Government, founding itself on the Westminster Confession and the Solemn League and Covenant?  There is no proof, however, of any such instant dismissal of Milton by the new powers, but rather a shade of proof to the contrary in the phraseology of the preface to his Ready and Easy Way.  The probability, therefore, is that it was after March 3, the date of the publication of that pamphlet, that Milton was sequestered, and that it was the pamphlet itself, added to the sum of his previous obnoxiousness to the new powers, that led to the sequestration.  Yet, as the new powers were proceeding warily, and keeping up as long as they could the pretence of leaving the Commonwealth an open question, it is quite possible that they were in no haste to discharge Milton, All in all, the most probable time of his dismissal is some time after the dissolution of the Parliament of the Secluded Members on the 16th of March, 1659-60, when Monk and the Council of State were left in the management.  As Milton had been originally appointed by the Council of State and not by Parliament, it was in the Council’s pleasure to continue him or dismiss him.  They were in a severe mood, virtually anti-Republican already, though not yet avowedly so, between March 28, when they ordered Livewell Chapman’s arrest, and April 9, when they dismissed Needham; and that or thereabouts may be the date of Milton’s discharge.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Phillips’s narrative of his uncle’s dismissal is a blotch of confused wording and pointing:—­“It was but a little before the King’s Restoration that he wrote and published his book in defence of a Commonwealth; so undaunted he was in declaring his true sentiments to the world; and not long before his Power of the Civil Magistrate in Ecclesiastical Affairs and his Treatise against Hirelings, just upon the King’s coming over; having a little before been sequestered from his office of Latin Secretary and the salary thereunto belonging, he was force,” &c.  This, as it stands, defies interpretation.  The Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes appeared in April 1659, or eight months before the same.  There ought, I believe, to have been a full stop after Hirelings, and the rest should have run on thus:—­“Just upon the King’s coming over, having a little before been sequestered from his office of latin Secretary and the salary therunto belonging, he was force,” &c.]

* * * * *

In office or out of office, it was the same to Milton.  He had determined that he would not be suppressed, that he would not be silent, till they should tie his hands, or gag his mouth.  There is no grander exhibition of dying resistance, of solitary and useless fighting for a lost cause, than in his conduct through April 1680.  Alone he then stood, we may say, the last of the visible Republicans.  Hasilrig, Scott, Ludlow, Neville, and Vane, had collapsed or were out of sight, the last under ban already by his