"Thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest."
While so many were thus coming and going, at £800 a year, £1000 a year, or £5000 a year, blind Milton, with his £200 a year, could only "stand and wait," the stationary Latin drudge. The return of his old assistant Meadows from Portugal may again have relieved him of somewhat of the drudgery; for, though Meadows was designated for the new mission to Denmark Feb. 24, 1656-7, he did not actually set out for Denmark till the following August, and there is something like proof that in the interval, envoy though he now was, he resumed secretarial duty at Whitehall under Thurloe. His renewed presence in London may account for the comparative rarity of Milton's State-Letters from Dec. 1656 to April 1657, and also for the fact that then there follows a total blank of four months in the series, bringing us precisely to August, when Meadows was preparing to go away again. What passed during these months we already know. The great question of Kingship or continued Protectorship, which had been in suspense during those months of March and April in which Milton had written his last four letters, had been brought to a close May 8, when Cromwell at last decisively refused the Crown; and the First Session of his Second Parliament had accordingly ended, June 26, not in his coronation, as had been expected, but in his inauguration in that Second Protectorship the constitution of which had been framed by the Parliament in their so-called Petition and Advice.—What may have been Milton's thoughts on the Kingship question we can pretty easily conjecture. Almost to a certainty, he was one of the private "Contrariants," one of those Oliverians who, with Lambert, Fleetwood, and most of the Army-men, objected theoretically to a return to Kingship, feared it would be fatal, and were glad therefore when Cromwell declined it and accepted the constitutionalized Protectorship instead. But, indeed, by this time, it is possible that Milton, though still Oliverian in the main, still a believer in Cromwell's greatness and goodness, was not so devotedly an Oliverian as he had been when he had written his panegyric on the Protector and the Protectorate in his Defensio Secunda. Even then he had made his reserves, and had ventured to express them in advices and cautions to Cromwell himself. He can hardly have professed that in those virtues of the avoidance of arbitrariness and self-will, the avoidance of over-legislation and over-restriction, which he had especially recommended to Cromwell, the rule of the Protector through the last three years had quite satisfied his ideal. Many of the so-called "arbitrary" measures, and even the temporary device of the Major-Generalships, he may have excused, as Cromwell himself did, on the plea of absolute necessity; all the measures distinctly for repression of Royalist risings and conspiracies must have had his thorough approbation; and, in the great matter of liberty of speculation and speech, Cromwell had certainly shown more sympathy with the spirit of Milton's Areopagitica than most of his Councillors or either of his Parliaments. Nor, as we have sufficiently seen, did Milton's notions of Public Liberty, any more than Cromwell's, formulate themselves in mere ordinary constitutionalism, or the doctrine of the rightful supremacy of Parliaments elected by a wide or universal suffrage, and a demand that such should be sitting always. He had more faith perhaps, as Cromwell had, in a good, broad, and pretty permanent Council, acting on liberal principles, and led by some single mind. But there had been disappointments. What, for example, of the frequent questionings and arrests of Bradshaw, Vane, and other high-minded Republicans whom Milton admired, and what especially of the prolonged disgrace and imprisonment of his dear friend Overton? Or, even if the plea of necessity or supposed necessity should cover such cases too (for Cromwell's informations through Thurloe might reach farther than the public knew, and the good Overton, at all events, had gone into devious and dangerous courses), what about the Protector's grand infatuation on the subject of an Established Church? He had preserved the abomination of a State-paid ministry; he had made that institution the very pride of his Protectorate; he was actually fattening up over again a miscellaneous State-clergy, in place of the old Anglicans, by studied encouragements and augmentations of stipend. So Milton thought, and very much in that language; and here, above all, must have been his dissatisfaction with Cromwell's Government. But what could be done? What other Government could there be? What would the Commonwealth have been without Cromwell, and in what condition would it be if he were removed? On the whole, what could a blind private thinker do but, in his occasional interviews with the great Protector on business, or his rarer presences perhaps in a retired place at one of the Protector's musical entertainments at Whitehall, keep all such thoughts to himself, reserving frank expression of them for his intimates, and meanwhile behaving as a loyal Oliverian and performing his duty? In such a state of mind, as I believe, did Milton pass from the First Protectorate into the Second.
BOOK II.
JUNE 1657-SEPTEMBER 1658.
