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Dating the digression in Milton's History of Britain*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Nicholas von Maltzahn
Nicholas von Maltzahn
Affiliation:
University of Ottawa
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Extract

I should first thank Professor Woolrych for his attention to my book, and also for his generous conduct in anticipating debate over his views. In particular I am grateful for his correction of a historical point on which my book proves in error: the readmission of conformist members in the first weeks of the Rump Parliament did not much extend to secluded members, and thus the backsliding of the revolutionaries after Pride's Purge and the king's trial may have been less troubling to Milton than I supposed. On this point I had mistaken Underdown and Worden's description of the revolutionaries' compromise, and had partially misunderstood their conclusion that ‘the damage to the revolutionary cause…had already been done by the end of February’. Here Woolrych now shows me wrong. But although this changes the balance it does not change the substance of my argument about Milton's stern note in the History. For as Woolrych renews the issue of the dating of the Digression from Milton's History, he again misreads that text and its context in the larger work. He believes it an expression of despair, and thinks such despair on Milton's part could only be occasioned by the national apostasy at the Restoration. But Milton, both in the contemporary Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649) as well as in later tracts, proves much less sanguine about English hopes than even the passages Woolrych cites will support. The Presbyterians, whom the Tenure attacks in the same terms as the Digression, were not the only problem faced by the ‘uprighter sort’ of magistrates and those ‘people, though in number less by many, in whom faction least hath prevaild above the Law of nature and right reason’.

Type
Debate
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , December 1993 , pp. 945 - 956
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 Remarks and collections of Thomas Hearne, X, ed. Salter, H. E. (Oxford, 1915), p. 474 (16 Nov. 1731)Google Scholar.

2 Worden, Blair, The Rump Parliament (Cambridge, 1974), p. 73Google Scholar; Underdown, David: ‘The almost immediate admission of so many conformist moderates to the Rump was a major reason for the Commonwealth's subsequent failure to implement the goals of the more committed revolutionaries’, Pride's Purge: Politics in the Puritan Revolution Oxford, 1971; London, 1985), p. xviGoogle Scholar.

3 Woolrych, Austin, ‘The date of the Digression in Milton's History of Britain’ in For Veronica Wedgwood These, ed. Ollard, R. and Tudor-Craig, P. (London, 1986), pp. 217–46Google Scholar [hereafter ‘Date’]; review in TLS (27 March 1992), p. 7; and present piece in Historical Journal [hereafter ‘Dating’].

4 Complete Prose Works of John Milton, gen. ed. Wolfe, D. M., 8 vols. (New Haven, Conn., 1953–1982), in, 197, 240–2 [= CPW hereafter]Google Scholar.

5 CPW, III, 190–2; V, 144. We may note the doubts about his countrymen evident even in Milton's ‘clarion-call’, as Woolrych, terms it (‘Dating’, p. 938)Google Scholar, in which he fears ‘the murmurs of new discord’ and must hope that God ‘will put other thoughts into the people…will incline them to heark'n rather with erected minds to the voice of our Supreme Magistracy’, or again can only propose ‘this hope…that he will bless us…if we have at least but so much worth in us to entertaine the sense of our future happiness, and the courage to receave what God voutsafes us’ (CPW, in, 235 ff., my italics).

6 For example, Woolrych argues that a phrase attacking ‘the high Presbyterians' intentions’ from the printed Character (not in the manuscript) is unlikely to be Milton's, because inappropriate to the date of 1660 (‘Date’, p. 243)Google Scholar, even though he acknowledges how appropriate it might be in 1648/9 after Pride's Purge. That an editor like L'Estrange should have bothered to add this ‘editorial gloss’ is improbable, however, and in fact it corresponds almost exactly (Milton's History, p. 39) to terms Milton, uses in April or 05 1649 in his Observations Upon the Articles of PeaceGoogle Scholar (to which Woolrych never refers in his original essay). Likewise, in both essays Woolrych is ready to accept a date after Pride's Purge, for Book in of the History (that is, early 1649)Google Scholar, even as his argument about the Digression focuses on its inappropriateness for 1648. He also supposes all the parallels drawn in the Digression must be exact – see, for example, his analysis of Milton's, concern about foreign invasion (‘Dating’, p. 935)Google Scholar – but while questioning my reference to Milton's likely concern about the Irish and Scots he never suggests why Milton would later express such fears in 1660.

7 Milton's History, pp. 24–5. Woolrych, supposes Milton, likely to have been wrong about this date (‘Dating’, pp. 930–1)Google Scholar, but he seems most unlikely only four or five years later to have erred about an undertaking of such magnitude, punctuated by the date of so extraordinary an event as the execution of Charles I. Even the weak argument Woolrych offers – he doubtfully maintains that in the earlier Defensio Milton ‘becomes seriously confused over the course of major public events in the past two or three years’ (but cf. Dzelzainis, Martin, ed., John Milton: Political Writings, Cambridge, 1991, pp. 229–32)Google Scholar – provides no reason to think Milton inaccurate about events in his own life.

