a considerable period, and their places to be taken
by newly elected members. Thus every third year the stuff of each
House would be entirely changed.--Not content with petitioning
Parliament, the Harringtonians disseminated their ideas vigorously
through the press. _A Discourse showing that the spirit of a
Parliament with a Council in the intervals is not to be trusted for a
Settlement, lest it introduce Monarchy_, was a pamphlet of
Harrington's, published July 28; another, published Aug. 31, was
entitled _Aphorisms Political_, and consisted of a series of
brief propositions: e.g. "Nature is of God," "The Union with
Scotland, as it is vulgarly discoursed of, is destructive both to the
hopes of a Commonwealth and to Liberty in Scotland." There were to be
other and still other publications, by Harrington or his disciples,
through the rest of the year, including, for popular effect, a copper
engraving of an Assembly in full session, watching the dropping of
noble voting-balls into splendid urns. But this was not all. The
Harringtonians set up their famous debating club, called _The
Rota_. "In 1659, in the beginning of Michaelmas term," says
Anthony Wood, "they had every night a meeting at the then Turk's
Head in the New Palace Yard at Westminster (the next house to the
stairs where people take water), called Miles's coffee-house--to
which place their disciples and virtuosi would commonly then repair:
and their discourses about Government and of ordering of a
Commonwealth were the most ingenious and smart that ever were heard,
for the arguments in the Parliament House were but flat to those.
This gang had a balloting box, and balloted how things should be
carried, by way of _tentamens_; which being not used or known in
England before upon this account, the room every evening was very
full. Besides our author and H. Neville, who were the prime men of
this club, were Cyriack Skinner, ... (which Skinner sometimes held
the chair), Major John Wildman, Charles Wolseley of Staffordshire,
Rog. Coke, Will. Poulteney, afterwards a knight (who sometimes held
the chair), Joh. Hoskyns, Joh. Aubrey, Maximilian Pettie of Tetsworth
in Oxfordshire, a very able man in these matters, ... Mich. Mallet,
Ph. Carteret of the Isle of Guernsey, Franc. Cradock a merchant, Hen.
Ford, Major Venner, ... Tho. Marriett of Warwickshire, Henry Croone a
physician, Edward Bagshaw of Christ Church, and sometimes Rob. Wood
of Linc. Coll., and James Arderne,