2 Milton and the English

Revolution
Christopher Hill
The only reason for my being here this evening, I suspeet, is that I
onee wrote a book ealled Mitton and the English Revolution. I shall
assume that none ofyou have read it. However, one item in it may
be of relevanee to our diseussions. I eited Chekhov's letters in
whieh we see that great (and relatively non-politieal) artist
haggling with the eensor about what he was permitted to say,
sometimes deeiding to omit a passage in order to get the rest
published, at other times deeiding that it was not worth it: a
partieular story must be saerifieed rather than emaseulated.
Milton's relationship to the eensor was rather similar, only Milton
was a mueh more politieally involved eharaeter than Chekhov,
and after 1660 he was marked down as a notorious enemy of the
regime. A seeond item of possible relevanee: Mauriee Baring's
report during the Russo-Japanese War of 1905-6 that one ofthe
most popular books with the peasant soldiers in the tsar's army was
a Russian translation of Paradise Lost. I am not quite sure what to
eonclude from this unexpeeted faet, but it helps to link the English
and Russian Revolutions.
Milton is England's greatest poet who was also a revolutionary
and her greatest revolutionary who was also a poet. I want to plaee
him in the eontext ofthe 17th-eentury English Revolution. But first
Iet me clear away some possible miseoneeptions. Milton was notas his popular image sometimes suggests-a dour Puritan, irongrey in clothes and ideas; 17th-eentury Puritans in general were
not like that; they were not killjoys. When we think of main-line
Puritans, those who made the English Revolution, we should think
not ofZeal-of-the-Land Busy but ofOliver Cromwell, with his Iove
of musie and wine, of Major-General Harrison strutting about in
his searlet cloak, of Luey Apsley, who teils us that when the very
Puritan Thomas Hutehinsan eame to courther he found 'withall
that though she was modest yet was she aeeostable'. What exaetly
'aeeostable' implies is not clear; but Mrs Hutehinsan was no prude:
she thought that Edward the Confessor had been 'sainted for his

23
G. A. Hosking et al. (eds.), Perspectives on Literature and Society in Eastern and Western Europe
School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London 1989

24

Milton and the English Revolution

ungodly chastity' . 1 We should recail too the Russian ambassador

who came to London in 1645, after the city had been under
'Puritan' domination for four years. Writing in 1646 to the Tsar to
describe what he found particularly impressive about the city he
picked out the beautiful stained glass in church-windows and the
merry pealing ofthe church beils. 2 Ifhe had only been able to read
some 20th-century textbooks he would have known that by 1646
'Puritans' had smashed ail the church windows and melted down
the beils to make cannon. The Russian who described what he
thought he saw and heard was clearly the victim of revolutionary
propaganda.
Milton wore his hair long, like most gentlemanly 'Roundheads'.
The man who insisted on short haircuts for Oxford undergraduates
was Archbishop Laud. Milton, like ail his contemporaries, expressed his political ideas in religious idiom. There are plenty of
revolutionary ideas in the Bible, which were used in furtherance of
secular political aims. Nor was Milton the woman-hater whom
Robert Graves depicted. One line in Paradise Lost is often quoted
against him: Milton wrote of Adam and Eve, 'He for God only, she
for God in him'. That sexist Statement was of course a totaily
conventional 17th-century view. Hardly a clergyman in the land
would have queried it. But did Milton query it? The notorious line
is part of a description of Adam and Eve as seen by Satan. Milton
sometimes attributed his own views to Satan, as we shail see: but in
this instance he may weil have been deliberately ambiguous. 3
Milton was denounced by his contemporaries as a libertine.
Certainly he was no austere 'Puritan'. When his undergraduate
contemporaries wanted a bawdy speech for a riotous party, they
turned to Milton to make it-and he obliged. Tbat migbt bave
happened to any ofus in our unregenerate youth, but not all ofus
would keep tbe speecb for nearly 50 years, as Milton did, and tben
publisb it. Milton feit it necessary to apologise later for some ofhis
early poems, wbicb in tbe words of Professor Tillyard are 'full of
sex'. Milton's nepbew teils us tbat bis uncle used in bis 30's
regularly to keep a 'gaudy day' witb 'some young sparks of bis
acquaintance, ... tbe beaux of tbose times'. I bope my nepbew
will be equally tactful if tbe time ever comes.
Milton smoked, drank, frequented tbe theatre, wore a sword
and was skilled in its use wbile be still retained bis sigbt. On bis
journey to Italy in 1638-9 Milton was received witb enthusiasm in
literary circles. One ofbis friends, Antonio Malatesti, dedicated a

