One of the Defining Political Controversies of the Interregnum
MILTON, John. Pro populo anglicano defensio contra Claudii Anonymi, aliàs Salmasii, Defensionem regiam. London [i.e. Amsterdam]: Du Gardianis [i.e. Jansson]. 1651.
12mo. Contemporary limp vellum, yapp fore-edges, manuscript lettering in ink to spine; pp. [2 (blank)], [2], [38], 330; woodcut Commonwealth arms device to title; binding a little marked; light toning and small rust hole to title; loosely inserted note with contemporary inscription in ink (see below); very good.
[offered with:]
[SAUMAISE, Claude.] Defensio Regia. Pro Carolo I. Ad Serenissimum Magna Britanniæ Regem Carolum II. Filium natu majorem, Heredem & Successorem legitimum. [Leiden?]: Sumptibus regiis. 1652.
12mo. Polished sheep in panel design, covers ruled and tooled in blind to panel design with small fleurons, rebacked; pp. 444; woodcut device to title, woodcut initials and head- and tailpieces; a little scuffed and worn with some light offsetting to endapers but a good sound copy; bookplate of Lord Calthorpe and shelf-mark to upper pastedown.
Early Continental edition of Milton’s celebrated defence of the English Commonwealth, issued with a false London imprint the same year as the first printing.
A pivotal work in the polemics of the Interregnum, Milton’s Defensio is a searing rebuttal of Claude Saumaise’s Defensio regia, the Royalist tract defending Charles I, published the previous year. The work is significant as the official reply commissioned by the English Parliament, written in Milton’s capacity as Latin Secretary to the Council of the Commonwealth. Prompted by the serious effect Salmasius’s arguments were having on public opinion across the Continent, the treatise offers an eloquent defence of the regicide and the legitimacy of the Commonwealth. Milton considered it his finest work in prose.
The Defensio appeared in more editions and was more widely circulated during Milton’s lifetime than any other of his works. The speed with which the work travelled across Europe is reflected in this Amsterdam edition, produced by Jansson’s press at a moment when the book was fiercely sought after. Contemporaries recognised Milton’s 1651 reply to Saumaise as an extraordinary demonstration of talent by a previously little-known writer, decisively dismantling the arguments of one of the most eminent scholars of the age. The result is a work that played a key role in shaping Milton’s Continental reputation and cemented his position as one of the most formidable polemical prose stylists of the seventeenth century.
The annotation in this copy appears to be the work of a contemporary Royalist reader who has inscribed a series of Latin anagrams to a loosely inserted slip, derived from “Carolus Stuartus Angliae, scotiae et Hiberniae Rex Aula, Statu, Regno exucris ac hostili arte necaberis” (Charles Stuart, King of England, Scotland and Ireland: you will be slain by cruel and hostile art, stripped of court, state, and kingdom.) Assuming the voice of the dead king addressing Parliament, the annotator continues, “Exercitas atque Parliamentum Anglicanum novum. Canes! ut rex nil aut parum mali umquam egi, nec muto” (You stir up an army and a new English Parliament. You dogs! As king, I have done little or no evil ever, and I do not change). This provocative response to Milton’s text presents a striking example of Royalist polemical engagement in the mid-seventeenth century.
Our copy is offered here with an early edition of Saumaise’s influential defence of Charles I. Claude Saumaise (1588-1653), the distinguished French humanist and philologist, completed the treatise at the request of Charles II, who is widely believed to have underwritten its publication. The work’s appearance caused a sensation. Suppressed in England, with Milton himself among the official censors, the Defensio Regia circulated freely on the Continent and quickly provoked the famous reply commissioned by the Commonwealth, Milton’s Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (1651). The exchange between Saumaise and Milton stands as one of the defining political controversies of the Interregnum.
Pro populo anglicano defensio: ESTC R234384; Wing M2168D; Madan 9; Coleridge 51. Defensio Regia: USTC 1844345; Madan 12.
SKU: 2124182