Notes to Chapter 1107 Five brief letters of the same date introduce and bespeak protection for Jephson from
the rulers of Brandenburg, Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck, and Norway whom he would
greet en route.
108 One letter (which exists in two versions) went to the United Provinces, and one to
Holland, recognizing it as “so great a part” of the confederation (CPW, V.2, 814–17).
Issues which brought the two nations again to the brink of war involved shipping,
trade, and the Dutch war with Portugal which threatened England’s use of the harbor
of Lisbon for its war against Spain.
109 These included some court cases: on June 5 the court settled the long-standing suit of
Elizabeth Ashworth and declared Milton’s claim against the Powells satisfied, ordering
him to return Wheatley to them (LR IV, 149–54).
110 The Order Books on September 8 call for the appointment of “Mr. Sterry” (Nathaniel)
to substitute for Philip Meadows in his absence, at £200. There is no formal note of
Marvell’s appointment, but on December 2, 1657 he was paid a quarter’s salary, indi-
cating an appointment dating from about September 2 (LR IV, 172–3). In The Re-
hearsal Transpros’d (London, 1672), part II, 127, Marvell states that he had no involvement
with the Interregnum government until 1657, when he accepted “an imployment, for
which I was not altogether improper.”
111 Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, IV, 231.
112 The fact that Dryden was granted money for funeral garments at Cromwell’s death in
September, 1658 and wrote a funeral elegy for him suggests that he held an appoint-
ment for some period before that time. On October 19, 1659 there was an order to
pay him £50.
113 Also, the parish registers, Memorials of St Margaret’s Church Westminster:... 1539–
1660 , ed. A. M. Burke (London, 1914), 250, under the date October 19, 1657, list the
birth of “Katherin Milton d. of John and of Katherin. This is Milton Oliver’s secre-
tary.” The last sentence seems to have been added later.
114 Biographical entries about him always claim friendship with the celebrated Milton.
See Leo Miller, “Milton and Lassenius,” MQ 6 (1972), 92–5.
115 See Timothy Raylor, “New Light on Milton and Hartlib,” MQ 27 (1993), 22–3.
Mercator’s letter to Hartlib was dated September 22; in an earlier letter (July 28) he
reports that he had passed along his copy of Milton’s treatise to one Mr Bridges,
chaplain at Petworth.
116 The 1645 Poems were quoted in Joshua Poole, ed., The English Parnassus (London,
1657), under such headings as beauty, light, blindness, etc: selections are taken from
the Nativity ode, L’Allegro, and Lycidas. Henry Stubbe praised Milton’s Latin and
Greek style – “that glory of our English nation” – in his anonymous Clamor, rixa, joci
(London, 1657, c. June 17), 45. The Reason of Church-governement and Apology for
Smectymnuus are advertised in John Rothwell’s Catalogue of the Most Approved Divinity
Books (London, 1657, c. June 13), 93. And on September 15 William London’s
Catalogue of the Most Vendible Books (London, 1657) lists Of Reformation, Of Prelatical
Episcopacy, Reason of Church-governement, the Defensio, Eikonoklastes, and the 1645
Poems.
117 Sallust, Bellum Catilinae (The War with Catiline) and Bellum Jugurthinum (The War
with Jugurtha), trans. J. C. Rolfe (Cambridge, Mass.,1930). Tacitus was also a favorite
of republicans, but he could be used either as a guidebook for absolute monarchy or in
Notes to Chapter 10