¹ Clarendon, History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (Oxford, 1888), I, 450. Cf. note 20 below.

² Cf. David Mathew, The Social Structure in Caroline England (Oxford, 1948), p. 132.

³ Rev. C. P. Meehan, in The Confederation of Kilkenny (Dublin, 1860), pp. 73 and 111, gives the sums brought by the two nuncios respectively in 1643 and 1645 as $30,000 and $36,000. He is forthright in declaring that the Confederation aimed at essential religious and political independence for Ireland.

⁴ Milton's estimate of the slain in all the massacres of the Irish revolt in 1641–42, 200,000, is far above Clarendon's “forty or fifty thousand” and Edmund Curtis' 10,000 (in A History of Ireland, London, 1936, I, 244), but it is far below Sir John Temple's 300,000 (quoted by Richard Bagwell in Ireland under the Stuarts and during the Interregnum, London, 1909, I, 333).

⁵ Milton was thinking of the account in Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (London, 1807), n, 330, of Philip Augustus' statement to Gualo, the papal legate, that John “was not the lawful king of England, sithens as an enemie to his own roiall dignitie he had given the right of his kingdome awaie to the pope.” He found Henry Ill's story in De Thou's History of his own times, in a passage that he transcribed into his Commonplace Book (Columbia ed., xviii, 182) close to some others of which he was to make more extensive use in his Observations.

⁶ An Order in Council of 1606 first forbade ploughing by the tail. Under Strafford an Act forbade it on the ground that, “besides the cruelty used to the beasts, the breed of horses in this kindgom is much impaired” (Bagwell, Ireland under the Stuarts, I, 125). Perhaps the motive for forbidding burning of oats in the straw was partly military. Thomas Carte, in The Life of James, Duke of Ormond (Oxford, 1851), in, 14, noted how well the Irish rebels subsisted “with their armies… in the field… cutting down the corn, burning (as their manner is), grainding, baking, and eating it in one day.”

⁷ Milton's Complete Works, Columbia Edition, vi, 255. Subsequent documentation in my text refers to this edition.

⁸ Meehan, The Confederation of Kilkenny, p. 154, Cf. Michael J. Hynes, The Mission of Rinuccini, Nuncio Extraordinary to Ireland, 1645–1649 (Louvain, 1932), pp. 46–290, passim.

⁹ Lord Ernest Hamilton, The Irish Rebellion of 1641 (London, 1920), p. 358.

¹⁰ Michael Jones was a son of the Protestant bishop of Killaloe. His education at the Inns of Court left his inherited Anglican sympathy strong enough for him to return to Ireland to serve King Charles in 1643, but in the spring of 1644, as a representative of the Irish Protestants at Oxford when Charles received the representatives of the Catholic Confederacy of Kilkenny there, Jones lost his faith in the King. He went back to Ireland to fight for Parliament. His main services were his defeat of the Confederacy's general Thomas Preston at Dungan Hill, 8 August 1647, and of Ormond at Rathmines, 2 August 1649. He died a lieutenant general under Cromwell in December, 1649.

¹¹ The Life of James Duke of Ormond; containing an account of the most remarkable affairs of his time, and particularly of Ireland under his government (Oxford, 1851), in, 452. (The first edition was published in 1736.)

¹² Henry Jones (1605–82) became bishop of Clogher on 27 October 1645 “on recommendation of the Marquis of Ormond” (says the DNB following Carte), and bishop of Meath on 25 May 1661. He seems to have been versatile in his friendships for under the Commonwealth he was Scoutmaster-general in Ireland and was not removed from the vice-chancellorship of the University of Dublin, a post which he owed to Ormond's support in 1646.

¹³ Ormand's restriction of the word “Protestants” to mean his Anglican co-religionists who recognized the English king as supreme head or governor of their church in all the Three Kingdoms, was a usual practice. Thus, after declaring his intention to support Protestantism in his manifesto to the Munster army in September, 1648, Ormond added a pledge to do his utmost to suppress Independency.

