1 - Milton's classical republicanism

Summary

In Behemoth, or The Long Parliament, Thomas Hobbes laid much of the blame for the Civil War at the door of the universities which, he said, ‘have been to this nation, as the wooden horse was to the Trojans’. This was also a warning because until the universities were reformed they would continue to pose the same threat: ‘The core of rebellion, as you have seen by this … are the Universities.’ Their potential for causing rebellion arose from a single source: the prominence of the ancient languages in the curriculum. For Hobbes believed that anyone acquiring a mastery of these languages was in effect being handed the keys to an ideological arsenal.

Two groups especially had exploited the opportunity presented to them. One was the clergy who were able to ‘pretend’ that linguistic expertise endowed them with ‘greater skill in Scriptures than other men have’. This meant they could ‘impose’ their ‘own sense’ of Scripture on their ‘fellow-subjects’ despite the fact that the Bible was available in English. They could also invoke the same ‘skill’ whenever they sought to ‘publish or teach … private interpretations’ which brought the king's authority into question – something which Hobbes regarded as a matter of the utmost consequence since ‘the interpretation of a verse in the Hebrew, Greek, or Latin Bible, is oftentimes the cause of civil war and the deposing and assassinating of God's anointed’.

The other group armed in this fashion was the gentry – the ‘men of the better sort’, ‘democratical gentlemen’ or simply ‘democraticals’ as Hobbes often called them.