innumerable etceteras. Then, on the other side
of the water, where his Majesty had meanwhile received
with extraordinary satisfaction, through Sir John
Greenville, the L50,000 voted him by the Commons,
L10,000 of it in gold from England, and the rest in
bank bills payable at sight in Amsterdam, and where
the Duke of York had been promised another L10,000
and the Duke of Gloucester L5000, much of the money
had to be converted into the apparel and other equipments
required for the suitable appearance of the three
royal personages and their retinues when they should
present themselves in England. A great deal might
be done at Breda, where already there was swarming
round his Majesty a miscellany of private visitors,
English, Scottish, and Irish, all anxious to be useful,
and many of them with presents of money. But
the final arrangements were to be at the Hague, the
capital of the United Provinces, amid whatever stately
ceremonial of congratulation and farewell the Dutch
Government could now offer in atonement for previous
neglect or indifference. There had been most
pressing solicitations, indeed, from the Spanish authorities
of Flanders, that Charles would return to Brussels
and make his arrangements there; Mazarin too had sent
a message at last, begging him to honour France by
making Calais his port of departure; but Charles preferred
the Hague. It was at the Hague, therefore, that
the commissioners from the two Houses of Parliament,
with deputations from the City of London and the London
clergy, were to wait upon Charles; it was there that
he was to confer his first large collective batch
of English knighthoods, following the single knighthood
conferred conspicuously already on Dr. Clarges at
Breda; and it was thence that there was to be the great
embarkation for Dover.[1]
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 906-910; Pepys’s
Diary, from the 8th of May onwards.]
And what meanwhile of the chief Republican criminals
at home, whether the Regicides or the scores of others
that might count themselves in peril for more than
mere place or property? Since the 1st of May,
or before, such of them as could, such as were at
liberty and had money, had absconded or been trying
to abscond. Of the Regicides and some of the
rest we shall hear enough in due course. For the
present let us attend only to Needham and Milton.
Needham had absconded in good time. It had probably
been in the very beginning of May, if not earlier;
for on the 10th of May there was out in London, in
the form of a printed squib, An Hue and Cry after
Mercurius Politicus, giving a sketch of his career,
and containing some doggrel verse about his escape,
in this style:—
“But, if at Amsterdam you meet
With one that’s purblind in the
street,
Hawk-nosed,
turn up his hair,
And in his ears two holes you’ll
find;
And, if they are, not pawned behind,
Two rings
are hanging there.
“His visage meagre is and long,
His body slender,” &c.[1]