Milton's Tenure and the Logic of Revolution
Revolution takes place on battlefields and barricades, but it first must take root in human minds. As the old regime-- its politics, institutions, terms of discourse-- appears to lose itself in contradiction and stalemate, the popular uprising furnishes new social layers and new ideas to fill the ideological void. In 1625, at the age of seventeen, John Milton had written, with all the fervor youth can muster, the patriotic "In Quintum Novembris," in which the wrath of God is visited upon the nefarious papal enemy of James I. By the time of the English regicide controversy in 1649, both the times and his ideas had undergone just such a revolution, and Milton's The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates furnishes a splendid illustration, in microcosm as it were, of the ideological transformation of an age.
It is in the nature of a revolution to concentrate the historical process of decades or even centuries of development into a matter of months, weeks, days. The subjective factor in history-- that is to say ideology-- correspondingly assumes predominance in such periods, wherein the more or less conscious interplay of parties and individual persons embodies the unconscious logic of objective historical forces. Such a moment was January, 1649, when the destiny of the English hinged on the fate of their king, and Milton's argument in The Tenure, "proving that it is Lawfull, and hath been held so through all ages, for any, who have the power, to call to account a Tyrant, or wicked King, and after due conviction, to depose, and put him to death," at once thrust the poet himself into the judgment of history. Posterity has been singularly divided in its evaluation of his reasoning and his presentation, as if neither Charles nor the Parliamentary capitulators were on trial at all, but rather Milton the regicide, for the events of January and February, 1649. I take upon myself therefore the thankless (but I hope not fruitless) task of justifying the ways of Milton to his detractors.
Negative generalizations about Milton, of course, are nothing new. In 1649 Clement Walker scurrilously wrote of him as "a libertine," who "will be tied to no obligation to God or man" (Hill 109), and the label dogged Milton for the remainder of his life. Since that time, terms purportedly descriptive of Milton's animus have ranged the gamut from "Machiavellian" to "Idealist." Christopher Hill argues instructively of the futility of pinning such tags on Milton. England's relaxation of censorship in the mid-1640s unleashed a marvelous proliferation of differentiation of opinion. The spectrum of Independent politics, within five years of its rupture with the Parliamentary majority, had widened to include Diggers, Levellers, and Fifth Monarchists; radical religious sects -- Congregationalists, Hermetics, Arminian Baptists, Seekers, Behmenists, Socinians, and Ranters-- now openly defied their erstwhile persecutors. "Milton's reaction to the confusing flux of the mid-forties," Hill observes, "was to return to the Bible, to evolve his own Bible-based theology" (95). Nor did Milton adhere firmly to any political tendency; it is therefore to the point to define his position negatively: he was not a Leveller, Digger, Ranter, Muggletonian, or Behmenist, but rather "the great eclectic, the asserter of Christian doctrine who was a member of no church" (99), a political theorist who lived "in a state of permanent dialogue with radical views which he could not wholly accept, yet some of which greatly attracted him" ((113-14).
Negative generalizations about Milton, of course, are nothing new. In 1649 Clement Walker scurrilously wrote of him as "a libertine," who "will be tied to no obligation to God or man" (Hill 109), and the label dogged Milton for the remainder of his life. Since that time, terms purportedly descriptive of Milton's animus have ranged the gamut from "Machiavellian" to "Idealist." Christopher Hill argues instructively of the futility of pinning such tags on Milton. England's relaxation of censorship in the mid-1640s unleashed a marvelous proliferation of differentiation of opinion. The spectrum of Independent politics, within five years of its rupture with the Parliamentary majority, had widened to include Diggers, Levellers, and Fifth Monarchists; radical religious sects -- Congregationalists, Hermetics, Arminian Baptists, Seekers, Behmenists, Socinians, and Ranters-- now openly defied their erstwhile persecutors. "Milton's reaction to the confusing flux of the mid-forties," Hill observes, "was to return to the Bible, to evolve his own Bible-based theology" (95). Nor did Milton adhere firmly to any political tendency; it is therefore to the point to define his position negatively: he was not a Leveller, Digger, Ranter, Muggletonian, or Behmenist, but rather "the great eclectic, the asserter of Christian doctrine who was a member of no church" (99), a political theorist who lived "in a state of permanent dialogue with radical views which he could not wholly accept, yet some of which greatly attracted him" ((113-14).
