‘Who can with patience hear this filthy, rascally Fool speak so irreverently of Persons eminent both in Greatness and Piety? Dare you compare King _David_ with King _Charles_; a most Religious King and Prophet, with a Superstitious Prince, and who was but a Novice in the Christian Religion; a most prudent, wise Prince with a weak one; a valiant Prince with a cowardly one; finally, a most just Prince with a most unjust one? Have you the impudence to commend his Chastity and Sobriety, who is known to have committed all manner of Leudness in company with his Confident the Duke of _Buckingham_? It were to no purpose to inquire into the private Actions of his Life, who publickly at Plays would embrace and kiss the Ladies.’ Whatever may be the faults of that ill-fated monarch—and they assuredly were not small—no one would now think this absurd invective to be even an excusable exaggeration. It misses the true mark altogether, and is the expression of a strongly imaginative mind, which has seen something that it did not like, and is unable in consequence to see anything that has any relation to it distinctly or correctly. But with the supremacy of the Long Parliament Milton’s attachment to their cause ceased. No one has drawn a more unfavourable picture of the rule which they established. Years after their supremacy had passed away, and the restoration of the monarchy had covered with a new and strange scene the old actors and the old world, he thrust into a most unlikely part of his _History of England_ the following attack on them:— ‘But when once the superficiall zeal and popular fumes that acted their New Magistracy were cool’d and spent in them, strait every one betook himself (setting the Commonwealth behind, his privat ends before) to doe as his own profit or ambition ledd him. Then was justice delay’d, and soon after deni’d: spight and favour determin’d all: hence faction, thence treachery, both at home and in the field: ev’ry where wrong, and oppression: foull and horrid deeds committed daily, or maintain’d, in secret, or in open. Som who had bin call’d from shops and warehouses, without other merit, to sit in Supreme Councills and Committees as thir breeding was, fell to huckster the Commonwealth. Others did therafter as men could soothe and humour them best; so hee who would give most, or, under covert of hypocriticall zeale, insinuat basest, enjoy’d unworthily the rewards of lerning and fidelity; or escap’d the punishment of his crimes and misdeeds. Thir Votes and Ordinances, which men looked should have contain’d the repealing of bad laws, and the immediat constitution of better, resounded with nothing els, but new Impositions, Taxes, Excises; yeerly, monthly, weekly. Not to reckon the Offices, Gifts, and Preferments bestow’d and shar’d among themselvs.’