Notes to Chapter 1reprinted Letter of John Rainolds, an Elizabethan Calvinist divine who had refused a
bishopric; it argued that bishops and presbyters originally held the same powers in the
primitive church and that bishops were simply the elected presidents of councils or
synods of elders. Early in 1641 the antiprelatical faction had reprinted that letter as The
Judgement of Doctor Reignolds Concerning Episcopacy, but Ussher builds his case from an
earlier Rainolds text emphasizing the bishops’ primacy, The Summe of the Conference
Betweene John Rainoldes and John Hart (London, 1584), 535–6.
49 See Thomas Corns, “The Freedom of Reader-response”: Milton’s Of Reformation and
Lilburne’s The Christian Mans Triall,” in Freedom and the English Revolution, eds. R. O.
Richardson and G. M. Ridden (Manchester, 1986), 93–103. At some point Milton
presented a copy of this work to one J. H. (probably John Hales, the “learned Friend”
Wotton mentions; see chapter 3, n. 93). The Bodleian copy is inscribed “Ex dono
authoris accepi J.H. (D. 12. 6 Linc).” Conceivably, the tract addresses Hales as the
“Friend.”
50 See chapter 3, pp. 65–6.
51 See Janel Mueller, “Contextualizing Milton’s Nascent Republicanism,” in Paul G.
Stanwood, ed., Of Poetry and Politics (Binghamton, NY, 1995), 261–82.
52 Hall had praised the English bishops Latimer, Ridley, and Grindel as highly honored
Marian martyrs, as had John Foxe in his enormously popular Acts and Monuments (Book
of Martyrs).
53 Peloni Almoni, A Compendious Discourse (London, 1641). While discussing the testi-
mony of Irenaeus (AD 184) about bishops, Almoni observes that “the late unworthy
authour of a Booke intituled, Of Reformation hath found some quarrel against him
[Irenaeus]: but Fevordentius... hath well answered such exceptions” (sig. A 4).
54 Of Prelatical Episcopacy (London, 1641); CPW I, 625–6, 652.
55 Stanley Fish, “Wanting a Supplement”: The Question of Interpretation in Milton’s
Early Prose,” in David Loewenstein and James G. Turner, eds, Politics, Poetics, and
Hermeneutics in Milton’s Prose (Cambridge, 1990), 41–68, claims that Milton’s failure to
argue from scripture despite these statements indicates his uncomfortable sense that, in
fact, scripture does need the supplement of commentary. Milton’s point, however, is
that his opponents have already conceded the Presbyterian interpretation of these scrip-
ture verses.
56 As Thomas Kranidas points out in “Words, Words, Words, and the Word: Milton’s Of
Prelatical Episcopacy,” MS 16 (1982), 154–5.
57 Corns, Uncloistered Virtue, 19–26.
58 Smectymnuus, A Vindication (London, 1641). Hall published a 103-page answer to this
tract on July 28, misleadingly entitled A Short Answer to the Tedious Vindication of
Smectymnuus (London, 1641), but thereafter he gave over the contest.
59 Animadversions (London, 1641); CPW I, 664.
60 One model for this is the Cynic–Stoic Diatribe. See Maureen Thum, “Milton’s Diatribal
Voice: The Integration and Transformation of a Generic Paradigm in Animadversions,”
MS 30 (1993), 3–25. Hall himself had made earlier use of this common polemic method.
61 The allusion is to Hall’s verse satires, Virgidemiarum (London, 1597–8) containing Tooth-
lesse Satyrs and Byting Satyrs. Milton targets as well the imaginary voyage or dystopia
that Hall published under the name Mercurius Britannicus, Mundus alter & idem (Lon-
don, 1605). See Richard McCabe, “The Forms and Methods of Milton’s Animadver-
Notes to Chapter 5