fllMlton's JEnglanb
John Milton
Photogravure from the engraving by T. Woolnoth of the miniature
painted in 1667 by William Faithorne
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Boston
X, C. page & Company
ADGCCCfff
Copyright, igo2
BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
All rights reserved
Published, September, 1902
{Colonial tyrcss
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Slmonds & Co.
Boston, Mass., U. S. A.
THIS LITTLE STUDY
OF BYGONE DAYS AND ANCIENT PLACES
IS INSCRIBED TO THE
PURITAN SCHOLAR AND DEAR FELLOW PILGRIM
WHO WANDERED WITH ME
ONE HAPPY SUMMER THROUGH
MILTON'S ENGLAND.
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MAP OF MILTON'S ENGLAND
flDUton's "Residences in Xonfcon
1. Bread Street, 1608-1624.
2. St. Bride's Churchyard, in 1639 or 1640.
3. Aldersgate Street, 16401645.
4. The Barbican, 1645-1647.
5. Holborn, near Lincoln's Inn, 1647-1649.
6. Charing Cross, opening into Spring Gardens,
seven months in 1649.
7. Whitehall, by Scotland Yard, 1649-1652.
8. Petty France, now York Street, 1652-1660.
9. Bartholomew Close, and a prison, 1660.
10. Holborn, near Red Lion Square, in 1660.
11. Jewin Street, 1661-1663 or 1664.
12. Artillery Walk, by Bunhill Fields Cemetery,
1664-1665, and from 1666 to November, 1674.
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Contents
CHAPTER PACK
I. THE LONDON INTO WHICH MILTON WAS
BORN ri
II. MILTON'S LIFE ON BREAD STREET . . 42
III. MILTON AT CAMBRIDGE 57
IV. MILTON AT HORTON 78
V. MILTON ON THE CONTINENT. IN ST.
BRIDE'S CHURCHYARD AT ALDERSGATE
STREET. THE BARBICAN. HOLBORN.
SPRING GARDENS 85
VI. MILTON AT WHITEHALL. SCOTLAND YARD.
PETTY FRANCE. BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE.
HIGH HOLBORN. JEWIN STREET. AR-
TILLERY WALK . . . . . .no
VII. CHALFOXT ST. GILES. ARTILLERY WALK . 112
VIII. THE TOWER TOWER HILL . . .126
IX. ALL HALLOWS, BARKING. ST. OLAVE'S.
ST. CATHERINE CREE'S. ST. ANDREW
UNDERSHAFT 143
X. CROSBY HALL. ST. HELEN'S. ST. ETHEL-
BURGA'S. ST. GILES'S, CRIPPLEGATE . 164
XI. GRESHAM COLLEGE. AUSTIN FRIARS.
GUILDHALL. ST. MARY'S, ALDERMAN-
BURY. CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. ST. SEPUL-
CHRE'S 184
XII. CHARTERHOUSE. ST. JOHN'S GATE. ST.
BARTHOLOMEW'S. SMITHFIELD . 202
via
Contents
CHAPTER
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
XVII.
ELY PLACE. INNS OF COURT. TEMPLE
CHURCH. COVENT GARDEN. SOMERSET
HOUSE . 221
WHITEHALL. WESTMINSTER ABBEY . . 240
THE PRECINCTS OF THE ABBEY. WEST-
MINSTER PALACE. ST. MARGARET'S . 264
LAMBETH PALACE. ST. SAVIOUR'S. LON-
DON BRIDGE . . . . . . 277
THE PLAGUE. THE FIRE. WREN. LON-
DON REBUILT 293
%lst of IFIlustrations
PAGE
JOHN MILTON . . . . . . Frontispiece
OLD ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 47
DEAN COLET, THE FOUNDER OF ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL 55
SIDNEY - SUSSEX COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE ... 59
CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 62
ST. SEPULCHRE'S CHURCH, CAMBRIDGE ... 70
THE CHURCH AT HORTON 80
PART OF WHITEHALL 101
REAR OF MILTON'S HOUSE, AND TREE PLANTED
BY HIM, YORK STREET, WESTMINSTER (PETTY
FRANCE) 103
IN MILTON'S HOUSE AT CHALFONT ST. GILES . .113
ST. CATHERINE CREE CHURCH IN 1736 . . . 157
MONUMENT TO JOHN STOW, ST. ANDREW UNDER-
SHAFT 161
CHURCH OF ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT IN 1737 . 163
CROSBY HALL 170
CHURCH OF ST. GILES CRIPPLECATE IN 1737 . .178
GRESHAM COLLEGE 184
THE CHARTERHOUSE 203
ST. JOHN'S GATE, CLERKENWELL .... 209
CHURCH OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT . .212
MIDDLE TEMPLE HALL 235
SOMERSET HOUSE 239
THE KING'S GATE AT WHITEHALL .... 241
x Xist ot Illustrations
rAGK
OLIVER CROMWELL 244
WESTMINSTER ABBEY AS MILTON KNEW IT . . 250
IN THE POETS' CORNER 254
WESTMINSTER HALL 274
IN LAMBETH PALACE 280
THE LOLLARDS' TOWER, LAMBETH PALACE . . 283
GOWER'S MONUMENT, IN ST. SAVIOUR'S CHURCH,
SOUTHWARK. 287
THE ROYAL EXCHANGE 295
Bow STEEPLE, CHEAPSIDE 304
/HMlton's
CHAPTER I.
THE LONDON INTO WHICH MILTON WAS BORN
O every well-read man whose mother
tongue is English, whether he be born in
America or Australia or within sound of
Bow Bells, the little dot upon the map, marked
" London," has an interest which surpasses that
of any spot on earth. Though in his school-days
he was taught nothing of the city's topography and
little of its local history, while he has laboriously
learned outlandish names on every continent, never-
theless, in his mind's eye, Westminster Abbey looms
larger than Chimborazo, and a half-dozen miles of
the tidal Thames have more of meaning to him
than as many thousand of the Amazon, the Oxus,
and the Ganges. To know London its mighty,
historic past and its complex, stupendous present
is to know the religion, the art, the science, the
ii
i /Baton's ]6nolan&
politics, the development, in short, of the Anglo-
Saxon race.
Perhaps there is no better method of coming to
know what is most interesting in this centre of all
English life than studying one of the supremely
important periods of its long history, when it was
touched by the spiritual genius of one of England's
most noble sons.
Three periods of a hundred years each stand out
above all others since the Christian era in their
significance and richness of accomplishment.
The third period began about 1790 with the birth
of the American Republic and the outbreak of the
French Revolution. The first was that one hundred
years which from 1450 to 1550 included the begin-
ning of the general use of gunpowder, which made
the pigmy with a pistol more than the match for
giant with spear and battleaxe. Then it was that
" Gutenberg made thought cosmopolite
And stretched electric wires from mind to mind."
In this period Italian art made its most splendid
achievements, and Luther, Calvin, and Columbus
gave man new freedom and new possibilities.
The middle period the one in which England
made her greatest contribution to human advance-
ment is the one that we are to consider. Milton's
flMlton'8 En0lant> 13
life covered sixty-six of its one hundred years. It
began with the destruction of the Spanish Armada
in 1 588, and included the brilliant period of explora-
tion and adventure just before Milton's birth, in
which Hawkins, Drake, and Raleigh, and other am-
bitious and not too scrupulous sea-rovers sought, like
Cecil Rhodes, jewels and gold, empire, expansion,
and renown.
It covered the chief work of Shakespeare, Ben
Jonson, Lord Bacon, Milton, Bunyan, Defoe,
Dryden, and fifty other men still read to-day. It
included all of Milton's great Puritan contempo-
raries, who, fighting for the rights of Englishmen,
fought the world's battle for freedom. It ended in
1688 with the downfall of the house of Stuart and
the final triumph of those principles for which Vane
and Milton had struggled and died without seeing
the fruit of their labours. Since 1688 no monarch
has sat upon the English throne by any outworn
theory of " divine right of kings," but only, explic-
itly and emphatically, by the will of the English
people.
For all believers in the people, for all who honour
Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln, Robert
Burns, John Bright and Gladstone, the century that
knew Cromwell and Milton, Sir Harry Vane and
Sir John Eliot, John Hampden, John Winthrop and
i4 /iDflton's
William Bradford must, more than most others,
have significance.
John Milton was born in London in 1608; and
it is chiefly the London of the twenty years that
intervened between the Spanish Armada and his
birth which we are to consider in this chapter.
As neither man nor anything that he has made
can be well understood except as they are related
to their origins, so to understand the names, the
customs, and the daily sights that the boy Milton
knew in this city, where for nearly two millenniums
before his day history had been making, one must
go back and take a brief survey.
Into the mooted question of the origin of the
name of London we need not enter. Suffice to say
that when we first hear of London it was a little
hamlet on a hill of perhaps one hundred feet in
height, lying between two ranges of higher hills.
At the north rose what we now call Highgate
and Hampstead, about 450 feet high, and to
the south, beyond the marshes and the Thames
and a broad shallow lagoon, whose little islands
once marked the site of Southwark, rose the
Surrey hills, from one of which in our day the
Crystal Palace gleams. Men with stone weapons
slew antlered deer upon the little marshy island of
Thorney, now Westminster. What is now St.
flDtlton's England 15
James's Park was then an estuary. Streams flowed
down the valleys between the wooded hills. Only
their names remain to-day to tell us, among the
present stony streets, where rivers and brooks once
flowed. West Bourn, Ty Bourn, Hole Bourne, the
southern part of which was called the " Fleet,"
flowed from the hills in the northwest in a south-
easterly direction into the Thames. Just east of the
last named was the little brook called " Wallbrook,"
by whose banks, on the present Cornhill, the first
settlement was made. All these names, of course,
belong to a time long subsequent to the first rude
settlements made in unknown antiquity before the
Christian era. The Tyburn at its mouth divided,
enclosing the island Thorney, upon which in later
times arose Westminster. Hole Bourne was so
named because of its running through a deep hollow.
The lower part of the river the Fleet was
tidal, and formed the western bulwark of London
for centuries. It emptied into the Thames where
now is Blackfriars Bridge.
Far eastward from the Wallbrook, through broad
marshes, flowed the river Lea down from the country
known to us as Essex and Hertfordshire. It emptied
into the Thames east of the Isle of Dogs, which
is now covered with huge docks for the shipping of
the great modern city. The Lea still flows as in
16 flMlton's England
the time of the Romans and Saxons, though its
marshes have largely disappeared. But the other
smaller streams are now obliterated, though in
Milton's time their course could still partly be dis-
cerned, and their degradation into drains was not
complete.
Through Bread Street, on which Milton was born,
passed Watling Street, the old Roman road, named
later by the Saxons, which with the Roman wall
around the city alone left traces of the Roman
occupation in the poet's day. The mosaic floors, the
coins, bronze weapons and scanty remains of the
Roman period, before the fourth century A. D., are
better known to us than to the Londoners of his
time. The Roman city spread itself along the river
from the Fleet on the west to the site of the present
Tower of London on the east, and then gradually
crept northward. By the time the Roman wall was
built in about 360 A. D., the circumference of the
city, counting the river front, was two miles and
three quarters. Here stood the town, not in an
area of fertile fields, but surrounded by forests on
the north, and on all other sides by wide-spreading
marshes. The enclosed space was originally 380
acres, to which later additions were made upon
the north and east. The wall was built of
layers of thin red brick and stone about twenty
/Dillon's Enolanfc 17
feet high, and was finished by bastions and
additional defences at the angles. Though scant
traces of any of the original construction now re-
main, much of the Roman wall, and, at all events,
a complete wall of mingled Roman and mediaeval
work, encircled the site of the ancient city limits in
Milton's day, and its gates were nightly locked until
long after his death.
At first, two land gates had sufficed, but in 1600
there were seven; on the east, Aldgate; further
north was Bishopsgate; further west, upon the
northern wall, were Moorgate and Cripplegate ; upon
the west, Aldersgate, protected by the Barbican, one
of the gateway towers ; and south of this, Newgate
and Ludgate. Upon the waterside, Dowgate, at the
mouth of the ancient Wallbrook, now covered by
the narrow street of the same name, and Billingsgate,
further east toward the Tower of London, gave
access to the city.
In Roman days the whole enclosure was crossed
by two great streets, Watling Street, which came
from the northwest and entered near Newgate, and
Ermyn Street, which came from the northeast.
Where these two met was later the market or chepe,
from the Saxon word meaning sale.
Of the Saxon period, which followed the sudden
and mysterious abandonment of their city by the
is /IDtlton's England
Romans after their occupation of it for three cen-
turies, we have to-day a thousand traces in London
names. Evidently the early Anglo-Saxon, like his
descendants, had a marked love of privacy and
seclusion. His sense of the sacred nature of prop-
erty was as marked in him as it has always been
in his posterity. The idea of inclosure or protection
is made prominent in the constantly recurring termi-
nations of ton, ham, worth, stoke, stow, fold, garth,
park, hay, burgh, bury, brough, borrow. Philologic
study of continental terms displays no such marked
emphasis upon the idea of property and demarkation
lines. Says the learned Taylor : " It may indeed be
said, without exaggeration, that the universal preva-
lence throughout England of names containing this
word, Homes [viz., ham, ton, etc.], gives us the clue
to the real strength of the national character of the
Anglo-Saxon race." Kensington, Brompton, Pad-
dington, Islington, are but a few of the local names
which illustrate in their suffix the origin of the
word town originally a little hedged enclosure.
[German zaun or hedge.] The most important rem-
nant of the Saxon influence is to be found in
the syllable ing which occurs in thousands of
London names. This was the usual Anglo-Saxon
patronymic, and occurs most often in the middle
syllable, as in Buckingham, the home of Buck's
flDUton's Bnatant) 19
son; Wellington, the village of Wells's son, or the
Wells clan. Family settlements are traceable by this
syllable ing.
Chipping or chepe was the old English term for
market-place, and Westcheap and Eastcheap were
the old London markets of Saxon days. When the
word market takes the place in England of the old
Anglo-Saxon chipping, we may assume the place
to be of later origin.
The Saxons, unlike the Romans, were not road-
makers, and when they applied the English word
street, corrupted from the Latin strata, as in the
case of Watling Street the ancient road which
they renamed we shall usually find that it marks
a work of Roman origin.
Clerkemvell, Bridewell, Holywell, and names
with similar suffixes indicate the site of wells from
which it would seem that the ancient Londoners
derived their water supply when it was not taken
from the Thames, the Holborn, or the Tyburn.
Hithe, which means landing-place, has in later times
largely disappeared, except at Rotherhithe near
Greenwich.
With the conversion of the Saxons in the seventh
century appear the names of Saxon saints. Among
the notable ones to whom churches were built was
holy St. Ethelburga, the wife of Sebert, the first
20 flDUton's
Christian king, whose church to-day stands on the
site of its Saxon predecessor beside Bishopsgate,
on the very spot where stood the Roman gate.
Another was St. Osyth, queen and martyr, whose
name also survives in Sise, or St. Osyth's Lane, and
whose black and grimy churchyard was doubtless
green in Milton's day. To these must be added St.
Dunstan, St. Swithin, St. Edmund the Martyr, and
St. Botolph, to whom no less than four churches
were erected.
The devastating fire of 1135 swept London from
end to end, and not a Saxon structure remained,
though the new ones that replaced them were built in
similar fashion. With the coming of the Danes were
built churches to their patrons, St. Olaf and St.
Magnus; and in the centre of the Strand, St.
Clement's, Danes, is said to mark the spot where
tradition assigns a settlement of Danes.
As of the Saxons, so of the Danes, the most
permanent record of their influence on London and
the Danish district of England was in their suffixes
to words which still survive. By, meaning first a
farm and later a village, is one which occurs some
six hundred times. To this day our common term,
a by-law, recalls the Dane.
The names of the street on which Milton was
born and of those in the near neighbourhood to the
rtMlton's England 21
booths that once surrounded Cheap indicate the
products formerly sold there, or the trades carried on
within them. To the north the streets were called :
Wood, Milk, Iron, Honey, Poultry; to the south
they were named after Bread, Candles, Soap, Fish,
Money-Changing. Friday Street was one on which
fish and food for fast days were sold.
Of Saxon and Danish London there remains in
the old city proper not one stone. Of Norman
London, we have to-day the great White Tower, the
crypt of Bow Church, from whose round arches it
received its name, the crypt of St. John's Priory out-
side the city, part of the church of St. Bartholomew's
the Great, and part of St. Ethelburga's, Bishopsgate.
Much more existed before the Great Fire of 1666.
The chief characteristics of the English Norman
work are the half -circular Roman arch, seen in all
Romanesque work: massive walls unsupported by
great buttresses and not pierced by the large win-
dows which appear in the later Gothic style; square
towers without spires; barrel vaulting over nave
and aisles in the churches; massive piers; the use
of colour upon ornaments and wall surfaces instead
of in the windows as in Gothic buildings; small
interlacing round arches in wall surfaces; zigzag
and " dog tooth " decoration ; " pleated " capitals ;
carvings, more or less grotesque, of human or
22
animal forms. English Norman, like English
Gothic, never equalled the French work in both
these styles.
