JOHN MILTON'S "PARADISE LOST"

Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609-1674) was an English statesman, lawyer, diplomat and historian who served as chief advisor to Charles I during the First English Civil War, and Lord Chancellor to Charles II from 1660 to 1667. One of the most famous quotes attributed to him and present in the newspapers throughout the 18th and 19th century, included the phrase "weary of life, and yet are most unwilling to die", similar to the Riverside Desktop Poem title of "sick of living, unwilling to die". This on its own wouldn't be that interesting, but for the fact that Zodiac cryptologist, David Oranchak, showed that Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon featured in a book called “The life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, lord high chancellor of England: Volume 2", detailing his life from birth to his banishment in 1667, in which a chunk of text comprising of 46 consecutive letters could fit into the 408 cipher. Although David Oranchak described this as a one in eleven billion chance, he stated "don’t be fooled by this. Just because this rare event occurred, doesn’t mean it is anything more than a simple coincidence".

​However, the phrase "unwilling to die" was not only part of the Riverside Desktop Poem title, it had relevance to both the Confession letters and Bates letters. The phrase "to die" appears a further four times in these letters, and the desktop poem title uses the word "unwilling", to which the Confession letter states "She was then very willing to talk to me" and "She went very willingly". But probably the most interesting aspect of the Edward Hyde text featuring in Zodiac's 408 cipher, is that Edward Hyde regularly used ciphers to communicate with King Charles II of England during his exile [1] [2]. Therefore, it is strange that the text from the Edward Hyde book, who himself dealt in ciphers, featured in a cipher by Zodiac, whether accidental or not. You might believe the coincidences stop there, but they don't.   

King Charles II of England, who exchanged ciphers with Edward Hyde, also had loose connections to the 408 cipher. King Charles II of England, who reigned from 1660 to 1685, was known for the Restoration of the monarchy after the English Civil War and the period of the Commonwealth. He was also a patron of the arts and sciences, and his reign saw the publication of John Milton's Paradise Lost, an epic poem in blank verse by the English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The first version, published in 1667, consists of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse. Both Milton and Hyde died in the same year..

Milton scholar John Leonard interpreted the "impious war" between Heaven and Hell as civil war. Paradise Lost is, among other things, a poem about civil war. Satan raises "impious war in Heav'n" by leading a third of the angels in revolt against God. The term "impious war" implies that civil war is impious. But Milton applauded the English people for having the courage to depose and execute King Charles I. In his poem, however, he takes the side of "Heav'n's awful Monarch".

​Critics have long wrestled with the question of why an antimonarchist and defender of regicide should have chosen a subject that obliged him to defend monarchical authority. Both Milton’s prose works and poetry were banned. The prose was banned by King Charles II because Milton passionately and publicly opposed the two most powerful institutions of his day: the British monarchy and the established church (Anglican in England and Scotland and Catholic worldwide)..When Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660, he issued a proclamation calling for two of Milton's books to be publicly burned by the hangman. Here is a Charles II copy of John Milton's Paradise Lost from 1667 (the date of its publication), stamped in gilt with the cipher of Charles II on the cover. The spine of the book was spelled "PARADICE LOST".

I dug a little further and found this 1890 book of Paradise Lost from the Library of Congress (see below). Chapter VII contained the text "A mercy-seat of gold, between the wings of two bright Cherubim; before him burn seven lamps as in a Zodiac representing the heavenly fires". The word "Zodiac" appeared in Chapter 7, line 255, of page 408. We now had "paradise", "Zodiac" and "408" in John Milton's book, a renowned epic poem first published in 1667, exploring the biblical story of the Fall of Man. John Milton, King Charles II and Edward Hyde from the 17th century can all be somewhat linked to the 408 cipher.