Born in London, the son of a well-to-do scrivener, John Milton was educated at St. Paul's School, then at Christ's College, Cambridge. He gained a reputation for erudition and poetic skill, writing several accomplished poems while still a student. When he left Cambridge in 1632, Milton gave up his original plan of becoming a clergyman and spent five quiet years at his father's house in Horton, Buckinghamshire, reading, writing and pursuing his studies in Greek, Latin and Italian. He travelled in France and Italy during 1638-9, meeting the theologian Grotius in Paris and the astronomer Galileo in Florence. On returning to England in 1639, Milton set up as a schoolmaster in London.
During the 1640s, Milton wrote tracts promoting various aspects of Puritanism. In 1641 and 1642, he published eloquent attacks on Episcopacy. In 1643, difficulties in the first of his three marriages prompted a series of pamphlets attacking English marriage law as a relic of medieval Catholicism and advocating the legality and morality of divorce. In 1644, he wrote a short tract urging reform of the universities, and in the same year produced the most popular of his prose writings, Areopagitica, in which he attacked censorship of the press.
After the execution of King Charles I in 1649, Milton wrote The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, in which he declared his support for the republican Commonwealth and advanced the view that the people had the right to depose and punish tyrannical kings. In March 1649, he was appointed Secretary of Foreign Tongues to the Council of State with responsibility for drafting the diplomatic letters and papers which passed between the revolutionary English government and foreign powers. Probably at Milton's suggestion, the Council of State resolved that all diplomatic correspondence should be written in Latin. Milton became familiarly known as the Latin Secretary.
As part of his duties, Milton wrote Eikonoklastes ("the Image Breaker") as a counterblast to Eikon Basilike ("the Royal Image"), which was popularly attributed to the martyred King Charles. However, he refused the Council of State's order to write a refutation of the Leveller pamphlet England's New Chains in 1649, possibly because he felt too much sympathy with the sentiments expressed to attack it. Milton wrote further justifications of the Commonwealth in Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio ("Defence of the English People") in 1651 and 1654.
Milton became blind in 1651 but he retained his office until the Restoration. As a notorious defender of the Commonwealth, he was briefly imprisoned in 1660. He then lived in retirement, devoting himself to poetry which he dictated to his daughter, friends and disciples. The epic Paradise Lost, by which he attained universal fame, was first published in 1667.
References:
John Milton, 1911 Encyclopedia www.1911encyclopedia.org
Links:
John Milton Reading Room
Selected Political Works