With Benjamin Burton, “Who Printed Milton’s Tetrachordon?” The Library 14:1 (2013), 18-44.

Who Printed Milton’s Tetrachordon (1645)?

Sharon Achinstein, Benjamin Burton

The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, Volume14, Number 1, March 2013, pp. 18-44 (Article)

Published by Oxford University Press

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ohn Milton worked with a number of different printers duringthe tumultu ous period of the divorce tracts (1643–45). Several areknown to us. Thomas Paine and Matthew Simmons, identified by theirinitials on the title-page of the first edition, printed The Doctrine and

Discipline of Divorce on 1 August 1643, and it was Simmons again whoentered Milton’s Judgement of Martin Bucer in the Stationers’ Register on 15 July 1644.1 Thomas Underhill entered Milton’s Of Education in the Sta -tioners’ Register on 4 June. Humphrey Moseley published the Poems (1645).But in the case of Areopagitica, as well as Tetrachordon and Colasterion(Thomason noting the latter two appearing on 4 March 1645),2 there is littleknown about the printers, publishers, or print circumstances of production.3This essay presents evidence, and some questions, regarding the printing ofMilton’s Tetrachordon, the third in Milton’s divorce tracts, and the sixthprinted text authored by Milton in the years 1643–45.4

Who Printed Milton’s Tetrachordon (1645)?

by

SHARON ACHINSTEIN and BENJAMIN BURTON

The Library, 7th series, vol. 14, no. 1 (March 2013)© The Author 2013; all rights reserved

J

1 Thomason’s copy is dated 6 August and Milton himself noted that he had published that work‘about a week before’ Herbert Palmer’s sermon of 13 August; see Tetrachordon, sig. A2

v, line 87, inComplete Prose Works of John Milton, gen. ed. D. M. Wolfe, 8 vols in 10 (New Haven, 1953–1982), ii:1643–48, ed. by Ernest Sirluck (1959), p. 580. Subsequent references to this edition (YP) are incor -porated in the text.

2 This would have been in advance of the turnover in the old style dating. Because the changeoverbetween 1644 and 1645 was not until 25 March Thomason crossed out the 1645 and corrected it to 1644;see BL, e 271(12). For recent overviews of Milton’s involvements with printers see Joad Raymond,‘Milton’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, ed. by John Barnard, D. F. McKenzie, DavidMcKitterick, and others, 7 vols (Cambridge, 1999– ), iv: 1557–1695, ed. by John Barnard, D. F. McKenzie, and Maureen Bell (2002), pp. 376–86; and Sabrina A. Baron, ‘Licensing Readers,Licensing Authorities in Seventeenth-Century England’, in Books and Readers in Early ModernEngland: Material Studies, ed. by Jennifer L. Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer (Philadelphia, 2002), pp. 217–42. On his involvement with the book trade and its ideologies see Steven B. Dobranski, Milton,Authorship and the Book Trade (Cambridge, 1999).

3 Tetrachordon must have been written before Colasterion: there are allusions to Tetrachordon inColasterion. See YP, ii, p. 736: ‘which I have cited else where’; and p. 749: ‘I have spok’n more in anotherplace’.

4 The authors would like to thank Mark Knights, Annabel Patterson, Nicholas van Maltzahn andArnold Hunt for their assistance in tracking down leads, the British Milton Seminar for theircomments, and David Como for reading a draft of the whole, and for sharing before publication hisimportant essay, ‘Print, Censorship, and Ideological Escalation in the English Civil War,’ Journal ofBritish Studies, 51:4 (2012), pp. 820–57.

03 Achinstein and Burton:Layout 1 12/02/2013 14:12 Page 18

Scholarship on Tetrachordon to date has determined that the work wasproduced collaboratively. Writing in The Library in 1937, William RileyParker suggested there were two separate printers for the work, having notedthe unusual mispagination involving a lapse in page numbering. Parkerdeter mined that one printer must have set pp. 1–40 (sigs A–F) and anotherprinter had set those beginning on the page marked 37 to the end (sigs G–O).Based upon this lapse in the pagination, along with differences in type fountsand watermarks, Parker concluded that there were two independent printerssetting up type.5 John Shawcross, identifying different spelling habits ofcompositors in Tetrachordon, offered confirmatory evidence to this hypo -thesis, suggesting that the work was produced on separate presses, but hedisagreed with Parker over how the work was divided between the printers.Shawcross contended that sigs B–F were ‘well-composed’ by a printerfamiliar with Milton’s orthography, while sig. A and sigs G–O were ‘verypoor work’ done by another printer.6

The printers of Tetrachordon, in contravention of the 1643 LicensingOrder, did not give a name on the title-page and it has long been assumedthat the work came from the houses of Simmons and Paine, who hadpublished Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. This essay asks whether thatassumption is warranted. By examining the evidence, both internal andexternal to the work, and by setting out a wide context in which to under -stand Milton’s complex relationships with his printers during a period ofpol iti cal instability, it establishes a rich background for Milton’s earlyprinters. It will be shown that Milton had a lifelong association with news -men: the producers, publishers, and printers of newsbooks.7 In doing so theessay will explore evidence on which rests the conventional assignment ofTetrachordon to Simmons and Paine and suggest possible alternatives.

Milton’s Printers, 1643–45For the printing of his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Milton partedfrom Thomas Underhill and John Rothwell, publishers of his earlier anti-

Sharon Achinstein and Benjamin Burton 19

5 William R. Parker, ‘Milton, Rothwell, and Simmons’, The Library, iv, 18 (1937), 89–103 (pp.99–100).

6 John T. Shawcross, ‘What We Can Learn from Milton’s Spelling’, Huntington Library Quarterly,26 (1963), 351–61 (pp. 355–56).

7 On Milton’s relationship with the newsman Marchamont Nedham see Joad Raymond, TheInvention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks, 1641–1649 (Oxford, 1996), p. 257; and Raymond,Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 154, 249. See also BlairWorden, ‘Milton and Marchamont Nedham’, in Milton and Republicanism, ed. by David Armitage,Quentin Skinner and Armand Himy (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 156–80.


prelatical pamphlets. It has been suggested that his old publishers refused it.8But there is no evidence for this claim. His new printers were in the samenetwork; Rothwell and Underhill had each acted as publishers for worksprinted jointly by Paine and Simmons in 1642 and 1643, and Rothwell wasconnected with Giles Calvert and Henry Overton.9 Ideological considera -tions may have had something to do with Milton’s decision to changepublishers: Underhill and Rothwell were becoming closely allied to thePresbyterian cause, Underhill the publisher of Robert Baillie, and Rothwellthe works of Lazarus Seaman, William Spurstowe, and Calibut Downing.When Milton’s first divorce pamphlet appeared on or before 1 August 1643

it identified the printers as Matthew Simmons and Thomas Paine, who puttheir initials on the imprint but did not register the work.

Simmons and Paine were frequently on the wrong side of the law for theirpublishing. They formed an association in 1640 in a shop in GoldsmithsAlley, Redcross Street, with Simmons not much active until that time, havingtaken up his freedom in the Stationers’ Company in 1632. Indeed on 21

August 1641 there was a ‘memorandum that Sim[m]ons and Payne, who havecontinually printed libels, [and] are known to all the stationers’, were beingsent for by Parliament for their association with the illicit publication of theOccurrences in Parliament.10 Simmons was repeatedly in trouble with the authorities in 1641, imprisoned in December of that year for his associa -tion with a radical work, described in the Lords Journal as ‘a Book againstthe Common Prayer’.11 This was Lewes Hughes’s Certaine Grievances(December–January 1640), which had originally appeared with the imprintof the London Cloppenberg Press (STC 13917), was reworked and reprintedin five editions between 1640 and 1642, and which bore the hands of bothPaine and Simmons. Hughes’s work bore an imprint of T. P. [Thomas Paine]in 1642 (Wing H3315) and then an imprint of T. P. and M. S. in 1643 (WingH3315A). An interesting tie-in with the pre-war radical press was thatSimmons also licensed and printed another work by Hughes, The Errors ofthe Common Catechism (1645). Thus work on Certaine Grievances suggests

Who Printed Milton’s Tetrachordon (1645)?20

8 Parker, ‘Milton, Rothwell, and Simmons’, p. 96; and Baron, ‘Licensing Readers’. Rothwell hadpublished An Apology against a pamphlet and Reason of Church Government, both printed byE[dward] G[riffin], and the Smectymnuuan pamphlets, An Answer to a book, entitled an humbleremonstrance (1641), (Wing M748); and A Vindication of the answer to the humble remonstrance(1641), (Wing M798). Further Rothwell had been publisher for John Pym’s 1642 speech (Wing P4278),which had been printed by R. Oulton and G. Dexter, two other of Milton’s early printers.

9 Paine’s and Simmons’s joint printing for Rothwell or Underhill include the following: an anony -mous pamphlet, Remonstrans Redivivus (25 July 1643) (Wing R1033); Thomas Goodwin’s Aggravationof sinne (1643) (Wing G1223); John Vicars’ God in the Mount (1642) (Wing V308); and Vicars’ Jehova-jireh (1644) (Wing V313).10 D. F. McKenzie and Maureen Bell, A Chronology and Calendar of Documents Relating to the

London Book Trade, 1641–1700, 3 vols (Oxford, 2005), i, 23. See CJ, ii, 267.11 Lords Journal (hereafter LJ), iv, 467 (10 December 1641). McKenzie and Bell, Chronology, i,

pp. 24, 30, 31.


a link between Simmons and Paine and the oppositional pre-Civil Warpress.12

During the years 1641 to 1660 Matthew Simmons was one of the period’smost active publishers. He would be given charge of publishing the papersof the Parliamentary Army in September 1647 and was later employed by therepublican Council of State.13 Earlier linked to the radical publisher GilesCalvert and — like him, the son of a non-conformist clergyman — Simmonswas a pro-Parliament newsman, with Paine publishing some of the earliestParliamentary newsbooks. In August 1642 A Continuation of the TrueDiurnall of All the Passages in Parliament appeared under their imprint, aswell as the vehemently Protestant Parliamentary newsbook, Wednesday’sMercury with Paine (from Goldsmith’s Alley) beginning on 19 July 1643.14

Milton, at the same time as the emergence of the first edition of TheDoctrine and Discipline of Divorce, therefore became involved with news -book makers, booksellers, editors, and publishers and was building the basisof what would become lifelong information networks. After The Doctrineand Discipline of Divorce, Milton continued his relationship with Simmonsby having him print and publish Judgement of Martin Bucer, the onlylicensed divorce tract in Milton’s canon. Simmons would later print Milton’sTenure of Kings and Magistrates; the Articles of Peace with Milton’s‘Observa tions’; and his Eikonoklastes. Simmons’s wife Mary inherited thebusiness upon his death in 1654 and was a prosperous printer in her ownright, with two working presses on her premises in 1668.15 It was her sonSamuel, who printed the first three editions of Paradise Lost.16 With theexception of Moseley most, if not all, of Milton’s subsequent publisherswere also involved in newsbook production.

