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Milton and Cromwell: Another Look at the Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2015

Tobias Gregory
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Abstract

It is often claimed that John Milton grew politically disaffected under the Protectorate government, which he served as Latin secretary. This article reviews the evidence for said disaffection. It finds that the passages in Milton's writings that have been taken to show disaffection with Protectorate or Protector, most of which postdate Cromwell's death, have little to do with Cromwell and mainly to do with the rapidly shifting political conditions of 1659–60. While the Cromwellian religious settlement fell short of the disestablishment Milton wanted, Cromwell favored religious toleration more strongly than his parliaments did, and Milton supported him in foreign affairs. Most likely Milton had no such thing as a single view of the Protectorate regime; his views of its various actors and interest groups, its successes and failures, would have been detailed and complex.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , January 2015 , pp. 44 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2015 

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References

1 It is not known just when Milton ceased his government duties. His last recorded salary payment is dated 25 October 1659. See Campbell, Gordon, A Milton Chronology (New York, 1997), 186CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Shorthouse, J. W., John Inglesant: a Romance, 6th ed. (New York, 1882), 150–51Google Scholar.

3 “Cromuellus, eo quidem tempore nostrorum exercituum Imperator, nunc totius Reipublicae vir summus” (“Cromwell, at that time the leader of our armies, now the first man in the state”). Pro Se Defensio (1655) in Patterson, Frank Allen et al. , eds., The Works of John Milton (New York, 1931–42), 9:12Google Scholar. Hereafter cited in notes by volume and page as CM.

4 Raymond, Joad, “The Rhetoric of Milton's Defenses,” in The Oxford Handbook of Milton, ed. McDowell, Nicholas and Smith, Nigel (Oxford, 2009), 283Google Scholar.

5 See Woolrych, Austin, “Milton & Cromwell: ‘A Short but Scandalous Night of Interruption?,’” in Achievements of the Left Hand: Essays on Milton's Prose, ed. Lieb, Michael and Shawcross, John (Amherst, MA, 1974), 185–218Google Scholar; Worden, Blair, “John Milton and Oliver Cromwell,” in Soldiers, Writers, and Statesmen of the English Revolution, ed. Gentles, Ian, Morrill, John, and Worden, Blair (Cambridge, 1998), 243–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Worden, Blair, Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England (Oxford, 2007)Google Scholar, chapters 11–13; Worden, Blair, God's Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell (Oxford, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapter 9; Sharpe, Kevin, “‘Something of Monarchy’: Milton and Cromwell, Republicanism and Regality,” in Reading Authority and Representing Rule in Early Modern England (London, 2013), 173–91Google Scholar. For other statements of this view, see, for example, Armitage, David, “Milton Against Empire,” in Milton and Republicanism, ed. Armitage, David, Himy, Armand, and Skinner, Quentin (Cambridge, 1995), 206–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Martin Dzelzainis, “Milton and the Protectorate in 1658,” in Milton and Republicanism, 181–205; Coffey, John, ‘The Brand of Gentilism’: Milton's Jesus and the Augustinian Critique of Pagan Kingship, 1649–1671,” Milton Quarterly 48, no. 2 (2014): 67–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See Fallon, Robert Thomas, Milton in Government (University Park, PA, 1993)Google Scholar; Fallon, Robert Thomas, “A Second Defense: Milton's Critique of Cromwell?,” Milton Studies, 39(2000):167–83Google Scholar; Stevens, Paul, “Milton's ‘Renunciation’ of Cromwell: The Problem of Raleigh's Cabinet-Council,” Modern Philology 98, no. 3 (2001): 363–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Knoppers, Laura Lunger, “Late Political Prose,” in A Companion to Milton, ed. Corns, Thomas N. (Malden, MA, 2001), 309–25Google Scholar; Campbell, Gordon and Corns, Thomas N., John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought (Oxford, 2008)Google Scholar.

7 An exception is alleged by Dzelzainis, “Milton and the Protectorate,” which finds anti-Cromwellian implications in Milton's publication of The Cabinet-Council in 1658. For a rebuttal, see Stevens, “Cabinet-Council.”

8 Don M. Wolfe, et al., eds., The Complete Prose Works of John Milton (New Haven, CT, 1953–82), 7:274. Hereafter cited in notes by volume and page number as CPW.

9 See Masson, David, The Life of John Milton (Cambridge, 1875–94), 5:606–07Google Scholar; Fallon, Milton in Government, 184–85; Wolfe, Don M., Milton in the Puritan Revolution (New York, 1941), 289–90Google Scholar; Woolrych, “Milton & Cromwell,” 201–09; Woolrych, “Introduction,” CPW, 7:85–87; Worden, “Milton and Cromwell,” 243; Worden, Literature and Politics, 41–44; Corns and Campbell, John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought (Oxford, 2008), 287–88Google Scholar. On the one hand, Woolrych, followed by Worden, explains “short” by reference to an anonymous anti-Cromwellian pamphlet, dated by Thomason 18 May 1659, whose title refers to the Protectorate as a “short, sharp night of tyranny and oppression;” here is a precedent whose language Milton might have echoed, consciously or not (“Milton & Cromwell,” 209). On the other hand, explanations have been offered for “interruption”: Robert Fallon notes that around half the members of the restored Rump had previously sat in Richard's parliament (Milton in Government, 184) and Corns and Campbell observe that Milton “appears to regard parliament as a sort of Platonic ideal variously and imperfectly embodied in several manifestations” (John Milton, 288). A third possibility raised by William B. Hunter, that the phrase refers to Richard's eight-month Protectorate, supposedly usurped from General Fleetwood contrary to Oliver's dying wishes, is evaluated in detail and found implausible by Woolrych (“Milton & Cromwell,” 202–09).

