The Tenure Of Kings And Magistrates Microform

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Excerpt from The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates It is not a little surprising, when one considers the amount of attention that has been bestowed on Milton's poetry, that his prose tracts, with a very few steep tions, have lain so neglected in recent times. The present edition is an attet wt to remedy this neglect. So far as one of these treatises is concerned. Others. It is hoped. Will follow; indeed, The Ready and Easy Way to mum a Free Commonwealth has already been taken in hand. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: rogative unaccountable, after sev'n years warring and destroying of his best subjects, overcom, and yeilded prisoner, should think to scape unquestionable, as a thing divine, in respect of whom so many thousand Christians destroy'd, should lye unaccounted for, polluting with their slaughterd carcasses all the land over, and crying for vengeance against the living that should have righted them' (21. 14ff.). Entertaining such views of his king, to whom loyalty and obedience would now mean only a base compliance, Milton was very strongly of opinion that the sword of justice above the king ought to do its work. Convinced in his own mind of the king's guilt and well merited punishment, he ranged himself in the most uncompromising allegiance on the side of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, who had long since resolved upon the tyrant's death. III. Purpose. The main purpose of The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates is therefore very plain. It is a justification of the thoughts and intents of all those in England who hated tyranny, and who held it to be simple justice that a perfidious monarch should, after fair trial, receive due punishment for high crimes and misdemeanors. The long title of this treatise lays down Milton's thesis 'that it is lawfull to call to account a Tyrant or wicked King and after due conviction to depose, and put him to death.' It was not the intention of Milton to disparage monarchy, however, although he combats the theory of divine right, and maintains that the original of power is in the people. He puts the case of the people against a wicked king, with special reference to Charles I, and gives illustrations from past ages of the overthrow and deposition of tyrants. But his purpose was not to glorify the republican form of government, nor to derogate from the fa...