“And so, Milton persisting in his blundering charge against Morus for that dangerous service to the King, the other Rebels could not, without great damage to their good patron, proceed against any other than Morus as guilty of so great a crime.  And, as Milton preferred my getting off scatheless to being found in a ridiculous position himself, I had this reward for my pains, that Milton, whom I had treated so roughly, turned out my patron and sedulous body-guard.  Don’t laugh, reader; but give best thanks, with me, to God, the most good, the most great, and the most wise, deliverer.”

This final version of the story of Du Moulin (in 1670, remember) seems to have become current among those who, after the Restoration, retained any interest in the subject.  Thus, Aubrey, in his notes for Milton’s life, written about 1680, has a memorandum to this effect, giving “Mr. Abr.  Hill” as his authority:  “His [Milton’s] sharp writing against Alexander More of Holland, upon a mistake, notwithstanding he [Morus] had given him [Milton], by the ambassador, all satisfaction to the contrary, viz. that the book called Clamor was writ by Peter Du Moulin.  Well, that was all one [said Milton]; he having writ it [the Defensio Secunda], it should go into the world:  one of them was as bad as the other.’”—­Bentrovato; but there is at least one vital particular in which neither Du Moulin’s amusing statement in 1670 nor Aubrey’s subsequent anecdote seems to be consistent with the exact truth as already before us in the documents.  The secret of the real authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor had been better and longer kept than Du Moulin’s statement would lead us to suppose.  Even Ulac in 1654, as we have seen, while declaring that Morus was not the author, could not tell who else he was.  Morus himself did then know, having been admitted into the secret, probably from the first; and several others then knew, having been told in confidence by Salmasius, Morus, or Du Moulin.  Charles II. himself seems to have been informed.  But that Morus had refrained from divulging the secret generally, or communicating it in a precise manner to Milton, even at the moment when he was frantically trying to avert Milton’s wrath and stop the publication of the Defensio Secunda, seems evident, and must go to his credit.  In the remonstrance with Thurloe, in May 1654, through the Dutch ambassador Nieuport, intended to stop the publication when, it was just leaving the press, we hear only of the denial of Morus that he was the author—­nothing of any information from him that Du Moulin was the real author; and, though Durie had about the same time informed Milton in a letter from the Hague that he had heard the book attributed, on private authority from Morus, to “a certain French minister,” no name was given.  Farther, in the Fides Publica, published some months afterwards, Morus was still almost chivalrously reticent.  While declaring