Milton's Political Contexts | Darkness Visible

Milton's Political Context

The Political Climate of Milton's Day
Milton’s Personal Politics
On Kingship
Poetry and Politics
<i>Paradise Lost</i>
Further Reading

The Political Climate of Milton's Day

The mid-seventeenth century was a time of great social and cultural turmoil. A series of political and military conflicts, now known as the English Civil War or the English Revolution, were waged intermittently between Parliamentarians and Royalists from 1642 to 1651. Many factors contributed to the tensions between the Crown and Parliament, including King Charles' marriage to the Catholic princess, Henrietta-Maria of France, and his desire to involve England in European wars. But most interesting were the ideological questions being raised about the nature of government and authority.

Throughout this period Parliament's power was steadily growing, but before the Civil War it was called and dissolved at the whim of the monarch, and mainly used to issue taxes when the king needed money. Charles I believed in the 'divine right of kings' and ruled fairly autonomously, even though much of Parliament believed that the king had a contractual obligation to the people to rule without tyranny. These Parliamentarians were angry that Charles refused to call a Parliament for most of the 1630s, during which time he tried to levy what were considered to be illegal taxes. With Archbishop Laud, he tried to take the Church in the direction of High Anglicanism, which aroused suspicion that he was trying to revert the country to Catholicism.

In 1649, after years of various political manoeuvres and bouts of fighting, King Charles I was executed for treason. For the next decade England had no monarch. Initially, a Commonwealth was formed and England was ruled by a republican government, but in 1653 Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector, a position which functioned essentially as military dictator. He was succeeded by his son Richard in 1658, but because of faction fighting and Richard's lack of popularity as a leader, the republic failed. Charles II, the executed monarch's son, was declared King in the Restoration of 1660.

Milton’s Personal Politics

In 1641 Milton published Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline in England, marking the beginning of a career of political prose writing which would last almost until his death in 1674. Close analysis reveals a subtle change in his thought away from the youthful orthodoxy which had led him to consider ordination as a priest, and towards the increasingly heretical and subversive theology which typifies his later writings. However, the general thrust of his political writings is towards Puritan reformation in the church, and the replacement of the monarchy with a free commonwealth. His enduring support for Cromwell resulted in his appointment in 1649 as Secretary for Foreign Languages, a position which involved acting as the voice of the English revolution to the world at large. He remained stalwart in his belief in the Republic, publishing The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth only a few months before Charles II's return in May 1660.

On Kingship

Milton's political views can be seen with particular clarity in relation to the execution of Charles I. Arguments both for and against Charles' reign exhibit a distinctively legal approach to scriptural exegesis (i.e. to the systematic interpretation and citation of passages from scripture). During his trial, Charles refused to make a plea to the court, claiming that no court could possess the necessary authority to try him. In denying the accountability of the monarch either to his subjects or to the law, Charles asserted that his rule was divinely ordained. The belief that the monarch is answerable only to God finds scriptural support in the Old Testament's records of God's endorsement of the kings of Israel and Judah, and in the New Testament in Romans 13:1-2. Writing in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (which was published only a month after Charles' execution in January 1649 and which serves primarily to justify the regicide), Milton adopts a markedly different interpretation of scripture:

No man who knows aught can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free, being the image and resemblance of God himself, and were by privilege above all the creatures, born to command and not to obey. (The Works of John Milton, historical, political, miscellaneous (1753), p. 344).

Here, Milton argues for the existence of a divine hierarchy and for the dominant position of men within this created order. Relying on both his historical and legal knowledge, Milton then makes the claim that the king must be understood as a servant of the people, bound to their service by the vows made in his coronation. A tyrannical ruler who disregards the will of his subjects therefore destabilises this natural order, since his rule would invalidate the elements of freedom and of command that scripture grants to all men - not just the monarch.

It follows that to say kings are accountable to none but God, is the overturning of all law and government [...] for if the king fear not God, [...] we hold then our lives and estates by the tenure of his mere grace and mercy, as from a god, not a mortal magistrate. (Works, p. 345)

Milton's argument is sublimely clever. He contends that for the king to make himself answerable only to God is to make himself a god, heretically contradicting the divine order of creation. However, whilst Milton's argument contains a cunning blend o Tenure of Kings and Magistrates f biblical exegesis and political pragmatism, his influence from classical sources is clear. His definition of a monarch is rather incongruously drawn from Aristotle, and his repeated emphasis on the idea of tyranny evokes both Greek political thought and Latin writers such as Plutarch and Tacitus.

The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates thus serves as a useful microcosm for broader aspects of Milton's politics, demonstrating his ability to combine biblical, classical and political arguments, as well as the importance of textual comprehension in his thought. These abilities would come to their fullest forms in Paradise Lost.

