then or soon afterwards a divine,
with many others, besides antagonists and auditors of note whom I
cannot now name. Dr. Will. Petty was a Rota-man, and would sometimes
trouble Ja. Harrington in his Club; and one Stafford, a gent. of
Northamptonshire, who used to be an auditor, did with his gang come
among them one evening very mellow from the tavern, and did much
affront the junto, and tore in pieces their orders and minutes. The
soldiers who commonly were there, as auditors and spectators, would
have kicked them down stairs; but Harrington's moderation and
persuasion hindered them. The doctrine was very taking, and the more
because as to human foresight there was no possibility of the King's
return. The greatest of the Parliament men hated this design of
rotation and ballotting, as being against their power. Eight or ten
were for it." By Wood's dating in this passage, the Harrington or
Rota Club must have been in full operation shortly after the
appointment, Sept. 8, of the great Committee of Parliament on the new
Constitution. Neville was one of that Committee, and the popularity
of the Club among the soldiers and citizens must have strengthened
his hands in the Committee. Indeed for five months the Rota Club was
to be one of the busiest and most attractive institutions in London,
yielding more amusement of an intellectual kind than any such
meetings as those of the few physicists left in London to be the
nucleus of the future Royal Society. It is worthy of remark that
Harrington and the chief Harringtonians looked with contempt on these
physical philosophers. What were _their_ occupations over drugs,
water-tubs, and the viscera of frogs, compared with great researches
into human nature and plans for the government of states? Dr. William
Petty, who belonged to both bodies, seems to have taken pleasure in
troubling the Rota with his doubts and interrogatives.[1]

[Footnote 1: Harrington's Works (large folio, 1727), with Toland's
Life of Harrington (1699) prefixed; Wood's Ath., III. 1115-1126;
Commons Journals, July 6, 1659; Catalogue of the Thomason Pamphlets
(for dates), with inspection of first editions of some of
Harrington's Pamphlets in the Thomason Collection.]

While the Rota was holding its first meetings, the Rump and the
Wallingford-House Party were again in deadly quarrel. More and more
the resolute proceedings of the pure Republicans for subjecting the
Army completely to the Parliament had alienated the