nd finally, he was a captain, and in the words of our great
literary antiquary, "siding with the rout and scum of the people, he
made them weekly sport by railing at all that was noble, in his
Intelligence, called Mercurius Britannicus, wherein his endeavours were
to sacrifice the fame of some lord, or any person of quality, and of the
king himself, to the beast with many heads." He soon became popular, and
was known under the name of Captain Needham, of Gray's Inn; and whatever
he now wrote was deemed oracular. But whether from a slight imprisonment
for aspersing Charles I. or some pique with his own party, he requested
an audience on his knees with the king, reconciled himself to his
majesty, and showed himself a violent royalist in his "Mercurius
Pragmaticus," and galled the Presbyterians with his wit and quips. Some
time after, when the popular party prevailed, he was still further
enlightened, and was got over by President Bradshaw, as easily as by
Charles I. Our Mercurial writer became once more a virulent
Presbyterian, and lashed the royalists outrageously in his "Mercurius
Politicus;" at length on the return of Charles II. being now conscious,
says our cynical friend Anthony, that he might be in danger of the
halter, once more he is said to have fled into Holland, waiting for an
act of oblivion. For money given to a hungry courtier, Needham obtained
his pardon under the great seal. He latterly practised as a physician
among his party, but lived detested by the royalists; and now only
committed harmless treasons with the College of Physicians, on whom he
poured all that gall and vinegar which the government had suppressed
from flowing through its natural channel.

The royalists were not without their Needham in the prompt activity of
_Sir John Birkenhead_. In buffoonery, keenness, and boldness, having
been frequently imprisoned, he was not inferior, nor was he at times
less an adventurer. His "Mercurius Aulicus" was devoted to the court,
then at Oxford. But he was the fertile parent of numerous political
pamphlets, which appear to abound in banter, wit, and satire. Prompt to
seize on every temporary circumstance, he had equal facility in
execution. His "Paul's Church-yard" is a bantering pamphlet, containing
fictitious titles of books and acts of parliament, reflecting on the mad
reformers of those times. One of his poems is entitled "_The Jolt_,"
being written on the Protector having fallen off his own coach-box: