ABSTRACT
Samson, like exile, imprisonment, public humiliation, and feelings of divine desertion united a broad spectrum of defeated republicans ranging from Ludlow to Algernon Sidney and Sir Henry Vane, to name but a few. Samson is certainly not a false martyr like the misnamed 'Charles Martyr' or a distracting 'idol' like the post-apostolic martyrs Milton dismisses in Of Prelatical Episcopacy, who were ironically 'worshipped' in ways not unlike the suffering post-Restoration saints. Milton's and Sidney's perspective differs from the godly republicans in another especially telling respect: they strenuously avoided the martyr-complex cultivated by Vane, Ludlow, and the majority of the radical Dissenters. Although Sidney finally did suffer a martyr's death, he never sought it but strove to keep republicanism alive by covert means. Classical republicans also believed in God's constant laws, but they were mainly empirical laws of political behavior that applied differently in changing historical circumstances.
