“I... Steer Right Onward” 1654–1658to whom you suggest counsels and even present threats if he should act in any other
fashion. To him you grant arms and empire, for yourself you lay claim to genius and
the toga. (1,109)As for the morals and heresy charges against him, More vigorously denies all the
scandals Milton laid to his charge, accusing Milton of deliberate lies, libel, and
calumny. He uses the effective strategy of reprinting testimonials from civil and
ecclesiastical councils that seem to clear him of all charges. The eight from Geneva
included in this first part (dated January–March, 1648) are followed by two testi-
monial letters (May 9, 1649) from the respected theologian John Diodati whom
Milton had mentioned visiting in Geneva.^6
Sometime in April 1655 Vlacq published More’s Supplementum Fidei Publicae.^7 In
it More gives his own version of his affair with Elizabeth Guerret (Pontia): the
trouble arose because Madame Salmasius sought to trap him in an unpropitious
marriage with Guerret, and both the Synod at Utrecht and the secular high court
decided the cases in his favor. The 13 additional testimonial letters from Geneva,
Middelburg, and Amsterdam comprise more than half of the volume; they are
meant to portray a man widely admired as a scholar and a minister and publicly
cleared of every charge against him. Though formally exculpatory, the letters them-
selves reveal that More attracted controversy and charges of licentious conduct
wherever he went, and that the Walloon churches of the United Provinces were a
hotbed of intense infighting and partisanship.
Milton claims that he began work on his answer to Fides Publica in October
1654, finished it in February, 1655, and dealt with the Supplementum as soon as it
appeared.^8 He made no effort to conflate the two parts, but simply provided a new
heading for the second section, “The Answer of John Milton Englishman to The
Supplement of Alexander More.” Milton’s Pro Se Defensio may have been substan-
tially finished by mid-May, but it was not published until around August 8, 1655,^9
as Milton’s work on it was interrupted by his extensive diplomatic correspondence
relating to the Waldensian crisis. For this tract, Milton assiduously gathered addi-
tional information about More from the ever-active Hartlib circle, from foreign
news reports in Mercurius Politicus, from Thurloe’s spies, and from his own contacts
in various cities; most of it confirmed his earlier portrait of More as a womanizing
scoundrel.
Some of Milton’s most damaging information dealt with More’s career in Ge-
neva. On March 24, 1655, Milton wrote to thank Ezekiel Spanheim for a letter
sent to him six months earlier.^10 Ever a dilatory correspondent, Milton wrote now,
with due apologies, to inform Spanheim that he was using part of his letter without
his name in the Pro Se Defensio.^11 As quoted there and dated October 14, 1654,
Spanheim’s letter assures Milton that his charges against Salmasius are those “com-
monly repeated in the mouths of all his greatest friends even, charges which can be
clearly corroborated by the authority and assent of the whole assembly”(CPW IV.2,