Christopher Hili

25

volume of poems to him. When Victorian scholars discovered that

the volume consisted ofmildly indecent sonnets, they were shocked
at Malatesti's failure to understand Milton. But Milton was not
shocked. He continued tosend good wishes to Malatesti, and may
ha ve adopted some ofhis tricks of ward-pla y for the hilarious double
entendres and rude jokes in one of his official Difences rif the People rif
England ofthe 1650s. One ofMilton's friends, who left him [100 in
his will, was Sir Peter Wentworth, whom Oliver Cromwell
denounced as a 'whoremaster'.
Milton's reputation as a libertine derived in part from the
pamphlets of the 1640s in which he defended divorce for incompatibility oftemperament-a suggestion which seems less startling
now than it did then. What was especially shocking was Milton's
offhand references to the only possible grounds for divorcemarital misconduct. He referred to 'casual adultery', as 'but a
transient injury', 'soon repented, soon amended'. In another
pamphlet he referred to 'Iove not in Paradise tobe resisted', andin
Paradise Lost to 'the happier Eden'- Adam and Eve 'emparadised
in one another's arms'. Adam and Eve had sex before the Fall,
'whatever hypocrites austerely talk'. Many of Milton's Conternpararies thought sexual relations impossible in the state of
innocence. The Fall itself was for Milton the result of romantic
Iove:
How can I live without thee, how forgo
Thy sweet converse and Iove so dearly joined,
To live alone in these wild woods forlorn?
Flesh of flesh,
Bane of my hone thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.
lt is one ofthe problems ofMiltonian criticism thatjust after those
marvellous lines Milton wagged a disapproving fingerat Adam for
having been 'fondly overcome with female charm'. Milton was
never sure whether the Fall had been a fortunate occurrence or
not. You see now why I was uncertain whether Satan or Milton
thought Adam was for God only, and Eve for God in him.
Milton picked up a lotofradical ideas in Garnbridge in the 1620s
andin ltaly in the 1630s. In England in the revolutionary 1640s
censorship totally broke down in this hitherto strictly supervised
society; freedom of assembly, freedom of discussion, freedom of the
press-all established themselves. There was a ferment of debate

26

Milton and the English Revolution

in London; every known heresy was discussed. Milton threw

hirnself into the midst of these discussions, contributing his fair
share of heretical ideas. In Areopagitica ( 1644), his defence of
freedom from pre-publication censorship, he glorified the 'disputing, reasoning, reading, inventing, discovering ... things not
before discovered or written' which was going on in London, 'this
ftowery crop of knowledge and new light'.
The traditional picture of Milton is of an austere, remote
scholar, who got his ideas from books-from the Greek and Latin
classics and from the early Church Fathers. I ventured to suggest in
1977 that he could equally easily have encountered among his
contemporaries in London the heretical ideas he espoused. Every
idea he put forward can be paralleled among Levellers, Diggers,
Ranters, Seekers, Antinomians and early Quakers. Remernhering
his nephew's account of his 'gaudy days' and the many other
contemporary accounts of his sociability, I was so foolish as to
suggest that Milton may have got his ideas from London pubs and
clubs. No one has been able to take this idea seriously: the
possibility ofMilton in a pubwas beyond the imagination ofany
literary scholar. So ifl ever get to a second edition I shall alterthat
phrase to read 'Milton got his ideas from social encounters and
from meetings of religious sects, which used to meet in taverns
because there was nowhere eise for them to meet'.
I see two revolutions in 17th-century England. The firstwas the
Puritan-Parliamentary revolution, which abolished the institutions of arbitrary government-Star Chamber, High Commission, Court of Wards-and substituted effective Parliamentary
control over state, church, foreign policy and the taxation which
financed it. This revolution had succeeded triumphantly by 1688.
The second revolution, a more radical one, had been defeated by
1660, when Cavaliers and Roundheadsunited to restore Charles
II. The radicals would have abolished the monarchy, House of
Lords and the state church. Levellers had called for a democratic
republic with wide legal reforms, Diggers for a communist society
and Ranters for free Iove. The radical congregations substituted
elected 'mechanic preachers' for the ministers of the established
church. They rejected the idea that only a minority of mankind
would be saved and saw God in all believers. They had expected
the rule of Christ and the saints on earth in the near future.
Milton was deeply involved in these discussions, contributing his

