Notes to Chapter 12.1.2: “I saw not better sport these seven years’ day,” and Variorum 2.2, 482–3. I quote
the text from TM.
51 A letter from Sandelands (April 11, 1654) indicates that he had employed “Mr John
Phillips (Mr Miltons Kinsman)” in gathering information about crown lands in Scot-
land (LR III, 367), and had received an interim report from him. See chapter 9, p. 292.
52 A Satyr against Hypocrites (London, 1655). On March 14, 1655 this work was registered
mistakenly with the Stationers in the name of Edward Phillips and the publisher Nathaniel
Brooke. The second edition (also 1655) was longer and more polished; it omits a par-
ticularly obscene passage but adds others. Edward Phillips in Theatrum Poetarum, Part II
(London, 1675), 115, assigns it to his brother and credits Milton with forming his style.
53 A Satyr against Hypocrites, 13.
54 For Phillips’s Responsio to Alexander More, written under Milton’s supervision, see
chapter 8, pp. 258–9.
55 For example, “There stood the Font, in times of Christianity, / But now ‘tis tak’n
down, men call it Vanity” (3); “These are the men that plague and over-run / Like
Goths and Vandals all Religion” (21).
56 Satyr against Hypocrites, 22
57 J. P., Tears of the Indians (London, 1656), a translation of Las Casas’s Destruycion de las
Indias. The dedication is signed J. Phillips.
58 At least five went to France. Three to Louis XIV asked him to honor the treaty of
November 3, 1655 and restore merchandise seized from English ships; and a pair to the
king and Mazarin introduce William Lockhart as the new ambassador to France (CPW
V.2, 713-14, 719–20, 729–30, 735–6). A letter to the Doge of Venice (December,
1655) sought return of an English ship forced to sail in the Turkish fleet and then
captured by the Venetians (715–16). Two letters to the rulers of Algiers (April, 1656)
promise to help resolve their complaints that English ships and flags are used by the
French and Dutch as cover to attack Algerian ports and ships; a third (June, 1656) asks for
release of an English ship and goods captured by an Algerian fleet (723–6, 740–1). Four
letters to the United Provinces (727–8, 737–9, 760–1) concern a ship captured at Flush-
ing and its goods sold (April 1); a follow-up complaint about Englishmen unsuccessful in
their efforts to claim an inheritance in Dutch courts (May 30); shipowners carrying Dutch
insurance baulked in their efforts to collect when their ship was lost (May 31); and an
annual stipend for an invention 33 years in arrears and now owed to the English heir of
the inventor (September 10, 1656). A letter to Portugal in July concerned a debt the
Brazil company owes English tradesmen for transportation and storage (745).
59 They are dated only by the month. The first two are addressed to King John IV, the
third to his chief minister Count Odemira (CPW V.2, 748–53).
60 Two letters (April 10 and July 30, 1656) lavishly praise the departing Swedish diplomats
who successfully completed an Anglo-Swedish treaty in July, 1656; the second ex-
presses Cromwell’s wish that God may keep the king “unharmed to defend His church
and to be the support of the Swedish state” (CPW V.2, 731–2, 746–7). A special letter
to Charles X accompanies a general passport for George Romswickel ( June 13), asking
protection and safety for him from all Protestant powers. Both commend Romswickel
for relinquishing “Popish superstition” and high office to embrace the reformed reli-
gion through “his own study and labor” (742–4).
61 He enumerates the dangers: the Swiss cantons are “anxiously expecting new commotions”
Notes to Chapter 10