n travel, conference, and writing, to reconcile Calvinists
and Lutherans, and that with little or no success. But the shortest
way were:--Take away ecclesiastical dignities, honours, and
preferments on both sides, and all would soon be hushed; those
ecclesiastics would be quiet, and then the people would come forth
into truth and liberty. But I will not engage in this quarrel. Yet
I shall lay this engagement upon myself,--to remain

"Your faithful friend and servant,

"M. Wall.[1]

"Causham: May 26, 1659."

[Footnote 1: Copy in Ayscough: MS. in British Museum, No. 4292 (f.
121); where the copyist "J. Owen" (the Rev. J. Owen of Rochdale)
certifies it as from the original. It was printed, not very
correctly, by Richard Baron, in 1756, in his preface to his edition
of the _Eikonoklastes._]

Here, from a man evidently after Milton's own heart on the Church
question, we have Milton's welcome back into the ranks of the old
Republicans. And more and more through the five months of the first
Restoration of the Rump (May 7--Oct. 13) the friends of "the good
old cause" had reason to know that Milton was again one of
themselves. It happens, indeed, that we have no more letters of his
for the Restored Rump Government than the two of May 15, already
quoted, which he wrote for the restored House, and which were signed
by Speaker Lenthall. Those two letters close the entire series of the
known and extant State-Letters of Milton. He and Marvell, however,
were still in their Secretaryship, drawing their salaries as before;
and of the completeness of Milton's re-adherence to the Republican
Government there is evidence more massive and striking than could
have been furnished by any number of farther official letters by him
for the Rump or its Council.

Milton, had not judged wrongly in supposing that the question of
Church-disestablishment would now be made part and parcel of "the
good old cause." We have already glanced at the facts (p. 466), but
they may be given here more in detail:--Hardly had the Rump been
reconstituted when petitions for Disestablishment, in the form of
petitions for the abolition of Tithes, began to pour in upon it. One
such, called "The Humble Representation and Petition of many
well-affected persons in the counties of Somerset, Wilts, and some
parts of Devon, Dorset, and Hampshire," was read in the House on the
14th of June. The petitioners were thanked, and informed that the
House reso