“The So-called Council of State” 1649–1652most proper to maintain a Correspondence among the Learned of all Nations in this
part of the World; scorning to carry on their Affairs in the Wheedling, Lisping Jargon
of the Cringing French, especially having a Minister of State able to cope with the
ablest any Prince or State could imploy for the Latin tongue. (EL 69)Phillips’s comment seems to reflect Milton’s own attitude to the “servility” of Louis
XIV’s court,^3 and his humanist desire to display the new republic’s ability to match
any in the use of correct, elegant, Ciceronian Latin. Milton was 40 and already
blind in his left eye when he was offered the post on March 13 or 14, 1649 by a
delegation sent to his house in Holborn.^4 On March 15 he was formally appointed
at the same salary paid to his predecessor, Georg Weckherlin, a little more than
£288 a year.^5 He became part of the permanent Secretariat headed by Gualter
Frost, general secretary to the Council of State with overall responsibility for its
papers and correspondence; that bureau also included his son Gualter Frost, Jr. as
assistant, Sir Oliver Fleming as master of ceremonies, and Edward Dendy as ser-
geant at arms. A “Shadow Secretariat” occasionally called upon for translation or
correspondence included, among others, Samuel Hartlib, the addressee of Of Edu-
cation, and others of his circle, Theodore Haak, John Dury, and John Hall.^6 Some of
these men already were and the rest soon would be Milton’s familiar acquaintances.
On March 20 Milton took the required oath of secrecy pertaining to his office, at
which time he probably met Cromwell for the first time.
The Council of State was forty-members strong, but seldom had half that number
in attendance. Its function was executive but it also discussed and proposed legisla-
tion to the parliament, whose average attendance was fifty to sixty members and
often much less.^7 Thirty-one of the council members were also in parliament, five
were lawyers or judges, three were officers (Cromwell, Fairfax, Phillip Skippon),
four were peers, thirteen had been regicides.^8 Like the Rump Parliament, the council
represented a mix of interests: Independents, moderate Presbyterians, social con-
servatives, social reformers, army grandees, republicans, pragmatists. This unwieldy
coalition held together during these first years to deal with enormous problems: the
imminent threat of invasion from Ireland and Scotland to restore Charles II; fears of
invasion from Europe; royalist plots and uprisings at home; Presbyterian demands
that the government establish Presbyterianism nationwide and suppress the rapidly
proliferating sects; a barrage of Leveller and republican polemic demanding a repre-
sentative legislature, relief to debtors, law reform, abolition of titles, and religious
toleration; agitation and sometimes mutiny by the rank and file soldiers demanding
arrears of pay and Leveller social reforms; an onslaught of anti-government news-
letters filled with biting royalist satire; damage to English trade from attacks at sea
and dubiety about existing trade agreements; and widespread disaffection in the
largely Presbyterian City of London and the largely royalist west country and Wales.
Exacerbating these difficulties was the ever-increasing need for money to support
the large army required to suppress rebellion in Ireland, Scotland, and at home, and