THE LIFE or MILTON, 403 that his perfon was facred and inviolable, provoked him to write the Tenure of Kings and Magiftrates, proving that it is lawful tocall a tyrant to account and to depofe and put him to death, and that they who of late fo much blame depofing are the men who did it them- (elves : and he publifhed it at the beginning of the year 1649, to fatisfy and compofe the minds of the people. Not long after this he wrote his Obfervations on the articles of peace between the Earl of Ormond and the frith rebels. And in thefe and all his writings, whatever others of different parties may think, he thought himfelf an advocate for true liberty, for ecclefiaffical liberty in his treatifes againft the bishops, for domeftic liberty in his books of divorce, and for civil liberty in his writings against the king in defenfeof the par- liament and people of England. After this he retired again to his private fludies ; and thinking that he had leifure enough for fuch a work, he applied himfelf to the writing of a Hiftory of England, which he intended to deduce from the ear. heft accounts down to his own times : and he had finifltecl four books of it, when neither courting nor expeding any fuch preferment, he was invited by the Council of State to be the Latin Secretary for foreign affairs. He ferved in the fame capacity under Oliver, ,amcl Richard, and the Rump, till the Refloration ; and without .doubt better Latin pen could not have been found in the kingdom. For the Republic and Cromwell (corned to pay that tribute to any foreign prince, which is ufually paid to the French King, of managing their ,affairs in his language ; they thought it an indignity and meannefs to which this or any free nation ought not to fubmit ; and took ,a noble refolution neither to write any letters to any foreign antes, nor to receive any anfwers from them, but in the Latin tongue, which was common to them all. And it would have been well, if fucceed- ing princes had followed their example ; for in the opinion of very wife men, the univerfality of the French language will make way for the univerfality of the French monarchy. But it was not only in foreign difpatches that the government made de of his pen. He had difcharged the bufinefs of his office a very little time, before he was called to.a work of another kind. For loon after the King's death was publifhed a book under his name intitled Eikon Bafilikee, or the royal image ; and this book, like Czfar's
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