“Domestic or Personal Liberty” 1642–1645know “the dayes / Wherin your Father flourisht,” save through Margaret’s praise
of his virtues; and she (also “later born”) necessarily relied on her father’s account.
The resolution is found in Margaret’s own embodiment of Ley’s virtues and atti-
tudes toward liberty – so evident “That all both judge you to relate them true, /
And to possess them, Honour’d Margaret.” And on that authority Milton’s sonnet
can read this history in terms useful to the cause of virtue and liberty.
Reading, the home of Milton’s father and brother Christopher, again became a
war zone in April, 1643 and surrendered to Essex on April 27. Milton’s father (then
about eighty) came to him in Aldersgate Street. He lived there, Phillips reports,
“wholly retired to his Rest and Devotion, without the least trouble imaginable”
(EL 64). Christopher cast his lot with the royalists at Oxford, at one point serving as
a Royal Commisioner of Excise for Wells.^22 About this time Milton took on at least
one additional student, Cyriack Skinner.^23 Phillips comments that “the Studies went
on with so much the more Vigour as there were more Hands and Heads employ’d”
(EL 64).
Some of Milton’s own studies, beyond the specialized reading required by his
divorce tracts and the literature he no doubt read continuously, can be tracked in
the Commonplace Book, which was largely complete by 1646.^24 During the years
before and just after his Italian journey, he chiefly took notes from classical history,
early church history, and English and European history.^25 In the years 1643–6 he
continued reading histories of the Roman Empire and of particular nations, and
histories of the church, notably Sarpi’s history of the Council of Trent from which
he made numerous extracts.^26 He also returned to some histories he had used be-
fore: de Thou’s Historia sui Temporis, and Girard’s history of France.^27 He read as
well selected biblical commentaries and Judaica, especially John Selden’s De Jure
Naturali et Gentium and Uxor Hebraica.^28 For civil and ecclesiastical law and politics
he read Justinian’s Institutes, Joannes Leunclavius [Johann Löwenklau], Henry
Spelman, and Bodin’s De Republica, as well as treatises on military strategy and
noble titles.^29 Books of or about literature include Francesco Berni’s version of the
Orlando Innamorato; Sidney, Arcadia; Boccalini, De’ Ragguagli di Parnasso; Tasso,
Gerusalemme Liberata; Tomasini, Petrarcha Redivivus; and Tassoni, Pensieri.^30 Other
extracts are taken from Raleigh’s History of the World and Purchas’s Pilgrimes.^31
Milton added extracts under each major category: Moral, Economic (Domestic),
and Political.^32 Several “Economic” topics are pertinent to his immediate concerns.
Under Marriage (two headings), Concubinage, and Divorce (two headings), he
notes examples of unorthodox views and practices, including divorce.^33 Citing claims
by physicians that copulation “without love is cold, unpleasant, unfruitful, harmful,
bestial, abominable,”^34 he concludes “Therefore it is intolerable that either one or
at least the innocent one should be bound unwillingly by so monstrous a fetter.” To
the Political Index he adds extracts under several topics – King (three headings),
The Tyrant (two headings), The King of England, Subject, Liberty, Of Laws, and
Of Civil War – many of which address issues brought to the fore by the outbreak of