10 CPW, 7:356.

11 Ibid., 356, n8; Woolrych, “Short but Scandalous Night,” 210–11.

12 CPW, 7:421.

13 See, for example, The Parliaments plea, or, XX reasons for the union of the Parliament & Army presented to publick consideration wherein the whole matter betwixt Parliament and Army is argued and this new interruption condemned (1659) (Early English Books Online; hereafter EEBO); Some animadversions upon the declaration of, and the plea for the army: together with 16 queries thence extracted Or, an essay by way of answer to the plea for, and declaration of the army, in reference to their interruption of the Parliaments sitting, October the 12. Written November 4.1659 (EEBO); The Christian Commonvvealth: or, The civil policy of the rising kingdom of Jesus Christ. Written before the interruption of the government, by Mr. John Eliot, teacher of the Church of Christ at Roxbury in New-England, Thomason E1001[10] (1659) (EEBO).

14 CPW, 4:67. See CM, 8:220, “tum te, sed neque tum primum, non minus consiliis, quam belli artibus valere sensimus: id quotidie in senatu agebas, vel ut com hoste pacta fides servaretur, vel uti ea, quae ex republica essent, mature decernerentur. Cum videres moras necti, privatae quemque rei, quam publicae, attentiorem, populum queri delusum se sua spe, & potentia paucorum circumventum esse, quod ipsi toties moniti nolebant, eorum dominationi finem imposuisti.”

15 CPW, 7:324.

16 Ibid., 324–25, n5.

17 A Declaration of the Officers of the Army (6 May 1659), 3–4 (EEBO).

18 For a contrasting view, see Wolfe, Don M., Milton in the Puritan Revolution (New York, 1941), 289–90Google Scholar. For Wolfe, this passage shows that Cromwell had come to seem tyrannical in Milton's eyes, and shows that the “short but scandalous night of interruption” in Likeliest Means refers to the whole Protectorate.

19 CPW, 7:329.

20 Ibid., 364–65. See CM, 8:222, “nihil esse in in societate hominum magis vel Deo gratum, vel rationi consentaneum, esse in civitate nihil aequius, nihil utilius, quam potiri rerum dignissimum.”

21 “The terms to be stood on are Liberty of conscience to all professing Scripture the rule of their faith & worship, And the abjuration of a single person” (CPW, 7:330).

22 For a contrasting view, see Worden, Literature and Politics, 340, n45.

23 The Rump re-opened the question of tithes in June, and Milton most likely began Hirelings in the hope of lending his voice to the debate; but the parliament voted to continue tithes on 27 June, before the tract appeared. See Woolrych, in CPW, 7:77–83.

24 “The Present Means, and Brief Delineation of a Free Commonwealth, easy to be put in practice, and without delay. In a Letter to General Monk,” CPW, 7:392–95.

25 CPW, 7:355.

26 Ibid., 330.

27 Ibid., 393.

28 Ibid., 368.

29 Ibid., 395.

30 Ibid., 482.

31 In the October “Letter to a Friend,” written in protest of the Army's dissolution of the Rump, Milton adds the qualification “I call it the famous parlament, though not the blameless” (CPW, 7:324–25). Nor will he fully condemn the October coup: “I presume not to give my censure upon this action, not knowing, as I doe not, the bottom of it” (CPW, 7:326–27).

32 CPW, 4:678. See CM, 8: 234–36, “Deinde si ecclesiam ecclesiae reliqueris . . . ejeceris ex ecclesia nummularios illos, non columbas sed columbam, sanctum ipsum spiritum cauponantes.”

33 The Instrument's thirty-fifth article stipulates:

That the Christian religion, as contained in the Scriptures, be held forth and recommended as the public profession of these nations; and that, as soon as may be, a provision, less subject to scruple and contention, and more certain than the present, be made for the encouragement and maintenance of able and painful teachers, for the instructing the people, and for discovery and confutation of error, hereby, and whatever is contrary to sound doctrine; and until such provision be made, the present maintenance shall not be taken away or impeached. (Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 3rd ed. [Oxford, 1906], 416Google Scholar)

The language of the article, based on the Army's 1649 Agreement of the People, would not have been fully to Milton's liking, since it assumes a role for government in maintaining ministers, and keeps the “present maintenance” in place until a new system should be established, which never happened. Opponents of tithes, however, could hear “as soon as may be” and “less subject to scruple and contestation” as indications that the question would at least be open to discussion by the new Protectorate parliament.

