“Between Private Walls” 1645–1649before, to doe as his owne profit or ambition led him. Then was justice delai’d &
soone after deny’d, spite and favour determin’d all: hence faction, then treacherie
both at home & in the field, ev’ry where wrong & oppression.... Some who had bin
calld from shops & warehouses without other merit to sit in supreme councel[s] and
committees, as thir breeding was, fell to hucster the common-wealth.... Thir votes
and ordinances which men look’d should have contain’d the repealing of bad laws &
the immediate constitution of better, resounded with nothing els but new imposi-
tions, taxes, excises, yearlie, monthlie, weeklie[,] not to reck’n the offices, gifts, and
preferments bestowed and shar’d among themselves. (443–5)Also, the Presbyterian divines of the Westminster Assembly devoted themselves to
avarice, place-seeking, and religious oppression:
And if the state were in this plight, religion was not in much better: to reforme which
a certaine number of divines wer[e] called... [who] wanted not impudence... to
seise into thir hands or not unwillinglie to accept (besides one sometimes two or more
of the best Livings) collegiat masterships in the universitie, rich lectures in the cittie,
setting saile to all windes that might blow gaine into thir covetous bosomes.... And
yet the main doctrin for which they tooke such pay... was but to tell us in effect that
thir doctrin was worth nothing and the spiritual power of thir ministrie less available
then bodilie compulsion;... thir intents were cleere to be no other then to have set
up a spir[i]tual tyrannie by a secular power to the advancing of thir owne authorit[ie]
above the magist[r]ate. (447)As well, economic grievances abound, to which the scrivener’s son testifies indig-
nantly, alluding to his difficulties in collecting debts from the Powells’ sequestered
estates, and to his loss of money and goods loaned voluntarily or taken up in assess-
ments under the now discredited guarantee of the “public faith.”^111
They in the meane while who were ever faithfullest to thir cause, and freely aided
them in person, or with thir substance [were]... slighted soone after and quite bereav’d
of thir just debts by greedy sequestration... yet were withall no less burden’d in all
extraordinarie assessments and oppressions then whom they tooke to be disaffected.... That faith which ought to bee kept as sacred and inviolable as any thing holy, the
public faith, after infinite summs receiv’d & all the wealth of the church, not better
imploy’d, but swallow’d up into a private gulfe, was not ere long asham’d to confess
bankrupt.^112
All this has scandalized the people, now grown “worse & more disordinate, to
receave or to digest any libertie at all” (449).^113
After this digression, Milton took up his historical narrative again, treating in
Books III and IV the continued attacks of the Picts and Scots, the Britons’ reliance
on and then subjugation by the Saxons, the conflicts between Christian and pagan
and between Roman and Celtic Christianity, and the struggles for supremacy among