264 and 304-305.] "_Killing no Murder: briefly discoursed, in Three Questions, by William Allen:_" such was the title of a pamphlet in secret circulation in London in June, 1657, and still of some celebrity.

It began with a letter "To His Highness, Oliver Cromwell," in this strain: "To your Highness justly belongs the honour of dying for the people; and it cannot choose but be an unspeakable consolation to you in the last moments of your life to consider with how much benefit to the world you are likely to leave it ...

To hasten this great good is the chief end of my writing this paper." There follows, accordingly, a letter to those officers and soldiers of the army who remember their engagements, urging them to assassinate Cromwell.

"We wish we had rather endured thee, O Charles," it says, "than have been condemned to this mean tyrant, not that we desire any kind of slavery, but that the quality of the master sometimes graces the condition of the slave." Sindercombe is spoken of as "a brave man," of as "great a mind" as any of the old Romans.

At the end there is this postscript: "Courteous reader, expect another sheet or two of paper on this subject, if I escape the Tyrant's hands, although he gets in the interim the crown upon his head, which he hath underhand put his confederates on to petition his acceptance thereof." This would imply that, though not in circulation till June, the pamphlet had been written while the Kingship question was in suspense, i.e, before May 8.