Christopher Hili

27

own views on bishops, divorce, pre-publication censorship and

responsibility ofkings to their subjects. 'No man who knows aught
can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free', he
proclaimed briskly in 1649, at a time when most of official Europe
was denying precisely that. Kingsand magistrates, Milton insisted,
are 'deputies and commissioners of the people'.
Milton had one foot in the camp of the successful revolution,
another in the camp of the radicals. When he became a government spokesman under the Commonwealth after it had broken
with the radicals, he defended the achievements ofthe Revolution
and attacked its royalist opponents. He never attacked the
Levellers, even when his employers instructed him to do so. In
return the Levellers continued to speak with respect of'learned Mr
Milton' while attacking the government he served. There were
thus contradictions in Milton's attitude towards the English
Revolution, which are perhaps reflected in the tensions within his
poetry.
Milton's political career ran parallel with that of many of the
radicals. Originally intended for the church, he early decided that
he could not become a priest und er Laudianism, which he attacked
in Lycidas. He later described hirnself as 'church-outed by the
prelates', but his decision was, I think, voluntary. He decided to
dedicate himselfto poetry. Originally he planned anational epic,
an Arthuriad, though it did not turn out quite like that. He had the
familiar guilt-feelings of a privileged intellectual in an unequal
society. 'Ease and pleasure were given thee', he told himself, 'out of
the sweat of other men' -men, not just his father.
Thus, he feit he had responsibilities to his society.
When the Revolution came he joined the campaign against
bishops. We should not think of 17th-century bishops as benign
rosy-cheeked old gentlemen. They were hard civil servants of an
autocratic arbitrary government. Archbishop Laud was virtual
prime minister and he packed the government with his supporters.
In Star Chamber and High Commission he tended to support the
most savage penalties for his opponents, such as flogging and
maiming. In 1639 the Archbishop of York thought it would be
good for the church torevive the practice ofburning heretics. 'It is
disgraceful and disgusting', Milton commented, 'that the Christian religion should be supported by violence'. In a pamphlet of
1642 he consigned all bishops, ex o.fficio and irrespective of their

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Milton and the English Revolution

