cated
so eagerly in his first pamphlets might have its inconveniences; the
elders of an English kirk would be no more merciful than his detested
bishops to such freedom of thought, speech and action as he now
demanded. {55} From henceforth he is an Independent and more than an
Independent; for he was attached to no congregation, apparently
attended no church regularly, and maintained that profoundly religious
temper which is even more visible in his last works than in his first
without the support of any authority, creed or companionship in prayer.
With these views growing upon him it was natural that, when the
struggle came between the Presbyterian Parliament and the Independent
Army, he had no hesitation in supporting the Army; nor is it surprising
that such a man of no compromise as he had shown himself to be was
ready to come forward, even before the deed was done, with a defence of
the execution of Charles I. It is in connection with that event that
his name first became known to all Europe and was soon so famous that
foreigners visiting England desired to see two men above all others,
Oliver Cromwell and John Milton. This Milton, from henceforth a
European celebrity, was not the author of _Paradise Lost_ which was not
yet written, nor of his earlier poems which were little known in
England and quite unknown elsewhere. He was the apologist of the
Regicides, the Foreign Secretary of the world-famed Protector.

{56}

For the next eleven years, from 1649 to 1660, Milton had a public and
official as well as a private life. Charles was executed on January
30, 1649. Within a few days after appeared Milton's _Tenure of Kings
and Magistrates_, largely written, of course, before the execution, and
justifying it and all the other proceedings of the Army without any
hesitation or compromise. It has some breathings of the Miltonic
grandeur; but that is all. For the rest it is a mere party polemic
written for the moment; and, as is the case with all pamphlets, the
very qualities which gave it its contemporary interest make it
unreadable to posterity. Part of it is a sweeping assertion of the
inalienable right of the whole people to choose, judge and depose their
rulers; a democratic doctrine which a few years later, when England had
grown tired of the Army and the Puritans, he was to find as
inconvenient as he had already found his early advocacy of the
Presbyterian system in matters ecclesiastical. For the moment,