Two days after the date of these letters the uproar of execration round the Wallingford-House Government had reached such an extreme that Whitlocke made his desperate proposal to Fleetwood that they should extricate themselves from their difficulty by declaring for Charles and opening negotiations with him.  Two days more, and Fleetwood’s soldiery, under the command of officers of the Rump, were marching down Chancery Lane, cheering Speaker Lenthall and asking his forgiveness.  Again two days more, and on the 26th of December, Fleetwood having given up the game and sent the keys of the Parliament House to Lenthall, the Rumpers were back in their old places.  We have arrived, therefore, at that Third Stage of the Anarchy which may be called “The Second Restoration of the Rump.”

* * * * *

Of Milton in this stage of the Anarchy we hear little or nothing directly; but there are means for tracing the course of his thoughts.

As may be inferred from the melancholy tone of his letter to Oldenburg, he had all but ceased to hope for any deliverance for the Commonwealth by any of the existing parties.  Even the Second Restoration of the Rump, though it was what he was bound to approve, and had indeed suggested as possibly the best course, can have brought him but little increase of expectation.  If, in its best estate, after its first restoration, the Rump had disappointed him, what could he hope from it now in its attenuated and crippled condition, with Vane expelled from it because of his actings during the Wallingford-House Interruption, with Salway out of it, who had worked so earnestly with Vane on the Church-question, and with others of the ablest also out of it, leaving a House of but about two scores of persons, to be managed by Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, and Henry Marten?  Nay, not to be managed even by those undoubted Republicans, but to a great extent also by Ashley Cooper, Fagg, and others, whose Republicanism was of a very dubious character!  For Milton cannot have failed to take note of the abatement in this session of the Rump of that Republican fervency which had characterized its former session.  What had been his own two proposed tests of genuine Republicanism?  Willingness of every one concerned with the Government to take a solemn oath of Abjuration of a Single Person, and willingness also of every such person to swear to the principle of Liberty of Conscience.  How was it faring with these two tests in this renewed Session of the Rumpers?  An abjuration oath of the kind indicated had been imposed indeed on the new Council of State; but nearly half of those nominated to the Council had remained out of that body rather than take the oath, and Hasilrig’s proposal to require the same oath from all members of the House itself had been so strenuously resisted that it had fallen to the ground.  Then, on the religious question, what was the deliberate offer of the House to the