“The So-called Council of State” 1649–1652probably lost on Mylius, that the document was substantially as Mylius wrote it
though somewhat pared down: “Certain things I found it necessary to insert; others
I condensed; I hardly believe the Council wishes it longer” (CPW IV.2, 838). That
same day Mylius wrote back with fulsome thanks and also visited Milton to request
a few changes, about which Milton “made notes in the margin” – he could still see
well enough to do that. Milton also agreed to have his amanuensis make a fair copy
of the English Rescript with Mylius’s changes.^152 On January 9 Milton visited Mylius,
apparently for the first time, showed the Rescript to him, and gave him a copy of
Rowland’s Apologia against his Defensio; in a letter of January 13 Mylius denounced
its “shamelessness” and “worthless and infamous filth” (CPW IV.2, 840–1). On
January 20 Milton wrote to report another snag: he was “present as usual in the
Council” when some members questioned whether Oldenburg’s quarrel with
Bremen might disrupt England’s amicable relations with that Protestant city,^153 and
the vote was again delayed. On February 5, at last, the council dealt with the matter
while Milton was absent, probably due to ill health. But it passed only the English
Rescript, not the more important Safeguard – which was then somehow mislaid.
Milton was hard pressed to explain this to Mylius, who visited him on February 9
to protest that this repulse dishonored him and his count. His diary entry records
Milton’s comment on this contretemps, laying it to the council members’ occupa-
tions and lack of political or cosmopolitan experience: “These men were mechan-
ics, soldiers, home grown, strong and bold enough, in public political matters mostly
inexperienced.” He urged Mylius not to “blame the Commonwealth, or the sounder
men,” noting that “among the forty persons who were in the Council, not more
than three or four had ever been outside England; but among them there were Sons
of Mercury [merchants] and of Mars [soldiers] enough.”^154 That candid comment
reveals something of Milton’s embarrassment when the republic’s leaders revealed
their limitations to cultivated Europeans. The next day Milton wrote to Mylius that
he brought up the matter again, and thought the council had simply failed to grasp
the issue: “most of them seemed to me not to have paid enough attention, rather
than to have been unwilling to concede what you ask, for they thought they had
granted in that document [the Rescript] whatever you wished”(CPW IV.2, 844).
On February 11 the Safeguard was at last approved in an English version and
Milton was ordered to translate it into Latin. The next day Mylius visited Milton to
protest that it did not include his added language extending the Safeguard to the
count’s successors and heirs. Milton explained that he dared not add that language
without express order of the council, since “he had already suffered rather harsh
words and had to let himself be stepped on, because he had showed me the drafts,
and had conducted private correspondence with me.”^155 That Milton may have
received some reprimand is suggested in his letter of February 12 to Whitelocke,
explaining at some length why he thought it allowable to show the drafts to Mylius.
But at the same time he made a last pitch for Mylius, commenting that he thought
the language about successors seems “but just” in view of the count’s advanced