private virtues, to an eternity ofhell. Sofaras I know, he put no

one else in hell, unlike other writers of epics such as his
contemporary Cowley or his predecessor Dante.
Milton was especially severe against the dull conformity which
the ecclesiastical censorship enforced. In 1637 he had hirnself
suppressed some lines of social criticism from his masque Comus:
they were restored only in the liberty of 1645:
If every just man that now pines with want
Had but a moderate and beseeming share
Ofthat which lewdly-pampered luxury
Now heaps upon some few with vast excess
The giver would be better thanked.
From the time of his earliest pamphlets Milton insisted on the
necessity of toleration. Most early spokesmen for toleration
excluded extremists like the Familists-a dissident sect roughly
analogaus to Maoists today. Milton said casually that Familists
reminded him of the early Christians. He became a nationallyknown figure thanks to Areopagitica, to his divorce pamphlets and
to his defence of regicide written before the trial and execution of
Charles I; and because ofhis scornful demolition of Eikon Basilike,
the fraudulent pamphlet which purported to record Charles's
reflections in imprisonment.
So it was natural for Milton to be offered, and to accept, the
office ofSecretary for Foreign Tongues under the Commonwealth.
He wrote a series ofbooks, in Latin, defending the republic against
its traducers, in the face of all Europe. The wit and brilliance ofhis
style gained him an international reputation. 'Nothing of such
quality from an Englishman was expected', said an astonished
Dutchman. Visitors to England in the 1650s wanted to see first
Oliver Cromwell, then John Milton.
In the process Milton lost the use ofhis sight. His enemies did not
fail to declare this a judgement on him for defending regicide.
Milton was convinced that he had sacrificed his eyes to the cause in
which he believed. He attributed to the English Revolution 'the
most heroic and exemplary achievements since the foundation of
the world' - a most remarkable statement. Did Milton really
believe that the English Revolution was more heroic and exemplary than the life and death of Christ? Or had he just forgotten
him in the excitement of eulogy? Either explanation prepares us for
the fact that Milton was unsound on the Trinity.

Christopher Hill

29

The English, Milton boasted, had 'the honour to precede other

nations who are now labouring to be our followers'. He claimed to
speak for 'the entire human race' against the foes of liberty. But
already Milton sensed that something was amiss with the revolution he was defending. 'Our form of government', he declared, 'is
such as our circumstances and schisms permit, ... only as good as
the stubborn struggles of the wicked citizens allow it to be'.
As- the 1650s wore on, as the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell
became more and more conservative, Milton's enthusiasm waned.
He used his position as government spokesman to warn England's
rulers of'the temptations ofwealth and the corruptions that wait
upon prosperity'. Unless people 'repel avarice, ambition and
luxury from your minds, ... you will find at home and within you
the tyrant who, you believed, was to be sought abroad and in the
field'. Otherwise posterity would have to say 'the foundations were
soundly laid, the beginnings-nay, more than the beginningswere splendid, butthat to their opportunity men were wanting'.
He coolly advised Cromwell to reintroduce some old republicans
into his government, naming those he thought suitable.
Gradually he relinquished government activity, some years after
his blindness struck him. He was employed from about 1654 only
as an occasional translator, and on matters like the massacre ofthe
Vaudois, where he saw a chance to reunite European Protestants.
Unlike Marvell, Dryden, Sprat, Milton wrote no celebratory
poem on the death ofCromwell. In the near-anarchy of 1659-60,
after Cromwell's death and the removal ofhis son Richard, Milton
resumed vigorous republican pamphleteering. He put forward six
variant constitutional proposals to avoid a restoration of monarchy. He attacked kingship in generaland Charles II in particular
with savage wit. He never publicly attacked Cromwell and the
heads ofinterregnum governments: he was concerned with how to
do better next time. But unity of the radicals proved impossible,
whilst former royalists and former Parliamentarians joined hands
against the radicals. As Milton wrote later in Paradise Lost:
0 shame to men! Devil with devil damned
Firm concord holds, men only disagree.

The restoration must have been traumatic for Milton. He

escaped a traitor's death, but only just, after weeks ofhiding and
suspense. Henceforth he was a marked man, in fear of assassination. Two of his books were officially burned. He suffered badly