In Milton's boyhood the impress of Plantagenet
London was everywhere visible. Throughout the
centuries, from the earliest to the latest Plantagenet,
the influence of the Church reigned supreme. It
has been estimated that then at least one-fourth of
the area of all London was in some way connected
with the Church, or the extensive conventual estab-
lishments belonging to it. Their Gothic towers and
steeples rose clean and pure to the soft blue of the
London sky, unfouled with coal smoke. Their lofty
walls, over which English ivy crept and roses
bloomed, shut from the narrow streets of the old
town stretches of soft greensward and shady walks.
Among these rose dormitories, refectories, cloisters,
and the more prosaic offices. At every hour bells
pealed and constantly reminded the citizens of
prayer and service.
Hardly a street but had its monastery or convent
garden. Most of these were just within or just
without the city wall, as they were founded when
the city had already become of a considerable size,
and they were therefore located in the more open
parts. The enormous size of the equipment of these
religious establishments before the Reformation, in
flDtlton's JEnolanfc 23
the century when Milton's grandfather was young,
can scarcely be conceived to-day when the adjuncts
of the Church have shrunk almost to nothingness.
In Milton's boyhood, it must have been an easy
task among the recent ruins and traditions of these
great establishments to reconstruct them to the
imagination in their entirety. Sir Walter Besant
in his graphic book on " London " details the num-
bers supported in this earlier period by St. Paul's
alone. The cathedral body included the bishop,
dean, the four archdeacons, the treasurer, the pre-
centor, the chancellor, thirty greater canons, twelve
lesser canons, about fifty chaplains or chantry priests,
and thirty vicars. Of lower rank were the sacrist
and three vergers, the servitors, the surveyor, the
twelve scribes, the book transcriber, the bookbinder,
the chamberlain, the rent-collector, the baker, the
brewer, the singing men and choir boys, of whom
priests were made, the bedesmen and the poor folk.
In addition to these were the servants and assistants
of all these officers; the sextons, gravediggers,
gardeners, bell ringers, makers and menders of the
ecclesiastical robes, cleaners and sweepers, carpen-
ters, masons, painters, carvers, and gilders.
A similar body, though somewhat smaller, was
required in every other religious foundation. No
wonder that not only one-fourth of the area but also
24 /IMlton's England
one-fourth of the whole city population was needed
to supply these demands.
From Norman London there remained, besides
St. Paul's vast monastic house, the priory of St. Bar-
tholomew's, the house of St. Mary Overie's, the
hospital of St. Katharine's, and the priory of the
Holy Trinity. In Plantagenet London, we find the
priory of Crutched that is, Crossed Friars,
who wore a red cross upon their back and carried
an iron cross in their hands. Farther north upon
the other side of Aldgate stood the great monastery
of Holy Trinity, the richest and most magnificent in
the city ; and the priory of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate,
whose noble ruins had not disappeared more than
a century after Milton's death. Farther west and
north of Broad Street stood the splendid house of
Austin Friars ; still farther west was St. Martin's le
Grand, and just beyond, the foundation of the Gray
Friars or Franciscans. Christ's Hospital, which lies
chiefly on. the site of this old monastery, we shall
consider in a later chapter. In the southwest corner
of the London wall dwelt the Black Friars the
Dominicans whose name to-day is perpetuated in
Blackfriars Bridge.
Outside the walls were other establishments as
rich and splendid as these that were within them.
Farther west than the house of the Black Friars was
flMlton's England 25
the monastery of White Friars or Carmelites, and
beyond these the ancient site of the Knights Tem-
plar, whose Temple church, in Milton's day, as well
as ours, alone remained. North of the Norman
St. Bartholomew's was the house of the Carthusians,
whose long history, ending in the Charterhouse,
must be reserved to a later chapter. Northwest
from the Norman house of St. Bartholomew's stood
the Norman priory of St. John's of Jerusalem.
Adjacent to it lay the twin foundation the priory
of Black Nuns.
South of the Thames lay two great establish-
ments, Bermondsey and St. Thomas's Hospital,
while of the hospitals situated among the priories
and monasteries to the north were the hospital of St.
Mary of Bethlehem and the great hospital of St.
Mary Spital, both of which were originally planned
for religious houses. This is but a dry, brief cata-
logue, not of all the great religious houses, but
only of those whose walls, more or less transformed
or ruined, were within walking distance and most
familiar to the boy Milton in his rambles around
the city of his birth.
Milton must have seen several " colleges " as
well as monasteries ; among these were St. Michael's
College on Crooked Lane, and Jesus Commons, and
a " college " for poor and aged priests, called the
26 /HMiton's England
" Papey." A portion of the " college " of Whit-
tington still remained, and on the site of the present
Mercers' Chapel stood a college for the education
of priests, whose splendid church remained until the
Great Fire.
Every lover of the beautiful must fondly dwell
upon the glorious period of Gothic architecture
during which these structures rose. Though London
in the Tudor period eclipsed in wealth and magnifi-
cence the city of earlier times, the Elizabethan age
had no power in its development of pseudo-classic
forms to equal the dignity and beauty of the Norman
and Gothic work. Then the unknown reverent artist
wrought not for fame or earthly glory, but dedicated
his labour to the God of Nature, whose laws and
principles were his chief guide. These were the
days when vine and tendril and the subtle curves of
leaf and flower or supple animal form suggested the
enrichment of capital and corbel. No cheap and
servile imitation of lute and drum, of spear and
sword and ribbon, of casque and crown and plume,
displayed a paucity of inventive genius and aban-
donment of nature's teaching for that of milliner
and armourer. Let John Ruskin, in many ways
the spiritual son of the beauty-loving Puritan, John
Milton, interpret to us the meaning of those poems
reared in stone, which Milton's age was fast dis-
placing :
/IMlton's England 27
" You have in the earlier Gothic less wonderful
construction, less careful masonry, far less expres-
sion of harmony of parts in the balance of the
building. Earlier work always has more or less
of the character of a good, solid wall with irregular
holes in it, well carved wherever there was room.
But the last phase of Gothic has no room to spare;
it rises as high as it can on narrowest foundations,
stands in perfect strength with the least possible
substance in its bars ; connects niche with niche and
line with line in an exquisite harmony from which
no stone can be removed, and to which you can add
not a pinnacle; and yet introduces in rich, though
now more calculated profusion, the living elements
of its sculpture, sculpture in quatrefoils, gargoyles,
niches, in the ridges and hollows of its mouldings
not a shadow without meaning and not a line with-
out life. But with this very perfection of his work
came the unhappy pride of the builder in what he
had done. As long as he had been merely raising
clumsy walls and carving them, like a child, in way-
wardness of fancy, his delight was in the things he
thought of as he carved; but when he had once
reached this pitch of constructive science, he began
to think only how cleverly he could put the stones
together. The question was not now with him,
What can I represent ? but, How high can I build
28 /BMlton's
how wonderfully can I hang this arch in air? and
the catastrophe was instant architecture became
in France a mere web of woven lines, in England
a mere grating of perpendicular ones. Redundance
was substituted for invention, and geometry for
passion." ("The Two Paths.")
It is in this later Gothic, for example the much
admired Chapel of Henry VII. at Westminster,
that we find this redundancy of motive and poverty
of invention, as, for instance, in the repetition of the
portcullis the Tudor heraldic ornament. Ruskin
would teach us that heraldic signs, though suited
for a few conspicuous places, as proclaiming the
name or rank or office of the owner, become imperti-
nent when blazoned everywhere, and are wholly
devoid of beauty when they reproduce by the hun-
dred some instrument of prosaic use.
Plantagenet London, and its many remnants of
domestic architecture, in Milton's day, illustrated
fully Ruskin's dictum that " Gothic is not an art
for knights and nobles ; it is an art for the people ;
it is not an art [merely] for churches and sanc-
tuaries; it is an art for houses and homes. . . .
When Gothic was invented houses were Gothic
as well as churches. . . . Good Gothic has always
been the work of the commonalty, not of the
churches. . Gothic was formed in the baron's
flMlton's Jn0lanfc 29
castle and the burgher's street. It was formed by
the thoughts and hands and powers of labouring
citizens and warrior kings." (" Crown of Wild
Olive.")
In a memorable passage in his lectures on Archi-
tecture in Edinburgh, Ruskin recalls the power with
which the Gothic forms appeal to the imagination
when embodied in poetry and romance. He asks
what would result were the words tower and turret,
and the mental pictures that they conjure up, re-
moved. Suppose Walter Scott had written, instead
of " the old clock struck two from a turret adjoin-
ing my bedchamber," " the old clock struck two
from the landing at the top of the stair." " What,"
he asks, "would have become of the passage?"
" That strange and thrilling interest with which
such words strike you as are in any wise connected
with Gothic architecture, as for instance, vault,
arch, spire, pinnacle, battlement, barbican, porch,
words everlastingly poetical and powerful, is a
most true and sure index that the things themselves
are delightful to you." As to stylobates, and pedi-
ments, and triglyphs, and all the classic forms, even
when pure and unvulgarised by decadent Renais-
sance work, how utterly they fail to satisfy the
poetic instinct of the man of English lineage is well
expressed by James Russell Lowell, as he stood
within the portals of Chartres Minster :
3
" The Grecian gluts me with its perfectness
Unanswerable as Euclid, self-contained,
The one thing finished in this hasty world.
But ah ! this other, this that never ends,
Still climbing, luring fancy still to climb,
As full of morals, half divined, as life,
Graceful, grotesque, with ever new surprise
Of hazardous caprices, sure to please,
Heavy as nightmare, airy light as fern,
Imagination's very self in stone ! "
Of the type of architecture most favoured by
Milton's contemporaries, Ruskin says :
" Renaissance architecture is the school which
has conducted men's inventive and constructive
faculties from the Grand Canal [in England, he
might have said, old Chester or old Canterbury] to
Gower Street, from the marble shaft and the lancet
arch and the wreathed leafage ... to the square
cavity in the brick wall." This is a strong expres-
sion of a half truth. But the baldness and blankness
of Gower Street and a thousand other streets is not
so hopeless as the pretentious bastard Renaissance
work which modern London shows. The rich mod-
ern world can not plead poverty as its excuse for
ugliness. Even the village cottage of three cen-
turies ago, as well as the city streets, showed a
popular love of beauty and a power to attain it
which few architects, or rather few of their patrons,
permit the modern world to see.
rtMlton's Bnalanfc 31
But let the lover of past beauty take new courage.
Hundreds of signs disclose the dawn of a revival of
true taste in which England and America bid fair
to lead the world.
Though in most of its forms the Renaissance art
that accompanied the new age of discovery and
expansion of commerce in the century before Milton
indicates a decadence of the love of beauty, excep-
tion must be made to much delightful domestic archi-
tecture that has the Tudor stamp and is distinctly
English, and unknown on the Continent.
The introduction into the background of portraits
of such classic outlines as domes, arches, and marble
pilasters, is a device used by painters when they
would flatter the vanity of their patrons and give
them a courtly setting. No Byzantine or Norman
arch, or Gothic spire or portal, however rich in dec-
oration, can equal the severe but pompous lines of the
Renaissance in conveying a sense of pride. Says
Ruskin : " There is in them an expression of aristoc-
racy in its worst characters : coldness, perfectness of
training, incapability of emotion, want of sympathy
with the weakness of lower men, blank, hopeless,
haughty insufficiency. All these characters are writ-
ten in the Renaissance architecture as plainly as if
they were graven on it in words. For, observe, all
other architectures have something in them that com-
32 /iDilton's England
mon men can enjoy ; some concession to the simplici-
ties of humanity, some daily bread for the hunger
of the multitude; quaint fancy, rich ornament,
bright colour, something that shows a sympathy
with men of ordinary minds and hearts, and this
wrought out, at least in the Gothic, with a rudeness
showing that the workman did not mind exposing
his own ignorance if he could please others. But the
Renaissance is exactly the contrary of this. It is
rigid, cold, inhuman ; incapable of glowing, of stoop-
ing, of conceding, for an instant. Whatever excel-
lence it has is refined, high-trained, and deeply
erudite, a kind which the architect well knows no
common mind can taste. He proclaims it to you
aloud. . . . All the pleasure you can have in any-
thing I do is in its proud breeding, its rigid formal-
ism, its perfect finish, its cold tranquillity. . . . And
the instinct of the world felt this in a moment. . . .
Princes delighted in it, and courtiers. The Gothic
was good for God's worship, but this was good for
man's worship. . . . The proud princes and lords
rejoiced in it. It was full of insult to the poor in
its every line. It would not be built of materials
at the poor man's hand. ... It would be of hewn
stone; it would have its windows and its doors and
its stairs and its pillars in lordly order and of stately
size."
/IDUton's JEnalanfc 33
To the novice, who is beginning to decipher the
inner meaning of sermons in stones in which the
ages have recorded, all unconsciously, the life and
aspiration of the past, these words may sound harsh
and fantastic.
With the memory of such rare geniuses as
Michael Angelo and Wren, and their awe-inspiring
cathedrals, built in the Renaissance forms, one may
hesitate before completely accepting Ruskin's dictum.
Ruskin himself has done homage to their genius and
the greatness of their work. " There were of
course," he says, " noble exceptions." Yet surely
the devout Christian must feel under their glorious
domes not so much like praying and reverencing his
Maker as glorifying the work of men's hands.
Under any dome and architectural reminder of
Roman thought and life, whether it be Wren's
mighty St. Paul's, or his small and exquisitely pro-
portioned St. Stephen's, Wallbrook, almost in its
shadow, the worshipper must feel something akin
to Ruskin's sentiment. A meek and contrite heart
feels alien and uncomforted amid its perfection.
But Ruskin's word chiefly concerns the more per-
fect Gothic of the Continent, and the manifestations
there worse than any in England of riotous
and insolent excess in its Renaissance work. The
most ostentatious and offensive monument in West-
34 flMlton's England
minster Abbey, which is adorned with meaningless
mouldings, artificial garlands, and cherubs weeping
hypocritic tears, is not so odious as those which
Venice, Rome, Antwerp, and a hundred other cities
reared upon the Continent. Those tasteless, costly
structures which modern Englishmen are but now
learning to condemn illustrate completely the pride
and arrogance of a world drunk with new wealth,
in which fashion supplants beauty.
Yet to a large extent the England of the splendid
Tudor period and the England of the Stuarts sub-
stituted for the beautiful and sincere forms of an
earlier period a style of construction and decoration
which showed distinct decadence. Witness the
carvings in the chapel and dining-hall of the Charter-
house, new in Milton's boyhood, the carvings in
the dining-halls of the different Inns of Court, and
mural tablets everywhere with their obese cherubs
and ghastly death's heads. In the quaint beam and
plaster front of Staple's Inn on Holborn still remains
the ancient type of domestic architecture which ante-
dated and accompanied Milton's boyhood. Hun-
dreds of such cosy, homelike residences with their
ample windows of many leaded panes lined the city
streets. The merchants who lived in them sold their
wares in the shops beneath, and, if they were artifi-
cers, housed their apprentices within them. They
ADUton's Bnglanfc 35
were built solidly to last for centuries. Strong beams
upheld the broad, low-studded ceilings. Capacious
fireplaces opened into chimneys whose construction
was often made a work of art. Around the house-
door were carvings of saints or devils, of prophets,
hobgoblins or grotesque dragons, of birds and bees,
and any wild or lovely fancy that the craftsman
loved to perpetuate in wood or stone. The home
must be made beautiful as well as the sanctuary. In
those days the mania of migration had not yet
destroyed the permanence and sacredness of the
homestead. Where the young man brought his
bride, even in a city home, there he hoped to dwell
and dandle his grandchildren upon his knee. It
was Milton's fate to know many homes in London.
Discoveries and travel of the Elizabethan period had
broken many traditions of the past, and the old
order in his day was yielding to the new. But half
the architecture of two hundred years before him
still remained, and all the traditions of the past were
fresh. The dingy and mutilated relics of the time
before the Tudors which, outside the Gothic
churches, alone remain to us, reveal but little of
what he saw.
With Henry VIII. and the widespread and thor-
ough dissolution of religious houses, London became
a far more commercial and prosaic place. Green
36 /UMlton's England
convent gardens were sold for the erection of
narrow wooden tenements; ancient dormitories,
refectories, and chapels were pulled down or trans-
formed for more secular purposes. Crutched Friars'
Church became a carpenter's shop and tennis court;
Shakespeare and his friends erected a playhouse on
the site of the Black Friars' monastery. A tavern
replaced the church of St. Martin's le Grand, and
far and wide traces of the despoiler and rebuilder
were manifest.
