“With Dangers Compast Round” 1660–1665was applied to by message from the King, and invited to write for the Court, but his
answer was, that such a behaviour would be very inconsistent with his former
conduct, for he had never yet employed his pen against his conscience.”^64
Life at Bunhill was peaceful, but Milton’s anxiety and dismay over the political
scene no doubt intensified in 1663–5 as, from his perspective, the Restoration
settlement went from bad to worse. During the parliamentary recess Charles II set
forth on December 26, 1662 a royal Declaration proposing to dispense with some
provisions of the Act of Uniformity, allowing peaceable Nonconformists to wor-
ship in their own way. Like many dissenters, Milton would have taken no pleasure
in that move, believing that Charles designed it to open the door to Roman Catho-
lics. On May 21, 1662 Charles had married the Portuguese Infanta, Catherine of
Braganza, whom he had compared at first sight to a bat; her Roman Catholic
entourage and that of Queen Mother Henrietta Maria exacerbated anxieties about
widespread Catholic influence at court and encouraged rumors that Charles himself
was a secret Catholic. During the next session of parliament (February 18–July 27,
1663) Charles’s tolerationist gesture was fiercely opposed and defeated. On July 1,
1664 parliament, alarmed by petitions and letters from “Fanatics, Sectaries, and
Non-conformists,” passed the notorious Conventicles Act prohibiting any meeting
of more than five non-family members for religious services not conforming to the
liturgy of the Church of England. Punishments escalated from fines to imprison-
ment to transportation to the colonies for seven years or, for peers, payment of
£100.^65 On October 31, 1665, in the midst of a new Dutch war and in response to
the discovery of a planned uprising by a few former republican soldiers, parliament
passed the Five-Mile Act. It forbade all Nonconformist ex-ministers or teachers
from settling within five miles of any city or corporate town or place where they
had formerly preached or taught, effectively banishing them to obscure villages
where they would have no contacts or means of livelihood. The Act also mandated
that ministers and all teachers of either sex attend Church of England services and
take an oath not to seek any alteration in church or state.^66 This completed the so-
called Clarendon Code, which had been vigorously promoted in parliament by
Anglican gentry. Enforcement, though, was spotty, so dissent managed to survive
and in some places to thrive.
Milton’s enemies did not forget him, and that fact must have caused him con-
tinuing frustration, since he dared not answer attacks. At the same time, he prob-
ably felt some relief in being freed from the necessity of answering such polemical
challenges, and thereby able to concentrate wholly on worthier projects. On the
anniversary of the regicide (January 30, 1663), in a sermon preached before Charles
II, Robert South denounced Milton as a “blind Adder [who] has spit so much
Poison on the King’s Person and Cause.”^67 That year also James Heath denounced
Milton, “since stricken with blindness,” for his writings against Salmasius and espe-
cially his “impudent and blasphemous Libel, called Iconoklastes.”^68 In February, 1663
his old enemy Roger L’Estrange attacked the Tenure again, and in June of that year,