forcement in future of the restrictions of certain cited
Press Acts,--to wit, the ordinance of the Long Parliament of June 14,
1643 (that against which Milton had written his _Areopagitica_),
the similar ordinance of the same Parliament of date Sept. 28, 1647,
the Act of the Rump Parliament of Sept. 20, 1649 (Bradshaw's Press
Act of the first year of the Commonwealth), and the renewal of the
same Jan. 7, 1652-3. Had this been all, one might have inferred
nothing more than one of those occasional panics about Press
licentiousness from the recurrence of which even Milton's reasoning
had never been able to free the Government with which he was
connected. But at the same meeting it was referred to Lord Fleetwood,
Lord Wolseley, Lord Pickering, Lord Jones, Lord Desborough, Lord
Viscount Lisle, and Lord Strickland, or to any two of them, "to
consider of fit persons to be added for licensing of books and to
report the names of such persons to the Council." This was distinctly
retrogressive; and the regret of Milton must have been none the less
because four of the Committee that were to find the new licensers
were men he had named in his _Defensio Secunda_ as heroes of the
Commonwealth, and because, as appears from a marginal jotting to the
minute as it stands in the Council Order Books, the man thought of at
once for one of the new licensers, or as the person fittest to be
first consulted in the business, was Marchamont Needham. After all,
it may have been, like some of the previous movements for
press-regulation, only a push from Paternoster Row in defence of the
legitimate book-trade, and the main intention of the Council itself
may have been against pamphlets like _Killing no Murder_ or
publications of the indecent order.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of dates, and Nickolis's _Milton
State Papers_, 143-144 (the last for Malyn's Letter about Nayler).
For previous Press Acts referred to by the Council, see ante Vol.
III. 266-271, and Vol. IV. 116-118.]

O how stable and grand seemed the Protectorate in the month of July
1658! Rebellion at home in all its varieties quashed once more, and
now, as it might seem, for ever; the threatened invasion of the
Spaniards and Charles Stuart dissipated into ridicule; a footing
acquired on the Continent, and 6000 Englishmen stationed there in
arms; Foreign Powers, with Louis XIV. at their head, obeisant to the
very ground whenever they turned their gaze towards the British
Islands