“Between Private Walls” 1645–1649posed by her own subjects, “who detested... thir Subjection to the Monarchie of
a Woeman, a peece of manhood not every day to be found among Britans” (74).
Even Boadicea, normally portrayed as a British heroine, is in Milton’s account
barbarous and foolish in leading a military uprising against the Romans with “no
rule, no foresight, no forecast,... such confusion, such impotence, as seem’d likest
not to a Warr, but to the wild hurrey of a distracted Woeman, with as mad a Crew
at her heeles.”^107 Virtually the only exception in his roll-call of wicked or foolish
female rulers is Leir’s daughter Cordelia, whose nephews rose against her, “not
bearing that a Kingdom should be govern’d by a Woman,” but they had no warrant
to “raise that quarrel against a Woman so worthy” (25). Another recurrent motif
finds lessons for religious liberty and separation of church and state. Britain was led
to profess Christianity by King Lucius, but true faith appears “more sincere...
without publick Authority or against it” (97). Early bishops came to a council at
their own charge, “far above the Presbyters of our Age; who like well to sit in
Assembly on the publick stipend” (116). King Ethelbert and multitudes of his peo-
ple were converted by Augustine but that king compelled none, having learned
“that Christian Religion ought to be voluntary, not compell’d” (189).
For his first book, the beginnings of the nation to the coming of Julius Caesar,
Milton found no worthy history to follow, whether because literacy came long
after, or records were lost or destroyed, or, as he seems rather to suspect, because
the wise men of those times perceived “not only how unworthy, how pervers, how
corrupt, but often how ignoble, how petty, how below all History the persons and
thir actions were” (1–2). He protests the dubious or fabulous character of all the old
stories from pre-Roman Britain – Albion, Brutus, Locrine, Dunwallo, Lud – but
has decided to relate them anyway, as possibly containing “reliques of something
true,” and as repositories for poets who “by thir Art will know, how to use them
judiciously” (3). For early Britain he perforce relies almost entirely on Geoffrey of
Monmouth, promising to avoid what is “impossible and absurd” (9), but inviting a
thoroughly skeptical reading of his reports. In Book III he rejects categorically the
stories of King Arthur, based as they are on Geoffrey’s “fabulous book” written 600
years after their supposed date and unconfirmed by any independent historian. His
tone reveals his annoyance that he himself was misled into accepting “Legends for
good story” when he earlier considered writing an Arthuriad (166).
With Book II he turns with relief to reliable Roman historians in whom “day-
light and truth meet us with a cleer dawn” (37): Caesar, Sallust, Tacitus, Suetonius,
Dio, Diodorus. He follows them closely, condensing, summarizing, and occasion-
ally clarifying points through minor additions, deletions, and changes in organiza-
tion. He explains the absence of British historians contemporary with the Romans
by the principle that cultures get the historians they deserve:
Worthy deeds are not often destitute of worthy relaters: as by a certain Fate great Acts
and great Eloquence have most commonly gon hand in hand.... He whose just and