It has now been sufficiently argued and demonstrated that kings after Moses were, at the command of God, bound by all laws just as the people were, and that no exemptions from the laws are found in scripture. So it is quite false, and said without authority and reason, that kings ‘could do with impunity what they wanted’ or that ‘they could not be punished by the people’ and accordingly that ‘God has reserved their punishment to his own tribunal’. Let us see whether the gospel advises what the law did not advise, and did not command either. Let us see whether the gospel, that divine proclamation of liberty, sentences us to slavery under kings and tyrants, from whose lawless power the old law, though it also taught some kind of slavery, did free the people of God.

Your first proof you take from the character of Christ - but who does not know that he took on the character not only of a private Citizen but even of a slave so we might be free? Nor is this to be understood merely of internal freedom and not of civil liberty. For how strange are those words which Mary, mother of Christ, uttered in prophecy of his Coming - ‘he has scattered the proud in the thought of their own hearts, he has dragged down rulers from their thrones, he has exalted the humble’ - if his Coming rather strengthened tyrants on the throne and subjected all Christians to their most savage rule. By being born, serving and suffering under tyrants, he has himself obtained all honourable liberty for us. As Christ has not removed from us the ability to endure slavery with calmness if it is necessary, so too he has left us with the ability to aspire honourably to liberty, but has granted the latter in greater measure. Hence Paul, I Cor. 7, decides thus, not only of evangelical but also of civil liberty: ‘Have you been summoned, since you are a slave? Do not heed it, but if you can be made free, enjoy it rather. You have been bought at a price, do not be the slaves of men.’

TOUCHING Our Soveraigne LORD the KING AND HIS PARLIAMENT

[Anyone who believes that it is servitude to live under a prince is badly mistaken: there is no more welcome liberty than to be under a righteous king]

THE PREFACE

There is a general belief that the parliament of England was at first an imitation of the assembly of the three estates in France. Therefore, in order to prepare the understanding in the [research] we have in hand, it is proper to give a brief account of the mode of France in those assemblies. Scotland and Ireland being also under the dominion of the king of England, a touch of the manner of their parliaments shall be by way of preface.

1. In France the king's writ goeth to the bailiffs, seneschals or stewards of liberties, who issue out warrants to all such as have fees and lands within their liberties, and to all towns, requiring all such as have any complaints to meet in the principal city, there to choose two or three delegates in the name of that province to be present at the general assembly.

On account of two inconveniences which are indeed very great, and in your consideration very heavy, you said in the previous chapter that the power of the people was not greater than that of the king: since, if you conceded that, another name would have to be found for a king, the term king having been transferred to the people. Also certain divisions of your political System would be disordered: one of these would be an expense for your dictionary; the other the Cross for your politics. I have answered these so that some account might be taken, first of our own safety and liberty, and then even of your System of naming and politics. Now you say ‘it is to be fully proven by other considerations that a king cannot be judged by his own subjects, and of these reasons this will be the most powerful and convincing: that a king does not have an equal in his kingdom'. What are you saying? A king does not have an equal in his kingdom? Then what are those twelve most ancient peers [of the king] of France? Are they fables and trifles [of Turpin's]? Are they so called in vain and as a mockery? Take care of speaking this insult to those leading men of France. [Or is it because they are equal to each other? As if indeed out of the whole French nobility only twelve were equal to each other; or that for this reason it should be judged fit to call them peers of France.] But if they are not in reality peers of the king [of France because, along with him, they manage the Commonwealth with equal right and counsei], watch out in case your glossary, which is the only thing that interests you, is not more mocked in the kingdom of France than in our Commonwealth.

Come then, make it clear that there is no equal of a king in his own kingdom. ‘Because', you say, ‘the people of Rome, after the expulsion of the kings, set up two consuls not one; so that if one committed a fault, he could be controlled by his colleague.’ Anything more silly could hardly be imagined.

The argument that Salmasius had said was ‘indisputable', when concluding the above chapter, was that ‘a thing actually is as it is believed to be, when all men unanimously have the same opinion about it'. His assertion of this, however, was utterly false when referring to ‘a matter of fact\ But I now, as I am about to discuss the right of kings, will be able to twist it round with füll truth upon himself.

For he defines a king as ‘one who has supreme power over his kingdom, responsible to no-one but God, who is allowed to do whatever he pleases, who is free from the restrictions of the laws’ (if indeed something could be said to be defined when it is made infinite on the earth). And I will prove completely the opposite, not using my own testimonies and reasonings alone, but his own also: that no race or people who are indeed of any account (for it is not necessary to go into all the barbarous areas), that no race, I say, ever granted laws or power of this kind to their king ‘that he should be free from the restrictions of the laws, that he should be allowed to do what he pleases, that he should judge all, but be judged by none'.

