In defence of Milton's Pro populo anglicano defensio

Rena i s sance Studies Vol. 4 No. 3

In defence of Milton’s Pro populo anglicano defensio* LEO MILLER?

I MILTON JUSTIFIED BY SALMASIUS’ OWN FRIENDS

With all of Milton’s other troubles at that time, his failing eyesight, his ill health, the nagging demands of his mother-in-law, it was at least his good fortune that he did not have to submit his Defence of the People of England to a university press and face its injunctions that he must ‘delete his peripheral material’, ‘judiciously summarize his argument’, ‘condense his citations’ and ‘omit quotations of verse from the classics’. He did not have to accept the diktat that ‘publisher’s editing improves every author’s text’.

That one book made Milton for the first time famous all over western Europe. It appeared in more editions and was more widely circulated during his lifetime than any other of his works. In the propaganda and counter-propaganda war of words between the exiled Stuarts and the regicide Commonwealth of England, his 1651 rebuttal to the royalist Defensio regza of Claudius Salmasius was recognized everywhere as an extraordinary achievement by a hitherto unknown talent, crushing the pretentious exertions put forth by one of the proudest intellectuals of that age. Yet, despite that contemporary success, in our century it has been relegated almost exclusively to the narrowest circle of academic readers, and by some of these subjected to the most nibbling kind of academic criticism, even at the hands of the warmest admirers of his poetry. Ex- amples could be cited at length.’

* Text references: Citations to the Latin text of Pro populo anglicano defensio will be both to the Columbia University Press edition of The Works o f John Milton, volume V I I (1932), and to the f-irst edition, ‘Madan 1, issue 3’ of Joannis Mzltoni Ang l i Pro Populo Anglicano Defenszo Contra Claudii Anonymz, alias Salmasii, Defensionem Regiam, Londzni, Typis D u Cardianis, Anno Domini 1651. The Columbia edition actually printed the revised 1658 text but the passages here cited are identical to the 1651 text, or essentially so. All translations by the present author are marked by an asterisk.

I purposely select, as examples, classics in Milton studies by three eminent critics who held Milton in high esteem, rather than any who have contemned his career, to illustrate the common academic attitude to Milton’s Defensio. Denis Saurat, Milton, M a n and Thinker (1925), page 88, ‘The book itself is of little interest, being mostly made up of quotations and discussions of authorities.’ E. M. W. Tillyard, Milton (1930), repeated in revised edition (1966), page 159: ‘It is the longest and most ephemeral of Milton’s pamphlets. His furious plungings into controversy are more ridiculous than impressive.’ James Holly Hanford, A Milton Handbook, 4th edition (1954). page 110: ‘Yet the Defensio can hardly be called today a noble work. It is filled from beginning to end with personalities, assailing in abusive phrases the scholarship, the mercenary motives and the private

’

0 I990 The Societyfor Renaissance Studies, Oxford Uniuersity Press

In defence of Milton’s Pro populo anglicano defensio 30 1

Milton himself spelled out a large part of his problem, as he wound up the book, just before his peroration. As translated by his near. contemporary Joseph Washington, Milton said: ‘Nor have I wittingly left unanswered any one argument alleged by my adversary, nor any one example or authority quoted by him, that seem’d to have any force in it, or the least colour of an argument. Perhaps I have been guilty rather of the other extreme, of replying to some of his fooleries and trifles, as if they were solid arguments, and thereby may seem to have attributed more to them than they deserved.”

To put the issue into better perspective, it will be helpful to look at some evidence from another contemporary of his, to see how utterly apt and tactically necessary was the mass of material which Milton chose to include in 1650. This testimony comes from the letters of Claude Sarrau, better remembered as Claudius Sarravius, a judge in the Parlement of Paris with a reputation for the highest integrity, a scholarly correspondent of Grotius, Vossius and other savants, and a good friend of Claudius

character of Salmasius, as if to discredit him as a man and a grammarian were the best means of discrediting the cause which he was pleading.’

Some more recent critics are more appreciative. While William Riley Parker, Milton, A Biography (1968), 378-84, blows hot and cold, others have, without any difficulty, found what Saurat, Tillyard and Hanford could not, notably Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolu- tion (1977), and Roger Lejosne, La raison duns l’oeuure de John Milton (1981). Comparable opinions from earlier centuries will be quoted later herein.

The translator of this Defensio in the Complete Prose Works of John Milton, volume IV (Yale University Press, 1966). Donald Mackenzie, eloquently pays a proper tribute to Milton’s stylistic brilliance (pages 296-7) but does slip sometimes in his reading of the Latin. More serious by far is the damage done by factual errors and distorted interpretations inflicted on Milton’s work by the com- mentary and annotations attributable to the editing; to remedy these would double or triple the length of the present study. Two characteristic instances taken at random will have to suffice here to alert the careful reader to discount the rest. Milton uses a proverb, the sun has seen much which Ber- nard has not, a proverb which a student of English literature will remember from Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, line 16, with an allusion usually applied to Bernard of Clairvaux; but note 5 (Yale, I V . 326) concocts instead a fantastic fabricated reverse etymology deriving a Latin word from the English ‘barnard’. Milton cites a document of Parliament dated 13 January 1645, which any tyro would know to look for and find in the Journal of the House of Lords for I? Januay 1645/46; but note 12 ( IV, 510) does not know where to look and offers twelve lines of foggy irrelevance instead.

I have elsewhere treated Milton’s scholarship and tactics in this Defensio in ‘Milton, Salmasius and Hammond; the history of an insult’, Renaissance and Reformation, 9 (1973), 108-15; ‘Milton, Salmasius and vapulandum: Who should be flogged?’, Milton Quarterly, 9 (1975), 70-4; ‘Some inferences from Milton’s Hebrew’, Milton Q, 18 (1984), 41-6; how Milton was given the assignment to answer Salmasius, correcting impressions fostered by Milton himself, ‘Before Milton was famous, January 8, 1649/50’, Milton Q, 21 (1987), 1-6; on the reception of the Defensio in Europe, ‘Milton, Fichlau. Bensen and Conring’, Publications of the Bibliographical Society of America, 68 (1974), 107-18, and ‘Milton cited in Germany, 1652’, Milton 4, 12 (1978), 28-31; on the Reichstag ban on the Defensio in German, John Milton €3 the Oldenbwg Safeguard (Loewenthal Press, New York, 1985). chapter 29.

A Defence of the People of England by John Milton In Answer to Salmasiw’s Defence of the King. Printed in the Year 1692, attributed to Joseph Washington, pages 244-5, translating Milton’s words: neque ullum sine responso vel argumentum, vel exemplum, vel testimonium ab adversario allatum sciens praetermisi. quod quidem firmitatis in se quicquam, aut probationis vim ullam habere videretur; in alteram fortasse partem culpae propior, qubd saepiuscule ineptiis quoque ejus, et argutiis tritissimis, quasi argumentis, respondendo, id iis tribuisse videar, quo dignae non erant (CE, V I I , 550; 1651, page 203).

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Salmasius. Sarravius made his home in Paris while Salmasius was then residing in Leiden, and they exchanged letters frequently. Indeed, Sar- ravius was clearly distressed when a week passed without a letter from the other Claude. Regrettably Salmasius' side of the correspondence seems not to be extant (it may be) but many of Sarravius' letters were collected and published, and these tell us a great deal.3

Among these are thirty-one letters written between April 1649 and July 1650 in which may be traced, and dated, some of the stages in the composition of the Defensio regia, of its printing in authorized and unauthorized editions, of their decision to have Salmasius do a somewhat variant edition in French, which Sarravius saw through the press at Paris, and much else of other interest.

It was in March 1649, a few weeks after the execution of Charles I , that his long-time envoy at The Hague Sir William Boswell sent to Salmasius the formal request to undertake on behalf of the royalist cause a mani- festo to rouse the continental monarchs against the English Common- wealth. Salmasius sent this news to Sarravius, sketching out a rough draft. From Sarravius' reply we see that the draft already included ideas which would later be found in the opening lines of the second chapter of the Defensio regiu, that a king is

cuius suprema est in regno potestas, nullique alii nisi Deo obnoxia . . . Cui quod libet licet. Qui legibus solutus e ~ t . ~

*he whose power is supreme in the kingdom, answerable to no other except to God . . . who may do what he wills, who is exempt from laws.

On 16 April 1649 Sarravius replied:

Fruamur hoc qualicumque otio, quod nobis DEI benignitas indulget ; de futuris minus solliciti, quae ejus Providentiae committamus.

' There have been at least two editions of Sarrau's letters from the manuscripts. The first (copy at Houghton Library, Harvard University) is Claudii Sarrazni Senatoris Parisiensis Epzstolm Opus Posthumum ad Serenissimam Christinam Suedice Reginam, 1654. Arausioni, preface by Is. Sarravius, presumably the editor. The second (New York Public Library) is in MarquardiGudiz et Doc- torum Virorum ad Eum Epzstolm. Quibus accedunt ex Bibliotheca Gudiana Clarissimorum el Doc- tissimosum Virorum, qui superiore t3 nostro smculofloruerunt; et Claudii Sarraznz Senatoris Paris- i en~ i s Epistolae Ex eadem Bibliotheca auctiores. Curante Petro Burmanno. Ultrajectz, 1697. There was a 1714 printing by H. Scheurleer at The Hague.

Citations are given here by dates of the letters, which are applicable to both editions, but texts used are from 1697. The 1654 edition misdates 28 May 1649 to 30 July and scrambles 22 and 29 January 1650. The 1654 edition conceals names, substituting magni Ecclesiastm, Aeolq, Herculi, where 1697 has the names Spanhelm, Rwetvs, Amyraldus. I have not had access to the original manuscripts.

