“Our Expiring Libertie” 1658–1660anything but utopian, though he shows increasing interest in devising a federal
system in which, through participation in local governmental and educational insti-
tutions, citizens could be exercised in and fitted for the responsibilities of republi-
can government. In retrospect, after Cromwell’s death the Restoration seems
inevitable and these proposals seem desperate. But that was not obvious at the time:
until the very end Milton could hope that some holding operation might stabilize
the situation until a “free commonwealth” could be more securely settled.
On the very eve of the Restoration, when most of his party had run to ground,
Milton continued to urge his version of the Good Old Cause. Blind, vulnerable,
and already a hated target for royalist revenge because of Eikonoklastes and the Defensio,
he continued with reckless courage to call attention to himself by his writings,
placing himself in danger of prison or even execution. This was the more remark-
able, since he ran the serious risk of not being able to finish the great epic he had
begun. He clearly felt a profound need to make a last desperate effort to recall his
countrymen to their better selves, or, failing that, to denounce their degeneracy
and bear witness to God’s ways with England in the resounding prophetic voice of
a new Jeremiah.
“Evills & Discords Incurable”
On September 4 Oliver’s elder son Richard Cromwell was proclaimed in West-
minster and the City of London, in a progress filled with pomp and pageantry. To
the relief of many, his succession met with general acceptance from men of sub-
stance who expected his regime to continue the conservative trajectory of the final
Oliverian years: gentry and lawyers who were pleased with the establishment of
hereditary succession, many royalists who had by now recovered their sequestered
estates, and senior army officers. But there was ferment beneath the surface: repub-
licans and commonwealthsmen believed the Protector and the new House of Lords
had usurped the rights of the sovereign people; millenarian sectaries still dreamed of
a rule of the saints; many in the army thought the Cromwellians had betrayed the
religious and social ideals of the revolution. A power struggle soon developed be-
tween the Cromwellian “Court Party” and the army officers meeting regularly at
Wallingford House, even as the slogan, the “Good Old Cause,” was increasingly
invoked by the army rank and file and by republicans meeting regularly at the
home of Milton’s friend, Vane. One worrying manifestation was a flood of peti-
tions and proclamations seeking the appointment of Charles Fleetwood as com-
mander-in-chief of the army, independent of Richard. The mounting debt and the
long-standing arrears of army pay led the Council of State to call a parliament for
January 27, 1659.
Milton continued his work as Latin Secretary. He provided a pair of letters (dated
September 6, 1658) from Richard to Louis XIV and Mazarin informing them of