IX. Sources.

Turning now to the special sources of The Tenure
of Kings and Magistrates, we find that Milton's chief
debt is to George Buchanan, author of the celebrated
revolutionary treatise, De Jure Regni apud Scotos, which
was published in Edinburgh in 1579. Buchanan and
Knox were students at St. Andrews, and imbibed
their passion for popular rights and hatred of tyranny
from their teacher, John Muir, who held that kings
derived their power from the people, could be con-
trolled by them, and, if tyrannical, might be deposed.
Knox expressed these views in his argument against
Lethington, to which Milton refers (28, 21); in his famous
interview with Mary, Queen of Scots; and in the trea-
tise which gave such offence to Queen Elizabeth,

* See De Jure Regni apud Scotos, trans, Macfarlan, pp. 146, 147.

Sources xxxix

The Monstrous Regiment of Women. Milton was familiar
with the opinions of Knox, but he found them system-
atized in the dialogue of Buchanan. We have indi-
cated in the notes the parallels between Milton’s trea-
tise and that of his Scottish mentor, and the reader
will observe what a large number of passages have
been paraphrased. Leading ideas, and, indeed, many
facts, quotations, and illustrations, were appropriated
by the English apologist for the Commonwealth,
Buchanan clearly owes more inspiration to the ancient
republicans than to the Bible, but he draws his argu-
ments from both sources, and in this respect was
followed by Milton. In his dialogue he gives the
origin of the name tyrant, summarizes various defi-
nitions of tyranny, refers to the fears which beset
tyrants, and to their punishment, and praises the
tyrannicides of antiquity. He bases his argument
for the sovereignty of the people on the social con-
tract.’ Buchanan also lays great stress upon the
appeal to reason, as does Milton. This treatise on
the rights of the crown, dedicated, perhaps ironically,
to the young James IV of Scotland, Buchanan’s royal
pupil, was destined to have a profound influence
on English politics. The hatred which it inspired in
royalists, and the popular conception of its close con-
nection with The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,
were amply expressed in 1683, when both works were
publicly burned by the ever loyal prelates of the Uni-
versity of Oxford.

The second source of Milton's first work in political
theory is to be found in his own youthful compi-

* De Jure Regni, pp. 140-142,

2 [bid., pp. 148, 146,

* ford, p. 148,

* Bid., pp. 161 ff., 198, 199,

5 Ibid. pp. 91, 95 ff., 103 ff.

xl Introduction

lation of quotations, his Commonplace Book.1 When
he came to write his protest against Charles and
other tyrants, he turned to this storehouse for illus-
trations and authorities. This book is, in fact, not
only a guide to his early reading, but shows the
political theory which he had already formulated.
Gooch remarks that Milton’s earliest political views
were merely those of a liberal constitutionalism,? and
that the Commonplace Book reveals his conception of
the state as an organism, his comprehensive view of
rational well-being, his aristocratical tendencies, his
reverence for the thinkers of antiquity, and, in short,
the whole spirit of his political thinking. There are
in this remarkable book the names of upwards of
eighty authors read by the young scholar—English,
French, Italian, Latin, and Greek. Along with the
instances and conclusions drawn from the original
authors, we have a few original observations on polit-
ical theory. He wrote the facts and quotations in
English, French, Italian, or Latin, as the humor seized
him. In those earlier years he read the following
authors, whose names he mentions, and whose thought
he was afterwards to incorporate in his first apology
for the Commonwealth: ancient writers—Aristotle,
Tertullian, Basil, Chrysostom; French—De Thou, Bodin,
Girard, Gilles, Seysell ; English—Holinshed, Camden,
Gildas, Stow, Speed, Fynes Morison, Raleigh, Sir
Thomas Smith, Selden ; Scotch— Buchanan; German—
Sleidan; theologians—Luther, Calvin, Peter Martyr,
proceedings of the Council of Trent; jurists—the Justin-
ian and Byzantine codes. This long array of authors
Proves that the Commonplace Book lay at Milton's
elbow when he wrote The Tenure of Kings and Mag-

* Ed. by Horwood, and published for the Camden Society, 1876.
* Domocratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century, p. 178.

