“I... Steer Right Onward” 1654–1658tic, blasphemous and execrable opinions,” but parliament thought that much too
mild for Nayler. He barely escaped the death penalty and was punished savagely: on
December 18 he was given more than three hundred lashes; on December 27 his
forehead was branded with the letter B, his tongue was bored through with a red-
hot iron, and he was remanded to Bridewell at parliament’s pleasure. Cromwell,
through various spokesmen, attempted to influence parliament toward moderation
and on December 26 questioned their legal right to proceed without his consent,
but he did not countermand their order.^85 In a speech to some army officers on
February 27, 1657 he used this case to argue the need for a second house of parlia-
ment: “they [this parliament] stand in need of a check or balancing power for the
Case of James Nayler might happen to be your own case. By their judicial power
they fall upon life and member, and doth the Instrument enable me to control it?”^86
For Milton the great event of autumn, 1656 was his new marriage after more
than four years as a widower. As required by law, the intention of marriage was
published three times, between Milton and Katherine Woodcock of the parish of
St Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury. Milton’s early biographers say nothing about
how and when they met, or how long they had known each other, Edward Phillips
reporting only that Katherine was the daughter of one “Captain Woodcock of
Hackney” (EL 77). What claim Katherine’s father, William Woodcock, had to that
rank is unclear; he was apparently a spendthrift who at his death in 1642 or 1643 left
his wife and four daughters very badly off. Her cousin, Sir Thomas Vyner, a gold-
smith, banker, and alderman of London, who was also a treasurer for funds to
relieve the Waldensians, may have known Milton and promoted the marriage to
secure Katherine’s future.^87 She was then twenty-eight and living in London; Milton
was within a month of his forty-eighth birthday. They were married on November
12, probably at the Guildhall, by Sir John Dethicke, an alderman and justice of the
peace.^88 The Marriage Act, with which Milton was in entire accord, called for a
civil ceremony. If Katherine was, as I think, the subject of Milton’s sonnet, “Mee
thought I saw my late espoused saint,”^89 then this marriage, though brief, was blessed:
Milton found in Katherine “love, sweetness, goodness,” and delight. As mistress of
the house in Petty France she evidently made Milton’s life and that of his three
daughters easier, more comfortable, and more pleasant; John Ward noted, on the
authority of Milton’s daughter Deborah, that she was “Very indulgent to her chil-
dren in law.”^90 Anne was then ten, Mary eight, and Deborah four-and-a-half.
In January, 1657 a plot to assassinate Cromwell and burn Whitehall in prepara-
tion for a royalist invasion from Europe gave additional impetus to parliament’s
disposition to settle the government in more traditional, monarchical forms, to
make Cromwell king, and to secure the succession. They put an end on January 29
to the thoroughly unpopular major-generals, and the policing of the counties re-
verted to the ordinary magistracy. From February to May they were at work on a
new constitution with Cromwell’s monarchy as its capstone, but after much vacil-
lation he refused that title on May 8, moved especially by the continuing fierce