[Footnote 1:  Wood’s Ath.  III. 711-713.—­Hyde, writing from Breda, April 16, 1660, says to a Royalist correspondent:  “This very last post hath brought over three or four complaints to the king of the very unskillful passion and distemper of some of our divines in their late sermons; with which they say that both the General and the Council of State are highly offended, as truly they have reason to be ...  One Dr. Griffith is mentioned.” Ibid., note by Bliss.]

It was more natural, however, for the General and the Council to take similar precautions against too violent expressions of anti-Royalism, too vehement efforts to stir up the Republican embers.  Of their vigilance in this respect we have just seen an instance in their instant suppression of the Republican appeal to Monk and his Officers entitled Plain English, and their procedure by proclamation against the anonymous publisher of that tract.  If I am not mistaken, he was Livewell Chapman, of the Crown in Pope’s Head Alley, the publisher of Milton’s Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church, and also of his more recent Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth.  There was, at all events, a printed proclamation of the Council of State against this person, dated “Wednesday, 28 March, 1660,” and signed “William Jessop, Clerk of the Council.”  It began in these terms:—­“Whereas the Council of State is informed that Livewell Chapman, of London, Stationer, having from a wicked design to engage the nation in blood and confusion caused several seditious and treasonable books to be printed and published, doth, now hide and obscure himself, for avoiding the hand of justice”; and it ended with an order that Chapman should surrender himself within four days, and that none should harbour or conceal him, but all, and especially officers, try to arrest him.  If he was the publisher of Plain English, there would be additional reason for suspecting that Milton had some cognisance of that anonymous appeal to Monk; but there can be no doubt that among the “seditious and treasonable books” the publication of which constituted Chapman’s offence was Milton’s own Ready and Easy Way.  The authorities had not yet struck at Milton himself, but they were coming very near him.  They had ordered the arrest of his publisher.

Within a few days after the order for the arrest of Milton’s publisher, Livewell Chapman, the authorities signified their displeasure, though in a less harsh manner, with another Republican associate of Milton, his old friend Marchamont Needham.—­Not without difficulty had this Oliverian journalist, the subsidized editor since 1655 of the bi-weekly official newspaper of the Protectorate (calling itself The Public Intelligencer on Mondays and Mercurius Politicus on Thursdays), been retained in the service of the Good Old Cause.  His Oliverianism having been excessive, to the extent of defending not only Oliver’s