Stow had then but just written his invaluable
chronicles, and little antiquarian interest prevailed.
For the first time in human history men sailed
around the globe. New worlds were opening to
men's visions. Not only dreams of wealth without
labour, but golden actualities had dazzled the imagi-
nation of thousands. Drake and Hawkins, Fro-
bisher and Raleigh were adding new lustre to an
age hitherto unparalleled in prosperity and enter-
prise. Emerson's description of the Englishman as
having a " telescopic appreciation of distant gain "
was exemplified.
England was rich in poets, great even in Shake-
speare's time. Of two hundred and forty who pub-
lished verses, forty are remembered to-day. Yet
of England's six million people, half could not read
at all. Never was there among people of privilege
flDUton's England 37
such a proportion of accomplished men. Every man
tried his hand at verses, and learned to sing a madri-
gal, and tinkle the accompaniment with his own
fingers. Gentlemen travelled to Italy and brought
back or made themselves translations of Boccaccio,
Ariosto, Tasso. Not only learned ladies like Queen
Elizabeth, who had had Roger Ascham for instruc-
tor, wrote Latin, but many others were accomplished
in those severer studies which ladies in a later age
neglected.
Sir Walter Besant tells us that from Henry IV.
to Henry VIII. herbs, fruits, and roots were scarcely
used. At this period, however, the poor again began
to consume melons, radishes, cucumbers, parsley,
carrots, turnips, salad herbs, and these things as
well graced the tables of the gentry. Potatoes were
unknown until a much later time. Much meat was
eaten, and in different fashion from our own, e. g.,
honey was poured over mutton. Tobacco cost
eighteen shillings a pound, and King James com-
plained that there were those who " spent 300 a
year upon this noxious weed." No vital statistics
existed to show the average of longevity. But cer-
tain it is that, with modern sanitation and cleanli-
ness, the great modern London, which to-day houses
about as many souls as did all England then, has
a much lower death-rate. When one remembers
38 flMlton's England
that, spite of stupendous intellectual attainments, of
exquisite taste in art and literature, spite of wise
statesmanship and all manly virtues, the wise men
of that day were children in their knowledge of
chemistry and medicine, we cannot wonder at the
recurrence of the plague in almost every generation.
In 1605 the bills of mortality included the ninety-
seven parishes within the walls, sixteen parishes
without the walls, and six contiguous outparishes in
Middlesex and Surrey. During Milton's lifetime,
they included the city of Westminster and the par-
ishes of Islington, Lambeth, Stepney, Newington,
Hackney, and Redriff. Scarlet fever was formerly
confounded with measles, and does not appear to be
reported as a separate disease until 1703.
In 1682 Sir William Petty, speaking of the five
plagues that had visited London in the preceding
hundred years, remarks : " It is to be remembered
the plagues of London do commonly kill one-fifth
of the inhabitants, and are the chief impediment
against the growth of the city."
In Milton's boyhood common folk were crowded
into such narrow, wooden tenements as one may still
see within the enclosure of St. Giles's Church, Crip-
plegate, almost the only ones that still remain
within the city. There were no sewers and no ade-
quate pavement until 1616. House refuse was not
flDilton's Bnglaufc 39
infrequently thrown into the street, and sometimes
upon the heads of passers-by, though ancient laws
enjoined each man to keep the front of his house
clean and to throw no refuse into the gutter. In
short, ideas on sanitation in London were much like
those in Havana before the summer of 1898.
It is difficult to obtain accurate statistics of the
population of London, but Loftie estimates that in
1636 seven hundred thousand people lived " within
its liberties."
Where now lofty, gray stone buildings of pre-
tentious and nondescript architecture shelter banks
and offices, gabled buildings with overlapping stories
darkened the streets. The city was not dependent
on the suburbs or upon other towns for aught but
food and raw material. Wool and silk and linen,
leather and all metals were wrought close to the
shops where they were sold. The odours of glue
and dyestuffs tainted the fresh air. The sound of
tools and hammers, and of the simple looms and
machinery of the day, worked by foot or hand power,
were heard.
New objects of luxury began to be manufactured
fans, ladies' wigs, fine knives, pins, needles,
earthen fire-pots, silk and crystal buttons, shoe-
buckles, glassware, nails, and paper. New products
from foreign lands were introduced and naturalised
40 flMlton's
among them, turkeys, hops, and apricots. Forks
had not yet appeared as a necessary table furnishing.
Kissing was a universal custom, and a guest kissed
his hostess and all ladies present.
Though in the time of Milton's father the ameni-
ties of life had much increased, cruelty and severe
punishments were more frequent than in an earlier
age. Three-fourths of all the heretics burned at
the stake in England suffered in those five years
of the bloody queen who, with her Spanish husband
at her court, ruled from 1553 to 1558 over unhappy
England. Many a time must the boy Milton have
heard blood-curdling tales from aged men of these
ghastly days when Ridley, Cranmer, Hooper, and
John Rogers withered in the flames. His own
father may have seen the later martyrdoms of Roman
Catholics in Elizabeth's reign, or of that Unitarian
in 1585 who suffered at the stake for the denial of
the divinity of Christ a theological view with
which Milton himself is shown to have had much
sympathy.
The historian tells us of men boiled and women
burned for poisoning; of ears nailed to the pillory
and sliced off for libellous and incendiary language.
We read of frightful floggings through the streets
and of an enormous number of men hanged. Many
rogues escaped punishment altogether, for, though
flDUton's BnQlanfc 41
punishment when it came was terrifically out of
proportion to the offence, and in its publicity incited
by suggestion to more crime, the law was often
laxly administered.
All periods are more or less transitional, but the
England into which Milton came in the first years
of the seventeenth century was peculiarly in a state
of transformation and unsettlement. As in the be-
ginning of the twentieth century, men's minds were
receiving radical, new impressions, and had not yet
assimilated or comprehended them. The doctrines
of religious and political freedom were the dreams
of prophets, and were yet to be conceived a possi-
bility by the masses, who through dumb centuries
had toiled and laughed and wept, and then stretched
themselves in mother earth and slept among their
fathers. The tender, growing shoots which in the
days of Wiclif had sprung from the seed, small as a
mustard seed, which he had planted, had grown.
Birds now lodged among its branches. The time
was ripening when, with the axe and hammer of
Milton and his mighty compeers, some of its timbers
should help rear a new structure for church and
state; and others should be driven deep under the
foundations of the temple which men of English
blood should in the future rear to democracy.
CHAPTER II.
MILTON'S LIFE ON BREAD STREET
DIRECTLY under the shadow of St. Mary
le Bow Church, and almost within bow-
shot of old St. Paul's, in a little court off
Bread Street, three doors from Cheapside, John
Milton, the son of John Milton, scrivener, was born,
December gth in 1608. The house was marked by
the sign of a spread eagle, probably adopted from
the armorial bearings of the family, which appear
on the original agreement for the publication of
" Paradise Lost." John Milton, scrivener, whose
business was much like that of the modern attorney,
was the son of a well-to-do Catholic yeoman of
Oxfordshire, and is said to have studied for a time
at Christ Church, Oxford. Certain it is that he
turned Protestant, was cast off by his father, and
in Elizabeth's reign settled in London; by 1600,
when he married his wife Sarah, the worldly goods
with which he her endowed in the church of All
Hallows, Bread Street, included two houses on that
street, besides others elsewhere.
42
flDUton's EnQlanfc 43
We know little of Milton's mother, except that
she was a woman of a warm heart and generous
hand, and had weak eyes which compelled her to
wear spectacles before she was thirty, while her
husband read without them at the age of eighty-
four. Three of their six little ones died in baby-
hood, but the little John's elder sister, Anne, and
younger brother, Christopher, grew with him to
middle life.
It was a musical household; an organ and other
instruments were part of the possessions most
highly prized in the Bread Street home. The little
lad must have looked with pride at the gold chain
and medal presented to his father by a Polish prince
for a composition in forty parts which the former
had written for him. Many chimes in country
churches played the psalm tunes that he had har-
monised. To this day a madrigal and other songs
of his are known to music lovers. No wonder that
the boy reared in this home was ever a lover of
sweet sounds, and learned to evoke them with his
own little ringers upon the organ keyboard.
The Bread Street of Milton's day, though swept
over by the Great Fire, was not obliterated, and
still covers its old site. Just at the head of it, on
Cheapside, stood the " Standard in Cheap " an
ancient monument in hexagonal shape, with sculp-
44 /IDilton's England
tures on each side, and on the top the figure of a man
blowing a horn. Here Wat Tyler and Jack Cade
had beheaded prisoners. A little west was the
Gothic Cross in Cheap, one of the nine crosses
erected in memory of Queen Eleanor, somewhat
similar to the modern one at Charing Cross.
Only a few steps from his father's house the
little John found himself in the thickest traffic and
bustle of the city. Here were mercers' and gold-
smiths' shops, and much coming and going of carts,
and occasionally coaches, which, as the antiquarian
Stow declared, " were running on wheels with many
whose parents had been glad to go on foot," for
coaches were but newly come into fashion. As the
little lad stood at the street corner looking east and
west along Cheapside, the ancient market-place,
his eye fell on well-built houses three and four stories
high; they were turned gable end to the street,
were built of timber, brick, and plaster, and had
projecting upper stories of woodwork. Stow de-
scribes a row built by Thomas Wood, goldsmith,
of " fair large houses, for the most part possessed
of mercers," and westward, beginning at Bread
Street, " the most beautiful frame of fair houses
and shops that be within the walls of London or
elsewhere in England. It containeth in number ten
fair dwelling-houses and fourteen shops, all in one
45
frame, uniformly builded, four stories high, beau-
tified toward the street with the goldsmiths' arms
and the likeness of woodmen, in memory of his
name, riding on monstrous beasts; all of which is
cast in lead, richly painted over and gilt."
The modern visitor, as he turns from the jostling
crowds of Cheapside into Bread Street, which is
scarcely wider than a good sidewalk, will find no
trace of aught that Milton saw. The present mer-
cantile establishment, at numbers 58-63, that covers
the site of his house, covers as well the whole Spread
Eagle Court, in which it stood. It bears no inscrip-
tion, but, if one enters, the courteous proprietor may
conduct him to the second story where a bust of
Milton is placed over the spot where he was born.
A little farther south, on the corner of Watling
Street, is the site of All Hallows Church, where
Milton was baptised, and which is marked by a
gray stone bust of the poet and the inscription :
" MILTON
BORN IN BREAD STREET
1608
BAPTISED IN CHURCH OF ALL HALLOWS
WHICH STOOD HERE ANTE
1878."
The register of his baptism referred to him as
" John, sonne of John Mylton, Scrivener."
46 flDUton's
Here the Milton family sat every Sunday and
listened to the sermons of Reverend Richard Stocke,
a zealous Puritan and most respected man, who is
said to have had the gift of influencing young people.
Further south, on the same side as All Hallows,
were " six almshouses builded for poor decayed
brethren of the Salter's Company," and beyond this
the church of St. Mildred, the Virgin. Upon cross-
ing Basing Lane, Milton saw the most noted house
upon the street, known as " Gerrard Hall." This
was an antique structure " built upon arched vaults
and with arched gates of stone brought from Caen
in Normandy," as Stow relates. A giant is said
to have lived here, and the large fir pole in the high
hall, which reached to the roof, was said to have
been his staff. Stow thought it worth while to
measure it, and declares it was fifteen inches in cir-
cumference. Small boys in Bread Street may well
have stood in awe of such a cane.
Whether the famous " Mermaid " Tavern was in
Bread or Friday Street or between them seems
doubtful, but Ben Jonson's lines plainly indicate
Bread Street:
" At Bread-street's Mermaid having dined and merry,
Proposed to go to Holborn in a wherry."
As Milton was early destined for the Church,
his unusually thoughtful disposition and quick per-
OLD ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL
The two upper views show the porch by Inigo Jones. The two lower
views show the
the church.
Lesser Cloisters." Milton's -school stood at the rear of
From an old engraving.
flDUton's Enalanfc 47
ception must have given promise of his fulfillment
of his father's hope. At the age of ten he was
writing verses. At this time, a Dutch painter,
Jansen, reputed to be " equal to Van Dyck in all
except freedom of hand and grace," was employed
to paint the scrivener's little son, as well as James I.
and his children and various noblemen.
This portrait shows us a sweet- faced, sober little
Puritan in short-cropped auburn hair, wearing a
broad lace frill about his neck, and an elaborately
braided jacket. This portrait is now in private
hands, from whence it is to be hoped that it will
some day find its way to the National Portrait Gal-
lery, and be placed beside the striking and noble
likeness of the poet in middle life.
The lines which were written beneath the first
engraving of it may have been the poet's own :
" When I was yet a child, no childish play
To me was pleasing ; all my mind was set
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do
What might be public good ; myself I thought
Born to that end, born to promote all truth
And righteous things."
Milton appears to have been very fond of his
preceptor, a Scotch Puritan named Young. He
seems to have well grounded the lad in Latin,
aroused in him a love of poetry, and set him to
4 flDUton's EttQlant)
making English and Latin verses. But the little
John must go to school with other boys; and what
more natural than that the famous St. Paul's
School, within five minutes' walk, should have been
selected ?
When Milton went to school in 1620, St. Paul's
Cathedral was become old and much in need of
restoration. It had been built on the site of an older
church and was in process of erection and alteration
from about 1090 to 1512, when its new wooden
steeple, covered with lead, was completed. Its cross
was estimated later by Wren to have been at least 460
feet from the ground. This had disappeared in a
fire in 1561, and none replaced it. What Milton
saw was a huge edifice, chiefly Gothic, with a
central tower about 260 feet high. The classical
porch by Inigo Jones was not added, neither were
certain buildings which abutted the nave torn down
until after Milton's school-days were over. On
the east end, next his schoolhouse, was a great
window thirty-seven feet high, above which was a
circular rose window. The choir stretched west-
ward 224 feet, which, with the nave, made the entire
length 580 feet. When Jones's portico was added,
its whole length was 620 feet. The area which it
covered was 82,000 feet, and it was by far the larg-
est cathedral in all England. Upon the southwest
flDUton's England 49
corner was a tower once used as a prison, and also
as a bell and clock tower. This was the real
Lollards' tower, rather than the one at Lambeth
which is so called. The northwest tower was like-
wise a prison. The nave was of transitional Nor-
man design, of twelve bays in length, and with
triforium and clerestory. For many decades a
large part of the cathedral was desecrated by a
throng of hucksters, idlers, and fops.
Ben Jonson makes constant allusion to " Paul's."
Here he studied the extravagant costumes of the
day. According to Dekker, the tailors frequented
its aisles to catch the newest fashions : "If you
determine to enter into a new suit, warn your tailor
to attend you in Paul's, who with his hat in his
hand, shall like a spy discover the stuff, colour, and
fashion of any doublet or hose that dare be seen
there ; and stepping behind a pillar to fill his table-
book with those notes, will presently send you into
the world an accomplished man."
Bishop Earle, writing when Milton was twenty
years of age, describes St. Paul's as follows : " It is
a heap of stones and men with a vast confusion of
languages; and were the steeple not sanctified,
nothing liker Babel. The noise in it is like that
of bees mixed of walking tongues and feet. It is
the exchange of all discourse, and no business what-
50 rtMlton's England
soever but is here stirring and afoot. It is the market
of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at
all rates and sizes. All inventions are emptied here,
and not few pockets. The best sign of a temple in
it is that it is the thieves' sanctuary."
Well may John Milton senior have cautioned his
young son not to tarry in " Duke Humphrey's
Walk," as this scene of confusion was called, on his
way home from school, though he may well have
taken him to inspect the lofty tomb of Dean Colet
or the monuments to John of Gaunt and Duke
Humphrey and the shrine of St. Erkenwald,
which was behind the high altar. As a man, in
later years, Milton may have walked down from
Aldersgate on a December in 1641 and attended the
funeral of the great painter, Sir Anthony Van
Dyck, who for nine years had made his residence
in England, and was buried here.
In a corner of the churchyard stood a covered
pulpit surmounted by a cross, where in ancient times
the folkmote of the citizens was held. For centuries
before Milton, this was a famous spot for outdoor
sermons and proclamations. Here the captured
flags from the Armada had waved above the
preacher. But in 1629, when Milton was in Cam-
bridge, Oliver Cromwell, in his maiden speech in
Parliament, declared that flat popery was being
AUton's Englanfc S 1
preached at Paul's Cross. When Cromwell's day
of power was come, and the cathedral during the
war was sometimes used to stable horses, Paul's
Cross was swept away, and its leaden roof melted
into bullets. Before that, in 1633, preaching had
been removed from there into the choir.
Of the architecture of the bishop's palace, which
stood at the northeast of the cathedral, we know
nothing, but we know that it existed in Milton's
school-days. Adjoining the palace was a " Haw,"
or small enclosure surrounded by a cloister, filled
with tombs, and upon the walls was a grisly picture
of the Dance of Death. Death was represented by
a skeleton, who led the Pope, and emperor, and
a procession of men of all conditions. In brief,
the little " Haw " was a small edition of the Pisan
Campo Santo.
