Background
This work was followed by four others, also related to church hierarchy and Presbyterianism. Christopher Hill considers that Milton was somewhat influenced, in the series, by the style of the pamphleteer Martin Marprelate, back in print; and notes that the timing in May 1641 was in the same month as the execution of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, and the fall of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. Further, Hill points out Milton's "special interest in the cultural and moral consequences, as he saw them, of episcopacy."
The work was Milton's first independently produced work, and was published in May 1641 under the title Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline in England: And the Cavses that hitherto have hindered it. The first page offers an alternate title, "Of Reformation in England".
Read more about this topic: Of Reformation
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