¹⁴ vi, 254–255. Countless instances might be given of the readiness of Protestants of all creeds to identify the Roman Catholic Church with the foe of primitive Christianity who is so mysteriously described by St. John (i John, I, 3) as “Antichrist”, or “every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh”, and with the beast that he described (in Revelation xiii, 1) as rising “out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.” Cf. John Foxe's commentary on the chapter in Eicasmi seu Meditationes, in sacrant Apocalypsin (London, 1587), pp. 216: “Hie iterum Romanae Monarchiae status clarissimis coloribus, velut in tabula depingitur. Nam alioqui quod vnquam imperium, quae monarchia ostendi poterit, praeter solam Romanam, in quam omnia ista simul confluunt, argumenta? In qua tanta vmquam audita sit blasphemia? In qua universae terrae tan ta obstipuit ad-miratio?”

¹⁵ Hynes, The Mission of Rinuccini, p. 264.

¹⁶ From the text of the National Covenant as given by James K. Hewison in The Covenanters: A History of the Church in Scotland from the Reformation lo the Revolution (Glasgow, 1908), Appendix i to Vol. i, p. 472.

¹⁷ Ormond insinuated what many Presbyterians were proclaiming in their new loyalty to the King. Their spokesman, William Prynne, was quoted by Clement Walker—in Anarchia AngUcana: or, The History of Independency. The Second Part. Being A Continuation of Relations and Observations Historicall and Politique upon this present Parliament. Begun Anno 16. Caroli Primi. By Theodore Verax (London, 1649), pp. 53–54—as having remonstrated (in The Publique Declaration and Protestation of William Pryn of Lincolnes Inne, Esquire, against his present Restraint, and the present destructive councells and Jesuiticall proceedings of the Generall, Officers, and Army) that all the “present exorbitant actings” of the Cromwellians “against the King, Pari, present Government, & their new modled Representative, are nothing else but the designs & proiects of Iesuits, Popish Priests and Recusants (who bear chief sway in their councells) to destroy and subvert Our Religion, Lawes, Liberties, Government, Magistracy, Ministry the… Pari, the King and his posterity, and our 3 Kingdomes…”

¹⁸ The City-Ministers unmasked, or the Hypocrisie and Iniquity of Fifty-nine of the most eminent of the Clergy, in and about the City of London. Cleerly discovered out of two of their own Pamphlets, One Intituled, A Serious and Faithful Representation; The other, A Vindication of the Ministers of the Gospel, in and about the City of London. &c. (London, 1649),pp. 21–22.

¹⁹ Quoted by Bagwell, Ireland under lite Stuarls, II, 105.

²⁰ Ormond's powers in negotiating with the Catholic Confederates were highly uncertain. Carte says {Life of Ormond, in, 388–389) that when, during the treaty of Newport, Charles was asked by Hatton, Ormond's representative, to confirm the Queen's grant of power to Ormond to make peace, he wrote on 28 October “to the marquis,’ approving the orders given him; requiring him to obey the queen's commands, and to disobey all his own publicly given, till he should give him notice he was free from restraint; and enjoining him to prosecute the instructions he had received, till others should be given him under his own hand.’ ” Hynes (Mission of Rinuccini, p. 225) interprets these orders as meaning that “If peace resulted in England, there was to be no peace in Ireland, and the country was to be delivered to the ‘mercies’ of the Independents.”

²¹ Bagwell, Ireland under the Stitarts, ii, 170.

²² The so-called “Cessation of 1646”, which Bellings ironically described as having been rejected in the Supreme Council of the Confederates at Kilkenny by a viva voce vote which was “far from being unanimous, and very far from finding a tacit consent in the minds of men.” The Council is represented as having been helpless to resist the demagogic methods of Rinuccini and the Bishop of Leighlin. Richard Bellings, History of the Irish Confederation, 1641–1649, edited from MSS by John T. Gilbert (Dublin, 1891), vii, 10.

²³ Dorothea Baker Townshend, George Digby (London, 1924), p. 145.

²⁴ Ibid., p. 146.

²⁵ Carte, Life of Ormond, iii, 311.

²⁶ Thomas Viscount Dillon, the first signer of the Articles of Peace for the Confederates, probably because (if Carte, iii, 289, can be believed) he had at age fifteen declared himself a Protestant, was one of the Irish nobles most trusted by Wentworth, under whom he was President of Connaught in 1635. On behalf of the moderate Catholics he pled for religious equality to the Council in Dublin in November, 1641, and as their commissioner laid their grievances before Charles at Oxford in 1644 (Bagwell, Ireland under the Stuarts, i, 331). In December, 1646, he was publicly reconciled to the Church of Rome by Rinuccini in St. Mary's, Kilkenny. In October, 1641, when he visited Charles in England, he was supposed to have returned to Ireland “in all probability as the bearer of Charles' incitement to the Irish lords to raise his standard in Dublin” (Gardiner, Fall of the Monarchy of Charles I, p. 304).

