“Between Private Walls” 1645–1649Nor did I write anything about the right of kings, until the king, having been declared
an enemy by parliament and vanquished in the field, was pleading his cause as a
prisoner before the judges and was condemned to death. Then at last, when certain
Presbyterian ministers, formerly bitter enemies of Charles... persisted in attacking
the decree which parliament had passed concerning the king... and caused as much
tumult as they could, even daring to assert that the doctrines of Protestants and all
reformed churches shrank from such an outrageous sentence against kings, I con-
cluded that I must openly oppose so open a lie. Not even then, however, did I write
or advise anything concerning Charles, but demonstrated what was in general permis-
sible against tyrants, adducing not a few testimonies from the foremost theologians.... This book did not appear until after the death of the king, having been written to
reconcile men’s minds, rather than to determine anything about Charles (which was
not my affair, but that of the magistrates, and which had by then been effected).
(CPW IV.1, 626–7)
He claims here that the Tenure was written “to reconcile men’s minds” to the fait
accompli of Charles’s death by defending the general proposition that execution of a
tyrant is lawful, rather than to judge the king’s case. But Milton’s various references
to “the proceedings now in Parlament against the King” (CPW III, 222) indicate
that the tract was largely written during the king’s trial, and that Milton did seek to
intervene in the unfolding scenario. He defends the acts of the army, justifies the
existing government of army officers and the Rump Parliament, seeks to inculcate
republican beliefs in his countrymen, and undertakes to bolster the courage of a
wavering populace subjected to a torrent of Presbyterian sermons and tracts. He
ridicules recent tracts by William Prynne, John Gauden, and Henry Hammond, but
reserves his special fury for the “dancing divines” of the Westminster Assembly and
Sion College, notably the Serious and Faithful Representation signed by 47 London
ministers on January 18, and A Vindication of the Ministers of January 27, “subscribed
with the ostentation of great Characters and little moment.”^120 Events, however,
outran Milton’s pen and the king’s execution intervened before he finished it.
It is at least possible that Milton joined the large and tumultuous crowd on that
wintry January 30 to witness the momentous event: the executioners in black masks;
the spectators kept at a distance so that Charles’s last words were inaudible to most;
Charles kneeling on the scaffold with outstretched arms; the “dismal Universal
Groan” that reportedly greeted the fallen axe.^121 Yet Milton’s comments about that
event never claim the authority of personal observation and could derive from the
many published reports and descriptions of the scene, e.g. “Granted... that the
common soldiers behaved rather insolently” (CPW IV.2, 644). If he were there, he
more than most would have registered the irony as Charles I, with dignity and
courage, enacted his last role on the black-draped scaffold stage erected outside
Inigo Jones’s Banquetting Room at Whitehall where he had danced so many masque
roles. Andrew Marvell’s famous lines memorably evoke the scene both men may
(or may not) have witnessed: