In the year 1641, the nation was in great ferment with the religious disputes of the day, which were intimately connected with the chief political questions then agitated. This roused Milton, who was alive to the close association of the two subjects; and for the furtherance of his political designs, the support of liberty, he issued a powerful tract upon Prelatical Episcopacy. This served to work out a good end, and strengthen the cause of the liberalists. For this, as for other reasons of a like nature, he was prompted to write several other polemical tracts, during that year, and then he dropped the subject forever.
In 1643 he married, being then thirty-five years old. After a month his wife, by his permission, went to visit her relations; and when sent for by him—for reasons which are as yet unexplained—she refused to return, and dismissed his messenger with contempt.
He was deeply wounded by this treatment, and maintained toward her a dignified and resolute indifference. Mortified, and full of sorrow, he found relief in the contemplation of his very source of wo; and after reflection upon it, he projected and published his work upon Divorce, which is to this day one of the most famous works on the subject ever printed.
Affairs had now assumed a new aspect, and the Presbyterian party had, after a great struggle with Royalty, gained the ascendency, and then ruled supreme in the councils of the nation.
The King and his abettors were fighting in the field for that authority, they had before vainly endeavored to establish with the arm of civil power. The Presbyterians were now in their day of prosperity; they had been oppressed but were now triumphant. Adversity had not been of use to them. They did not learn charity, or humanity, from her lessons, but now exercised authority with a lordly air, and wielded the sword of State with presumptuous arrogance. Among other acts of great inconsistency and oppression, they established a supervision of the press under the control of an authorized licenser, and at the same time endeavored to suppress the freedom of speech. This base desertion of the principles for which they had contended, this mean exercise of authority in that, in which they had suffered the most, and against which they had clamored the loudest, excited Milton to the writing of the Areopagitica. This pamphlet was written by him upon this shameful abuse. He had before acted in concert with them, as the movement party of the day; but when they abandoned and treasonably betrayed the rights of Man, they left him where he had always been, standing on the rock of truth fast by his principles.
There is not a nobler vindication of the freedom of speech, and the liberty of the press, to be found any where, than in this pamphlet.
This book was published in 1644, and in this year he was reconciled to his wife, who sought him out, and unexpectedly to him fell at his feet, and with tears besought his love and forgiveness. In this, as in other instances, have we a strong evidence of the mildness and gentleness of his feelings; for although his resentment had been aroused by her wicked abandonment of him, yet when she returned home, repentant and in sorrow, he joyfully received her, and forgave all. Nay more, when defeat and route had fallen upon the royal standard, he generously took home her father, and his whole family—who were attached to the cause of the monarchy—protected them during the heat of his party triumph, and finally interested himself to secure their estates from confiscation, although they had in their days of prosperity prompted his wife to her disobedience and desertion of her republican husband; thus showing a high-heartedness which was above malice, and in keeping with and but a practical domestic application of the pure, upright faith professed by him, which was stern and unyielding in the pursuits of right, but humane and gentle in the use of power and advantage.
He was now an eminent man, and his bold pen had won for him a public fame and name. About this time he was well-nigh being swept into the mid current of popular politics, and it was contemplated making him the adjutant general, under Sir William Waller; but this design was abandoned upon the remodeling of the army, and he was left at his studies.
The king was imprisoned and tried, and then it was that the true faith and intentions of many were made clear. The Presbyterian party, who had professed democratic republicanism, while their hopes of office were high—like many in our own days, who, when they have attained their hopes, or been rejected by the people for better men, desert their cause, abandon their principles, while they hold on to their name, and fight under their old banners, that they may more surely but more basely injure truth—being now in the minority and out of power, became noisy in their lamentations over the king’s fate, and endeavored by every means to prevent his execution, using all arguments, and stopping at nothing to undo what they themselves had brought about. For when they found that there was an unflinching determination of the democracy to punish this man for his enormities and wicked misgovernment.
“They who”—to use Milton’s language—“had been fiercest against their prince, under the notion of a tyrant, and no mean incendiaries of the war against him, when God out of his providence and high disposal hath delivered him into the hands of their brethren, on a sudden and in a new garb of allegiance, which their doings have long since concealed, they plead for him, pity him, extol him, and protest against those who talk of bringing him to the trial of justice, which is the sword of God, superior to all mortal things, in whose hand soever, by apparent signs, his testified will is to put it.”