The failure to register and license The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorcemay not have been a gesture of defiance. In the previous year neither Painenor Simmons had registered a single book they published and yet Wing liststwenty-five works under their imprint in 1642.17 It is likely therefore that


12 David Como, ‘Secret Printing, the Crisis of 1640, and the Origins of Civil War Radicalism’, Pastand Present, 196 (2007), pp. 37–82, has argued that the Cloppenberg imprint, formerly of Amsterdam,was being used by oppositional printers in England in the early 1640s for clandestine publications ofthe radical puritan propagandists including Hughes, John Burton, Lilburne, Samuel How, RichardOverton, Marprelate tracts, and those of the Scottish Covenanters.13 McKenzie and Bell, Chronology, i, p. 213. 14 The 8–15 August 1642 Continuation of the true diurnall of passages in Parliament is the first

number of this title to list their names, but the title had begun publishing earlier. Carolyn Nelson andMatthew Seccombe, British Newspapers and Periodicals: A Short-Title Catalogue (New York, 1987),p. 70.15 Harris F. Fletcher, John Milton’s Complete Poetical Works Reproduced in Photographic Facsimile,

4 vols (Urbana, 1945–48), ii, 106–09.16 D. F. McKenzie, ‘Milton’s Printers: Matthew, Mary and Samuel Simmons’, Milton Quarterly, 14

(1980), pp. 87–91 identifies these as father, mother, and son. See also I. Gadd, ‘Simmons, Matthew (b. in or before 1608, d. 1654)’, ODNB.17 Parker. ‘Milton, Rothwell, and Simmons’, pp. 89–103 (p. 96).


they had long been publishing without a licence, the standard procedure forthe time. It is clear however that both of these printers were at the heart ofoppositional printing networks in the early 1640s, and it was not simply acase of ‘hunger’ for any work at all, as has been suggested, but a carefulideological positioning.18 Indeed there is much in the ideological reading tosuggest reasons for which Milton turned to Thomas Paine and MatthewSimmons jointly to produce Tetrachordon in their two print shops. Thisassignment of that work to them makes sense based upon Milton’s earliercollaborations with these printers over the Doctrine and Discipline ofDivorce and Judgement of Martin Bucer. However, as we shall show, it is notcertain that this assumption is warranted.

CollaborationsGiven this background, then, three hypotheses emerge about who printedTetrachordon. First, Matthew Simmons and Thomas Paine in collaboration(a possibility first raised by William Parker in 1937); second, Simmonsworking alone (a new possibility raised by us); and third, Thomas Paine andFrancis Neile in collaboration (as suggested by the British Library GeneralCatalogue 3).

Setting aside the identity of printers for a moment, it is necessary first toevaluate the cases for the collaborative printing posited by Parker and Shaw -cross: the former through evidence of pagination; and the latter throughorthography. In support of Parker’s hypotheses of two separate printersbased on pagination, there is additional evidence of different ‘house-styles’in sigs B–F and G–O. Such house styles include the formatting of biblicalcitations and the use of superscript ‘th’ and ‘d’ in contractions (usually fornumbers). In sigs B–F (pp. 1, 6, 7, 13, 14, 23, 24) the first line of biblicalcitations is aligned to both the left and right margins, with subsequent linesindented; in sigs G–O (pp. 37(2), 45, 48, 60, 69, 77) the first line is indented,with subsequent lines aligned to both the left and right margins (see Figures1 and 2). Some biblical citations are preceded by ‘Vers’ in sigs G–O (pp. 45,47, 48, 69) but not in sigs B–F. In addition, superscript contractions ‘th’ and‘d’ are used in sigs G–O (pp. 49, 50, 55, 59, 63, 64, 66, 97), but not in sigs A–F(except for the title page). These findings confirm Parker’s hypothesis of twodifferent printers.

The evidence of spelling is less than convincing however. There are otherexamples of so-called Miltonic spelling listed by Shawcross in Tetrachordon,which contradict his claims that sigs B–F were set by a printer familiar withMilton’s orthography while sigs A and G–O were ‘very poor work’ done byanother printer. For instance there are alternate spellings in the case of


18 As has claimed Baron, ‘Licensing Readers’.


words containing ‘-ceav-’/ ‘-ceiv-’. The former, which Shawcross lists as ‘analmost consistent spelling for Milton but an infrequent one in print’ (pp. 356–57), occurs more often in sigs A and G–O than in sigs B–F (13 outof 25 times, as opposed to 2 out of 13 times), complicating the assumptionthat sigs A and G–O were set by a compositor who was either careless orunfamiliar with Milton’s spelling habits. Indeed the evidence for twoseparate printers is not clear cut. Even if we discount the fact that Shawcrossand Parker disagree over who was responsible for printing sig. A, problemsremain. Strictly speaking neither supplies evidence of different printinghouses but only of different compositors.

Parker built his case for identifying Simmons and Paine as the printers ofTetrachordon on two pieces of evidence, one hard and one soft. First is thehard evidence of type: that the large ornamental capital ‘I’ on sig. G1

r ofTetrachordon was also used by Paine in 1640, shortly before he becamepartner with Simmons (see Figure 3). Paine continued to use this ornamentalletter in several works that he published in partnership with Simmons in1641 and 1642. Second, Parker made a conjecture based on the fact thatSimmons and Paine had jointly printed another of Milton’s divorce tracts,the first edition of Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce in 1643, and thatthere is a likelihood of Milton remaining loyal to them. Putting these pieces


Fig. 1 Detail from Tetrachordon, sig. B1r, showing formatting of biblical citations in sigs

B–F. Courtesy of The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, shelfmark AA 23(5) Th. Seld.

Fig. 2 Detail from Tetrachordon, sig. G1r, showing formatting of biblical citations in sigs

G–O. Courtesy of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, shelfmark AA 23(5) Th. Seld.


of evidence together, Parker suggests that Simmons and Paine also collabo -rated in printing Tetrachordon.19 In support of Parker’s hypothesis, furtherresearch has made it clear that Paine, in fact, did use the ornamental capital‘I’ on sig. G1

r in numerous works published between 1640 and 1649, includ -ing works published shortly before and after Tetrachordon. Indeed, in otherworks, he also used most, if not all, of the printer’s ornaments that appearon sig. G1

r of Tetrachordon (see Figure 4).20


Fig. 4 Row of printer’s ornaments from Tetrachordon, sig. G1r Courtesy of The Bodleian

Libraries, University of Oxford, shelfmark AA 23(5) Th. Seld.

19 Parker, ‘Milton, Rothwell, and Simmons’, p. 100. Parker notes the appearance of the ornamentalcapital ‘I’ in John Preston’s A Heavenly Treatise of the Divine Love of Christ (1640), p. 53 (STC20240.3); Nathaniel Horne’s The Nevv World, or the Nevv Reformed Church (London: Printed by T.P. and M. S., 1641), sig. A2

r (Wing H2570); and A True Report of the Occvrrences at Portsmovth(London: Printed by T. P. and M. S., 1642), p. 3 (Wing T3095).20 The following works printed by Paine include the large ornamental capital ‘I’ found in Tetra -

chordon (this list does not include those titles discovered by Parker): Jeremiah Dyke, Divers SelectSermons (1640), sig. B1

r (STC 7414; anr. edn 7414.5); Jeremiah Burroughs, Moses his Self-DenyallDelivered (1641), sig. B1

r (Wing B6097); Thomas Weld, An Answer to W. R. (1644), sig. B1r (Wing

W1262; Thomason’s copy dated 27 July); Immanuel Knutton, Seven Questions abovt the Controversiebetween the Church of England and the Separatists and Anabaptists (1645), sig. A3

r (Wing K744;Thomason’s copy dated 23 January1644/5); Robert Burnam, A Remonstrance, or A NecessitatedVindication of Robert Burnam (1645), sig. A3

r (Wing B5748); Paul Amyraut, The Triumph of GoodConscience (1648), sig. B1

r (Wing A3038; Thomason’s copy dated 9 February 1647/8); JohnSpittlehouse, Rome Ruin’d by VVhite Hall (1650) [i.e. 1649]), sig. B1

r (Wing S5013; Thomason’s copydated 31 December). For Paine’s use of ornaments see for example Richard Baker, Meditations andDisquisitions vpon the Lords Prayer (1640), sig. A2

r (STC 1226); Thomas Shepard, The Sincere Convert(1640), t. p. (STC 22404.9); Burroughs, Moses his Self-Denyall (1641), sig. [A7

r] (Wing B6097); C. C.The Covenanter Vindicated from Perjurie (1644), sig. A2

r (Wing C176); Richard Younge, CordiallCouncell (1645), t. p., sig. A2

r (Wing C6283); William Mercer, Angliae Speculum (1646), sigs A2v, Gv,

H2v, H4

v, N1r, and N3

r (Wing M1735).

