the tract was a concoction of a few of the City Republicans, with Barebone among them, meeting privately perhaps in the back-parlour of the Republican bookseller who ventured the publication anonymously; but it is possible that Milton may have been consulted, or at least have been cognisant of the affair.  The reprinting of the reasons of the Long Parliament for their No-Address Resolutions of January 1647-8 was an excellent idea, inasmuch as it reminded people of that disgust with Charles I., that impossibility of dealing with him even in his captive condition, which had driven the Parliamentarians to the theory of a Republic a year before the Republic had been actually founded; and this feature of the tract may have seemed good to Milton.——­The Tract must have annoyed Monk and the other authorities, for it was immediately suppressed.  This we learn from a reply to it, which appeared on the 3rd of April, with the title Treason Arraigned, in answer to Plain English, being a Trayterous and Phanatique Pamphlet which was condemned by the Counsel of State, suppressed by Authority, and the Printer declared against by Proclamation ...  London, Printed in the year 1660.  The reply takes the very curious form of a reproduction of the condemned tract almost textually, paragraph by paragraph, with a running comment of vituperation upon the author or authors.  The following sentences, culled from the vituperative comment, will show that the writer suspected Milton as the person chiefly responsible, and will sufficiently represent the entire performance:—­

“Some two days since came to my view a bold sharp pamphlet, called Plain English, directed to the General and his Officers....  It is a piece drawn by no fool, and it deserves a serious answer.  By the design, the subject, malice, and the style, I should suspect it for a blot of the same pen that wrote Eikonoklastes.  It runs foul, tends to tumult; and, not content barely to applaud the murder of the King, the execrable author of it vomits upon his ashes with a pedantic and envenomed scorn, pursuing still his sacred memory.  Betwixt him [Milton] and his brother Rabshakeh [Needham?] I think a man may venture to divide the glory of it.  It relishes the mixture of their united faculties and wickedness....  Say, Milton, Needham, either or both of you, or whosoever else, say where this worthy person [Monk] ever mixed with you....  Come, hang yourself; beg right; here’s your true method of begging:—­’O, for Tom Scott’s sake, for Hasilrig’s sake, for Robinson, Holland, Mildmay, Mounson, Corbet, Atkins, Vane, Livesey, Skippon, Milton, Tichbourne, Ireton, Gordon, Lechmere, Blagrave, Barebone, Needham’s sake, and, to conclude, for all the rest of our unpenitent brethren’s sake, help a company of poor rebellious devils[1].’”

[Footnote 1:  The dates of the two pamphlets, and the extracts, are from copies in the Thomason Collection.  Such references to Milton in the pamphlets of March—­April 1660 might be multiplied.  He was then in all men’s mouths.]