John Milton
The independent radical contingent which drew Milton in London consisted of disaffected artisans and déclassé intellectuals; collectively they were engaged in dialogue with the laboring classes, especially within the ranks of the army. What Hill says of Milton's "ambiguous relationship" to the more "orthodox" Puritans, on the one hand, and on the other to the sectaries and "heretics" (97), could be applied as well to the majority of Independents until the regicide crisis. Buffeted both left and right, their historic role had been to mediate, to reconcile the conflicting classes. The early months of 1649 quickly dashed their illusions.
Arthur Barker observes in Milton's prose corpus "a steady shift from the Puritan right to the extreme left" (xxiv). All the more dramatic, then, was the appearance of The Tenure after a silence of nearly five years on questions of state. Areopagitica had portended a radical shift in Milton's views; by the time of his sonnet to Fairfax he appeared antimonarchist in principle, and inspired by Parliament's victories in the Second Civil War, he soon reached convictions he could scarcely have conceived a year or two earlier.
Milton's own account of The Tenure appeared in the Second Defense of 1654. On his long silence concerning civil liberty, he wrote, "I said nothing, because I saw that sufficient attention was paid to it by the magistrates; nor did I write anything on the prerogative of the crown, till the king, voted an enemy by the parliament and vanquished in the field, was summoned before the tribunal which condemned him to lose his head." Milton entered the controversy when a group of Presbyterian ministers cried out against the sentence, and he was particularly incensed by their claim to represent Protestant doctrine. "I thought that it became me to oppose such a glaring falsehood; and accordingly, without any immediate or personal application to Charles, I showed in an abstract consideration of the question, what might lawfully be done against tyrants."
Owing mostly to its brevity, Milton's retrospective summary is somewhat misleading in several respects. William B. Hunter understands the purported composition of The Tenure as an "abstract consideration" to imply that Milton was "not specifically concerned with judging or sentencing Charles, and is not thus a regicide, as the term is usually used for an active participant" (56). Yet it is impossible to imagine any reader in 1649, responding to the tract's frequent appeals to the Sword of God and thunderous evocations of slain monarchs, without thinking Milton any less a regicide than Cromwell, John Bradshaw, or the very executioner of Charles.
True, Milton felt obliged, by training and temperament, to observe the academic conventions of argumentation, and his audience probably expected it; but in The Tenure, he soon finds it necessary to abandon the chimera of "abstract consideration" to speak directly to the subject at hand, the prisoner in the dock and the claims made in his defense. The most striking feature of the pamphlet, in fact, is its sense of urgency and the vehemence of its denunciation, and not its scholarly documentation or classical construction. Almost as soon as it is established, the protocol of argumentation, as if overwhelmed by the headlong rush of people and events, is repeatedly violated.
Milton, moreover, may have been a trifle disingenuous when he explained, a bit further along in the Second Defense, that the regicide pamphlet had been written "rather to reconcile the minds of the people to the event, than to discuss the legitimacy of that particular sentence which concerned the magistrates". Don M. Wolfe shows just how far Milton goes in The Tenure not to reconcile, but rather to antagonize the Presbyterian clergy. In the wake of the execution of Charles, other, more conciliatory, apologies for regicide were forthcoming,. but generally these were explicitly counter-revolutionary, arguing regicide against a "Leveling confusion" and signaling the rightward turn of the Independents in suppression of their erstwhile allies, the better to join forces with "the prosperous middle classes, of whom the Presbyterian ministry were the most influential representatives" (217). Milton chose instead to cast his fate with the insurgents and brave the wrath of respectable public opinion. Indeed, if Milton had entertained any hope of reconciliation with the "dancing Divines," he wrote the tract to undermine that very possibility.
