ask on what evidence I, at such a distance, make these statements, and how they can have become so certain to myself, I reply that it is not on the evidence of rumour merely, but partly on that of most scrupulous witnesses who have most solemnly made the assertions to myself personally, partly on that of letters written either to myself or to others.  I will quote the very words of the letters, but will not give the names of the writers, considering that unnecessary in matters of such notoriety independently.  Here you have first an extract from a letter to me from the Hague, the writer of which is a man of probity and had no common means of investigating this affair:—­’I have ascertained beyond doubt (exploratissimum mihi est) that Morus himself offered the copy of the Clamor Regii Sanguinis to some other printers before Ulac received it, that he superintended the correction of the errors of the press, and that, as soon as the book was finished, copies were given and distributed by him to not a few.’...  Take again the following, which a highly honourable and intelligent man in Amsterdam writes as certainly known to himself and as abundantly witnessed there:—­’It is most certain that almost all through these parts have regarded Morus as the author of the book called Regii Sanguinis Clamor; for he corrected the sheets as they came from the press, and some copies bore the name of Morus subscribed to the Dedicatory Epistle, of which also he was the author.  He himself told a certain friend of mine that he was the author of that Epistle:  nay there is nothing more certain than that Morus either assumed or acknowledged the authorship of the same.’ ...  I add yet a third extract.  It is from another letter from the Hague:—­’A man of the first rank in the Hague has told me that he has in his possession a copy of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor with Morus’s own letter.’”

Farther on Milton re-adverts to the same topic, in a passage which it is also well to quote: 

“You say you ’will produce not rumours merely, not conversations merely, but letters, in proof that I had been warned not to assail an innocent man.’  Let us then inspect the letter you publish, which was written to you by ’that highly distinguished man, Lord Nieuport, ambassador of the Dutch Confederation,’—­a letter, it is evident, which you bring forward to be read, not for any force of proof in it, for it has none, but merely in ostentation.  He—­and it shows the singular kindliness of ‘the highly distinguished man’ (for what but goodness in him should make him take so much trouble on your most unworthy account?)—­goes to Mr. Secretary Thurloe.  He communicates your letter to Mr. Secretary.  When he saw that he had no success, he sends to me two honourable persons, friends of mine, with that same letter of yours.  What do they do?  They read me that letter of Morus, and they request, and say that Ambassador Nieuport also requests, that I will trust to your letter in which