people take water), called Miles’s coffee-house—­to which place their disciples and virtuosi would commonly then repair:  and their discourses about Government and of ordering of a Commonwealth were the most ingenious and smart that ever were heard, for the arguments in the Parliament House were but flat to those.  This gang had a balloting box, and balloted how things should be carried, by way of tentamens; which being not used or known in England before upon this account, the room every evening was very full.  Besides our author and H. Neville, who were the prime men of this club, were Cyriack Skinner, ... (which Skinner sometimes held the chair), Major John Wildman, Charles Wolseley of Staffordshire, Rog.  Coke, Will.  Poulteney, afterwards a knight (who sometimes held the chair), Joh.  Hoskyns, Joh.  Aubrey, Maximilian Pettie of Tetsworth in Oxfordshire, a very able man in these matters, ...  Mich.  Mallet, Ph.  Carteret of the Isle of Guernsey, Franc.  Cradock a merchant, Hen.  Ford, Major Venner, ...  Tho.  Marriett of Warwickshire, Henry Croone a physician, Edward Bagshaw of Christ Church, and sometimes Rob.  Wood of Linc.  Coll., and James Arderne, then or soon afterwards a divine, with many others, besides antagonists and auditors of note whom I cannot now name.  Dr. Will.  Petty was a Rota-man, and would sometimes trouble Ja.  Harrington in his Club; and one Stafford, a gent. of Northamptonshire, who used to be an auditor, did with his gang come among them one evening very mellow from the tavern, and did much affront the junto, and tore in pieces their orders and minutes.  The soldiers who commonly were there, as auditors and spectators, would have kicked them down stairs; but Harrington’s moderation and persuasion hindered them.  The doctrine was very taking, and the more because as to human foresight there was no possibility of the King’s return.  The greatest of the Parliament men hated this design of rotation and ballotting, as being against their power.  Eight or ten were for it.”  By Wood’s dating in this passage, the Harrington or Rota Club must have been in full operation shortly after the appointment, Sept. 8, of the great Committee of Parliament on the new Constitution.  Neville was one of that Committee, and the popularity of the Club among the soldiers and citizens must have strengthened his hands in the Committee.  Indeed for five months the Rota Club was to be one of the busiest and most attractive institutions in London, yielding more amusement of an intellectual kind than any such meetings as those of the few physicists left in London to be the nucleus of the future Royal Society.  It is worthy of remark that Harrington and the chief Harringtonians looked with contempt on these physical philosophers.  What were their occupations over drugs, water-tubs, and the viscera of frogs, compared with great researches into human nature and plans for the government of states?  Dr. William Petty, who belonged to both bodies, seems to have taken pleasure in troubling the Rota with his doubts and interrogatives.[1]