“Against... the Bishops” 1639–1642leaders: Denzil Hollis, Sir Arthur Haselrigg, John Pym, John Hampden, and William
Strode. They escaped into the City and many thousands rose in arms to protect
them. Unwilling to deal directly with parliament after this fiasco, the king left
Whitehall on January 10 with the queen and Prince of Wales, moving first to
Hampton Court and then to Windsor. On January 11 parliament reassembled,
carrying the five members back to the chamber in triumph.
Milton evidently wrote his fourth tract, The Reason of Church-governement Urg’d
against Prelaty, during the anxious weeks of November and December, 1641, com-
pleted it by January 1, and saw it published in January or February, 1642.^67 This was
the first treatise to which Milton affixed his full name, “By Mr. John Milton.”
While most of the treatise deals broadly with the issue of church government, in
three chapters Milton answers a recent collection of tracts and extracts, Certain
Briefe Treatises Written by Diverse Learned Men, Concerning the Ancient and Moderne
Government of the Church,^68 specifically addressing those of Ussher and Lancelot
Andrewes. For the most part, the several authors present the episcopal system as an
appropriate development from Old Testament, apostolic, and early church practice
but not as jure divino, and therefore open to some reform and compromise. Engag-
ing these episcopal moderates allowed Milton to argue that exclusion and reform –
which seem to be on the horizon – are not enough, and to align himself again with
the vociferous populist petitions for uprooting the bishops root and branch. But in
contrast to his last two explicitly confrontational treatises, in this one Milton does
not even name the collection he is answering. Most of the treatise is devoted to
exposing the bishops as “malignant, hostile, [and] destructive” (861) to religion,
civil government, king, parliament, people, law, liberty, wealth, and learning, and
to describing an alternative New Testament church government – nominally Pres-
byterianism but in fact close to Independency. In this signed tract Milton also intro-
duces himself formally to his audience in a lengthy “Preface” to Book II that functions
both as apologia and as ethical proof of his argument: it is a remarkable personal
statement about his education and arduous study, his life choices, his poetics, and
his sense of vocation as prophet and bard. This tract is discussed on pages 145–53.
During the first weeks of 1642 a torrent of pamphlets for and against bishops
poured from the presses. Reform leaders also promoted street demonstrations and
petitions to the Commons from Londoners of all sorts: poor people, poor laboring
men, porters, tradesmen’s wives, widows, gentlewomen.^69 On February 5 the Lords
finally passed the Bishops’ Exclusion Bill and to the surprise of many the king
signed it, probably expecting that a military victory over parliament would soon
enable him to reverse it. On February 23 Queen Henrietta Maria and Princess
Mary left for Holland with the crown jewels, and Charles moved north, arriving at
York around March 19. On February 23 also, the Smectymnuan Stephen Marshall
preached a fast-day sermon to the Commons, Meroz Cursed, on a text that soon
became a clarion call to arouse the Puritan faithful to support God’s cause against
his enemies.^70 On March 5 Parliament passed without the king’s assent a Militia