We have given accounts of a purely convivial, of a literary and artistic, and now will shortly describe a purely political club, of which, however, but little is known, namely, the Rota. It took its name from its object, namely, to promote the changing of certain Members of Parliament annually by rotation. It held its meetings at the Turk’s Head, otherwise known as Miles’ Coffee-house, in New Palace Yard, not far from the residence of James Harrington, which was in the Little Ambry (Almonry), looking into the Dean’s yard. It was founded in 1659 for the dissemination of republican ideas, which Harrington had glorified in his ’Oceana,’ and for resisting Cromwell’s attempt to do without a Parliament and to establish an undisguised military despotism. The republicans took the alarm, and formed themselves into a debating society, says the Royalist Anthony Wood, to discuss the best form of government. Their discourses, according to this author, of ordering a commonwealth were the most ingenious and smart ever heard, for the arguments in the Parliament House were flat to these. This gang had a balloting box ... the room was every evening very full. Beside James Harrington and Henry Nevil, who were the prime men of the club, were Cyriac Skinner, Major Wildman, Roger Coke, author of the ’Detection of the Four Last Reigns,’ William Petty and Maximilian Petty, and a great many others. The doctrines were very taking, and the more so because to human foresight there was no possibility of the King’s return. The greatest of the Parliament men hated this rotation and balloting, as being against their power. Henry Nevil proposed it to the House; the third part of the House should vote out by ballot every year, and not be re-eligible for three years to come, so that every ninth year the Senate would be wholly changed. No magistrate was to continue above three years, and all were to be chosen by a sort of ballot. It is probable that Milton was a member of the Rota; Aubrey belonged to it in 1659. After the death of Cromwell the Rota gave great publicity to its proceedings, and acquired a high reputation for learning, talent, and eloquence, so that it became a question whether it were more honourable to belong to the Rota or the Society of Virtuosi, which had been designated by Boyle in 1646 ’the Invisible or Philosophical Society.’ The members of the Rota threw into the teeth of their rivals that they had an excellent faculty of magnifying a louse and diminishing a commonwealth. Charles II., who was a virtuoso himself, avenged this taunt by erecting, in 1664, the Virtuosi into the Royal Society, by dispersing the members of the Rota, and exiling Harrington for life to the island of St. Nicholas, near Plymouth; but he was afterwards released on bail, and died at his house in the Almonry in 1677. The statement that the Royal Society was established for political reasons, though it has often been contradicted, would thus seem not to be without foundation.