Fig. 3 Ornamental capital ‘I’ from Tetrachordon, sig. G1r courtesy of The Bodleian

Libraries, University of Oxford, shelfmark AA 23(5) Th. Seld. (A); and two examples fromPaine imprints published before and after Tetrachordon: Wing K744 — Immanuel Knutton,Seven Questions abovt the Controversie between the Church of England and the Separatists

and Anabaptists (1645), sig. A3r (Thomason’s copy dated 23 January 1644/5), courtesy of The

Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, shelfmark Vet. A3 e. 1760 (B); Wing A3038 — Paul Amyraut, The Triumph of Good Conscience (1648), sig. B1

r, courtesy of The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, shelfmark Mason AA 464 (C)

A B C


The second distinguishing marker in Tetrachordon is the large orna mentalcapital ‘T’ on sig. A2

r, from the section presumably printed by the secondprinter (see Figure 5). Although Parker was unable to determine who ownedthis ornamental capital, the current authors have found instances ofSimmons using this letter later, in two works printed in 1646 and 1649:Nathanael Homes, A Vindication of Baptizing Beleevers Infants (1646), sig. B1

r (Wing H2578; Thomason’s copy dated 20 February 1645/6); andJohn Owen, Ouranon Ourania (1649), sig. B1

r (Wing O789). Further, thissecond distinguishing ornament does not appear to feature in any workidentifiable as Paine’s during this period. There are also other works printedby Simmons — both before and after Tetrachordon — which use one of theornaments that appear on sig. A2

r although that ornament, a fleur-de-lis,does not feature regularly in his work (see Figure 6).21 Putting this evidencetogether the case for Paine’s input in the printing of Tetrachordon is


A B

C D

Fig. 5 Ornamental capital ‘T’ fromTetrachordon, sig. A2

r, courtesy of TheBodleian Libraries, University of Oxford,shelfmark AA 23(5) Th. Seld. (A); and anexample from Simmons imprintspublished after Tetrachordon: WingH2578 —Nathaniel Homes, AVindication of Baptizing BeleeversInfants (1646), sig. B1

r, courtesy of TheBodleian Libraries, University of Oxford,shelfmark C 14.9 Linc.(9)(B). Twoexamples from Neile imprints publishedbefore and after Tetrachordon: WingS6205 — The Sussex Picture (Printed . . .July 29, 1644), sig. A2

v, courtesy of TheBodleian Libraries, University of Oxford,shelfmark Wood 612 (23)(C); WingR1257 — Edward Reynolds, IsraelsPrayer in Time of Trouble (1645), sig.B1

r (Thomason’s copy dated 5 August),courtesy of The Bodleian Libraries,University of Oxford, shelfmark 100

w.177(1) (D)

21 For Simmons’s ornaments see for example A Second Powder-Plot (1644), sig. A2r (Wing S2328);

Milton’s The Ivdgement of Martin Bucer (1644), sigs A2r, Cr, Fr (Wing B5270); Benjamin Bourne’s The

Description and Confutation of Mysticall Anti-Christ, the Familists (1646), sig. B1r (Wing B3844);

Nathanael Homes, A Vindication of Baptizing Beleevers Infants (1646), sig. [Gg2v] (Wing H2578).

Fig. 6 Row of printer’s ornaments from Tetrachordon, sig. A2r, courtesy of The Bodleian

Libraries, University of Oxford, shelfmark AA 23(5) Th. Seld.


persuasive. Paine was using all the relevant ornaments at the time Tetra -chordon was published.

The case for Simmons’s input is less secure, however, since it is not knownwhether he had the ornamental capital ‘T’ in 1645. Parker notes that theornamental ‘T’ also appears in a series of news pamphlets printed anony -mously in August 1642. It is unlikely this was Simmons’s work as he does notappear to have used the other ornaments that figure in these pamphlets.22

There are at least two more works that contain this letter, both publishedanonymously in 1644. One of these includes a printers’ device that Simmonsused when he printed Nathaniel Homes’s Vindication of Baptizing in 1646.Tantalizingly the latter is also the first of Simmons’s works to feature thecapital ‘T’ that appears in Tetrachordon.23 The case for Sim mons’s input isnot clear cut, though; Simmons does not appear to have used this device inany other of his works and, as we will see, another printer was regularlyusing the same device and ornamental capital at the time Tetra chordon waspublished.

At present, then, Simmons is chiefly assigned the printing of Tetrachordonon the basis of his previous association with Paine and Milton. But there isno evidence that he and Paine were still working together in 1645. Indeedtheir partnership had broken up physically almost a year earlier. As Parkernotes the last known work to bear a Paine-Simmons imprint is HezekiahWoodward’s A Dialogue, Argving that Arch-Bihops, Bishops, Curates,Neuters, are to be Cut-Off by the Law of God (Wing W3486), which Thom -a son purchased on 26 February 1643/4.24 By May 1644 Simmons had movedout of the printing house he shared with Paine in Goldsmith’s Alley to largerpremises around the corner, next to the Gilded Lion in Aldersgate Street. Hisaddress is initially given as ‘Aldersgate Street’ (Wing E3381; Thomason’s copy


22 Parker, ‘Milton, Rothwell, and Simmons’, p. 100, n. 2 notes that the ornamental letter ‘T’ appearsin a series of pamphlets printed anonymously in August 1642: The Kings Proclamation andDetermination Concerning the Earle of Essex (Wing C2549), The Earle of Essex his Desires to theParliament (Wing E73), The Kings Articles and the Parliaments Honour (Wing K589) and The ScotsResolution Concerning this Present Expedition Expressed in the Voluntary Service of Diverse ScottishCommanders (Wing S1999). We have discovered another work that belongs to this group — JohnBrowne, Good News From Somerset-shire ([London]: Printed for Richard Thomson, August 12 1642)(Wing G1067). It is not clear who printed these pamphlets.23 Richard Mather, A Modest & Brotherly Ansvver to Mr. Charles Herle his Book against Inde -

pendency (London: Printed for Henry Overton, 1644), sig. A3r (Wing M1274; Thomason’s copy dated

15 March 1643/4); Richard Boothby, A True Declaration of the Intollerable Wrongs Done to RichardBoothby ([London: n. pub.], 10 June 1644), sig. B1

r (Wing B3745). The same page of the latter workbears the printers’ device used by Simmons in Nathanael Homes, Vindication of Baptizing (1646).24 Parker, ‘Milton, Rothwell, and Simmons’, p. 100. Another work, John Vicars’s Jehovah-Jireh

(London: Printed by T. Paine and M. Simmons, 1644) (Wing V313), may have been printed collabora -tively after this date.


dated 31 May 1644), then as ‘the Gilded Lyon in Aldersgate Street’ (WingM2181; Thomason’s copy dated 13 February 1649), and finally as ‘next doreto the gilded Lyon in Aldersgate street’ in works published between 6 October 1649 and Simmons’s death on 6 May 1654 (see Wing M2112).25

After this date Simmons’s widow Mary ran the printing house at this address(see Wing C769A, printed 1655), later in conjunction with her son Samuel(see Wing S3080D and S3082, printed in 1668 and 1674 respec tively).

Geography thus puts the two in different locations. Paine seems to haveremained in Goldsmith’s Alley during this period. His address is given as‘Red-Crosse-street, in Goldsmiths-Alley, over-against the signe of the Sugar-loafe’ (Wing W680 and W695B; both dated 1646). He was still in Gold -smith’s Alley at the end of December 1649 (Wing S5013; see also Plomer).26

Later imprints do not record his address. Though the pair still lived andworked in the same neighbourhood, and both were just a few minutes’ walkfrom Milton’s house in Lamb Alley, they were not under the same roof.27

Clearly a continued collaboration between Paine and Simmons would befeasible under these conditions, but there was another printer living andwork ing in the area who may also have had a hand in Tetrachordon, and thatwas Francis Neile.

Francis Neile enters the story by way of the Integrated Catalogue of theBritish Library. There the entry for its copies of Tetrachordon names printersas Paine and Francis Neile. Although the catalogue entry does not supplyevidence for Neile’s input, this entry was likely introduced in GK3 in the1950s at a time when the renowned bibliographer David Foxon was on thestaff. The printers are not listed in the 1908 catalogue of the Thomasontracts.28 As this lead has been pursued there emerges indeed a case for theNeile association, one based on a comparison of ornamental capitals. Thefact is that Francis Neile regularly used the Tetrachordon ornamental capital‘T’ during the period 1644 to 1654, notably in works published shortlybefore and after it (see Figure 5). Furthermore Neile regularly used theprinter’s ornaments that feature on sig. A2

r of Tetrachordon during this


25 For the date of Simmons’s death see Henry R. Plomer, A Dictionary of the Booksellers and Printerswho were at work in England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1641 to 1667 (London, 1907), p. 164. Plomersays Simmons worked at Aldersgate Street from 1636 (p. 164), but the current authors have found noevidence to support this.26 Plomer, Dictionary, p. 146.27 For Milton’s address in this period see Gordon Campbell and Thomas N. Corns, John Milton: Life,

Work, and Thought (Oxford, 2008), pp. 133, 413, n. 9.28 Thanks to Arnold Hunt for helping address this mystery. The catalogue entry is noted but not

discussed in William Parker, Milton: A Biography, 2 vols (Oxford, 1968), ii, 893, n. 111.


period (see Figure 6).29 The forensic case for Neile’s input is thus strong.However there is no other evidence that he and Paine collaborated duringthis period, nor that Neile was involved in the publication of any otherworks by Milton.

The evidence of Neile’s printing with Tetrachordon’s ornamental capital‘T’ nonetheless complicates the case for Simmons’s input. AlthoughSimmons and Neile both used this letter between 1646 and 1650, it appearsmost regularly in Neile’s work — and, as noted above, we have found onlytwo other examples in works bearing Simmons’s imprint (Wing H2578:Nathaniel Homes’s, A Vindication of Baptizing (1646); and Wing O789:John Owen’s Ouranon Ourania (1649)). Perhaps the simplest explanation isthat there was more than one copy of the letter in use at this time. It shouldbe noted, however, that Simmons and Neile worked together in this period.Both lived in Aldersgate Street after 1645 although the precise location ofNeile’s premises is unknown.30 They are also listed as partners in HenryPlomer’s Dictionary, although Plomer does not say when they workedtogether.31 The pair did collaborate on at least one work, however, publishedin 1651 (Wing P420: Henry Parker’s Scotland’s Holy War). Questions there -fore arise. When did the collaboration begin? Did Neile and Simmons sharetype? If they did, this might explain the sudden appearance of the orna -mental letter ‘T’ in a work printed by Simmons in 1646, a work that alsoincludes a device used by Neile. Indeed there is the possibility of a networkinvolving Paine, Neile, and Simmons, who shared type.