At the east end of the churchyard stood the
Bell Tower, surmounted by a spire covered with lead
and bearing a statue of St. Paul. The cloister of
the Chapter House or Convocation House hid the
west wall of the south transept and part of the nave.
It was, unlike most structures of that character,
two stories in height, and formed a square of some
ninety feet, which was called the " Lesser Cloisters,"
doubtless to distinguish it from the other cloisters
in the " Haw." During his most impressionable
52 flMlton's Bnglanfc
years, the city boy John Milton could not have
stirred from home without being confronted by
majestic symbols of the Christian faith, and mighty
structures already venerable with age, and rich in
treasures of a great historic past. Religion and
beauty played as large a part in the influences that
moulded the life of his young contemporaries as
science and athletics do in the life of every American
boy to-day. Whatever faults the methods of educa-
tion in Milton's age may be accused of, it can not
be denied that they developed industry, reverence,
and moral courage three qualities which with all
our child study and pedagogical improvements are
perhaps less common to-day than they were then.
About the year 1620, when William Bradford
was writing his famous journal, and John Carver
and F.dward Winslow were sailing with him in the
Mayflower, when Doctor Harvey had told Lon-
don folk that man's blood circulates, and many
new things were being noised abroad, twelve-year-
old John Milton first went to school. His school
had been founded in 1512 by Dean Colet, whose
great tomb, just mentioned, was but a stone's throw
distant. It was a famous school. Ben Jonson and
the famous Camden had studied there, and learned
Latin and Greek, the catechism, and good manners.
There were 153 boys in all; the number prescribed
/IMlton's Bnglanfc 53
had reference, curiously, to the number of fishes in
Simon Peter's miraculous draught. Over the win-
dows were inscribed the words in large capital let-
ters : " Schola Catechizationis Puerorum In Christi
Opt. Max. Fide Et Bonis Literis. On entering, the
pupils were confronted by the motto painted on
each window : " Aut Doce, Aut Disce, Aut Discede "
either teach or learn or leave the place. There
were two rooms, one called the vestibulum, for the
little boys, where also instruction was given in
Christian manners. In the main schoolroom the
master sat at the further end upon his imposing
chair of office called a cathedra, and under a bust of
Colet said to have been a work of " exquisite art."
Stow tells us that somewhat before Milton's time
the master's wages were a mark a week and a
livery gown of four nobles delivered in cloth; his
lodgings were free. The sub-master received
weekly six shillings, eight pence, and was given
his gown. Children of every nationality were eligi-
ble; on admission they passed an examination in
reading, writing, and the catechism, and paid four
pence, which went to the poor scholar who swept
the school. The eight classes included boys from
eight to eighteen years of age, though the curriculum
of the school extended over only six years. Milton's
master was Doctor Alexander Gill, who from 1608-
54 Hilton's
1635 held the mastership of St. Paul's School. A
progressive man was this same reverend gentleman
a great believer in his native English and in
spelling reform. Speaking of Latin, this remark-
able Latin master said : " We may have the same
treasure in our own tongue. I love Rome, but
London better. I favour Italy, but England more.
I honour the Latin, but worship the English." He
was also an advocate of the retention of good old
Saxon words as against the invasion of Latinised
ones. " But whither," he writes, " have you ban-
ished those words which our forefathers used for
these new-fangled ones? Are our words to be
exiled like our citizens? O ye Englishmen, retain
what yet remains of our native speech ! " Under
Mr. Gill's instruction, and that of his son, who was
usher, Milton spent about four years of strenuous
study. So great was his ambition for learning
during the years when most boys find school hours
alone irksome enough that he says : " My father
destined me when a little boy for the study of
humane letters, which I seized with such eagerness
that from the twelfth year of my age I scarcely
ever went from my lessons to bed before mid-
night; which indeed was the first cause of injury
to my eyes, to whose natural weakness there were
also added frequent headaches." Philips writes:
UEAN COLET, THE FOUNDER OF ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL
From a plaster cast of tlie group sculptured by Hamo Thorny croft.
fl&Uton's Enalanfc ss
" He generally sat up half the night as well in
voluntary improvements of his own choice as the
exact perfecting of his school exercises; so that at
the age of fifteen he was full ripe for academical
training." During these years the boy probably
learned French and Italian, as well as made a begin-
ning in Hebrew.
It was in his last year at school that he para-
phrased the ninety-fourth Psalm, beginning:
" When the blest seed of Terah's faithful son
After long toil their liberty had won,
And passed from Pharian fields to Canaan's land
Led by the strength of the Almighty's hand,
Jehovah's wonders were in Israel shown,
His praise and glory were in Israel known."
Likewise Psalm one hundred and thirty-six, be-
ginning :
" Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord, for he is kind :
For his mercies aye endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure."
The present St. Paul's School is now splendidly
housed in a great establishment in Hammersmith.
But Milton's school and the one which arose on
its ashes after the Great Fire are remembered by
the following inscription : " On this site, A. D. 1512
to A. D. 1884, stood St. Paul's School, founded by
5* /IMlton's
Dr. John Colet, Dean of St. Paul's." From the
studio of Mr. Hamo Thornycroft at Kensington,
whence came the heroic figures of Cromwell at
Westminster and King Alfred at Winchester, St.
Paul's School is to receive a noble statue of the
great scholar.
CHAPTER III.
MILTON AT CAMBRIDGE
iHE schoolmate whom Milton most loved
was a physician's son, Charles Diodati,
almost exactly his own age, who went to
Cambridge a little in advance of him.
After his sister, who was then eighteen years old,
had been wooed and won by Mr. Philips, and had
made the first break in the home on Spread Eagle
Court, Milton, now sixteen years old, followed his
friend to Cambridge. Doubtless he rode on the
coach, which every week the hale old stage-coach
driver Hobson drove from the Bull's Inn on
Bishopsgate Street. A well-to-do man was this
worthy, who, in spite of eighty winters, still cracked
his whip behind his span, and kept forty horses in
his livery stable. Milton took a great fancy to
him. He soon learned, as did every young gentle-
man intent on hiring a nag, that " Hobson's choice "
meant taking the horse that stood nearest the stable
door. Hobson is said to have been the first man
in England to let out hackney-coaches. The modern
57
58 flDUton's Englaufc
visitor to the university town finds the old carrier
honoured by a memorial; for he became a public
benefactor, and among many generous gifts be-
queathed a sum that to this day provides for a
fine conduit and for the runnels of sparkling water
that flow along the streets and around the town. 1
Under the mastership of Doctor Thomas Bain-
brigge, Milton became a " lesser pensioner " in
February, 1624, at Christ's College. Students were
classified according to social rank and ability to
pay, and Milton stood above the poorer students,
called " sizars," who had inferior accommodation ;
he probably paid about 50 a year for his
1 ONE OF MILTON'S TWO EPITAPHS ON HOBSON
" Here lies old Hobson. Death hath broke his girt,
And here, alas, hath laid him in the dirt ;
Or else, the ways being foul, twenty to one,
He's here stuck in a slough, or overthrown.
'Twas such a shifter, that if truth were known,
Death was half glad when he had got him down ;
For he had any time these ten years full,
Dodged with him, betwixt Cambridge and the ' Bull,'
And surely death could never have prevailed,
Had not his weekly course of carriage failed.
But lately finding him so long at home,
And thinking now his journey's end was come,
And that he had ta'en up his latest inn,
In the kind office of a chamberlain,
Showed him his room, where he must lodge that night,
Pulled off his boots and took away the light ;
If any ask for him, it shall be said,
Hobson has supt and's newly gone to bed.' "
3 1
c <
o *
a s
flDilton's Englanfc 59
maintenance. Christ's College, as regards numbers,
then stood nearly at the head of the sixteen col-
leges and had one master, thirteen fellows, and
fifty-five scholars, which, together with students,
made the number two hundred and sixty, about the
same that it has to-day. It stands between Sidney
Sussex College and Emmanuel. In the former,
Cromwell studied, from April, 1616, to July, 1617,
and the room with its bay window and deep
window-seats and little bedroom opening out of
it, which is said to have been his, may still
be seen in the second story of the building next
to the street. The window is modern. His por-
trait, painted in middle life, hangs in the dining-
hall. Doctor William Everett, in what is the best
book on life in Cambridge, his " On the Cam,"
thus sums up his estimate of the Protector : " Bigots
may defame him, tyrants may insult him, but when
the hosts of God rise for their great review and
the champions of liberty bear their scars, there shall
stand in the foremost rank, shining as the brightness
of the firmament, the majestic son of Cambridge,
the avenger and protector, Oliver Cromwell." A
Royalist has written in a note that is appended to
Cromwell's name in the college books : " Hie fuit
grandis ille impostor carnifex perditissimus ; " and
it is as " impostor " and " butcher " that two-thirds
60 Hilton's
of Englishmen would have described him before
Carlyle resurrected the real man.
Emmanuel College is preeminently the Puritan
college. It is dear to Americans as the one where
William Blackstone, the learned hermit of Shawmut,
John Harvard, the founder of Harvard College,
and Henry Dunster, its first president, Bradstreet,
the colonial governor, and Hugh Peters, the regi-
cide, who lived in Boston, once studied. Here
also Thomas Hooker, the founder of Connecticut,
was a student, and here John Cotton was a fellow.
This beloved preacher afterward left his ministry
over St. Botolph's Church in Boston, England, to
go to the little settlement of Winthrop's, which
had changed its earlier names of " Shawmut " and
" Trimountaine " to " Boston " before his arrival.
American tourists, who find their way to the
spacious grounds of Jesus College to see the Burne-
Jones and Morris windows in the chapel, will be
glad to note that in these stately halls John Eliot
walked a student. Little he then dreamed of his
future life in wigwams, a guest of mugwumps, in
the forests of Natick, Massachusetts, and of the
laborious years to be spent in turning Hebrew poetry
and history and gospel message into their barbar-
ous tongue. Francis Higginson, the minister to
Salem, and the ancestor of Colonel Thomas W.
rtMlton's En0la^ 61
Higginson, studied here as well. John Winthrop,
the governor of the Massachusetts colony, and
President Chauncy of Harvard College studied at
Trinity a generation before Wren erected its great
library, and Isaac Newton was a student there.
John Norton, Cotton's successor at the First Church,
Boston, studied in Peterhouse, the oldest of all the
colleges, and Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode
Island, entered Pembroke College the year before
Milton entered Christ's. Whether the two, whose
lives were to touch so closely later, knew each other
then or not is doubtful. William Brewster was the
only man who came in the Mayflower who had a
college education. He too studied at Cambridge;
and so did John Robinson, the dearly loved pastor
of the Pilgrims, who remained with the other Eng-
lish refugees at Leyden.
It was these men, with Shepard, Saltonstall, and
a score more of Oxford and Cambridge men, who
were the spiritual fathers of Samuel Adams, Warren,
Otis, Hancock ; of Jonathan Edxvards, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Channing, Beecher, and Phillips Brooks;
of Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant, Holmes,
and Hawthorne ; of Garrison, Phillips, and Sumner ;
of Motley, Bancroft, Prescott, and John Fiske.
The Cambridge that Milton knew was the mother
and the grandmother of the founders of states
62 /IDilton's
and of the architects of national constitutions and
ideals.
Though most of the New England Puritan leaders
came from Cambridge, Oxford furnished several of
the great Puritans who remained at home Pym,
Vane, John Eliot, and Hampden.
It is estimated that nearly one hundred university
men, between 1630 and 1647, left their comfortable
homes and the allurements that Oxford, Cambridge,
and the picturesque England of their time presented,
to undergo the hardships of pioneers in the raw
colony upon Massachusetts Bay. Of these, two-
thirds came from Cambridge, a particularly large
proportion from Emmanuel College. Of the forty
or fifty Cambridge or Oxford men who were in
Massachusetts in 1639, one-half were within five
miles of Boston or Cambridge. It was this element
of culture and character that determined the history
of New England, and forced its stony soil to bring
forth such a crop of men in the ages that were to
come as made New England, in the words of Mau-
rice, " the realisation in plain prose of the dreams
which haunted Milton his whole life long."
Sidney Sussex, Christ's, and Emmanuel Colleges
were erected during the Tudor period, Christ's Col-
lege, founded in 1505, being the earliest of the three.
The buildings of the latter now present a more
jt,
a
a '^
II
X Q
U U
flMlton's
commonplace appearance than when the " Lady of
Christ's," as the students called young Milton,
walked among them in his cap and gown. One still
may climb the narrow, shabby stairway to the room,,
with a tiny, irregular bedroom and cupboard, where
Milton lived, and which probably he shared with
a roommate. It has no inscription or special mark,
and probably few strangers seek it out. The visitor
will note its two windows opposite each other, whose
heavy window-frames, with the wainscoting and
cornice, bear mark of age.
No one, however, fails to seek within the secluded
inner garden the decrepit mulberry-tree, which is
said to have been planted by Milton. Its trunk is
muffled high in a mound of sod, and its aged limbs,
which still bear foliage and black berries, rest on
supports. High, sheltering walls shut in the exqui-
site green lawns around it, and birds, blossoms, and
trees make the spot seem a paradise regained.
Among the students of Christ's College, none in
later years brought it such renown as two men of
widely differing types the authors of " Evidences
of Christianity " and " The Origin of Species."
William Paley in 1766, when he was but twenty-
three years old, was elected a fellow, and remained
in Cambridge ten years. His famous work to-day
forms part of the subjects required for the " Little
64 dDUton'0
Go." Charles Robert Darwin, the Copernicus of the
nineteenth century, entered Christ's with the inten-
tion of studying for the ministry. He left it to
journey on the Beagle through the southern seas,
and to bring back results which, with his later study,
led to such a revolution in human thought as made
it only second to that wrought in the minds of men
who lived a generation before Milton was born.
Masson tells us that in Milton's college days the
daily routine was chapel service at five o'clock in
the morning, followed sometimes by a discourse by
one of the fellows, then breakfasts, probably served
in the students' own rooms, as they are to-day.
This was followed by the daily college lectures or
university debates, which lasted until noon, when
dinner was served in the college dining-halls ; there
the young men, then as now, sat upon the hard,
backless benches, and drank their beer beneath
painted windows and portraits, perchance by Hol-
bein, of the eminent men who had been their
predecessors.
After dinner, if they supped at seven, and attended
evening service, they could do much as they pleased
otherwise. In Milton's day, the rule of an earlier
time, which prescribed that out of their chambers
students should converse in some dead language,
had been much relaxed. Probably the barbarous
flDUton's Enalanfc 65
Latin and worse Greek and Hebrew, which this pre-
scription must have caused, finally rendered it a
dead letter. Smoking was a universal practice, and
boxing matches, dancing, bear fights, and other for-
bidden games were not unknown. Bathing in the
sedgy little Cam was prohibited, but was neverthe-
less a daily practice.
In many colleges the undergraduates wore " new
fashioned gowns of any colour whatsoever, blue or
green, or red or mixt, without any uniformity but in
hanging sleeves ; and their other garments light and
gay, some with boots and spurs, others with stock-
ings of divers colours reversed one upon another."
Some had " fair roses upon the shoe, long frizzled
hair upon the head, broad spread bands upon their
shoulders, and long, large merchants' ruffs about
their necks, with fair feminine cuffs at the wrist."
The portrait of Milton, which hangs in a spacious
apartment used by the dons at Christ's College,
shows him a youth of rare beauty, in a rich and
tasteful costume with broad lace collar. He holds a
gilt-edged volume in his hand, and has the mien
of a refined and elegant scholar, but not effeminate
withal, for he was used to daily sword practice.
Corporal punishment was then still in vogue, and
delinquents under eighteen years old were not
infrequently chastised in public. In fact, at Trinity
66 flMlton's England
College, " there was a regular service of corporal
punishment in the hall every Thursday evening at
seven in the presence of all the undergraduates."
Masson discredits the story that Milton was once
subjected to corporal punishment.
In Milton's day the old order was changing, and
we note that on Fridays men ate meat, and that
the clergy indulged in impromptu prayers, to the
scandal of the good churchmen. It was complained
that " they lean or sit or kneel at prayers, every
man in a several posture as he pleases ; at the name
of Jesus, few will bow, and when the Creed is
repeated, many of the boys, by men's directions,
turn to the west door."
Milton seems to have attended plays at the
university, and to have been a critical observer.
Toland quotes him as saying : " So many of the
young divines and those in next aptitude to Divinity
have been seen so often on the stage writhing and
unboning their Clergy Lims to all the antic and
dishonest Gestures of Trinculos, Buffoons, and
bands; prostituting the shame of that ministry
which either they had or were nigh having, to the
eyes of Courtiers and Court Ladies, with their
grooms and Mademoiselles. There where they acted
and overacted among other young Scholars, I was
a Spectator; they thought themselves gallant Men
flDilton's England 67
and I thought them Fools; they made sport, and
I laughed; they mispronounced, and I misliked;
and to make up the Atticisms, they were out and I
hist."
