Milton’s Map of Liberty

Chapter 5 turns to Milton’s exploration of custom as it informs Britain’s ancient territories of civic liberty in A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle (1637/45). Milton’s poetic map of the uneasy lands around the Welsh border juxtaposes competing visions of the land as massive or minuscule with rival definitions of its character as a Crown holding or a distinct nation. Like the pocket cartography it physically resembles, the poet’s publication is a rebus that argues on both lexical and image-based levels for a British government whose magistrates serve as temperate and virtuous representatives of the commons, acting in relative autonomy within the polity.