State, which,
after the disappearance of the king and the abolition of the House of
Lords, took over the burden of the executive, and claimed the right to
scrape men's consciences by administering to anybody it chose an oath
requiring them to approve of what the House of Commons had done against
the king, and of their abolition of kingly government and of the House
of Peers, and that the legislative and supreme power was wholly in the
House of Commons.

Before the creation of this Council the duties of Latin Secretary to the
Parliament had been discharged by Georg Rudolph Weckherlin, a German
diplomat who had married an Englishwoman. He retired in bad health at
this time, and Milton was appointed to his place in 1649. When, later
on, the sight of the most illustrious of all our civil servants failed
him, Weckherlin returned to the office as Milton's assistant. In
December 1652 ill-health again compelled Weckherlin's retirement.[49:1]

Milton's letter to Bradshaw, who had made his home at Eton, is dated
February 21, 1653, and is as follows:--

"MY LORD,--But that it would be an interruption to the
public wherein your studies are perpetually employed, I should now
and then venture to supply thus my enforced absence with a line or
two, though it were onely my business, and that would be no slight
one, to make my due acknowledgments of your many favours; which I
both do at this time and ever shall; and have this farther, which I
thought my part to let you know of, that there will be with you
to-morrow upon some occasion of business a gentleman whose name is
Mr. Marvile, a man whom both by report and the converse I have had
with him of singular desert for the State to make use of, who also
offers himself, if there be any employment for him. His father was
the Minister of Hull, and he hath spent four years abroad in Holland,
France, Italy, and Spain to very good purpose, as I believe, and the
gaining of these four languages, besides he is a scholer and
well-read in the Latin and Greek authors, and no doubt of an approved
conversation, for he now comes lately out of the house of the Lord
Fairfax, who was Generall, where he was intrusted to give some
instructions in the languages to the Lady, his daughter. If upon the
death of Mr. Weckerlyn the Councell shall think that I shall need any
assistance in the performance of my place (though for my part I find
no encu