ed, on private authority from Morus, to
"a certain French minister," no name was given. Farther, in the
_Fides Publica_, published some months afterwards, Morus was
still almost chivalrously reticent. While declaring that the real
author was "alive and well," and while describing him negatively so
far as to say that he was not in Holland, nor within the circle of
Morus's own acquaintances, he still avoids naming him, and only
appeals to himself to come forward and own his performance. And so,
as late as August 1655, when Milton replied to Morus in his _Pro Se
Defensio_, the evidence still is that, though he had more correct
ideas by that time as to the amount and nature of Morus's
responsibility for the book, and was aware of some other author at
the back of Morus, he had not yet ascertained who this other author
was, and still thought that the defamatory Iambics against himself,
as well as the Dedicatory Epistle to Charles II., might be Morus's
own. It seems to me possible that not till after the Restoration did
Milton know that the alleged "French Minister" at the back of Morus
in the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ was Dr. Peter Du Moulin, or at
all events that not till then did he know that the defamatory
Iambics, as well as the main text, were that gentleman's. The only
person who could have put an end to the mystery completely was Du
Moulin himself, and not till after the Restoration, as we have seen,
was it convenient, or even safe, for Du Moulin to avow his
handiwork.

Yet all the while, as Du Moulin himself hints in his confession of
1670, he had been, if we may so express it, close at Milton's elbow.
In 1652, when the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ appeared, Du Moulin,
then fifty-two years of age, and knows as a semi-naturalized
Frenchman, the brother of Professor Lewis Du Moulin of Oxford, had
been going about in England as an ejected parson from Yorkshire, the
very opposite of his brother in politics. He had necessarily known
something of Milton already; and, indeed, in the book itself there is
closer knowledge of Milton's position and antecedents than would have
been easy for Salmasius, or Morus, or any other absolute foreigner.
The author had evidently read Milton's _Tenure of Kings and
Magistrates_ and his _Eikonoklastes_, as well as his
_Defensio Prima_; he was aware of the significance given to the
first of these treatises by the coincidence of its date with the
King's Trial, and could represent it as actually a c