“Between Private Walls” 1645–1649was already an Arminian. Making matters worse, on July 8 the Scots invaded as
promised, and the fleet (which had defected to Prince Charles, in Holland) block-
aded the mouth of the Thames, seizing trading vessels and their goods. And
parliament, increasingly conservative, disclaimed any desire to change the funda-
mental constitution of King, Lords and Commons and rescinded its vote of No
Addresses.
Sometime between July 8 and August 17, Milton addressed a sonnet to the ar-
my’s commander-in-chief, titled in the Trinity manuscript “On ye Lord Gen. Fairfax
at ye seige of Colchester,” and probably sent it to him.^96 Fairfax was besieging some
3,000 royalist soldiers in that town. This is the first of Milton’s sonnets to great men
in the exalted encomiastic manner of Tasso’s “Heroic Sonnets,” but Milton mixes
his high praise with urgent advice. The octave pays tribute to Fairfax’s “firm, unshak’n
vertue” – the term suggests both strength and goodness – as the basis for his striking
military successes which are the envy of Europe’s kings and an augury of continued
success. He is cast as a Hercules-figure lopping off the Hydra heads of “new rebel-
lions” and Scottish perfidy. But the sestet urges him to take on the “nobler task” of
reforming the civil order, where a psychomachia rages that requires the exercise of
his proven “vertue”:
For what can Warr, but endless warr still breed,
Till Truth, & Right from Violence be freed,
And Public Faith cleard from the shamefull brand
Of Public Fraud. In vain doth Valour bleed
While Avarice, & Rapine share the land. (ll. 10–14)The specific evils pointed to by these personifications – greed, corruption, fraudu-
lent use of public monies, defaulting on debts guaranteed by the public faith, reli-
gious repression – are laid at the door of the Presbyterian parliament in the
“Digression” to Milton’s History of Britain, also probably written during these months.
The profusion of evils suggests that Herculean Fairfax needs to cleanse the English
Augean stables. Evidently Milton was now ready to look to the army and its noble
commander-in-chief as the best hope to settle the government.
The Second Civil War was over by the end of August. Cromwell won a stun-
ning victory at Preston over the Scottish and English armies (August 17–19) and
Fairfax on August 28 accepted the famine-induced surrender of the royalist forces
at Colchester. In September parliament began a “personal treaty” with the king in
Wales,^97 but Charles, still hoping for an invasion from Ireland or Europe or for an
opportunity to escape, continued his delaying tactics. As this crisis intensified, Milton
would have heard news of the Treaty of Westphalia (October 14/24) bringing to
an end the catastrophic Thirty Years Wars of religion. A few days later his second
child was born, a daughter named Mary after her mother, and Milton recorded the
event in his family Bible: “My daughter Mary was born on Wednesday Octob.