There is, however, one final hypothesis to consider: not that there wasanother collaboration, but that Simmons worked alone. Evidence providedby Parker and Shawcross would not automatically seal the case for two inde -pendent printing shops; it might point to two compositors working underthe same roof. Indeed Parker seems to allow this possibility in a later article


29 Neile used the ornamental capital ‘T’ in the anonymous pamphlet The Sussex Picture (‘Printed [. . .]July 29. 1644), sig. A2

v (Wing S6205); Edward Reynolds’s Israels Prayer in Time of Trouble (1645), sig.B1

r (Wing R1257; Thomason’s copy dated 5 August); Thomas Horton’s Sinne’s Discovery and Revenge(1646), sig. B1

r (Wing H2882); The Love and Faithfulnes of the Scottish Nation (1646), sig. A1v (Wing

L3195; Thomason’s copy dated 29 June); and Edward Reynolds’s A Treatise of the Passions (1650), p. 221, sig. [Ff4r] (Wing R1295 and R1295A). As noted above (n. 21) the letter also appears in WingM1274 and B3745, both printed anonymously in 1644. The former contains an ornamental border usedby Neile in A Looking-Glasse of the World (1644), t. p. (Wing L3037) and Wing S6205 (1644), sig. A2

v.The latter, as we have seen, contains a printer’s device that was used by Simmons. However, this devicewas also regularly used by Neile in 1646; see, for example, George Gillespie’s Sermon Preached . . . uponthe 27th August, 1645 (1645), sig. A2

r (Wing G759), and Wing H2882 (1646), sig. B1r. For Neile’s use

of ornaments see for example John Price, Honey out of the Rock (1644), t. p., sigs A3r and A4

r (WingP3343); Wing L3037 (1644), t. p., sigs A2

r and A3r; Wing S6205 (1644), sigs A2

r–v; AlexanderHenderson, Sermon Preached [. . .] at Westminster, Wednesday the 28. of May 1645 (1645), t. p., sigsA4

v and B1r (Wing H1443); Wing L3195 (1646), t. p., sig. A2

v.30 See Neile imprints from George Digby, Earl of Bristol’s Two Remarkable Letters (London: Printed

by F. Neile, dwelling in Aldersgate-street, 1645) (Wing B4785) to Samuel Shephard, Merlinus Anonymus(London: Printed by F: Neile in Aldersgate street, 1655) (Wing A2381D).31 Plomer, Dictionary, p. 135.


when he states that Simmons ‘had the second part [of Tetrachordon] printedon one press while the first part was being printed on another’.32 Perhaps,then, there is a case for a single printer and two presses. Indeed, there weretwo presses later on in the Simmons family print shop. In 1668 Simmons’swidow Mary would be taxed on two presses at the printing house in Alders -gate Street.33 It is possible, then, that Simmons produced Tetra chordonunder the single roof with two presses acquired earlier. In further support ofthe hypothesis of a lone printer, it is known that Simmons alone publishedanother work by Milton in this period — The Judgement of Martin Bucerin 1644. There is also evidence to show that Simmons alone printed othercontroversial works without a license, or an imprint, before Tetrachordonwas published, including, as we have seen, Lewes Hughes’s CertaineGrievances and Hezekiah Woodward’s Inquiries into the Causes of ourMiseries (1644).34 In other works Simmons used both of the ornamentalcapitals that feature in Tetrachordon: he printed works containing the same‘T’ in 1646 and 1649 (see above), and one work in 1649 that contains theornamental ‘I’.35 At present, though, it is not clear if he had either letter in1645.

The evidence for Simmons working without a partner is tantalizing, then,but not satisfactory. Crucially it is not yet known whether indeed Simmonswas operating two of his own presses during his lifetime. Simmons died in1654, so it is at least possible that Mary (or her son Samuel) acquired anaddi tional press some time after her husband’s death. Even if we assume thatSimmons was operating two presses after 1644, the evidence for his input inTetrachordon remains unclear. Simmons does not appear to have used theornamental capitals ‘I’ or ‘T’ until after Tetrachordon was published. If hedid use these letters before this date, he did so anonymously.

Does the analysis of paper contribute anything of value in this story? Inhis 1937 article, Parker noted that sigs A–F of Tetrachordon contain ‘threeor four’ watermarks that do not appear in sigs G–O, evidence that streng -thened his case for two separate printing houses.36 Further research under -taken in this area confirms Parker’s findings. Of the eleven watermarks inthe copies of Tetrachordon recently examined, four in sigs A–F do not


32 William Parker, ‘Above all Liberties: John Milton’s Relations with his Earliest Publishers’, PrincetonUniversity Library Chronicle, 2 (1941), 41–50, (pp. 46–47).33 Fletcher, Complete Works, ii, p. 107.34 Both were published anonymously. Earlier Simmons was ordered to attend the House (3 December

1641) and confessed that he had printed Certain Grievances (10 December 1641), and was committedto the Fleet; see LJ, iv, 469. On 28 December 1644 the House investigated both Woodward and Milton(LJ, vii, 116). See McKenzie and Bell, Chronology, i, pp. 30–31 and 127–29.35 For Simmons’s use of the ornamental capital ‘T’ see p. 25 above. Simmons used the ornamental

capital ‘I’ in William Greenhill’s An Exposition of the Five First Chapters of the Prophet Ezekiel (1649),p. 209 (sig. [Ee3

r]) (Wing G1852). This is a reprint, with corrections, of G1851 (1645). The earlier work,also published by Simmons, does not contain this letter.36 Parker, ‘Milton, Rothwell, and Simmons’, pp. 99–100.


appear in sigs G–O.37 Taken alone, however, this evidence does not seal thecase for two separate printing houses. On the contrary it could simplyindicate that a single printer purchased paper stock containing a variety ofdifferent watermarks.38 Further in a situation where two presses operatedunder a single roof, it is conceivable that paper might be distributed in thismanner.39 This explanation supports the third hypothesis outlined above,namely, that Tetrachordon was produced by Matthew Simmons workingalone — assuming that Simmons did indeed operate two presses in thisperiod. When viewed alongside the evidence of type and ornaments, how -ever, the distribution of watermarks between sigs A–F and G–O does seemto reinforce the case for collaborative printing. Further analysis could yetestablish if there is a strong link between the paper used in both sections ofTetrachordon and that used in other works published by Simmons, Neile,and Paine during this period.


37 Eleven watermarks appear in the copies of Tetrachordon recently examined (Bodleian Wood B29(3)and Bodleian AA 23(5) Th. Seld.). This includes 4 pairs of watermarks that are ‘twins’ — varying inheight, position, or details of design, but belonging to the same mould-maker and denoting the samepaper stock. The following description is based on Wood B29(3), with variations in AA 23(5) Th. Seld.recorded in parentheses: 1. a single handle pot, topped by crescent, quatrefoil, 5 lobes with alternatetrefoil and balls, pot cover consisting of two lines, three bars across its bowl, bearing the initials“N|DM” (similar to Heawood ##3611, 3623, 3624, and Gravell POT 417.1, FOL 2031). Tetrachordon,sigs A1/4 (sigs A2/3 in AA 23(5) Th. Seld.); 2. single handle pot, topped by crescent, quatrefoil, 5 lobeswith alternate trefoil and balls, pot cover consisting of one line, three bars across its bowl, bearing theinitials “GG[interlocking, the first reversed]|D” (similar, if not identical, to Gravell POT 366.1, FOL0899). Tetrachordon, sig. B2/3, C1/4 (sigs C1/4, E1/4 in AA 23(5) Th. Seld.); 3. a ‘twin’ of 2 (as above,with a pot cover consisting of two lines). Tetrachordon, sig. D1/4, F2/3 (sigs B1/4, D2/3 and F2/3 in AA23(5) Th. Seld.); 4. a wreath?, tipped with two flower-heads? (close binding makes it impossible toidentify many of the features of this watermark). Tetrachordon, sig. E2/3 (not in AA 23(5) Th. Seld.);5. single handle pot, topped by crescent, quatrefoil, 5 lobes with alternate trefoil and balls, pot coverconsisting of two lines, three bars across its bowl, bearing the initials “R|DP”, quatrefoil? in a bell-shaped base (similar to Gravell POT 010.1, FOL 0087). Tetrachordon, sig. G2/3; 6. a ‘twin’ of 5 (asabove, with differences of distortion to the bowl and handle, and in the design of the capital ‘R’).Tetrachordon, sig. H1/4 (sig. H2/3 in AA 23(5) Th. Seld.); 7. a single handle pot, topped by crescent,quatrefoil, 5 lobes with alternate trefoil and balls, pot cover consisting of two lines, two bars across itsbowl, bearing the initials ‘R|SL’ (similar, if not identical, to Churchill #466). Tetrachordon, sig. I2/3; 8.a ‘twin’ of 7 (as above, with differences in the shape and chain position of the pot handle). Tetra -chordon, L2/3 (sig. L1/4 in AA 23(5) Th. Seld.); 9. a double handle pot, topped with crescent, quatrefoil,5 lobes with trefoils, pot cover consisting of two lines, crescent on the pot throat, 3 bars across the bowl,bearing the initials ‘M|D?S’, quatrefoil in a bell-shaped base. Tetrachordon, sig. K1/4 (not in AA 23(5)Th. Seld.); 10. a ‘twin’ of 9 (as above, with differences in the shape and chain position of the crescent).Tetrachordon, sig. M2/3, N1/4 (sigs K2/3, M2/3, and N1/4 in AA 23(5) Th. Seld.); 11. a single handlepot, topped with crescent, quatrefoil, 4 lobes with trefoils, and a fleur-de-lis, pot cover consisting oftwo lines, 2 bars across the bowl, bearing the initials ‘I|E ’, fleur-de-lis in a bell-shaped base (someresemblance to Heawood #3598, 3636). Tetrachordon, sig. O2/3. See Edward Heawood, Watermarks:Mainly of the 17th and 18th Centuries (Hilversum, Holland, 1950), p. cccxlvi; W. A. Churchill,Watermarks in Paper in Holland, England, France, etc. in the XVII and XVIII Centuries and theirInterconnection (Amsterdam, 1935), pls 485–86; Daniel W. Mosser, Ernest W. Sullivan II, with Len Hatfield, and David H. Radcliffe, The Thomas L. Gravell Watermark Archive 1996 —<www.gravell.org>.38 R. B. McKerrow, An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students (Winchester, 1994), pp. 101

and note.39 The authors thank Nicholas van Maltzahn for suggesting this hypothesis [private communication