And I certainly do not think that anyone of any race (except for Salmasius alone) ever displayed such a servile spirit as to maintain that all the inhuman crimes of tyrants were the rights of kings. The majority of those amongst us who most strongly Supported the king always abhorred this disgraceful belief. Rather it is easy to detect that even Salmasius himself, before he had been corrupted by bribery felt quite otherwise about these matters, as is shown by other previous writings. So servile in nature and spirit are these words that they do not seem to have been written by a free man in a free State - still less in that most celebrated Commonwealth and most famous academy of Holland, but in some workhouse or slave market auction block.

After the law of God and nature has been disturbed by you in vain and most badly handled, from which you have gained nothing apart from the shame of ignorance as well as wickedness, I don't see what you then can advance in this royal cause apart from trifles. But although I hope that I should have fully satisfied all good and learned men and this most noble of causes also, even if I should put an end to my answer at this point, still in case others should meanwhile think that I have evaded the variety and sharpness of your argument radier than your immoderate prolixity, I will go on as far as you wish. But I shall be so brief that it may easily appear that after having done all which, if not the dignity, at least the urgency of the cause required, I am now only gratifying the expectation or even curiosity of some people.

‘From here on', you say, ‘another and greater rank of arguments will rise before me.’ Is there a greater rank of arguments than that which the law of God and nature supplied? Bring help, Lucina, Mt Salmasius is in labour. Not for nothing did he become the wife of his wife. Mortals, await some monstrous birth. ‘If he who is and is called king could be accused before another power, this must be altogether greater than royal power; but that which is set up as greater must truly be called and be royal. For royal power must be defined in this way: as the power which is highest in the State and unique; and above which no other is recognized.’ O truly a mouse brought forth by a mountain and a ridiculous one at that! Bring help, grammarians, to this grammarian in labour. It is all up - not with the law of God or nature, but with the dictionary!

What if I should answer you in this way? Let names give way before realities. It is not our business to be cautious of the name, as we have got rid of the reality. Let others who love kings care about this. We enjoy our liberty.

I would wish for my part, Salmasius, so I shall not seem to anyone to be unfair or bitter against King Charles who has fulfilled his fate and punishment, that you had passed over in silence this whole passage about ‘his crimes', which would have been more advisable both for you and your party. But now, since it has pleased you more to speak about them too overconfidently and wordily, I will make you perceive indeed that nothing more thoughtless could have been done by you than to save up till last the worst area of your cause, namely his crimes, to be torn open again and inquired into in greater detail. When I have shown these to have been real and most terrible, they will at the very end leave in the minds of your readers both a memory of him which is displeasing and hateful to all good men, and a very great hatred of you, his defender.

You say ‘the accusation against him can be divided into two parts: one deals with blame attached to his way of life; the other with the crimes which he might have committed as king'. It will be easy for me to be silent about his life, which slipped away amid banquets and games and troops of women. For what is there about luxury worth relating? Or what would these things have mattered to us if he had been only a private Citizen? After he chose to be king, he could not live for himself, just as he could not even sin for himself alone. For firstly he harmed his subjects most violently by his example. In the second place, all the time he spent upon his desires and Sports - which was very great - he withdrew from the Commonwealth which he had undertaken to govern. Finally he squandered upon domestic luxury immense wealth, countless riches which were not his own but the public's. And so it was at home that he first began to be a bad king.

But ‘let us pass over’ radier to diose crimes ‘which he is charged with having committed in misruling'.

I am afraid that if I am as lavish of words but empty of matter in defending the people of England as most people have thought Salmasius was in his defence of the king, I may seem to have deserved the name of a defender who is at the same time most verbose and most absurd. But still, no-one thinks he must be so much in a hurry in dealing with any commonplace subject as not to be in the habit of using an introduction that is at least appropriate to the worth of the task he has undertaken. If I do not omit an introduction in speaking of a matter that is almost the most important of all, nor glance over it too briefly, I hope for my part that I will attain more or less two goals, which I greatly wish. One is that I should in no way fail, as far as lies within my power, this most celebrated cause which is most worthy of being remembered by all ages. The other is that while I should criticize emptiness and excess in my Opponent, I should nevertheless be judged to have avoided them myself.

For I will tell of things that are neither trivial nor commonplace: of how a most powerful king, who had crushed the laws and beaten down religion, and was ruling in accordance with his own caprice, was at last conquered in war by his own people who had served a long term of slavery; then how he was handed over into custody; and then when he showed absolutely no reason for them to hope for better of him either by words or by deeds, he was finally condemned to death by the highest Council of the kingdom, and Struck by the axe before the very door of the palace. will also tell (something which will be of much use in lightening men's minds of a great superstition) under what law, particularly that of the English, this judgement was made and executed; and I shall easily defend my very brave and honest countrymen, who have deserved outstandingly well of all the Citizens and peoples of the world, from the most wicked calumnies of slanderers, whether of our country or from abroad, and especially from the slanders of this most empty sophist who behaves like the leader and chief of the rest.