Sources xli

istrates. This treatise is more heavily indebted to
that learned scrap-book than any other prose work of
Milton, the History of England, however, being a close
second. In our notes the reader will observe how
many seed-thoughts, quotations, and illustrations were
transferred from one book to the other by our prov-
ident writer, and what embellishment they received
in the process. A comparison of the Commonplace
Book with The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates is a
most interesting study in literary evolution. Milton’s
Prose masterpiece, The First Defence, shows the com-
pletion of the process. If the Commonplace Book is
the blade, The Tenure is the ear, and the First De-
Jence is the full corn in the ear.’

In discussing the subject of tyrannicide, we have
already indicated some of Milton's indebtedness to
ancient authorities. It was in reality owing to the
influence of the Renascence that he was enabled to
bring into this work citations from Aristotle and Eurip-
ides, from Cicero and Livy, from Seneca and Dio,
from Trajan and Theodosius; the new learning also
made it possible for him to support his argument with
quotations from the Justinian and Byzantine codes
of law.

It is to the French historians of the sixteenth cen-
tury, however, that we trace perhaps the most novel
feature of Milton’s contribution to the cause of civil
liberty. Francis Hotman has the distinction of being

* For the amplification of ideas in the First Defence, see notes on
10. 14, 11. 9, 12. 22, 18.11, 14. 7, 1%. 15, 18. 28, 20.19, 24.2. That
kings are accountable to none but God is refuted in a few lines
in the Zenure, but the argument covers thirty pages in the First
Defence (see note on 18, 11). Milton’s treatment of tyrannicide
may be traced through the three stages of development—in the
Commonplace Book, in the Tenure, and in the First Defence,

xlii Introduction

the first modern historian to search the annals of his
own land in an endeavor to discover in the practices
of earlier generations proofs that the people had set
up and deposed kings at pleasure, and had instituted
parliament to be a bridle to monarchs. On this ac-
count, his Franco-Gallia was an epoch-making book.
Miltor’s debt to Hotman is seen in his statements
tegarding the coronation and election of early French,
German, Scottish and Arragonian kings,’ the origin
and meaning of parliaments, which were intended to
be bridles to the kings,? instances of the deposition
of Frankish kings,’ his assertion that the people is
the original of power, and that the titles of dukes,
peers, and great officers of the crown were at first
not hereditary, but purely complimentary.> Milton also
drew considerable material for this treatise from the
French historians, Claude de Seysell, Bernard Girard,
sometimes called Seigneur du Haillan, and J. A. de
Thou (Thuanus). Girard’s Histoire des Rois de France
is often quoted in the Commonplace Book. The great
Latin tomes of Thuanus also afforded Milton a com-
prehensive knowledge of the histories of Denmark,
Scotland, Belgium, France, and Germany during the
sixteenth century. It was these tremendous folios, the
Historia sui Temporis, that Dr. Johnson regretted he
had never translated, and that Froude, Milton’s modern
disciple in thorough-going hatred of clericalism, read
with unflagging interest. The Latin folio of Sleidan's

' Franco-Gallia, trans, Molesworth, pp. 38 ff. 71.

* [bid., p, 70,

* Jord, pp. 44 ff,

‘ [bid., p. 64,

* (oid. pp. 97 ff. It is interesting to remember that Hotman
read Buchanan’s revolutionary dialogue with delight, and paid
a tribute to his judgment. See Irving, Life of Buchanan, p. 258,
and note.