20 September 2011].

E


The case for a single printer is perhaps strengthened, however, throughcomparison with the watermarks in another of Milton’s divorce tracts —Colasterion. Very little is known and much assumed about the production ofColasterion. Scholars have long suspected a link with the printers of Tetra -chordon, based on the fact that the two tracts came simultaneously intoThomason’s hands on 4 March 1645. Although neither work bears animprint, the apparently coterminous publication of the two pamphlets wastaken by Parker as strong evidence for identical printers.40 In the case ofColasterion, however, there are no ornaments, devices or decorated capitalsto confirm bibliographical research. Parker noted that the type fount used inthe headlines of sigs A–F of Tetrachordon appears to be the same as thatused in the headlines of Colasterion (p. 101, n. 1). This evidence is suggestivebut unsatisfactory since it is the case that the particular type fount was usedwidely in this period. Paper analysis may help here. Parker had noted thatthe watermarks in the paper of Tetrachordon and Colasterion are ‘similar’,but he regarded this evidence as inconclusive and did not record his findings(p. 101, n. 1). The current authors have found evidence to support Parker’sclaim that the watermarks in the paper of Tetrachordon and Colasterion aresimilar, if not identical. Preliminary research in this area suggests that thepaper used in Colasterion holds four watermarks in common with Tetra -chordon. One of these watermarks is only found in sigs A–F of Tetra -chordon, however, while the remaining three are only found in sigs G–O.41

This suggests that the same paper was used in printing both Colasterion andTetrachordon. Although this evidence does not reveal the identity of aparticular printer, it does strengthen the hypothesis that the printing of thetwo works is very closely linked. Further it may offer support for the hypo -thesis that Tetrachordon was produced by a single printer operating twopresses. In the case of Colasterion, which shows no signs of collabo rativeprint ing, it seems clear that a single printer had purchased paper stockcontaining a variety of watermarks, including some from both sigs A–F andG–O of Tetrachordon. Further analysis could yet establish if the sameprinter, using the same paper stock, produced both divorce tracts under thesame roof.

The case is therefore strong, but at present not conclusive, for thecollaborative printing of Tetrachordon, that is for at least two printers ratherthan one. There is a possibility that Simmons printed Tetrachordon alone


40 Parker, ‘Milton, Rothwell and Simmons’, p. 101.41 Four watermarks appear in the copies of Colasterion examined (Bodleian Wood B29(4) and AA

22(5) Th. Seld.). This includes one pair of watermarks that are ‘twins’. In both copies sigs B1/4 andC2/3 (C1/4 in AA 22(5) Th. Seld.) contain the ‘twin’ watermarks that feature in sigs I and L ofTetrachordon; sig. D1/4 (D2/3 in AA 22(5) Th. Seld.) contains one of the twin watermarks that featuresin Tetrachordon, sigs K, M and N; while sig. E1/2 contains one of the twin watermarks that feature inTetrachordon, sigs B and C, D and F (for a description of these watermarks see note 33 above).


but it is not clear, yet, if he operated two presses during his lifetime, or whenhe acquired the ornamental capitals that appear in this work. As suchParker’s original hypothesis of collaboration between Paine and Simmonsremains a viable possibility, although there may have been some kind of col -laboration involving Paine and Neile jointly, or even a triumvirate of Paine,Neile, and Simmons. Of the three printers the case for Paine’s involvementseems strongest. He regularly used the ornamental capital ‘I’ during theperiod 1640 to 1649 along with the ornaments that appear in this section ofTetrachordon. The case for Simmons’s input is weaker than that for Paine.Simmons certainly used both of the ornamental capitals that appear inTetrachordon, but we have not yet found any evidence to confirm that he hadeither of them before 1646. There is a possibility, though, that Simmons andNeile were sharing ornamental letters and printers’ devices in this period.This may be what Simmons did when he published a work with this orna -mental capital in 1646, that is, Nathaniel Homes’s A Vindication of Bap -tizing (Wing H2578). Regardless of whether Simmons had these ornamentalletters there is no evidence to confirm that he continued to collaborate withPaine after February 1644. At present, then, the case for Simmons’s role inthe printing of Tetrachordon rests chiefly on his previous association withPaine and Milton.

For this reason there is a reasonable case to be made for a Paine-Neilecollabo ration. Unlike Simmons Neile was certainly using the ornamentalcapital ‘T’ and the correct printer’s ornaments at the time Tetrachordon waspublished. There has yet been found no external evidence to link Neile withPaine in this period, but that does not automatically rule out the possibilityof collaboration. Simmons may have had a part to play here: both Paine andNeile collaborated with Simmons at different times and it is conceivable thathe put them in touch with each other and, perhaps, with Milton in 1645.Questions remain: Did Simmons pass over the opportunity to work withMilton at this moment? Was he under pressure as a result of the politicalcircumstances and in particular of Milton’s investigation of December 1644

for Areopagitica? Another possibility is that Milton approached Simmonsabout publishing Colasterion as well as Tetrachordon and Simmons subse -quently made arrangements to share this potentially dangerous work withNeile and Paine. In any case the idea of a network involving Paine, Simmons,and Neile seems helpful for thinking about who printed Tetrachordon: ifSimmons did work with Paine in 1645, he may have borrowed type fromNeile for the job; if Neile worked with Paine, he may have met him throughtheir mutual contact Simmons.

Political TopographiesIn seeking to establish the relationship between these candidates as printersfor Milton’s Tetrachordon, the internal evidence may be helpfully placed in



relation to external evidence, specifically within the context of the Pres -byterian crackdown on the press. As is known, Milton’s pamphlets ondivorce were swept up in this larger story of a fracturing ideologicalconsensus and they became the focus of Presbyterian recrimination.42 ThePresbyterian Herbert Palmer on 13 August preached a sermon before a jointaudience of Parliament and the Westminster Assembly against those who plead Conscience [. . .] for divorce for other causes then Christ and His Apostlesmention; Of which a wicked booke is abroad and uncensured, though deserving tobe burnt, whose Author hath been so impudent as to set his Name to it, anddedicate it to your selves.43

Palmer’s attack on Milton helped to mobilize the Presbyterian pressure onParliament for control over the spread of ideas and the press, especially thoseof the Independents. On 26 August 1644 the Stationers’ Company petitionedthe House of Commons, which subsequently directed its own committee forprinting ‘diligently to inquire out the Authors, Printers, and Publishers, ofthe Pamphlet against the Immortality of the Soul, and concerning Divorce’.44

This was a response to the ideological campaign against the Independents,fronted by Prynne, Edwards, and Stewart, all named in Milton’s poem Onthe New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament as ‘mere A.S.’,‘shallow Edwards’ and ‘baulk your ears’.45 Around that time, on 1 November1644, one of the licensers of the Press, the Independent chaplain JohnBachelor [Bachiler] was requested by the Westminster Assembly to be ques -tioned by the Committee of Plundered Ministers in Parliament ‘concern ingsome bookes by him licensed’.46

While little is known about Milton’s own personal experience in thesemechanisms of prosecution, there is nonetheless data to broaden an under -standing of the printing circumstances and of the world of printers associ -ated with his divorce writings. Scholars have often separated these twostrands of bibliographical inquiry, and it is suggested below that a widerpicture of the social life of print can help to give insight into the question ofidentifying the printers of Milton’s major divorce work.

As it turns out Matthew Simmons proves to have been a lightning rod forpolitical scrutiny at this time. He was associated with another Independent


42 For the circumstances of Milton’s printing in this period see Nigel Smith, ‘Areopagitica: VoicingContexts, 1643–45’, in Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneutics in Milton’s Prose, ed. by James GranthamTurner and David Loewenstein (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 103–22; Ernest Sirluck, ‘Introduction’, in YP, ii,pp. 137–45, and 158–164.43 Herbert Palmer, The Glasse of Gods Providence Towards His Faithfull Ones (London: Printed by

G. M. for Th. Underhill . . . , 1644), p. 54.44 CJ, iii, 606 (26 August 1644). See also McKenzie and Bell, Chronology, i, p. 121.45 John Milton, ‘On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament’, ll. 8, 12, 17 in

Milton: Complete Shorter Poems, ed. by John Carey (London, 1997), p. 299 (hereafter CSP). 46

1 November 1644, scribe Henry Robrough and Adoniram Byfield, Bodleian MS Tanner 61, fol. 162

r.


writer under Parliamentary investigation, Hezekiah Woodward, also linkedto Milton at the time. The Stationers’ Company had requested the House ofLords to conduct an inquiry into Milton’s writing in December 1644,complaining of the ‘Printing of scandalous Books by divers, as HezechiaWoodward and Jo. Milton’.47 Edwards would attack both Milton and Wood -ward in Part I of Gangraena, a work noted by Thomason as appearing on 26

February 1645/6.48

The thread is a twisted one and deserves some untangling here because,like Milton, Woodward had shared printers Simmons and Paine. Hispublication of Woodward’s pamphlet, A Dialogue . . . Presented to theAssembly of Divines (1644), dated 26 February 1644 by Thomason, wouldbe the very last work in which the two printers, Simmons and Paine, wouldshare an imprint.49 The story behind the story is that Parliament came to beinterested in Milton through Woodward, and the common factor is theprinter Simmons. The timeline of events is suggestive for exploring whoprinted Tetrachordon. On Monday 9 December 1644 a scurrilous sheetattacking the two commanders of the Parliamentary Army was circulatingwidely in London, and came to the attention of the House of Lords, who atonce ordered an inquiry (LJ, vii, 91). On 26 December the Lords asked theLord Mayor and the Company of Stationers to reply on the matter. On 28 December the Company of Stationers answered, That they have used their best Endeavours to find out the Printer and Author of thescandalous libel; but they cannot yet make any Discovery therof, the Letter [i.e. thetype] being so common a Letter; and further complained of the frequent Printingof scandalous Books by divers, as Hezechia Woodward and Jo: Milton (LJ, vii,116).

