Prolocutor or Moderator, met in St. Paul’s.[1] In Lancashire too the System is fairly on foot; but I think in other English Counties it was somewhat lazy to move, and never came rightly into action, owing to impediments.—Poor old Laud is condemned of treason, and beheaded, years ago; the Scots, after Marston Fight, pressing heavy on him; Prynne too being very ungrateful. That ‘performance’ of the Service to the Hyperborean populations in so exquisite a way has cost the Artist dear! He died very gently; his last scene much the best, for himself and for us. The two Hothams also, and other traitors, have died.
Our next entirely authentic Letter is at six-months distance: a hiatus not unfrequent in this Series; but here most especially to be regretted; such a crisis in the affairs of Oliver and of England transacting itself in the interim. The Quarrel between City and Army, which we here see begun; the split of the Parliament into two clearly hostile Parties of Presbyterians and Independents, represented by City and Army; the deadly wrestle of these two Parties, with victory to the latter, and the former flung on its back, and its ‘Eleven Members’ sent beyond Seas: all this transacts itself in the interim, without autograph note or indisputably authentic utterance of Oliver’s to elucidate it for us. We part with him labouring to get the Officers sent down to Saffron Walden; sorrowful on the Spring Fast-day in Covent Garden: we find him again at Putney in Autumn; the insulted Party now dominant, and he the most important man in it. One Paper which I find among the many published on that occasion, and judge pretty confidently, by internal evidence, to be of his writing, is here introduced; and there is no other that I know of.
- ↑ Rushworth. vi. 489; Whitlocke (p. 249) dates wrong.
