“The So-called Council of State” 1649–1652neglected to follow through; under threat of sequestration he completed the proc-
ess on February 25, 1651, paying a fine of £130 and charges (LR III, 8). The
problem for Anne Powell concerned her widow’s thirds, which Milton had sent
her regularly out of the rents for Wheatley, but which the Committee on Compo-
sitions now refused to allow, denying her any rights in this composition and refer-
ring her to the courts to sue for her thirds.^124 In July 1651 she petitioned again, in
somewhat exaggerated terms, pleading extreme poverty and asking the committee
to direct Milton to continue her thirds, “to preserve her & her [eight] children
from starving.” Milton, as a representative of the hated new government and as an
unsatisfactory son-in-law, was made the scapegoat for her many difficulties: she
claimed (wrongly) that he had “allowance given him for the petitioners thirds” and
had stopped paying her voluntarily. A note attached to this petition a few days later
reveals her deep animosity, as well as her readiness to rewrite the domestic history
of Milton and Mary:
By the law she might recover her thirds without doubt, but she is so extreame poor,
she hath not wherewithall to prosecute, & besides Mr Milton is a harsh & Chollericke
man, & married to Mrs. Powells daughter, who would be undone, if any such course
were taken against him by Mrs. Powell, he having turned away his wife heretofore for
a long space upon [a small occasion, cancelled] some other occasion.^125Just below this is a copy of a note from Milton indicating his willingness to con-
tinue paying the thirds, if that sum were excluded from calculation of the sum he
must compound for:
Although I have compounded for my extent & shalbe so much the longer in receiving
my debt, yet at the request of Mrs. Powell in regard of her present necessitys I am
contented as farre as belongs to my consent to allow her the 3ds of what I receive from
the estate, if the Committee shall so order it, that what I allow her may not be reck-
oned upon my account.Despite Milton’s offer, the committee again refused to allow Anne Powell’s thirds
from the Wheatley revenues. Milton may have done something else to help her but
that seems unlikely, given the antagonism between them.^126
In late summer, 1651, the first substantial response to Milton’s Defensio was pub-
lished anonymously in Antwerp: Pro Rege et Populo Anglicano Apologia, contra Johannis
Polypragmatici (alias Miltoni Angli) Defensionem Destructivam Regis et Populi Anglicani.^127
The author of this 220-page duodecimo was a royalist clergyman living abroad,
John Rowland, who undertook to damp down the “sulphurous fire” of Milton’s
words until Salmasius could drown it with his own “full flood.”^128 The twelve
chapters of often defective Latin consist mainly of quotations from Milton followed
by paragraphs of rebuttal denigrating him and praising Salmasius. Milton wanted to
reserve his energies to meet the expected reply from Salmasius and so delegated the