Questions, by
William Allen:_" such was the title of a pamphlet in secret
circulation in London in June, 1657, and still of some celebrity. It
began with a letter "To His Highness, Oliver Cromwell," in this
strain: "To your Highness justly belongs the honour of dying for the
people; and it cannot choose but be an unspeakable consolation to you
in the last moments of your life to consider with how much benefit to
the world you are likely to leave it ... To hasten this great good is
the chief end of my writing this paper." There follows, accordingly,
a letter to those officers and soldiers of the army who remember
their engagements, urging them to assassinate Cromwell. "We wish we
had rather endured thee, O Charles," it says, "than have been
condemned to this mean tyrant, not that we desire any kind of
slavery, but that the quality of the master sometimes graces the
condition of the slave." Sindercombe is spoken of as "a brave man,"
of as "great a mind" as any of the old Romans. At the end there is
this postscript: "Courteous reader, expect another sheet or two of
paper on this subject, if I escape the Tyrant's hands, although he
gets in the interim the crown upon his head, which he hath underhand
put his confederates on to petition his acceptance thereof." This
would imply that, though not in circulation till June, the pamphlet
had been written while the Kingship question was in suspense, i.e,
before May 8. The name "William Allen" on the title-page was, of
course, assumed. The pamphlet, hardly any one now doubts, was by
Edward Sexby, the Stuartist arch-conspirator, then moving between
England and the continent, and known to have been the real principal
of Sindercombe's plot. Actually, when the pamphlet appeared, the
desperate man was again in England, despite Thurloe's police. The
pamphlet was greedily sought after, and much talked of. The sale was,
of course, dangerous. A copy could not be had under five
shillings.[1]

[Footnote 1: Copy of _Killing no Murder_ (first edition, much
rarer than a second and enlarged edition of 1659) among the Thomason
Pamphlets, with the date "June 1657" marked on it: Wood's Ath. IV.
624-5; Godwin, IV. 388-390 (where the pamphlet is assumed to have
been out "early in May"); Carlyle, III, 67. After the Restoration,
Sexby being then dead, the pamphlet was claimed by another.--An
answer to _Killing no Murder_, under the title _Killing is
Murder_, appeared Sept. 21, 1657. It was by a Michael