"So completely... does [Lylburne's] Regal Tyrannie anticipate Milton's arguments," says Wolfe, "that it is difficult not to take for granted that it lay on his desk as he wrote The Tenure and A Defense of the People of England (182). Despite its religious foundations and biblical trappings, the basic appeal of The Tenure stays "in the main humanistic and secular" (216). In Barker's consideration, the fundamentals of Leveller political theory are expressed as secular analogues to the principles of congregational church government:
The priesthood of all believers became the natural equality of all men; Christian liberty, the natural liberty and right of every individual to consent to and share in the government under which he lives; the church covenant a social contract of agreement of the people; God's law, the law of nature expressed in the fundamental laws of the constitution according to which the executive governs by the authority received from the people or its representatives (141).
The Tenure proceeds from this mutual interpenetration of religion and politics. "No man who knows ought, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were borne free," Milton postulates, in the "image and resemblance of God himself... born to command, and not to obey" (Hughes 199). In the argument that follows, Milton attempts a syllogism of linked propositions, a chain of reasoning leading to the carefully-worded conclusion "that power, whether ordinary, or if that faile, extraordinary so executing [the] intent of God, is lawfull, and not to be resisted" (198). Through fused appeals to God and reason, he laboriously connects the prerogative and duty of church discipline, extending equally to "King and Peasant," to the mandate of "the civil Sword, to the cutting off without exemption him that capitally offends. Seeing that Justice and Religion are from the same God, and works of justice ofttimes more acceptable" (222). He is able to rest his case on 'this golden rule of justice and moralitie , as well as of Arithmetic, out of three termes which they admitt, will as certainly and unavoydably bring out the fourth, as any Probleme that ever Euclid, or Apollonius made good by demonstration" (253).
Out of religion and reason Milton synthesizes a doctrine of overriding public necessity; this had hitherto been the King's sole prerogative to decide, the very essence of political power. To Milton, a historical imperative justified "the present Parlament & Army, in the glorious way wherein Justice and Victory hath set them; the only warrants through all ages, next under immediat Revelation, to exercise supream power" (194). Small wonder that all parties to the regicide controversy, vainly seeking the hand of Providence in the affairs of men, should founder on the precise determination of the divine will. The London ministers in their Representation maintained that "God doth not approve the practice of whatsoever his Providence doth permit" (Hughes 55). The Presbyterians reasoned that, against the wickedness of the heretical army, God was trying the souls of true Christians; the outright royalists, for their part, supposed God to be harding the hearts of their enemies prior to pronouncing punishment upon them (52). The interpretation of scripture on all sides went into contortions, as though under the weight of a higher law of historical necessity.
"The strength and originality of The Tenure come from its frank acceptance of revolution as a force in history," Hill recognizes (167). From the standpoint of formal argument, then, Milton's most effective gambit is his persuasive demonstration of inconsistency on the part of his Presbyterian opponents, who now balk at the inevitable culmination of the ecclesiastical struggle they themselves had long before initiated:
The logic of revolutionary upheaval, of class conflict in its most intense manifestation, has brought legal and scriptural argumentation to an impasse, "when they that give it, see not for madness and vexation of thir ends lost, that those Statutes and Scriptures which both falsely and scandalously, they wrest against their Friends and Associates, would, by sentence of the common adversarie fall first and heaviest on their own heads" (195). Arguing from historical necessity, Milton takes a tentative but nonetheless definitive step away from idealism-- the image of God's kingdom-- to materialism, an advocacy of the priorities of revolution to undercut "privileges, customs, forms, and that old entanglement of Iniquity, thir gibrish Lawes" (193).