The Defensio regia of Claudius Salmasius appeared in about a dozen Latin editions and issues between 1649 and 1684, but not since. My citations are to the edition designated 'Madan 4' in: F. F. Madan. 'A revised bibliography of Salmasius's Defenszo regia and Milton's Pro populo anglicano defensio', The Library, 5th ser., 9 (1954), 101-21 (which needs these corrections: in footnote 4 on pages 101-2, 13 May should be 13 August; footnote 5 on page 102 and footnote 3 on page 109 should read 2 April, not 11 April).

' Defensio regia, Madan 4, page 39.

In defence of Milton’s Pro populo anglicano defensio 303

Caeterum periculosae plenum opus aleae aggrederis, Defensionem dico nuper occisi Britanniarum Regis; maxime cum vestri Ordines mediam viam secent. Laudo tamen animi tui generosum propositum, quo nefandum scelus aperte damnare sustines. Hoc tamen te cautione uti opus est, ne ita Majestatem Regiam extollas, ut erga subditos amorem videantur illis gratis largiri. Debent enim illi suis populis praesertim prodesse, quorum causa constitui sunt.

Satis sciunt hoc nostro aevo Reges quae & quanta sit sua potestas, omnibus, qui illos accedunt, aulicis certatim eorum auribus insusur- rantibus, eos uno Deo minores posse quodcumque libuerit, nec ulli mortalium debere administrationis suae reddere rationem. Sed istius potestatis verum, legitimum, & moderatum usum pauci eos docent, duabus de causis. Prior est, quia Reges non amant cogi in ordinem, nec volunt ullas quamvis liberas pati habenas. Altera est, quia eorum, qui illos accedunt, unum studium est illis placere & assentari: unde sit, ut in immensum eos extollere tantum laborent. Hos si effugeris scopulos, ad quos plurimi impegerunt , magnum feceris operae pretium.

*We are enjoying whatever leisure which God’s kindness indulges us; little solicitous of what is to be, which we commit to his Providence. On the other hand, you are undertaking a labour full of hazardous chance. I mean the Defence of the lately executed King of the British Isles; particularly because your States may travel a neutral path.5 None the less I praise the generous resolution of your mind, whereby you openly stand up to condemn that unspeakable crime. However, you need to use caution that you should not so extol Royal Majesty that they may seem to extend love to their subjects gratuitously. For above all they are supposed to seek the well-being of their peoples, for whose benefit they are constituted.

In our age Kings are well taught what their power may be, and how great, by all courtiers, who approach them earnestly whispering in their ears, that they can exercise power subject to God alone, whatever may please them, and they are not oblig[at]ed to render an account of their administration to any mortal. Few, however, teach them the true, legitimate and moderate use of their power, for two causes. The first is, because kings do not like to be called to order, and are unwilling to endure any reins, however loose they may be. The other is that the one aim of those who are near them is to please them and flatter them, whence it follows that they labour to extol them exceedingly. If you

The Ordines, to which Sarravius refers, are the governing bodies of the United Netherlands, the ‘States General’, and the ‘States’ of the component provinces. J. M . French, The Life Records of John Milton, 11, 245, mistranslates this passage as ‘since your classes follow a middle way of life’, illustrating thereby the dangers of translating by the dictionary and failing to pay heed to the facts of history.

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escape these shoals, on which so many are dashed, you will have created a work of great value.

Milton, in principle favouring a ‘free commonwealth’, wisely chose a strategy calculated to appeal to scholarly minds of diverse religious and political persuasions on the continent. Avoiding a doctrinaire position, while endorsing a republican form of government, he drew a distinction between royal powers exercised under law and their abuse under absolu- tist tryanny. In contrast, over in Leiden one year before, Salmasius is daily meeting with adamant Stuart royalists and is yielding to their pressure. Accordingly he writes to Sarravius, paying no heed to his friend’s advice, more of these points which appear in his second chapter, arguing that the kings of David’s line in ancient Jerusalem were not under the jurisdiction of the Sanhedrin, asserting that

nihil omnino tam proprium regiae majestati quam .rb hvum66uvov, 2 nemine pendere, nemini esse obnoxium, ?I nemini judicari posse.6

*nothing is absolutely so proper to royal majesty than ~b &vunsO0uvov, to depend on no one, to be answerable to no one, to be capable of being judged by no one.

As a good friend of long standing, Sarravius responds, 6 May 1649, with an invitation for Salmasius to come for a visit when the Apologia for the late King is finished, but as magistrate of the Parlement of Paris, grounded in the law, he must offer his counsel:

Quod ais Reges solo Deo minores ei soli obnoxios esse, czterum vivere dtvux&u0~vov, vulgo id dicitur. Negant tamen Angli; quin immo populos Regibus antiquiores eos constituisse ad se tutandos juxta patriarum Legum & consuetudinum przscriptas formulas affirmant. Non autem ut ad libidinem olim aut nuper ex communi Regni concilio stabilita vel refigant. Przterea teneri Reges Sacramenti s u z inaugura- tionis religione, quod si violaverint, se quoque posse illos contemnere & privatorum loco habere. Nec Anglicum facinus quanquam hor- rendem, ita est novum, ut exemplo careat. Dubitant eruditi & adhuc sub judice lis est, an Hebraeorum Reges subditi fuerint Synedrio, nec ne. Affirmavit Baronius & Cardinali subscripserunt viri doctissimi; etiam nostrarum partium. Itaque noli credere tuam Thesin ita con- stanter veram esse, ut sine controversia admittatur. Sed haec tu melius, q u z avide expectabimus, tum etiam te ipsum.

*What you say about Kings being inferiors only to God and answerable to him alone, otherwise living &vw&6uvov, that is common talk. However, the English deny that. In fact they affirm that peoples, precedent to Kings, established them to take care of themselves

‘ Dejenszo regia, Madan 4, page 52

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according to the laws of their fatherlands and forms prescribed by cus- toms. Nor are they perhaps arbitrarily abolishing what was established in the past or recently by the common council of the kingdom. Besides Kings are held to the obligation of the oath of their consecration: that, if they violate it, they also may be contemned and be considered like private citizens. The English crime, no matter how horrendous, is not so novel as to lack precedent. Scholars are in doubt, and till now it has been a matter of legal debate, whether the Kings of the Hebrews were subject to the Sanhedrin or not. Baronius so affirms and very learned men subscribe to the Cardinal’s view, even men of our own party. Therefore don’t be so firm in your belief that your thesis is always true, that it will be accepted without controversy. But you can handle that better, eagerly we look forward to that, then also to you yourself.

With Sarravius in hand, we can now fully appreciate Milton’s Chapter I1 lecture throwing back to Salmasius his own pretentious Greek and his own definition:

Illud autem ~ ~ v u . ~ s ~ € ) u v o v , id est, h nemine pendere, null i mortalium rationem reddere, quod tu regiz Majestatis maximi. proprium esse ais, Aristoteles, Polit. 4. c. 10 maximi. tyrannicum, et in libera natione minimi. ferendum esse affirmat.

*That &VU.~SU€)UVOV, however, to depend on one, to render account to no mortal, which you say is absolutely proper to royal majesty, Aris- totle in his Politics, IV, 10, declares is most tyrannical and not to be endured by a free nation.

The question of whether the ancient Hebrew kings were subject to the Sanhedrin continues to vex Sarravius. (The truth is that there was an historical confusion involved here. As its Greek etymology shows, the term Sanhedrin, derived from synedrion, properly may not be used to describe any Hebrew council meeting before the conquest of Jerusalem by Alex- ander the Great, and the subsequent Hellenizing of the Near East. Euro- pean jurists and theologians used the term Sanhedrin loosely, as if such a well-defined body of Elders had functioned from the time of Moses and Joshua onward.) In his letter of 28 May to Salmasius, Sarravius returns to that question, which, he repeats, is in dispute among the erudite, who know that the books of the Hebrews even debate what penalty might be inflicted on kings. Deferentially he concludes:

Probat Scickardus multis testimoniis, quibus quid sis oppositurus, libenter videbimus.

*Schickhard proves that by many testimonies. We shall eagerly look forward to what you will be able to oppose to those.

’ Pro populo anglicano defensio, CE, V I I , 106; 1651, page 28. The citation to Aristotle’s Politics should be to IV, 8.

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It is to this same authority, Wilhelm Schickhard and his Jus regzum Hebraeorurn, to whom Milton turns several times to refute Salmasius and his pretended rabbinical erudition precisely on this issue.

One of these weeks, Sarravius gets wind of a rumour: heeding his Anglican-royalist mentors too closely, Salmasius is reported to be assign- ing blame for the regicide to English Calvinists. On 11 June Sarravius writes, on two matters:

Quorum prius, recusatum mihi esse exemplum epistolae tuae, in qua de Calvinistis tanquam de reis Anglicani Regicidii locutus dicebaris: quia vetuit vir magnz dignitatis apographum mum cum mortalium quoquam communicari .

*The first, there has been denied me a copy of your letter in which you were said to have spoken of the Calvinists as guilty of the English Regicide: because a man of great dignity has forbidden his copy to be shared with a mere mortal.

There are some gaps in the correspondence between June and August 1649, but from the letter of 13 August we infer there has been some vexa- tion expressed between the friends:

De tuo pro infelice Regi Apologetico solens facis, qui facis quod libet, & amicorum consilia spernis. Quod tamen tibi proposueram omni culpa & periculo vacabat. Consuluisses, si illud sequutus esses, & f a m z Regiz & propriz securitati. Videris velle irritare crabrones, & tuis inimicis occasiones przbere in te sine ratione insaniendi. Sed jacta, quando ita voluisti, alea, videbimus quid casurum sit.

