Notes to Chapter 1J. Max Patrick, ed., The Prose of John Milton (Garden City, NY, 1967). The second
edition (DDD 2) and all other tracts of this period are cited from CPW II.
3 He also refuses to demonize the sectaries that the Presbyterians most abominated:
Anabaptists, Familists, and Antinomians. He terms their views “fanatick dreams” but
finds most of them zealous and “not debausht,” simply led to extremes by “the restraint
of some lawfull liberty” (DDD 1 , 163).
4 He allows that Arminius was “perverted” from Calvinist orthodoxy by reading a book
he undertook to confute, but describes him in admiring terms: “the acute and distinct
Arminius” (CPW II, 519).
5 Stephen Fallon, “The Metaphysics of Milton’s Divorce Tracts,” in David Loewenstein
and James Grantham Turner, eds, Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneutics in Milton’s Prose (Cam-
bridge, 1990), 69–83.
6 Powell’s financial affairs were in some disarray in 1642, due to his improvident and
somewhat shady dealings, and he was in some danger of losing his Forest Hill estate. In
1627 Milton’s father had placed in Milton’s name a loan of £300 with Powell, bringing
interest of £12 semi-annually. Powell had hitherto paid faithfully, but may have asked
for an extension of the interest due June 12 and Milton’s visit may have been to discuss
the matter. See J. Milton French, Milton in Chancery: New Chapters in the Lives of the Poet
and his Father (New York and London, 1939), 71–99 and 167–83; and Parker, II, 866–
70.
7 See Parker, II, 865, for the evidence fixing the date as summer, 1642.
8 See chapter 5, p. 140.
9 Cyriack Skinner’s biography has a similar take on the situation: “Shee, that was very
Yong, & had bin bred in a family of plenty and freedom, being not well pleas’d with his
reserv’d manner of life,” left shortly to return to her mother (EL 22). Aubrey reports
that she was used to much company and merriment and adds (offering no evidence or
authority) that she hated to hear Milton’s nephews cry when beaten (EL 14).
10 “An Ordinance of the Lords and Commons Concerning Stage-Plays,” September 2,
1642, John Rushworth, Historical Collections of Private Papers of State, 8 vols (London,
1721–2), V, 1.
11 “I did not avoid the toils and dangers of military service without rendering to my fellow
citizens another kind of service that was much more useful and no less perilous....
Having from early youth been especially devoted to the liberal arts, with greater strength
of mind than of body, I exchanged the toils of war, in which any stout trooper might
outdo me, for those labors which I better understood, that with such wisdom as I
owned I might add as much weight as possible to the counsels of my country and to this
excellent cause, using not my lower but my higher and stronger powers.” Defensio
Secunda, 1654 (CPW IV.1, 552–3). See Robert Fallon, Captain or Colonel (Columbia,
Mo., 1984), 47–56.
12 The sonnet in TM is in the hand of a copyist, as is this heading. It is crossed out, and a
second title appears below it in Milton’s hand, “When the assault was intended to ye
City.” Preparatory to circulation or publication Milton perhaps wished to remove the
possible suggestion that he was hiding behind his own door, pleading for his safety. In
the editions of 1645 and 1673 the poem simply bears the number VIII. Milton’s poems
of this period are cited from Poems, 1645.
13 See Janel Mueller, “On Genesis in Genre: Milton’s Politicizing of the Sonnet in ‘Cap-
Notes to Chapter 6