10
“I... Still Bear Up and Steer Right
Onward” 1654–1658
During the remaining years of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate, Milton’s diplo-
matic correspondence comprised around ninety known letters, translations, and
treaty documents (and probably more). He wrote several protests about commer-
cial matters, but his Latin was especially in demand for the Protector’s impassioned
appeals for Protestant unity in the face of the Catholic menace, in response to the
massacre of the Waldensians and Sweden’s conflicts with other Protestant powers.
During periods of relative leisure Milton pressed ahead with several projects: bring-
ing his History of Britain up to the Norman Conquest, working on a Latin Thesaurus
and on the theological compendium that was to become De Doctrina Christiana, and
perhaps beginning Paradise Lost. He also delivered his final round in the Salmasius–
More controversy, responding to More’s answer to his Defensio Secunda with a
scathing and very personal treatise, the Pro Se Defensio.
Milton made no explicit comment on the direction taken by the Protectorate
government during these years, constrained by having chosen to continue his ap-
pointment in the Secretariat. But he had few close associates in government after
his republican friends, Vane and Bradshaw, had broken with Cromwell. He was
surely disappointed by some of the Protector’s policies that went directly counter to
his advice in the Defensio Secunda about church disestablishment and the enlarge-
ment of personal liberty. He shows no sympathy for the “court party” seeking to
settle a new dynasty in Cromwell and he still believes that a republic is the best form
of government for free men. But he is less disposed than his republican friends to
make a sovereign and representative parliament the sine qua non of a republic, since
religious freedom had proved to be safer with Cromwell than with any of his par-
liaments. Also, as Milton prepared state letters for Cromwell, he no doubt came to
admire his leadership in foreign affairs and especially in promoting European Prot-
estant solidarity against Rome. He was also pragmatist enough to recognize that
Cromwell’s government was the only viable immediate option. As he continued to