north, suppressing the Cheshire Insurrection of Sir George Booth; in the next month discontent with the Rumpers and their rule was rife in Lambert’s victorious northern Brigade; and in the beginning of October London was again in agitation with the rupture of the hasty alliance that had been patched up between the Republicans and the Wallingford-House Council of Army Officers.  It was on the 12th of October that the Rump defied the Army by cashiering Lambert, Desborough, Berry, and six other officers; and on the 13th Lambert retaliated by his coup d’etat, filling the streets with his soldiery, catching the Rumpers one by one as they went to the House, and informing them that it was the will of the Army that they should sit no more.  Thus had begun that “Second Stage of the Anarchy” which we have called The Wallingford-House Interruption.

Of Milton’s thoughts over the change effected by Lambert’s coup d’etat we have an authentic record in a letter of his, dated “October 20, 1659” (i.e. just a week after the coup d’etat), and addressed to some friend with whom he had been conversing on the previous night.  It appears in his works now with the title “A Letter to a Friend, concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth:  Published from the Manuscript."[1] Who the Friend was does not appear; but the words of the Letter imply that he was some one very near the centre of affairs.  “Sir,” it begins, “upon the sad and serious discourse which we fell into last night, concerning these dangerous ruptures of the Commonwealth, scarce yet in her infancy, which cannot be without some inward flaw in her bowels, I began to consider more intensely thereon than hitherto I have been wont,—­resigning myself [i.e. having hitherto resigned myself] to the wisdom and care of those who had the government, and not finding that either God or the Public required more of me than my prayers for those that govern.  And, since you have not only stirred up my thoughts by acquainting me with the state of affairs more inwardly than I knew before, but also have desired me to set down my opinion thereof, trusting to your ingenuity, I shall give you freely my apprehension, both of our present evils, and what expedients, if God in mercy regard us, may remove them.”  At the close of the Letter he says, “You have the sum of my present thoughts, as much as I understand of these affairs, freely imparted, at your request and the persuasion you wrought in me that I might chance hereby to be some way serviceable to the Commonwealth in a time when all ought to be endeavouring what good they can, whether much or but little.  With this you may do what you please.  Put out, put in, communicate or suppress:  you offend not me, who only have obeyed your opinion that, in doing what I have done, I might happen to offer something which might be of some use in this great time of need.  However, I have not been wanting to the opportunity which you presented before me of showing the readiness which