“Between Private Walls” 1645–1649analyses of biblical covenants between God and his people, by the legal concept
that the ancient constitution of England and Magna Carta subject the king to the
law, and by Leveller efforts to literalize the originary myth in a written constitution,
an Agreement of the People. Most theorists assumed, however, that “the people”
who have rights as citizens are an educated, propertied, male elite. The categorical
terms with which Milton introduces his version of the contract theory – “No man
who knows ought, can be so stupid to deny” (198) – evoke this common ground.
In Milton’s version men were created free, “born to command and not to obey”
until the Fall introduced sin and violence among them, leading them “by common
league to bind each other” from injury and for common defense. This is a social
compact constructing societies: “Citties, Townes, and Common-wealths.” This
pact proving insufficient to control wrongdoers, the people ordained “som author-
ity” – a king if one man were most worthy, magistrates if several were of equal
worth – “not to be thir Lords and Maiesters... but, to be thir Deputies and Com-
missioners” to execute the powers that reside inherently in each man (198–9). This
establishes a political compact. When these rulers at length fell prey to the tempta-
tions of absolute power, the people invented laws to limit magistrates, “so man...
might no more rule over them, but law and reason” (200). When laws were ig-
nored or misapplied, the people formalized the governmental compact, requiring
kings and magistrates to take oaths “to doe impartial justice by Law: who upon
those termes and no other, receav’d Alleageance from the people... ofttimes with
express warning, that if the King or Magistrate prov’d unfaithfull to his trust, the
people would be disingag’d.” Then they added counselors and parliaments to have
care of the public safety, “with him or without him, at set times or at all times”
(200). These last two stages of the originary myth Milton grounds in history, citing
examples of coronation oaths.
His conclusion from this narrative is to insist (in contrast to Hooker and Hobbes)
that the political compact can be abrogated since essential sovereignty always re-
mains in the people: “The power of Kings and Magistrates is nothing else, but what
is only derivative, transferr’d and commited to them in trust from the People, to the
Common good of them all, in whom the power yet remains fundamentally, and
cannot be tak’n from them, without a violation of thir natural birthright” (202).
But for Milton, in contrast to Hobbes and the Levellers, repudiation of the political
contract does not abrogate the social contract and return men to the state of nature.
Milton also insists that royalist theories arguing the king’s right to his throne by
inheritance (in Filmer’s view the king inherits by descent from Adam),^144 and di-
vine-right theories based on Romans 13:1 and 1 Samuel 8, that the king is answer-
able to none but God, make the people slaves and overturn all law and government.
Throughout the tract, Milton draws out the metaphorical implications of the term
“tenure” to represent the king as a bondsman who holds his office or “tenure” from
the people on condition he fulfill his covenant with them.^145 As for that explicit
covenant “The Solemn League and Covenant,” which the Presbyterians under-