Notes to Chapter 171 See Dayton Haskin, Milton’s Burden of Interpretation (Philadelphia, 1994), for a nuanced
argument locating the sonnet in a complex discourse in which the parable of the talents
was seen to figure issues of election, hermeneutics, and social duty. To recognize that
context does not, however, require denying (as Haskin almost does) the significance of
blindness and autobiographical reference.
72 See chapter 3, p. 60.
73 About November 9, 1652 John Frederick Gronovius declared to Heinsius: “I easily
understand [the author of Clamor] to be Morus”; on January 21, 1653 he reiterated that
ascription: “That More was the author of that tirade I recognized immediately from the
style.” On January 17 the Swiss agent Jean Baptiste Stouppe wrote to a friend in Zurich
attributing the Clamor to More and recounting the scandal about More and the maid
“whom he had promised to marry as he has not done” (LR III, 274, 314–15). For other
reports see LR III, 292–3, 315–17. The gentlewoman’s name was Elizabeth Guerret.
74 Mercurius Politicus, no. 121, 1,910 (September 23–30, 1652).
75 Pontia is satirized in Juvenal, Saturae, VI, 637–42, and Martial, Epigrams, II, 34–6. For
the Latin word-play and archival evidence proving that the rumored pregnancy was
indeed false, see Paul Sellin, “Alexander Morus and John Milton (II),” in Contemporary
Explorations in the Culture of the Low Countries, ed. W. Shetter and I. Van der Cruysse
(Lanham, 1996), 277–86; and also Sellin, “Alexander Morus before the Hof van Hol-
land,” in Studies in Netherlandic Culture and Literature, ed. M. Bakker and B. Morrison
(Lanham, 1994), 1–11.
76 His informants were probably Frederick Spanheim (Geneva), Lieuwe van Aitzema (The
Hague), and Phillippe Diodati (son of the Geneva theologian John Diodati and cousin to
Milton’s dear friend Charles) who was pastor at Leyden from 1651. See Kester Svendsen in
CPW IV.2, 687–93, and Paul Sellin, “Alexander More Before the Synod of Utrecht,’
Huntington Library Quarterly 38 (1996), 239–49. See pp. 308–9 and chapter 10, pp. 322–4.
77 The register of presentations to benefices from 1649–54 (BL Add Ms 36792, fol. 28)
records on July 23, 1651 Milton’s recommendation of Heath, which Heath had presum-
ably requested of him. He may have been one of Milton’s pupils at some point. See
Austin Woolrych, “Milton and Richard Heath,” Philological Quarterly 53 (1974), 132–5.
78 See above, p. 288.
79 Sandelands enclosed in the letter his correspondence with Colonel Lilburne in Scotland
and an elaborate outline of the scheme (LR III, 312–14).
80 See Parker, II, 1,024 for the discussions of Sandeland’s project in the Committees on
Trade and the Admiralty, from July, 1652 through June, 1653.
81 CPW IV.2, 861; CSPD 1652–3, 241, 266. On April 8, 1653 the council considered the
Argyle business – presumably the deception revealed in Sandeland’s letter.
82 There are echoes of Lycidas in Marvell’s Cromwell poems, e.g. “beaked promontory,”
Lycidas, l. 94, The First Anniversary, l. 358; also Lycidas, l. 71, “That last infirmity of
Noble mind,” A Poem upon the Death of O. C.,” l. 22, “Those nobler weaknesses of
humane Mind.”
83 There is no record of Meadows’s first appointment; on October 17, 1653 the council
ordered that Meadows “now employed by the Council in Latin translations, do also
assist Mr. Thurloe in the dispatch of Foreign Affairs,” granting him an additional £100
“to be added to the £100 per annum he now receives of the Council” (LR III, 345–6).
For three years he worked as Milton’s assistant for Latin correspondence.
Notes to Chapter 9