“With Dangers Compast Round” 1660–1665regard for his learning and talents, and also from a sense that to punish this interna-
tionally famous blind scholar would seem meanspirited and prove counterproduc-
tive.
Milton’s supporters did not protest, and perhaps even encouraged, a resolution
on June 16 urging Charles to call in Milton’s Eikonoklastes and Defensio and John
Goodwin’s Obstructors of Justice, to have those books burned by the hangman, and
to order the authors arrested by the Commons sergeant-at-arms.^9 That resolution
might serve to assure Milton’s enemies that he would be separately apprehended
and punished and so need not be listed among the twenty, though Goodwin was
still included. Milton could then remain in hiding until the Act of Oblivion were
signed, after which the resolution against him would presumably be moot. That
some such plan was in play is suggested by the timing: on June 27 the king in
council ordered that the proclamation against Milton and Goodwin be issued, but
that was not done until August 13, after the House of Lords had debated for a
month about imposing fiercer penalties on still more persons. They did not name
Milton, but he was not home free until a compromise Act of Oblivion was final-
ized by the two houses.
The king’s August 13 proclamation vents outrage against Milton’s and Good-
win’s books, and seems to propose punishing the books in lieu of the persons.
Milton’s two books are said to contain “sundry Treasonable Passages against Us and
our Government, and most Impious Endeavors to justifie the horrid and unmatchable
Murther of Our late Dear Father, of Glorious Memory,” while Goodwin’s is de-
scribed in less inflammatory language, as written “in defence of the Traiterous Sen-
tence.” But then, instead of the expected directive to apprehend these men, the
proclamation states that they “are both fled, or so obscure themselves, that no
endeavors used for their apprehension can take effect, whereby they might be brought
to Legal Tryal, and deservedly receive condigne punishment for their Treasons and
Offences.”^10 It provides instead that sheriffs, magistrates, justices of the peace, and
university officials confiscate all copies of these books and cause them to be “publickly
burnt by the hand of the Common Hangman.” The proclamation, reprinted in full
in Mercurius Publicus,^11 was executed promptly: on August 27 several copies of Milton’s
and Goodwin’s books were solemnly burned at the Sessions House in the Old
Bailey, and perhaps also in subsequent weeks and in other venues, though appar-
ently not at Oxford.^12
The Act of Free and General Pardon, Indemnity, and Oblivion was passed by
both houses on August 28 and signed by the king the next day. It excepted 102 per-
sons by name, but not Milton. Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, John Bradshaw, and
Thomas Pride and twenty other dead regicides were attainted of treason, their estates
were confiscated, and they were made subject to whatever penalties parliament
might impose. Forty-nine living regicides were condemned to death: twenty
had escaped abroad and nineteen had their executions suspended because they had
surrendered in expectation of the mercy the King’s Proclamation at Breda