“For the Sake of Liberty” 1652–1654als with trenchant clarity as nothing more than “Winding Staires and back dores” to
persecution.^41 Vane, a member of every Council of State during the republic, con-
tinued his defense of toleration and church disestablishment there and in parlia-
ment.^42
For his part, Milton had recourse to poetry again, addressing sonnets to Cromwell
and Vane. Like the Fairfax poem, these are heroic sonnets owing something to
Tasso. But in Milton’s revision of that kind, the high praises culminate in appeals to
these two great men to help defeat the Independent ministers’ Proposals. While
several of Milton’s sonnets dealt with dangers or evils in church and state,^43 here for
the first and last time he uses that form to urge a particular course of action on a
political issue under debate. In these two sonnets Milton assumes as poet the role he
so often adopted in prose: that of judicious adviser to magistrates and people.^44 Both
are Petrarchan sonnets, but the poem to Cromwell, uniquely among Milton’s son-
nets, ends with a rhyming couplet.
The sonnet initially titled “To the Lord Generall Cromwell May 1652 On the
proposalls of certaine ministers at ye Commtee for Propagation of the Gospell,”
was no doubt sent to its addressee sometime that month.^45 It appeals to that long-
time supporter of toleration before he has taken a formal position on the Proposals.
Apostrophizing Cromwell as “our cheif of men,” Milton casts the octave in the
panegyric mode, celebrating Cromwell’s victories in battle and the virtues he has
exhibited. But the stately, end-stopped lines relegate all that to the past, and the
allusions prepare for the sestet’s exhortation. The first quatrain portrays Cromwell
on an allegorical pilgrimage where, guided by faith and “matchless Fortitude,” he
has plowed through “a cloud” of war and detractions to gain “peace & truth.” That
last phrase was often used to define the goals of the revolution, as when the signa-
tories of the Solemn League and Covenant promised to “establish these Churches and
kingdoms in truth and peace.” Allusion to the Covenant recalls the Presbyterian
understanding of that phrase as requiring religious uniformity, and the next quat-
rain points to the battlefields “imbru’d” with blood caused by that understanding,
as it praises Cromwell’s notable victories over the Scots at Preston, Dunbar, and
Worcester.^46 In 1651 parliament struck a coin to celebrate those victories bearing
the allegorical figures of Truth and Peace. The octave suggests that Cromwell
achieved those goods not by acceding to but by defeating the Scots and their view
of the Covenant.
The volta or turn from octave to sestet in the middle of line nine and the run-on
lines in the third quatrain mark the movement from past to present, from the recent
wars to the peacetime struggles yet to come. Mid-line volte are increasingly com-
mon in Milton’s sonnets, and serve a variety of purposes. With the line, “peace hath
her victories / No less renownd then warr” – an echo of Cicero^47 – Milton points
to the “new foes” to be overcome: not now the Presbyterians but the conservative
Independent hirelings who seek “to bind our soules with secular chaines.” By with-
holding the principal verb until the final couplet Milton puts intense pressure on