where Richard Cromwell was proclaimed Protector, 1659, p. 75). Obedient to these denunciations, the restored Long parliament, on 13 May 1659, removed Nedham from the post of editor of the ‘Public Intelligencer,’ but restored him again on 15 Aug. following (Commons' Journals, vii. 652, 758). Professor Masson concludes, from the wording of the orders, that Nedham contrived to retain the editorship of ‘Mercurius Politicus’ during the three months of his suspension, and Wood states that he started a new paper called ‘The Moderate Informer,’ of which the first number appeared on 12 May 1659 (Masson, Life of Milton, iv. 671; Athenæ Oxon. iii. 1186).
A pamphlet against the restoration of monarchy, entitled ‘Interest will not lie,’ proving that every party would lose by the return of Charles II, doubtless helped him to regain the favour of the republicans. But as he was hated by royalists and presbyterians, and suspected to be the author of a pretended letter from the court of Charles II, entitled ‘News from Brussells,’ he was removed from the editorship both of the ‘Mercurius’ and the ‘Intelligence’ by the council of state (9 April 1660; Whitelocke, Memorials, iv. 406. ed. 1853). Royalist pamphleteers were already suggesting that the coming restoration would be incomplete unless he were hanged. Extracts from ‘Mercurius Politicus,’ bringing together all his abuse of Charles II and his family, were published under the title of ‘A Rope for Pol, or a Hue and Cry after Marchamont Nedham,’ May 1660 (see also Kilburne, A New Year's Gift for Mercurius Politicus; A Dialogue between Thomas Scot and Marchamont Nedham concerning the Affairs of the Nation; The Downfall of Mercurius Britannicus-Pragmaticus-Politicus, that Three-headed Cerberus).
Nedham fled from England about the beginning of May 1660, and took refuge in Holland (Masson, Life of Milton, v. 702). A few months later, ‘for money given to an hungry courtier,’ he obtained his pardon under the great seal, and was able to return to England in safety.
For the rest of his life Nedham lived by practising physic, but gradually returned to his old trade of pamphleteering. The ‘Discourse concerning Schools and Schoolmasters,’ which he published in 1663, suggests several reforms in education, but was also written to serve a political purpose. In the interest of orthodoxy he proposed the exclusion of schismatic schoolmasters from the teaching profession. He asks ‘whether it be consistent to banish schism out of the church and to countenance it in the schools,’ and answers: ‘If these schismatic schoolmasters were given by the vicar-general licence to practice physic instead of teach schools,’ it would be safer for the public. Nedham's orthodoxy was probably only skin-deep; in medicine, at all events, he remained an open heretic and scoffer. His ‘Medela Medicinæ,’ published in 1665, was ‘a plea for the free profession and renovation of the art of physic,’ an attack on the College of Physicians and its methods, and a complaint of the neglect of chemistry for anatomy. This attracted several refutations, due rather to its vigour than its intrinsic value. ‘Four champions,’ boasted Nedham, ‘were employed by the College of Physicians to write against this book,’ adding that two died shortly afterwards, the third took to drink, and the fourth asked his pardon publicly, ‘confessing that he was set on by the brotherhood of the confederacy’ (Wood, Athenæ Oxon. iii. 1187). The government of Charles II so far condoned Nedham's past political offences that it even employed his pen to attack the parliamentary opposition and its leaders. Nedham assailed them in his ‘Pacquet of Advices to the Men of Shaftesbury’ (1676), for which service he is said to have been paid 500l., and possibly obtained 50l. (34th Rep. of the Deputy-Keeper of Public Records, p. 312). A circumstantial account of his introduction to the Earl of Danby by Justice Warcup is given in a contemporary pamphlet (‘No Protestant Plot,’ 1682, 4to, pt. iii. p. 58). But he did not long enjoy the fruits of this new employment. ‘This most seditious, mutable, and railing author,’ says Wood, ‘died suddenly in the house of one Kidder, in Devereux Court, near Temple Bar, London, in 1678, and was buried on the 29th of November at the upper end of the body of the church of St. Clement's Danes, near the entrance into the chancel.’ But two years later, when the chancel was rebuilt, his monument was taken away or defaced (Wood, Athenæ Oxon. iii. 1189).
In person Nedham is described as short, thick-set, and black-haired (Aulicus his Hue and Cry after Britannicus, 1645). Nedham married twice. By his first wife, Lucy, he had a son named Marchamont (b. 6 May 1652) (Masson, Life of Milton, iv. 433). His second wife was a widow named Elizabeth Thompson (Chester, London Marriage Licences, p. 962; the licence is dated 18 April 1663).
Omitting the newspapers mentioned in the article, the following is a list of Nedham's works: 1. ‘A Check to the Checker of Britannicus; or the Honour and Integrity of