Recent scholarship has raised and re-opened some important questions of authorship and dating connected with Filmer. Firstly, the date of composition of Patriarcha has been variously set at years ranging from 1631 or earlier to 1648 or later. Secondly, the ascription of The Free-holders Grand Inquest to Filmer has been challenged, and it has been suggested that it is in fact by Sir Robert Holborne, a lawyer who defended John Hampden in the famous Ship Money trial of 1637–8 but who became a royalist in the Civil War. Thirdly, some anonymous seventeenth-century works of political theory have been attributed to Filmer. Each of these three topics deserves brief discussion here. On the first, see also p. viii above.

THE DATE OF FILMER'S PATRIARCHA

In the introduction to his Patriarcha and Other Political Works of Sir Robert Filmer (Oxford 1949), p. 3, Peter Laslett suggested that Patriarcha was written between 1635 and 1642. He argued that it must have been written after 1635, since the Cambridge manuscript ‘quotes Selden's Mare Clausum, which was published in that year’; and that it dates from before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, since the Cambridge manuscript (unlike the printed versions of 1680 and later) refers to only two civil wars in English history – the Barons' Wars and the Wars of the Roses (p. 34 below). The 1680 edition added a reference to a third war, namely ‘the late rebellion’ – that is to say, the Civil War.

THE ANARCHY OF A LIMITED OR MIXED MONARCHY OR,

A succinct Examination of the Fundamentals of Monarchy, both in this and other Kingdoms, as well about the Right of Power in Kings, as of the Originall or Naturall Liberty of the People.

A Question never yet disputed, though most necessary in these Times

Lucan Lib. 3.

Libertas (–) populi quem regna cohercent

Libertate perit: –

[Lucan Pharsaliaiii, 145–6: the liberty of a people which is subject to royal government is lost if they gain too great liberty]

[Claudian, De Consulatu Stilichonisiii, 114–15: nor is there any more welcome liberty than to be subject to a good master).

THE PREFACE

We do but flatter ourselves, if we hope ever to be governed without an arbitrary power. No, we mistake. The question is not, whether there shall be an arbitrary power, but the only point is who shall have that arbitrary power, whether one man or many? There never was, nor *ever*304 can be any people governed without a power of making laws, and every power of making laws must be arbitrary. For to make a law according to law, is contradictio in adjecto [self-contradictory]. It is generally confessed that in a democracy the supreme or arbitrary power of making laws is in a multitude, and so in an aristocracy the like legislative or arbitrary power is in a few, or in the nobility.

Charles I was executed on 30 January 1649. The events leading to this act, the act itself, and its consequences, dominate Milton's political writings. Within two weeks he had published a vindication of the proceedings against Charles, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (largely written while the trial was in progress), and was rewarded for his unsolicited efforts a month later by the newly constituted Council of State which appointed him as its Secretary for Foreign Tongues. Henceforth Milton was responsible not only for handling much of the Commonwealth's diplomatic correspondence but was also in effect its chief Propagandist. The works he published between 1649 and 1651 - Observations upon the Artides of Peace, Eikonoklastes, and Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio - were all officially commissioned.

Towards the end of the decade the interregnum regime disintegrated in a succession of experiments and expedients. In 1660, with the return of Charles II imminent, Milton published two works in which he sought to stem the tide: The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth urged a revived commitment to republicanism, while Brief Notes upon a Late Sermon advocated more despairingly that, if there must be a king, it would be better to elect one rather than restore the Stuarts. Milton only narrowly escaped with his life at the Restoration and, until his death in 1674, devoted himself largely to poetry, Publishing first Paradise Lost and then Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.

The foundations of these achievements were laid in a prolonged period of self-preparation. Milton was born in London in 1608, the son of a relatively well-to-do scrivener. In 1620 he entered St Paul's School where the curriculum reflected the humanist values of its founder, John Colet. The education Milton received there led to some dissatisfaction with the scholastic emphasis of the syllabus at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he was a Student from 1625 until 1632. For the next few years he studied privately, immersing himself especially in the Greek and Latin writers. This leisured existence culminated in 1638 in a fifteen-month tour of Europe during which he met Grotius and Galileo, and was enthusiastically received in several Florentine humanist academies. From the time he returned to England until summoned by the Council of State in 1649, he supported himself largely as a private tutor.