“The So-called Council of State” 1649–16528
“The So-called Council of State...
Desired to Employ My Services”
1649–1652
Milton took great pride in his appointment to serve the Commonwealth as Secre-
tary for Foreign Languages. He was gratified to be part of the daring experiment in
republican government in a post that made use of his formidable linguistic and po-
lemical skills. It was the kind of public service his whole life had prepared him for.
Soon he was caught up in a whirl of activities and responsibilities largely set by
others, a life very different indeed from his former retired life as scholar and poet. He
saw the beleaguered new government ringed about by enemies in Ireland, Scotland,
and much of Europe, threatened at home by royalist resistance, opposed by former
supporters, and disliked by much of the populace. He was eager to help it establish
credibility by writing its letters to foreign states in elegant Latin,^1 and by answering
the most formidable polemic attacks upon it: King Charles’s supposed testament
from the grave, and an influential Latin treatise by the famous French scholar, Claude
Saumaise (Salmasius). In the Defensio Secunda (1654) he provides his own account of
the circumstances in which he was offered this appointment and these commissions:
The so called Council of State, which was then for the first time established by the
authority of Parliament, summoned me, though I was expecting no such event, and
desired to employ my services, especially in connection with foreign affairs. Not long
afterwards there appeared a book attributed to the king, and plainly written with great
malice against Parliament. Bidden to reply to this, I opposed to the Eikon the
Eikonoklastes, not, as I am falsely charged, “insulting the departed spirit of the king,”
but thinking that Queen Truth should be preferred to King Charles.... Then Salmasius
appeared. So far were they from spending a long time (as More alleges) seeking one
who would reply to him, that all, of their own accord, at once named me, then
present in the Council. (IV.1, 627–8)Some duties – licensing the weekly government news sheet, authorizing an oc-
casional foreign book, examining the papers of some suspected enemies of the state