It is the boast of Cambridge that she educated
Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, the three martyrs
whom Oxford burned. It must likewise be noted
that Erasmus, Spenser, Coke, Walsingham, and
Burleigh were Cambridge men.
The Cambridge of Milton's time \vas but a small
town of seven thousand inhabitants, about one-sixth
of its present size, but rich with a history of nearly
six hundred years. Its most beautiful building then
as now was King's College Chapel in fact, the
most beautiful building in either Oxford or Cam-
bridge, despite Mr Ruskin's just criticism upon it.
No doubt, it would look less like a dining-table
bottom-side up, with its four legs in air, were two
of its pinnacles omitted; doubtless also the same
criticism on its monotonous decoration of the alter-
nate rose and portcullis, which we made in regard
to the Chapel of Henry VII. , is here applicable. But
its great length, its noble proportions, its rare rich
windows, its splendid organ-screen old in Mil-
ton's college days must appeal to every lover of
beauty. One loves to think of the young poet mus-
ing here upon those well-known lines in "II
68 ADtlton's England
Penseroso " which this stately building may have
inspired.
" But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloisters pale,
And love the high, embowered roof,
With antick pillars massy proof,
And storied windows, richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full voiced Quire below,
In service high and anthem clear,
As may with sweetness through mine ear
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all heaven before mine eyes."
In King's Chapel Queen Elizabeth attended ser-
vice several times, and listened with delight to a
Latin sermon from the text " Let every soul be
subject unto the higher powers." On the afternoon
of the same Sunday she returned to the antechapel
and witnessed a play of Plautus.
Among many buildings which were very old even
in Milton's time must be mentioned the church of
St. Benedict on Bene't Street, which was once the
chapel of Corpus Christi College. Its ancient tower
is especially noteworthy. Its little double windows
are separated by a baluster-shaped column. The
tower is similar to one at Lincoln, and, with the
whole structure, antedates the Norman conquest.
A generation before Milton's time Robert Browne,
flDilton's JEnglant) 6 9
the father of Congregationalism, drew great crowds
within this venerable edifice to listen to his radical
doctrine. At Cambridge, where he had studied,
he became impressed with the perfunctoriness and
worldliness of the Church of his time, and he re-
solved to " satisfy his conscience without any regard
to license or authority from a bishop."
When the Pilgrim Fathers fled from Austerfield
and Scrooby in 1608, it was as Brownists or Sepa-
ratists that they went to Holland. They sought a
refuge where they might worship God according to
the dictates of their own conscience, without inter-
ference of bishop or presbyter. It was Browne's
doctrine, not only of the absolute separation of
Church and state, but also of the independence of
each individual congregation, that laid the founda-
tion of church government in New England. Presby-
terianism has gained little root east of the Hudson.
After Browne had suffered for his faith in thirty of
the dismal dungeons of that day, and, shattered in
mind by his suffering, had recanted and returned to
Mother Church, his disciples remained true to the
light that he had shown them; the generation of
scholars with whom Milton talked at Cambridge
were as familiar with Browne's doctrine as the
present generation is with that of Maurice and
Martineau, and Milton must have been much influ-
enced by it.
7 /IDUton's Bnglanfc
Opposite St. John's Chapel is the little round
church of the Holy Sepulchre. This is the earliest
of the four churches in England built by the Tem-
plars which still remain. It is similar to the Temple
church in London, and was probably begun a little
later than St. Benedict's, which has just been men-
tioned. It is questionable whether the students of
Milton's college days appreciated the beauty of this
beautiful remnant of the Norman period that was
in their midst. The taste of that day was decidedly
for architecture of the Renaissance type, of which
Cambridge boasts many examples.
In Milton's time the most beautiful quadrangle
in Cambridge, and perhaps in the world, that of
Trinity, had been but newly finished by the architect,
Ralph Symons, who altered and harmonised a group
of older buildings. In the centre of the court is
Neville's fountain, built in 1602, which is a fine
example of good English Renaissance work. During
four years of Milton's residence, part of St. John's
College was in process of erection in the Italian
Gothic style. This was at the expense of the Lord
Keeper Williams, whose initials and the date, 1624,
are lettered in white stone near the western oriel.
It was completed in 1628. Clare Bridge was not
finished until 1640, and most of the other beautiful
bridges that span the Cam to-day were unknown
ST. SEPULCHRE'S CHURCH, CAMBRIDGE
From an old engraving.
flMlton's Bnalanfc 71
to Milton when he mused beside its shady banks
where
" Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy and his bonnet sedge
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge
Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe."
Only fifteen miles away, across the level fields, lay
Ely Cathedral, built on what was once hardly more
than an island in the Fens. Many a time during
his seven years in the university town must Milton
have walked over there, or ridden on one of Hobson's
horses, perhaps with his dear Charles Diodati, to
view the mighty structure, or to study its Norman
interior. Its gray towers and octagonal lantern
dominate the little town that clusters around it, and
may be seen from far across the plain.
During these studious years, while Milton walked
among the colleges where Chaucer, Bacon, Ben
Jonson, and Erasmus had likewise walked as stu-
dents, he was not only busied with logic, philosophy,
and the literature of half a dozen living and dead
languages, but his tender emotions seem to have been
briefly touched by some unknown fair one; and his
interest in public matters, for instance, Sir John
Eliot's imprisonment in the Tower, is evident. In
one letter he mentions the execution of a child but
nine years old, for setting fire to houses. A scourge
72 ADilton's
of the plague afflicted London on the year that he
entered Cambridge, and five years later he was
driven from town by its devastation there. The
university ceased all exercises, and the few members
of it that remained shut themselves in as close pris-
oners. So great was the poverty and suffering inci-
dent to this calamity, that the king appealed to the
country for aid to the stricken town.
During these years of quiet growth, Milton's first
noteworthy poems appear, of which the Latin poems,
according to good judges, deserve the preference.
We here mention only some of his English poems.
The longest of these, which was written the month
and year when he came to his majority, was begun
on Christmas morning, 1629. This serious youth of
twenty-one longed to give " a birthday gift for
Christ," and thus appeared his poem, " On the
Morning of Christ's Nativity." Three or four years
earlier he had written on the death of his baby niece,
Mrs. Philips's child, his lines " On the Death of a
Fair Infant." The revelation of self in his sonnet
" On His Being Arrived to the Age of Twenty-
Three," makes the latter the most interesting of
these early flights of song.
The most precious literary treasure which Cam-
bridge possesses, and as Mr. Edmund Gosse asserts,
" the most precious manuscript of English lit-
rtMlton's EnQlanfc 73
erature in the world," is the packet of thirty loose
and ragged folio leaves covered with Milton's hand-
writing, which since 1691 has lain in Trinity Col-
lege Library. For a generation, they attracted no
attention, but later they were examined and handled
by so many that they suffered seriously; within
fifty years, seventeen lines of " Comus " were torn
out and stolen by some unknown thief. Mr. Gosse,
in a delightful article in the Atlantic Monthly, upon
"The Milton Manuscripts at Cambridge, "gives reins
to his imagination in picturing the sudden tempta-
tion of this man, who, passing down the long ranges
of " storied urn and animated bust," which adorn the
interior of Wren's famous structure, advances
beyond the beautiful figure of the youthful Byron
to the gorgeous window in which the form of Isaac
Newton shines resplendent. The careless attendant
places in his hands the richly bound thin folio,
" and now the devil is raging in the visitor's bosom;
the collector awakens in him, the bibliomaniac is
unchained. In an instant the unpremeditated crime
is committed. . . . And so he goes back to his own
place certain that sooner or later his insane crime will
be discovered . . . certain of silent infamy and
unaccusing outlawry, with no consolation but that
sickening fragment of torn verse which he can never
show to a single friend, can never sell nor give nor
74 /IMlton's England
bequeath. Among literary criminals, I know not
another who so burdens the imagination as this
wretched mutilator of ' Comus.' ' These pages are
the laboratory or studio of the poet, and reveal most
interestingly the progress of his art during his earlier
creative years. Like Beethoven's note-book, they
teach the impatient and inaccurate that genius con-
descends carefully to note little things and to take
infinite pains, whether it be with symphonies or
sonnets. Charles Lamb, on looking over the Milton
manuscripts, whimsically recorded his astonishment
that these lines had not fallen perfect and polished
from the poet's pen. " How it staggered me to see
the fine things in their ore! interlined, corrected! as
if their words were mortal, alterable, displaceable at
pleasure ! " But the average man, who despairs of
ever attaining artistic excellence, and finds every
kind of literary composition a formidable task, takes
consolation in the fact here revealed, that even the
creator of " L' Allegro " and " II Penseroso," before
he reached the perfect phrase, " endless morn of
light," experimented with no less than six others :
" ever-endless light," " ever glorious," " uneclipsed,"
" where day dwells without night," and " in cloud-
less birth of night." The authorities of Trinity
College, having of late realised the invaluable service
to men of letters that this glimpse into the poet's
flMlton's England 75
workshop would be, have issued a limited edition, in
sumptuous form, of a perfect facsimile of the
Milton manuscripts. " Now, for the first time," as
Mr. Gosse remarks, " we can examine in peace, and
without a beating heart and blinded eyes, the price-
less thing in its minutest features." When it is
remembered that no line of Shakespeare's remains
in his own handwriting, and nothing of any conse-
quence of Chaucer's or Spenser's, Mr. Gosse cannot
be accused of over-statement when he says that to
all lovers of literature this volume is " a relic of
inestimable value. To those who are practically
interested in the art of verse, it reads a more preg-
nant lesson than any other similar document in the
world."
Some day the great university may add to its
charms not only an adequate memorial to its Puri-
tans, but one to its poets Spenser, Milton, Pope,
Gray, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, and Tenny-
son, who have enriched it by their presence, and have
made Cambridge par excellence the university of the
poets. It must be remembered that Chaucer and
Shakespeare were not university men.
The time for a pilgrimage to Cambridge is term
time, when window-boxes, gay with blossoms,
brighten gray old walls within the " quads," and
when the streets are enlivened by three thousand
76 rtMlton's
favoured youths intent on outdoor sport. Then all
points of interest are accessible, and perchance one
may be so fortunate as to get entrance up narrow,
worn stone stairways into some student's cosy study ;
the visitor will find it lined w r ith books, rackets, and
boxing-gloves, and decorated with trophies and
photographs of some one else's sister. Bits of college
gossip and local slang, hints of college traditions,
prejudices, and customs pleasantly vary the tourist's
hours spent over the fine print of Baedeker and
in search for the tombs of eminent founders.
Even if one is a tourist and not a " fresher," he
will find it profitable to study contemporary Cam-
bridge through " The Fresher's Don't," written by
" A Sympathiser, B. A.," and addressed to freshers
" in all courtesy." As to dress, the " fresher,"
among other pieces of sage advice, is told : " Don't
forget to cut the tassel of your cap just level with
the board. Only graduates wear long tassels."
" Don't wear knickerbockers with cap and gown,
nor carry a stick or umbrella. These are stock
eccentricities of Fresherdom." (The genuine Cam-
bridge student would rather be soaked to his skin
and risk pneumonia, than encounter the derisive
grin which an umbrella would evoke.)
" Don't aspire to seniority by smashing your cap
or tearing your gown, as you deceive no one."
flDUton's Enalaito 77
" Don't be a tuft-head. The style is more fa-
voured by errand boys than gentlemen."
" Don't by any chance sport a tall hat in Cam-
bridge. It will come to grief."
Under other headings, the following injunctions
may be selected:
" Don't sport during your first month. You will
only earn the undesirable appellation of * Smug.' '
" Don't speak disrespectfully of a man ' Who only
got a third in his Trip., and so can't be very good.'
Before you go down your opinion will be * That a
man must be rather good to take the Trip, at all.' '
" Don't mistake a Don for a Gyp. The Gyp
is the smarter individual."
" Don't forget that St. Peter's College is ' Pot-
House,' Caius is ' Keys,' St. Catherine's is ' Cats,'
Magdalene is ' Maudlen,' St. John's College Boat
Club is ' Lady Margaret/ and a science man is
taking ' Stinks.' "
" Don't forget that Cambridge men * keep ' and
not ' live.' "
CHAPTER IV.
MILTON AT HORTON
|N leaving Cambridge, when he was nearly
twenty-four years old, Milton retired to
his father's new home at Horton, about
seventeen miles west of London. Here he tells us
that, " with every advantage of leisure, I spent a
complete holiday in turning over the Greek and Latin
writers; not but that I sometimes exchanged the
country for the town, either for the purpose of buy-
ing books, or for that of learning something new in
mathematics, or in music, in which sciences I then
delighted."
As Milton's father was in easy circumstances
his son never earned money until after he was thirty-
two years of age. These free and quiet years at
Horton, when he was his own master, and was
without a care, were the happiest of his life.
The visitor from London now alights at the little
station of Wraysbury, and if it be upon a July
4th, as when the writer made a pilgrimage to
Horton, he will find no pleasanter way to celebrate
the day than to stroll through level fields by the
78
/IMlton's lEnglant) 79
green country roadside a mile and a half to the little
hamlet among the trees. On the way he will espy
to the left, on the horizon, the gray towers of
Windsor, and may imagine the handsome young
poet, whose verse has glorified this quiet rural land-
scape, pausing some morning in the autumn on his
early walk to listen to the far sound of the hunts-
man's horn, and presently to see the merry rout of
gaily clad dames and cavaliers dash by, leaping
fearlessly the hedgerows and barred gates.
Horton is a tiny, tranquil village, with little that
remains to-day, outside the ancient parish church,
that John Milton saw, except the Horton manor-
house of the Bulstrode family, which had had con-
nections with Horton from the time of Edward VI.
The modern Milton manor, situated in beautiful
grounds, may or may not stand upon the site of
Milton's former home, which remained until 1798,
when it was pulled down. The old tavern of uncer-
tain date upon the one broad street may perhaps
have gathered around its antique hob, within the
little taproom, gray-haired peasants who guided
clumsy ploughs through the rich loam of the fields of
Horton, while the white-handed poet sat on a velvet
lawn under leafy boughs, and penned his blithe
tribute to the nightingale, or in imagination sported
with Amaryllis in the shade, or with the shepherds,
8o rtMlton's
sprites, and nymphs who peopled his youthful
dreams.
As in Cambridge, runnels of clear water, which
come from the little river Colne not far distant,
flow beside the road. Even to-day one has not far
to seek to find the suggestion for those exquisite
lines in " Comus " which Milton wrote in Horton :
" By the rushy-fringed bank,
Where grows the willow and the osier dank,
My sliding chariot stays,
Thick set with agate and the azurn sheen
Of turkis blue and emerald green
That in the channel strays :
Whilst from off the waters fleet
Thus I set my printless feet
O'er the cowslip's velvet head
That bends not as I tread."
The student of Milton finds the centre of interest
in Horton to-day to be the beautiful old church
where the Milton family attended service for five
years, and where the mother lies buried.
It stands in the green churchyard, back from the
village street. Yew-trees and rose-bushes lend it
shade and fragrance. The tombs for the most part
are not moss-grown with age, but are rather new,
though the slab at the entrance over which Milton
passed is marked " 1612." The battlemented stone
tower is draped with ivy and topped with reddish
K .S
5- u
O .
SI
flDflton's Englanfc 81
brick. Like scores of churches of the twelfth or
thirteenth century, in which it was built, the gabled
portico is on the side. The interior is well-pre-
served ; it has a nave with two aisles and a chancel,
and in the porch is an old Norman arch. Upon
the wall at the rear are wooden tablets which record
curious bequests of small annuities for monthly
doles of bread to needy people.
Never since those five joyous years at Horton has
any English poet blessed the world with verse of
such rare loveliness and perfection as fell from the
pen of Milton during this time, when spirit, heart,
and mind were in attune. The world's clamour
had not broken in upon his peace.
Probably at the request of his friend, the com-
poser Lawes, he wrote his " Arcades " in honour of
the Countess Dowager of Derby, who had been
Spenser's friend. The venerable lady lived about
ten miles north of Horton on her fine old estate of
Harefield, where Queen Elizabeth had visited her
and her husband. On that occasion a masque of
welcome had been performed for her in an avenue
of elms, which thus received the name of the
" Queen's Walk." It was in this verdant theatre
that Milton's " Arcades " was performed by the
young relatives of the countess. Among these were
Lady Alice and her boy-brothers, who on the fol-
82 flDilton's
lowing year took part in Milton's " Comus," which
he wrote anonymously to be played at Ludlow
Castle upon the Welsh border, when the children's
father was installed as lord president of Wales.
