“Between Private Walls” 1645–1649action to bring the king to justice until the Agreement of the People could be
settled.^116
On January 4, 1649 the remnant of the Commons (the Rump) formally declared
their own supremacy without king or house of peers, proclaiming a de facto repub-
lic. On January 6, a commission of some 135 men, headed by Fairfax, Cromwell,
and Ireton, was appointed to try the king, but Fairfax and more than eighty others
soon withdrew. About this time Milton received another letter from Carlo Dati
announcing his receipt of two copies of Milton’s “most learned” Latin Poems, re-
porting his own recent achievements, and passing along “affectionate greetings”
from Frescobaldi, Coltellini, Francini, Vincenzo Galilei (Galileo’s son), and oth-
ers.^117 Milton was probably pleased, but apparently did not reply; just then his care-
free life with his academy friends must have seemed very remote indeed.
Given his sense that the nation was poised at a defining moment, Milton may
have been among the crowds in the galleries that witnessed the dramatic spectacle
of the king’s trial, which began on January 20, 1649 in the Great Hall at Westmin-
ster. John Bradshaw presided over a court attended by only sixty to seventy of the
appointed commissioners, but packed with lawyers on both sides, as well as soldiers
and spectators on the floor and in the galleries. Bradshaw read out the charge of
“High Treason and other High Crimes,” specifying that Charles broke his corona-
tion oath,
out of a wicked design to erect and uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical
power to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the
people; yea, to take away and make void the foundations thereof... which by the
fundamental constitution of this kingdom were reserved on the people’s behalf in the
right and power of frequent and successive Parliaments or national meetings in coun-
cil; he... hath traitorously and maliciously levied War against the present parliament
and the people therein represented.^118Every day, Charles kept his hat on in defiance of the court’s authority, and refused
to answer the charges against him on the ground that a sovereign king cannot be
judged by any earthly power. The court pronounced him in contempt and heard
several witnesses against him. On January 27 he was sentenced: “Charles Stuart, as
a Tyrant, Traitor, Murderer, and public Enemy to the good people of this nation,
shall be put to death by the severing his head from his body.”^119 Fifty-nine of the
commissioners signed the death warrant.
Throughout the trial, the Presbyterian pulpits and presses exploded with denun-
ciations, and Milton entered the fray with The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. In the
Second Defense (1654) he offers a carefully reconstructed account of the purposes
and timing of the Tenure, in which he portrays himself as a private citizen and
scholar who took no part in the polemics or decisions concerning Charles himself,
but who was moved by the furor and lies of the Presbyterians during the king’s trial
to offer a theoretical analysis of tyranny: