Notes to Chapter 1want of this quells them to a servile sense of their own conscious unworthinesse, it may
save the wondring why in this age many are so opposite both to human and to Christian
liberty” (Tetrachordon, CPW II, 587).
34 Lines 5–9. These references – to James Gordon, Lord Aboyne, Alexander MacDonnell
(also known as MacColkitto) and George Gillespie, a covenanter – argue for a date in
the earlier months of 1646, when these references would still be fresh. Their royalist
forces in Scotland suffered a crushing defeat in mid-September, 1645.
35 “Thy age, like ours, O soul of Sir John Cheek / hated not learning wors then toad or
Asp, / when thou taught’st Cambridge & King Edward Greek.” The lines have re-
ceived various interpretations. I follow J. M. Smart, The Sonnets of Milton (Glasgow,
1921), 73–4, who cites evidence from Cheke himself of his age’s hatred of and resist-
ance to Greek.
36 There is no draft in Milton’s hand in TM, only a copy (with several corrections) in the
hand of an amanuensis, on the same page and just after the sonnet to Vane. Milton
evidently wrote it on a loose sheet and had it copied in later. For the 1673 edition a
handwritten note indicates that it is to be inserted just after the Tetrachordon sonnet.
Some critics date this sonnet in 1648, when parliament had taken further steps to settle
Presbyterian government and had (on May 2) passed its Blasphemy Act. But the refer-
ences to Edwards and Baillie point, I think, to 1646, when they were especially active
and when Milton had more hope of influencing parliament.
37 From March 5–14 ordinances were passed settling details of the Presbyterian organiza-
tion, but on April 17 parliament proclaimed that it reserved to itself the amount of
toleration to be granted to “tender consciences that differ not in fundamentals of Reli-
gion.” The June compromise provided a list of specified offenses upon which the elders
could act alone, but a parliamentary commission was to judge other offences and to
serve as an appeals court.
38 A. S. is the Scots Presbyterian divine and polemicist Adam Stewart (who signed his
pamphlets A. S.); he was one of the first to answer the Apologetical Narration by the
Westminster Assembly Congregationalists with his Observations and Annotations upon the
Apologeticall Narration (London, 1644). Samuel Rutherford was one of the four Scots
divines in the assembly; his pamphlets include The Due Right of Presbyteries (London,
1644) and The Divine Right of Church-governement and Excommunication (London, 1646, c.
March 3).
39 See note 27.
40 See Smart, Milton’s Sonnets, 126–7.
41 The Roman Catholic Council of Trent, that spearheaded the Counter-Reformation.
See Mueller, “The Mastery of Decorum,” 496–7.
42 Milton crossed out his first version of line 17 – “Cropp yee as close as marginall P —— ‘s
eares” – probably recognizing that such a reference to Prynne’s punishment was
meanspirited and that the line might be read as proposing physical punishment of the
Presbyterians.
43 EL 52. Christopher’s fines were set at £80 and £200; he paid the first fine but not the
second, perhaps forgiven it through Milton’s intervention (Parker, II, 929).
44 The book of tracts in the Bodleian (4o F.56 Th, kept at Arch.G.e.44) contains eleven
works, the five antiprelatical tracts, DDD 2 and the three later divorce tracts, Areopagitica,
and Of Education. The inscription to Rouse is in Milton’s hand and he supplied as well
Notes to Chapter 7