Milton's argument achieves its force, not only through its sophisticated critique of despotism's new-found champions, but also from his conviction, shared by all revolutionists of modern times, that he represented an historical vanguard against the claims of outworn and debased ideals. Milton's unequivocal stress upon the international ramifications of the English revolution,, his native country having "the honour to precede other Nations who are now labouring to be our followers" (236), provides yet more evidence of the scope of his revolutionary convictions. Clearly, to paraphrase Engels more than two hundred years beyond his time, Milton was no longer content to interpret the world; he was an active participant in the struggle to change it.
Visible in The Tenure also, however, are indications of significant and severe limitations to Milton's democratic ideas. His claims on behalf of a "mutual bond of amity and brotherhood between man and man all over the World" must be balanced against his offhandedly invidious comparison of the native tyrant with "a Turk, a Sarasin, a Heathen" (215). Although Milton decries the notion that Englishmen should ever be enslaved by kings, The Tenure attacks the chattel slavery from which Englishmen derived enormous profits and by which they were to uproot and afflict others made in the image of God. Between the lines of his ringing declamation on behalf of "liberty and the flourishing deeds of a reformed Common-wealth" is buried the embryonic concept of a world divided between "civilized" and "heathen" nations.
It may also be argued that, for all his fulminations against the Presbyterians' "insisting with much niceness on the unnecessariest clause of their Covnant" (194), Milton's own strategy was no less constrained by an appeal to another covenant, the coronation oath violated by Charles, the priority of which occupies such a large expanse of The Tenure. The essence of the regicides' legal case against Charles was his abrogation of the bourgeois holy of holies, the contract. "For learned and popular readers alike," Hughes observes, "the charge of perjury comprised the whole case against Charles," as if the decade-long tumult which divided all England against itself could be reduced to a simple breach of contract (98). The pace of events has outstripped the capacity of established institutions and modes of discourse.
Hence the curious tension in The Tenure between Milton's stodgy, plodding methodology, trotting out the required citations pro forma, and the explosive character of the events it attempts to justify. The appeal to abstract principles with which it proceeds is continually offset by reminders of contemporary civil war, the bloodiness of Charles and the perfidy of "Malignant backsliders." Milton's would-be classical oration is repeatedly interrupted by digressions replying to the main arguments of the Representation. The tract is liberally sprinkled with transparent appeals to class hatred of the Presbyterian hierarchy, whose "hope to bee made Classic and Provincial Lords led them on, while pluralities greas'd them thick and deep, to the shame and scandal of Religion, more than all the Sects and Heresies they exclaim against" (195-6). Such outbursts appear incongruous set within a method of argument broadly Ciceronian, firmly anchored to an appeal to reason yet striving to arouse the passionate indignation of his audience.
"If men within themselves would be govern'd by reason and not verbally give up thir understanding to a double tyrannie of Custom from without and blind affections within, they would discerne better, what it is to favour and uphold the Tyrant of a Nation" (190). Milton's exordium begins with the frank recognition of the volatility of public opinion and the shrill cries of reaction in the wake of Cromwell's insurrection and the indictment against Charles. The ensuing narratio sets forth his principal propositions and supports them with citations from classical, Jewish, Christian, and Presbyterian sources. By the time his argument reaches the plateau of the confirmatio, however, Milton lets slip his impatience with the entire procedure:
Milton's preliminary definition of a tyrant is here accompanied by a barrage of rhetorical flourishes, and there are two rather long digressions from what might otherwise be a rather tedious documentation. The first amounts to a characterization of Charles as an "outlander" within his own kingdom, while the second purports, unconvincingly, to dissociate "the true church" from the antimonarchist label thrust upon it by the Presbyterians. In between the two digressions, Milton cites New Testament books along with his own antiprelatical maxims, delves into English and Scottish historians to find a support in common law, links ecclesiastical and civil law, and ends with an array of Protestant and Presbyterian authorities from the sixteenth century. The line of argumentation, marshaling the custom and authority of past ages, is less impressive here than the tendency of the digressions to address specifically the charges against King Charles, as if Milton were momentarily dropping the pretense of "abstract consideration."