*You are doing your Defence for the unfortunate King as usual, you who do what you like, and spurn the counsels of friends. What, however, I proposed to you, was free from all guilt and danger. Have you considered, if you follow your course, both the royal reputation and your own security? You seem intent on stirring up the hornets, and give occasion to your enemies to have reason to rant against you. But the dice are cast, as you have chosen, we shall see how they may fall.

Whether Sarravius was concerned about damage to Salmasius’ scholarly reputation, or troubled about the reactions among French Protestants, or about possible hostility from influential Calvinists in the Dutch provinces (where factional opposition to William I1 of Orange could mean an anti- Stuart alignment), or all of these, is not clear. From the letters of yet another friend, we have testimony of a certain justified anxiety which was shared by Salmasius himself. This comes from the prominent Parisian physician, Gui Patin, inveterate and gossiping letter-writer. To his friend and frequent correspondent, Charles Spon, Patin had written on 28 May 1649:


J’apprens ici que le scavant & incomparable Monsieur de Saumaise e‘crit en faveur du Roy d’Angleterre (2 la priitre de son gendre le Prince d’Orange) contre les Anglois qui lui ont coupe‘ la tCte: je prie Dieu qu’il puisse reussir en un si beau sujet, comme il est un des grands person- nages du Monde.’

*I learn here that the learned and incomparable Monsieur de Saumaise is writing on behalf of the King of England (at the entreaty of his son-in-law the Prince of Orange) against the English who cut off his head. I pray to God that he will be able to succeed in such a worthwhile subject, since he is one of the great men of the world.

On 8 October 1649, writing to Spon, Patin quotes these lines from a

Si vous me demandez ce que je fais B pre‘sent, je suis sur l’apoiogie que le Roi d’Angleterre m’a charge‘ de faire pour le feu Roi son Pitre: elle s’imprime & sera bien-t6t acheve‘e. C’est un sujet assez chatouilleux, & qui ne contentera pas tout le monde.’

*If you ask me what I am doing at present, I am into the Defence which the King of England has commissioned me to make for the late King his father. It is being printed and will soon be finished. It is rather a ticklish subject, and will not satisfy everyone.

Not satisfy everyone: long before Milton will loose his blast, Salmasius will be hearing harsh words from friends of the Stuart kmigrks, criticizing matters of technical argument, blaming his blundering tactics, questioning his personal integrity. There is also the threat of suppression by the Dutch ruling authorities.

In those years books often came from the printer in gathered sheets, which a purchaser might have bound as he chose. Sometimes, as in this instance, a book came out in partial instalments. Complete copies of Defensio regiu did not reach Sarravius in Paris till 26 February 1650, but by 16 November 1649 he had seen some of the first printed sheets:

Vidimus hic ~p6oonov ~ q k . a ~ y k 5 Defensionis Regiae. Omnino magnus est iste tuus labor, & istam materiam profunde meditatus es. Typi sunt elegantes; non paucis tamen erroribus deformati.

*We have seen here ‘the far-beaming sun’ of your Defensio regiu. That work of yours is outstandingly great and you have given profound

letter he has received from Salmasius, who said:

Lettres Choisies de Feu Mr. Guy Patin (etc.), I la Haye, chez Henry van Bulderin, 1707, 49-50. There are many editions of Patin’s letters, but all are unsatisfactory: not one includes all his letters. I have not had access to the manuscripts. This letter is also in the 1725 Reiner Leers edition at Amsterdam, not in the 1685 Petit edition, nor the 1695 Leers edition.

’ Nouvelles Lettres de Feu Mr. Gui Patin, Tiries du Cabinet de Mr. Charles Spon, chez Steenhouwer & Uytwerf, Amsterdam, 1718, I , 242. These remarks by Salmasius, as well as the letters of Sarravius, are here f o r the first time made available to Miltonists.

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thought to that subject matter. The typography is elegant, however marred by not a few misprints.

The work is hailed by Sarravius, but it is vulnerable, for reasons regretted

Tuam defensionem quod spectat, dolendum esset in ipsis nascendi primordiis interire. Sed voluisti istam aleam subire spreto strenue, quod tibi proposueram, consilio. Videbimus ergo quid ex generoso tuo animo boni aut mali eveniet. Sed malum avertat omnis boni Auctor, cui te cornmendatum opto.

*As to what faces your Defensio, it would be deplorable if it were to perish in the very first days of its appearance. But you wanted to risk that hazard, strenuously spurning the advice which I offered you. So we shall see what good or ill befall your noble mind. Yet may the Author of all good avert any evil - I pray you commended to his care.

Sarravius is apparently referring to the motion made to the provincial States of Holland and West Friesland by Walter Strickland, envoy from the English Parliament, calling for the suppression of the Defensio regz'a. The Hollanders play a game of neutrality between the English Common- wealth and the Royalist exiles. Their internal Dutch politics makes for cross conflicts. They debate and discuss and delay and finally issue an order 7/17 January 1650 suppressing the publication, so as to satisfy Stickland and the Commonwealth in words which come effectively too late to stop the book."

When Milton in his response comes to this point of suppression, he manifests here as elsewhere a keen sense of practical political tactics, while retaining his conscientious adherence to his own scrupulous standards of principle. At the time when Milton is finally revising his preface, the untimely death of William 11, Prince of Orange and brother-in-law of Charles 11, on 6 November 1650 has averted the possibility of his becom- ing king of the Netherlands on the despotic French model. Milton can then praise the States of Holland for having damned to darkness the anti- republican pro-absolute-monarch Defensio regia sponsored by the prince who lately was a prime threat to Dutch liberties. Milton is also England's sturdy advocate of a press free from prior censorship, and so he ends his preface with a sardonic recommendation to the States of Holland: do let Salmasius' book circulate freely, and Milton's refutation will more effectively suppress its falsities. Except, sardonically still, and perhaps ruefully, Milton suspects, and expects, that the effectiveness of his

by him (26 November 1649):

' " Reduced facsimile of the order of 17 January 1650 NS in Madan, 'A revised bibliography', page 11 1. Milton's preface refers to a prccious order for the Fiscal to seize all copies (see: French, Lzj" Rccorrls. 1 1 , 277. citing S r z w - d Proceedircgs in Purlmrnent, 21-28 December 164Y, number 13, page 161 1 .

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refutation will be the ultimate guarantee that Salmasius' book will not be forgotten. ' '

Sarravius continues to voice two diverging themes in his letters: persistent praise most lavishly accorded and recurrent painful recognition of serious flaws, flaws which will presently be Milton's select targets. On 27 December 1649 he writes, based on the pages he has seen so far:

Hactenus satis cognitum quid in humanioribus litteris, quid in anti- quitate sacra & profana, quid in Jurisprudentia, quid in Medicina valeres, quid autem in Politica, quid in Oratoria posses hinc etiam constabit. In utroque enim hoc argument0 versari debet Apologeticus in gratiam Regis miserrimi scriptus: nec dubitare fas est, te nostrae ex- pectationi facturum esse satis.

*Until now it has been well known how good you are in the literature of the humanities, how good in sacred and secular antiquity, in jurispru- dence, in medicine: from this it will be clear what you can also do in political theory and in oratory. In both kinds of writing, your Apologetic in behalf of that poor King must stand up, and there is no reason to doubt that you will have adequately fulfilled our expectation.

On 12 February 1650 Sarravius writes that he has forestalled a local proposal for a French language translation, so that Salmasius will be able to prepare his own. Sarravius must add that not everyone is enthusiastic:

Invenies hic multos laudatores: sed aliquos etiam Censores. Qui aliter in tanta sentiendi, & quidlibet effutiendi licentia? Multi enim A u k addictius serviunt, propter spem praemii: alii vero libertatem magis amant; quam existimant se in moderato regio imperio facilius posse tueri. Varia itaque experieris hominum judicia: sed sat erit melioribus & potioribus placuisse.

*You will find many here who praise, but some also who criticize. How otherwise when there is so much licence of opinion and for babbling what one will? Many indeed serve the Court servilely because of hope of gain; others rather love liberty more - they believe that it is easier to be secure under moderate royal rule. So you will discover different judgements among men, but it will be enough to please those who are the better and preferable kind.

But one week later, 18 February, Sarravius himself was startled into sharply questioning his respected friend. He has just received the fascicle containing Salmasius' preface, which may have been done late, or revised late, in the composition of the book, and in it he finds a most astounding reversal of principle:

I ' PPDA, CE, VII, 40; 1651, Sig. D. Milton reiterates his principled stand that Salmasius has a right to write his book and be wrong, CE, VII, 398; 1651, page 142.

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Penes me sunt aliquot quaterniones tuae Defensionis. Miratus sum, & procul dubio mecum erunt multi in eadem sententia, ubi legi in Praefatione necessarios tibi videri Episcopos in regimine Ecclesim Anglican&. Tibi inquam, qui in Wallone Messalino, adeo acriter eos insectatus es, ut forsan inde arrepta sit, si non nata occasio eos penitus amovendi.

*In my hands there are several gatherings of your Defensio. I am astonished, and beyond a doubt many will feel the same with me, when I read in the Preface that ‘it appears to you that Bishops are required for the governance of the Anglican Church’. I ask you, who [under the pen-name] Walo Messalinus attacked those Bishops so sharply that it would likely be thence concluded whether the time had not arisen to abolish them entirely.

