nd and obedience, and
of distributing equal right and liberty among all men, as this of
_Wheeling_."...[1]

[Footnote 1: There is a reprint of this _Censure of the Rota_
in the Harleian Miscellany (IV. 179-186). I take the date of
publication from the Thomason copy of the original.]

How notoriously Milton had flashed forth as the chief militant
Republican of the crisis, how universally he had drawn upon himself
in that character the eyes of the Royalists and become the target for
their bitterest shafts, may appear from yet another probing among the
contemporary London pamphlets.----Perhaps the last formal and
collective appeal on behalf of the Republic to Monk and the others in
power was a small tract which appeared in the end of March, with this
title:--_Plain English to his Excellencie the Lord-General Monk and
the Officers of his Army: or a Word in Season, not onely to them, but
to all impartial Englishmen. To which is added a Declaration of the
Parliament in the year 1647, setting forth the grounds and reasons
why they resolved to make no further Address or Application to the
King. Printed at London in the year_ 1660. The first part of the
tract consists of eight pages addressed to Monk, in the form of a
letter dated "March 22," by some persons who do not give their names,
but sign themselves "your Excellency's most faithful friends and
servants in the common cause"; after which, in smaller type, comes a
reprint of the famous reasons of the Long Parliament for their total
rupture with Charles I. in January 1647-8 (Vol. III. pp. 584-585).
The letter begins thus:--"My Lord and Gentlemen,--It is written
_The prudent shall keep silence in the evil time_; and 'tis like
we also might hold our peace, but that we fear a knife is at the very
throat not only of our and your liberties, but of our persons also.
In this condition we hope it will be no offence if we cry out to you
for help,--you that, through God's goodness, have helped us so often,
and strenuously maintained the same cause with us against the return
of that family which pretends to the Government of these nations ...
We cannot yet be persuaded, though our fears and jealousies are
strong and the grounds of them many, that you can so lull asleep your
consciences, or forget the public interests and your own, as to be
returning back with the multitude to Egypt, or that you should with
them be hankering after the leeks and onions of our old bondage."
There fo