He speaks, too, almost entirely in the interest of husbands.

With him woman is not complementary to man, but his inferior, to be cherished if obedient, to minister to her husband's welfare, but to have her resolute spirit broken after the manner of Petruchio, the shrew-tamer.

In all this, however, Milton was eminently a type of the times.

It was the canon law of the established Church of England at which he aimed, and he endeavored to lead the parliament to legislation upon the most sacred ties and relations of human life.
Happily, English morals were too strong, even in that turbulent period, to yield to this unholy attempt.

It was a day when authority was questioned, a day for "extending the area of freedom," but he went too far even for emancipated England; and the mysterious power of the marriage tie has always been reverenced as one of the main bulwarks of that righteousness which exalteth a nation.
His apology for Smectymnuus is one of his pamphlets against Episcopacy, and receives its title from the initial letters of the names of five Puritan ministers, who also engaged in controversy: they were Stephen Marshall, Edward Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcome, William Spenston.
The Church of England never had a more intelligent and relentless enemy than John Milton.
OTHER PROSE WORKS .-- Milton's prose works are almost all of them of an historical character.