8 No evidence has surfaced of Milton's preparations to write the History, although his possible method of assembling notes and sources may be reflected in his friend Anglesey's, practice in his ‘Heads, & Memorandum's for an intended General History of Ireland’ (British Library, Add. MS 4816, fos. 1–35)Google Scholar; note Haak's, Theodore earlier report of Milton's, work toward ‘a Univ[ersal] History of Engl[and]’ (Milton's History, pp. 28–)Google Scholar, and also the rapidity with which Milton could compose the first books of the History in Feb.-March 1648/9.

9 Milton's History, 1, 35. Works = The Works of John Milton, gen. ed. Patterson, F. A., 18 vols. (New York, 1931–8)Google Scholar.

10 Despite his many references to Milton, L'Estrange never shows any knowledge of the Defensio secunda (which at this date provides only the printed biographical materials from which the date of the Digression might be deduced).

11 Later in the century another Tory critic could note of the Digression that Milton might write ‘Unbrib'd’ in a vein quite ‘contrary to what he afterward had a Pension to set up’ – here a seventeenth-century voice again testifies to the sequence of composition of the History (Milton's History, p. 20). The writer, Charles Leslie, may have thus elaborated the implications of the title and preface of the Character, or have worked out the date of the Digression from the biographies of Milton then available. But he possibly had some closer knowledge of the matter owing to his connection with the Brome family, which had earlier published the Character.

12 Milton's History, pp. 16–17; Shawcross, J. T., ‘Milton's spelling: its biographical and critical implications’, dissertation (New York University, 1958), pp. 222–9Google Scholar.

13 Moyles, R. G., The text of Paradise Lost: a study in editorial procedure (Toronto, 1985), pp. 80–116Google Scholar.

14 Woolrych again repeats such formulations in his essay above – ‘reflected directly and despairingly on the current political situation in England…frankest and most despondent reflections…sense of total defeat…past saving…such a despairing judgement…sense of utter defeat’ – without questioning the assumptions behind this reading.

15 For a contemporary example of this emphasis, and its Baconian origin, see ‘A Method of History. By J[ohn] H[all],’, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D 152.

16 L'Estrange was eager to direct his reader to ‘the beginning of the Third Book of the said History’, first to prove from this context that it was Milton's work, and also to identify the History more fully as Milton's critique of the government of the 1640s. When Thomas Birch, who first sought to replace the Character in its original context, mistakenly intruded that truncated text at this point of the History, he was at least respecting the continuity of sentiments between the introduction to Book III and the Digression. A complete collection of the historical, political and miscellaneous works of John Milton (London, 1738), II, 39Google Scholar.

17 In 1670 Milton seems to have wished to publish the History entire, the Digression included. Note the possible conflict recorded in the introductory note ‘To the Reader’ in the Character, which declares that the Digression was ‘designed to be Printed’ by Milton, only then to have been ‘struck out’, apparently by some other hand, owing to its ‘harshness’, possibly in consultation with Anglesey, who appears to have played some part here. We may therefore also question Woolrych's claim that ‘there is no reason to doubt that the decision was his own’, or that Milton was not asked to change his ‘design’.

18 That in the Restoration Milton would resent the presbyterians' struggle for comprehension follows from his own hopes instead for a wider toleration for protestants: comprehension would not have allowed much to someone of Milton's beliefs, and might have made his position much more difficult than in an under-enforced uniformity.

19 CPW, V, 421–2; ‘Date’, p. 225.

20 Lilburne, John, Englands New Chains Discovered (26 02 1648/1649), A 1r, A3rGoogle Scholar; The Second Part of Englands New-Chaines Discovered (Thomason, = 24 03 1648/1649), A1r, 9, 15–16Google Scholar.

21 [Hall, John or Canne, John?] The Discoverer (2 06 1649), 7Google Scholar; Parker, W. R., Milton: A Biography (Oxford, 1968), pp. 355–6, 960Google Scholar.

22 Walker, Clement, The Mysteries of the Two Junto's, Presbyterian and Independent (1647), 7 [= 5], also 13Google Scholar, and The History of Independency (edn 1, 1648), 70–1.

23 Mercurius Pragmaticus, no. 6 (15–26 10 1647), p. 48Google Scholar. Much of what Milton deplores in the Digression had already been denounced by Nedham and his associates.

24 Mercurius Pragmaticus, 2nd ser. (1648–1649), no. 6 passimGoogle Scholar; no. 10, pp. 1, 5; no. 17, p 2; no. 22, p. 11; no. 48, pp. 3–4.

25 ‘However much sophisticated modern scholars may blur its outlines, there was a revolution in England, and the events of December 1648 and January 1649 mark its greatest climax.’ , Underdown, Pride's Purge, p. 2Google Scholar. Milton is less likely than Woolrych allows to have so much identified his cause with that of the Army; for example, Woolrych's, evident affection for the new Agreement of the People (‘Dating’, p. 934Google Scholar; Soldiers and Statesmen, Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar may only questionably be attributed to Milton, none of whose writings mention it. Milton could in private disparage ‘the sons of Mars’ and is unlikely, given his republican values, to have favoured Army ‘statesmen’ as much as Woolrych, supposes (Milton's History, pp. 43–4)Google Scholar. A forthcoming essay by Martin Dzelzainis further explores Milton's suspicions in the 1650s of these ‘fortes satis et acres’ (‘Juvenal, Charles X Gustavus of Sweden and Milton's Letter to Richard Jones’).