vious neglect or
indifference. There had been most pressing solicitations, indeed,
from the Spanish authorities of Flanders, that Charles would return
to Brussels and make his arrangements there; Mazarin too had sent a
message at last, begging him to honour France by making Calais his
port of departure; but Charles preferred the Hague. It was at the
Hague, therefore, that the commissioners from the two Houses of
Parliament, with deputations from the City of London and the London
clergy, were to wait upon Charles; it was there that he was to confer
his first large collective batch of English knighthoods, following
the single knighthood conferred conspicuously already on Dr. Clarges
at Breda; and it was thence that there was to be the great
embarkation for Dover.[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 906-910; Pepys's Diary, from the 8th of May
onwards.]

And what meanwhile of the chief Republican criminals at home, whether
the Regicides or the scores of others that might count themselves in
peril for more than mere place or property? Since the 1st of May, or
before, such of them as could, such as were at liberty and had money,
had absconded or been trying to abscond. Of the Regicides and some of
the rest we shall hear enough in due course. For the present let us
attend only to Needham and Milton.

Needham had absconded in good time. It had probably been in the very
beginning of May, if not earlier; for on the 10th of May there was
out in London, in the form of a printed squib, _An Hue and Cry
after Mercurius Politicus_, giving a sketch of his career, and
containing some doggrel verse about his escape, in this style:--

"But, if at Amsterdam you meet
With one that's purblind in the street,
Hawk-nosed, turn up his hair,
And in his ears two holes you'll find;
And, if they are, not pawned behind,
Two rings are hanging there.

"His visage meagre is and long,
His body slender," &c.[1]

[Footnote 1: "_O. Cromwell's Thankes to the Lord General faithfully
presented by Hugh Peters in another Conference, together with an Hue
and Cry after Mercurius Politicus: London, Printed by M.T._"
("1660, May 10" in the Thomason copy).]

Our latest glimpse of Milton is on the 7th of May, the day before the
public proclamation of Charles in London. On that day "John Milton,
of the City of Westminster," transferred to his friend "Cyriack
Skinner, of Lincoln's Inn, Gentleman," a Bond for L400 given by the
Commissioners