Established Church, but also all else in his policy that grated most on the pure Republicans, he had been discharged from his editorship on the 13th of May, 1659, by order of the Restored Rump, before it had been six days in power, the place going then to John Canne.  But Needham’s versatility was matchless, and on the 15th of August the Rump had thought it best to reappoint him to the editorship.[1] Since then, having already in succession been Parliamentarian, Royalist, Commonwealth’s man or Rumper, and all but anti-Republican Protectoratist, the world had known him in his fifth phase of Rumper or pure Commonwealth’s man again.  Not only in his journals, but also in independent pamphlets, he had advocated the Good Old Cause.  One such pamphlet, published with his name in August 1659, under the title of Interest will not lie,[2] had been in reply to some Royalist who had propounded “a way how to satisfy all parties and provide for the public good by calling in the son of the late King”:  against whom Needham’s contention was “that it is really the interest of every party (except only the Papist) to keep him out.”  One can understand now why, in the Royalist squib lately quoted, Needham was named as “the Commonwealth didapper"[3] along with Milton as “their goose-quill champion,” and why the public were there promised the pleasure of soon seeing the two at Tyburn together.—­But the final performance of Needham’s, it is believed, was a tract called News from Brussels, in a Letter from a near attendant on his Majesty’s person to a Person of Honour here.  It purports to be dated at Brussels, March 10, 1659-60, English style, and was out in London on March 23.  The publication is said to have been managed secretly by Mr. Praise-God Barebone; and, though the tract was anonymous, it was attributed at once to Needham.  Being “fall of rascalities against Charles II. and his Court,” as Wood says, and professing to give private information as to the terrible severities which they were meditating when they should be restored to England, the pamphlet was much resented by the Royalists; and John Evelyn roused himself from a sickbed to pen an instant and emphatic contradiction, called The late News or Message from Brussels unmasked.  Needham’s connexion, or supposed connexion, with so violent an anti-Royalist tract, and possibly also with the Republican manifesto called Plain English, which appeared in the same week, could not be overlooked; and, accordingly, in Whitlocke, under date April 9, 1660, we find this note:  “The Council discharged Needham from writing the Weekly Intelligence and ordered Dury and Muddiman to do it.”  The Dury here mentioned was not our John Durie of European celebrity, but an insignificant Giles Dury.  His colleague Muddiman, the real successor of Needham in the editorship, was Henry Muddiman, an acquaintance of Pepys, who certifies that he was “a good scholar and an arch rogue.”  He had been connected with the London press for some time (for smaller news-sheets had been springing up again beside the authorized Mercurius and Intelligencer), and had been writing for the Rumpers.  He had just been, owning to Pepys, however, that he “did it only to get money,” and had no liking for them or their politics.[4]