Sarravius has here recoiled from Salmasius’ betrayal of his own past principles, at the same time one of his most serious tactical errors. Once again under the guidance of die-hard royalist advisers, who have learned nothing and forgotten nothing in the ten years of struggles of episcopacy, presbytery and independency in England, Salmasius veered away from that Calvinist hostility to the hierarchy of bishops which he had preached publicly in print for ten years previously. Milton was able to seize upon this apostasy to inflict some of his sharpest attacks on Salmasius. Three times in his preface he quotes directly from the Apparatus contra primatu papm, where Salmasius had argued in 1645 that rule by bishops was a worse evil than the schisms they supposedly prevented. Accepting Stuart- ist dogma, Salmasius in Defensio regia needlessly involved himself in the argument that bishops were needed to keep down the proliferation of sects and heresies: this argument more specifically affected Milton and the supporters of the Commonwealth in England, but it had been the English and Scottish Presbyterians who had actually struck down the episcopate. As Sarravius’ shocked protests shows, Salmasius not only was leaving himself open to the accusation of insincerity, but on this emo- tionally charged would alienate the Scottish Kirk and lose the support of French, Dutch, Swiss and German Calvinists.’2

The same inept counsellors misled Salmasius into compounding that tactical error, by implicating the Presbyterian faction in England in having paved the way for the regicide, the error in tactics which had distressed Sarravius in his letter of 11 June. (The truth is that the

’‘ Samuel Bochart, one of the most prominent Huguenot clergymen, nephew to the elder Pierre du Moulin. wrote to Salmasius on 17 May 1650 praising the Defensio regia but taking strong excep- tion to his having included the English Presbyterians among the Regicides. Bochart contributed an influential publication to the Stuart cause in the third part of his long ‘letter’ addressed to [George] Morley, I . De Presbyteratu d Episcopatu, I I . De Provocatione a Judiciis Ecclesiasticis, I I I . De Jure ac Potestate Regum, dated March 1650, rehearsing many points used by Salmasius, but seeking to clear the Presbyterians of any share in the death of Charles I . Both documents are reprinted in Bochart’s Geographia sacm (Leiden and Utrecht, 1692).


Presbyterian party had indeed played that role, as Milton reminded them at every opportunity.) There could be no possibility of a royal restoration unless the Stuartists won over or at least neutralized that constituency. On 5 March 1650, although Sarravius writes that he likes the first instalments of the French translation sent by Salmasius, he devotes most of his letter to that tactical problem:

Presbyterianos fratres offendit accusatio nefandi criminis, cujus eos facis participes: quamvis enim postmodum videaris istud onus rejicere in Independentes, rursum tamen eos insectaris, nec vis istius culpae esse immunes: quod sane durum est a consecraneo pati. Satis praevidisti eorum querelas, quas vitasse consultius fuisset. Circa editiones vulnus est immedicabile. Quid tamen vetat, quin in Gallicis chartis, quae adhuc penes te, aliquid lenimenti adferatur? Saltem ea populus non legeret, nec de te ob istam tuam libertatem male forsan sentiret. Si me audies id in fratrum gratiam praestabis. De necessitate Episcopatus Anglicani quod obiter dixeras in Praefatione, uti jam monui, fortius adhuc urges ips0 opere, contra dictata Wallonis Messalini; quod tibi vitio vertetur: diceturque te calidum & frigidum eodem ex ore efflare, nec generositati t u z id convenire existimabitur. Passim negas extare exemplum ullius Regis, qui ita publice traductus fuerit & carnifici traditus: Alicubi tamen dicis aliquot Scotiae Reges, in public0 capitali supplicio esse affectos: quae conciliatione indigere videntur.

*The accusation of that unspeakable crime, of which you make them participants, is offensive to the Presbyterian brethren: for (although you later seem to throw that onus again on the Independents) none the less again you blame them, and you want them not to be immune from that guilt: which is very hard to accept from a co-religionist. You have supplied plenty of complaints from them, which it would have been more advisable to avoid. In what is published the wound is incurable. What, however, prevents some kind of remedy to be applied in the French drafts, which are still with you? At least the populace will not read that, and perhaps will not think ill of you on account of that liberty of yours. If you heed me, you will rise in the brethren’s graces. Of the necessity of Anglican Episcopacy, of which you spoke in passing in the Preface, as I have already complained, you further press more strongly in the book itself, contradicting Walo Messalinus: it will be charged to you as an offence on your part, and it will be said that your lips blow hot and cold, and it will be judged as not befitting your high character. Passim you deny that there ever was an example of any King who was so publicly tried and sentenced to execution: elsewhere, however, you say that several Scottish Kings were so condemned to public capital punishment: that seems to require reconciliation. Milton took full advantage of these Salmasian errors. In his tenth

chapter (CE, VII, 498-500, 1651, page 182) he particularly read a lesson

312 Leo Miller

to his Presbyterian compatriots on the dangers they will incur: Vae vobis imprimis, si unquam stirps Caroli regnum posthac in Anglos recuperabit; in vos, mihi credite, cudetur haec f a b a , *‘Woe be to you among the first, if ever Charles’ posterity recover the crown of England: believe me, you will smart for this.’ More specific than Sarravius, Milton in his first chapter calls to memory how Mary, Queen of Scots, had been executed by Protestants, without protest from her Protestant Scottish subjects.

Salmasius’ reply to the letter of 5 March would especially be worth recovering, as may be judged from Sarravius’ rejoinder on 12 March:

Te ergo habemus reum fatentem. Sive tempori servias, sive causae, nobis perinde est . . . Przterea credo non licere Advocato vel Regio, in causa domini sui, aliter dicere publice, quam privatim loquatur & sen- tiat: quemadmodum non sunt divers= leges, quibus domi utimur, ab illis juxta quas in for0 placita decernuntur. At scripsisti, inquis, ex imperio. Ergo potest tibi imperari, ut sententiam mutes?

*So we have you confessing guilt. For if you are going to accommodate yourself to an occasion, or to a cause, that to us amounts to the same . . . In any event I believe it is not proper even for a Royal Advocate, in the cause of his lord, to speak in public differently from what he says and feels in private. But you wrote, you say, by command. Can you therefore be commanded to change your opinion?

On 2 April Sarravius, unable to budge Salmasius, tries again, tactfully and thoughtfully addressing the matter of changing opinions:

Graviter ut semper, postrema tua dogmata defendis, damnatis prioribus. Ego pauca reponam, nec enim mea res est, aut admodum dissentimus. Mutatio sententiz, pro variis causarum figuris, nolo esse crimen: imo ne quidem delictum. Sed in uno eodemque argumento, nodo Episcopos reos peragere violati in eum modum Ecclesiastici Regiminis, ut nullo mod0 tolerari aut emendari possint, quin potius de- beant solio deturbari; mod0 eos tantum in ordinem cogere, & damnare & quidem verbis atrocibus eos a quibus prior sententia executioni man- data est, saltem inconstantiz notam non possit effugere.

*Weightily as ever, you defend your latter doctrines, condemning your former doctines. I will say little in reply, since it is not my affair, and we do not dissent greatly. Changing one’s opinion, for various kinds of reasons, I consider no crime; indeed, not even a fault. But in one and the same issue of debate, at one time to prosecute the bishops as guilty in that charge of corrupted church governance, not to be in any way tolerated or corrected, but rather to be dethroned from their authority, at another time to call to account and condemn in atrocious words those by whom the previous sentence of execution was carried out, at least cannot escape the brand of inconstancy.


So writes honest Sarravius, not too happy, but still holding on to his long-time friend.

In among these issues of major principle, there occur any number of Salmasian peccadilloes, which Milton in his Defence picks up, and for their seeming pettiness he is faulted by some of his academic critics. In his Chapter 111, he nails Salmasius for ignorance amounting to a heresy in a fine-spun theological dogma of remission of sins under the ‘old covenant’. To supply an exposition here explaining what Salmasius wrote, and how Milton sought to shame him, would only emphasize the foggy abstruse- ness of the issue. But in Paris of 1650 that precise point mightily troubled Sarravius because Salmasius had thereby opened himself to attack, and on 26 March he wrote:

Caeterum gavisus sum cum vidi te in Gallica versione sustulisse, quae in Latina editione capite tertio dixeras ad locum Ambrosii, De remissione peccatorum, quasi locum non habuerit sub Veteri Testamento, quemadmodum habet sub Novo. Haec enim doctrina offensionis justam praebeat materiam.

*I was indeed happy when I saw that you suppressed in your French translation what you had said in the Latin edition, chapter three, on that point of Ambrose on the remission of sins, as if that point did not obtain under the Old Testament as it does under the New. For that doctrine offers just matter of offence.I3

Although he omitted that point in the French edition, in his letters Salmasius stood by his first formulation, so that Sarravius finds it important to return to that matter, 16 April:

Quamvis repugnare videaris, optime fecisti expungendo illam periodum tuae Defensionis, in qua asserueras, remissionem peccatorum locum non habuisse sub Veteri Foedere.

*However much you seem to dislike it, you did best to expunge that sentence of your Defensio in which you asserted that there was no locus on remission of sins under the Old Covenant.I4

Despite Madan’s efforts, the bibliographic data of the editions of Defensio regia in France are somewhat unclear. Madan was unfamiliar with Adrian Vlacq, whose name he saw in Sarravius’ letters of 5 February and 26 March 1650 which show Vlacq involved in printing a Latin edition, but yielding it to the widow Mathurin Dupuis: this should be added to my discussion in ‘Milton and Vlacq’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 73 (1979), 145-207, further clarifying Vlacq’s con- nections with the Salmasius circle. In Vlacq’s own public statements, he did not mention his past involvement with Defenszo regia in France, which he gave up when he was relocating to the Netherlands. Madan lists a French translation, Apologie Royale Pour Charles I , quarto, published by the widow Dupuis; but Eugsne and Emile Haag, La France protestante (1859), IX, 149-73, in their life of Salmasius state that he published his French version under the pseudonym Claude Legros de Saint-Hilaire, at Paris, 1650, octavo.

