Being "fall of rascalities against Charles II.

and his Court," as Wood says, and professing to give private information as to the terrible severities which they were meditating when they should be restored to England, the pamphlet was much resented by the Royalists; and John Evelyn roused himself from a sickbed to pen an instant and emphatic contradiction, called _The late News or Message from Brussels unmasked_.

Needham's connexion, or supposed connexion, with so violent an anti-Royalist tract, and possibly also with the Republican manifesto called _Plain English_, which appeared in the same week, could not be overlooked; and, accordingly, in Whitlocke, under date April 9, 1660, we find this note: "The Council discharged Needham from writing the Weekly Intelligence and ordered Dury and Muddiman to do it." The Dury here mentioned was not our John Durie of European celebrity, but an insignificant Giles Dury.

His colleague Muddiman, the real successor of Needham in the editorship, was Henry Muddiman, an acquaintance of Pepys, who certifies that he was "a good scholar and an arch rogue." He had been connected with the London press for some time (for smaller news-sheets had been springing up again beside the authorized _Mercurius_ and _Intelligencer_), and had been writing for the Rumpers.

He had just been, owning to Pepys, however, that he "did it only to get money," and had no liking for them or their politics.[4] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates.