Summary
In “The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,” Milton delivers one of his most radical arguments: the people have the right to execute any leader who has become tyrannical. The essay was written in the context of the English Civil War, fought between supporters of the King, Charles I, and supporters of Parliament, a legislative body composed of aristocrats and ordinary people. As the war progressed, divisions arose within Parliament. Some members were “Presbyterians,” who wanted to reach a compromise with the king. Others were “Independents,” who wanted to continue the war until the king had been utterly defeated.
Milton responds to the Presbyterians, urging them towards a more radical position. The essay begins by asserting that it is lawful for people to put a wicked king to death, as long as they have the power to do so. He claims that those who fail to accept this have become slaves. Not only do they allow themselves to be dominated by an evil government, but they rule themselves with similar tyranny, repressing their own political capacity in favor of blind conformity.
Milton then describes some of the reasons why people oppose the execution of the king, despite being on the side of Parliament. Some claim to pity him, but they are really either shallow, enamored of the king’s wealth and power, or traitors seeking instability. For Milton, to spare the king and doom the whole nation cannot be an act of mercy. He then identifies another set, who once fought to overthrow the king, but are now having second thoughts. These individuals are his primary audience, as he seeks to fire up their courage with his writing.
“The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates” does not attempt to prove that Charles I is a tyrant. It takes this as a foregone conclusion, proven by the blood spilled during the civil war. Instead, it seeks to prove that people have the right to overthrow and execute Charles I because he is a tyrant. To make this argument, Milton first states “that all men naturally were born free, being that image and resemblance of God himself, and Were, by privilege above all the creatures, born to command, and not to obey.” In other words, when God made Adam, he intended him to be a lord of his environment.
However, Milton states, when Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise, there started to be tension between people. In order to create stable communities, people agreed to “bind themselves” into groups that could defend themselves. These groups were led by kings and magistrates. However, kings and magistrates were not supposed to be better than anyone else. Rather, they were supposed to carry out the will of the people in order to maintain justice. As time went on, some kings perverted this origin, and began to see themselves as the masters of society.
Milton uses this version of history to make several arguments. First, because kings were originally given their office by the people, it’s only sensible that people also have the right to strip them of that office if they fail to live up to the title. The fact that they have legally inherited their crown means it’s also legal for that inheritance to be stripped from them, if they violate the rights of the people. Milton also stresses that the people cannot rely on God to get rid of wicked kings. If the king is only responsible to God, and not the people, then a king who does not fear God has no reason to rule justly. Furthermore, if only God has power over the king, then he is made superior to the people, reducing the people to the status of slaves. Finally, if the king only has authority because it improves the lives of the people, then it is the people’s right to reject him, should his authority no longer serve them.
Throughout this portion of the argument, Milton quotes from the Bible. His quotations assert that God gives people the right of choosing and changing their own government. For example, in the Bible, rulers who work to drive out evil are ordained by God and deserve submission and obedience. Conversely, Milton argues, rulers who aid evil are not ordained by God, and we have no obligation to obey them. Ultimately, he stresses, the power to rule comes from the people, and can be taken away by them just as easily.
From here, he gives his definition of a tyrant: a ruler who reigns for himself and his faction, rather than for the law and the common good. Milton argues that people naturally understand that such a ruler deserves death, but they blind themselves to that impulse by focusing instead on what other people do. Therefore, he will describe moments in history when people overthrew a tyrant. He begins with an example from Greece, and then shifts to Jewish and Christian examples. Many of these are drawn from the Bible, but others are more recent, including Scottish resistance to the monarchy in the mid-sixteenth century.
Yet, Milton goes on, these examples really shouldn’t be necessary. After all, the Presbyterians should already recognize the legitimacy of deposing the king: they did it themselves, when they sided with Parliament in the Civil War. They themselves declared that the king should not have authority over Parliament. For Milton, the identity of the king depends on the relationship between monarch and subject: the monarch rules, and the subject consents to be ruled. When the Presbyterians ceased to see themselves as subjects, they also stripped the king of his identity as ruler. Indeed, in this, they have themselves killed the king, by destroying who he is.
Given that the Presbyterians were once happy to depose and kill the king, Milton can only conclude that they were never truly acting from conviction, but rather from a desire to breed commotion and instability. Otherwise, they would see their action to the end. Milton concedes that no Protestant country has ever before executed a Protestant king. Yet, he argues, this does not mean that the English should not do so. Rather, they have the opportunity to set a new precedent. Other nations will follow, deposing their own leaders when they earn death by ruling tyrannically.
Milton then addresses the divines, or theological scholars. He gives a series of quotes from various Protestant theologians all speaking in support of the people’s right to depose an unjust king. He acknowledges that there are many other thinkers who disagree, but states that the lack of agreement between scholars speaks to the limitations of their knowledge. In response to these complex debates, Milton emphasizes the simple fact that people have a right to defend themselves. By killing the king, they will be exercising that fundamental right on a communal scale. Furthermore, Milton states, God is the only true king. To instead obey tyrants, or listen to their supporters, is to betray God.
Analysis
“On the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates” is a bit of an odd essay, in that Milton seems to feel he shouldn’t need to make this argument. We see this most in his argument from history. As in “Areopagitica,” Milton’s most famous essay which argues in favor of free speech, he uses a series of examples drawn from recent European history, the Bible, and classical Greece and Rome to defend his position. In this essay, he wants to say that people have always deposed, or overthrown, leaders who failed to serve their interests.
Yet the examples he gives are somewhat unconvincing, or at least require lots of explanation before Milton can use them to defend his position. For example, from the Bible, he cites the story of Ehud, a Jewish king who delivered Israel from the tyrannical reign of Eglon. As Milton himself acknowledges, however, Eglon was never the legitimate king of the Jewish people. He was a foreigner, the king of Moab, and he conquered Israel in order to incorporate it within a pagan empire. For Milton’s reader, the situation is plainly different: most everyone would have agreed that people have a right to liberate themself from a foreign occupier.
On its own, then, the example isn’t really relevant to the argument Milton is making. He uses it, however, as an excuse to make a radical argument: “Nor is it distance of place that makes enmity, but enmity that makes distance. He therefore that keeps peace with me, near or remote, of whatsoever nation, is to me, as far as all civil and human offices, an Englishman and a neighbour: but if an Englishman, forgetting all laws, human, civil, and religious, offend against life and liberty, to him offended, and to the law in his behalf, though born in the same womb, he is no better than a Turk, a Saracen, a heathen.” In other words, the place you were born or where you live has no bearing on your national identity. Instead, national identity is determined by a shared commitment to peace. Therefore, King Charles I, who Milton sees as a tyrant who endangers the lives of ordinary people, is no more an Englishman than Eglon was an Israelite.
This bizarre argument is revealing. In reality, the thing Milton is suggesting is utterly radical. Never before had a European people overthrown their king and replaced them with a democratic body led by a commoner. He provides the historical arguments because reference to the Bible is an important tenant of Protestantism, and because people are more likely to take the plunge when they don’t feel alone.
Yet ultimately, the only real precedent Milton can cite is the English Civil War itself. As he emphasizes, the people who now want to compromise with the king have already fundamentally undermined his authority. A monarch is someone who rules. By refusing to be ruled and going to war instead, they have already put an end to his identity as king, and no compromise can reverse that. Milton’s job as an essayist is to force his audience to recognize what they have done, and to follow through with it. In doing so, they can set a new precedent, and encourage other peoples to claim their own power.