’‘ locus: a scriptural or other text for elucidation of an issue. In Milton’s Artis logicae plenzor in- stitutio (CE, IX, 22; 1672, Spencer Hickman edition, page 3), locos unde argumenta sumuntur, ’places whence arguments are taken’.

314 Leo Miller

In his response Salmasius obstinately resorted to refining his sophistry on this question, and in turn Sarravius felt it needful to counter on 7 May with a ponderous review of the pertinent theology. If today we choose to spare ourselves their epistolary re-examination of the Greek phraseology of Romans 3.25, of Hebrews 9.8, and of the interpretation found in Hesychius the grammarian of Alexandria, we must yet conclude that many such remote items that seem to clog the flow of Milton’s argument (for scholars today) must have been thoroughly appropriate for his first readers. I s

I1 MILTON’S MESSAGE OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY

Salmasius’ own good friends have demonstrated how apt and how necessary was Milton’s attention to so much which academic critics have disparaged. Conversely, Milton’s own words offer the best affirmative demonstration that his Defensio at that same time made a major positive contribution to the literature of political principle, bringing to the peoples of western Europe the message of popular sovereignty overriding the superstition of divine right monarchy. This is clearly to be seen, even though by limiting ourselves to this one Defensio we are unfair to Milton, whose political doctrines evolved over a span of years and through many books. To the reigning despots on the European continent Milton’s Defensio was eminently clear and powerfully effective. They saw to it that it was burned in Paris and Toulouse. The Imperial Reichstag banned it in the Germanies, especially concerned that it not be discussed in the universities. Among the first acts of the Stuart restoration in 1660 was a royal proclamation to call in all copies and burn them.

Milton faced a dual problem. He had to defend the English Revolution in terms suited to a European ‘public opinion’ brought up to think in the jargon of Catholic and Protestant theologies and in the concepts of classical Greek and Roman philosophy, literature and history. In the particular political circumstances of 1650, he had to supply justification for an activist minority - the Army officers, the Rump Parliament and their Independent and Sectary allies among the people - to speak and decide for the nation.

In his own mind he has worked out the appropriate philosophy in proper theological terms. In his own mind, the English Revolution was a struggle to recover human freedom as ordained by God: Adam, the first man, was created in a state of original liberty, which was lost in Adam’s fall; ‘Christ’, by carrying out his extraordinary role, regained the

’ ’ For an instance of how minutely Milton’s Defrnszo was read and cited, see Jacobus Fridericus Reimann, Historza Unzuersalzs Atheismi et Atheorum Falso et Merito Suspectorum (Hildesiae, 1725), pagr 51 1 . Reimann includes Salmasius, because Milton at one point (Chapter IX, CE, V I I , 460; 1651, pagr 166) calls him atheus for his hypocrisy on the issue of bishops.


possibility of liberty for man. This concept of ‘Christian liberty’ (whatever it may have connoted to the authors, revisers and readers of the early Christian scriptures in ancient Antioch and ancient Rome) took on new meanings during the era of the Protestant Reformation. The insurgent peasants in Germany, for example, took the doctrine to heart much more eagerly than Luther was willing to concede to them. Milton did not in- volve himself here in expounding his full system of belief but he applies it in terms which could be generally accepted. In rebuttal of Salmasius he says:

*Your first argument you take from the role of Christ. Who does not know that he took on the role not only of a subject, but even of a slave, that we might be free?

Nor is this to be understood of some inward liberty only, as if not of political liberty. How out of place are those words that Mary mother of Christ sang on his coming - ‘He hath scattered the proud in the im- agination of their hearts; he hath cut down proud monarchs from their thrones and exalted them of low degree’ - if his coming rather established tyrants on their thrones and subjected all Christians to their savage sway.

He himself, by being born under tyranny, and serving, and suffer- ing, under tryanny, has acquired all rightful liberty for us. As he has not withheld from us the patience to endure slavery, if we must, so he has not forbidden us to strive nobly for liberty, but has empowered us to a greater degree.I6

Governments are needed among men, says Milton (that is, since the Fall from original innocence), but the choice of government remains open:

*Without magistrates and civil government there can be no commonwealth, no human society, no living.

*Therefore the institution of magistrates is from God, so that by their administration the human race may live under law. But the option to choose whether this or that form of administration, these magistrates or those, beyond doubt always belonged to the free nations of men.”

For lack of space here, I will include only my translations from Milton’s Latin, not reproducing his Latin texts, but giving their citations. This passage translates CE, V I I , 144; 1651, page 42. Milton’s words are Przmum argumentum duczs u person6 Chrzsti. After Milton’s blast at Salmasius for using persona in the west European vernacular sense of person, is there any excuse for here translating that word as person, as has been done by the translators in both Columbia and Yale editions? For Mary’s Magnificat, I use some of Milton’s own words from his Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (CE, v, 23; 1649 first edition, page 22), where he describes it as a song, rather than the Geneva Bible or King James versions, ‘put down the mighty from their seats’. Who was closer to the original intent of that song? Here, as often, Milton’s translations from the Hebrew and Greek texts are his own, differing also from the Junius-Tremellius version.

” Pro populo anglzcano defensio, CE, V I I , 174, 168; 1651, pages 55, 52.

316 Leo Miller

To Europe Milton proclaims the sovereignty of the people: *‘I do not hesitate to affirm that all the authority of magistracy comes from the people. ” *

Tactically and tactfully Milton avoids a final choice among forms of government, suggesting that it is wrong to dogmatize on the issue of forms, but always pressing home that basic principle:

*It is for the wisest of men, therefore, to ascertain what may be most suitable and most beneficial to a people; for certain it is that the same form of government is not fitting for every nation, or for the same nation at all times; but either this form or that, according as citizens’ standards in ethics and effort now wax, now wane. But he who takes from a people their power to elect what form of government they wish, takes that indeed in which all political liberty consists.’9

Tactically and tactfully Milton does not flatly reject all monarchy, but hedges it around with cautionary objection:

*Truly this is not the place now to discuss which system of governing the commonwealth is better, by one or by many. Many eminent men have indeed extolled monarchy, yet only if he who reigns alone be the best man of all and worthiest to reign; unless that is the case, nothing slips faster than monarchy into the worst sort of tyranny.20

Earlier in the book, invoking the word of God in Deuteronomy 17, he has made his own position plain:

*God himself attesting, all peoples and nations have always had either the choice to make use of that form of government which pleased them or to change i t for another . . . The form of a republic, moreover, was by God considered more perfect and more desirable than a monarchy for his own people.21

Salmasius can also find Bible citations. He cites David (who refrained, despite justifiable provocation, from killing the king who was anointed of the Lord) and thence he deduces that no kings may be punished regardless of any villainies they perpetrate. Milton scoffs:

*Those kings, indeed, whom God either anointed by his prophets, or destined by name to some particular purpose, as Cyrus at one time, Isaiah 44, I acknowledge as the Lord’s anointed. The rest in my opinion are the anointed either of the people, or the army, or of their own faction only. Even if I were to concede to you that all kings are the

’ * CE, V I I , 182; 1651, page 57. ’’ CE, V I I , 190-2; 1651, page 61.

CE, v I I , 278: 1651, page 96. ” CE, VII , 76; 1651, pages 15-16.

I n defence of Milton’s Pro populo angkano defensio 317

Lord’s anointed, that therefore they are above the law, and not to be punished for any crimes whatever -this you will never prove.22

Against divine right of kings Milton asserts the divine right of the

*All kings are of God, you say: therefore the people ought not to resist even tyrants. In return I say that the meetings and the assemblies of the people, their endeavours, their votes and their ordinances are likewise of God, God himself here attesting.

Or if God be said to give a people into slavery whenever a tyrant prevails over a people, why ought he not as well be said to set them free whenever the people prevail over a tyrant? Shall the tyrant credit his tyranny to God, and not we our liberty?23

Over and again Milton affirms the supreme right of the people to take

people:

action against tyranny:

*Since the king has no right to do wrong, the right of the people remains by nature supreme; and therefore by that right whereby, before kings were created, men first united their counsels and strength for their mutual defence, by that right whereby for the preservation of the common safety, peace and liberty of all, they deputed one or more to govern the rest, by the same right they may punish and depose those same persons whom for their valour and prudence they had set above the rest, or any others who misgovern through sloth or folly or dishonesty or treachery; since nature has always been concerned with and is concerned with not the power of the one or of a few, but the safety of all, whatever may become of one man’s or a few men’s power.24

This vindication of the people’s right to overthrow their oppressors only half answers the question posed by Salmasius. The spokesman for the people faces an accusing finger from the spokesman for royal one-man despotism. The clique for whom Salmasius scribbles does not give a hoot for the sovereignty of the people, but the leaders of the Commonwealth say they do. Who purged the Parliament, Salmasius asks, taunting, was it the people?

His question was simplistic, but the answer could not be simple. Since 1639, in spasmodic stages, many of the institutionalized forms of political and economic oppression had been overthrown, and the repressive powers of the established Church had been broken, to the easing of many private consciences in matters of religion. These changes had been achieved with the participation of many segments of the ‘people’, at first very wide. That support tended to narrow in span whenever any segments

* * CE, V I I , 220; 1651, page 73. *’ CE, V I I , 229, 180; 1651, pages 77, 57 * 4 CE, V I I , 270-2; 1651, page 94.

