He acted as private secretary to several of the royalist leaders, and was afterwards engaged as private secretary to the Queen, in ciphering and deciphering the correspondence which passed between her and Charles I.; the work occupying all his days, and often his nights, during several years.

And while Cowley was thus employed in the royal cause, Milton was employed by the Commonwealth, of which he was the Latin secretary, and afterwards secretary to the Lord Protector.

Yet, in the earlier part of his life, Milton was occupied in the humble vocation of a teacher.

Dr.Johnson says, "that in his school, as in everything else which he undertook, he laboured with great diligence, there is no reason for doubting" It was after the Restoration, when his official employment ceased, that Milton entered upon the principal literary work of his life; but before he undertook the writing of his great epic, he deemed it indispensable that to "industrious and select reading" he should add "steady observation" and "insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs." [1318] Locke held office in different reigns: first under Charles II.

as Secretary to the Board of Trade and afterwards under William III.