No stouter appeal for the freedom of the press was ever heard,
even in America. But in the main, his prose pen was employed against the
crown and the Church, while they still existed; against the king's memory,
after the unfortunate monarch had fallen, and in favor of the parliament
and all its acts. Milton was no trimmer; he gave forth no uncertain sound;
he was partisan to the extreme, and left himself no loop-hole of retreat
in the change that was to come.
A famous book appeared in 1649, not long after Charles's execution,
proclaimed to have been written by King Charles while in prison, and
entitled _Eikon Basilike_, or _The Kingly Image_, being the portraiture of
his majesty in his solitude and suffering. It was supposed that it might
influence the people in favor of royalty, and so Milton was employed to
answer it in a bitter invective, an unnecessary and heartless attack upon
the dead king, entitled _Eikonoklastes_, or _The Image-breaker_. The Eikon
was probably in part written by the king, and in part by Bishop Gauden,
who indeed claimed its authorship after the Restoration.
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