The Acrostic Paradise Lost by John Milton and Terrance Lindall

The YNF contacted the Strawberry Hill House that has the archives of
Horace Walpole.
Dear Yuko Nii:
Thank you for your enquiry. Walpoles’s copy of the death warrant
was an engraved (ie printed) facsimile, not a manuscript. The entries
in the 1774 Description of Strawberry Hill and the Strawberry Hill
sale catalogue are as follows :
Prints, of the house of commons and warrant for beheading of Charles
1 st . inscribed with a pen, Major Charta; of Ethelreda lady
Townshend; of lord Chatham; lord Holland; lord and lady Strafford;
Mr. H. Walpole; and le comte de Guerchy.
Two curious prints, fac similies of Magna Charta and of the Death
Warrant of Charles I.
Best wishes,
Michael Snodin, Chairman and Honorable Curator of the
Strawberry Hill Trust
The words "Mr. Walpole also has a copy" in the descriptive of the Yuko
Nii Foundation (YNF) copy appears to indicate that this copy might have
been made while Walpole was alive (died 1797) perhaps around 1756, the
time Walpole had acquired the one he hung above his bed. Or it may
indicate that the YNF copy is a copy made at the same time that the
original with seals was made and that additional copies were made as
“solicitor’s copies” a common practice with legal documents, which
would make it 17 th century. One assumes that this copy in the YNF
collection was made in the presence of the actual death warrant that is
herein described as "...preserved among other documents in the Tower..."
unless it is a copy from a copy.
It would still be a remarkable piece of 17 th or 18th C. ephemera for one of
the most important periods of English history during which John Milton
played a significant role as Cromwell's secretary and advocate of the
execution of King Charles. The Yuko Nii Foundation also owns a copy
of Defensio pro Populo Anglicano, a Latin polemic by John Milton,
published in 1651 that defends the right to execute an unjust monarch.
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