IN MY ROTATION:
OUR CAR CLUB:
NEXT: Herbie Nichols
Out of religion and reason Milton synthesizes a doctrine of overriding public necessity; this had hitherto been the King's sole prerogative to decide, the very essence of political power. To Milton, a historical imperative justified "the present Parlament & Army, in the glorious way wherein Justice and Victory hath set them; the only warrants through all ages, next under immediat Revelation, to exercise supream power" (194). Small wonder that all parties to the regicide controversy, vainly seeking the hand of Providence in the affairs of men, should founder on the precise determination of the divine will. The London ministers in their Representation maintained that "God doth not approve the practice of whatsoever his Providence doth permit" (Hughes 55). The Presbyterians reasoned that, against the wickedness of the heretical army, God was trying the souls of true Christians; the outright royalists, for their part, supposed God to be harding the hearts of their enemies prior to pronouncing punishment upon them (52). The interpretation of scripture on all sides went into contortions, as though under the weight of a higher law of historical necessity.
"The strength and originality of The Tenure come from its frank acceptance of revolution as a force in history," Hill recognizes (167). From the standpoint of formal argument, then, Milton's most effective gambit is his persuasive demonstration of inconsistency on the part of his Presbyterian opponents, who now balk at the inevitable culmination of the ecclesiastical struggle they themselves had long before initiated:
He who but erewhile in the Pulpits was a cursed Tyrant... is now, though nothing penitent or alter'd from his first principles, a lawfull Magistrate, a Sovran Lord, the Lords anointed, not to be touch'd, though by themselves imprison'd. As if this onely were obedience, to preserve the mere useless bulke of his person, and that onely in prison not in the field, and to disobey his commands, deny him his dignity and office, every where to resist his power but where they thinke it onely surviving in their own faction (197).Milton pointedly asks the Presbyterians why, during the time Charles was their captive, they did not "restore him all that while to the true life of a King... The truth therefore is, both that they would not, and that indeed they could not without thir own certain destruction" (234). The straightforward exigencies of self-preservation, regarded by the Presbyterians as the "ignoblest dictate of the law of nature" (Hughes 65) became the most persuasive element of Milton's argument, his appeals to God and reason notwithstanding. Not by accident, The Tenure is dressed in defensive formulations: "They tell us that the law of nature justifies any man to defend himself... : let them shew us then why the same Law, may not justifie much more a State or whole people, to doe justice upon him" (254); the Presbyterians, perversely interpreting Scripture in pursuit of factional aims, are the blind and lame Defenders of Jerusalem" (256), who "with Scripture in their mouths, gloss'd and fitted for thir turnes with a double contradictory sense, [transform] the sacred verity of God, to an idol with two faces" (195). On the issue of the deposition of Charles, they appear "with a riding covnant in thir mouths, seeming to swear counter almost in the same breath Allegiance and no Allegiance" (232).
The logic of revolutionary upheaval, of class conflict in its most intense manifestation, has brought legal and scriptural argumentation to an impasse, "when they that give it, see not for madness and vexation of thir ends lost, that those Statutes and Scriptures which both falsely and scandalously, they wrest against their Friends and Associates, would, by sentence of the common adversarie fall first and heaviest on their own heads" (195). Arguing from historical necessity, Milton takes a tentative but nonetheless definitive step away from idealism-- the image of God's kingdom-- to materialism, an advocacy of the priorities of revolution to undercut "privileges, customs, forms, and that old entanglement of Iniquity, thir gibrish Lawes" (193).
Milton's argument achieves its force, not only through its sophisticated critique of despotism's new-found champions, but also from his conviction, shared by all revolutionists of modern times, that he represented an historical vanguard against the claims of outworn and debased ideals. Milton's unequivocal stress upon the international ramifications of the English revolution,, his native country having "the honour to precede other Nations who are now labouring to be our followers" (236), provides yet more evidence of the scope of his revolutionary convictions. Clearly, to paraphrase Engels more than two hundred years beyond his time, Milton was no longer content to interpret the world; he was an active participant in the struggle to change it.
