France. For it is impossible that the Council could have intended to
retain. Milton in any way in the working Secretaryship at a reduced
salary of L150 a year while Meadows, his former assistant, had the
title of "Secretary for the Latin Tongue," with a higher salary of
L200 a year. Perhaps one may detect Thurloe's notions of official
symmetry in the proposed change. Milton's _Latin Secretaryship
Extraordinary_ or _Foreign Secretaryship Extraordinary_ may
have begun to seem to Thurloe an excrescence upon his own general
_Secretaryship of State_, and he may have desired that Milton
should retire altogether, and leave the Latin Secretaryship complete
to Meadows as his own special subordinate in the foreign department.

The document, however, we have to add farther, though it purports to
be an Order of Council, did not actually or fully take effect. I
find, for example, that Needham's pension or subsidy of L100 a year,
which is one of the outlays the document proposed to "retrench and
take away," did not suffer a whit. He went on drawing his salary,
sometimes quarterly and sometimes half-yearly, just as before, and
precisely in the same form, viz. by warrant from President Lawrence
and six others of the Council to Mr. Frost to pay Mr. Needham so much
out of the Council's Contingencies. Thus on May 24, 1655, or five
weeks after the date of the present Order, there was a warrant to
Frost to pay Needham L50, "being for half a year's salary due unto
him from the 15th of Nov. last to the 15th of this instant May"; and
the subsequent series of warrants in Needham's favour is complete to
the end of the Protectorate.[1] Again, Mr. George Vaux, whom our
present order seems to discharge from his house-keepership of
Whitehall, is found alive in that post and in receipt of his salary
of L150 a year for it to as late as Oct. 1659.[2] There must,
therefore, have been a reconsideration of the Order by the Council,
or between the Council and the Protector, with modifications of the
several proposals. The proposal to raise the salaries of Scobell and
Jessop from L365 a year to L500 a year each must, indeed, have been
made good,--for Scobell and Jessop's successor in the colleagueship
to Scobell are found afterwards in receipt of L500 a year.[3] But, on
the same evidence, we have to conclude that the reductions proposed
in the cases of Mr. Gualter Frost and Milton were _not_
confirmed, or were confirmed only _partially_. Frost is found
a