Fairfax's military capacity is certain, and his private virtues are unquestioned. Writing in 1648, Milton credited him with the power to settle the affairs of the nation. But Fairfax was not a politician. He broke with Cromwell over the execution of the king, and in July 1650 retired into private life. Baxter, Warwick, and Clarendon all wrote of him at a distance of time that showed his merits and limitations in truer perspective. Milton addressed him again when singing the praises of Bradshaw and Cromwell and other Parliamentary leaders in his _Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Secunda_, 1654. As a specimen of a contemporary Latin character, and a character by Milton, the passage is now quoted in full: 'Sed neque te fas est præterire, _Fairfaxi_, in quo cum summa fortitudine summam modestiam, summam vitæ sanctitatem, & natura & divinus favor conjunxit: Tu harum in partem laudum evocandus tuo jure ac merito es; quanquam in illo nunc tuo secessu, quantus olim Literni Africanus ille Scipio, abdis te quoad potes; nec hostem solum, sed ambitionem, & quæ præstantissimum quemque mortalium vincit, gloriam quoque vicisti; tuisque virtutibus & præclare factis, jucundissimum & gloriosissimum per otium frueris, quod est laborum omnium & humanarum actionum vel maximarum finis; qualique otio cum antiqui Heroes, post bella & decora tuis haud majora, fruerentur, qui eos laudare conati sunt poetæ, desperabant se posse alia ratione id quale esset digne describere, nisi eos fabularentur, coelo receptos, deorum epulis accumbere. Verum te sive valetudo, quod maxime crediderim, sive quid aliud retraxit, persuasissimum hoc habeo, nihil te a rationibus reipublicæ divellere potuisse, nisi vidisses quantum libertatis conservatorem, quam firmum atque fidum Anglicanæ rei columen ac munimentum in successore tuo relinqueres' (ed. 1654, pp. 147-8). Page 149, l. 9. The Self-denying Ordinance, discharging members of Parliament from all offices, civil and military, passed both Houses on April 3, 1645. l. 18. He succeeded his father as third Lord Fairfax in 1648. l. 21. See p. 118, ll. 8 ff. 41. Clarendon, MS. Life, p. 103; _History_, Bk. III, ed. 1702, vol. i, pp. 148-9; ed. Macray, vol. i, pp. 247-9.