“I... Steer Right Onward” 1654–1658More was associated, praising the United Provinces^30 and especially Geneva. Extol-
ling Geneva’s liberty and peace and the civic virtues that sustain it as a republic, he
implicitly offers it as a model for England which has not yet managed to settle a
republic and which is badly in need of those civic virtues:
I admire first her zeal and her worship of a purer religion; then I honor almost as
much the prudence, fairness, moderation, and constancy in that republic, by which,
though hemmed in by narrow boundaries and by threatening and powerful neighbors
on both sides, she has for so many years preserved and defended herself in the height
of liberty and peace... which is the beginning and end of all civil life. (785)While Milton was concerned with More, parliament, in a forthright assertion of
parliamentary sovereignty, sent Cromwell their revised Instrument of Government,
requiring him to accept all 60 articles. They had done nothing else, deferring Bills
for funding the army and navy and the government so as to force Cromwell to
continue their sitting beyond the mandated five months. But Cromwell deter-
mined to rid himself of their obstruction and, by creative calculation of months on
the basis of 28-day lunar months, dismissed parliament on January 22. Their revised
constitution died with them, along with any hope of raising the much-needed
funds by parliamentary authority, and Cromwell and his council continued to gov-
ern by the terms of the original Instrument.
If Milton regretted the demise of yet another parliament he probably accepted
Cromwell’s action as necessary to assure stability and protect religious toleration.
Thurloe’s spies uncovered a planned Leveller revolt in February and a much more
dangerous royalist uprising scheduled for early March. Shortly before their dismissal
parliament had unleashed its persecuting zeal on John Biddle, a Socinian who had
been arrested on earlier occasions for preaching and publishing anti-Trinitarian
doctrine. Parliament arrested him, convicted him, burned his books, and on Janu-
ary 15, 1655 set about determining a dire punishment for him.^31 Milton, himself on
the way to becoming an anti-Trinitarian if not already one, was no doubt glad to
see that threat deflected by parliament’s dismissal. Released in March, Biddle was
soon arrested again for preaching anti-Trinitarianism to a small Socinian congrega-
tion in London, but in October Cromwell saved him from the grave danger of a
trial by exiling him to the Isles of Scilly with an annual pension. Cromwell’s mounting
concern for public order prompted an ordinance against Quakers and Ranters (Feb-
ruary 15) which affirmed their liberty of conscience but held them liable to arrest as
disturbers of the peace if they disrupted church services. Yet Cromwell intervened
to release George Fox and some of his followers from a particularly harsh imprison-
ment, and in private conversation seemed, Fox thought, quite sympathetic to Quaker
views.^32 In December, 1655 Cromwell called a conference to consider the readmis-
sion of Jews to England; nothing was decided but Cromwell quietly allowed some
Jewish immigration and the continuation of Jewish worship in an existing London