“Teach the Erring Soul” 1669–1674The final sentences of the History apply the moral lessons of the Norman Conquest
and the entire work to the present time of apparent “security:”
And as the long suffering of God permits bad men to enjoy prosperous daies with the good, so his
severity oft times exempts not good men from thir share in evil times with the bad.
If these were the Causes of such misery and thraldom to those our Ancestors, with
what better close can be concluded, then here in fit season to remember this Age in
the midst of her security, to fear from like Vices without amendment the Revolution
of like Calamities. (CPW V.1, 403)Before publication the History met with problems from the censor. Edward Phillips
claims that it was “all compleat so far as he went, some Passages only excepted,
which, being thought too sharp against the Clergy, could not pass the Hand of the
Licencer” (EL 75). Toland identifies the passages excised, either from inside infor-
mation or by an inspired guess:
We have it not as it came out of his hands; for the Licensers, those sworn Officers to
destroy Learning, Liberty and good Sense, expung’d several passages of it wherin he
expos’d the Superstition, Pride, and Cunning of the Popish Monks in the Saxon
Times, but apply’d by the sagacious Licensers to Charles the Second’s Bishops. (EL
185)This seems plausible: as early as Of Reformation Milton related contemporary
ecclesiastical evils to a long history of “neere twelve hundred yeares” of rule by
blind and ignorant English bishops.^25 The autumn of 1670 saw a tightening of press
supervision and licensing after the temporary laxity that followed upon the disasters
and political upheavals of the mid-1660s. L’Estrange was probably the censor who
made trouble for Milton’s History, as he took a special interest in books on law and
history and was very sensitive to real or imagined slights against bishops.^26 Milton’s
friend the Earl of Anglesey reportedly kept the suppressed pages “while he lived,”
which suggests that it was he who negotiated with L’Estrange over the final text of
the History, as he was later to do for Marvell’s Rehearsal Transprosed.^27 The sup-
pressed pages were never found. Milton had evidently planned to include the Di-
gression denouncing the Long Parliament and the Westminster Assembly but decided
to omit it also, perhaps because the removal of the Saxon bishops passage destroyed
the symmetry of castigating both the new presbyters and the old priests. Or, Angle-
sey may have persuaded Milton that the Digression could harm the dissenters’ cause.^28
By November 1, 1670 the History of Britain had been published and priced at 6
shillings.^29 The 1670 edition was nicely printed in a small quarto of 308 pages, with
an elaborate index of 52 pages carefully prepared by some knowledgeable person. It
has as frontispiece an engraved portrait of Milton by William Faithorne, probably
commissioned by Allestry, which notes Milton’s age as 62 over the date, 1670
(plate 16).^30 Faithorne was a well-known engraver and print-seller whose repertoire