The Presbyterians were using this political moment to press forward theirideological grip on the printers. Lords followed the bait. Justice Reeves andJustice Bacon were charged with investigating Woodward and Milton.Wood ward almost immediately confessed to being the author of anunlicensed work (LJ, vii,117).50 Not until early in the new year, 17 January1645, did the Stationers’ Company report they had found an entirely dif -ferent culprit printer for the scurrilous sheet. But Milton’s name was now onthe target list of the Presbyterian propaganda campaign and under scrutinyby Parliament.51


47 LJ, vii, 116.48 Thomas Edwards, Gangraena: Or a Catalogue and Discovery of many of the Errours, Heresies,

Blasphemies, and pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of this Time (1646): attacking Woodwardbeginning on the first page of the preface (sig. B1

r); attacking Milton on p. 34.49 Hezekiah Woodward, A Dialogue . . . Presented to the Asssembly of Divines (1644), was ‘Printed by

T[homas] P[aine] and M[atthew] S[immons] in Gold-Smiths-Alley’.50 H. R. Plomer, ‘Secret Printing in the Civil War’, The Library, ii, 20 (1904), 374–403 (p. 376);

McKenzie and Bell, Chronology, i, p. 128.51 Cropping up in Edwards’s Gangrena, again linked with Woodward; see Hughes, Gangraena (1646),

p. 162.


In the Lords’ examination of Woodward (like Milton a schoolmaster andnot protected by a professional body of ministers) on 31 December 1644, theauthor complained that ‘the truth is, if the Book has Independent upon itsfront, and be thought to speak for that way [. . .] it is silenced before itspeaks’.52 Woodward also admitted having given his own pamphlet,Inquiries into the Causes of our Miseries (1644) to the printer Matthew Sim -mons, whom he names as ‘Symons, living near Aldersgate’, and con fessed hehad it printed even though it had been denied a licence.53 This is most likelyMatthew Simmons, whose premises had recently removed to AldersgateStreet.

No further record exists of the result of the investigation of Milton.54

Simmons however did keep publishing and entered works in the Stationers’Registers on 11 January and 4 February, which were in Thomason’s hands by17 January and 3 March respectively, with the latter appearing a day beforeTetrachordon and Colasterion. When Tetrachordon appeared, Thomasonnoting it on 4 March, these run-ins with the authorities would have beenquite recent, but they do not explain why Milton chose particular printers.Milton’s experience of being fingered in the August 1644 petition and thenpossibly called before the House of Lords for examination on 28 December1644 is part of the social life of his divorce tracts. Simmons’s output did notslow down at this time. On the contrary his individual output soared duringthese years, with Wing listing twenty-two works for 1644; thirty-nine worksfor 1645; and a staggering fifty-seven for 1646 alone. The Licenser JohnBachelor admitted that the books for which he had been earlier examined,including ‘the Treatise about Divorce’, had never been licensed by him;indeed he wrote, ‘I have been so farre from licensing, that I have not so muchseene or heard of them, till after they have been commonly sold abroad’.55

Would Simmons, Neile, and Paine have said the same thing?

Breakdown of the PartnershipThe collaboration between Paine and Simmons was fruitful but short-lived.According to STC and Wing, Paine and Simmons printed sixty titles withtheir joint imprint between 1640 and 1644. There are eight more titles to addto this list, and there are doubtless more that the pair published


52 Hezekiah Woodward, Inquiries into the Causes of our Miseries (1643), Thomason dates 23 December.53 McKenzie and Bell, Chronology, i, p. 129; citing HMC, vi, 39; and see LJ, vii, 118 (31 December

1644): ‘He had given a printer named Symons, living near Aldersgate, 55s to print it; on the refusal ofMr. Carroll, minister of Lincoln’s Inn, to grant a license, he had printed it despite knowing of theParliamentary order’.54 Campbell and Corns, John Milton, p. 167; Barbara Lewalski, The Life of John Milton: A Critical

Biography, rev. edn (Oxford, 2003), pp. 181–82.55 John Bachiler [sic], in John Goodwin, Twelve considerable Cautions (London: Printed by M. S. for

Henry Overton, 1646), n. pag.


anonymously.56 The peak years for Paine and Simmons were 1642 and 1643.In this short period alone the pair printed at least fifty-two titles together,including Milton’s Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. After that theiroutput fell sharply, with only six works published in 1644. The last knownPaine-Simmons imprint was purchased by Thomason on 26 February 1644.It is likely that the Paine-Simmons partnership ended at this time. On 2 March 1644 Simmons entered a work in the Stationers’ Register that subse -quently appeared without an imprint. It was the first work Simmonsregistered in this period that did not bear his name together with Paine’s. On13 April 1644 Paine entered a work in the Stationers’ Register alone, the firsttime he had done this independently since 7 April 1641, which subsequentlyappeared bearing the imprint ‘T. Paine’ (Thomason’s copy is dated 13 May1644). From this point on both men regularly registered works that bore theirindividual imprints, the partnership seeming to have come to an end.

In relation to Milton’s publications, then, Paine and Simmons collabo -rated at a time when their careers were heading in opposite trajectories fromthat common point. As Parker points out, their partnership ended ‘withSimmons being employed by the Council of State, and Paine mysteriouslydropping out of sight’.57 Parker’s assessment may exaggerate the differencein Paine’s and Simmons’s fortunes. Instead of dropping out of sight, Painewas also employed by the Council of State, which on 19 September 1650

ordered twenty pounds to be given to him ‘as a gratuity for his sufferings byprinting a book for the cause of Parliament, written by Mr Walker’.58 Thisis likely to be Clement Walker, author of The History of Independency.Plomer doubts that Paine was paid for printing The History, but he offers noevidence to support this claim. In fact the size of the ‘gratuity’ suggests Painewas involved in printing a major edition of Walker’s work(s). In any case thispayment suggests that Paine had Parliamentary backing.

Despite this it seems that Paine’s career was on a downward turn after1643. He appears to have run into financial difficulties at some point in thisperiod. In 1643 he was in trouble for failing to repay a debt of more than£148 that he had taken out three years earlier.59 The outcome of this debt isnot known, but it is clear that by the end of the decade Paine’s business was


56 The Copie of a Letter Sent from the Lord Chiefe Justices and Privie Councellours in Ireland, to theLords Assembled in Parliament here in England (1641) (Wing C6150); Votes die Martis 12 July, 1642(1642) (Wing E2443); John Davenport, An Ansvver of the Elders of the Severall Chvrches in New-England (1643) (Wing M1270); A Continuation of the True Diurnall of Passages in Parliament (1642)(Thomason E.202[35]), and Wednesday’s Mercury, nos 1–4, (1643) (Thomason E.61[9], E.61[15],E.62[8], and E.63[4]).57 Parker, ‘Milton, Rothwell, and Simmons’, p. 98.58 Henry R. Plomer, Dictionary, p. 146.59 Records of the Court of the Stationers’ Company, 1602–1640, ed. by William A. Jackson (London,

1957), pp. 337–38; The Loan Book of the Stationers’ Company with a List of Transactions, 1592–1692,ed. by W. Craig Ferguson (London, 1989), p. 18.


all but finished, while Simmons’s career was flourishing as he assumed therole of printer for the Council of State. Paine was even in need of financialsupport in the early 1650s. He received his first payment from the Stationers’Company Poor Fund in the fourth quarter of 1652 and continued to receivecharity until the second quarter of 1653 (probably until the time of hisdeath).60

As for the third printer, Francis Neile, his story reflects some of the ideo -logical contours of the period’s turbulent history. While his modest outputnever rivalled that of Simmons, his business seems to have been steadier thanPaine’s in the years after Tetrachordon. He did collaborate with Simmons forone work as late as 1651, although it is not yet known whether this was aone-off venture or whether it points to a longer lasting collaboration. Ideo -logical commitment may have been instrumental. During the 1640s and early1650s Neile seems like a recognizably Presbyterian or broadly Parlia - mentarian publisher. He printed a number of sermons by prominent Pres -byterians and members of the Westminster Assembly, including those byEdward Bowles, Edward Corbet, Alexander Henderson, Thomas Horton,John Maynard, Edward Reynolds, and the Scottish representative, GeorgeGillespie, the ‘Galasp’ of Milton’s Sonnet XI, ‘A book was writ of late calledTetrachordon’(l. 9; CSP, p. 308).61 In the same period Neile worked the otherside of the fence, printing works by Independent ministers and radicalpolitical thinkers including George Wither, Thomas Brooks, John Cotton,and John Goodwin.62

Given these stark ideological differences there is nonetheless evidence ofthe development of Neile’s allegiance over time. Indeed the printer’sexperience reflected the varied stories of writers who had to adjust to newcircumstance and whose ideological positions evolved during this period. By


60 W. Craig Ferguson, ‘The Stationer’s Company Poor Book, 1608–1700’, The Library, v, 31 (1976),37–51 (p. 47).61 Bowles, Good Counsell for Evil Times (1648) (Wing B3872); Corbet, Gods Providence a Sermon

Preached before the Honorable House of Commons at their Solemn Fast, Decemb. 28, Anno 1642(1647) (Wing C6242); Gillespie, A Sermon Preached before the Right Honourable the House of Lords. . . at Westminster, upon the 17th of August, 1645 (1646) (Wing G759); Henderson, A Sermon Preachedbefore the Right Honouable House of Lords, . . . at Westminster, Wednesday the 28. of May 1645 (1645)(Wing H1443); Horton, Sinne’s Discovery and Revenge as it was delivered in a sermom [sic] to the RightHonorable House of Peers . . . at Westminster, on Wednsday [sic], December 30, 1646 (1646) (WingH2882); Maynard, A Shadow of the Victory of Christ . . . a sermon preached at Margarets Westminsteron . . . Octob. 28. 1646 (1646) (Wing M1453); Reynolds, Israels Prayer in Time of Trouble, with GodsGracious Answer Thereunto . . . in Seven Sermons (1645) (Wing R1257), A Treatise of the Passions andthe Faculties of the Soul of Man (1650) (Wing R1295 and 1295A), An Explication of the Hundreth andTenth Psalm . . . being the Substance of Several Sermons Preached at Lincolns Inne (1654) (WingR1249).62 Brooks, The Hypocrite Detected, Anatomized, Impeached and Arraigned, and Condemned before

the Parliament of England . . . a sermon preached before the Parliament . . . 8th of Octob. 1650 (1650)(Wing B4949); Cotton, Of the Holinesse of Church-members (1650) (Wing C6448); Goodwin, M. S. toA. S. with a plea for libertie of conscience in a church way (1644) (Wing G1180); Two Hymns, orspirituall songs . . . for that most wonderfull and happy successe of the English army . . . over theScottish forces at Worcester (1651) (Wing G1212); Wither, Westrow Revived (1653) (Wing W3211).


