een the construction,
abroad. "Morus is gone into France," writes a Hague correspondent of
Thurloe, Nov. 3, 1654; "it is believed that he has a calling, _et
quidem a Castris_, and that he will not return to Amsterdam. They
love well his renown and learning, but not his conversation; for they
do not desire that he should come to visit the daughters of condition
as he was used to do. He promised Ulac to finish his Apology; but he
went away without taking his leave of him: so that you see that Ulac
hath finished abrupt." Morus, as we shall find, did finish the book;
but the _Fides Publica_, as it was first circulated in Holland
towards the end of 1654, and as it first reached Milton, was the book
abruptly broken off as above, at page 130, with the testimonials and
the autobiography coming no farther down than the year 1648, when
Morus had not yet left Geneva.

In January, 1654-5, when Milton had read Morus's _Fides Publica_
in its imperfect state, and was considering in what form he should
reply to it, his thoughts on the subject must have been interrupted
by the new misfortune of his friend Overton. What that was has
already been explained generally (ante pp. 32-33); but the details of
the incident belong to Milton's biography.

Overton's former misunderstanding with the Protector having been made
up, he had been sent back to Scotland, as we saw, in September, 1654,
to be Major-General there under Monk, and pledged to be faithful in
his trust until he should himself give the Protector notice of his
desire to withdraw from it. For a month or two, accordingly, all had
gone well, Monk in the main charge of Scotland, with his
head-quarters at Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, and Overton in special
charge of the North of Scotland, with his head-quarters at Aberdeen.
Meanwhile, as Oliver's First Parliament had been incessantly opposing
him, questioning his Protectorship, and labouring to subvert it, the
anti-Oliverian temper had again been strongly roused throughout the
country, and not least among the officers and soldiers of the army in
Scotland. There had been meetings and consultations among them, and
secret correspondence with scattered Republicans in England and with
some of the Parliamentary Oppositionists, till at length, if
Thurloe's informations were true, the design was nothing less than to
depose Monk, put Overton in supreme command, and march into England
under an anti-Oliverian banner. The Levellers, on the one side, a