Notes to Chapter 128 Article 22 of the treaty rescinds prohibitions on some of those practices: plowing by
holding on to the horse’s tail, and threshing by burning oats in their husks.
29 He offers a challenge to the Rump and the council with a prayer “that all thir ensuing
actions may correspond and prove worthy that Impartiall and noble peece of Justice”
(311).
30 CPW III, 310–11. Clement Walker in Anarchia Anglicana (London, 1649), had labeled
the regicides “declar’d atheists.”
31 Gardiner, Commonwealth and Protectorate, II, 30. John Owen was a principal proponent
and Cromwell later lent his support. The Pauline reference is to the Jews as the root of
a cultivated olive tree, and the Gentiles the branches grafted upon it.
32 At Drogheda the garrison of 2,600 was given no quarter, and at Wexford, in almost
indiscriminate slaughter, about 2,000 were killed by the victors. By 1653 the last resist-
ance had been overcome. See Corns, “Milton’s Observations,” 123.
33 LR II, 245, 255, 256. Both were arrested for suspected dealings with enemies of the
state. The first commission was given either to Frost or Milton; the second both to the
sergeant-at-arms, Edward Dendy, and Milton.
34 The council ordered Mr Randolph to be retained as clerk of the papers of state at
Whitehall and that “Mr. Milton is to have an inspection into that Office” (PRO SP 25/
- p. 533).
35 Eikon Basilike: the Portraiture of his Sacred Majestie in his Solitudes and Sufferings (London,
1648 [1649]). There is no formal record in the council’s Order Book, but in the preface
to Eikonoklastes Milton claims he took on this task “as a work assign’d rather, then by
me chos’n or affected. Which was the cause both of beginning it so late, and finishing it
so leisurely, in the midst of other imployments and diversions” (CPW III, 339).
36 LR II, 250. Hall was appointed on May 14 “to make answer to such pamphletts as shall
come out to the prejudice of this Commonwealth,” and was paid £100 a year for his
labors. Hall’s An Humble Motion to the Parliament (London, 1649) echoes Milton’s harsh
critique of licensing in Areopagitica (pp 28–30) and also his critique of university educa-
tion in Of Education (25–6).
37 Phillips’s account of Milton’s residences and writing in 1649–51 is confusing (EL 69–
71). But since he states that Milton lived there only “until his designed apartment in
Scotland Yard was prepared for him” – in November, 1649 or soon after (LR II, 273,
- – the “book” he describes as written and published during Milton’s residence in
Charing Cross must refer back several paragraphs to Eikonoklastes (October or Novem-
ber, 1649). Milton also petitioned for, and in November was awarded, a renewal of his
lease on the Red Rose in Bread Street.
38 Joseph Hall, Resolutions... of Divers Practicall Cases of Conscience (London, 1649, c. April
9), 389–91. Also, the epilogue addressed to Elizabeth of Bohemia in Christopher Wase’s
translation, Electra of Sophocles (London, 1649, c. April 5) refers scornfully to “the fro-
ward Miltonist” untwisting the nuptial knot and signing a “Bill of plain Divorce.”
39 John Goodwin, The Obstructours of Justice (London, 1649), 78–80.
40 See Nigel Smith, Literature and Revolution in England, 1640–1660 (New Haven, Conn.,
and London, 1994), 32–5, 54–70, and especially Joad Raymond, The Invention of the
Newspaper (Oxford, 1996), 1–79.
41 Mercurius Britanicus began publishing in August, 1643; this quasi-official parliamentary
newsbook engaged more or less directly with the royalist publication Mercurius Aulicus.
Notes to Chapter 8