Cromwell becomes Lord Protector.

1654   (30 May) Defensio Secunda.

1655   (8 August) Defensio Pro Se.

1656   (12 November) Marries Katherine Woodcock.

1657   (19 October) Daughter Katherine born.

1658   (3 February) Wife dies. 17 March: daughter Katherine dies. 3 September: Oliver Cromwell dies.

1659   (16 February) A Treatise of Civil Power. August: Considerations Touching the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Church. May: Richard Cromwell abdicates.

1660   (3 March) Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth. April: Brief Notes upon a Late Sermon. May: M. goes into hiding in a friend’s house in Bartholomew Close. Charles II enters London in triumph. August: M.’s books burned by hangman, but M. is exempted from the death-list. October: M. arrested and imprisoned until December.

1662   Sir Henry Vane executed. M.’s sonnet to Vane published.

1663   (24 February) Marries Elizabeth Minshull. Moves to a house in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields.

1665   M. takes house in Chalfont St Giles to escape the plague.

1666   Great Fire of London.

1667   Paradise Lost published in a ten-book version.

1670   The History of Britain published.

1671   Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes published.

1673   Of True Religion published. Revised and enlarged edition of Poems (1645) published.

1674   Second (twelve-book) edition of Paradise Lost. M. died on or about 8 November, and was buried on 12 November in St Giles, Cripplegate.

FURTHER READING

Editions

Richard Bentley, Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’, 1732.

Cleanth Brooks and J. E. Hardy, Poems of Mr. John Milton: the 1645 Edition with Essays in Analysis, Harcourt, Brace, 1951.

Douglas Bush, Milton: Poetical Works, Oxford University Press, 1966.

Gordon Campbell, John Milton: Complete English Poems, Of Education, Areopagitica, Dent, 1990.

John Carey and Alastair Fowler, Poems of John Milton, Longman, 1968; revised 1980.

Scott Elledge, John Milton: ‘Paradise Lost’, Norton, 1975; 2nd edn, 1993.

Roy Flannagan, John Milton: ‘Paradise Lost’, Macmillan, 1993.

Harris F. Fletcher, Milton’s Complete Poetical Works in Photographic Facsimile, 4 vols., University of Illinois Press, 1943–8.

Fowler. See above, under ‘Carey’.

E. A. J. Honigmann, Milton’s Sonnets, Macmillan, 1966.

Merritt Y. Hughes, John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, Odyssey, 1957.

P[atrick] H[ume], Annotations on Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’, 1695.

David Masson, The Poetical Works of John Milton, 3 vols., 1893.

Thomas Newton, ‘Paradise Lost’: a Poem in Twelve Books, 1749.

Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg, The Oxford Authors: John Milton, Oxford University Press, 1990.

Zachary Pearce, A Review of the Text of ‘Paradise Lost’, 1733.

F. T. Prince, Milton: ‘Samson Agonistes’, Oxford University Press, 1957.

Jonathan Richardson, sen.