ls at Thurloe's office
and occasional presences at interviews with ambassadors and envoys in
Whitehall, were all he had been doing for fifteen months for his
salary of L288 a year. The fact cannot have escaped notice. He had
himself called attention to it, as if by anticipation, in that
passage of his _Defensio Secunda_ in which he spoke of the kind
indulgence of the State-authorities in retaining him honourably in
full office, and not abridging his emoluments on account of his
disability by blindness. The passage may have touched Cromwell and
some of the Councillors, and there was doubtless a general feeling
among them of the worth, beyond estimate in money, of Milton's name
to the Commonwealth, and of his past acts of literary championship
for her. Economy, however, is a virtue easily recommended to
statesmen by any pinch of necessity, and it so chanced that at the
very time we have now reached, April 1655, the Protector and his
Council, being in money straits, were in a very economical mood (see
ante p. 35). Here, accordingly, is what we find in the Council Order
Books under date April 17, 1655.

_Tuesday, April_ 17, 1655:--Present the Lord President
Lawrence, Lord Lambert (styled so in the minute), Colonel Montague,
Colonel Sydenham, Sir Charles Wolseley, Sir Gilbert Pickering,
Major-General Skippon.

"The Council resumed the debate upon the Report made from the
Committee of the Council to whom it was referred to consider of the
Establishment of the Council's Contingencies.

"_Ordered:_--

"That the salary of L400 _per annum_ granted to MR. GUALTER
FROST as Treasurer for the Council's Contingencies be reduced to
L300 _per annum_, and be continued to be paid after that
proportion till further order.

"That the former yearly salary of MR. JOHN MILTON, of L288, &c.,
formerly charged on the Council's Contingencies, be reduced to L150
_per annum_, and paid to him during his life out of his
Highness's Exchequer.

"That the yearly salaries hereafter mentioned, being formerly paid
out of the Council's Contingencies,--that is to say L45 12_s._
6_d._ _per annum_ to Mr. Henry Giffard, Mr. Gualter
Frost's assistant,--_per annum_ to Mr. John Hall,--_per
annum_ to Mr. Marchamont Needham,--_per annum_ to Mr.
George Vaux, the house-keeper at Whitehall,--_per annum_ for
the rent of Sir Abraham Williams's house [for the entertainment of
Ambassadors], and--_per annum_ to M. Ren