318 Leo Miller

became satisfied or became disappointed, until the climactic erection of the Commonwealth by a minority, who maintained the form of a republic against the supporters of the former royalist oligarchy on one side, and resisted, on the other, the more or less inarticulate aspirations of the toil- ing masses. To Salmasius’ challenge Milton replies:

*I say it was the people. For whatever the better, the more sound part of the Parliament did, in which the true power of the people resided, shall I not say that the people did it? What if many of the Parliament should choose enslavement and sell out the state, ought not a lesser number prevent that and hold on to liberty, if it be in their power?25

Being in a minority is no reason for giving up striving for freedom, Milton steadfastly affirms, citing an ancient Hebrew hero with whom he has long felt a kinship:

*That hero Samson, though his countrymen blamed him (Judges 15, ‘Knowest thou not that the Philistines have paramount rule over us’), yet made war singlehanded against his rulers, and slew not one but many of his country’s tyrants together, whether inspired by God or his own valour, having first prayed to God to be his help. Therefore it appeared not impious but pious to Samson to kill his lords, his country’s tyrants, even though the greater part of his countrymen refused not slavery.26

When the king’s party, reinforced by some of the Presbyterian faction (with no better claim to represent the people), were threatening a new civil war,

*In that crisis matters had come to such a point, indeed, that of necessity we must be crushed by them or they by us. On their side stood mostly London merchants and manufacturers, and generally the most factious of the ministers, on ours an army known for its great faith, moderation and valour. Able through them to maintain our liberty, the safety of our commonwealth, do you think that all ought to have been surrendered by negligence and

Salmasius speaks with royalist contempt of the common people. Milton

*Then you inveigh against the common people as ‘blind and brutish, lacking the art of governing, nothing more full of wind, nothing more

responds with distinctions:

*’ CE, VII, 356; 1651, page 126. 2 6 CE, V I I , 218; 1651, page 73. ’’ CE, VII , 494; 1651, page 180. ‘Merchants’ and ‘manufacturers’ must be understood in terms of

seventeenth-century London. Milton’s words institores atque opzyices are not very precise. In translating the Council of State’s proposals for a treaty with the Dutch in 1652, Milton uses institores to translate the English word ‘factor’, meaning an agent abroad acting for a British merchant prin- cipal (institores in the Algemeen Rijksarchief original manuscript, MS Aitzema 86, number 21; erroneously institutores in Columbia edition, XVIII , 104, 108).


empty, more fickle, more inconstant’. All these words fit you best of all; and they are true likewise of the lowest of the people, but not of the middle sort, amongst whom are generally found the most prudent and experienced men. The rest are commonly diverted, on the one hand by luxury and wealth, on the other by want and poverty, from virtue and the study of civil statesmanship.2s

Milton knows that the English Commonwealth is not exactly the fulfil- ment of his dreams, but its limitations are not of his choosing:

*Our constitution is what the dissensions of our time permit; not such as were to be desired, but such as the persistent strife of unworthy citizens will allow it to be.29

In abolishing the monarchy one definitely great stride forward was taken, and throughout this book Milton’s greatest concern is to prevent its restoration. It is exiled Charles I1 who taught Salmasius that Parliament is vassal to the king, the coronation oath an empty form,

*So that no reverence for law, no binding force of an oath, or scruple to break it, will avail to protect your lives and fortunes from the lust of a king unbridled, or from the revenge of a king embittered, who from his childhood has been taught to think that laws, religion, and his own pledged word ought to be his vassals and subject to his will and pleasure.

If what you want is wealth, if liberty, if peace, if empire, how much better, how much more worthy yourselves would it be, resolutely to seek all these by your own virtue, industry, prudence and valour, than under a royal despotism hope for them in vain? They who think that these cannot be obtained without a king and lord, it is beyond words how abjectly, how dishonourably (I do not say how unworthily) they think of themselves; for what do they but confess themselves insipid, feeble, lacking in mind and judgement, born to be slaves body and soul.

All slavery indeed is disgraceful to a man freeborn; but for you, after recovering your liberty with God on your side and by your own arms, after so many brave deeds done, and so memorable an example made of a most powerful king, for you to desire, against your own destiny, to return again into bondage, will not only be most shameful, but some- thing sinful and criminal. 3 0

” CE, VII, 390-2; 1651, 139-40, translating plebs as ‘common people’, infma plebs as ‘lowest of the people’, and media as ‘the middle sort’. Milton here defines ‘people’, populus, as including all citizens regardless of order or degree. As against king, lords and bishops, Milton is always defending ‘the people’, while reserving to himself the right to criticize ‘the people’ at other times when they yield to tyrannies and despots.

’ 9 CE, V I I , 28: 1651, Sig. 2”. ” CE, V I I , 542; 1651, page 200.

320 Leo Miller

Milton’s doctrines are open to historical criticism. Many of his formula- tions (which I have not cited here) show limits imposed by the times in which he lived. He never had the leisure, and probably not the inclina- tion, to engage in purely theoretical enquiry the way Hobbes and Har- rington did, but he did translate into his three last great poems his judgement on the experience of the English Revolution and its aftermath; and in Pro populo anglicano defensio he made a major contribution to the world’s literaure of struggle for freedom.

111 SMASHING T H E SHAMS

We return to the academic critics. William Riley Parker, Milton, A Biography, page 383: ‘The controversy sounds like a bookish brawl, a quarrel in a library.’ That simile is as artistically inappropriate as the judgement. Libraries are oases of quiet, where not ears but eyes are strained, and such a near-sighted judgement is likely to be a penalty of a lifetime’s eyesight spent in the library. Quite differently, from 1640 on, John Milton’s life was spent in the thick of political struggle. Even during those seven years when he was a schoolmaster indoors at home, his pen was being wielded as a martial weapon out of doors in the public forum.

When he was composing the Defensio, Milton was serving as the spokesman of a revolutionary government. Day by day as he was writing, until May 1650, the armies of that goverment were battling for its con- tinued existence against the supporters of Charles I1 in Ireland. As June was shading into July Milton was writing the last pages of his second chapter; he was very aware that Charles had landed in Scotland and was swearing his soul away to the Scottish covenanters. 3 ’ Although Dunbar was fought on 3 September in 1650, Charles was strong enough to be crowned king of Scotland next New Year’s day, strong enough to strike south with his troops into the heart of England. When Milton brought his book to the Council of State, Worcester fight was still eight months away.

Defensio regia called on the crowned monarchs of Europe to crush the Commonwealth. Time proved that those kings were not about to pull Stuart chestnuts out of the fire, but in 1650 the English Council of State could hardly count on such international inertia. They could see Defensio regia out in eight Latin editions, in multiple issues, in three variant Dutch versions, one in French. They knew of the continental taunts baiting the

” The Scottish Calvinists, and their English allies, reacting from the demands of the (to them, radical or democratically inclined) Sectaries, had swung back to the side of the monarchy, which they intended to control. On the day when Charles I1 was crowned king in Scotland, he was compelled to listen to a sermon by Robert Douglas, in which Salmasius’ Defenszo regia was condemned for ‘urging the damnable Maximr, Quod libet licet’ (printed in The Form and Order of the Coronation of Charles the Second, several editions in Scotland, 1651). Mercurzw Politicus, 16 August 1650, printed a report of a denunciation of his father Charles I to which Charles I1 subscribed on demand of his Scottish supporters.

In defence of Milton’s Pro populo anglicano defensio 32 1

British for protracted failure to respond, until Milton’s eloquence turned the taunt the other way.

Milton’s Defensio properly should be read the way it was read in 1651, side by side with the Defensio regia. Inevitably Milton’s reply had to be tuned to Salmasius’ text. When W. R. Parker (Milton, page 383) says ‘Milton stooped to conquer’, the eminent biographer focused only on the dismal matter which Milton had to confront. In contrast, Milton’s con- temporaries, including many who did not agree with his politics, spoke of the brilliance with which he ripped Salmasius to shreds, and the ruling powers of Germany and elsewhere recognized that along with his invective Milton clearly conveyed a platform of progressive principles which ulti- mately would put an end to their reign of privilege.32

The reply to Defensio regia was not an occasion for one dispassionate political philosopher to exchange courtesies with a fellow enquirer into classical theories of the state, while disagreeing on inferences reasonably drawn from evidence objectively examined. This was an occasion when a writer enjoying a high reputation as a savant had assumed the stance of a political enemy, relying on his established reputation to gain credence from a public most of whom would uncritically accept what he had to offer. The literary world of 1651 recognized consummate artistry in the way Milton accomplished what needed to be done, not only to defeat the dogmas of divine right absolutism, but also to devastate the reputation of their defender. And if there was anyone who could detect the sham in Salmasius’ pretentious and pompous presentation, it was the genuine scholar Milton who - political principle apart - was fully outraged by that sham.

On four counts Salmasius deserved that devastation. First, Salmasius had repeatedly resorted to the falsehood of incomplete and out-of- context quotation. Second, Salmasius repeatedly built up a case from abstruse allegations, and then some pages away directly contradicted his own allegations and argument. Third, Salmasius the highly touted polymath repeatedly perpetrated the sloppiest of factual howlers. Fourth, Salmasius lavished vituperation and contumely on the Commonwealth government, on the Independents and Sectaries, and on the people of England generally. Milton correctly assessed Salmasius’ vulnerabilities on each account, and he counter-attacked not only with force but with elegance.

By a falsehood of incomplete quotation Salmasius implied that Aeschylus in The Suppliants urged that a king was not subject to judgement. To expose and rebut the falsehood Milton felicitously quotes that episode to create a miniature drama: when pitiful women refugees use

’* J. M . French, Life Records ofJohn Milton, volume 111, passim, prints extracts from the correspondence of Isaac Vossius and Nicholas Heinsius, and the comments of Leonard Philaras (page 220), Samuel Bochart (page 249), Queen Christina (page 351); see note 2 above for others.

