ABSTRACT
Roger L’Estrange played a significant role in shaping John Milton’s early reputation. His involvement with Milton falls into three phases. His first recorded response to Milton’s work came at the Restoration itself, when L’Estrange promoted the return of Stuart monarchy and prosecuted first republicans and Independents, then also Presbyterians, in his vigorous prose. The second phase followed from L’Estrange gaining power as Surveyor of the Imprimery in 1662−63 and lasted into the mid-1670s: here L’Estrange’s part is half hidden, but leads to the outright suppression of at least one Miltonic text and much brokering over another. The last stage coincides with the Exclusion Crisis, when L’Estrange invokes Milton anew among Whig bogeymen. But he now also became Milton’s publisher, setting Milton against ‘Milton’ in a revealing Tory service to the Milton canon. L’Estrange did much to invent the Whig Milton, in a hostile characterisation that proved surprisingly influential even when others then came to make of Milton a Whig hero.