Besides these longer poems, Milton wrote his " II
Penseroso " and " L' Allegro " at Horton, as well
as the noble elegy " Lycidas," which was written in
memory of his gifted friend, Edward King, who
was drowned in the summer of 1637, just before
Milton left his father's home.
In this peaceful valley of the Thames, his clear
eye searched out every sight, his musical ear sought
out every sound that revealed beauty or that sug-
gested the antique, classic world in which his whole
nature revelled. He walked in " twilight groves "
of " pine or monumental oak; " he listened to " soft
Lydian airs " and curfew bells, to the lark's song,
and Philomel's. He watched " the nibbling flocks,"
the " labouring clouds," and saw, " bosomed high
in tufted trees," towers and battlements arise, and
beheld in vision his
" Sabrina fair, . . .
Under the glassy, cool translucent wave
In twisted braids of lilies knitting
The loose train of her amber dropping hair."
He lived in a world enchanted by the magic
of his genius. Yet in his little world of loveliness
flMlton's jEnglant) 83
he was not deaf to the distant hoarse cry of the
coming storm, and at the last the Puritan within
him awoke and cried out at those
" who little reckoning make
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast . . .
Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheephook or have learnt aught else the least
That to the faithful herds-man's art belongs !
What recks it them ? What need they ? They are sped ;
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs,
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw ;
The hungry sheep look up and are not fed
But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw
Rot inwardly and foul contagion spread."
In the spring of 1637, the last year that the poet
spent at Horton, just before another outbreak of
the plague, his mother died. We may think of
brother Christopher, a young student of laws of the
Inner Temple, and the widowed sister Anne and her
two boys coming post-haste from London, and stand-
ing beside the desolate father and the poet-brother
in the chancel, when the tabernacle of clay was
lowered to its resting-place. A plain blue stone
now bears the record : " Heare lyeth the Body of
Sarah Milton, the wife of John Milton, who died
the 3rd of April, 1637."
The American visitor to Horton on the day that
commemorates his country's declaration of inde-
84 flDilton's Englanfc
pendence will remember Runnymede and Magna
Charta Island. And he will find nothing more con-
sonant with his feeling, after visiting the home of
the republican Milton, than to wend his way across
the fields, golden with waving grain and gay with
scarlet poppies, to the spot where his ancestors and
Milton's in 1215 brought tyrant John to sullen
submission to their just demands.
On the margin of the river he may embark, and
as the sun casts grateful shadows eastward, he may
drift gently down beside the long, narrow island in
the rushy margin of the stream, where white swans
build their nests. A notice warns him not to tres-
pass, for the gray stone house upon it, whose gables
are half hid by dense shrubbery, is private property.
Some day perhaps this English nation that so loves
its own great history will reclaim this historic spot,
and mark Magna Charta Island with a memorial of
the brave men who made it world-famous. Or
perhaps, who knows ? some American, who has
spent three years at Oxford, and learned to love
the history of the race from which he sprang, may
be impelled to honour that which is best in her, and
after placing in Cambridge and in Horton fit
memorials of Milton, may be moved to erect here
a worthy monument to the bold barons.
CHAPTER V.
MILTON ON THE CONTINENT. IN ST. BRIDE'S
CHURCHYARD. - AT ALDERSGATE STREET. -
THE BARBICAN. - HOLBORN. - SPRING GARDENS
year after his mother's death, and
probably just after Christopher's wedding,
the poet, now a man of thirty, arrived in
Paris, accompanied by his servant, and bearing
valuable letters of introduction, among others, some
from Sir Henry Wotton. As we are dealing with
Milton's England, scant space must be allowed to
this year or more spent among the savants and the
unwonted sights of France and Italy. In Paris
the young scholar was introduced by Lord Scuda-
more to the man whom he most desired to see, the
great Hugo Grotius, a man of stupendous erudi-
tion and lofty character. Milton declared that he
venerated him more than any modern man, and
well he might, for the Dutch hero and exile had
not his equal upon the Continent, even in that age of
great men.
Passing through Provence, Milton entered Italy
85
86 flMlton's
from Nice, and found himself in the land whose
melodious language he had made his own, and
whose history and literature few Italians of his age
knew better than he. He went to Genoa, " La Su-
perba," which then boasted of two hundred palaces;
thence to Leghorn, and fourteen miles farther to Pisa
on the Arno, and, farther up the Arno, to beautiful
Florence. Here he paused two months, lionised by
the best society, and hobnobbing with painters,
poets, prelates, and noblemen as he walked in Santa
Croce, or on the heights of Fiesole, or in the leafy
shade of Vallombrosa. Here it was that he was
presented to the blind Galileo, " grown old," he
writes, " a prisoner to the Inquisition for thinking
in Astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and
Dominican licensers thought." Doubtless, in later
years, when blindness and royal disfavour had
embittered but failed to crush his spirit, the gray-
haired poet often recalled this visit made in his
radiant youth.
Going by way of Siena, on its rocky height, Mil-
ton passed on to Rome in the autumn, and here
spent two months in the splendid city of the Popes,
in which great St. Peter's was but newly finished.
The city swarmed with priests and prelates, but the
poet spoke freely of his own faith. One of his great
joys was to listen to the incomparable singing of
flDUton's England 87
Leonora Baroni, the Jenny Lind of his time, to
whom he wrote exuberant panegyrics in Latin.
In November, Milton drove to Naples, a hundred
miles away, where he was favoured with the hospi-
tality of the aged Manso, the friend of Tasso, and
the wealthy patron of letters ; he showed the young
Englishman his beloved city, presented him with
valuable gifts, and welcomed him in his villa at
Pozzuoli, overlooking the bay of Naples.
Milton had planned to visit Sicily and Greece,
but he writes : " The sad news of civil war coming
from England called me back; for I considered it
disgraceful that, while my fellow countrymen were
fighting at home for liberty, I should be travelling
abroad at ease for intellectual purposes."
War, however, had not yet broken out, and
Milton lingered another two months in Rome, little
aware of the relics of the Caesars that lay buried in
the Forum under the cow-pasture of his time.
Another visit to Florence, where he was again
the centre of attraction, was followed by trips to the
quaint mediaeval cities of Lucca, Ferrara, Bologna,
and to Venice by the sea. Guido Reni, Guercino,
Domenichino, and Salvator Rosa were then living,
and he may have chanced upon them in his wander-
ings. From Venice he turned back through Verona
and Milan, and paused a little in Geneva, which was
88 flDUton's England
still under the strong influence of its great reformer,
Calvin; then he journeyed on to Paris, where a
royal infant, Louis XIV., had been born during his
travels. On reaching home, after this journey into
the great splendid world full of temptations to every
man who was dowered with keen susceptibilities
and a passionate, vehement disposition, Milton
writes : "I again take God to witness that in all
those places where so many things are considered
lawful, I lived sound and untouched from all prof-
ligacy and vice, having this thought perpetually
with me, that though I could escape the eyes of men,
I certainly could not the eyes of God."
It was a chaste and modest love that inspired the
six amatory sonnets in Italian, which were probably
written during his stay abroad. It was a refined
and high-bred man, who knew the world and took
it at its just measure, who was now to lend his hand
to fight the people's battle.
On his return to England Milton did not take
up his residence again in his father's home at
Horton, which was then kept by his younger brother
and his wife. He went to London, and for a brief
time made his home with a tailor named Russel
in St. Bride's Churchyard, near Fleet Street, within
view of Ludgate Hill and St. Paul's. Here in the
winter of 1639-40 he began teaching the little Phil-
/BMlton'3 JBnfllanfc 89
ips boys, his nephews, and took entire charge of
his small namesake John, but eight years old. His
sister Anne by this time had remarried, and was now
Mrs. Agar. During his stay in St. Bride's Church-
yard, Milton jotted down on seven pages of the
manuscript that is now in Trinity College Library
suggestions for future work with which his brain
was teeming. Of the ninety-nine subjects that he
considered, sixty-one, including " Paradise Lost "
and " Samson," are Scriptural, and thirty-eight,
including " Alfred and the Danes " and " Harold
and the Normans," are on British subjects. Like
the young Goethe who projected " Faust," which
was not finished until his hair had whitened, Milton
conceived his epic when it was to wait a quarter of
a century for completion.
Says Edward Philips, the elder nephew whom he
taught : " He made no long stay in his lodgings on
St. Bride's Churchyard : necessity of having a place
to dispose his books in, and other goods fit for the
furnishing of a good handsome house, hastening
him to take one; and accordingly, a pretty garden-
house he took in Aldersgate Street, at the end of
an entry, and therefore the fitter for his turn,
besides that there are few streets in London more
free from noise than that."
At that time the entrance to the street from St.
9 /IMlton's
Martin's-le-Grand was one of the seven gates of
the city wall. A new one, on the site of a far older
one, had been erected when Milton was nine years
old ; this had " two square towers of four stories
at the sides, pierced with narrow portals for the foot
passengers and connected by a curtain of masonry
of the same height across the street, having the main
archway in the middle." Besides the figures of
Samuel and Jeremiah, the gate was adorned with
an equestrian statue of James I. on the Aldersgate
side, and the same monarch on his throne on the St.
Martin's-le-Grand side. In 1657 Howell says:
" This street resembleth an Italian street more than
any other in London, by reason of the spaciousness
and uniformity of the buildings and straightness
thereof, with the convenient distance of the houses."
Amid the labyrinth of dingy, crowded alleys with
which the garden spaces of the seventeenth century
now are covered, one looks in vain to-day for any
trace of Milton's home; in short, of all the houses
that he occupied in London, no one remains, or even
has its site marked. All we know of the house
on Aldersgate Street is, that it stood in the
second precinct of St. Botolph's parish, between the
gate and Maidenhead Court on the right, and Little
Britain and Westmoreland Alley on the left.
Near by dwelt his old teacher, Doctor Gill, and
flDUton's Enalanfc 91
Doctor Diodati, the father of his dearest friend,
whose recent death he mourned in a touching elegy
\vritten in Latin. Upon his walks into the open
fields, which were not then far distant, he must have
passed many fine town houses of the gentry, their
sites now covered by a dreary waste of shops and
factories. During these years we learn that he
varied his studies in the classics, and his keen ob-
servations on the doings of the newly assembled
Long Parliament by an occasional " gaudy-day,"
in company with some " young sparks of his ac-
quaintance."
It was in Aldersgate Street that Milton began
writing his vehement pamphlets, and it was Thomas
Underhill, at the sign of the "Bible" in Wood
Street, Cheapside, who published the first polemics
which he and young Sir Harry Vane sent forth
upon the burning questions of the day, into which
the scope of this volume forbids us to enter. Mil-
ton's future career was a complete refutation of
Wordsworth's conception of him as a lonely star
that dwelt apart. The gentle author of " Comus "
and the composer of elegant sonnets had changed
his quill for that " two-handed engine " which was
to smite prelate and prince.
During these days the post brought daily news
of the horrors of the insurrection in Ireland ; Milton
92 flMlton's
read " of two and twenty Protestants put into a
thatched house and burnt alive " in the parish of
Kilmore; of naked men and pregnant women
drowned ; of " eighteen Scotch infants hanged on
clothiers' tenterhooks;" of an Englishman, wife, and
five children hanged, and buried when half alive;
of eighty forced to go on the ice " till they brake the
ice and were drowned." These, and the hideous
tortures upon thousands, which history relates, may
explain, if they do not palliate the cruelties a few
years later which Cromwell committed, and which
have made his name synonymous with " monster "
to this day throughout this much tormented and
turbulent Irish people.
Americans who sharply condemn the devastation
which old Oliver wrought will also do well to cry
out no less loudly at the like barbaric slaughter in
the island of Samar, which was ordered two hun-
dred and fifty years later by some of their own
officers.
War opened. There were doubtless anxious days
in the house on Aldersgate Street, for brother
Christopher, who stood with the royal party, had
moved with his father from Horton to Reading,
which was besieged. But war was not the sole
cause for anxiety. When old Mr. Milton arrived
safely in London late in the summer he found his
flMlton'0 England 93
son John married and already parted from his bride
of seventeen, who had lived with him but one short
month. Of the brief courting of Mary Powell at
her father's house at Forest Hill, near Oxford, we
know little. But one day in May, when King
Charles I. had driven her brothers and all other
students out of Christ Church, and had taken up
temporary residence there himself, the venturesome
lover came into the enemy's country and called on
her. The family was well known to him; their
comfortable mansion housed ten or eleven children
and had fourteen rooms. We read of their " stilling-
house," "cheese-press house," "wool-house," of their
two coaches, one wain, and four carts. It was a
merry household, and one well-to-do in worldly
goods.
Whether the girl was deeply enamoured of the
grave, handsome man, twice her age, who asked her
hand, is doubtful, but they were soon married, and
in the Aldersgate house, the nephew relates, there
was " feasting held for some days in celebration of
the nuptials, and for entertainment of the bride's
friends." Then the relatives bade the bride good-
bye. But the young wife, having been brought up
and lived " where there was a great deal of company
and merriment, dancing, etc., when she came to
live with her husband found it very solitary ; no
94 /lDUton'6 England
company came to her;" consequently at the end
of a month her preoccupied husband gave consent
to the girl's request to pay a visit home, with the
promise of returning in September.
Some sons of intimate friends joined the nephews
as pupils, and the elder Milton was added to the
household. But the bride declined to answer her
husband's letters or to return ; during the following
months the irate man, thus deserted, wrote his
pamphlets on " Divorce," while all England was
astir with the meeting of the famous Westminster
Assembly, the spread of Independency, and the
king's defeat at Marston Moor. During these days
also Milton wrote his remarkable scheme for the
education of gentlemen's sons, in which he showed
himself as radical and original and as ready to
make learning a delightful and not an odious pro-
cess as did Rousseau and Froebel a century or more
later. Marvellous was the work accomplished by
Milton's young pupils at Aldersgate Street. We
read of these boys of fourteen and sixteen,
though even their learned teacher knew not yet
of the microscope and the law of gravitation, study-
ing not only Greek and Latin, but Hebrew, Chaldee,
Syriac, and Italian.
Milton's noble " Areopagitica " a plea for free-
dom of the press was written during these melan-
flDilton's In0lan& 95
choly, wifeless months, while the din of civil war
was in the air, and he mused in wrath and bitterness
over his country's miseries and his own.
The fortunes of the Powell family had waned
with the king's cause. One day, when Milton called
on a relative who lived near by his home, on the
site of the present post-office, " he was surprised,"
writes his nephew, " to see one whom he thought
to have never seen more, making submission and
begging pardon on her knees before him." A
reconciliation was effected, and, with the wife of
nineteen now two years older and wiser than since
their first attempt at matrimony, they began house-
keeping in the Barbican.
This was a larger house than the one in Alders-
gate Street, and only a three minutes' walk from
it. It remained until Masson's lifetime and had,
he says, " the appearance of having been a commo-
dious enough house in the old fashion." " And I
have been informed," he adds, " that some of the old
windows, consisting of thick bits of glass lozenged
in lead, still remained in it at the back, and that
the occupants knew one of the rooms in it as a
schoolroom, where Milton had used to teach his
pupils." The visitor to the noisy, bustling Barbi-
can to-day, close to old London wall, will find noth-
ing that Milton saw.
96 /IDUton'8
Here he published the first edition of his col-
lected poems. The title-page tells us that the songs
were set to music by the same musician, Henry
Lawes, " Gentleman of the King's Chapell," who
had engaged him to write the " Arcades " and
" Comus." It was to be " sold at the signe of the
Princes Arms in Paul's Churchyard, 1645." The
wretched botch of an engraving of the poet which
accompanied it displeased him, and he humourously
compelled the unsuspecting and unlearned artist to
engrave in Greek beneath it the following lines :
" That an unskilful hand had carved this print
You'd say at once, seeing the living face ;
But finding here no jot of me, my friends,
Laugh at the botching-artist's mis-attempt."
Unfortunately this was the only published por-
trait of Milton during his life, and gave strangers
at home and abroad the impression that his face
was as grim as his pamphlets were caustic.
By strange coincidence this house, where Milton
lived when " Comus " was first published, was but
a few yards distant from the town house of the
earl in whose honour the masque had been com-
posed a dozen years or more before this. With him
was the " Lady Alice," now nearly twenty-four
years old, who, as a girl of eleven, had sung Mil-
's J6nglan& 97
ton's songs in Ludlow Castle. The earl loved music,
and his children's music teacher, Lawes, and others
who had acted in the merry masque comforted his
invalidism with concourse of sweet sounds, almost
within hearing of the old scrivener and organist
and his poet-son. Milton loved Lawes, and wrote
a sonnet to him; doubtless during these days they
were much together.
About the time that Milton's first baby daughter
appeared, the Barbican house was crowded with
the disconsolate Powell family, who had nearly lost
their all, and fled to Mary's husband for protection.
Mother Powell seems to have been a woman of
strong personality, and the new baby was christened
" Anne " for her. Within two months, both the
Milton and Powell grandfathers were buried from
the house in Barbican. In the burials at St. Giles's
Cripplegate appears, in March, 1646, the record:
"John Milton, Gentleman, 15."
