“For the Sake of Liberty” 1652–1654having urged on the crime in books that revile the sacred spirit of the king (1,050–
1). The Clamor concludes with an ode eulogizing Salmasius and a 245-line poem
“Against that Foul Rascal John Milton, the Advocate of Parricide and Parricides”
that abuses Milton in scurrilous iambics and derogatory epithets: “an ignoble, com-
monplace little fellow,” “a great stinking pestilence,” a “swindler, so insignificant,
so puny,” a “foolish shrew-mouse” twitching the mane of the lion Salmasius, a
“dung-heap,” “a dark pettifogger, pure corruption and poison,” “an unnameable
buffoon,” a fool who dares to teach the great Salmasius Latin as “a pig teaches
Minerva, [or] an evil Thersites teaches a Nestor” (1,078–80).
As summer gave way to autumn and winter, Milton must have found the politi-
cal situation worrying. Tensions were rapidly mounting between the army and the
parliament, whose members were blamed for procrastinating about needed re-
forms and enriching themselves at public expense. The Dutch war was unpopular
with much of the army and the populace. Financially it imposed a heavy burden,
as the need to build new ships, maintain the fleet, and pay sailors was met by
confiscations of royalist property, increased taxation, and reductions in the size of
the army. London merchants suffered serious losses from seizures of English mer-
chantmen, and Denmark’s closure of the Sound cut off the Baltic trade in pitch,
tar, hemp, and masts, all necessary to the fleet. Everyone suffered from depleted
supplies of coal. In August, 1652 the council of army officers had “divers meet-
ings,” resulting in a petition to parliament for successive parliaments, broad tolera-
tion for Protestants, an alternative to tithes, law reform, poor relief, and other
reforms.^62 But parliament, council, and officers came to no agreement;^63 a pam-
phlet war raged over tithes, Owen’s Proposals, and the excise tax; and radical con-
gregations urged on by sectarian and Fifth Monarchist preachers demanded a new
representative body comprised of men of truth, fearing God and hating covetous-
ness. In November, Whitelocke reported a meeting between Cromwell and him-
self during which Cromwell reportedly speculated, “What if a man should take it
upon him to be King.”^64 If true, the remark may reveal Cromwell’s keen ambi-
tion, or simply that he was thinking aloud about a governmental structure conso-
nant with English tradition and affording some balance to the single-house
parliament. Along with all this, Milton heard persistent rumors that Salmasius’s
reply to him was imminent.^65 More’s preface predicted that the Dutch will con-
quer the English “as easily and happily as Salmasius will finish off Milton” (CPW
IV.2, 1,045). On January 21, 1653 Vossius wrote that some parts of Salmasius’s
reply were in press and would be devastating: he “sometimes calls Milton a cat-
amite, and says that he was the vilest prostitute in Italy.” Heinsius answered that
that particular charge is “pure calumny,” that in fact Milton made enemies in Italy
for his “over-strict morals” and disputes over religion.^66
I believe that Milton’s sonnet beginning “When I consider how my light is
spent, / Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,” was prompted by these
personal and public anxieties and probably written late in 1652.^67 Various dates