30

Mitton and the English Revolution

financially. Censorship was restored, and anything Milton wrote

was naturally very carefully scrutinised. Milton devoted himselfto
writing his great poems, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson
Agonistes, and to the completion of his De Doctrina Christiana, a
summa theologica of a very heretical nature which he hoped would
reunite European Protestants. When the censorship was temporarily relaxed in 1673 he returned to the fray, publishing
cautiously-worded and encoded tracts attacking popery and
absolutism. The image ofMilton in a repentant and pacifist old age
is as false as most ofthe legends about him. He was fighting till the
last.
It is against this background that we should read the last great
poems. They were intended, among other things, to explain the
defeat of what Milton and many others had regarded as God's
cause. How had this been possible? 'God hath spit in our face',
declared Milton's friend Major-General Fleetwood. In the 1660s
God's ways to men appeared to need some justifying. Milton
thought it was not God or the Revolution that had failed, but men
who had betrayed God's cause. Isaac Deutscher, you will remember, compared the rule of Stalin with a post-revolutionary
'restoration'.
The Fall ofMan became central to Milton's later thought; it also
became moreprominent in the thought of George Fox and the
Quakers after 1660. Conservatives had previously used the Fall
and the consequent sinfulness of the mass of mankind, as an
argument against change of any sort, as an argument for passive
obedience. Milton used the specific inadequacy of the English
people to explain the defeat of the Revolution. In Paradise Lost the
fall, first of the rebel angels, then of man, was a story of missed
opportunities, of angels and men who were not good enough to
meet a challenge, of ambition, pride, greed and compromise with
evil. Milton had denounced all these defects in his Difences qf the
English People in the 1650s.
At the same time that he wrote Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes
he was working on the De Doctrina Christiana, which he described as
his 'best and dearest possession'. This large treatise was far too
heretical tobe published in the 17th century, even in Latin. It did
not appear untill825, and its significance has only recently begun
to be fully absorbed. Milton still has to be saved from those who,
from Addison onwards, depict him as an orthodox Puritan. Far
from it: it has been calculated that under the 1648 Blasphemy

Christopher Hili

31

Act-a 'Puritan' act- Milton's heresies wou1d have rendered

him liable to five death sentences and eight sentences of life
imprisonment. Weil, statistics always go to the head. Let us halve
it, and say that Milton would only have been executed 2.5 times
and imprisoned for four lives. It still suggests that he was not a
wholly orthodox Puritan.
Let us now consider some of Milton's unorthodoxies. First, he
shared the fierce anti-clericalism ofmost ofthe radicals, attacking a
state church and the tithes which financed it, advocating freedom
of teaching and preaching, reading and publishing. He was an
Arminian who rejected the view that God had fore-ordained the
majority of mankind to eternal torment, and who stressed the
freedom of men and women to work their own salvation.
Milton was a millenarian, for whom Christ was 'shortly-expected King'. The Second Coming would bring 'hasty ruin and
destruction to all tyrants'. It was a political, secular belie( Milton,
with others 1 believed that the trial and sentence of Charles I had
been a foretaste ofthe lastjudgement. Milton rejected Trinitarianism. Men and women were saved by their own efforts, not
vicariously by the crucifixion. In Paradise Regained the hero is
always described as the Son ofGod, never asjesus Christ. 'All men
are Sons of God'. Christ is a model of conduct under trial and
temptation: he is not a Saviour. This was still a dangerous doctrine.
The last heretics tobe burnt in England, in 1612, had been antiTrinitarians. In 1639 it was against an anti-Trinitarian that
Archbishop Neile wished to revive burning. Men were still
condemned to death for this beliefin the later 17th century. Locke
and Newton kept their anti-Trinitarianism very dark.
Milton was a theological materialist. He believed that the
universe had been created ex deo, not ex nihilo. Consequently all
matter was good and rightly tobe enjoyed. There is no distinction
ofsubstance between mankind and angels. This accounts for some
curious features of Paradise Lost: angels not only weep, bleed and
eat, but also digest, excrete and interpenetrate sexually, though in
a suitably angelic manner. The good things oflife, and the human
senses, are given us to enjoy.
Milton was an antinomian: he believed that the elect should
follow their own consciences, even when they conflicted with the
teachings of the church or of the Christian Fathers, or with the
Bible. The decalogue, Milton believed, was 'not a faultless code'. (I
have often wondered which of the ten commandments he rejec-

