Can the authorship of documents created and approved by government committees be attributed to the individual assigned to translate them into the official language of diplomacy? This question is but one of many that hover around John Milton's letters of state, but it more than likely accounts for William Riley Parker's uncharacteristically dismissive statements about not just Milton's government position as Secretary for Foreign Languages during the Interregnum (“Milton was little more than a translator and interpreter for monolingual bosses”) but the value of assigning such work to him on the mere chance that he may have translated it (“If one set about seriously collecting on this basis, it should not be difficult to double or treble the now accepted number of letters! And to what end?”) Given Parker's prominence in the field of Milton studies at the time, his dim view of this part of Milton’s canon reassured those convinced that critical neglect should continue.

However, long before Parker, others, for different reasons, were convinced the letters should never appear in print and made efforts to make sure it did not happen. In the early 1670s, when Milton's Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, History of Britain, Tetrachordon, Artis logicae, and a second edition of the 1645 Poems were published for the first time or republished, the author's attempt to see an edition of his public and private letters through the press failed. Only after he replaced his letters of state with his Latin prolusions did his Epistolarum Familiarium appear six months before his death in 1674. Also thwarted was Daniel Skinner, who having been given two manuscripts from Milton—one comprised of a collection of state papers and a second the theological treatise De Doctrina Christiana—tried to have both published by the Dutch printer Daniel Elzevir, most likely selected because his Catalogus Librorum for 1674 announced that Milton's three Defences and a second edition of the 1645 Poems were forthcoming. But others remained steadfast that the state papers would not be part of any revival of interest in Milton.