John Milton

1608-1674. Author and active member of the Cromwellian Government.

Born December 9 1608. He was educated by a private tutor, Thomas Young, from 1618 to 1620 and went to St Paul’s School until he matriculated at Christ’s College (Cambridge) in 1625. “Milton’s father recognized and encouraged his son’s talents as an intellectual and poet, assuring him an excellent education destined to prepare him for a career in the church” (Woods vii). Although he did not start such a career his belief would influence the actions and literary productions of his later life. Milton got a BA in 1629 and MA in 1632.

Due to the ongoing conflicts between members of the Anglican Church and the Puritans/Calvinists, Milton went to France, Italy and Geneva. He was influenced by Renaissance culture and “[t]here he met and charmed the last remnants of the high Renaissance […] He also met Galileo and, in Naples, Giovanni Battista Manso, a patron of the great sixteenth-century Italian poet Torquato Tasso” (Woods viiif.) He went back to London in 1639.

During he Civil War, pamphleteering became very popular and Milton was one of the most active pamphleteers; he wrote, for example, Of Reformation. Touching Church Discipline (1641) and Of Education (1644). He supported the freedom of public expression in Areopagitica. Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing (1644). Milton wanted England to be “a Christian, Protestant recreation of the Athenian and Roman states [based on] worship, labour, sports and intellect” (Bradford 28). For him, education was a possibility to repair man’s relationship with God but most of all he wished for a united country with “a collective sense of identity” (ibid.).

In 1642 he married Mary Powell. Milton was 33, his wife only 17. The relationship did not work very well. Mary had a completely different attitude towards life. She was not interested in literature and she did not regard her religion as an intellectual part of her life. She fled back to her parents and the couple “would not meet again until […] the defeat of the King” (Bradford 31). During these times, Milton did also write another pamphlet called The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643). For Milton, marriage was not only a sexual coming together but also a meeting of minds and sharing of the same thoughts and beliefs. For him, love between man and woman equals God’s love for man and if it is absent, it is a form of atheism.

Mary and John Milton reconciled in 1645/1646 and had 4 children together: Anne (1646), Mary (1648), John (1651) and Deborah (1652). Two days after the birth of their last daughter, his wife Mary died. That is the same year in which Milton went blind. In 1656 Milton married for the second time. His new wife, Katherine Woodcock, then 28, died in 1658 in childbed (the new-born daughter died soon afterwards).

“The trial of Charles I drew Milton back into […] political and religious debates” (Bradford 36). The tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649) was a justification for regicide. His Eikonoklastes (1649) is an iconoclastic reply to Eikon Basilike (1649), the (self-)stylisation of Charles I as royal martyr. Milton became the official spokesman of the Cromwellian Government and in 1649 the Government gave him a house near Westminster and some scribes to continue his political writing. He lost his eyesight in 1652.

After Oliver Cromwell's death and Charles II's return Milton had to go into hiding. He was imprisoned but soon released again since his brother had connections to the Royalist party and since his friend Andrew Marvell also supported him. In 1663 Milton married again, Elizabeth Minshull, and during the Great Fire of London (1666) he lost Bread Street, the only property that was left. In 1667 he published Paradise Lost, in 1671 he wrote Paradise Regained.

Milton died between 8 and 10 November 1674.

Sources and further reading

Bradford, Richard. The Complete Critical Guide to John Milton. London: Routledge, 2001.

Woods, Susanne. "Introduction". Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Eds. Christopher Ricks, John Hollander. New York: Signet, 2001.