Notes to Chapter 1
155 The quatrain echoes lines from Euripides, Alcestis, 1,136, 1,117, 1,144–6.
156 The point is not that Katherine has fulfilled the days of supposed uncleanness (though
the requisite 80 days have indeed passed), but rather that her salvation does not depend
on bodily purification but on her purity of mind, which testifies to Christian election.
Cf. Revelation 19.8: “And to her [the Lamb’s bride] was granted that she should be
arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.”
Chapter 11 “The Last Words of Our Expiring Libertie” 1658–1660
1 A letter of that date was addressed to the States General (SP 84/162/164–5), and an-
other was surely sent promptly to Charles X of Sweden, England’s other major ally. See
Robet T. Fallon, Milton in Government (University Park, Pa., 1993), 169.
2 Another letter (probably not delivered) introduces Sir George Ayscue who was to bring
a naval force to Sweden (CPW V.2, 853–4); it was written around October 26, but on
January 7 his ship was still in port. Disease among the crew had caused delays, so the
expedition was probably aborted.
3 See chapter 10, p. 352. Meadows’s name is listed but crossed out since he was on his
mission to Sweden and could not be present.
4 The order of march, listing categories of marchers and several names in each, together
with their places of waiting in Somerset House, is in BL Lansdowne Ms 95 (no. 2), ff.
1–15. Listed in pairs as “Secretarys of the French and Latin Toungs” (l. v) are Dryden
and Sterry, Marvell and Milton, and Hartlib; “Mr. Pell” and “Mr. Bradshaw” are also
listed but crossed out.
5 The broadside and newsbook accounts stressed the costly magnificence of the accoutre-
ments, and list the categories of the marchers, but not their names: The True Manner of
... Conveyance of His Highenesse Effigies (London, 1658); also Mercurius Politicus 443
(November 18–25), 23–4; and The Publick Intelligencer 152 (November 22–9, 1658),
21–3. That issue of Mercurius Politicus also advertises Milton’s revised Defensio (p. 29).
Also see Laura Lunger Knoppers, Constructing Cromwell: Ceremony, Portrait, and Print
1645–1661 (Cambridge, 2000), 139–45.
6 Besides the verbal changes there were some 700 differences in spelling and punctuation;
it is hard to know how many of these were simply incidental (Parker, I, 518).
7 The Thomason copy is dated simply “Octob.” but as this is the third of seventeen
entries for that month in Thomason’s manuscript catalogue, it probably appeared early.
8 CPW IV.1, 537. Milton would probably think Paradise Lost to be another order of
accomplishment, not directly comparable to the Defensio. On several occasions during
1658 and at least until June, 1659, Milton was also occupied with a Chancery suit
harking back to the loan he had made in 1638 to Sir John Cope which he had been
unable to collect. See LR IV, 232–4, 236–8, 241–3, 252–3, 257, 271–2.
9 “A Paper sent by General Monk from Scotland to the Protector Richard Cromwell,” dated
September 15, called on Richard to convene another Assembly of Divines, to favor
“moderate presbiterian divines,” and settle the church, so as to put a stop to “that
progresse of blasphemy and profanes, that I fear is too frequent in many places by the
great extent of toleration.” John Thurloe, A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe,
Esq., ed. Thomas Birch, 7 vols (London, 1742), VII, 387. Each week the government-
Notes to Chapter 10–11