He had not, then, escaped notice, and how he escaped proscription it is hard to say.
Interest was certainly made for him.

Andrew Marvell, Secretary Morrice, and Sir Thomas Clarges, Monk's brother-in-law, are named as active on his behalf; his brother and his nephew both belonged to the Royalist party, and there is a romantic story of Sir William Davenant having requited a like obligation under which he lay to Milton himself.

More to his honour this than to have been the offspring of Shakespeare, but one tale is no better authenticated than the other.

The simplest explanation is that twenty people were found more hated than Milton: it may also have seemed invidious to persecute a blind man.

It is certainly remarkable that the authorities should have failed to find the hiding-place of so recognizable a person, if they really looked for it.
Whether by his own adroitness or their connivance, he avoided arrest until the amnesty resolution of August 29th restored him to the world without even being incapacitated from office.