While worrying over the settlement of the Powell
estates and brother Christopher's as well, Milton
continued his teaching ; his pupil writes : " His
manner of teaching never savoured in the least any-
thing of pedantry." Cyriack Skinner, grandson of
the great Coke, to whom he wrote two sonnets in
later years, was his pupil in the Barbican.
In 1647, J ust after the march of Fairfax and
98 flDUton's Englanfc
Cromwell through the city, Milton removed to a
smaller house in High Holborn, " among those that
open backward into Lincoln's Inn Fields," which
had been laid out by Inigo Jones. Here he ceased
playing the schoolmaster, became definitely a republi-
can at heart, and busied himself with the writing of a
history of England, and compiling of a Latin diction-
ary and a System of Divinity. The new home was
among pleasant gardens, and near the bowling green
and lounging-place for lawyers and citizens. Its
exact site is unknown. In 1648 a second baby girl,
called Mary, was born to the Miltons in the new
home.
By his bold tractate on the " Tenure of Kings
and Magistrates," which was written during the
terrible days of the king's trial and execution, Mil-
ton put himself on the side of the regicides. Exactly
a month after its appearance he was waited on at
High Holborn by a committee from the Council of
State, who asked him to accept the position of
" Secretary for Foreign Tongues." His eyesight
was already failing; he could no longer read by
candle-light ; but here was a great opportunity for
public service, and he did not long hesitate. On
March 2Oth, when he entered upon office, he learned
that all letters to foreign states and princes were to
be put into dignified Latin form, so as to be instantly
flDllton's Bnalanfc 99
read by government officials in all countries, and not
into the " wheedling, lisping jargon of the cringing
French," as his nephew calls it. His salary was a
trifle over 288 worth about five times that sum
to-day. Sometimes an early breakfast at High Hoi-
born was necessary in order to meet the council at
seven A.M. in Whitehall, but usually it met at eight
or nine. It seemed, however, best for the Miltons
to move nearer Whitehall, and while he waited for
his apartments to be ready, Milton took lodging at
Charing Cross, opening into Spring Garden, where
now is the meeting-place of the London County
Council. This was on the royal estate, and was so
named from a concealed fountain which spurted
forth when touched by the unwary foot. It must
have been a pleasant spot, with its bathing pond and
bowling green and pheasant yard, which led from
what is now Trafalgar Square into St. James's
Park. Opposite, at Charing Cross, was the palace
of the Percys, later called " Northumberland
House," and next to it, where now stands the Grand
Hotel, was the home of Sir Harry Vane. Queen
Eleanor's Cross had been taken down in 1647, an ^
the statue of Charles I., which on the year of Mil-
ton's death replaced it on its site, was at this time
kept in careful concealment.
St. Martin's Lane was a genuine shady lane, bor-
/BMlton's
dered with hedges. The church which Milton saw
upon the site of the present one was erected by
Henry VIII. , and was even then in reality St.
Martin's in the Fields.
Upon the north side of what is now Trafalgar
Square, which is occupied by the National Gallery,
stood the Royal Stables. Pall Mall, which leads
westward, was so named from the Italian outdoor
game, resembling croquet, which was played upon
a green in the vicinity. It was then a resort for
travellers and foreigners, who, like the Londoners
Pepys and Defoe, frequented the chocolate and
coffee houses in the neighbourhood and for a shil-
ling an hour were carried about in sedan-chairs.
The latter tells us that " the chairmen serve you for
porters to run on errands, as your gondoliers do at
Venice."
St. James's Palace, with its picturesque brick
gateway, had but just seen the last hours of the
monarch whom Milton had helped dethrone. Here
Charles II. had been born in 1630, and here the
Princess Mary was born in 1662, and was married
to William, Prince of Orange, fifteen years later.
3 J j
S _ ':
W =
PL. o ^
o- 5
~ *,
X
CHAPTER VI.
MILTON AT WHITEHALL. SCOTLAND YARD.
PETTY FRANCE. BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE.
HIGH HOLBORN. JEWIN STREET. ARTIL-
LERY WALK
i
[ILTON remained in Spring Gardens about
seven months, when his new apartments in
the north end of Whitehall Palace were
ready. These opened from Scotland Yard, in which
was the Guard House. The yeomen of the guard
wore red cloth roses on back and breast, and must
have seemed very gay and imposing personages to
the little girls of the Milton family. Their rooms
were connected with the various courts and suites of
apartments that extended down to the Privy Garden.
The palace in Cromwell's time probably retained in
residence a large portion of the small army of
caterers, butchers, brewers, confectioners, glaziers,
etc., who provided for the constant needs of the
huge establishment. The Horse Guards, built for
gentlemen pensioners, was erected in 1641, and was
101
102 flMlton's Englanfc
still quite new. This apparently was not on the site
of the present Horse Guards, which was built in
1753-
At Scotland Yard, Milton's only son, John, was
born, and here his protracted labours in his vehe-
ment controversy with Salmasius brought on the
blackness of great darkness which, at the age of
forty-three, for ever shut his w r orld from view.
For the next twenty years and more it is the
blind poet whose life we follow, during the period
when his fiery spirit was chastened not only by his
own afflictions, but by the nation's also.
In 1652 Milton moved to Petty France, now York
Street, near the Bird Cage Walk, which was so
named from the king's aviary there. Here the
next year his little daughter Deborah was born, and
soon after his wife, at the age of twenty-six, after
nine years of married life, died. After the first
estrangement and reconciliation, so far as we know,
all had gone well. Her little John, who had scarcely
learned to speak his father's name, soon followed
her to the grave.
The household then consisted of the poet, his
nephew and amanuensis John, and his three mother-
less little girls. Masson describes the house as he
saw it before its destruction in 1875. It was then
No. 19 York Street, and had a squalid shop in its
REAR OF MILTON'S HOUSE, AND TREE PLANTED BY HIM,
YORK STREET, WESTMINSTER (PETTY FRANCE)
From an old engraving.
flMUon's England 103
lower part, and a recess on one side of it used for
stacking wood. On entering by a small door and
passage at the side of the shop, one groped up a
dark staircase, where several tenants lived, in the
rooms that were once all Milton's. " The larger
ones on the first floor are not so bad, and what
are now the back rooms of the house may have been
even pleasant and elegant when the house had a
garden of its own behind it, and that garden opened
directly into the park."
Jeremy Bentham, who over a century later was
landlord of the house and lived close by, placed a
tablet on the rear wall inscribed " Sacred to Milton,
Prince of Poets." After 1811 Bentham's tenant
was William Hazlitt ; before that his friend James
Mill occupied the house.
Lord Scudamore, who had given Milton an
introduction to Grotius, was his next-door neigh-
bour at York Street. To-day the loftiest apartment
house in London stands upon the unmarked site
of Milton's house. The frequent walk which Milton
took to Whitehall, with a guide to his dark steps,
during his eight years' residence here, led him half
a mile across St. James's Park from Queen Anne
Gate to Spring Gardens or the Horse Guards. The
ornamental water was not then there, but there were
ponds and trees and pleasant stretches of green turf.
104 flDUton's
Charles II. had it later all laid out by the famous
French landscape artist, Le Notre.
Occasional sonnets those to Cromwell, Vane,
" On his Blindness," and " On the Late Massacre
in Piedmont " appeared in the increasing leisure
of this period, when his duties lessened, and he
retired on a diminished salary. But Milton was
become a man who was sought out by foreigners
of note and persons of quality; among his friends,
Andrew Marvell, the poet, and his pupil, Cyriack
Skinner, were frequent visitors, with charming
Lady Ranelagh, his neighbour, who persuaded him
to teach her little son, and who he said had been
to him in the place of kith and kin.
After four years of widowerhood, when his little
girls were sadly in need of a mother, Milton mar-
ried Katharine Woodcock, daughter of a Captain
Woodcock of Hackney, in the church of St. Mary
Aldermanbury, on November 12, 1656. Her com-
ing into the home in Petty France brought serenity
and happiness to all its inmates. During the brief
fifteen months of their married life, a little daughter
came, who followed her soon after to her grave in
St. Margaret's Church beside the Abbey, and the
sorrowing husband was again left in his blindness
to bring up his three motherless little daughters.
After eighteen years, the poem, sketched out in
flDilton's Bnglan& 105
St. Bride's Churchyard, was resumed, and in the
lonely house in Petty France, the first lines of
" Paradise Lost " were dictated, just before the clos-
ing days of Cromwell's life. Under Richard Crom-
well, Milton retained his secretaryship, but with the
return of Charles II., in May, 1660, he fled his home
in Petty France, for he well knew the vengeance
that might follow. His little girls were sent no
one knows whither, and he took refuge in a friend's
house in Bartholomew Close, a passage which led
from- West Smithfield, through an ancient arch. It
was filled with quaint old tenements, where Doctor
Caius, the founder of Caius College, Cambridge,
had lived, and also Le Sceur, who had modelled the
statue of Charles I., which, as has been stated,
was concealed during the Commonwealth, and was
soon to be erected. Sixty-five years later, young
Benjamin Franklin set up type in a printing-office
here. To the blind refugee, it mattered little that
he had left his garden to be hemmed in by narrow
walls. The labyrinth of little courts and tortuous
passages was his safeguard. During those days of
arrests and executions of his friends, Milton must
have known that any day might bring the hang-
man's summons for him. Many a time during the
nearly four months that he was hidden here must
he in imagination have heard the shouts of the fickle
io6 flMlton's England
populace, and seen himself haled in a cart to
Tyburn gallows. Says Masson : " Absolutely no
man could less expect to be pardoned at the Restora-
tion than Milton," and " there is no greater histor-
ical puzzle than this complete escape." But his
faithful friend, Andrew Marvell, pleaded for him,
and other powerful friends did their utmost in his
behalf; the brain that was to give birth to a great
epic was spared to England.
Though Milton lay in some prison for a little
time, during which his " infamous " books " were
solemnly burnt at the Session house in the Old
Bailey by the hand of the common hangman," he
was soon a free man, though many of his com-
panions were meanwhile hanged and quartered, or
like Goffe and Whalley fled beyond seas and even
there scarcely escaped the king's swift avengers.
In December, Milton emerged from prison and
moved temporarily into a little house on the north
side of Holborn near Red Lion Square, which was
behind it, and nearer Bloomsbury than was his
former residence upon the street. Close by was the
Red Lion Inn, where in January, on the anniversary
of the execution of Charles I., lay on a hurdle,
amidst a howling mob, the ghastly bodies of Crom-
well, Ireton, and Bradshaw, which had been dis-
interred and were on their way to Tyburn to be
flMlton's Bnglanfc 107
swung upon the gallows. It was well for Milton
to sit behind barred doors in silence in those days,
while Sir Harry Vane languished in prison, bold
Algernon Sidney was in exile, and the England that
he loved seemed in eclipse.
In 1 66 1, Milton, who had good reason to reside
as far away from Petty France and the court end
of town as possible, returned to the neighbourhood
of his early married life, and took a house in Jewin
Street, off Aldersgate, at the end of the street near-
est St. Giles's, Cripplegate, where his father lay
buried. For the remainder of his life, here and in
Artillery Walk, he was a parishioner of this church.
During the three years spent here, Vane was be-
headed, two thousand clergy were ejected from their
livings, and many, as Richard Baxter tells us,
starved on an income of only eight or ten pounds
a year for a whole family; men of Milton's way
of thinking struggled for daily bread on six days
in the week, and preached on the seventh with the
police upon their track.
During these fruitful years in Jewin Street, while
" Paradise Lost " was growing apace, Milton had
about him his motherless and ill-educated girls. The
oldest, about seventeen years of age, was hand-
some, but lame, and had a defect of speech. It
fell to Mary and little eleven-year-old Deborah to
io8 /RMlton's England
read, with scanty comprehension of the words, as
their father required their services, from his Latin,
Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Italian works.
To them, and to a group of young men who felt
it an honour to serve him, he dictated the sonorous
lines of his great epic. No wonder that girls of a
dozen or sixteen years of age found life in Jewin
Street dull, and Greek dictionaries and the daily
records of the doings of the hosts of heaven and
hell abominably irksome. They served their father
with grudging pen, and pilfered from him, and
tricked him in his helpless sightlessness small
blame to them, perhaps, whose rearing had been
by servants and governesses, but pitiable for the
father of fifty years, who fought his daily battles
with fate alone in the dark.
Andrew Marvell and Cyriack Skinner sought him
out, and doubtless told him the latest literary news
of Henry More, the Platonist; of Howell, but just
appointed historiographer royal; of Samuel Butler,
who had just gone with the Lady Alice of " Comus "
to Ludlow Castle ; of Richard Baxter, whose popu-
lar book, " The Saints' Everlasting Rest," Milton
had doubtless read when it appeared five years
before; of Pepys, now secretary to the Admiralty;
of Izaak Walton, whose " Complete Angler " Mil-
ton may have read ten years before ; of Evelyn and
flDUton's Bnglanfc 109
of the poet Cowley; of Bishop Jeremy Taylor; of
George Fox, the valiant Quaker, and the philoso-
phers, Hobbes, and John Locke, who was then at
Oxford ; and the budding poet, John Dryden.
We learn from Richardson that Milton usually
dictated " leaning backward obliquely in an easy
chair, with his leg flung over the elbow of it,
though often when lying in bed in a morning."
Sometimes he would lie awake all night without
composing a line, when a flow of verse would come
with such an impetus that he would call Mary and
dictate forty lines at once. During these days a
newly converted young Quaker, Thomas Ellwood,
who was desirous of improving his Latin, and to
see John Milton, who, he writes, " was a gentleman
of great note for learning throughout the learned
world," betook himself to the modest home on
Jewin Street, got lodging hard by, and engaged
to read Latin to him six afternoons a week. Milton,
noticing that he used the English pronunciation,
told him that if he wanted to speak with foreigners
in Latin he must learn the foreign pronunciation,
This Ellwood by hard labour accomplished, when
Milton, seeing his earnestness, helped him greatly
in translation. These happy hours were interrupted
by Elhvood's arrest for attending the Quaker meet-
ing in Aldersgate Street. Three months were spent
no /ftilton's England
in Bridewell and Newgate, where he saw the bloody
quarters and boiled heads of executed men, and
wrote out in detail an account of the hideous spec-
tacle. One heavenly day in a quiet library reading
of Dido and ^Eneas with Milton, the next in an
English hell of bestiality, filth, and cruelty a
memorable experience for a young man of twenty-
two, was it not?
Household affairs were going from bad to worse
in Jewin Street, and the unhappy home needed a
wife and mother. When the news came to the
daughter Mary that her father was to marry again,
she exclaimed that it was " no news to hear of his
wedding, but if she could hear of his death, that
would be something." The third wife, Elizabeth
Minshull, was twenty- four years old when Milton
married her, in the church of St. Mary Aldermary,
a little south of his boyhood's home near Cannon
Street. She proved an excellent wife, and was of a
" peaceful and agreeable humour." There are tra-
ditions that the young stepmother had golden hair
and could sing; her good sense and housewifely
accomplishments brought peace, comfort, and thrift
into the discordant household.
Soon after his marriage, the Milton family re-
moved to a house in Artillery Walk, leading to
Bunhill Fields. This was on the roadway which is
flDilton's England m
the southern part of Bunhill Row. Not only was
there a garden here, but the site of the present
Bunhill Fields Cemetery, where Defoe, Bunyan,
Richard Cromwell, and Isaac Watts lie buried, was
then an open field; while, close at hand, was Artil-
lery Ground, where trained bands occasionally
paraded, as they have done from 1537 to the present
time. Of the house we know little, except that it
had four fireplaces. Near by was " Grub " Street,
since changed to " Milton " Street, partly perhaps
to commemorate the fact of the poet's residence
in the neighbourhood. In June, 1665, while the
Great Plague had begun its desolating course,
Milton had completed the last lines of " Paradise
Lost." It was then that young Ellwood came to his
assistance, and engaged for him " a pretty box in
Giles-Chalfont," whither he was driven with his
wife and daughters.
CHAPTER VII.
CHALFONT ST. GILES. ARTILLERY WALK
[F the pilgrim to the shrines of Puritans
and poets has thought worth while to
spend an afternoon at Horton, he may
well spare two or three days more for a drive
from there to Stoke Pogis, Harefield, and the region
thirteen miles north of Horton in lovely Bucking-
hamshire, among the Chiltern hills.