Visible in The Tenure also, however, are indications of significant and severe limitations to Milton's democratic ideas. His claims on behalf of a "mutual bond of amity and brotherhood between man and man all over the World" must be balanced against his offhandedly invidious comparison of the native tyrant with "a Turk, a Sarasin, a Heathen" (215). Although Milton decries the notion that Englishmen should ever be enslaved by kings, The Tenure attacks the chattel slavery from which Englishmen derived enormous profits and by which they were to uproot and afflict others made in the image of God. Between the lines of his ringing declamation on behalf of "liberty and the flourishing deeds of a reformed Common-wealth" is buried the embryonic concept of a world divided between "civilized" and "heathen" nations.
It may also be argued that, for all his fulminations against the Presbyterians' "insisting with much niceness on the unnecessariest clause of their Covnant" (194), Milton's own strategy was no less constrained by an appeal to another covenant, the coronation oath violated by Charles, the priority of which occupies such a large expanse of The Tenure. The essence of the regicides' legal case against Charles was his abrogation of the bourgeois holy of holies, the contract. "For learned and popular readers alike," Hughes observes, "the charge of perjury comprised the whole case against Charles," as if the decade-long tumult which divided all England against itself could be reduced to a simple breach of contract (98). The pace of events has outstripped the capacity of established institutions and modes of discourse.
Hence the curious tension in The Tenure between Milton's stodgy, plodding methodology, trotting out the required citations pro forma, and the explosive character of the events it attempts to justify. The appeal to abstract principles with which it proceeds is continually offset by reminders of contemporary civil war, the bloodiness of Charles and the perfidy of "Malignant backsliders." Milton's would-be classical oration is repeatedly interrupted by digressions replying to the main arguments of the Representation. The tract is liberally sprinkled with transparent appeals to class hatred of the Presbyterian hierarchy, whose "hope to bee made Classic and Provincial Lords led them on, while pluralities greas'd them thick and deep, to the shame and scandal of Religion, more than all the Sects and Heresies they exclaim against" (195-6). Such outbursts appear incongruous set within a method of argument broadly Ciceronian, firmly anchored to an appeal to reason yet striving to arouse the passionate indignation of his audience.
"If men within themselves would be govern'd by reason and not verbally give up thir understanding to a double tyrannie of Custom from without and blind affections within, they would discerne better, what it is to favour and uphold the Tyrant of a Nation" (190). Milton's exordium begins with the frank recognition of the volatility of public opinion and the shrill cries of reaction in the wake of Cromwell's insurrection and the indictment against Charles. The ensuing narratio sets forth his principal propositions and supports them with citations from classical, Jewish, Christian, and Presbyterian sources. By the time his argument reaches the plateau of the confirmatio, however, Milton lets slip his impatience with the entire procedure:
Against whom what the people lawfully may doe, as against a common pest, and destroyer of mankinde, I suppose no man of clear judgement need go furder to be guided then by the very principles of nature in him. But because it is the vulgar folly of men to desert thir own reason, and shutting thir eyes to t think they see best with other mens, I shall shew by such examples as ought to have most waight with us, what hath been don in this case heretofore (212).
Milton's preliminary definition of a tyrant is here accompanied by a barrage of rhetorical flourishes, and there are two rather long digressions from what might otherwise be a rather tedious documentation. The first amounts to a characterization of Charles as an "outlander" within his own kingdom, while the second purports, unconvincingly, to dissociate "the true church" from the antimonarchist label thrust upon it by the Presbyterians. In between the two digressions, Milton cites New Testament books along with his own antiprelatical maxims, delves into English and Scottish historians to find a support in common law, links ecclesiastical and civil law, and ends with an array of Protestant and Presbyterian authorities from the sixteenth century. The line of argumentation, marshaling the custom and authority of past ages, is less impressive here than the tendency of the digressions to address specifically the charges against King Charles, as if Milton were momentarily dropping the pretense of "abstract consideration."