HISTORY:—OLIVER'S SECOND PROTECTORATE.
BIOGRAPHY:-MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE SECOND PROTECTORATE.
[CHAPTER I.]
OLIVER'S SECOND PROTECTORATE: JUNE 26, 1657—SEPT. 3, 1658.
REGAL FORMS AND CEREMONIAL OF THE SECOND PROTECTORATE: THE PROTECTOR'S FAMILY: THE PRIVY COUNCIL: RETIREMENT OF LAMBERT: DEATH OF ADMIRAL BLAKE: THE FRENCH ALLIANCE AND SUCCESSES IN FLANDERS: SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF MARDIKE: OTHER FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE PROTECTORATE: SPECIAL ENVOYS TO DENMARK, SWEDEN, AND THE UNITED PROVINCES: AIMS OF CROMWELL'S DIPLOMACY IN NORTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPE: PROGRESS OF HIS ENGLISH CHURCH-ESTABLISHMENT: CONTROVERSY BETWEEN JOHN GOODWIN AND MARCHAMONT NEEDHAM: THE PROTECTOR AND THE QUAKERS: DEATH OF JOHN LILBURNE: DEATH OF SEXBY: MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM TO MARY FAIRFAX: MARRIAGES OF CROMWELL'S TWO YOUNGEST DAUGHTERS: PREPARATIONS FOR ANOTHER SESSION OF THE PARLIAMENT: WRITS FOR THE OTHER HOUSE: LIST OF CROMWELL'S PEERS.—REASSEMBLING OF THE PARLIAMENT, JAN. 20, 1657-8: CROMWELL'S OPENING SPEECH, WITH THE SUPPLEMENT BY FIENNES: ANTI-OLIVERIAN SPIRIT OF THE COMMONS: THEIR OPPOSITION TO THE OTHER HOUSE: CROMWELL'S SPEECH OF REMONSTRANCE: PERSEVERANCE OF THE COMMONS IN THEIR OPPOSITION: CROMWELL'S LAST SPEECH AND DISSOLUTION OF THE PARLIAMENT, FEB. 4, 1657-8.—STATE OF THE GOVERNMENT AFTER THE DISSOLUTION: THE DANGERS, AND CROMWELL'S DEALINGS WITH THEM: HIS LIGHT DEALINGS WITH THE DISAFFECTED COMMONWEALTH'S MEN: THREATENED SPANISH INVASION FROM FLANDERS, AND RAMIFICATIONS OF THE ROYALIST CONSPIRACY AT HOME: ARRESTS OF ROYALISTS. AND EXECUTION OF SLINGSBY AND HEWIT: THE CONSPIRACY CRUSHED: DEATH OF ROBERT RICH: THE EARL OF WARWICK'S LETTER TO CROMWELL, AND HIS DEATH: MORE SUCCESSES IN FLANDERS: SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF DUNKIRK: SPLENDID EXCHANGES OF COMPLIMENTS BETWEEN CROMWELL AND LOUIS XIV.: NEW INTERFERENCE IN BEHALF OF THE PIEDMONTESE PROTESTANTS, AND PROJECT OF A PROTESTANT COUNCIL DE PROPAGANDA FIDE; PROSPECTS OF THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT: DESIRE OF THE INDEPENDENTS FOR A CONFESSION OF FAITH: ATTENDANT DIFFICULTIES: CROMWELL'S POLICY IN THE AFFAIRS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK: HIS DESIGN FOR THE EVANGELIZATION AND CIVILIZATION OF THE HIGHLANDS: HIS GRANTS TO THE UNIVERSITIES OF EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW; HIS COUNCIL IN SCOTLAND: MONK AT DALKEITH: CROMWELL'S INTENTIONS IN THE CASES OF BIDDLE AND JAMES NAYLER; PROPOSED NEW ACT FOR RESTRICTION OF THE PRESS: FIRMNESS AND GRANDEUR OF THE PROTECTORATE IN JULY 1658: CROMWELL'S BARONETCIES AND KNIGHTHOODS: WILLINGNESS TO CALL ANOTHER PARLIAMENT: DEATH OF LADY CLAYPOLE: CROMWELL'S ILLNESS AND LAST DAYS, WITH THE LAST ACTS AND INCIDENTS OF HIS PROTECTORSHIP.