“Between Private Walls” 1645–1649If men within themselves would be govern’d by reason, and not genereally give up
thir understanding to a double tyrannie, of Custom from without, and blind affections
within, they would discerne better, what it is to favour and uphold the Tyrant of a
Nation. But being slaves within doors, no wonder that they strive so much to have
the public State conformably govern’d to the inward vitious rule, by which they
govern themselves. For indeed none can love freedom heartilie, but good men; the
rest love not freedom but licence; which never hath more scope or more indulgence
then under Tyrants. (190)Such assertions, often reiterated, echo a core of classical and modern writers on
politics whom Milton had studied assiduously over many years: Aristotle, Cicero,
Lucan, Sallust, Suetonius, Tacitus, Livy, Machiavelli.^142 From that reading Milton
has concluded that the virtues needed by both rulers and ruled to sustain liberty in
a free commonwealth include reason, justice, magnanimity, temperance, fortitude,
and strong commitment to the common good and the preservation of liberty. Clas-
sical theory regarding slavery and freedom also underpins Milton’s redefinition of
tyranny. According to Roman political thought as developed by Cicero, Livy,
Tacitus, Sallust, and others, a slave is subject to someone else’s power, a citizen is
not.^143 So for Milton tyranny is not simply the illegal seizure of a throne or vicious
deeds against the people, but any absolute monarchy or any claims to a sphere of
royal prerogative outside the law, since such power, even if not abused, makes
slaves of the people. On this point Milton also cites Aristotle: “Monarchy unac-
countable, is the worst sort of Tyranny; and least of all to be endur’d by free born
men” (204).
Throughout the tract Milton launches a ferocious attack on the Presbyterian
ministers, whose pulpits were ringing with denunciations of the trial and the regi-
cide as covenant-breaking and sacrilege. As he later describes it: “I attacked, almost
as if I were haranguing an assembly, the pre-eminent ignorance or insolence of
these ministers, who had given promise of better things” (CPW IV.1, 626). His
caustic language has the rhetorical function of discrediting them, but it also displays
his seething rage against these backsliders from the revolution: they are “Apostate
Scarcrowes”(CPW III, 194), “dancing Divines” (195), “Mercenary noisemakers”
(236), “pragmatical Sidesmen of every popular tumult and Sedition” (241), “Min-
isters of Mammon instead of Christ” (242). The moral charges against them are
much the same as in the History of Britain – venality, ambition, place-seeking, money-
grubbing, ignorance – and he again castigates their repressive efforts to “bind other
mens consciences” (239). But here he especially emphasizes their political sins.
They themselves were fiercest in stirring up the revolt against Charles, and in doing
so they “devested him, disannointed him, nay curs’d him all over in thir Pulpits and
thir Pamphlets” (191) and essentially unkinged him, kingship being a relation that
involves subjects offering obedience to rulers. Indeed, in fighting against him they
might well have killed him themselves, on the battlefield. But now they have igno-
miniously turned their coats, denouncing the consequences of the actions they