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that flattering line to beg for protection, the king himself insists on put- ting the decision to a vote by the people, whose final authority is then asserted four times over. Deceitfully Salmasius attributed an aphorism to Tacitus: the goods gave to the emperor the glory of supreme authority, to subjects the glory of obedience. Salmasius gave no citation, either (so Milton suggests) to conceal his fraud, or because he had lifted it from a secondary source. Milton locates the original passage, and shows that Tacitus was really quoting from a man on trial before the emperor, abjectly pleading for his life. Proceeding like a true scholar, Milton continues out of Tacitus, and also from Dio, Cicero and Pliny, to convict Salmasius for trying to justify the ‘right of kings’ by the corruptions of the Roman principiate; master artist as ever, in among his citations Milton intercalates the vivid action scene of Antony at the Lupercalia dramati- cally offering the crown to Caesar, while the assembled people groan and lament.

Arguing the unarguable, Salmasius often befuddled himself into re- pudiating his own evidence and his own arguments. Milton’s retentive memory is inexorable: you say that King Saul was a tyrant, but previously you said that he was not a tyrant; you hailed the Senate as an assembly of kings, now you degrade them to a body of slaves.34 Does it seem wearisome to see one contradiction and another pilloried, time and again? But Salmasius’ self-contradictions usually lie at some distance from each other, and they must be exposed and pilloried.

Salmasius had the name of a prodigy in learning, and the whole con- struction of his book is meant to impress that illusion on the reader: but frequently in his arrogance he slips into howlers. *‘To say that kingdoms existed before kings’, he says, ‘is as ridiculous as to say that light existed before the sun’ - but in 1650 everyone knew from the first chapter of Genesis that God created light on the first day of creation, the sun not till the fourth day. Everyone who studied any geography knew that the ter- restrial globe has two frigid zones at opposite ends, a torrid zone in the middle and two temperate zones in between, so what should one think of Salmasius redrawing the globe, to make an analogy, to have three temperate zones between one frigid zone opposite to one torrid? What is one to think of Salmasius’ arguments from the law of England when he cites statutes which never existed, having failed to check the data given him by his Stuartist advisers? Such blunders exposed do impeach

’’ CE, V I I , 306-12, 317-23; 1651, 108-10, 111-13. For reasons not always immediately apparent, Milton passes by some of Salmasius’ sourccs. Most notably, he does not touch on Salmasius’ citations from William Prynne. On the other hand, when Salmasius interweaves without citation or reference some random phrases which a modern reader would hardly notice, Milton at once calls attention to their source in Martial’s Epigrams, XI , 20 (CE, V I I , 548; 1651, page 202); but in this instance we may hazard a guess that this one salacious epigram was well known to his teenage classmates at St Paul’s School.

’4 CE, V I I , 222, 340; 1651, pages 74, 120.


pretensions to authority, and in this context also advance the cause of freedom, and if they afford some comic relief, so much the better.35

Salmasius was unsparing in opprobrious epithets. On that score, and considering his crass sophistry, the grossness of his defence of despotic tyrannies, as well as his dishonesty in quotation and propensity to factual and grammatical howlers, by the standards of their century he fully earned the retaliation with which Milton repaid in kind.

On one account Milton’s counterblasts, based on reports which he had some basis for believing, appear in fact to have been without foundation: the accusation of venality, the mercenary motives, of a fee of a hundred jacobuses from the impoverished royalist treasury and earlier of seeking the patronage of Cardinal Richelieu. On that previous occasion, Salma- sius had turned down a most tempting offer, recorded for us by his friend and admirer, Gui Patin, in a letter of 16 February 1645 to Charles Spon:

M. de Saumaise e‘toit alors B Paris, & ce fut en ce tems-12 que Mr. le Cardinal de Richelieu traitoit avec lui pour l’y arreter avec une bonne pension, dont Madame de Saumaise sa femme e‘toit ravie: mais il n’y voulut pas consentir & se de‘gouta des propositions ge‘ne‘rales qu’on luy en faisoit, pour une particuliCre, qu’on y fit couler, qui e‘toit d’e‘crire en latin l’histoire de ce Cardinal: ce que Mr. de Saumaise m’a dit luy- mCme en secret, & me protestant qu’il eQt e‘te‘ bien marri d’employer le talent que Dieu luy avoit donne‘ au service & 2 l’histoire farde‘e de ce Ministre, qui avoit failli 2 ruiner 1’Europe par son ambition.

“M. Saumaise was then in Paris, and it was at that time that Cardinal Richelieu dealt with him to detain him there with a good pension, with which Mme Saumaise, his wife, was overjoyed: but he did not want to agree, and he was disgusted with the general proposals made to him, in particular one insinuated to him, which was to write the history of that Cardinal in Latin: which M. Saumaise told me in secret, protesting to me that he would have been very sorry to use the talent which God had given him to the service and the odious history of that Minister who had almost ruined Europe b y his ambition.

On the other hand, Patin confirms the widespread knowledge that the eminent Salmasius smarted at home from the domestic tyranny of a ter- magant wife (letter to Spon, 12 September 1645):

Madame sa femme qui de‘siroit fort de venir demeurer icy voyant ses pre‘tensions manque‘es, a commence‘ d’Ctre plus acarigtre et plus

’’ CE, V I I , 490, 407, 538; 1651, pages 174, 145, 198. Edward Hyde, later Lord Clarendon, in a letter of 13 August 1652, refused to co-operate with a Venetian writer, saying ‘if an interpreter were required between them, it would beget a thousand errors in both, as was the case with Salmasius, through the animadversions he received from Lord [Ralph] Hopton, and the latter from Lord Keeper [Sir Richard] Lane’ (Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers Preserved in the Bodlezan Library, edited by W. D. Macray, 1859, I , 143).

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mauvaise que jamais, & en est venue 1 telle extremite‘ que voyant son mari re‘solu de ne bouger de 11 elle l’a quitte‘, ne voulant plus demeurer en ce pais-12, et s’en est venue icy avec deux de ses e n f a n t ~ . ~ ~ *Mme. Saumaise, his wife, who greatly wanted to come to reside here [Paris], seeing her demands lost, began to be more cross and ill- tempered than ever, and it came to such an extremity that seeing her husband resolved not to budge thence [from the Netherlands] she left him, not wanting to stay any longer in that country, and came here with two of her children.

Readers who would like to preserve the Wordsworthian image of a Milton whose soul was like a star and dwelt apart might wish he had mani- pulated his goosequill in some less wry fashion to tickle the risibilities of his audience. So might I , though I am not distressed that Milton never ‘dwelt apart’. Yet in our time, when mores are supposedly more delicate, it is a fact that every elected president in our USA from Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan has been subjected to public critics’ com- ment on account of his relationship with his spouse.

More important, most important is to recognize that in every tactical volley against every weakness in Salmasius’ panoply, there is a reiteration of affirmative principle. ‘It is because Magistracy and the Church have confused their jurisdictions that for so many years war has sown more war throughout all Christendom.’ Is it necessary to interpret or annotate that? Rather it is to be admired how much democratic precept is infused into a polemic whose format was necessarily a negative denying of royalist claims: ‘originally all power flowed from the people and still so proceeds’ . . . to any ruling authority, ‘that power is delegated, not his own’ . . . ‘the deciding on peace and war always is vested in the supreme legislature’ - and not in the executive . . . no man may be imprisoned, or his property confiscated, or suffer any penalty except by verdict of a trial court delivered by judges who are independent of the ruler, and the last word rests with the people in the twelve-citizen jury. Every one of these points is enshrined in the Constitution of the United States of America, composed by persons whose American Revolution was a continuation and a re-enact- ing of the struggles in which Milton was a prime spokesman. I make reference to the Constitution of the United States not only as an American, but because it is a fact that in no country have the doctrines of republican popular sovereignty taught by Milton taken so deep and lasting root as in the United state^.^'

’6 Lettres Chozjzes de Feu Monrzeur Guy Putzn, P Paris, Chez Jean Petit, 1685: 16 February, page 7; 1 1 September, page 22 (dated 12 September in the 1725 Leers edition). Both Vossius and Heinsius refer to Salmasius’ wife by the nickname Xantippe. ” Quotations are from CE, V I I , 34, 424, 470, 466; 1651, pagesSig. C3”, 152, 171, 169. Summary,

on courts, CE, V I I , 463, on jury, 430: 1651, pages 168, 155. I n fairness to Milton, whose views are often subjected to distortion and out-of-context misrepresen-

tation, the concrete circumstances in which he wrote need to be constantly borne in mind.

In defence of Milton’s Pro populo anglicano defensio

IV TESTIMONY FROM COMPETENT WITNESSES

325

Now, to conclude the defence of Milton’s Defensio, I invoke a standard rhetorical proceeding, the supporting quotation, the testimony of witnesses fully qualified to judge literary values and political principle.

It is, first, a pleasure to call on Charles Lamb as witness. It appears that his soul, gentle as his name, was not appalled by the mordancy which so disturbed our book-learned critics. In October 1802 Lamb wrote in a letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge that he had acquired two volumes of Milton’s Latin works, and

Circa Defensionem istam Pro Pop” Ang” acerrimam in praesens ipse praeclaro gaudio moror. *At present I dwell with much delight on his vigorous defence Pro populo anglicano. 3 8

(1) In 1650 Milton’s defence of a ‘minority’ was the defence of an incomplete and unfinished people’s revolution which he wanted to keep moving in the direction of widening rights for all people, not a defence of a reactionary or counter-revolutionary minority bent on turning back the gains of the people. The repression of the Levellers and the diversion of the army towards Ireland had put a stop to the potential of further democratization, but Milton, it will be remembered, did not comply with the Council of State’s directive that he write against the Levellers.