Poetry and Politics

It is well-known that Milton’s poetry overflows with political fervour – and in turn his political writings are as equally saturated with poetic imagery and literary devices. Writing in Areopagitica, a tract denouncing restrictive censorship, Milton famously imagines England as 'a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks’. He continues: ‘methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam' (Works, p. 168). The elevated tone and creative imagery of this passage far exceed the usual conventions of political writing, and England becomes a nation as multifaceted as the style which describes her. The inverse of this can be found in many passages of Milton’s poetry. In the penultimate speech of Samson Agonistes, Samson (before massacring the Philistines by pulling their temple down upon their heads) argues: '[m]asters' commands come with a power resistless / To such as owe them absolute subjection'. Samson seems to adopt both the tone and the logic of Milton’s early political writing when considering divine authority – and it is this expression which characterises both Milton’s justification of the regicide and Samson’s consideration of mass murder.

Paradise Lost

In attempting to situate Paradise Lost in its political context we face a particular critical choice, which is informed by the specific kind of political context which we have in mind. On the one hand, we can examine the stylistic and argumentative similarities between sections of Paradise Lost and Milton's more explicitly political writings. On the other hand, Paradise Lost can be read as a political allegory, which is to say that events and characters in Paradise Lost can be aligned with aspects of the political context of the poem's creation. But the stylistic similarities between passages of Paradise Lost and Milton's political works are not mere chance - they arise in part because the characters in Paradise Lost find themselves in situations which genuinely are political. In directing his Son to create earth, God conducts an act of rulership, which is inescapably political. These broader political parallels lead us towards a more allegorical interpretation of the poem as a whole.

Is this the region, this the soil, the clime, […]
That we must change for heaven, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? (1.242-5)

Satan's speeches provide the strongest example of a distinctively political voice appearing in the poem, drawing on rhetorical techniques that saturate Milton’s political prose. Here, he uses a series of rhetorical questions with progressively more contracted syntax in order to assert his point. Satan's attempts to rouse the fallen angels in Book I are further reminiscent of Milton's desire to rally support for the Cromwellian government. But Milton's rhetorical sophistication is demonstrated by the subtle flaws woven into Satan's arguments, expressing his corrupted nature at a particularly detailed level. This can be seen in Book IX:

Indeed? Hath God then said that of the fruit
Of all these garden trees ye shall not eat,
Yet lords declared of all in earth or air? (9.656-8)

When Satan persuades Eve to eat the fruit, Milton strikes a fascinating balance by making Satan’s arguments as convincing as they are misleading. Satan deliberately misunderstands Eve in order to make God's restriction appear more authoritarian and perverse. But beyond this, he implies that there is a contradiction between Adam and Eve having been created as lords over the world and their being restricted from eating the sacred fruit. The implication is gentle, avoiding direct criticism of God and instead pressuring Eve to justify God's prohibition. These examples also demonstrate Satan's ability to modulate between different kinds of rhetorical questioning, much as Milton's prose works combine both blistering interrogation, and the barbed, faux-naïve attitude which Satan adopts towards Eve.

We can begin to see how the great debate in Book II might be read as a political satire, mocking the tiresome debates which Milton both witnessed and conducted in his youth. Similarly, the interaction between Adam and Eve is a nuanced study of gender politics, whilst the relationship between God the Father and God the Son presents an obvious ideal of kingship and the delegation of power. But the danger of such readings is that they quickly lose their specificity, especially when considering characters such as Satan, who accommodates such a wide variety of different allegorical interpretations. He can be seen as a false leader to the fallen angels, his enforcement of his own will on the great debate in Book II recalling Charles I's wilful disregard for parliament. But alternatively, he can be seen to represent something of Milton and Cromwell in their revolutionary struggles against the king. At a slightly more general level he may even represent the failure of any political discourse in this period, and of religious culture which attempts to exist apart from divine authority and biblical revelation. The problem is that Satan is primarily identified as a force of rebellion against God, and Paradise Lost rarely seems to require us to construe him as anything else.

Closing Thoughts

Although the direct concern of Paradise Lost is religious, it is also a poem of its time. An understanding of the politics of Paradise Lost requires an understanding of the English Civil War and of Milton’s position within the republic. The application of this context to the text is conducted most effectively through appreciation of the interplay of ideas between Milton’s poetic and political writings; while allegorical interpretations are to some extent the natural result of a stylistic analysis of the poem's politics, the real political centre of the poem lies in Milton’s diction and style, his intelligent comparisons between mortal and divine authority, and his empowered defence of democracy.

...all men naturally were born free, being the image and resemblance of God himself...

Milton