Notes to Chapter 138 For Williams’s association with Vane see Masson, IV, 395. In a letter to the City of
Providence Williams spoke of Vane as “my kinde freind and ancient acquaintance” and
in a letter of July 12, 1654 to John Winthrop referred to the language lessons with
Milton: The Correspondence of Roger Williams, ed. Glenn La Fantasie, 2 vols (Hanover,
NH and London, 1988), II, 389, 393. Williams wrote a letter to Mrs Anne Sadleir,
daughter of his old patron Sir Edward Coke and aunt of Milton’s pupil Cyriack Skinner
(undated but perhaps sometime in 1652), in which he recommended Milton’s
Eikonoklastes to that ardent royalist. She replied: “If I be not mistaken, that is he that has
wrot a book of the lawfulnes of devorce, and if report sais true he had at that time two
or thre wives living. This perhaps were good Doctrine in new England, but it is most
abominable in old, England. For his book that he wrot against the late King that you
would have me read, you should have taken notice of gods judgment upon him who
stroke him with blindnes” (Correspondence, I, 378–9).
39 Williams’s letter continues: “Grammar rules begin to be esteem’d a Tyrannie. I taught
a young Gentlemen, a Parliamt mans Sons (as we teach our children English) by words,
phrazes, and constant talk” (Correspondence, II, 393).
40 The Fourth Paper Presented by Major Butler (London, 1652), preface and p. l7. A marginal
note referring to “that great Controversie of the Bloody Tenet, between Mr. Cotton and
my self” proves that this anonymous work is by Williams. The tract is offered as a
defense of four principles by Major William Butler; one of the signers was Henry Vane’s
brother Charles. Williams included a copy of the 15 Proposals but said he had not yet
seen a copy of the doctrinal fundamentals.
41 Williams, The Bloody Tenent yet More Bloody (London, 1652, c. April 28), 319. Williams
also published that month The Hireling Ministry None of Christs (London, 1652).
42 Vane’s speeches are not on record, but his principles were well known. Robert Baillie,
the Scots representative to the Westminster Assembly, reported that “Cromwell and
Vane [would]... have a libertie for all religions, without any exceptions” and that
Vane argued “prolixlie, earnestlie, and passionatelie... for a full libertie of conscience
to all religions,” Baillie, Letters and Journals... 1637–1662, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1841),
II, 230, 235. Vane’s brother Charles, briefly envoy to Portugal, was one of the petition-
ers against Owen’s scheme for an established church. Milton gave Charles Vane an
elegant folio presentation copy of his Defensio with a title-page inscription. See chapter
8, n. 108.
43 “Captain or Colonel,” “I did but prompt the age,” “A book was writ of late,” “On the
New Forcers of Conscience,” and the Fairfax sonnet.
44 In the same month (May, 1652) John Lilburne from his exile abroad, in his own interest
paid tribute to that Miltonic stance, urging Cromwell and the army officers to take the
“excellent and faithfull advice” of their “valiant and learned Champion” who, after
routing Salmasius “turnes his speech [in the peroration to the Defensio] to his Masters
that had set him on worke,” addressing them “with much faithfullness and Freedom.”
Lilburne, As You Were (Amsterdam, 1652); LR III, 219–20.
45 It was first printed with some variations by Edward Phillips in Letters of State (1694); this
title in TM is crossed out and Phillips omits it as too occasional. The Fairfax, Cromwell,
and Vane sonnets (and that to Cyriack Skinner on Milton’s blindness) could not be
included in the revised edition of Poems (1673) in the Restoration milieu. My citations
are based on the version in TM.
Notes to Chapter 9