The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography

“Higher Argument”: Paradise Lost 1665–1669

the Spread Eagle – sometimes visited by admiring foreigners – was entirely de-
stroyed.^52
Milton did not comment in writing, though others did, about the causes of all
these disasters. To many they seemed an augury of an imminent Apocalypse, and to
many more they provided a focus for widespread disappointment with the restored
Stuarts. Charles’s marriage was still barren though his sexual profligacy and royal
mistresses had become notorious. Rumors of sexual debauchery also circulated around
his brother and heir presumptive, James Duke of York and his unpopular Duchess,
Clarendon’s daughter Anne Hyde. The court was decried as dissolute and a site of
open lewdness.^53 Many cavaliers complained that they had not been fully restored to
their places and goods, dissenters lamented their persecution under the harshly re-
strictive Clarendon Code, and City merchants protested the loss of trade due to the
war. An outpouring of jeremiad-like sermons and tracts read the events of 1665–6 as
God’s punishment for sins general and national, and called for repentance:

The great and famous City of London, once the glory of the world, now lies in ashes,

being in four days time by a dreadful and lamentable Fire made a ruinous heap, and a

doleful spectacle... so that we may all truly take up that lamentation of the Prophet

Jer. 1.1. How doth the City remain solitary that was full of people.... Surely, every

good Christian should humble himself under this heavy Judgement... for we have

sinned and rebelled, and therefore it is that he hath not spared; let us labour to bear the

punishment of our iniquities patiently... and turn again unto the Lord: who knows

but that he may have a blessing in store for us; and by sanctifying these great afflictions

to us, may make us Spiritual gainers by our Temporal Losses.^54

But as a contemporary letter writer observed, many seized the opportunity to lay
the disasters to some particular enemy’s charge:

All see the same desolation, yet, by looking on it with different opinions and interest,

they make different constructions as if the object were so. Some thinking it a natural

and bare accident, while others imagine it a judgment of God, and are as confident of

it as if they saw the hand on the wall. The Quakers say, it is for their persecution. The

Fanaticks say, it is for banishing and silencing their ministers. Others say, it is for the

murder of the king and the rebellion of the city. The Clergy lay the blame on schism

and licentiousness, while the Sectaries lay it on imposition and their pride.^55

Milton probably had someone read to him Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis, which ap-
peared in January, 1667^56 and was designed to recoup the king’s reputation in the
face of all the criticism. Patriarchal imagery covers over his barrenness and profli-
gacy, representing him as a pious and tender father of his people: rebuilding the
destroyed navy, directing rescue efforts in the fire, and giving shape to a vision of a
reborn and far grander “Augustan” city.^57 With his own epic ready to be published,
Milton would have been especially interested in Dryden’s preface defending this