Milton and the English Revolution. Christopher Hill

problem arose, and had adopted his own version of the Puritan and Shakespearean ideal – that marriage should be a union of two minds, that mutual solace and delight was as important an object of marriage as the procreation of children. And Milton had already speculated, in the abstract, on the desirability of divorce where a couple proved mutually incompatible: it was the natural corollary of the new emphasis on marriage as a voluntary union of like-minded people, though not all who cherished the ideal pushed this logic as far as Milton did.¹ For a century and more the relation of the sexes had been the subject of eager discussion, as the vernacular printed Bible was studied, and as attempts were being made to impose the monogamous family on to populations many of which had never hitherto really accepted it; and this at a time when the opening up of Asia, Africa and America to European trade revealed whole civilizations in which monogamy was not the rule.²

      Against this background of speculation Milton suddenly had to face the failure of his own marriage. The life which was to have been a true poem was jarred by a piece of cacophonous prose. Milton’s ideas about divorce were not suddenly adopted because of his own predicament; but his predicament certainly sharpened his thinking on the subject, and the urgency of his writing.

III Divorce

      Milton’s ideas on divorce, as on much else, go back to the thinking of the early Protestant reformers. They were not his sources, but he was to find to his delight that they (and Wyclif too) had anticipated some of his conclusions. Not to mention More’s Utopia, an impressive list could be drawn up of early Protestant divines who sanctioned divorce – Tyndale, Calvin, Melanchthon, Bucer, Osiander, Paraeus. Advocacy of divorce was one of the charges against the Marian martyr Bishop Hooper in 1555. Cranmer’s The Reformation of the Ecclesiastical Laws insisted that the grounds for divorce should be the same for both sexes.³ Milton also noted in his Commonplace Book that Bodin was in favour of divorce – for incompatibility. This position was, however, more characteristic of radical Protestants, especially Anabaptists.⁴

      The Anglican church remained more conservative on the subject of divorce than other reformed churches. Judicial separation a thoro et mensa could be obtained, sometimes for reasons other than adultery; but not divorce permitting remarriage. Things were tightening up from the end of Elizabeth’s reign. Some Puritans had advocated divorce – Perkins (for desertion, and where one of the spouses was an unbeliever, as well as for adultery), Rainolds, Silver-tongued Smith (who thought it was ‘the physic of marriage’ – but for adultery only), Stock and Joseph Hall (both for adultery only). A radical like Robert Browne was more liberal, allowing divorce ‘for religion and conscience’, and in 1605 it was claimed that members of Francis Johnson’s congregation in Amsterdam ‘accused themselves of adultery so that they might be rid of their wives’, so easy was it to obtain a divorce.¹ Divorce was also easier in New England. The Socinian Racovian Catechism authorized believers to desert an obstinately unbelieving spouse.² In 1576 there had been agitation in Parliament for matrimonial cases to be taken away from the church courts and transferred to the common law. That would be the logical consequence of ceasing to regard marriage as a sacrament and treating it as a civil contract. This seemed obvious common sense to Milton: it was recommended again by Hugh Peter in 1651, and finally carried into effect by the Barebones Parliament in 1653.³ Under their act Milton was married to his second wife by a J.P. In August 1653 an attempt had been made to insert a divorce clause in the marriage bill before Parliament.

      Milton decided in 1643 to write on the subject of divorce, in the general interest, not merely with respect to his own case. He did so with fantastic, reckless courage, flying in the face of received respectable opinion in England. He displayed the same sort of courage in isolation later in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and The Ready and Easy Way, though it is difficult to be absolutely certain in any of these cases just how far Milton was aware of his isolation.

      The opening passage of his first divorce pamphlet, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, suggests that others as well as Milton had expected that after the defeat of episcopacy ‘man’s nature would find immediate rest and releasement from all evils. But … such as have a mind large enough to take into their thoughts a general survey of human things would soon prove themselves in that opinion far deceived.’⁴

      Milton had learnt from his own experience that ‘the strongest Christian’ who found himself ‘bound fast … to an image of earth and phlegm … will be ready to despair in virtue, and mutiny against divine Providence.’ The ‘pain of loss’ in such cases was ‘in some degree like that which reprobates feel’. It might lead to ‘thoughts of atheism’.¹ Already the ways of God to men had to be considered and explained before they could be justified. The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce was published in August 1643. A second edition followed within six months, and two more in 1645. The Judgment of Martin Bucer,² in July 1644, together with Tetrachordon and Colasterion (March 1645) completed the series.

      Milton’s problem was to explain away Christ’s apparent flat prohibition of divorce on any grounds other than adultery. To do this he went back to first principles. Whereas previously he had claimed that the Bible was easy for simple men to understand, now he argued that ‘there is scarce any one saying in the Gospel but must be read with limitations and distinctions to be rightly understood’; interpreting the Bible calls for ‘a skillful and laborious gatherer’.³ Above all, we must not ‘enslave the dignity of man’ by setting ‘straiter limits to obedience than God had set’. ‘The ways of God … are equal, easy and not burdensome: nor do they ever cross the just and reasonable desires of men.’⁴ Milton was consistent in expecting greater freedom, more Christian liberty, under the Gospel than under the Mosaic law. If therefore Christ’s words seem stricter than God’s law in the Old Testament, we must approach them very carefully and with an assumption that they do not mean what they appear to. Perhaps ‘fornication’ means something less precise than we would think: perhaps something more like ‘a wife’s constant contrariness, faithlessness and disobedience’, ‘a constant alienation and disaffection of mind’. ‘Uncleanness’ may mean ‘any defect, annoyance, or ill quality in nature, which to be joined with makes life tedious’. So Milton doubted not ‘with one gentle stroking to wipe away ten thousand tears out of the life of man’.⁵ Since marriage is a union of minds, not merely of bodies, it must be freely entered into and freely dissoluble: the marriage contract is analogous to the church covenant, or the contract between king and people. The liberty of Christian men (and women) to live moral lives according to conscience depends on their being freed from external encumbrances. Milton’s emphasis on Christian freedom in divorce may have been the first step in his advance to Arminianism.⁶

      Milton restored to his own satisfaction ‘that power which Christ never took from the master of the family’. The right of divorce ‘cannot belong to any civil or earthly power against the will and consent of both parties, or of the husband alone’. It was an essential part of Milton’s high conception of the dignity of man. This right of divorce applies in cases of permanent incompatibility of temperament – ‘indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind arising from a cause in nature unchangeable’, since loss of mutual solace and peace is a more important reason for divorce than ‘the accident of adultery’. ‘Marriage must give way to … any really irresistible antipathy’, Milton concluded in the De Doctrina. He never paid detailed attention to the question of women’s rights in divorce, though on the title-page of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce he announced that the pamphlet was ‘to the good of both sexes’. He threw in phrases like ‘mutual consent’, and said that the law must ‘take care that the conditions of divorce be not injurious’. Nor did he consider the problem of children very deeply, though aware that they were likely to suffer from matrimonial discord. In the De Doctrina he argued that the possibility of divorce is advantageous to a woman, even if it is at the discretion of her husband.¹

      Milton certainly did not intend to provide ‘divorce at pleasure’, as his enemies suggested; but he laid himself open to the charge by his failure to think out the mechanics of divorce. He never determined