“Our Expiring Libertie” 1658–1660cil’s servants, including Milton who was to receive £86.12s. of his annual salary of
£200.^55 General Monk in Scotland repudiated the coup as a military usurpation of
the legal civilian government and threatened to march on England in parliament’s
defense. The Rump’s republican defenders claimed that it was the only relic of civil
authority remaining and insisted that the sword remain subject to the civil power.^56
The army’s defenders invoked salus populi again and claimed that the army had a
right to represent and act for the people, as a more adequate embodiment of popu-
lar sovereignty than the Rump.^57 Vane and Henry Stubbe tried again to unite par-
liament and army around proposals for a representative parliament and some sort of
select senate to guarantee fundamentals.^58
During the six weeks of the Rump’s dissolution (October 13 to December 26)
Milton sketched out in two unpublished papers some proposals about government
that he was to promote over the next several months as he tried to deal with one
crisis after another. Both embody his core republican principles, but modified by
the political reality of army power and the royalist threat during “this distracted
anarchy” (CPW VII, 336). He would have the Rump Parliament (filled up by
some process guaranteeing election of the well-affected) become the permanent
Grand Council, recognizing that it is the only remaining vestige of an elected leg-
islature, and more important, that it is committed to a republic. He eschews any
version of the army’s Select Senate plan and also Harrington’s very complex model,
preferring the simple structure of 1649–53: a unicameral legislature and an execu-
tive Council of State.
A conversation on the evening of the army coup with some unidentified friend
close to the Council of Officers evidently galvanized Milton to dictate a letter to
that friend the next day (October 20), with recommendations for a settlement which
he directed the friend to pass along to the officers, or not, as he thought best.^59
While the “Letter to a Friend” is a common polemic genre, some such encounter
probably did occur much as Milton reports it; indeed, this may have been the start
of Milton’s association with a loose republican–radical coalition that attempted to
deal with the ongoing crises and stave off the restoration of the monarchy. Such a
group would find Milton’s pen a welcome asset, and his several treatises of these
months are closely related to others of similar intent. The designated friend may
have been Vane. His proposals show considerable sympathy for Lambert and the
army, while Milton was harshly critical of them, but both men recognized that any
settlement would have to address the basic desires and fears of both factions.^60 Milton
was furious with the army for dissolving the parliament once more and he de-
nounced their actions, past and present, echoing contemporary jeremiad language.
Their dissolution of the Rump in 1653 was “without just autority”; happily they
confessed their “backsliding from the good old cause” and restored it; but now they
are again “relapsing &... backsliding” into the same fault (324–5). Though not
blameless, the Rump has “deserved much more of these nations, then they have
undeserved,” and God indicated his pleasure in their restitution with the signal