34 See articles 36 and 37:

XXXVI. That to the public profession held forth none shall be compelled by penalties or otherwise; but that endeavours be used to win them by sound doctrine and the example of a good conversation.

XXXVII. That such as profess faith in God by Jesus Christ (though differing in judgment from the doctrine, worship or discipline publicly held forth) shall not be restrained from, but shall be protected in, the profession of the faith and exercise of their religion; so as they abuse not this liberty to the civil injury of others and to the actual disturbance of the public peace on their parts: provided this liberty be not extended to Popery or Prelacy, nor to such as, under the profession of Christ, hold forth and practise licentiousness. (Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, 416)

35 For the latter suggestion I am grateful to John Coffey. In Likeliest Means, Milton takes at least one clear swipe at the Triers: “And for the magistrate in person of a nursing father to make the church his meer ward, as alwaies in minoritie . . . her to subject to his political drifts or conceivd opinions by mastring her revenue, and so by his examinant committies to circumscribe her free election of ministers, is neither just nor pious.” (CPW, 7:307–08).

36 See Davis, J. C., “Cromwell's Religion,” in Cromwell and the Interregnum, ed. Smith, David (Malden, MA, and Oxford, 2003), 139–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 On Cromwell's Biblicism, see Morrill, John, “How Oliver Cromwell Thought,” in Liberty, Authority, Formality: Political Ideas and Culture, 1600–1900, ed. Morrow, John and Scott, Jonathan (Exeter and Charlottesville, VA, 2008), 89–111Google Scholar.

38 See Austin Woolrych, “The Cromwellian Protectorate: A Military Dictatorship?,” in Smith, Cromwell and the Interregnum, 61–90.

39 On the textual history of the State Papers, see CM, 13:593–600; Fallon, Milton in Government; Villani, Stefano, “Le lettere di Stato inglesi scritte al Granduca di Toscana tra il 1649 e il 1659 e tradotte in latino da John Milton,” Archivio Storico Italiano 618, no. 4 (2008): 703–66Google Scholar. Villani has recently located the originals of seven of Milton's letters to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, previously unknown, in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze.

40 Fallon, Milton in Government, 124.

41 Campbell and Corns, John Milton, 210–11.

42 Ibid., 255.

43 During the Protectorate years Milton's name is largely absent from the Order Books of the Council of State. Robert Fallon has argued that this absence results not from inactivity but a bureaucratic realignment: he was no longer working for the Council, but for the secretary of state. See Fallon, Milton in Government, 123–39. Worden finds this explanation unconvincing: see Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England, 298, n29.

44 Letters of State, written by Mr. John Milton, to most of the sovereign Princes and Republicks of Europe, from the year 1649. Till the year 1659, A3r.

45 See Stevens, “Cabinet-Council,” 377–78. For Cromwell's speech at the opening of the Second Protectorate Parliament, see Abbott, W. C., ed., Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, (Cambridge, MA, 1947) 4:260–79Google Scholar.

46 “It is this interest in the fate of liberty and religion abroad, this willingness to defend the freedom of individual conscience central to Milton's understanding of Protestantism, that enabled him, despite whatever disillusionment he may have felt with many of Cromwell's domestic policies, to devote so much energy and skill to the articulation of his foreign policies.” Stevens, “Cabinet-Council,” 375.

47 Worden, Literature and Politics, 318.

48 Ibid., 318–19.

49 Campbell and Corns, John Milton, 208.

50 Bradshaw, who after presiding at the king's trial served as first president of the Commonwealth Council of State, was one of its few members who was not an MP.

51 Sharpe, Reading Authority, 177, 185, 187–90.

52 Ibid., 188.

53 Milton, John, “To Mr. Cyriack Skinner upon his Blindness,” lines 11–12. Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Hughes, Merritt (Indianapolis, IN, 2003), 170Google Scholar.

54 Hints of disaffection have been found in two pieces of Milton's correspondence. Answering a letter in December 1657 from Peter Heimbach, a young acquaintance who had written from The Hague asking Milton to recommend him as a secretary to the new English envoy there, Milton excuses himself: “I grieve deeply that it is not in my power, both because my influential friends are few (since I stay nearly always at home—and willingly)” (CPW, 7:507). For Barbara Lewalski, “‘willingly’ suggests that Milton is distancing himself deliberately from those now in power—probably in part for ideological reasons as well as to concentrate on more important projects.” (Life of John Milton, 349). Perhaps. Moses Wall, in a letter to Milton of 26 May 1659, writes “You complaine of the Non-progresency of the nation, and of its retrograde Motion of late, in Liberty and Spiritual Truths” (CPW, 7:511). Much depends here on what Wall meant, or took Milton to have meant, by “of late.”

55 Fallon, “A Second Defense,” 168.

56 “Short but scandalous night,” 211.

57 In this respect Milton was typical among godly revolutionaries. See Davis, J. C., “Religion and the Struggle for Freedom in the English Revolution,” Historical Journal 35, no. 3 (1992): 507–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 CPW, 7:463.

59 Samson Agonistes 1211–13, in Hughes, ed., Complete Poems, 580.