hip, they could hardly do
less than turn Milton out of his Latin Secretaryship. About this
time, accordingly, he did cease to hold the office which he had held
for eleven years. Phillips's words are that he was "sequestered from
his office of Latin Secretary and the salary thereunto belonging";
but, unfortunately, though he gives us to understand that this was
shortly before the Restoration, he leaves the exact date uncertain.

Though the last of Milton's state-letters now preserved and known as
his are the two, dated May 15, 1659, written for the Rump immediately
after the subversion of Richard's Protectorate, we have seen him
holding his office in sinecure, and drawing his salary of L200 a
year, to as late at least as the beginning of the Wallingford-House
Interruption in October 1659; and there is no reason for thinking
that the Council or Committee of Safety of the Wallingford-House
Government, his dissent from their usurpation notwithstanding,
thought it necessary to dismiss him. Far less likely is it that the
Republican Rumpers, when restored the second time in December 1659,
would have parted with a man so thoroughly Republican and so
respectful to themselves, even while they dared not adopt his
Church-disestablishment suggestions. We may fairly assume, then, that
Milton remained Marvell's nominal colleague till Monk's final
termination of the tenure of the Rump by re-admitting the secluded
members, i.e. till Feb. 21, 1659-60. Had he been then at once
dismissed, it would have been no wonder. How could he, the
Independent of Independents, the denouncer of every form of
State-Church, the enemy and satirist of the Presbyterians, and
moreover the author of the Divorce heresy and the founder of a sect
of Divorcers, be retained in the service of a re-Presbyterianized
Government, founding itself on the Westminster Confession and the
Solemn League and Covenant? There is no proof, however, of any such
instant dismissal of Milton by the new powers, but rather a shade of
proof to the contrary in the phraseology of the preface to his
_Ready and Easy Way_. The probability, therefore, is that it was
after March 3, the date of the publication of that pamphlet, that
Milton was sequestered, and that it was the pamphlet itself, added to
the sum of his previous obnoxiousness to the new powers, that led to
the sequestration. Yet, as the new powers were proceeding warily, and
keeping up as long as they could the pretence of leaving