Notes to Chapter 188 The Registers of St. Mary Aldermary, London... 1558 to 1754, Publications of the Harleian
Society, LXI (London, 1931), 152, record the marriage on November 12, 1656: “The
Agreement and Intention of Marriage betwene John Milton Esqr. of the Parish of
Margeretts in Westminster: and Mrs Katharine Woodcocke of the Parish of Marys in
Aldermanbury: was Published three severall Markett Days in three severall weekes (vizt)
on Wensday the 22th and Monday the 27th of October and on Monday the 3d of
November and no exceptions being made against their Intentions They were Acording
to the Actt of Parlaimentt: Maryed the 12th of November by Sr John Dethicke Knight
and Alderman one of the Justices of Peace for this Citty of London.”
89 I quote from the version in TM.
90 LR IV, 216. Ward was professor of rhetoric at Gresham College. His notes, sent to
Milton’s editor Thomas Birch, are in BL Add. Ms 4,320, p. 232; they are based on a
visit to Milton’s daughter Deborah Clarke around 1727, and to his granddaughter Mrs
Elizabeth Foster on February 10, 1738. On many matters he is an unreliable reporter, as
are his informants, but there is no reason to doubt this information.
91 Major-Generals John Lambert, Colonel William Sydenham, John Desborough, and
Charles Fleetwood remained strongly opposed, and petitions were sent in from many
regiments. Also, Anabaptist ministers and many gathered churches protested vigor-
ously, and the Fifth Monarchists planned an uprising for April. See Charles H. Firth,
The Last Years of the Protectorate, 1656–1658, 2 vols (New York, 1964), I, 107–66.
92 Excluded were Roman Catholics and all who fought against parliament or plotted
against the Protectorate unless reconciled, and also atheists, blasphemers, scoffers against
religion, execrable heretics, profaners of the Lord’s Day, drunkards, and others not of
“good conversation.”
93 Firth, Last Years of the Protectorate, I, 167–200.
94 See chapter 9, p. 316. For Cromwell’s self-presentation, see Laura Lunger Knoppers,
Constructing Cromwell (Cambridge, 2000), 129–30.
95 [Edward Sexby and Silas Titus], Killing Noe Murder (printed in Holland, 1657, c. May),
sig. B 2. The title page lists a fictitious William Allen as author. Milton is cited (sig. B 2)
to answer an objection that tyrannicide is permitted in the Bible by God’s inspiration
but not in contemporary society: “I answer with the learned Milton, that if God com-
manded these things, tis a signe they were lawfull and are commendable.”
96 Mercurius Politicus, no. 252, 7,643–4, 7,674–5 (March 19–26); Mercurius Politicus, no.
255, 7,675, 7,690–2 (March 26–April 2). In the Case of the Commonwealth (see chapter
9, p. 249) Nedham also asserted the Machiavellian principle that forms of government
must be suited to the nature of the people, but here, with evident irony, he asserts the
cynical view that one form of government is as good as another, monarchy as condu-
cive to liberty as a republic.
97 Mercurius Politicus, no. 256, 7,706 (April 2–9).
98 Two parallel letters to Louis XIV and Mazarin (c. September 25) call attention to ships
and goods seized by a French privateer, and a third to the king concerns a London
merchant unable to complete a purchase of hides from a captured ship. Two letters
(October 1656) are to the King of Portugal: one introduces Thomas Maynard as consul
for trade, the other concerns a ship and goods seized from one Thomas Evans. A letter
to the Senate of Hamburg (October 16) threatens retaliation unless justice is obtained in
a long-standing litigation over goods willed to but withheld from two English citizens.
Notes to Chapter 10