Milton’s trust

Abstract

“Trust” is a keyword in the polemical prose that Milton published during the 1640s and 1650s. Milton sometimes uses it to denote the confidence that God places in man and that government ought to place in the people. He also uses it to describe the crisis of confidence in government that occurred during the reign of Charles I, and to refute Charles’ account of himself as a good king who placed his faith in God. Milton responds to this crisis by presenting a theory of government that has much in common with the theory of entrusted powers that Locke presents in the Second Treatise. But “trust” is also an important component of his effort to justify those men who denied the English populace a range of civil liberties during the 1650s. While he articulates a precedent for modern theories of entrusted powers, Milton thus also expresses a perspective on political life and civil liberty that is anti-democratic and pre-modern.

Keywords:

• Milton
• trust
• Areopagitica
• republicanism
• modernity
• rhetoric

Notes

1. All references to Milton’s prose works are to the versions of them printed in Complete Prose Works of John Milton.

2. The Early Modern Research Group. See also Knights.

3. OED, trust, n., definition 5b.

4. OED, trust, v., definitions 2a, 3, 6.

5. For other accounts which observe the Parliamentarians’ distrust of Charles, see Kishlansky, Braddick, Woolrych.

6. The solicitor for the Commonwealth, John Cook, also argues that Charles was guilty of treason because he had betrayed the people’s trust, in the speech which he had intended to make to the Court and which was published on February 9 (Muddiman 235, 236, 246, 247). For observations on how the legal case against the king was based on the proposition that the royal office was an office of trust which Charles had violated, see Burgess.

7. For dates of composition and publication of the English prose works from 1649 to 1660, see the headnotes to each work in The Complete Works of John Milton, vol. 6, Vernacular Regicide and Republican Writings, ed. N. H. Keeble and Nicholas McDowell (Oxford: OUP, 2013).

8. For other precedents (including Henry Parker and the Levellers) for Milton’s usage of the term, see Gough 136–71, Hughes 110–25, Maloy.

9. On the distinction between “psychic” trust and “authorial” trust, see Maloy and Dunn (“Political Agency”). For “trust” in seventeenth-century legal usage, see OED trust, n., definition 6; Holdsworth, vol. 4, 407–80; vol. 5, 304–15; vol. 7, 171–88.

10. For a recent account of Milton’s increasingly prominent negative representation of the English populace, and the ways in which this representation conflicts with his claims to defend the English people, their claim to sovereignty, and their civil liberties, see Hammond.

11. See Dzelzainis “Regicide,” and Walker.

12. See Dzelzainis, “Introduction.”

13. The main Hebrew verbs which are translated as “to trust” in the King James Version of the Old Testament are batach and chasah; the main noun rendered as “trust” is mibtach. See Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, vol. 1, 226–30. The main Greek nouns translated as “trust” in the King James Version of the New Testament, are pistis and pepoithésis; the main verbs rendered as “to trust” are elpizó, peithó, pisteuó. See Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 2, 517–33; vol. 6, 1–7; vol. 8, 162–64.

14. The word “trust” is also common in the prophetic books. For a list of occurrences in the King James Version, see http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/search.php?q=trust&hs=1.

15. See for example, A Declaration of the Parliament of England, Expressing the Grounds of their late Proceedings … (March, 1649) (Malcolm 369–90).

16. For the original Latin text of the Defences, see vols. 7 and 8 of The Works of John Milton.

17. See Machiavelli 114–8.

18. See Foxley.