d fundamentals of Liberty of Conscience and
Abjuration of any Single Person. Vane, to be sure, was on the
Committee, and a host in himself for both principles; and there were
others, such as Salway and Ludlow, that would not flinch on either.
But Whitlocke, Sydenham, and the majority, were but moderately for
Liberty of Conscience, and certainly utterly against that Miltonic
interpretation of it which implied Church-disestablishment, while one
at least, the Scottish Johnstone of Warriston, was positively against
Liberty of Conscience beyond very narrow Presbyterian limits. Nor,
though probably all would have assented at that time to an oath
abjuring Charles Stuart, were they all without taint of the Single
Person heresy in other forms. Some of them, including Whitlocke and
Berry, would have liked to restore Richard; and Fleetwood and Lambert
were not wrongly suspected of seeing the most desirable Single Person
every morning in the looking-glass. Milton's former regard for
Fleetwood must have suffered considerably by recent events; and he
thought of Lambert as the very "Achan" to be dreaded. But, farther,
even had the two aristocracies been of perfectly satisfactory
composition, they had abandoned that idea of their own permanence
which Milton had made all but essential. They had agreed that their
chief work should consist in shaping out a fit constitution for the
Commonwealth, and that the _Committee of Safety_ should continue
in power only till that should be done and the new Constitution
should come into operation.

Such as it was, the new Government of the Wallingford-House
Interruption had no objection to retaining Mr. Milton in the Latin
Secretaryship if he cared to keep it. That he had held the post
throughout the whole of the Government of the Restored Rump (though
all but in sinecure, as we must conclude from the cessation of the
series of his Latin Letters in the preceding May) appears from a very
interesting document in the Record Office. The Council of State of
the Rump, it is to be remembered, had not vanished with the Rump
itself on Oct. 13, but had sat on for twelve days more, though with
its number reduced by the secession of Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, and
other very vehement Rumpers,--the object being to maintain the
continuity of the public business and to make the most amicable
arrangement possible with the Army-officers. That object having been
accomplished by the institution, of the new _Committee of