The moment was most favourable. Presbyterianism had got itself
established, but could not pretend to represent the majority of the
nation. It had been branded by Milton himself in the memorable line:
"New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large." The Independents were for
toleration, the Episcopalians had been for the time humbled by
adversity, the best minds in the nation, including Cromwell, were
Seekers or Latitude men, or sceptics. Here was invitation enough for a
work as much greater than the "Areopagitica" as the principle of freedom
of thought is greater than the most august particular application of it.
Milton might have added the better half of Locke's fame to his own, and
compelled the French philosophers to sit at the feet of a Bible-loving
Englishman. But unfortunately no external impulse stirred him to action,
as in the case of the "Areopagitica." Presbyterians growled at him
occasionally; they did not fine or imprison him, or put him out of the
synagogue. Thus his pen slumbered, and we are in danger of forgetting
that he was, in the ordinary sense of that much-abused term, no Puritan,
but a most free and independent thinker, the vast sweep of whose thought
happened to coincide for a while with the narrow orbit of so-called
Puritanism.

Impulse to work of another sort was at hand. On January 30, 1649,
Charles the First's head rolled on the scaffold. On February 13th was
published a pamphlet from Milton's hand, which cannot have been begun
before the King's trial, another proof of his feverish impetuosity when
possessed by an overmastering idea. The title propounds two theses with
very different titles to acceptance. "The Tenure of Kings and
Magistrates proving that it is lawful, and hath been held so through all
ages, for any who have the power to call to account a tyrant or wicked
king, and after due conviction to depose and put him to death: if the
ordinary magistrate have neglected or denied to do it." That kings have