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Milton and the English Revolution

ted.) 'The practice ofthe saints interprets the commandments.' If

the Bible appears to enjoin things contrary to the good of man,
including his temporal good, our understanding of it must be
mistaken. Milton was strongly opposed to 'the Superstition of
scarecrow sins'. All men can become sons ofGod upon earth. Hell
is not a place, but an internal state of mind. As Satan found, it
accompanied him wherever he went. Mankind can attain on earth
to a Paradise within, 'happier far' than that of Adam's Eden.
Ultimately, when all men are sons of God, God hirnself will
abdicate, for he will be all in all.
These doctrines could not be openly expressed in Paradise Lost,
Paradise Regained or Samsan Agonistes. Like Chekhov, Milton had to
decide what he could get away with saying. But he knew that
Paradise Lost was a great poem, which had tobe published. We must
read it with these facts in mind. Take for instance the invocation to
Book VII:
I sing . . . unchanged
To hoarse or mute, though fallenon evil days,
On evil days though fallen and evil tongues,
In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,
And solitude.
What would the force of 'unchanged' be for informed readers in
1667? They would know Milton, not as a great poet but as a
leading republican spokesman, defender of regicide, of a free press,
of divorce for incompatibility, and of religious toleration. Some of
his readers at least would grasp that Milton was unchanged in
these principles. One good critic argued recently that Milton could
have written an anti-Trinitarian poem in Paradise Lost. Since he
did not do so, we can disregard the evidence of the heretical De
Doctrina Christiana. This seems to me like saying that a Czech poet
today could attack communism. In one sense, yes; but the
consequences for him if he were so foolish as to try to publish it
would be disastrous. The heresies are there in Paradise Lost if we
look for them carefully. Daniel Defoe-a trained theologianspotted anti-Trinitarianism there long before the De Doctrina
Christiana was published. Milton held that baptism should be
performed in running water. He puts this unorthodox doctrine
into Paradise Regained, but in the mouth of Satan. Who could hold
Milton responsible?
Many 19th-century critics eulogised the great 'hymn to wedded

Christopher Hill

33

Iove' in Book IV of Paradise Lost. What Milton hailed was 'wedded

Iove ... as saints and patriarchs used'. What are patriarchs doing
there? The point was missed by 19th- and early 20th-century
critics, but in 17th-century discussions on marriage patriarchs
mean t only one thing- polygamy. They were very holy, they were
models for us all; and they had many wives. Milton approved of
polygamy, as the De Doctrina makes clear. He also-together with
many of the radicals- rejected the ceremony of church marriage.
He was careful to make it clear that Adam and Eve underwent no
such ceremony. What mattered was the mutual Iove and consent of
the partners: that is why divorce should be permitted ifmutuallove
ceased.
God equals history equals fact. The brutal realities of the
restoration had forced Milton to rethink both God, and man as an
agent ofhistorical change. Books XI and XII of Paradise Lostshow
the re-education offallen Adam by means of a preview of world
history, just as (Milton, no doubt, hoped) readers would be reeducated by his poem. Adam concluded that the way forward was:
... By small
Accomplishing great things, by things deemed weak
Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise
By simply meek.
Why, we might ask, should Adam, Iord of the world, undisputed
ruler of his family of two, want to subvert worldly strong? The
answer is clear as soon as we ask the question. Adam's words are
directed at Milton's generation: teil them how to behave.
Key words in Milton's great poems are 'free' and 'stand'. The
rebel angels and Adam fell when they were free to stand. In
Paradise Regained the Son of God personifies all men, res1stmg
temptation to wrong action-mostly to premature political
action.
Victorious deeds
Flamed in my heart, heroic acts, one while
To rescue Israel from the Roman yoke,
Thence to subdue and quell all the earth
Brute violence and proud tyrannic power,
Till truth were freed, and equity restored.
But 'that people victor once' was now 'vile and base, Deservedly
made servile'. The Son ofGod does not reject political action: it is a

