“For the Sake of Liberty” 1652–1654“friendly desires concerning Peace” between England and Holland and asking the
ambassadors to transmit to King Frederick parliament’s Declaration of the causes of
war (Milton’s Scriptum Parlamenti).^23 The sticking point in the treaty negotiations
was England’s insistence that Denmark accord it commercial privileges, customs,
and tariffs as favorable as those already granted to the United Provinces. In Septem-
ber Milton wrote two letters about the articles under dispute, in one of which the
council affects to disbelieve the ambassadors’ claim that they have no authority to
alter existing customs and tariff arrangements.^24 Negotiations broke down as the
English, buoyed with their sea-victory over the United Provinces at Kentish Knock
(September 28), decided they could not conclude a treaty with the Danes who
were traditional allies of the Dutch.^25 Milton evidently translated the council’s curt
letter of October 19, protesting that parliament’s Declaration must have removed
“the least Dissatisfaction concerning the Justice and Candor” of England’s proceed-
ings in the Dutch war, and insisting that its treaty proposals are entirely “cleare, &
moderate.”^26 After the Danes impounded English merchant ships in the harbor of
Copenhagen and the English responded by impounding all Danish ships in English
harbors, Milton wrote a final letter for parliament to King Frederick (November 9,
1652) refusing his explanation of the affair and appointing Richard Bradshaw, the
envoy to Hamburg, to negotiate (CPW V.2, 634–5). But before the year was out
the Danes joined the Dutch in the war, closing the Baltic to English shipping.
Though Milton’s official duties concerned foreign affairs, he was surely aware of
intensifying domestic conflicts in the months after the Battle of Worcester. Cromwell
seemed torn between his conservative impulse to promote stability by restoring
some traditional institutions, and his reformist impulse to support radical soldiers
and sectaries who were calling for wholesale restructuring of the legal system, broad
toleration, abolition of tithes, and poor relief. Bulstrode Whitelocke reports a con-
ference involving a few parliament members and officers in December, 1651, at
which some, including Cromwell, were willing to consider a settlement with “some-
thing of monarchical power.”^27 But for millenarian-minded sectaries any such set-
tlement would be a flagrant repudiation of King Jesus, and for committed republicans
any “single person” was deeply repugnant. The Rump Parliament was subject to
such conservative–radical conflicts as it debated law reform, poor relief, and church
matters, while outside its chambers Lilburne and the Levellers produced new pam-
phlets and Winstanley presented his blueprint of a communist Digger Utopia to
Cromwell.^28 Parliament, urged from all sides to set a terminus to its sitting, fixed
that date as November 3, 1654, but could not settle on how to exclude the disaf-
fected from the new elections, and who would judge the qualifications of those
elected.^29
During the spring and summer of 1652 Milton viewed with alarm the growing
threat to his cherished goals of religious liberty and church disestablishment. The
ascendancy of Cromwell and the army halted the establishment of a national
Presbyterian system, but many in government and out of it found the upsurge of