known as King’s Pamphlets in the British Museum, usually writes the date on the title-page of each; but has, with a curious infelicity, omitted it in the case of Milton’s Pamphlets, which accordingly remain undateable except approximately.
The exact copy of the Scotch Demands towards a Treaty I have not yet met with, though doubtless it is in print amid the unsorted Rubbish-Mountains of the British Museum. Notices of it are to be seen in Baillie, also in Rushworth.[1] The first Seven Articles relate to secularities; payment of damages; punishment of incendiaries, and so forth: the Seventh is the ‘recalling’ of the King’s Proclamations against the Scots. The Eighth, ‘anent a solid peace betwixt the Nations,’ involves this matter of Uniformity in Religion, and therefore is of weightier moment. Baillie says: ‘For the Eighth great Demand some days were spent in preparation.’ The Lords would have made no difficulty about dismantling Berwick and Carlisle, or such-like; but finding that the other points of this Eighth Article were to involve the permanent relations of England, they delayed. ‘We expect it this very day,’ says Baillie (28th February 1640-1). Oliver Cromwell also expects it this very day, or ‘speedily,‘—and therefore writes to Mr Willingham for a sight of the Documents again.
Whoever wishes to trace the emergence, re-emergence, slow ambiguous progress and dim issue of this ‘Eighth Article, may consult the opaque but authentic Commons Journals, and strive to elucidate the same by poor old brown Pamphlets, in the places cited below.[2] It was not finally voted in the affirmative till the middle of May; and then still it was far from being ended. It ended, properly, in the Summoning of a ‘Westminster Assembly of Divines,’ To ascertain for us how ‘the two Nations’ may best attain to ‘Uniformity of Religion.’
This ‘Mr. Willingham my loving friend,’ of whom I have
