“Against... the Bishops” 1639–1642now gaining strength in England and pressing their demands for toleration. The
anti-episcopal agitation which united many disparate groups was fueled by fears
and passions associating the bishops with popery, idolatry, tyranny over con-
science, evil counsel to the king, and pompous excesses in lifestyle and ceremony
that affronted the sober bourgeois. On December 11, 1640 a petition signed by
some 15,000 from the City of London (probably including Milton)^38 called for
abolition of episcopal government “with all its dependencies, roots, and branches.”
On January 23, 1641 a compromise petition signed by more than 700 clergy –
including Edward Calamy and Stephen Marshall, two of the Presbyterian con-
troversialists Milton supported in his first tracts – called for the bishops’ removal
from parliament and all secular offices and from some ecclesiastical functions.^39
Moderates on both sides were promoting some such compromise. On May 1 the
Commons passed an Exclusion Bill and gave preliminary approval on May 27 to
a “Root and Branch” bill abolishing Episcopacy altogether. But on June 8 the
Lords rejected Exclusion.
Milton, following the controversy intently from his study, may have been
invited by his tutor and friend Thomas Young to serve God’s cause with his pen,
or he may have volunteered to do so. At Laud’s instigation Bishop Joseph Hall of
Exeter had published in February, 1640, under his initials, a 260-page treatise,
Episcopacie by Divine Right Asserted, which argued from scripture texts, patristic
testimony, and ancient church practice that episcopacy was ordained by God.^40
In January, 1641, as the clamor over bishops and liturgy intensified, Hall pub-
lished under the same initials An Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parlia-
ment; it retreats from jure divino claims but finds apostolic warrant for bishops and
bewails the “furious and malignant spirits” venting libels against them.^41 The
most substantial of the several answers to Hall appeared around March 20, 1641
under the name “Smectymnuus” – an acronymn formed from the initials of the
Presbyterian ministers Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young,
Matthew Newcomen, and William Sperstow. Young was the primary author of
this 93-page tract, also addressed to parliament, An Answer to a booke entituled, An
Humble Remonstrance. In Which, the Original of Liturgy and Episcopacy is Discussed. It
denounces the “Popish” liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer and argues scrip-
ture warrant for Presbyterian church government from the fact that in scripture
and in the primitive church bishop and presbyter are synonymous terms, both
referring to ministers of individual churches.^42 Milton almost certainly wrote or
contributed largely to the tract’s nine-page postscript, a historical review of Eng-
lish prelacy as a danger to church and state in all ages, producing “those bitter
fruits Pride, Rebellion, Treason, Unthankefulnes.”^43
By April 12, 1641 Hall published, anonymously, a 188-page response, A Defence
of the Humble Remonstrance, against the Frivolous and false Exceptions of Smectymnuus; it
was addressed to the king and was much sharper in tone than his previous tracts.^44
Conceding that bishop and presbyter were at first synonymous terms, he nonethe-