Notes to Chapter 194 William Prynne, Twelve Considerable Serious Questions, Touching Church Government
(London, 1644, c. September 16).
95 An Answer... A Plea for Ladies and Gentlewomen, and all other Maried Women against
Divorce. Wherein, Both Sexes are vindicated from all bondage of Common Law, and other
mistakes whatsoever: And the unsound Principles of the Author are examined and fully confuted
by the authority of Holy Scripture, the Laws of this Land, and sound Reason (London, 1644).
96 The author instances a property transaction concerning Milton’s property at Aldersgate
as an example of binding contract (33). Also, denying Milton’s argument that social
conventions prevent adequate trial of a virgin’s capacity for conversation before mar-
riage, he claims that everyone save kings and princes has opportunity for that, “if you
have so much time” (Answer, 15).
97 Caryl wrote: “To preserve the strength of the mariage bond and the Honour of that
estate, against those sad breaches and dangerous abuses of it, which common discontents
(on this side Adultery) are likely to make in unstaied mindes and men given to change,
by taking in or grounding themselves upon the opinion answered, and with good
reason confuted in this Treatise, I have approved the printing and publishing of it”
(CPW II, 727).
98 Answer, 17.
99 He repeats the Augustinian canard that had conversation been a primary need God
would have given Adam a male companion, since “man ordinarilie exceeds woman in
naturall gifts of minde and in delectableness of converse” (Answer, 12).
100 Ibid., 8–9: “Who sees not, how many thousands of lustful and libidinous men would
be parted from their Wives every week and marrying others; and upon this, who
should keep the children of these divorcers which sometimes they would leave in their
Wives bellies? how shall they come by their Portions, of whom, or where? and how
shall the Wife be endowed of her Husband’s estate? Nay, commonly, to what Re-
proach would the woman be left to, as being one left who was not fit for any ones
company? and so who would venture upon her again?”
101 Areopagitica (London, n.p., 1644). There were no further editions in Milton’s lifetime,
nor (except in collected editions in 1697 and 1698) in the seventeenth century. How-
ever, several extensive, though unacknowledged, adaptations were published at mo-
ments when censorship was again feared. See Sirluck, CPW II, 480.
102 Milton proposed substituting for this new ordinance the one “next before this,” choosing
to overlook two intervening and more restrictive measures of August 26, 1642 and
March 9, 1643. See note 37.
103 Page 570. See above, p. 161 and note 38. Milton supports those who labor in the
production of books – authors and printers – against the idle would-be monopolists,
the Stationers who held legal copyright. See Elizabeth Magnus, “Originality and
Plagiarism in Areopagitica and Eikonoklastes,” English Literary Renaissance 21 (1991),
87–101.
104 In this letter to Leonard Philaras, dated September 28, 1654 (CPW IV.2, 869) Milton
reports that “It is ten years, I think, more or less” since he began to notice these
symptoms.
105 These were the possibilities most often suggested by 50 leading neuro-opthalmologists
who were given the circumstances of the case, in a survey conducted by Shannon
Murray and reported at the International Milton Symposium, Bangor, Wales, July,
Notes to Chapter 6