Milton’s opportunity to serve came in the crisis of 1649.  The king had been sent to the scaffold, paying the penalty of his own treachery, and England sat shivering at its own deed, like a child or a Russian peasant who in sudden passion resists unbearable brutality and then is afraid of the consequences.  Two weeks of anxiety, of terror and silence followed; then appeared Milton’s Tenure of Kings and Magistrates.  To England it was like the coming of a strong man, not only to protect the child, but to justify his blow for liberty.  Kings no less than people are subject to the eternal principle of law; the divine right of a people to defend and protect themselves,—­that was the mighty argument which calmed a people’s dread and proclaimed that a new man and a new principle had arisen in England.  Milton was called to be Secretary for Foreign Tongues in the new government; and for the next few years, until the end of the Commonwealth, there were two leaders in England, Cromwell the man of action, Milton the man of thought.  It is doubtful to which of the two humanity owes most for its emancipation from the tyranny of kings and prelates.

Two things of personal interest deserve mention in this period of Milton’s life, his marriage and his blindness.  In 1643 he married Mary Powell, a shallow, pleasure-loving girl, the daughter of a Royalist; and that was the beginning of sorrows.  After a month, tiring of the austere life of a Puritan household, she abandoned her husband, who, with the same radical reasoning with which he dealt with affairs of state, promptly repudiated the marriage.  His Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce and his Tetrachordon are the arguments to justify his position; but they aroused a storm of protest in England, and they suggest to a modern reader that Milton was perhaps as much to blame as his wife, and that he had scant understanding of a woman’s nature.  When his wife, fearing for her position, appeared before him in tears, all his ponderous arguments were swept aside by a generous impulse; and though the marriage was never a happy one, Milton never again mentioned his wife’s desertion.  The scene in Paradise Lost, where Eve comes weeping to Adam, seeking peace and pardon, is probably a reflection of a scene in Milton’s own household.  His wife died in 1653, and a few years later he married another, whom we remember for the sonnet, “Methought I saw my late espoused saint,” in which she is celebrated.  She died after fifteen months, and in 1663 he married a third wife, who helped the blind old man to manage his poor household.

From boyhood the strain on the poet’s eyes had grown more and more severe; but even when his sight was threatened he held steadily to his purpose of using his pen in the service of his country.  During the king’s imprisonment a book appeared called Eikon Basilike (Royal Image), giving a rosy picture of the king’s piety, and condemning the Puritans.  The book speedily became famous and