from Coldstream to fight
Lambert. All over England and Ireland people were declaring for Monk
with increasing enthusiasm, and execrating Lambert's _coup
d'etat_ and the Wallingford-House usurpation. Portsmouth had
revolted; the Londoners were in riot; Lambert's own soldiery were
falling away from him at Newcastle; Fleetwood's soldiery in London
were growing ashamed of themselves and of their chief amid the taunts
and insults of the populace. On the 20th of December appearances were
such that Whitlocke and his colleagues were in the utmost
perplexity.

One great Republican had not lived to see this return of public
feeling to the cause of his heart. Bradshaw had died on the 22nd of
November, all but despairing of the Republic. His will was proved on
the 16th of December. It consisted of an original will, dated March
22, 1653, and two codicils, the second dated September 10, 1655. His
wife having predeceased him, leaving no issue, the bulk of his
extensive property went to his nephew, Henry Bradshaw; but there were
various legacies, and among them the following in one group in the
second codicil,--"To old Margarett ffive markes, to Mr. Marcham^t.
Nedham tenne pounds, and to Mr. John Milton tenne poundes." There is
nothing here to settle the disputed question of Milton's cousinship,
on his mother's side, with Bradshaw.[1] The legacy was a trifling
one, equivalent to L35 now; and, as Needham and Milton are associated
on terms of equality, Bradshaw must have been thinking of them
together as the two literary officials who had been so much in
contact with each other, and with himself, in the days of his
Presidency of the Council of State,--Needham as the appointed
journalist of the Commonwealth, and Milton as its Latin champion, and
for some time Needham's censor and supervisor. In Milton's case
perhaps, as the codicil was drawn up fifteen months after the
publication of the _Defensio Secunda_, the legacy may have been
intended not merely as a small token of general respect and
friendliness, but also as a recognition by Bradshaw of the bold
eulogy on him inserted into that work at a critical moment of his
relations to Cromwell.

[Footnote 1: Ormerod's Cheshire, III. 409; but I owe the verbatim
extract from the codicil to the never-failing kindness of Colonel
Chester.--By an inadvertence the date of Bradshaw's death has been
given, ante p. 495, as Oct. 31, 1659, instead of Nov. 22.]

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