was submitted to the Convention of Army and Navy delegates at Whitehall; and it was on the 14th that, after modifications by this body tending to make it still more Whitlocke’s than it had been, it went back to the Committee of Safety approved and ratified.  A Single House Parliament of the customary sort to meet in February; a new Council of State of the customary sort to be appointed by that Parliament; the Established Church to be kept up, and by the system of Tithes until some other form of ample State-maintenance for the clergy should be provided; Liberty of Conscience for Nonconformists, but within limits:  this and no more was the parturition after all.  If Ludlow was in despair because no sufficient security had been taken that the new Parliament should be true to the Commonwealth, and if the theorists of the Rota were disappointed because none of their patent models had been adopted, Milton’s regret can have been no less.  Government after government, but all deaf alike to his teachings!  Even this one, with Vane at the heart of it, unable to rise above the old conceits of a customary state-craft, and ending in a solemn vote for conserving a Church of Hirelings!

So in the middle of December.  Then, for another week, the strange phenomenon, day after day, of that whirl of popular and army opinion which was to render all the long debate over the new Constitution nugatory, to upset the Wallingford-House administration, and stop Whitlocke in his issue of the writs for the Parliament that had just been announced.  Monk’s dogged persistency for the old Rump had done the work without the need of his advance from Coldstream to fight Lambert.  All over England and Ireland people were declaring for Monk with increasing enthusiasm, and execrating Lambert’s coup d’etat and the Wallingford-House usurpation.  Portsmouth had revolted; the Londoners were in riot; Lambert’s own soldiery were falling away from him at Newcastle; Fleetwood’s soldiery in London were growing ashamed of themselves and of their chief amid the taunts and insults of the populace.  On the 20th of December appearances were such that Whitlocke and his colleagues were in the utmost perplexity.

One great Republican had not lived to see this return of public feeling to the cause of his heart.  Bradshaw had died on the 22nd of November, all but despairing of the Republic.  His will was proved on the 16th of December.  It consisted of an original will, dated March 22, 1653, and two codicils, the second dated September 10, 1655.  His wife having predeceased him, leaving no issue, the bulk of his extensive property went to his nephew, Henry Bradshaw; but there were various legacies, and among them the following in one group in the second codicil,—­“To old Margarett ffive markes, to Mr. Marcham^t.  Nedham tenne pounds, and to Mr. John Milton tenne poundes.”  There is nothing here to settle the disputed question of Milton’s cousinship, on his mother’s side, with Bradshaw.[1] The legacy was a trifling