John Milton's politics
Politics were an important part of John Milton's life. Milton enjoyed little wide-scale early success, either in prose or poetry, until the production of his later, controversial political works starting with The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and Eikonoklastes. Political works Although Milton was known early on for a poem that he wrote about Shakespeare and for his masque Comus, he was only a minor figure until he started writing in a pamphlet war. By 1654, Milton was involved in public controversies, thinking that he could help the English people by using his writings to promote his political beliefs. His writing brought him into a position of power in the Commonwealth, Secretary for Foreign Tongues to the Council of State, and he served in that duty from 1649 until 1659. His controversial works, starting with The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and Eikonoklastes, were able to appeal to a larger audience than many of Milton's previous works, and, in turn, they sold well even though the content of the works were not received positively. Antiprelatical tracts The antiprelatical tracts were written just after the Bishops' Wars of 1639 and 1640. Milton joined the antiprelatical factions opposing the policies of William