of his enemy, may, without any breach of his integrity, regain his
liberty, or preserve his life, by a promise of neutrality: for the
stipulation gives the enemy nothing which he had not before. The
neutrality of a captive may be always secured by his imprisonment or
death. He that is at the disposal of another may not promise to aid
him in any injurious act, because no power can compel active
obedience. He may engage to do nothing, but not to do ill.

There is reason to think that Cowley promised little. It does not
appear that his compliance gained him confidence enough to be
trusted without security, for the bond of his bail was never
cancelled; nor that it made him think himself secure, for, at that
dissolution of government which followed the death of Oliver, he
returned into France, where he resumed his former station, and
stayed till the restoration.

"He continued," says his biographer, "under these bonds till the
general deliverance;" it is therefore to be supposed that he did not
go to France, and act again for the king, without the consent of his
bondsman: that he did not show his loyalty at the hazard of his
friend, but by his friend's permission.

Of the verses on Oliver's death, in which Wood's narrative seems to
imply something encomiastic, there has been no appearance. There is
a discourse concerning his government, indeed, with verses
intermixed, but such as certainly gained its author no friends among
the abettors of usurpation.

A doctor of physic, however, he was made at Oxford in December,
1657; and in the commencement of the Royal Society, of which an