_A._ In the latter end of the preceding year the King was come from Paris to the Hague; and shortly after came thither from the Rump their agent Dorislaus, doctor of civil law, who had been employed in the drawing up of the charge against the late King. But the first night he came, as he was at supper, a company of cavaliers, near a dozen, entered his chamber, killed him, and got away. Not long after also their agent at Madrid, one Ascham, one that had written in defence of his masters, was killed in the same manner. About this time came out two books, one written by Salmasius, a Presbyterian, against the murder of the King; another written by Milton, an English Independent, in answer to it. _B._ I have seen them both. They are very good Latin both, and hardly to be judged which is better; and both very ill reasoning, hardly to be judged which is worse; like two declamations, _pro_ and _con_, made for exercise only in a rhetoric school by one and the same man. So like is a Presbyterian to an Independent. _A._ In this year the Rump did not much at home; save that in the beginning they made England a free state by an act which runs thus: “Be it enacted and declared by this present Parliament, and by the authority thereof, that the people of England, and all the dominions and territories thereunto belonging, are, and shall be, and are hereby constituted, made, and declared a commonwealth and free state, &c.” _B._ What did they mean by a free state and commonwealth? Were the people no longer to be subject to laws? They could not mean that: for the Parliament meant to govern them by their own laws, and punish such as broke them. Did they mean that England should not be subject to any foreign kingdom or commonwealth? That needed not be enacted, seeing there was no king nor people pretended to be their masters. What did they mean then? _A._ They meant that neither this king, nor any king, nor any single person, but only that they themselves would be the people’s masters, and would have set it down in those plain words, if the people could have been cozened with words intelligible, as easily as with words not intelligible. After this they gave one another money and estates out of the lands and goods of the loyal party. They enacted also an engagement to be taken by every man, in these words: _You shall promise to be true and faithful to the commonwealth of England, as it is now established, without King or House of Lords._ They banished also from within twenty miles of London all the royal party, forbidding also every one of them to depart more than five miles from his dwelling-house. _B._ They meant perhaps to have them ready, if need were, for a massacre. But what did the Scots in this time?