“I... Steer Right Onward” 1654–1658work for Cromwell, he could blame the policies he disliked chiefly on the unstable
political circumstances and the disaffected masses, and hope for better times. But his
ambivalence is indicated in some passages of the History of Britain, in his edition of
The Cabinet Council, a collection of Machiavellian political maxims attributed to Sir
Walter Raleigh, and perhaps most strongly by the fact that he offered no word of
praise or advice to the Proector during these years, and no verses for his death.
Milton seems to have enjoyed these relatively quiet years. European travelers
regularly called on the famous author of the Defensio. He took a special interest in
several promising young scholars, reaching out to them almost as surrogate sons.
Longtime friends and former pupils visited often and some of them served as occa-
sional amanuenses. He corresponded about scholarly matters with a widening circle
of learned acquaintances and exchanged warm and affectionate letters with absent
friends. He also married again after four years as a widower and apparently enjoyed
this time the love and domestic society whose lack he so bitterly lamented in the
divorce tracts, as well as the comfort of a well-ordered household. But his wife died
within two years and their infant daughter died also, at less than five months old.
Milton’s muse sang of the pleasures and the tragedies of these years in five sonnets:
a ringing prophetic denunciation of the slaughter of the Waldensians; two “invita-
tion” sonnets in the Jonsonian mode celebrating the delights of recreation with
friends; a poem revisiting the trauma of his blindness in more optimistic terms; and
a poignant lament exposing his grief and agonizing sense of loss at the death of his
wife. The first and last of these are, along with the first sonnet on his blindness, his
grandest achievements in the genre.
“I Have Discharged an Office... Not Unuseful to the State”
The first Protectorate parliament, which got underway on September 3, 1654,
contained many Presbyterians and other religious conservatives and also republican
irreconcilables. They immediately set about reworking all the provisions of the
Instrument of Government, seeking to limit Cromwell’s powers and to deny him the
veto he demanded over matters relating to “fundamentals.” They also threatened
the cause nearest to Milton’s heart, religious liberty, by excluding from toleration
several ill-defined categories – Atheism, Blasphemy, Popery, Prelacy, Licentious-
ness, and Profaneness – and by requiring profession of some 20 articles of faith
(expanding Owen’s 15) from clergy on public stipend. Cromwell also met with
continued opposition from republicans and religious radicals, especially Fifth Mon-
archists. Milton’s friend Overton, who had reconciled with Cromwell as Milton
had implicitly urged in the Defensio Secunda and had returned to Scotland as Gen-
eral Monk’s second-in-command, was soon implicated in an army plot against
Cromwell. He was arrested in December and committed to the Tower on January
16, 1655.^1