ad disappointed him,
what could he hope from it now in its attenuated and crippled
condition, with Vane expelled from it because of his actings during
the Wallingford-House Interruption, with Salway out of it, who had
worked so earnestly with Vane on the Church-question, and with others
of the ablest also out of it, leaving a House of but about two scores
of persons, to be managed by Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, and Henry
Marten? Nay, not to be managed even by those undoubted Republicans,
but to a great extent also by Ashley Cooper, Fagg, and others, whose
Republicanism was of a very dubious character! For Milton cannot have
failed to take note of the abatement in this session of the Rump of
that Republican fervency which had characterized its former session.
What had been his own two proposed tests of genuine Republicanism?
Willingness of every one concerned with the Government to take a
solemn oath of Abjuration of a Single Person, and willingness also of
every such person to swear to the principle of Liberty of Conscience.
How was it faring with these two tests in this renewed Session of the
Rumpers? An abjuration oath of the kind indicated had been imposed
indeed on the new Council of State; but nearly half of those
nominated to the Council had remained out of that body rather than
take the oath, and Hasilrig's proposal to require the same oath from
all members of the House itself had been so strenuously resisted that
it had fallen to the ground. Then, on the religious question, what
was the deliberate offer of the House to the country in their heads
for a public Declaration on the 21st of January 1659-60? "Due
liberty to tender consciences" was promised; but that was a mere
phrase of custom, implying little or nothing, and it was utterly
engulphed, in Milton's estimate, by the accompanying engagement to
"uphold a learned and pious ministry of the nation and their
maintenance by Tithes." On the Church-disestablishment question the
House had actually receded from its former self by announcing that it
was not even to prosecute the inquiry as to a possible substitute for
Tithes. Altogether, before the twice-restored Rump had sat a month,
Milton must have seen that his ideal Commonwealth was just as far off
as ever. All he could hope was that the wretched little Parliament
would not prove positively treacherous.

With others, however, he must have been thinking more of Monk's
proceedings and intentions than of those of th