²⁷ Donald Lord Viscount Muskerie, who became Earl of Clancarty by patent from Brussels in 1658, was made general of all Irish forces in Munster by the King and won almost complete control of the province in 1647. In April, 1648, he was a commissioner from the Confederacy to Queen Henrietta Maria and Prince Charles at St. Malo. “Throughout the entire rebellion he remained true to the royal interest, even defying the papal nuncio, Rinuccini, to protect Charles's hold on Ireland at the cost of imprisonment for himself” (Bagwell, Ireland under the Stuarts, ii, 50). Carte (iii, 312–315) relates that when, in 1647, some Dominicans tried to discredit Muskery with the Supreme Council, he roused his troops against them, but spared their lives when they were within his power. Subsequently, “the Council interposed with the nuncio to order the Dominicans (who had gone so far as to publish theological reasons, maintaining the lawfulness of killing Muskery) to quit Munster.” Thereafter, though he was relieved of his command in Munster, Muskery was a recognized leader in the Council and in all the activities of the Kilkenny Confederacy.

²⁸ Donogh Maccarty, second viscount Muskery, “had by his wife Eleanor, sister of James, first duke of Ormond, three sons” (DNB).

²⁹ Carte says that Ormond carried on “negotiations by the means of Sir G. Hamilton with the Scots”, and on 28 March 1648 received letters from the earls of “Loudon, Lauderdale, and Lanerick” which disappointed his hope of immediate military cooperation with them (Life, iii, 354).

³⁰ Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, iv, 449.

³¹ Gardiner, Fall of the Monarchy of Charles I, ii, 119–120.

³² Firth, Oliver Cromwell and the rule of the Puritans in England (London, 1933), p. 26.

³³ Curtis, Edmund, A History of Ireland (London, 1942), p. 249.

³⁴ vi, 252.

³⁵ The words conclude “a pithie speech” by Pymme in The Journal of Sir Simon D'Ewes, ed. Wallace Notestein (Yale Univ. Press, 1923), p. 305.

³⁶ (London, 1656), pp. 10–11.

³⁷ Renato Biragha (1506P-83) was born in Milan but went to France in youth, studied law, and became a Councillor to Parliament under Francis I. In 1563 he was a French representative at the Council of Trent. Favored by Catherine de' Medici, he became Garda sigilli under Charles IX in 1570. As a member of the Secret Council to the Throne he was regarded as one of the chief inspirers of the massacre of St. Bartholemew. He became Chancellor in 1573. His career after the incident to which Milton refers took him into the Church under Henry III, and in 1578 he became a Cardinal. Later, though he kept his rank, he lost the Seal; hence his traditional description as “a Cardinal without title, a priest without benefice, and a Chancellor without seal.”

³⁸ The story is found in Jacobi Augusti Thuani Historiarum libri ccxiii, Book lvii, pp. 294–296, in the London edition of 1733. As J. H. Hanford has shown (“The Chronology of Milton's Private Studies”, PMLA, xxxvi [1921], 273), Milton used the Geneva edition in five volumes folio, 1620, of De Thou's Hisloria sui temporis. “The study of … De Thou, Girard, Comines, and perhaps Sesellius”, Hanford thought might “coincide with the period in which Milton was most busily occupied with the divorce tracts” (ibid., p. 302).