Oliver Cromwell
But this latter tendency carries through the remainder of The Tenure, wherein such digressions appear ever more regularly and the tone of Milton's rhetorical shifts noticeably toward pungent invective and defiance of public opinion. Weaker, as Hill notes, in defense than in counter-attack (167-8), Milton reserves his most persuasive rhetoric for the refutations dissection and demystification of the nature of covenants and for the peroration's dramatic consideration of the present crisis in the judgment of posterity. As his final appeal comes to rest on historical necessity, the defense of the people's right to revolution, and the exemption of ecclesiastical officials from civil affairs, the very structure of syllogistic reasoning with which Milton began becomes unraveled, as from a "seam" buried among its fundamental premises.
Perhaps the most remarkable result of this breakdown is Milton's reliance upon sharp satire, particularly in the concluding sections of The Tenure, as a rhetorical fortification for the inadequacies of his intended syllogism. Vadoz has perceived in Milton's satiric barbs "a talent for catching up to a mistake on his adversary's part, explaining it to him, and then with great force and emphasis showing him the consequences" (Hughes 141), an ability that reminds one of Heine's famous comment two centuries hence on Lessing, who, not content with cutting off the head of his opponent, was malicious enough to lift it from the ground and show the public that it was quite empty.
Such recourse to satire was quite necessary, for the old syllogisms simply didn't add up during the storm of revolution. Even now the ethical humanist, liberal evaluation of Milton's Tenure depends upon the ossified, codified wisdom of "normal" times (if such times can be said to exist late in the twentieth century), having little conception of the superseding logic of historical change. Thus Barker fails to grasp the issue when he finds in Milton's revolutionary prose "the painful attempt of a sincere but not markedly precise mind to achieve coherence of thought in the midst of social disintegration... It is of illogicality rather than insincerity that he should be accused" (xviii-xix).
Probably the most egregious modern attack on Milton's revolutionary ideas was mounted by Wolfe, who argues that the Cromwell regime constituted a setback for the democratic aims of the revolution and that the terms of the Presbyterian Covenant would have provided a shorter road to constitutional government. Where Milton was mindful of the "implacable revenge" of tyrants, Wolfe insists still upon the possibility of a peaceful resolution of a conflict which had by 1649 consumed tens of thousands of lives and brought the masses of England upon the stage of history. He saw in Milton's justification of regicide "an untenable position... the dilemma of justifying at once military coercion and democratic ideology" (215) and declared the Rump's seizure of power and trial of Charles I "plainly illegal" (231), without considering the legitimacy of revolution's challenge to the legal basis of monarchy. His antipathy to the claims of revolution, moreover, leads Wolfe to a specious identification of Cromwell as "a religious fascist" (197) and to label the Independent regime in Parliament a "benevolent fascism" (205), terms hardly applicable to the seventeenth century. Like most liberal-democratic critiques of revolution, Wolfe's does not acknowledge its own debt to the ideological crucible of revolutions past.
John T. Shawcross, instead of accusing Milton of illogicality, seems to charge The Tenure with a superfluity of logic and a misunderstanding of "political man": "It was not until some years later that he realized that fit audience is always few; and perhaps he never really learned that in the realm of government idealism is not only ineffectual but generally unrecognized" (147). Milton's error appears to have been a case of casting pearls before swine, of believing "that one can argue tellingly, whereas other, more 'practical' men have known that the best argument 'to persuade' involves tangible 'rewards'" (150). Like Barker, Shawcross declares Milton an ineffectual political thinker, an "unpractical idealist" who mistakenly presupposed "that man confronted with fact or argument and logic will accept or at least weigh the evidence and conclusions" (156). The Tenure therefore "fails in achieving what is really desired Kongs' any kind of broad scale in its own time." In Milton's argument, says Shawcross, there is "the overly of debate, of contemporary issues and men, of rebuttal of specific statements and actions-- and in these things Milton's effect was short-lived and gnat-like" (143).
