and did
much stick to his own apprehensions." The leader of the more moderate
party, as against Vane, was Whitlocke himself. He represented the
Lawyers, the Established Clergy, all the more sober and conservative
spirits. Parliamentary use and wont, with no great new-fangled
inventions, but only prudent modifications and precautions;
preservation of the Established Church, the Universities, and the
existing legal system; Liberty of Conscience certainly, but so
guarded as not to give reins to Quakerism and other Sectarian
excesses: these were the recommendations of Whitlocke. The Laird of
Warriston, it appears, who was not on the Sub-Committee, took up a
position of his own in the General Committee, which was neither
Vane's nor Whitlocke's, but represented what Ludlow calls "the
Scottish interest." One of its principles was that Liberty of
Conscience should be very limited indeed. And so, through November,
while Monk was consolidating his forces in Scotland, the discussion
of the new Constitution had been straggling on in the Sub-Committee
and Committee at Whitehall, and in less authorized assemblies in the
same neighbourhood. Among these, besides a clerical conclave of
Independent ministers, such as Owen and Nye, meeting at the Savoy and
advising Whitlocke on the Church-question, one must specially
remember Harrington's Rota Club at the Turk's Head in New Palace
Yard. That institution was now in its full nightly glory, discussing
all the questions that were discussed in Whitehall and many more. It
had won by this time the crowning distinction of being a subject of
daily jokes and witticisms. In a London squib of Nov. 12, 1659,
laughing at Harrington and his Rota-men, the public were informed
that among the last "decrees and orders of the Committee of Safety of
the Commonwealth of Oceana" had been these three:--1. "That the
politic casuists of the Coffee Club in Bow Street [had the Rota
adjourned thither, or was this some other debating Club?] appoint
some of their number to instruct the Committee of Safety at Whitehall
how they shall find an invention to escape Tyburn, if ever the law be
restored; 2. That Harrington's _Aphorisms_ and other political
slips be recommended to the English Plantation in Jamaica, to try how
they will agree with that apocryphal purchase; 3. That a Levite and
an Elder be sent to survey the Government of the Moon, and that
Warriston Johnstone and Parson Peters be the men, as a couple of
learned