³⁹ In reply to the question how a tyranny as absolute as that in Turkey might be erected in France, De Thou says (pp. 294–295) that Poncet replies: “proceres ante omnia de medio tollendos, et nobileis sensim carpendos: nam, cum in regno très ordines sint, eos aliorum quasi vindices et assertores esse, et regiae potestatis quasi arbitres ac moderatores, ita ut, qui legem aliis debet dicere, ab iis plerumque accipere cogatur: ad tollendos autem proceres et nobilitatem in ordinem cogendam, placere, ut bellum religionis colore, qui apud alios duos ordines, ecclesiasticum et plebeium, speciosus est, alatur: nam sic paulatim ad inter-necionem eos, praesertim quo quisque generosior est, deleri posse: neque defuturas artes, quibus ii, queis belli fortuna pepercerit, in pace opprimante: interea dum bello et pace in id incumbitur, caute servandum esse, ne rex dignatates, honores, munia publica iis aut in eorum gratiam cuiquam tribuat; invidiosas et sump tus periculique plenas praefecturas aut legationes ipsis reservet, pensionibus et honorariis quantum licebit subtractis, quo vasta ilia corpora quasi alimento negato ad maciem paulatim adducantur, ac postremo concidant : in primis, publica regni comitia, quae tantum ad firmandam Ordinum potentiam spectant, omnino prohibenda esse; et severe catigandos, tanquam quietis publicae perturbatores, qui ad ilia proclamabunt: sublatis proceribus et labefaetata nobilitate, in civitatibus et urbibus eos petendos, qui per haec bella a regiis partibus minime steterint; quibus rursus sublatis, et sacro ordine plebeioque omni patrocinio destitutis, facile fore, ut toto regno civitates munitae moenibus et propugnaculis nudentur, arces procerum ac nobilium diruantur, et religio quam rex probaverit cum plena sua potestate, nemine in posterum contradicente, firmetur ac stabiliatur.”

⁴⁰ The English translation of this work by the French Protestant preacher and controversialist, Dumoulin (1568–1658), which is the only form in which I have seen it, was published in Villa Franca in 1659. Chapter x states and chapter xi develops the parallel in question. This work is also attributed to King Charles's chaplain, Isaac Basire, and to John Bramhall. Its translator is supposed to have been Mathew Playford.

⁴¹ Dugdale, Sir William, A Short View of the Late Troubles in England; Briefly setting forth, Their Rise, Growth, and Tragical Conclusion. As also, some Parallel thereof with the Barons-Wars in the Time of King Henry III. But chiefly with that in France, called the Holy League, in the Reign of Henry III and Henry IV, late Kings of that Realm. To which is added A Perfect Narrative of the Treaty at Uxbridge in an. 1644. (Oxford, 1681). One of Dugdale's more specific comparisons is between the Peace of Uxbridge and the truce with the Cardinal of Lorraine.

⁴² The quoted passage is from the English version (London, 1711) which was set up from the translation by “the Author of the Account of”Denmark“ in 1574 (pp. 1–2).

⁴³ The French, which is reflected only fragmentarily in Milton's extract in the Commonplace Book, is from the 1609 (Paris) edition of De L'Estat et Succès des affaires de France of Bernard de Girard, Seigneur de Haillan, sig. E. In the Commonplace Book this passage is juxtaposed with de Thou's assertion of the right of the third estate in France to control its parliamentary representatives at Blois in 1576.

⁴⁴ Carte, Life of Ormond, iii, 409.

⁴⁵ Belfast became a barony in 1613, when the Lord Deputy to Ireland, Sir Arthur Chichester, was created the first baron. Milton was perhaps alluding to the fact that his nephew, Arthur Chichester, was in bad odor with the Presbytery for refusing the Covenant in 1644 and being created earl of Donegal on Ormond's recommendation in 1645 as a reward for his refusal.

⁴⁶ Lord George Hamilton, Irish Rebellion of 1641, pp. 354–355.

⁴⁷ A True Narrative of the Rise and Progress of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, 1623–1670 (Belfast, 1866), p. 155.

⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 163.

⁴⁹ The commissioners of the Kirk “unanimously declared that the concessions of the King were unsatisfactory, that no adequate security had been given for the establishment and maintenance of the Presbyterian government; that the treaty was only calculated to restore to power the prelatical faction; and that it was dangerous, both to the Church and State of Scotland, to unite in such an enterprise with those who had been uniformly hostile to the religious rights and liberties of the nation.” James Seaton Reid, History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (Belfast, 1867), ii, 67–68.

⁵⁰ Hugh R. Williamson, Charles and Cromwell (London, 1946), p. 184.

⁵¹ Gardiner, Commonwealth and Protectorate, I, 23. It was not actually until the Act of 19 May 1649 that the Commons declared “England to be a Free Commonwealth, and therefore to be governed by ‘the representatives of the people in Parliament… without any King or House of Lords‘” (ibid., p. 64).

