John Milton’s Education and Early Political Writings
The son of a manuscript copier, John Milton was born in 1608. He received an education first at St. Paul’s School in London and then at Christ’s College at Cambridge. In the years after his education he wrote several poems that have survived to this day, but it was his political tracts that made him famous (or, in some circles, infamous). As the country around him descended into Civil War between the forces of the Crown and the force of Parliment, Milton wrote a series of pamphlets calling for the end of the rule of the Church by Bishops. During the height of the Civil War, Milton continued to produce political writings, arguing for a reform to the educational system and for changes to the law that would make divorce easier. This last point was so radical at the time, that Milton suffered many attacks and censorship in his efforts to speak out. It was partly in reaction to this, that he produced his most famous no-poetic work, Areopagitica, a written speech defending freedom of the press. Despite many of his issues with the government, Milton was a devoted Parlimentarian.
Milton and the Regicide
In 1649, the English Civil War ended with the execution of the King Charles I, an event known as the regicide. Although Milton had nothing directly to do with the trial or execution, he was afterwards employed by the Parlimentarian government, and in this position wrote several works attacking the former monarch and defending his execution. The most famous of these works Defensio pro Populo Anglicano provoked outrage across Europe, especially at the exiled court of King Charles II.
The Restoration
In the early 1650s, John Milton went blind, a fact he attributed to his writing. After this, he became more and more disenfranchised by the new government and moved away from political writing and more towards poetry. In 1658 he began writing his greatest work, Paradise Lost. This work was interrupted in 1660 when Charles II was restored to the throne of England. Many who had been involved in the regicide were rounded up and executed. An order was put out for the arrest of John Milton, but the writer went into hiding. Eventually the order was rescinded, probably through the intervention of Milton’s friends in parliament. Free from this looming threat, Milton was able to work on his poetry, which he devoted the rest of his life to perfecting.
Primary information for this article obtained from “Milton: The Poet who Preferred Prose,” by Blair Worden, BBC History Magazine, Vol. 9, No.12.
