“Between Private Walls” 1645–1649of dastardly blasphemies and heresies.^19 Paul Best was imprisoned on June 10, 1645,
to be tried for his life for “horrible” anti-Trinitarianism. John Goodman of Coleman
Street and Henry Burton of Friday Street, strong voices for toleration, were ex-
pelled from their livings. The Leveller John Lilburne was remanded to prison in
August for attacks on parliament and its speaker. There was a new barrage of
antitolerationist pamphlets,^20 and protests against the sects were mounted in the
strongly Presbyterian City of London. On January 1, 1646 the clergy associated
with Sion College denounced the evils of toleration to the assembly: “wee detest
and abhorre the much endeavoured Toleration.”^21 This was followed on January
15–16 by antitolerationist petitions from the lord mayor and aldermen of London,
pointing with horror to the “Superstition, Heresie, Schisme, and Profanenesse...
and such Blasphemies as the Petitioners tremble to think on” which were vented in
the City by women preachers.^22 On January 29 two Baptist preachers were arrested
for distributing copies of their Confession of Faith.^23
Milton was made part of this controversy as his views on divorce continued to be
cited as a prime example of reprehensible heresy. In early May, 1645, Ephraim
Pagitt listed Williams, Overton, and Milton as notorious “Atheists [who]... preach,
print, and practise their hereticall opinions openly: for books, vide the bloudy Tenet,
witnesse a Tractate of divorce, in which the bonds [of marriage] are let loose to
inordinate lust: a pamphlet also in which the soul is laid asleep from the hour of
death unto the hour of judgement.”^24 Later editions carry an engraved frontispiece
with emblematic figures of six notable heretics – Anabaptist, Jesuit, Familist,
Antinomian, Divorcer, and Seeker; a similar engraving in a 1646 broadside shows
the Divorcer driving his wife away with a rod (plate 7).^25 A special section in Pagitt’s
book is headed “Divorcers:”
These I term Divorsers, that would be quit of their wives for slight occasions, and
to maintaine this opinion, one hath published a Tractate of divorce, in which the
bonds of marriage are let loose to inordinate lust, putting away wives for meny
other causes, besides that which our Saviour only approveth; namely, in case of
adulterie, who groundeth his Error upon the word of God, Gen. 2.18. I will make
him a helpe meet for him. And therefore if she be not an helper, nor meet for him, he
may put her away, saith this Author which opinion is flat contrary to the words of
our Saviour.^26In November, 1645, the Scots Commissioner Robert Baillie charged that “Mr Milton
permits any man to put away his wife upon his meere pleasure without any fault,
and without the cognysance of any judge.”^27 Baillie also associated Milton with
notorious views ascribed to Samuel Gorton and Ann Hutchinson in New England,
among them, allowing a woman to desert a husband “when he is not willing to
follow her in her Church-way.” Milton’s doctrine of divorce is number 154 in
Thomas Edwards’s voluminous catalogue of dangerous sects and heresies, Gangraena