“Against... the Bishops” 1639–1642bourgeois anger over Charles’s hated levies. Harold Harefoot “exacting ship monie”
is one among many examples he cites of kings who were “pollers” (plunderers) and
lost their subjects’ love or provoked rebellion by exorbitant levies for unwise wars
or private corruption (CPW I, 480). Camden’s counterexample of Queen Eliza-
beth’s moderation in taxing and spending leads Milton to generalize that a king
should not tax excessively, since “need, if anything, plunges the English into re-
volt” (484). Under the topic “Of Allies” he cites Roger Ascham to the effect that
“Our league and union with the Scots [is] a thing most profitable, & naturall.”^34
The topic “Of Civil War” elicits examples of “the danger of calling in forraine
aids” that relate to Charles’s rumored plans to call in Irish or French armies (499).
Entries under such heads as “King,” “The Tyrant,” “Subject,” “The State,” “Of
War,” “Laws,” and “Courtiers,” collect examples of limitations on royal power:
coronation oaths, Magna Carta, and the judgments of historians, e.g. Sir Thomas
Smith’s dictum that the act of a king not approved by the people or established by
parliament is “taken for nothing, either to bind the k., his successors, or his sub-
jects.”^35 Other citations point to kings rightfully resisted in arms or deposed for
tyranny: Richard II, Edward II, King John, and the Holy Roman Emperor at-
tacked by the German Protestant Princes. Holinshed’s account of Richard II leads
to an observation about tyranny with clear contemporary relevance: “to say that the
lives and goods of the subject are in the hands of the K. and at his disposition is...
most tyrannous and unprincely” (446).^36 Several entries indicate a heightening of
Milton’s antimonarchist and republican sentiments, notably his summary of
Machiavelli’s views as to why a commonwealth is preferable to a monarchy: “be-
cause more excellent men come from a commonwealth than from a kingdom;
because in the former virtue is honored most of the time and is not feared as in a
kingdom” (421).^37
Throughout these months pulpits and presses resounded with denunciations
of or support for the bishops and the Book of Common Prayer. Royalist Laudians
defended the established liturgy and episcopacy as divine ordinances, and bish-
ops’ secular offices and power as essential supports to the monarchy: “No Bishop,
no King.” More moderate Anglicans argued that liturgical practices and bishops’
powers developed over time but have biblical and apostolic precedent and sanc-
tion; some were willing to relax liturgical mandates and also, if that became
necessary, to remove bishops from the House of Lords and strip them of most
political functions. Reformist Puritans sought to replace the “popish” liturgy of
the Book of Common Prayer and to abolish bishops. Presbyterians claimed a biblical
mandate for Presbyterian church government, in which ministers (presbyters),
deacons, and lay elders govern individual parishes, and parish councils are linked
together through regional synods and a national assembly. The separatist sects
(chiefly Congregationalists, Brownists, Independents, and Anabaptists) wanted
no national church, only individual gathered communities of the elect. Many
went into exile in Holland or New England during previous decades, but were