“Between Private Walls” 1645–1649That thence the Royal Actor born
The Tragick Scaffold might adorn,
While round the armed Bands
Did clap their bloody hands.
He nothing common did, or mean
Upon the memorable Scene:
But with his keener Eye
The Axes edge did try:
Nor call’d the Gods with vulger spight
To vindicate his helpless Right,
But bow’d his comely Head
Down, as upon a Bed.^122Milton was less conflicted. While he would not (I think) clap his hands, he surely
believed that justice was served when the axe fell.
Steps were taken immediately to form and secure the new republic. During the
first week of February the Commons passed resolutions to abolish the office of king
and the House of Lords; on February 13 a 41-member Council of State was named
to serve as executive; on February 22 an Engagement, to be subscribed by council
members and later by other officials, called for “the settling of this nation for the
future in way of a Republic, without king or House of Lords.”^123 But the infant
Commonwealth was threatened on all sides. Scotland and Ireland proclaimed the
exiled Prince Charles king and armies were gathering in both countries. A book
purportedly written by Charles I in prison, Eikon Basilike: The True Portraicture of
His Sacred Majesty in his Solitudes and Sufferings, began circulating immediately after
the execution, eliciting an onrush of sympathy for the monarch. The royalist news
sheets vehemently denounced the new government and demanded the coronation
of Charles II. In a flurry of tracts and petitions the disaffected Levellers and their
supporters in the army denounced the Rump Parliament, the army grandees, and
the other institutions of the new republic as having no sound claim to represent the
sovereign people without the constitutional form of an Agreement of the People.^124
In these unsettled circumstances, proposals to dissolve the Rump Parliament and
hold new elections came to seem foolhardy.
Milton’s Tenure was published c. Febrary 13, 1649, the first declaration of support
by a person of note outside parliament. At this crisis moment Milton chose, coura-
geously, to cast his lot publicly with the regicides. He may have hoped by this
gesture to call his gifts to the attention of the new men in power in the Commons
and Council of State. The full title indicates the tract’s scope: The Tenure of Kings
and Magistrates: proving, That it is Lawfull, and hath been held so through all Ages, for any,
who have the Power, to call to account a Tyrant, or wicked king, and after due conviction, to
depose, and put him to death; if the ordinary magistrate have neglected, or deny’d to doe it.
And that they, who of late so much blame Deposing, are the Men that did it themselves.^125
The tract makes what seems a calculated effort to draw parliamentarians, army