ses upon the Lord Protector, whereby his
Highness and divers others were offended and displeased ... I must
acknowledge I copied a paper of verses called _The Character of a
Protector_; but I did neither compose them, nor (to the best of my
remembrance) show them to any after I had writ them forth. They were
taken out of my letter-case at Leith, where they had been a long time
by me, neglected and forgotten. I had them from a friend, who wished
my Lord [Cromwell] well, and who told me that his Lordship had seen
them, and, I believe, laughed at them, as, to my knowledge, he hath
done at papers and pamphlets of more personal and particular import
and abuse." It is really a relief to know that Overton, who is still
credited with these lines by Godwin, Guizot, and others, was not the
author of them, and this not because of their peculiar political
import, but because of their utter vulgarity. How else could we have
retained our faith in Milton's character of Overton--"you, Overton,
bound to me these many years past in a friendship of more than
brotherly closeness and affection, both by the similarity of our
tastes, and the sweetness of your manners"? Still to have copied and
kept such lines implied some sympathy with their political meaning;
and, Thurloe's investigations having made it credible otherwise that
Overton was implicated, more than he would admit, in the design of a
general rising against the Protector's Government, there was an end
to the promising career of Milton's friend under the Protectorate. He
remained from that time a close prisoner while Oliver lived. On the
3rd of July, 1656, I find, his wife, "Mrs. Anne Overton," had liberty
from the Council "to abide with her husband in the Tower, if she
shall so think fit."[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, III. 75-77, and 110-112; Council Order Book,
July 3, 1656. Godwin, whose accuracy can very seldom be impeached,
had not turned to the last-cited pages of Thurloe; and hence he
leaves the doggrel lines as indubitably Overton's own (_Hist. of
Commonwealth_, IV. 163). Guizot and others simply follow Godwin
in this, as in most things else.--That Overton's disaffection was
very serious indeed, and that Cromwell had had good reason for his
suspicions of him even on the former occasion, appears from the fact
that among the Clarendon Papers in the Bodleian there is a draft, in
Hyde's hand, of a letter, dated April 1654, either actually sent, or
meant to be sent, by Charles II.