⁵² This document, which was printed in London in 1649, seems, although it was drafted six days before Charles's execution, to have been the manifesto of the English Presbyterians that the Belfast Presbytery had principally in mind. The Ulster Presbyters may also have seen The Dissenting Ministers Vindication of themselves, from the horrid and detestable Murder of King Charles the First, of glorious Memory. With their Names subscribed, about the Twentieth of January, 1648. This document is in The Harleian Miscellany (London, 1744, ii, 512–515). It is interesting for laying exceptional stress upon the exact terms of the Covenant with breach of which the Independents were charged. The Ulster Presbyterians may also have seen The Cities Representation set forth by some Ministers of the Gospel, within the Province of London, concerning the Proceedings of the Army, a document which I know only as it is reflected in An Answer to the Cities Representation &c… By a Presbyterian Patriot. The Answer is dated London, 7 February 1649.

⁵³ We have a check on the textual accuracy of the Representation as it stands in the Columbia and earlier editions of Milton's prose in the text which Reid printed in his History of the Presbyterian Church, ii, 88–95. He reproduced the text as he found it in the Sample of Jet-Black Prelatic Calumny, and he rightly observed (p. 88n) that “It differs in some respects, but not of any great importance, from that printed at the time in London, in a pamphlet, entitled, A Necessary Examination of a dangerous design and practice against the interest and sovereignty of the nation and commonwealth of England, by the Presbytery of Belfast, in the province of Ulster in Ireland, in their scandalous, malicious, and treasonable libel, by them called, ‘A Necessary Representation &c.‘ Reid then refers to Milton's Observations though without noting, as he might have done, that their text differs only in nonessentials from his text of the Representation.

⁵⁴ Declaration, pp. 5–6.

⁵⁵ The transition of the question from controversy to history was still unfinished when, in 1713, James Kirkpatrick published An Historical Essay upon the Loyalty of Presbyterians in Great Britain and Ireland from the Reformation to this present Year 1713 (Belfast). Kirkpatrick wrote in reply to works like William Tisdale's The Conduct of the Dissenters in Ireland with respect both to Church and Slate (Dublin, 1712), and the anonymous A Sample of True-Blue Presbyterian Loyalty, in all changes and turns of Government, taken chiefly out of their most authentic records (Dublin, 1709), which Reid [History of the Presbyterian Church, ii, 534) attributed to Tisdale. An earlier reply to Tisdale, which incidentally revived the memory of Milton's Observations, is attributed by Reid (in, 39) to Rev. Mr. McBride of Belfast, This pamphlet was called A Sample of Jet-Black Prelatic Calumny, in Answer to a Pamphlet called ' A Sample of True-Blue Presbyterian Loyalty &c. Kirkpatrick (pp. 247248) traces the allusions to Milton's Observations through the other works.

⁵⁶ Presbyterian Church in Ireland, pp. 154, 180–181, 155. It is interesting to find Adair impartially recording the dissent of two of the Ulster Presbyters, James Ker and Jeremiah O'Queen, from the decision to promulgate the Necessary Representation. They did “not absolutely condemn the murder of the King, nor the courses of the sectarian party in England, but rather mitigated their practices and put a good construction upon them after they had overturned the foundations of government, both in church and state” (ibid., p. 166). In reply to them the Presbytery published A Vindication of the late and present proceedings of the Presbytery; especially of their late Representation, &c. (Belfast, 10 April 1649). Long excerpts are found in Reid's History of the Presbyterian Church (ii, 105–106) and Kirkpatrick's Historical Essay (pp. 286–287).

⁵⁷ Cf. the evidence in The Cambridge Modern History (rv, 350–352) that Parliament was preparing to “vote home” the King; the reluctance of the House of Commons to declare the Scots to be enemies, Cromwell's warning that they were preparing to “vote an approbation of the coming of the Scots army”, as late as August, 1648, and the terms of the Treaty of Newport, whereby the King assented to a scheme “for the establishment of Presbyterianism without a vestige of toleration.”

⁵⁸ iv, 308. Cf. the appeal to Scripture and the Primitive Fathers (vi, 263) to prove that page toleration as the Independents proposed to practice it was no innovation in the history of Christianity.