sentative House of about 400 members, in proportions among the counties not unlike those in Ireton's Draft Bill, though not quite the same. There were general Resolutions on the subject that day, and the House resumed the subject in Committee on five following days; but on the whole with the practical conclusion that the infant Moses must still be nursed by his own mother. The business of nominating the New Council of State, therefore, occupied February 12, 1649-50, and one or two succeeding days. Thirty-seven of the former 41 were reelected, and five new members were chosen, making the number of the New Council 42. The five new Councillors were chosen, by a mixed system of ballot and open vote, in a House of 108 members, each member present first giving in an unsigned paper with the names of the five he voted for, and then the whole House accepting or rejecting successively those placed at the top of the poll. The three at the top were appointed unanimously; but the next two were set aside, and the two next to them in the ballot substituted.1 One member of the Old Council, who would probably have been reappointed, had just died. This was Philip, Earl of Pembroke, one of the extreme Parliamentarian Peers since the beginning of the Civil War, and latterly one of the three Peers who had forsworn their order by taking seats in the single Representative House. He died January 23, 1649-50; and on the 6th of February the Council of State and the Parliament accompanied his corpse some way out of town on its way to Wilton. The Royalist pamphleteers exulted over his death, and this was the style of their epitaphs on him :"He was a Judas, and Iscariot's fare He had; he lived in sin, died in despair; He was a new-made saint, and 's virtues were To curse, 'G―d- -him! 'sblood, and 'swounds' to swear: His name was Pembroke." We may remember him more gently now as one of the two 1 Commons Journals of days named, and of Feb. 16, 19, and 20. Sir Henry Vane, senior, who was fourth on the ballot poll with 35 votes, was rejected in the open vote. The highest by the ballot had 60 votes, the next 59, the next 37. The rise of the attendance for this occasion to 108, by far the largest number since the constitution of the Commonwealth, is very significant. noble Herbert brothers (William, Earl of Pembroke, who died 1630, being the other and superior) to whom the first folio. edition of Shakespeare's works had been dedicated in 1623, on the ground that they had "prosecuted both them and the author living with so much favour." He had in his youth known and liked Shakespeare.1 1 Council Order Book, Feb. 4, and Commons Journals of same day; Mercurius Pragmaticus for Jan. 22-29; and Heminge and Condell's Dedication of the first folio Shakespeare. CHAPTER II. MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP FROM JULY 1649 TO FEB. 1649-50. ENORMOUS POPULARITY OF THE EIKON BASILIKE: DOUBTS AS TO THE AUTHORSHIP: MILTON'S EIKONOKLASTES: ANALYSIS OF THE SAME, WITH QUOTATIONS: PARTICLES OF MILTON'S BIOGRAPHY FROM THE COUNCIL ORDER-BOOKS, WITH NOTICES OF MARCHAMONT NEEDHAM, CLEMENT WALKER, THE PRINTER NEWCOME, THE PRINTER ROYSTON, THE PRINTER DUGARD, AND OTHERS: MILTON'S REMOVAL FROM CHARING-CROSS TO AN OFFICIAL RESIDENCE IN WHITEHALL: HIS MISCELLANEOUS OFFICIAL OCCUPA- POWERS (NOS. I—V): SALMASIUS AND HIS DEFENSIO FIRST of all in this Chapter we may place the publication by Milton of that answer to the Eikon Basilike which he had been ordered or requested by the Council of State to write, and on which he must have been engaged, in his spare hours, for some months. The Eikon Basilike having been out since the 9th of Feb. 1649, and having circulated in thousands of copies, in various sizes and forms,1 there had been, besides the tears and 1 In an Article on the Eikon Basilike in Nichols's Lit. Anecdotes (I.522-529) it is stated, on what seems excellent bibliographical authority, that there were fifty editions of the book in various languages within twelve months after the King's death, some of them with the Prayers and others without. I have two VOL. IV. K copies lying before me at the present moment, both bearing the date 1648, and therefore among the earliest printed, but quite different in size and appearance. One is in small octavo, in open and largish type, and with the words, "Reprinted in R. M. An. Dom. 1648," on the title-page; the other is an extremely enthusiasm over it among the Royalists, a good deal of shrewd discussion as to the real authorship. Was it the late King's at