Indeed it is difficult now to measure with any precision the impact The Tenure exerted upon the course of history when it first appeared, and scholars on either side of the issue have not been able to answer the question with any degree of certainty (Hunter 57). In any case, I would venture to say that Milton had more impact upon his historical moment than together Professors Shawcross, Wolfe, Barker, Hughes and Hill have mustered upon ours. Milton in 1649 was no ivory-tower intellectual; he was a revolutionist coming directly to grips with the nascent forces of modern history.
PS: To my horror, I haven't been able to locate my bibliography. If I ever do, I'll append it forthwith.
The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates: complete textSuch recourse to satire was quite necessary, for the old syllogisms simply didn't add up during the storm of revolution. Even now the ethical humanist, liberal evaluation of Milton's Tenure depends upon the ossified, codified wisdom of "normal" times (if such times can be said to exist late in the twentieth century), having little conception of the superseding logic of historical change. Thus Barker fails to grasp the issue when he finds in Milton's revolutionary prose "the painful attempt of a sincere but not markedly precise mind to achieve coherence of thought in the midst of social disintegration... It is of illogicality rather than insincerity that he should be accused" (xviii-xix).
Probably the most egregious modern attack on Milton's revolutionary ideas was mounted by Wolfe, who argues that the Cromwell regime constituted a setback for the democratic aims of the revolution and that the terms of the Presbyterian Covenant would have provided a shorter road to constitutional government. Where Milton was mindful of the "implacable revenge" of tyrants, Wolfe insists still upon the possibility of a peaceful resolution of a conflict which had by 1649 consumed tens of thousands of lives and brought the masses of England upon the stage of history. He saw in Milton's justification of regicide "an untenable position... the dilemma of justifying at once military coercion and democratic ideology" (215) and declared the Rump's seizure of power and trial of Charles I "plainly illegal" (231), without considering the legitimacy of revolution's challenge to the legal basis of monarchy. His antipathy to the claims of revolution, moreover, leads Wolfe to a specious identification of Cromwell as "a religious fascist" (197) and to label the Independent regime in Parliament a "benevolent fascism" (205), terms hardly applicable to the seventeenth century. Like most liberal-democratic critiques of revolution, Wolfe's does not acknowledge its own debt to the ideological crucible of revolutions past.
John T. Shawcross, instead of accusing Milton of illogicality, seems to charge The Tenure with a superfluity of logic and a misunderstanding of "political man": "It was not until some years later that he realized that fit audience is always few; and perhaps he never really learned that in the realm of government idealism is not only ineffectual but generally unrecognized" (147). Milton's error appears to have been a case of casting pearls before swine, of believing "that one can argue tellingly, whereas other, more 'practical' men have known that the best argument 'to persuade' involves tangible 'rewards'" (150). Like Barker, Shawcross declares Milton an ineffectual political thinker, an "unpractical idealist" who mistakenly presupposed "that man confronted with fact or argument and logic will accept or at least weigh the evidence and conclusions" (156). The Tenure therefore "fails in achieving what is really desired Kongs' any kind of broad scale in its own time." In Milton's argument, says Shawcross, there is "the overly of debate, of contemporary issues and men, of rebuttal of specific statements and actions-- and in these things Milton's effect was short-lived and gnat-like" (143).
Indeed it is difficult now to measure with any precision the impact The Tenure exerted upon the course of history when it first appeared, and scholars on either side of the issue have not been able to answer the question with any degree of certainty (Hunter 57). In any case, I would venture to say that Milton had more impact upon his historical moment than together Professors Shawcross, Wolfe, Barker, Hughes and Hill have mustered upon ours. Milton in 1649 was no ivory-tower intellectual; he was a revolutionist coming directly to grips with the nascent forces of modern history.
PS: To my horror, I haven't been able to locate my bibliography. If I ever do, I'll append it forthwith.
IN MY ROTATION:
OUR CAR CLUB:
- Gene Ammons, Gentle Jug (Prestige, 1961, 1962)
NEXT: Herbie Nichols
