“Between Private Walls” 1645–1649the various Saxon tribes and kingdoms – all of which produced almost unremitting
internal strife throughout the land. Milton laments that for this period he must rely
on sources – Nennius, Bede, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Monmouth, Malmesbury
- that he finds barbarous in style, unreliable in reporting civil matters, and in most
matters of religion “blind, astonish’d, and strook with superstition... in one word,
Monks” (127–8). Again, he often invites his readers to skepticism. He pauses in his
narrative at another fair but lost opportunity for the English to govern themselves:
the notable military victory at Badon which gave them a 44-year peace untroubled
by the Saxons. Following Gildas closely, Milton details their corruptions in terms
that resonate with present conditions: kings who had degenerated to “all Tyranny
and vitious life” and clergy who were “Unlerned, Unapprehensive, yet impudent;
suttle Prowlers, Pastors in Name, but indeed Wolves... seising on the Ministry as
a Trade, not as a Spiritual Charge,... bunglers at the Scripture” (174–5). There-
fore, when war broke out again, the Saxons drove the Britons from most of the
country. This is a story, Milton concludes, of “the many miseries and desolations,
brought by divine hand on a perverse Nation”(183). He accurately describes Book
IV of his history as a “scatterd story” of civil matters, and voices his frustration that
his primary source for it, Bede, offers something closer to a calendar than an inter-
pretative history: “Thir actions we read of, were most commonly Wars, but for
what cause wag’d or by what Councells carried on, no care was had to let us know:
wherby thir strength and violence we understand, of thir wisedom, reason, or jus-
tice, little or nothing” (229–30).
In December, 1648 the army’s seizure of power and its determination to bring
the king to trial threw constitutional issues into clear relief. Appealing to a time-
honored political principle invoked by all sides since the beginning of the Revo-
lution, Salus Populi Suprema Lex (the preservation of the Commonwealth is the
first law of nature), the officers held that their actions were warranted in the
present extreme crisis, though they sought to preserve some shards of legality by
claiming to act under the authority of the Commons.^114 Moderates who held
tenaciously to the rule of law under the old constitution still hoped to restore the
king with strict limitations on his power; even Cromwell still hoped for some
such settlement. The Levellers saw the enactment of an Agreement of the People
as the prime necessity so that the government might be settled under a new social
compact and written constitution. Millenarians often discounted the importance
of any civil settlement, given their expectation of the imminent appearance of
King Jesus. The Council of Officers met for five weeks in December and January
to discuss a new version of the Agreement, but it foundered this time over the
issue of religious toleration: some Levellers and sectaries would deny the magis-
trate any power in religious matters, while the officers held out for his power to
protect and maintain Protestant religion and to restrain palpable wickedness: athe-
ists, Roman Catholics, idolaters, and some radicals.^115 Believing themselves
“cozen’d and deceived” by the officers, the Levellers now opposed taking any