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First published in 1656, and compiled from previously written editorials in the parliamentarian news book "Mercurius Politicus", "The Excellencie of a Free State" addressed a dilemma in English politics, namely, what kind of government should the Commonwealth adopt? One possibility was to revert to the ancient constitution and create a Cromwellian monarchy. The alternative was the creation of parliamentary sovereignty, in which there would be a 'due and orderly succession of supreme authority in the hands of the people's representatives'. Nedham was convinced that only the latter would 'best secure the liberties and freedoms of the people from the encroachments and usurpations of tyranny'.

A fifth Errour in Policy hath been this, viz. a permitting of the Legislative and Executive Powers of a State, to rest in one and the same hands and persons. By the Legislative Power, we understand the Power of making, altering, or repealing Laws, which in all well-ordered Governments, hath ever been lodged in a succession of the supreme Councels of Assemblies of a Nation.

Marchamont Nedham

Marchamont Nedham (1620 – 1678) was a journalist, publisher and pamphleteer during the English Civil War, who wrote official news and propaganda for both sides of the conflict.

A "highly productive propagandist, he was significant in the evolution of early English journalism, and has been strikingly (if hyperbolically) called the "press agent" of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell.^[

The triumph of the Parliamentarians in the Civil War led to Nedham's incarceration in Newgate Prison in June 1649; he gained his release in November, by switching sides again. The result was his most significant enterprise, the weekly periodical Mercurius Politicus, which he used as a platform for the Commonwealth regime (Nedham received a government payment of £50 in May 1650, probably to start this venture). This third Nedham weekly began in June 1650, on a light note: "Why should not the Commonwealth have a Fool as well as the King had?" — but soon settled into a more serious vein as a voice of the republican movement of the day. He rested the case for the Commonwealth on arguments similar to those of Hobbes: that "the Sword is, and ever hath been, the Foundation of all Titles to Government", and that it was hardly likely that the Commonwealth's adversaries would ever succeed in their designs.

Nedham was associated with a set of influential republican writers of his generation, a circle that included Algernon Sidney, Henry Nevile, Thomas Chaloner, Henry Marten — and John Milton. Milton, as a secretary to the Council of State in the early 1650s, would have overseen Nedham's publishing activity; later, the two men reportedly became personal friends.

Nedham was notable as an advocate of the commercial interests of emerging capitalism in preference to the pillars of the older order. In 1652, he wrote that commercial interest "is the true zenith of every state and person...though clothed never so much with the specious disguise of religion, justice and necessity".Consistent with this outlook, Nedham translated John Selden's Mare Clausum (1636) as Of the Dominion or Ownership of the Sea (1652).