October 1649 Neile had fallen foul of Parliament and was named among aseries of printers bound by recognizance ‘not to print any seditious orunlicensed books, pamphlets, or pictures, nor suffer their presses to be usedfor any such purpose’.63 He seems to have come right, and was involved inprinting pro-Commonwealth works by Henry Parker against its opponents,including A Letter of due Censure and Regulation (1650) against JohnLilburne; and Scotland’s Holy War (1651), an attack on Scottish and Presby -terian opponents. Neile printed the latter work jointly with Simmons and itseems likely that this particular venture would have appealed to Simmons’sown ideological sympathies. In his next printing role Neile became anewsman. He was one of the printers behind The Weekly Intelligencer from1650 to 1655, under Parliamentary approval, and which was targeted towarda rural audience.64 Its editor, Richard Collings, was a newsman through andthrough, having edited Mercurius Civicus from 1643–46 and The WeeklyIntelligencer of the Commonwealth, which ran from 1650 to 1655, and fromMay–December 1659.65 Neile also published the newsbook The ArmiesIntelligencer, which began publication in August 1651; and Several Lettersfrom Scotland, of the Proceedings of the Army (1651); and The TrueInformer of the Actions of the Army in England, Scotland and Ireland(1651).

Not long after his metamorphosis into a newsman, however, Neile was introuble again for ‘an offensiue & scandalous Almanack’ — apparently theanti-protectorate satirical almanac, Merlinus Anonymus (1653), written bySamuel Sheppard.66 The wardens were ordered to ‘seize the almanac, press,and letter’, but it is unclear what steps, if any, were taken against Neile ashis output does not appear to have declined, and he printed further issues ofMerlinus Anonymus, one at the end of 1653 and another in 1655. Sheppard,the author of those almanacs, was a Presbyterian who adapted to circum -stance, at times putting his neck out against the authorities. He had cele -brated the New Model’s military victories in the mid-forties, but turned hisloyalty to the King in the later part of that decade, writing Royalist news -books from the later forties onward, collaborating with Nedham andCleveland; but in 1651 penned a pro-Cromwellian poem: a typical exampleof the uneven political and religious allegiances during this period.67 Thereare signs, then, that Neile’s sympathies were complex.


63 McKenzie and Bell, Chronology, i, p. 265. 64 Jason McElligott, Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England (Woodbridge, Suffolk,

2007), p. 33; see Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks, 1641–1649 (Oxford,1996), pp. 73–76, on Parliament’s limiting newsbooks after 1649.65 See H. R. Plomer, ‘An Analysis of the Civil War Newspaper Mercurius Civicus’, The Library, vi,

22 (1905), 184–207.66 McKenzie and Bell, Chronology, i, pp. 265, 324. 67 On the Presbyterian Sheppard’s shifting political allegiances, see McElligott, Royalism, pp. 105,

108–11.


The forensic case for Neile’s input into Milton’s Tetrachordon is strong,but there is no other evidence that he and Thomas Paine collaborated duringthis period, or that Neile was involved in the publication of any other worksby Milton. Neile’s output appears to have ceased in 1655, indicating he mayhave retired, or died — one year after his one-time collaborator MatthewSimmons. Given the varied output of Neile in this period, it might bepossible to imagine an occasional collaboration with the likes of Paine andSimmons, but it seems difficult to make a case for more sustained involve -ment on ideological or physical grounds at present. What is shown is thepossibilities are broader than suspected, and that the political landscapeconnects to the printers’ histories in ways that could shed light on Milton’sown allegiances.

The 1672 AfterlifeThere is one final mystery to unravel: the reappearance of Tetrachordon in1672. This promises a trail indeed leading some way back to the unnamedprinters of the 1645 text. After twenty-six years, beginning in 1671, copiesof Tetrachordon regularly began to be offered for sale in book catalogues ofthe Restoration bookseller and publisher John Starkey.68 In his 1671 Starkeypublication, The Annals of Love (Wing A3215), a book catalogue at the backput Milton’s Tetrachordon first among the quartos listed in the ‘Catalogueof Books’, with a price of 1s. 6d. The same catalogue offered ParadiseRegain’d at 2s. 6d. bound and Accidence bound at 8d.69

The story of Milton and Starkey is still to be written. That story links theCivil War period divorce writings to the Restoration opposition campaignagainst Charles II, in which Starkey was a prime mover. Starkey’s connectionwith Milton may be dated to 1669 when Starkey began selling Milton’sAccedence Commenc’t Grammar (1669), which had been printed by SamuelSimmons. Starkey was also publisher of Milton’s 1671 Paradise Regain’d andSamson Agonistes (1671).70 Laura Knoppers, in her fine study of Starkey inher ‘General Introduction’ to the Oxford Complete Works of Milton, ii, and


68 At least one copy (the Folger) of Benjamin Priolo, The Historie of France (1671), which was enteredinto the Stationers’ Registers on 23 March 1670, lists Tetrachordon for sale; see John T. Shawcross,Milton: A Bibliography for the Years 1624–1700 (Binghamton, NY, 1984), p. 632. Other copies of thiswork (e.g. Bodleian 8O E66 Art. and Huntington EEBO copy) do not list Tetrachordon for sale. 69 Annabel Patterson, ‘The Allure of the Scofflaw: Rediscovering John Starkey’, unpublished MS. I

thank Professor Patterson for making this material available to me. Starkey set Tetrachordon differentlyin his lists depending on the intended audience: in the February 1672 Catalogue appended to hisSuetonius (Wing S6147) it comes first and was listed under the category of ‘Divinity’ (sig. Kk3). InBattista Nanni, The History of the Affairs of Europe (1673) (Wing N151), which was printed by JohnMacock, who had also printed Milton’s History of Britain and the 1673 Poems, the list of booksincludes Tetrachordon for sale under the category of ‘Divinity’.70 Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes were however not in Starkey’s catalogues of 1665–71.

Milton’s Accedence was advertised in 1669 in Starkey’s catalogues appended to William Aglionby’s ThePresent State of the United Provinces of the Low-Countries (Wing A766); and Guy Miege’s A Relationof the Three Embassies from His Sacred Majestie Charles II (Wing M2025).


Mark Knights, in work on his bookshop, have established Starkey’s radicalcredentials and have placed him at the centre of the network of neo-Harringtonian and Lockean subterranean activists, with his print shop themeeting place for the Green Ribbon Club in 1679.71 What remains to bedetermined is the trail of evidence that leads from the Tetrachordon of 1645

to Starkey in 1672.John Starkey would come to dominate Milton’s later career, but just when

Milton began an association with him is not clear. Starkey was an influentialfigure in the book trade, publishing prolifically in the period 1670 to 1682

when he was ‘outlawed’ for the illegal publication of Nathaniel Bacon’sedition of Selden’s Historical Discourse. It is clear however that an initialconnection to Milton came through the Simmons family, who in 1669 hadprinted his Accedence Commenc’t Grammar with Starkey as the bookseller.Matthew Simmons, the printer of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,Bucer, Eikonoklastes, both editions of Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,Articles of Peace, and likely some of Tetrachordon, had died in 1654. His shop was carried on successfully by his widow Mary (for the period1654–67) and then by his son, Samuel, printer of Paradise Lost.72

There is no bibliographical evidence within Tetrachordon of a new edi -tion, nor even a reprint with a new title-page. A plausible narrative is thatunsold copies of Tetrachordon in the Simmons house were still lying aroundin the later 1660s, and that Starkey was dusting off old copies. Mary Sim -mons’s printing property, located without the city wall, had escaped thedevastation suffered by other printers in the Fire. Plomer’s Dictionary showsMary’s name in the Hearth Tax Toll in 1666 with a return of thirteenhearths, a number greater than any other printer on the roll.73 Her premisesmust have been large enough to keep on hand old stock. Did Mary or Samuelhand over, or sell, their unsold copies of Tetrachordon to Starkey? Thisseems the likeliest possibility. When we look to the business of Mary andSamuel Simmons in the period, we see that they were eagerly buying uprights to the exposition on Job by Joseph Caryl.74 Samuel had already beensought as a printer of seditious books, and there was a warrant in January1670 issued to a messenger ‘to search for Sam. Symmons and Peter Parker’,


71 Mark Knights, ‘John Starkey and Ideological Networks in Late Seventeenth-Century England’,Media History, 11 (April, 2005), 127–45; Peter Lindenbaum, ‘Rematerializing Milton’, PublishingHistory, 41 (1997), 5–22 (p. 12) calls Starkey a ‘kindred spirit’ to Milton.72 On Matthew and Mary Simmons see Fletcher, Complete Works, ii, pp. 106–09; and Parker, ‘Milton,

Rothwell, and Simmons’, 89–103 (p. 101, n. 2). Of Milton’s Commonwealth and Protectoral printers,there was Thomas Newcomb, who had married Ruth Raworth (the printer of the 1645 Poems), asNewcomb became ‘more and more the Government’s printer’, as Parker puts it. See Parker, ‘Above allLiberties’, 41–51 (p. 50).73 Henry R. Plomer, Dictionary, p. 164; and see Fletcher, Complete Works, ii, p. 107.74 McKenzie, ‘Milton’s Printers’, 87–91 (pp. 88–90); Fletcher, Complete Works, ii, p. 107; see A

