“Our Expiring Libertie” 1658–1660Way, joining his voice with those who, recognizing the agitation for a free parlia-
ment as a Cavalier Trojan horse, were imploring Monk to continue the Rump in
power.^75 His title suggests that he also wanted to engage Harrington’s tract of Feb-
ruary 6, The Wayes and Meanes Wherby an Equal & Lasting Commonwealth May be
suddenly Introduced and Perfectly founded, which calls for a free parliament structured
according to his model; the right institutions, Harrington firmly believed, would
preserve a commonwealth in England even if royalists were elected.^76 Milton again
urges, as in the Letter to a Friend and the Proposalls, the simple expedient of preserv-
ing the status quo, which at this juncture means filling up and then perpetuating the
Rump. He blames the failure to establish a commonwealth earlier on the “distur-
bances, interruptions and dissolutions which the Parlament hath had, partly from
the impatient or disaffected people, partly from some ambitious leaders in the armie”
- Lambert’s faction most recently (CPW VII, 365). He also warns against the “fond
conceit of somthing like a duke of Venice,” giving some credence to the widespread
suspicion that Monk,^77 or more likely Lambert, might be “suttly driving on under
that prettie notion his own ambitious ends to a crown” (374–5). The tract expati-
ates at great length on the evils of monarchy, argues the superiority of common-
wealth government and God’s own preference for it, and expands the judiciary and
educational functions the Proposalls had vested in local committees. He now imag-
ines councils comprised of the local “nobilitie and chief gentry” (383), thereby
offering some species of self-government to those vociferously demanding repre-
sentation in a free parliament, and also exploring further the concept of federal–
regional power-sharing.
He cannot, however, forbear warning the members of the legislature he would
perpetuate who are unsound on toleration, that he who seeks “violently to impose
what he will have to be the only religon, upon other men’s consciences... bears a
minde not only unchristian and irreligious, but inhuman also and barbarous” (380).
Separation of church and state is, he again insists, the only route to peace: parlia-
mentary elections could then be free of factional strife, as “every one strives to
chuse him whom he takes to be of his religion; and everie faction hath the plea of
Gods cause.” Also, “[a]mbitious leaders of armies would then have no hypocritical
pretences so ready at hand to contest with Parlaments, yea to dissolve them and
make way to their own tyrannical designs: [and]... I verily suppose ther would be
then no more pretending to a fifth monarchie of the saints” (380). This caustic
judgment may encompass Cromwell and the Barebones Parliament, but it targets
most obviously the recent machinations of Lambert and Fleetwood. As worthy
models he points to the United Provinces, which enjoyed concord and prosperity
when they left off persecuting the Arminians, and to Poland, which enjoyed most
peace “when religion was most at libertie among them” (382).
But before the treatise in this form could be published events overtook Milton’s
plan, so he added a preface sometime after February 21 to adapt it to the new
conditions (353–5). The enigmatic Monk, still proclaiming publicly his commit-