Sets out the book’s main themes: Milton’s anticlericalism; his enduring concern to maximize liberty of conscience for heterodox godly lay intellectuals; Milton’s republicanism and its relatively minor place amongst his priorities; his political writing to be understood as partisan and polemical, not as philosophy; “follow the particular”; Milton’s multifarious, unsystematic liberty-talk; “strenuous liberty;” Milton’s tolerationist thought as proceeding from the lower ground; Milton’s poetry and prose not politically at odds, but differing in subject matter, audience, and purposes; unrepentant politics of the late poems. Brief discussion of archive and methods; summary of chapters.