Transcript of the Registers of the Worshipful Company of Stationers; from 1640–1708, 3 vols (London,1913), ii, p. 448 (15 November 1672).


which Fletcher takes to indicate that Simmons may have been in hiding at thetime, along with the bookseller of Paradise Lost. At the time, however, sel -ling off old stock may have been a good idea to generate cash for the Carylventure.75

Starkey pops up everywhere in the vicinity of Milton; he has connectionswith another of Milton’s later printers, John Macock, who in 1670 hadprinted History of Britain, and who would be printer for Milton’s 1671

Paradise Regain’d volume.76 Starkey owned the right of copy to that volume,having entered it in the Stationers’ Company Registers of 10 September1670. Macock that same year also served as the printer for one of Starkey’sopposition publications, Battista Nanni’s The History of the Affairs ofEurope, which had boasted Tetrachordon in the sale catalogue at the back.77

Thus Starkey seems to have sought control over the Milton titles: he wouldcome to own the right of copy to the Paradise Regain’d volume (1670),registering it with the Stationers’ Company on 10 September 1670.78 Starkeywas, as Annabel Patterson puts it, ‘building a little Milton list’.79

Starkey’s advertisements for Tetrachordon reveal the intellectual, aes -thetic, and political habits of the desired consumers of this work at thattime. Starkey did not include sale catalogues in all of his publications, nordid he include all his works for sale when he did, nor did he include all theMilton titles when he mentioned one or another of them.80 The advertise -ments for Tetrachordon appear in lengthy, voluminous works of anti-clericalor republican, politically-inflected works of history. For instance Tetra -chordon is offered in the catalogue inserted into Starkey’s publishing ofNeville’s translation The Works of the Famous Nicolas Machiavel (1675, butlicensed 2 February 1674).81 On the other hand Tetrachordon is not includedin catalogues of law cases, literature, or travel writings, which were alsoStarkey’s specialisms.


75 The authors thank Mark Knights for this hypothesis (private communication, 15 March 2011);Fletcher, Complete Works, ii, p. 107.76 Harris F. Fletcher, ‘The Publication of the 1671 Texts’, in Fletcher, Complete Works, iv, p. 12.

Macock was also active in newsbook publishing: Occurrences from Forraigne Parts (1659–); AParticular Advice (Weekly from 1659); and Englands Remembrancer (Monthly, 1647).77 Starkey’s catalogue, Mercurius Librarius (issue 5), appearing 22 November 1669, notes Starkey’s

shop is at the ‘Miter in Fleet-Street near Temple Bar’. On Starkey’s role in the creation of the TermCatalogues, see Cyprian Blagden, ‘The Genesis of the Term Catalogues’, The Library, v, 8 (1953),30–35. 78 Fletcher, Complete Works, iv, pp. 13–14; Transcript of the Registers of the Worshipful Company

of Stationers . . . 1640–1708, ed. by George Edward Briscoe, 3 vols (London, 1913), ii, 415. Accedencewas listed in Starkey’s Mercurius Librarius, or a Catalogue of Books, no. 4 (June 28, 1669), or TermCatalogues in Trinity Term 1669, p. 14, offered at price bound 8d.79 Patterson, ‘Allure’, p. 7. 80 For instance Wing C5543 (1674) lists Paradise Regain’d but not Tetrachordon; Wing A767 (1671)

lists Paradise Regin’d, Accedence, but not Tetrachordon. Some extant copies of a single work containthe sale catalogues while others do not; the Folger copy of Priolo’s History of France (1671) lists itemsfor sale including Tetrachordon (see John T. Shawcross, Milton: A Bibliography for the Years 1624–1700(Binghamton, NY, 1984), p. 632) while the Huntington copy of the same work does not.81 See Shawcross, Bibliography: p. 164; item number 703.


In the early 1670s there was presumably thought to be a new market ofinterested readers or buyers for Tetrachordon. Not simply was Miltonbecoming the renowned poet of Paradise Lost, but 1671–72 was a propitiousmoment for a new sales pitch for a tract on divorce. Divorce was in theheadlines because of the Lord Roos divorce proceeding in Parliament. In factStarkey’s own manuscript newsletters were following the bill closely in thespring of 1670, and he commented in May 1670 in a note to his corres -pondent Sir Willoughby Aston that no books had been printed on divorce‘since Miltons’.82 An early Life of Milton, most likely by Cyriack Skinner,recounted that an ‘eminent Member’ of the House of Lords had consultedMilton himself in the matter.83 The matter of the Roos divorce was notsimply a sensational affair with screaming headlines. It was also relevant tothe problem of succession: as the king’s marriage to Catharine of Braganzawas without heir, there was discussion of a royal divorce as a means toexclude James II to succeed to the Crown.84

Arguments for divorce could easily be set in relation to arguments forresistance to royal prerogative or hereditary succession. It is clear that notonly Starkey’s newsletter correspondents, but that a wider public was poten -tially hungry for the topic. Another reason for readvertising Tetrachordonwas that John Milton’s works were beginning to receive the kind of attentionthat would make it attractive to publish a new edition of his poems. In the1673 Poems, &c. Upon Several Occasions by Mr John Milton, the Tetra -chordon sonnet first appeared. This Milton revival would eventually lead tothe Whig rebranding of Milton in the 1690s.85 Starkey was well placed toeffect this transformation, offering Tetrachordon for sale in a list that wasinclined towards radical, neo-Harringtonian, and republican works. Hisbookshop would become the meeting place for the Green Ribbon Club in1679 and he was at the centre of opposition ideological networks in the laterseventeenth century.86 It may be that Samuel Simmons was cash-strappedfrom trying to buy up all the rights to Joseph Caryl’s commentary on Job


82 Starkey, Newsletters, fols 173 and 180, quoted in Laura Knoppers ‘General Introduction’ in TheComplete Works of John Milton, ed. by Thomas N. Corns and Gordon Campbell, 11 vols (Oxford,2008– ), ii: The 1671 Poems: Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes, ed. by Laura Knoppers (2008),p. xxiv(hereafter CW). 83 The Early Lives of Milton, ed. by Helen Darbishire (London, 1932), p. 33.84 Roderick Phillips, Putting Asunder: A History of Divorce in Western Society (Cambridge, 1988),

p. 132; Lawrence Stone, Uncertain Unions, pp. 309–13. See Bishop Cosin’s reports in State Trials, xiii:1332–38. See also John Dryden, Tyrannick Love (1670); in 1673 Richard Leigh was tarring Marvell withhis proximity to Milton: ‘his books of Divorce, (for he has learnedly parted Man and Wife in no lessthen four Books) namely, his Doctrine and Discipline, where toward the bottom of the second Page,they may find somewhat which will hardly merit so cleanly an Expression as that of the Moral Satyrist,words left, betwixt the Sheets’, The Transproser Rehears’d (1673), p. 136.85 See Nicholas von Maltzahn, ‘The Whig Milton, 1667–1700’, in Milton and Republicanism, ed. by

David Armitage, Armand Himy, and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 229–53.86 Knights, ‘John Starkey’, pp. 127–45; Knoppers, ‘General Introduction’, in CW, ii, p. xxxix. On

Starkey’s role in the publishing world see Blagden ‘The Genesis’, 30–35.


and was eager to offload his leftover stock. It may be that Simmons sold toStarkey because he was a mediocre businessman and couldn’t make a profit,as has been argued by Peter Lindenbaum.87 The links between Simmons andStarkey make it clear that the Simmons’s house was probably the source forthese newly pertinent copies of Tetrachordon, and make a strong case foridentifying Simmons as centrally involved in the printing of Tetrachordonfrom the earlier period.

These findings support the case for collaboration in the printing of Tetra -chordon, but they also raise questions about the nature and extent ofSimmons’s input. Parker’s hypothesis of Paine-Simmons collaboration iscertainly tenable but, as we have shown, the case for Francis Neile’s input isalso plausible. If the books were lying around in the Simmons house untilafter the Restoration, it is suggested that there is warrant for asserting someconnection. The possibility of a Neile-Simmons collaboration during thisperiod further complicates our understanding of the network of printingrelationships that Milton may have entered into at this time. In recent yearsscholars have shown how Milton shared responsibility for writing andprinting his works, forming collaborative relationships in which the author‘benefited from the advice and assistance of acquaintances both during theimaginative creation of his works and during the practical process of puttinghis writing into print’.88 Milton did forge a productive collaboration withThomas Paine and Matthew Simmons, and quite possibly Francis Neile, ina period of intense political turmoil and scrutiny of the printing industry.Indeed Paine and Simmons were at the heart of oppositional printingnetworks in the early 1640s, and their collaboration with Milton was notsimply a case of economic need but also a matter of ideological positioning;Neile’s publications would come to embrace support for the Independentsand Parliamentary Army. On the relationship between Milton and Simmonsin particular, scholars speak of Milton’s ‘remarkable loyalty’ to the Simmonsfamily,89 and refer to Simmons as a ‘life-long friend’ of Milton. Thesephrases demote the links between professional association and ideologicalaffinity in favour of affective bonds in the relationship between Milton andhis printers.90 The work undertaken here to unearth Milton’s relationshipswith all three printers shows his abiding affinity for publishing his work with


87 Peter Lindenbaum, ‘Milton’s Contract’, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, 10 (1991–92),439–54. See also Harris F. Fletcher, ‘Samuel Simmons, Printer’, in Fletcher, Complete Works, ii, pp. 106–08.88 Stephen Dobranski, Milton, Authorship, and the Book Trade (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 9–10.89 Anna Beer, Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer and Patriot (London, 2008), pp. 172, 309.90 Dobranski, Milton, p. 126.


men heavily involved in the oppositional press. These relationships may helpexplain where Milton obtained his political information; and they may castlight on Milton’s ability to evade prosecution in this period. Looking at thematerial evidence can also lead to some renewed questions about politicalassociations and exemplifies the challenges of mapping the changing terrainof the print industry against a changing landscape of political, religious, andideological affiliation.

Oxford



With Benjamin Burton, “Who Printed Milton’s Tetrachordon?” The Library 14:1 (2013), 18-44.

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Transcript of With Benjamin Burton, “Who Printed Milton’s Tetrachordon?” The Library 14:1 (2013), 18-44.