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Mitton and the English Revolution

matter of choosing the right time. His final triumph in standing

alone on the pinnacle of the temple is followed by his descent to
resume his job of preaching, of re-education.
The hero of Samson Agonistes is a failed national Ieader,
imprisoned and blinded .
. . . Promise was that I
Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver:
Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves,
Hirnself in bonds und er Philistian yoke
In this he is like Milton, like his cause. Samson alone is to blame for
his failure. He is carefully associated with the 'Good Old Cause',
with the New Model Army, and 'the Philistian yoke' with the
Norman yoke of monarchy and aristocracy, which had been a
leading myth of the Parliamentarian revolutionaries. Samson
learns from his degradation how to act correctly when the time for
political action comes-just as Milton seized his opportunity in
1673 (two years after Samson Agonistes was published) and as he was
simultaneously preparing the De Doctrina Christiana for publication.
Samson stood, alone, in the temple, exposed to the jeering of the
Philistine aristocracy and priests; and God helped him to pull
down the temple on their heads. 'The vulgar only 'scaped who
stood without', added Milton, in a line which has no Biblical
authority whatsoever. The aristocracy and priests were the
principal enemies ofthe 'Good Old Cause' in restoration England,
and Milton thought it a religious duty to hate God's enemies. Hell
is the destiny of all bishops. Those modern critics who shrink from
the vengefullesson of Samson Agonistes, and suggest that Milton does
not intend us to approve of Samson, miss this bitter political
context. We should think ofSamson in terms ofa resistance Ieader
in occupied Europe under the Nazis, or of a black Ieader in South
Africa today. The only time Milton asked hirnself how he could
prove the existence of God, he replied: 'lt is intolerable and
incredible that evil should be stronger than good; therefore God
exists'. It is perhaps not a very good proof; but it teils us a lot about
Milton.
After 1660 he was a revolutionary facing the utter and final
defeat ofhis revolution. We know better than he did how complete
the defeat was, so final that it is difficult for us to think back to a
time when hatred of bishops, of aristocracy and clergy, was a

Christopher Hill

35

religious duty. The virtues which Milton most admired are postlapsarian-courage, fortitude, steadfastness in adversity, hope
when hope seems impossible. Milton no doubt thought ofhimself
among others when he wrote of Abdiel:
Among the faithless, faithful only he,
Among innumerable false unmoved,
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,
His loyalty he kept, his Iove, his zeal;
Nor number nor example with him wrought
To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind
Though single. . . . His back he turned
On those proud towers, to swift destruction doomed.
Alas: the destruction did not come swiftly.
We do not often reflect what outstanding courage Milton
showed in the timing ofhis attacks-on bishops in March 1641,
when they had only just ceased tobe the ruling powers; on kingship
in December 1648, before Charles I was brought to trial; and on
monarchy again in April 1660, a month before Charles II was
restored to his father's throne. At a time when other radicals were
preserving a prudent silence, Milton published, over his own
name, The Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth. As he
must have known, it was a forlorn hope. 'If I be not heard or
believed', he wrote towards the end of the pamphlet, 'the event will
bear me witness to have spoken truth; and I in the meanwhile have
borne my witness, not out of season, to the church and to my
country'. Some 11 years later he could still, in the conclusion of
Samson Agonistes, see the Good Old Cause as an undying Phoenix,
which
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
When most unactive deemed,
And though her body die, her fame survives
A secular bird, ages of lives.
Milton never gave up.

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Milton and the English Revolution

NOTES
1.
2.
3.

Lucy Hutchinson, Memoirs oJ the Life oJ Colonel Hutchinson, ed. James

Sutherland (Oxford University Press, 1973) pp. 31, 280.
Z.N. Roginskii, London in 1645-6: new material about the journey oJ Gerasim
Semeonovich Dokhurimov to England (Yaroslavl State Pedagogical Institute,
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David Aers and Bob Hodge, '"Rational Burning": Milton on Sex and
Marriage', in Aers, Hodge and G. Kress (eds), Literature, Language and Sociery
in England, 158()-1680 (Dublin, 1981) pp. 143-4.