Sources xliii

History of the Reformation was a source, not only for
Milton’s knowledge of German history, but also for
his citations from the writings of Luther, and his
references to the connection of the reformer with the
Peasants’ Revoit. Pastor Peter Gilles’ simple, yet
touching recital, of the sufferings of the Piedmontese
Protestants was also read by Milton in those industrious
youthful days, and lies behind the great sonnet and
the references in this tract to the persecutions and
Struggles of the Waldenses,

Another work of the sixteenth century, whole pages
of which are transcribed in the Commonplace Book,
and to which we have already referred j
of the literat
De Republica. overnment became

was published, and
ne of a triumvirate,
e Aristotle and Mac-
that Milton borrowed

his pages devoutly,
De Republica helped
f the Miltonic argu-

€ years after the appearance

ame forth from a secret press
a work over the significant pseudonym of Junius
Brutus, the real authorship of which is still in doubt,!
a book which was to be the authority of all radicals
and tyrant-haters for centuries. Six editions of the Vin-
diciee contra Tyrannos appeared between 1579 and 1599,
and six between 1600 and 1648; in the latter year it

* Hither Hubert Languet or Du Plessis-Mornay was the real
author.

xliv Introduction

was translated into English, and in this form was read
by Milton, for he refers to it as The Defence against
Tyranny,! and says it is commonly ascribed to Beza.
At the Oxford inquisition party in 1683, this notable
work was burned with the political works of Buchanan
and Milton. As we have already mentioned the place
of this book in the history of tyrannicide, and have
made many references in the notes to Milton’s use of
it for a source of political theory, we shall add nothing
here except to point out that he follows it partic-
ularly in his method of appeal to sacred history
against tyranny.

For the facts of English history, Milton turned to
early authorities, whom he had already been con-
sulting for his proposed History of England. He ap-
plies to the history of bis own land the method of
Hotman, examines coronation oaths and ceremonies,
cases of deposition of kings, and of punishment meted
out to tyrants, and tries to deduce therefrom that
the sovereign power is in the people. The weakness
in Milton’s argument respecting the deposition of
Richard Il, for example, lay in the fact that it was in
the nature of a palace-revolution rather than a con-
certed movement on the part of the people. Among
English historians cited by Milton in this treatise .-e
Gildas, Matthew Paris, Sir Thomas Smith, Camden,
Holinshed, Stow, Speed, and Rushworth. His debt
to them is indicated in tle notes. For the history of
Scotland he consulted Buchanan, Knox, and de Thou.?

Like all Puritan scholars, Milton was well versed

* Second Defence (Bohn 1, 280).

* For a contemporary estimate of the value of de Thou’s
history, see Whitelocke, Memorials, preface to first edition, 1681,
p. 11. For a recent appreciation, see Tilley, The Literature of the
French Renaissance 2. 221 ff.

Sources xlv

in the church fathers and councils, in the commen-
taries and treatises of the Protestant reformers, and
in those of subsequent expositors and pamphleteers,
Owing to his disparagement of the patristic writers,!
he refers only to Tertullian, Chrysostom, and Basil in
this treatise, but his list of Protestant authors is
lengthy, including Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Bucer,
Martyr, Parzeus, Cochleus, Cartwright, Fenner, Gilby,
Goodman, Knox, and Whittingham. His use of the
names of Luther and Calvin in support of his argu-
ment in favor of deposing tyrants is scarcely honest.
His mi.ase of Luther’s words out of their connection
is particularly open to criticism? He also wrests
Calvin to his purpose, for that stern theologian was
far from being an upholder of popular government.
On the contrary, he advocated submission to the worst
tyrant. ‘Let no man here deceive himself,’ says he,
‘since he cannot resist the magistrate without resisting
God. We must be subject not only to good princes,
by whatever means they have so become, although
there is nothing they less perform than the duty of
princes.’* Milton must have read these words, yet
he was unscrupulous enough to try to induce his
readers to believe that Calvin was on his side of the
controversy. In quoting other Protestant writers,
Milton often suppresses a word or phrase, as will be
seen by comparing the text with that given in the
notes, In general, it may be said that while the early
Protestant theologians uttered brave words in con-
demnation of wicked princes, their counsel was pas-

1 See 9,19, and note.

2 See note on 45. 12.

*See note on 47. 28, See also Janet, Hist. de la Philosophie
Morale et Politique 2,40; 2. 67,

* Institutes 4, 20.

xlvi Introduction

sive obedience; at a later period they stipulated that,
if the people were to take action against the powers,
they should act through the inferior magistrates, and
avoid individual or disorderly uprisings.