all, or only a forgery in his name, intended perhaps to have been brought out in his interest while he was alive, but afterwards converted into a funereal tribute to him and a plea for his dynasty? That such a controversy had arisen within the first month or two after the publication of the book is proved by a sentence in John Goodwin's Obstructors of Justice opposed. "As for the Book which passeth up "and down," says Goodwin, "by the title of Elkov Baoiλikń, "which strains so many men's wits to invent, so many men's "consciences to exhibit, elegies of honour, admiration, astonish"ment, commensurable with the seraphical worth of it, "whether he were the positive or only putative author of it, though some make it their great interest, yet to me it is a mere impertinency to determine." The question, however, was formally discussed by others. An anonymous pamphlet appeared on the 16th of August entitled Eikov 'Aλnown: The Portraiture of Truth's most sacred Majesty, truly suffering, but not solely; wherein the false colours are washed off wherewith the Paper-stainer had bedaubed Truth, the late King, and the Parliament, in his Counterfeit piece, entitled Elkov Baoiλiký: published to undeceive the world. Here the theory is that the Eikon was written by some English Prelate or Doctor, to ingratiate himself with the late King, but afterwards, on the King's death, published as likely to have a large sale; and the theory is suggested by an engraved frontispiece, representing the King at a desk writing, and a Doctor or Prelate dictating to him from behind a curtain. On the other hand the authenticity of the Book had already been maintained in a Royalist tract, published June 2, and called The Princely Pelican: Royal Resolves, &c. Extracted from his Majesty's divine Meditations: with Satisfactory reasons to the whole King tiny little copy, with no such imprint on the title-page, but with a copy of the engraved frontispiece, and one or two other illustrations, bound up with it. This copy must have been the pocket copy of some devoted Royalist, for it had been bound in black velvet for mourning, and has a clasp and gilt edges. As if by long carrying in the pocket, the floss of the velvet is now nearly all worn off, and the diminutive little book looks like the faded model of a coffin. dom that his sacred person was the only author of them; and it was maintained afresh in a Tract, published Sept. 11, with the title Eikov morý, or the Faithful Portraiture of a Loyal Subject, in vindication of Elkov Baσiλiký, and in answer to a Book entitled Eikov 'Aλnown. On the whole, though a mystery hung over the Book, and some continued to be sceptics, and even to name Dr. Henry Hammond or a Dr. Harris as possibly the author, the doubters were publicly hushed, and the Royalists, at home and abroad, were left undisturbed in their admiration. How profound that was may be judged from one or two of the numberless contemporary references to the Eikon. "I "have delivered to your noble lady, for your Excellency," Sir Edward Nicholas had written from Caen to the Marquis of Ormond, in March 1648-9, "his late Majesty's Portraiture, "being the most exquisite, pious, and princely piece that I "ever read." And Hyde, writing from the Hague in April to Lord Hatton, then with the Queen-mother in France, and speaking of the obligation to serve the Queen laid upon him by his reverence for the memory of his dear master, if by nothing else, had added, with allusion to the affectionate mentions of the Queen made in the Eikon: "I verily believe "the immortal monument he hath left of his transcendent "affection to and value of her Majesty hath made that im"pression on all men that whoever pretends to honour him can never fail in duty to her; and I am persuaded the “Queen will live to reap a plentiful harvest from that seed." Again, "For all this their politic malice," Dr. Richard Watson had said, in a sermon preached before Charles II. at the Hague, "our Royal Martyr hath not only the crown and 66 66 trophy of a title, but the everlasting, stupendous monument "of a book, raised higher than the Pyramids of Egypt in the "strength of language and well-proportioned spiring expres"sion." The Latin and French translations of the book, which Charles II. had ordered, had meanwhile appeared at the Hague the former by Dr. John Earle, and entitled Eikov Baoiλiký, vel Imago Regis Caroli in illis suis Erumnis et Solitudine; and these were diffusing the admiration of the book among foreigners. But, for one all-comprehensive |