Introduction
Keyword(s):
John Selden was a role model for John Milton, who called him “the chief of learned men reputed in this Land.” But one was primarily a scholar, the other a poet-polemicist, and although they both supported the reform of English family law and the parliamentary side in the civil war, their approaches differ. Milton was more impetuous and daring, Selden more circumspect, always adjusting his discourse to fit his audience, whether in Parliament, at table among friends, or in his scholarship. This introduces the important presence of Jewish law, ignored by editors, in Selden’s Table Talk, and it analyzes Selden’s use of rhetoric to prepare the readers of De Jure Naturali to acknowledge the validity of that law.