“With Dangers Compast Round” 1660–1665Milton’s Defensio – more than three hundred pages of tiny print, in Latin, which
dealt only with Milton’s first three chapters.^21 No doubt Milton obtained an early
copy and had it read to him, chafing at insults he could not now answer. He heard
himself traduced as “a teacher in an insignificant London school, [with]... a
dishonest mind, an evil tongue, an atrocious style,” and as “a libeler, a sycophant,
an imposter,” “a dwarf in stature, a giant in malice” who is “blind with rage, not
less in mind than in body.” Especially galling, no doubt, were Salmasius’s jibes
that many who know Milton “earnestly deny that Milton himself knows Latin or
can write it,” that the faults in Milton’s early Latin poetry show him to be a bad
Latinist, and that the true author of the Defensio is a “French teacher from the
lower school.”^22
While living in Holborn, Milton would have learned the fates of several friends
and associates. Vane was in the Tower under threat of execution but with some
possibility of reprieve. Charles Fleetwood and John Goodwin were incapacitated
from holding office. Overton evidently escaped punishment. Nedham fled to Am-
sterdam but returned soon after the Act of Oblivion secured his safety and took up
the practice of medicine; his escape from all punishment occasioned much wonder
and protest.^23 Soon Milton had news of the trials of twenty-nine regicides (October
11–16), and of the first ten grisly executions by hanging, disembowelling, drawing,
and quartering (October 13–19).^24 The details of the executions were fully reported
in the newsbooks, and Milton could hardly help hearing the mobs in the streets as
they returned from these bloody occasions.
One autumn day during the parliamentary recess (September 13–November 6),
Milton was greatly surprised to find himself arrested and imprisoned by James
Norfolke, sergeant-at-arms of the Commons.^25 Apparently, Norfolke did not think
that the August 13 proclamation against Milton had been canceled by the Act of
Oblivion. We can imagine Milton’s anxiety and the difficulties he endured as a
vulnerable blind man, wholly dependent on his jailors for every necessity of life,
and unsure whether he would soon – or ever – be freed. Unfortunately, those who
could tell us when, where, how long, and under what conditions he was incarcer-
ated, and how he reacted to that situation, avoid that topic, being eager in the
Restoration milieu to play down Milton’s “treasonable” politics. Edward Phillips
avoids all reference to Milton’s imprisonment and Cyriack Skinner alludes to it
obliquely, emphasizing, perhaps misleadingly, its short duration: “For hee early
sued out his Pardon; and by means of that, when the Serjeant of the house of
Commons had officiously seisd him, was quickly set at liberty” (EL 32). We do not
know when Milton made formal application for a pardon under the Act of Ob-
livion or whether a delay occurred in processing it – likely enough, since such
applications were very numerous. The pardon was probably granted a day or two
before December 15, when the Commons gave order “That Mr. Milton, now in
Custody of the Serjeant at Arms attending this House, be forthwith released, paying
his Fees.”^26 A dispute about fees may have delayed his release: two days later Marvell