Milton Close –  John Milton (1608-74)

https://www.christs.cam.ac.uk/john-milton-1608-74-0

John Milton was born in Cheapside, London, son of a scrivener. He was well educated, studying at Cambridge. He became a poet and travelled to the continent. His early poetry was in Latin and railed against the corruption of the church. During the English civil wars he wrote Republican pamphlets.  He also published tracts arguing for the right to divorce on intellectual incompatibility ground – his own marriage was not a success. The government tried to suppress Milton’s writing, in response he wrote Areopagitica (1644), which argued for freedom of speech and toleration. He wrote a tract defending the execution of Charles I and served in Oliver Cromwell’s government. In 1652 he went blind, after which he resumed writing poetry and worked on his History of Britain. He did not support the restoration of Charles II, writing polemics on political and religious liberty, reiterating his defense of regicide. In the late 1650s Milton started writing Paradise Lost, a poem of some ten thousand lines, which was published in 1667. In 1671 he published Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes.