“With Dangers Compast Round” 1660–166512
“In Darknes, and with Dangers
Compast Round” 1660–1665
In the years after the Restoration, Milton’s worst political fears were realized. Sev-
eral of his closest associates were brutally executed and others imprisoned. Anglicanism
triumphed and religious dissent of all sorts was harshly repressed. The press was
rigorously censored. The court of Charles II was awash in licentiousness, scandal,
and Catholic influence. Happily, however, his worst personal fears were not real-
ized: though he lived in fear of his life for months, to the surprise of many he
escaped a traitor’s death or any formal sentence. But his case was bad enough: he
was imprisoned for some weeks in 1660; his Eikonoklastes and Defensio were publicly
burned by the hangman; he lost Vane, Fleetwood, and other close friends to the
executioner; and the plague returned in virulent force in 1665. Also, his domestic
life was rife with tension and difficulty: he had to move house often, his finances
were strained, his daughters resented the circumstances of their life with him, and
he could neither understand nor cope with their defiance.
He had, however, his consolations. His friends remained staunchly loyal, man-
aging by various strategies to win his reprieve, hiding him in time of danger, and
providing the assistance a blind man needs in managing his affairs. He had friends,
students, and amanuenses to read to him and write for him, though not with the
regularity he wanted and needed. A third marriage brought order and domestic
comfort to his life, though his daughters complained bitterly about their new step-
mother. The Muse continued to visit nightly and Paradise Lost was taking final
shape, though reportedly Milton’s poetic vein flowed only for six months of the
year. The rest of his time was most likely spent bringing De Doctrina Christiana
close to completion. The primary amanuensis for that treatise, Jeremy Picard, was
associated with Milton in 1658–60, but Milton would have had little time for it in
the frantic months when he was writing against the Restoration; no doubt he took
it up again when he could, probably giving something like final form to his doctri-
nal positions and arguments by the mid-1660s, with a view to seeking publication