“Against... the Bishops” 1639–1642these events, first of all to God, and then to those to whom the people had en-
trusted with this office” (CPW IV.1, 621). Among those leading the reform move-
ment in the Lords were Bedford, Essex, Warwick, and Saye and Sele; and in the
Commons, John Pym, John Hampden, John Selden, Francis Rous, Oliver Cromwell,
Henry Martin, and Henry Vane, Jr. There were two overarching issues: securing
and expanding the rights of parliament against the king’s perceived absolutist ten-
dencies; and either restricting the power of, or wholly abolishing, the bishops.
Parliament acted quickly to release and compensate Laud’s Puritan victims (Prynne,
Burton, Bastwick, and Lilburne), to declare the Laudian canons void, to abolish
ship-money, to abrogate the hated Star Chamber and other special courts, and to
enact a law for triennial parliaments. On November 25 parliament impeached
Strafford for plotting to use the Irish army to subdue Scotland and England, and for
advising the king that he was not bound by “rules of government” in raising money
for his Scots wars.^28 In December they began impeachment proceedings against
Laud for “subversion of the laws... and of religion” and on March 1, 1641 sent
him to the Tower. Strafford’s long treason trial ended abruptly with a Bill of At-
tainder passed by parliament and signed, with great reluctance, by the king; he was
executed on May 12, 1641. On May 10 parliament passed an act prohibiting its
dissolution except by its own consent, the legal ground which allowed it to become
the Long Parliament. The presence of the Scots army in the North and of the Scots
Commissioners in London negotiating a treaty – not signed until August, 1641 –
kept up continual pressure for reform, civil and ecclesiastical.
While Milton observed these events from the sidelines, his private studies helped
him place the developing conflict in historical perspective and prepared him to
speak to the issues. In 1639–42 he chiefly read English and British history, taking
notes in his Commonplace Book on Bede, William of Malmesbury, Stow, Hardyng,
Holinshed, Speed, Sir Thomas Smith, William Camden, John Hayward, William
Lambard, André du Chesne, George Buchanan, Edmund Campion, Edmund
Spenser’s View of the Present State of Ireland, and others.^29 For European history he
read Sleiden, Paulus Jovius, Machiavelli, Savonarola, Sarpi, Thuanus (du Thou),
and others.^30 He also took a few notes from literary works (Chaucer’s Canterbury
Tales and Romaunt of the Rose, and Gower’s Confessio Amantis), classical and patristic
texts (Aristotle, Caesar’s Commentaries, Lactantius, Cyprian), Cuspinian’s history of
the Roman emperors, Sozomen’s ecclesiastical history, Sinibaldus on the genera-
tion of man, and Ascham.^31 His few additions to the Moral and Economic Indices
in his Commonplace Book include some that speak to his immediate concerns,
among them a summary of Bede’s little story “about an Englishman who was sud-
denly made a poet by divine Providence.”^32 Most entries are to the Political Index,
and many have contemporary relevance. Citing Stow on King Alfred turning the
old laws into English, Milton suggests application to the king’s prerogative courts:
“I would he liv’d now to rid us of this norman gibbrish.”^33 Several entries under the
topic “Property and Taxes” and “Official Robbery or Extortion” display Milton’s