Notes to Chapter 1extensive participation in these sessions. Milton’s summary of the English versions of
these documents survives, but not his Latin versions. Fallon (Milton in Government 51–
3) suggests that the working papers, correspondence, and documents pertaining to this
and other treaties, as well as the treaties themselves, were probably in Milton’s posses-
sion but withheld from publication as being impolitic and probably illegal.
103 LR III, 13–14. With the death of the Stadholder William II on November 6, 1650,
the Dutch set aside the House of Orange, whose strong ties to the Stuarts were ce-
mented by the marriage of William to the eldest daughter of Charles I, Mary, and
established a republic. The English Commonwealth, eager to establish close ties with
that Protestant republic, sent a distinguished embassy to The Hague in March, 1651, but
they met cold and even hostile opposition, and returned empty-handed after three months.
104 On March 27, 1651 Milton was directed to send to the Spanish ambassador a protest
regarding seizures, arrests, and imprisoment of English merchants at Malaga, and it is
likely though not certain that he composed that letter (CSPD 1651, 134). Other com-
plaints were written in April, to no avail. On May 30 he was ordered to put into Latin
a petition from Alderman John Dethick, one of the owners of the ship May Flower,
whose goods and those of other owners were seized in Flanders in 1649 for debts
allegedly owed; and also a letter from the council to the Spanish ambassador, Don
Alonso de Cardenas, seeking his “effectuall” intervention and strongly protesting slan-
ders being laid on the parliament. Petitions and counter-petitions had already been
exchanged and an admiralty court found Dethick’s complaint justified, but more than
a year had passed with no action. On June 26 Milton was ordered to carry Dethick’s
new petition and the council’s letter to Cardenas (CPW V.2, 551–2).
105 CPW V.2., 535–56. This letter of July 14 from parliament to the king of Spain as-
sumes, diplomatically, that the king had not been informed (or had been misinformed)
about the many previous protests concerning injuries to the English merchants in the
Canary Islands. It reminds the king of the mutual benefits of trade and warns that
without redress and future security they “cannot do business any longer in those places.”
106 Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (London, 1651). The date of publication is noted in the
Nouvelles Ordinaires de Londres, no. 34 (February 27–March 9, 1651) published by
Dugard, who had also published Milton’s Defensio: “The reply made to the injurious
book of M. de Saumaise by Mr. John Milton... came out on Monday last, to the
great pleasure and approval of everybody” (136). Dugard had been imprisoned in
February, 1650, for attempting to publish Salmasius’s Defensio Regia, but in April his
press and his headmastership of the Merchant Taylors School were restored to him and
thereafter (like Nedham) he worked for the republic. See Parker, II, 973, and LR II,
301–2.
107 For bibliographical details see Parker, II, 973–5, 979–83, and (revd) 1,128. In 1651,
besides the reissues there was at least one other quarto edition printed at Gouda, and at
least six duodecimo editions, published in Utrecht, Leyden (by Elzevier), Amsterdam,
and the Hague. In one Paris edition, Salmasius and Milton were bound together, with
a joint title page.
108 One presentation copy (now at the Pierpont Morgan Library) is dated August, 1651,
another (at Harvard) is dated February 24, 1651; recipients are unknown. Other cop-
ies are undated. One (now at the University of Texas) is inscribed in Milton’s hand to
the council secretary Gualter Frost. Others are inscribed from Milton but by other
Notes to Chapter 8