Notes to Chapter 1Reasons... by the Ministers of London (London, 1646).
22 The Humble Petition of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Commons of... London, 2.
23 A Confession of Faith of... Anabaptists (London, 1646, c. January 28).
24 E[phraim] P[agitt], Heresiography (London, 1645), sig. A4.
25 A Catalogue of the Severall Sects and Opinions (London, 1646, c. January 19) carries en-
gravings of several heretics, among them the “Divorcer.”
26 P[agitt], Heresiography, 2nd edn (London, 1645), 142. In the third and fourth editions
(London, 1647) this sentence is repeated (145–6) and Milton is also discussed under the
heading of “Independents” – “Mr. Milton permits a man to put away his wife upon his
meere pleasure, without any fault in her, but for any dislike, or disparity of Nature”
(86–7).
27 Robert Baillie, A Dissuasive from the Errours of the Time (London, 1645, c. November
24). This formula appears in a table of contents, and is repeated as a marginal note on
page 116, along with this comment: “Concerning Divorces, some of them goe farre
beyond any of the Brownists, not to speak of Mr. Milton, who in a large Treatise hath
pleaded for a full liberty for any man to put away his wife, When ever he pleaseth,
without any fault in her at all, but for any dislike or dysempathy of humour.”
28 Thomas Edwards, Gangraena: Or a Catalogue and Discovery of many of the Errours, Heresies,
Blasphemies, and pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of this Time (London, 1646), 34.
29 Edwards, The Second Part of Gangraena (London, 1646), 10–11.
30 Selden’s Uxor Ebraica (London, 1646) was entered into the Stationers Register on Sep-
tember 2, 1645, though the publication date is 1646. Milton cites and praises the work
in his Commonplace Book (CPW I, 402), in the Defensio Secunda (IV.1, 625), in The
Likeliest Means (VII, 299), and in the De Doctrina (VI, 378). He may have seen it in
manuscript while writing his divorce tracts: see chapter 6, note 65.
31 Scholars date these two sonnets variously, from late 1645 to mid 1647. The priority of
“I did but prompt” is suggested by its composition, in Milton’s hand, on the bottom of
the page in TM that carries the first draft and fair copy of the Lawes sonnet. Two
versions of Sonnet XIV on Catherine Thomason (dated December, 1646) appear on
the verso of that leaf, in Milton’s hand. “I did but prompt” is numbered 11 in TM,
although in the edition of 1673 Milton numbered this poem 12 and the sonnet on
Tetrachordon 11. For that volume he may have wanted to place the more general defense
of his several divorce treatises after the poem pertaining only to one of them. The
Tetrachordon sonnet (also in Milton’s hand) appears on the recto in TM following that
bearing the Lawes sonnet and “I did but prompt.” Between these two leaves another
leaf has been pasted in with scribal copies of these sonnets ordered as in 1673: 11
(changed to 12) “I did but prompt”; 12, “A booke was writt”; 13, “To Mr. Hen.
Lawes”; and 14, “When Faith & Love,” on Catharine Thomason.
32 See Janel Mueller, “The Mastery of Decorum: Politics as Poetry in Milton’s Sonnets,”
Critical Inquiry 15 (1987), 475–508. Milton may intend Latona’s twin-born progeny to
allude to his twinned publication (March 4, 1645) of Tetrachordon and Colasterion.
33 See, for example, Tenure: “none can love freedom heartilie, but good men; the rest love
not freedom, but licence” (CPW III, 190); “libertie hath a sharp and double edge fitt
onelie to be handl’d by just and vertuous men” (Hist. Brit., CPW V.1, 449); “If we
consider that just and naturall privileges men neither can rightly seek, nor dare fully
claime, unlesse they be ally’d to inward goodnesse, and stedfast knowledge, and that the
Notes to Chapter 7