which he still held of the militia in the east and middle division of the county, and contrived his removal from the commission of the peace (August 1644). Wither denounced Onslow with virulence in his ‘Justiciarius Justificatus,’ and complaint was made to the House of Commons. The book was referred for examination to a committee on 10 April 1646, and on 7 Aug. it was voted to be ‘false and scandalous.’ Wither was directed to pay a fine of 500l., and the book was burned at Guildford by the hangman (Whitelocke, p. 218). Subsequently, Wither states, the house discharged him ‘both from the said fine and imprisonment without his petitioning or mediation for it’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 14th Rep. pt. ix., Onslow Papers, pp. 476–7).
Wither pursued his literary labours undismayed. In a flood of further tracts and poems he warned the House of Commons or the nation of coming danger in the Cassandra-like spirit of his ‘Britain's Remembrancer’ (cf. Letters of Advice to the Electors, 1644, prose; Some Advertisements for the New Election of Burgesses; Speech without Doors, 9 July 1644; Vox Pacifica, a long poem in four cantos, 1645, with a woodcut map of England, Scotland, and Ireland as frontispiece; Speech without Doors Defended, 1646; Opobalsamum Anglicanum, 1646; Major Wither's Disclaimer: being a Disavowment of a late Paper, entituled ‘The Doubtfull Almanack’ [prose], lately published in the name of the said Major Wither, 1646, 4to, prose; What Peace to the Wicked? 1646, 4to, a poem in short rhyming couplets, printed in double column, denouncing the clergy for the dissensions of 1645).
All his old prophecies of calamity were repeated in his tedious poem, ‘Prosopopœia Britanica: Britain's Genius, or Good-Angel, Personated; reasoning and avissing, touching the Games now playing, and the Adventures now at hazard in these Islands; and presaging also some future things not unlikely to come to passe,’ London, 1648, 8vo. This work and ‘Britain's Remembrancer’ were the publications which Wither regarded as of greatest value among all his publications (cf. Fides Anglicana, p. 53; Furor Poeticus, p. 30).
In 1647 he issued two poems in the interests of peace. One was ‘Carmen Expostulatorium: or a timely Expostulation with those, both of the City of London and the present Armie, who have either endeavoured to engage these Kingdomes in a Second Warre, or neglected the prevention thereof.’ The other was ‘Amygdala Britannica: Almonds for Parrets; a dish of stone fruit: partly shel'd and partly unshel'd.’
Wither's private anxieties grew year by year more acute, and he often varied his comments on public events by long petitions to the House of Commons describing his personal embarrassments. ‘A Single Siquis, And a quadruple Quere,’ in verse [1648], which was presented to members of parliament in their private capacities, opens with a reference to Cromwell's victory over the Scots at Preston on 17 Aug. 1648, but it dealt mainly with its author's pecuniary distress. A like appeal, called ‘The Tired Petitioner,’ appeared about the same time, on a single sheet, as well as ‘Verses presented to several Members of the House of Commons, repairing thither the 23rd of December 1648 … with an imprinted petitioner therto annexed.’ His contemporary tracts, ‘The true state of the case betwixt the King and Parliament;’ ‘The Prophetical Trumpeter Sounding an Allarum to Britaine’ (London, n.d., 8vo); ‘Carmen Eucharisticon,’ on Michael Jones's victory in Ireland (1649, 4to), touched less personal topics. Of somewhat ambiguous import was ‘Vaticinium Votivum, Or Palæmons Prophetick Prayer. Lately Presented Privately to His now Majestie in a Latin Poem; and here Published in English; Trajecti. Anno Caroli Martyris primo’ [1649], 8vo, with portrait of Charles II.
After the king's death Wither constituted himself the panegyrist of the new form of government. Some doubt exists as to his responsibility for the sympathetic prose tract on recent political history, called ‘Respublica Anglicana,’ 1650, 4to, although assigned on the title-page to ‘G. W.’ But he described himself ‘A faithful servant to this Republik,’ in ‘A Timelie Cavtion, comprehended in thirty-seven Double Trimeters, occasioned by a late rumour of an intention suddenly to adjourn this Parliament, and superscribed to those whome it most concernes. September 10, 1652.’ In a postscript he not unjustly calls the publication ‘Wither'd leaves’—a play upon words which he frequently repeated. To a mystical tract in verse called ‘The dark Lantern’ he added ‘A Poem concerning a Perpetuall Parliament,’ 1653, 8vo. Other lucubrations of the time were of a more exclusively religious temper (cf. ‘Three Grains of Spiritual Frankincense,’ 1651, 12mo, dedicated to President Bradshaw; ‘A Letter to the Honourable Sir John Danvers, knight,’ at end of a ‘Copy of a Petition from the Governor and Company of the Sommer Islands,’ 1651, 4to; ‘The British Appeals, with Gods Mercifull Replies,’ printed for the author, 1651, 8vo, two editions). ‘Westrow Reviv'd’ (1653) was an elegy on Thomas Westrow, a well-to-do neighbour to whom Wither had been under pecuniary obligations. Praises
