“Our Expiring Libertie” 1658–1660Milton probably published his Brief Notes on Griffith’s sermon during the second
week in April.^101 He refers to Griffith’s imprisonment, and by April 20 Roger
L’Estrange had published an answer to Brief Notes, titled with cruel wit, No Blinde
Guides, and carrying the epigraph, “If the Blinde lead the Blinde, Both shall fall into
the Ditch.”^102 Neither printer nor bookseller was willing to put his name to Milton’s
tract, intimidated no doubt by the warrant issued on March 28 for the arrest of the
bookseller Livewell Chapman, the principal conduit for republican and radical trea-
tises. Brief Notes addresses Monk as one audience, affecting still to believe his “pub-
lic promises and declarations” in support of a commonwealth and vehemently
denouncing Griffith for supposing “most audaciously and falsely” that he would
renounce them. But then he challenges Monk to follow through on them quickly,
to “deterr such insinuating slanderers” (CPW VII, 471). He also addresses the Pres-
byterians, instancing Griffith’s sermon as evidence that the royalists intend to sub-
ject all Puritans alike to ruin, perpetual bondage, and vengeance. Milton offers a
trenchant and scornful analysis of Griffith’s scripture exegesis and logic, and reprises
his own often-repeated arguments justifying the regicide and the Commonwealth:
all magistrates are equally the Lord’s anointed; God himself showed preference for
a commonwealth; the English had a right to abolish kingship since all forms of
government are always in the choice of a free people; free commonwealths are best
for “civil, vertuous and industrious Nations, abounding with prudent men worthie
to govern” (481). But now, very reluctantly, he backs away from his earlier fierce
repudiation of any Single Person and offers support to those who, during March,
were urging Monk to become Protector or King.^103 If the degenerate English peo-
ple, despairing “of our own vertue, industrie, and the number of our able men,”
seek “thralldom” under a king, Milton grudgingly allows that they might choose
one – Monk – who has stood with the people against tyranny:
[W]e may then, conscious of our own unworthiness to be governd better, sadly betake
us to our befitting thraldom: yet chusing out of our own number one who hath best
aided the people, and best merited against tyrannie, the space of a raign or two we
may chance to live happily anough, or tolerably. (482)Significantly, he specifies a temporal limit for such a “raign,” refusing to give up
hope that the people in time will learn better republican values.
In denying Griffith’s claim that monarchy is the “fundamental law” of England,
Milton invokes the principle of Tenure, that a free people have always the right to
change their government: “how could our forefathers binde us to any certain form
of Government, more then we can binde our posteritie?” (481). In his point-by-
point answer to Milton, L’Estrange picks up on the very evident inconsistency: “If
no certain form of Goverment can bind our Posterity,” he demands, “what will
become of your Standing Council?” He notes also that Milton would allow the
people at any time to “Assemble, and Tumult, under the colour of a new Choyce.”^104