(2) The boundaries of Milton’s conception of the ‘middle sort’ are more clearly defined at the upper end, ‘by luxury and wealth’, than at the lower, ‘by want and poverty’. In his Mask of Comus, Milton contrasted the genuine courtesy of shepherds in lowly sheds with smoky rafters against the practices in courts of princes, the plight of the just man who pines in want against those other ‘some few’ pampered in luxury with vast excess. Milton’s concepts of social status are usually associated with moral values, ‘just equality’, ‘proportioned equality’. His ideas are filtered through classical literary tradition, so that he sees Spartacus (the inspiration of twentieth-century radicals) as a law-breaking gladiator (CE, V I I , 288. 320; 1651, pages 100, 112). It is inappropriate to equate Milton’s ‘middle sort’ narrowly and rigidly with some particular segment of the population precisely definable by its relation to the mode of production and exchange; or to a vague and undefined ‘middle class’, a concept varying from century to century; or to the much abused category of the ‘rising bourgeoisie’.

Milton in 1650 blamed the royalism of the institores et opifices (whom, for a 1990 audience, I translate as ‘merchants and manufacturers’). He was aware then, as he was later to dictate in A Free Commonwealth in 1660, that influential circles engaged in merchandizing wanted the monarchy back for the same reasons as described by the Venetian envoy Lorenzo Paulucci, 17 August 1653: ‘The Londoners think they have gained little by the present form of government. A large part of the people is now obliged to live on the profits they obtained of yore from the nobility and gentry, as lux- uries are at present practically abolished, wealth having fallen into the hands of people unused to possess it and who are more inclined to hoard than to spend, so that tradesmen here and all over England sigh for the old state of affairs’ (translated from the Italian, Calendar of State Papers, Vene- tian, X X I X , 111-12). Against their whining for their short-term receipts, Milton tried to keep England moving in the direction of long-term values.

(3) In 1650 Commonwealth leaders who called themselves the Keepers of the Liberty of England saw nothing wrong with fortunes being made in the African slave trade. In 1650 men did not speak for the rights of women to participate equally in government. It has taken three centuries, including the revolutionary crises of 1689, 1776-91, 1861-5, to attain those degrees of human rights, liberty and equality which have been attained in my own country, the USA; and fraternity is still afar off. With all the limitations of his time, and ours, Milton’s writings were and continue to be major con- tributors towards those goals,.

’’ Lamb’s Latin sentence is quoted here from the original manuscript letter in the Berg Collec- tion, New York Public Library. The English translation by Stephen Gwynn is printed in all editions of Lamb’s letters. I would prefer ‘ardent’ for acerrzmam and ‘linger over’ for moror. The letter is not dated in the original, but it refers to events which are datable between 21 September and 4 October 1802.

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Coleridge apparently sent him one of the typical 1651 volumes, in which the Defensio regia was bound together with Milton’s reply. On 4 November 1802 Lamb writes back, with his usual whimsicality, to ac- company the two volumes mentioned above,

If you find the Miltons in certain parts dirtied and soiled with a crumb of right Gloucester blacked in the candle (my usual supper), or per- adventure a stray ash of tobacco wafted into the crevices, look to that passage more especially: depend on it, it contains good matter. I have got your little Milton, which, as it contains Salmasius - and I make a rule of never hearing but one side of the question (why should I distract myself?) - I shall return to you when I pick up the Latina opera. The first Defence is the greatest work among them, because it is uniformly great, and such as is befitting the very mouth of a great nation speak- ing of itself.39

Vastly different in personality was Honor6 Gabriel Riquetti de Mirabeau, foremost agitator in the first episodes of the French Revolu- tion. In the year of the Fall of the Bastille, 1789, he surreptitiously had printed a volume adapted from Milton’s Defensio, Thiorie de la Royauti?, d’aprds la Doctrine de Milton. In his preface Mirabeau wrote:

Je me suis attache sur-tout 5 la fameuse dkfense du peuple Anglois, que Toland, auteur de la vie de Milton, appelle Master-piece, la piece maitresse; 81 quoique la plupart des principes qu’elle contient, soient maintenant avoues & reconnus, il falloit, du temps de Milton, un genie bien extraordinaire pour les appercevoir & pour les developper comme il l’a fait.40

*I have devoted myself above all to the famous Defence of the English People, which Toland, author of the biography of Milton, calls the masterpiece; and even though most of the principles which it contains may now be acknowledged and recognized, it required, in Milton’s time. a really extraordinary genius to perceive them and develop them as he did.

John Toland, of the six primary biographers of Milton who had access to first-hand information, the one most in sympathy with Milton’s politics, was accordingly enthusiastic:

’’ From The Letters of Charles and Mary Annp Lamb, edited by E. L. Marrs (1976), 1 1 , 84-5. The original manuscript is not known to survive.

Page ij in my copy of The‘orze de la RoyautQ, D’Aprks la Doctrzne de Milton, 1789, from the preface ‘Sur Milton et ses ouvrages’, which refers to Mirabeau’s previous adaptation of Areopagitzca in a manner which indicates that he himself is writing the preface. According to J . F. Michaud’s Bzographze unzverselle, Mirabeau employed Jean Baptiste Salaville as compiler and copyist; how much of the French adaptation from Milton’s Defenszo may be attributed to either, is undetermined, so far as I am now aware.


And now we com to this Master-piece, his chief and favorit Work in Prose, for Argument the noblest, as being the Defence of a whole free Nation, the People of England; for stile and disposition the most elo- quent and elaborat, equalling the old Romans in the purity of their own Language, and their highest Notions of Liberty; as universally spread over the learned World as any of their Compositions; and certain to endure while Oratory, Politics or History, bear any esteem among Men. It cannot be deny’d, says that excellent Critic Monsieur Baile, that Milton’s Latin stile is easy, brisk and elegant, nor that he defended the Republican Cause with a world of Address and Wi t .41

Toland knew and recommended Joseph Washington’s English translation, but he revised it somewhat to his own style for quoting Milton’s peroration. His revision is readily available in Helen Darbishire’s The Early Lives of Milton, so it will be more useful here to reprint that passage in the impetuous voice of honest John Lilburne from his now rare pamphlet As You Were (1652). Freeborn John Lilburne, spokesman for England’s radical democracy, was not one to waste words on a spokesman of Crom- well’s administration. Yet he recognized in Milton a kindred spirit who wanted to carry forward the unfinished tasks of their revolution:

Therefore as a man that intirely loves my native Countrey I shall request you to commend unto the serious and hearty consideration of the LORD GENERALL and his Confederates the Advice of their valiant and learned Champion Mr. MILTON, who haveing much spent his eloquence to rout the forces of SALMASIVS, in the Epilogue of his Latin booke, ‘called a Defence of the People of England turnes his speech to his Masters that had set him on worke, whom he with much faithfullnes and Freedome bespeakes on this manner.

‘One thing is remaineing and that haply of the greatest moment, that you o my Countrymen and Fellow-Cityzens should your owne selves undertake the refutation of this your adversary; which I doe not see how you can otherwise possibly effect, save by endeavouring with tooth and naile to make your gallant actings the eternal1 confutation of all your Enemies raileings. God did graciously give eare to your Vowes and most ardent petitions, when being oppressed with more than a single bondage, you fled to him for succour. You in the first place among all Nations has he gloriously delivered from Tyranny and Super- stition, the greatest plagues, doubtles of humane life, and most pre- judicial1 to all virtue and true Gallantry. Into you it is that he hath infused that height of courage, as that you have not doubted to be the

I ’ John Toland, ‘The life of John Milton’, in A Complete Collection of the Historical, Politi- cal and Miscellaneous Works of John Milton (1698), ( I ) , page 30. Toland translates from Pierre Bayle’s Dictzonnazre h2:ctorzque et critique, article ‘Milton’, note F: ‘on ne peut nier que son style ne soit fort coulant, vif et fleuri, et qu’il n’ait defendu adroitement et inghieusement la cause des monarchomaques’ .

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first of Mankind, that have by a famous judgement tryed a King and punnished him being condemned, after that you had by your Armes procur’d his Conquest and surrender. After which so glorious a trans- action, you ought not now to thinke, much less to act anything that is Mean and Low. Which that it may be your commendation, you have no more to doe, but to take this course; namely, to make it appeare to all the World, that you are as well able in the middest of peace and disarmed, most valiantly to conquer Ambition, Avarice, Mammon and those corruptions of manners that attend prosperity; which are wont to conquer other Nations and generations of men; as you have bin to van- quish your Enemies in time of Warr; and to shew forth as much Zustice, Temperance and Moderation in the preservation of your Liberties, as ever you have manifested courage in casting the yoake of bondage from off your necks. By these arguments and these alone, by such testimonies as these alone, you will be able to evince, that you are none of those public Enemies, Traitors, Thieves, Murderers, Par- ricides, Fantastic Enthusiasts who this man railes upon; that you have not, moved with ambition or a desire to invade anothers right, nor pricked and spurred on with sedition, any base lusts, madnes or fury, murdered a King: but that you have, being inflamed with the love of liberty, religion, justice, common honesty and your native Countrey, punished a tyrant. But if (which I beseech thee o good God may never come to pass) your minds shall be otherwise enclined, if haveing bin valiant in warr, you shall in time of peace prove base and unworthy; you who have had manifest experience of Gods fighting in such a manner for you and against your enemies; if casting behind your backs so rare and never to be forgotten an example of divine Presence, you shall forget to feare God and execute Righteousnes; for my part I shall cer- tainly grant and confess, (for it will be past all denial,] that all those things are true which malignant liers and railers have at any time most ignominiously thought or said of you; and that you shall in a short time find God more incensed with wrath against you, than ever yet your enemies have found him averse or you have felt him benigne, favourable and fatherly-affected unto you, more then to all the Nations at this time inhabiting the face of the whole earth.’

and soe far for Mr. Miltons excellent and faithfull advice to them.42

In defence of Milton's Pro populo anglicano defensio

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