Here stands, about twenty-three miles northwest
of London, in the little village of Chalfont St. Giles,
the only house that still exists in which Milton ever
lived. The village lies in a quiet hollow among the
hills, three or four miles removed from the shriek
of any locomotive. One may approach it by train
from the little stations of Chorley Wood or Chalfont
Road. It will well repay one before doing so to
make a detour of a mile and a half to Chenies,
one of the loveliest villages in all England, beside
the tiny Chess, where Matthew Arnold loved to
angle. A delightful hostelry is the " Bedford
Arms," where he always "put up." The chief
112
fl&tlton's
feature of the place is the mortuary chapel of the
Russell s, where the family have been buried from
1556 until the present day. But the lover of the
picturesque will more admire the adjoining Tudor
mansion. American multi-millionaires have built
no Newport palace that is so attractive to the lover
of the beautiful.
As one drives toward Chalfont, he enters it at
the end farthest from Milton's cottage, which is
one of the last houses upon the left of the main
street. It is on the road that leads to Beaconsfield,
four miles away. The cottage lies at the foot of
a slope close by the roadside; it is built of brick
and timber, and has two entrances, four sitting-
rooms, and five bedrooms.
On the floor which is level with the garden are
two sitting-rooms that look toward the hill slope
and Beaconsfield. Their quaint old windows are
filled with diamond panes, which are set in lead
and open outward. The long carved dining-table,
in the room at the left, and the small table, cabinet,
and stools in the room at the right, which is seen
in the illustration, were Milton's own. Here at the
open casement, during those days of horror in the
stricken city, Milton sat and breathed the fragrant
air, and in the evening listened to the nightingales
which haunt the Chalfont groves. Hither the brave
"4 flMlton's
young Ellwood came to greet him, fresh as he was
from another imprisonment; he returned with his
comments the manuscript of " Paradise Lost,"
which Milton had loaned to him, and added : " Thou
hast said much here of Paradise lost, but what hast
thou to say of Paradise found?" To which the
poet answered nothing at the time, but, as the result
proved, the query brought later a fitting response
in " Paradise Regained." Perhaps the visitor may
be allowed to ascend the narrow winding stair with
its carved railing to the humble chambers under the
gables, whither the poet groped his way to bed, and
to glance into narrow cupboards, where he may have
piled his books and manuscripts. There is a
tender, pathetic charm about the place, which even
the greater poet's house at Stratford lacks. The
man Shakespeare the successful dramatist we
know little of; his inner life we only guess at and
infer. His consummate genius wins our worship;
it does not touch our hearts. But the blind poet,
the passionate lover of liberty and fearless pleader
for justice, the man who like blind Samson shook
his locks in defiance of fate, and would not be cast
down, this man we know. We have followed step
by step his brilliant youth, his strenuous manhood,
and his brave, declining years. With all his faults
of temper we love him as we love Dante and Michael
flDUton's jencjlan& 115
Angelo and Beethoven. We linger reverently in
the little house made dear to England by his pres-
ence there.
Then we wander back a little on our way, to a
row of antique houses and go through a passage to
the venerable parish church and churchyard where
Milton's feet doubtless have trod.
En route to Beaconsfield the traveller will not
fail to pause at Jordan's, a plain, square structure in
a leafy grove, beside a green God's Acre. It was
the Quaker meeting-house in Milton's day as it is
still. At the rear is a concealed gallery where the
worshippers took refuge when their service was
broken up by armed pursuers. Close by are many
unmarked graves, and among them is Ellwood's.
But the grave of William Penn, the founder of a
great American State, and the graves of his wife
and children, have low modern headstones, for their
position was well known. Here the man of gentle
birth, the hero and saint, who is dear to all Ameri-
cans, sleeps peacefully among his English kindred.
During the year when Milton was at Chalfont, Penn
was a youth in Paris, seeing the world, but keeping
himself unspotted from it.
At Beaconsfield we drive through a broad country
road to the Saracen's Head a conspicuous land-
mark. We turn our steps at once to the gray old
church and its battlemented tower, whose walls
of flint rise in rugged strength from the churchyard
with its mossy tombs. Within the centre aisle lies
buried the valiant apostle of American freedom
Edmund Burke.
He was a man with whom the refugee at Chalfont
would have found much in common had he lived a
century and a quarter later. The inscription over his
grave is modern, and so are the bas-relief and
inscription to him on the side wall. His former
seat within the parish church is marked upon the
floor, and a fine carved desk is made from his old
pew. Within the churchyard gay roses and solemn
yews droop over ancient monuments, among them,
the showy obelisk on Waller's grave. Nothing is
lovelier than the drive late in an afternoon over the
high hills, from which one catches far distant views,
to Amersham, which lies in a little valley among the
hills. This was a seat of the Puritan revolt and
earlier martyrdoms. John Knox preached here
an obnoxious personage to the worthy sexton of the
beautiful church, who told the writer that he had
buried every man and woman in the parish for forty
years. " The fact is," quoth this worthy, " John
Knox traduced Mary Queen of Scots ; now I've no
use for a man who isn't good to the ladies." On
being reminded that Elizabeth did worse and cut
flDilton's J6n0lant> n;
her head off, he condoned that as being " probably
an affair of state." A lover of poets was this sexton.
" I've read 'em all," he said, " but my favourite is
Pope." Isaac Watts likewise shared his approval,
and he volunteered upon the spot a number of his
hymns from memory. " But I take a lugubrious
view of life," continued this digger of many graves,
" for it's just grub, grub, grub, all your life, and
then be shovelled under ; the fact is, as any man can
see with half an eye, that this is the age of mammon
and no mistake." Shakespeare would have found a
gravedigger to his mind in the sexton of Amersham.
Amersham does not offer so favourable accommo-
dations for the night as does Wendover. which has
a choice of hostelries, and is but a few minutes' ride
by train from the Amersham station, a quarter of
a mile away. After viewing the early English
church in Wendover next morning, one may hire a
trap and drive to Great Hampden, three miles dis-
tant, to the stately home of John Hampden, within
a large park. There are still traces of the ancient
road which was cut through the park for Queen
Elizabeth. The shady avenue of beeches around the
side leads up to the little church of gray flint stone
which stands near the great mansion and its mighty
cedars of Lebanon. The little churchyard is carpeted
with velvet turf, starred with tiny white flowers
us dbtlton's Englanfc
which recall the foregrounds in the brilliant paintings
of Van Eyck.
The reader of Puritan history is reminded of that
mournful day after the battle gf Chalgrove Field,
when the body of John Hampden was brought home.
As many soldiers as could be spared accompanied it,
marching with arms reversed and muffled drums,
while, with uncovered heads, they chanted the solemn
words of comfort that begin the ninetieth Psalm:
" Lprd, Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all
generations." They laid him in a grave within the
chancel, which still remains unmarked; it is close
beside the slab on which he had written his beauti-
ful epitaph to his wife. When they marched back
beneath the beeches their voices rang out with the
lines of Psalm Forty-three : " Why art thou cast
down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted
within me? hope in God." Says a writer of that
time : " Never were heard such piteous cries at the
death of one man, as at Master Hampden's."
Within the spacious mansion, which once was red
brick and now is covered with gray plaster, are
various relics of Hampden and Cromwell, and a por-
trait of Queen Elizabeth in the room which she
occupied on her visit here. Two miles further, on
one of the finest estates in the county, is Chequer's
Court, an imposing brick mansion of the Tudor
flMlton's
period, once owned by Cromwell's youngest daughter
and her husband. It stands in a park, and contains
the greatest collection of Cromwelliana in the king-
dom. But these and the Hampden relics owned
by the Earl of Buckingham at Great Hampden are
rarely shown to visitors who do not apply in writing
some time in advance of their visit. It is to be hoped
that some day the nation may own these and make
them freely accessible to all scholars. Through a
circuitous drive between beautiful fields of grain, in
view of the Chiltern Hills, the traveller reaches the
old parish church at Great Kimble, where John
Hampden, the sturdy cousin of Cromwell, in 1635
made his refusal to pay King Charles's demands
for ship money. Near by lies the field whose tax
was in question. The sum was paltry, only-
twenty shillings, but, like George Third's tax on
tea in the colonies, the refusal to pay it meant war
in the end. This whole section of beautiful Bucks
is rich with memories of Milton, and of the men
whom he knew and loved.
Ellwood records that " when the city was cleansed
and become safely habitable," the Miltons returned
to Artillery Walk. This must have been about
March, 1666. The open fields close to their house
had been filled with the bodies of thousands of the
plague victims, many of whom were uncoffined.
120 flDilton's
Thereafter it was made a regular cemetery, and was
surrounded with a brick wall, and became what
Southey called, " the Campo Santo of the Dis-
senters." On a side street near by, next to a kind
of institutional meeting-house belonging to the
Friends, is a beautiful green inclosure where fourteen
thousand Quakers lie buried in unmarked graves.
One humble headstone alone marks a grave near
the fence, which was opened in the nineteenth cen-
tury, and was found to be that of Milton's con-
temporary, George Fox, the tailor with the
leather suit, who founded the sect of the uncompro-
mising democrats who called no man " Lord," who
used no weapons but their tongues, and who thun-
dered with them to such purpose as to make men
quake.
While Milton was on the point of publishing his
" Paradise Lost," another calamity, to be described
later, befell the stricken city. For three days the
Great Fire crackled and roared, and drove man and
beast before its fearful heat westward to Temple Bar,
and swept away Milton's birthplace, which he still
owned. It wiped out the church where he was christ-
ened, the school where he had studied, and came so
far north as almost to bury his father's grave under
the walls of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. Amid the
horror of smoke and the sound of distant explosions
jflDtlton's
and wild confusion, the poet sat during those awful
days, when it seemed as if the fate of Sodom had
befallen his dear London town. Up to that date his
birthplace had been visited by admiring foreigners.
This was the only real estate that he then owned, and
its loss must have crippled his resources.
The precious manuscript of " Paradise Lost " fell
to the censorship of the young clergyman of twenty-
eight, who had married Milton to his youthful wife,
Elizabeth. This man, named Tomkyns, like Pobedo-
nostzeff two hundred and fifty years later, held that
liberty of conscience was a " highly plausible thing,"
but did not work well in practice, and he came near
suppressing the volume, so tradition says, for imagi-
nary! treason in some lines ; but he relented, and the
world was spared its greatest epic poem since the
JEntid.
The many booksellers around St. Paul's suffered
terrible losses, and Pepys estimates that books to the
value of 150,000 were burnt in the vicinity. Most
of them were hurriedly stowed in the crypt of old
St. Paul's Church, but when the walls of the great
cathedral fell, they let in the fire which consumed
them. In April, 1667, when the ruins had hardly
ceased smoking, Milton agreed, for 5 down
and three times as much at certain future dates, to
sell his copyright to Samuel Symons, printer. Thir-
122 flDUton's
teen hundred copies constituted the edition. Through
the days of dusty turmoil while the new city was
slowly rising on the ashes of the old, the proof-sheets
passed from the printing-press in Aldersgate Street
to Artillery Walk. There was only an interruption
of five anxious days in June, when the bugle sounded,
and terrified citizens assembled to ward off the
Dutch, who, bent on vengeance, burnt English ships
and sent cannon-balls hurtling at English forts. In
August " Paradise Lost " appeared as a rather fine
looking, small quarto of 342 pages, which could
be bought for three shillings in three bookstores.
For artistic purposes the poem is written according
to the Ptolemaic theory of cosmos, though Milton
of course accepted the Copernican view.
While John Milton was expecting 15 or 20
for his work of more than seven years, John
Dryden, who was much more in fashion in
those days of Nell Gwynne and the reopened
theatres, was receiving a yearly income of 700.
But John Dryden knew a poet when he read him.
After reading " Paradise Lost," he exclaimed :
" This man cuts us all out, and the ancients, too."
About 1670, Milton's three daughters left their
father's home. Knowing that they needed to be
fitted for self-support, he paid for their apprentice-
ship, and had them taught embroidery in gold and
/HMlton's Enalanfc 123
silver. Doubtless bright silks and gay patterns were
much more to their mind than their father's folios,
and the change was best for all concerned. Their
father sat at his door on pleasant days, dressed in
his gray camblet coat, wearing a sword with a small
silver hilt. He received many visitors some of
them men of rank and note.
He is described as wearing at this time his light
brown hair parted from the crown to the middle of
the forehead, " somewhat flat, long and waving, a
little curled." His voice was musical and he " pro-
nounced the letter r very hard." He rose early,
began his day by listening to the Hebrew Bible, and
spent his morning listening and dictating. Music,
as much walking as his gouty feet permitted, and,
in the evening, a smoke, were his sole recreations.
He belonged to no church, and attended no service
at this period.
As his end drew near he told his brother that
he left only the residue of his first wife's property
to their three daughters, who had " been very un-
dutiful ; " but everything else to his " loving wife,
Elizabeth." Just one month before he had com-
pleted his sixty-sixth year, John Milton died on a
Sunday night, November 8, 1674. He was buried
beside his father in St. Giles's, Cripplegate, and was
followed to the grave by many friends. What
/Baton's
hymns were sung we do not know, but certainly
none could more fitly have been sung than that noble
one by his dear friend, Sir Henry Wotton :
" How blessed is he born or taught
Who serveth not another's will,
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his highest skill.
" This man is freed from servile bands,
Of hope to rise or fear to fall ;
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing, yet hath all."
Milton's wife was thirty-six years old when the
poet died. She lived to be nearly eighty-nine years
old, but never remarried. Deborah lived until 1727,
when Voltaire writes : " I was in London when it
became known that a daughter of blind Milton was
still alive, old and in poverty, and in a quarter of
an hour she was rich." The latest descendants of
John and Christopher Milton died about the middle
of the eighteenth century, but their sister Anne's
posterity may perhaps be traced to-day.
The forgotten Duke of York has his great column
in Waterloo Place. The scholarly but uninspired
Prince Consort has his gorgeous Memorial, and a
hundred nobodies have their lofty monuments scat-
tered all over England, teaching the rising genera-
flMlton's Jn0lan& 125
tion their fathers' estimation of the relative worth
of names in England's history. The only statue of
Milton known to me in England, except the one
on the London University Building, is the modest
figure which stands, together with Shakespeare and
Chaucer, upon a fountain in Park Lane opposite
Hyde Park.
No student of the period which is treated in this
little volume should fail to visit the upper floor of
the National Portrait Gallery, and view the por-
traits of the many rioted men who were Milton's
contemporaries. Besides portraits of the royal
families, he will note those of William Harvey,
Samuel Pepys, Cowley, old Parr, Sir Henry Vane,
Andrew Marvell, Cromwell and his daughter, Inigo
Jones, Selden, Sir Julius Caesar, Samuel Butler,
Hobbes, Dryden, Ireton, Algernon Sidney, Sir
Christopher Wren, and the Chandos Shakespeare
portrait. Milton's own portrait in middle life, which
is little known, is most impressive, and very different
from the common portraits.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE TOWER. TOWER HILL
IXCEPT Westminster Abbey, no spot in
England is so connected with every phase
of England's history as is the Tower of
London. A map, printed in the generation before
Milton, shows us the ancient moat full of water, and
the space within its walls that now is gravelled then
covered with greensward. North of St. Peter's little
church, where lay the bones of Anne Boleyn,
stretched a row of narrow gabled houses like those
seen in the neighbouring London streets. The
White Tower, built by William the Conqueror,
stands to-day practically as it stood in William's
time and Milton's. Built of durable flint stones, it
has withstood time's decay as few other buildings
erected far more recently have done, when they were
of the soft, disintegrating quality of stone so often
used in London. True, Christopher Wren faced
the windows with stone in the Italian style, and
somewhat modernised the exterior, but the interior
126
flbilton's Englanfc 127
remains practically as it was built over eight hun-
dred years ago.
As there is no need of duplicating here the main
facts about its history, which are to be found in every
guide-book, let us confine ourselves to the chief
literary and historical associations with it, that must
have appealed to the boy and man, John Milton.
One can imagine few things more exciting and
stimulating to the mind of an observant boy in
1620 than a visit to the Tower. In the days when
circuses were unknown, and menageries of strange
beasts were a rare sight, the view of such behind the
grated walls of Lion's Tower must have delighted
any London lad. The wild beasts were not very
numerous, only a few lions and leopards and " cat
lions," but no doubt they were as satisfactory as
the modern " Zoo " to eyes that were unsatiated
with such novelties. Whether small boys were al-
lowed for sixpence to see the rich display of state
jewels is not quite clear, yet it is certain that they
were shown to strangers.
Says that indefatigable antiquarian, Stow, whose
old age almost touched the babyhood of Milton:
" This Tower is a citadel to defend or command the
city; a royal palace for assemblies or treaties; a
prison of state for the most dangerous offenders;
the only place of coinage for all England at the
128 /HMlton's England
time; the armory for warlike provisions; the treas-
ury of the ornaments and jewels of the Crown ; and
general conserver of the records of the king's courts
of justice at Westminster."
In Milton's boyhood, the royal palace in the south-
east corner of the inclosure was standing. But in
his manhood, his staunch friend, Oliver, having got
possession, it was pulled down. The little Norman
chapel of St. John, within the Tower, is one of the
best bits of Norman work now extant in England.
Its triforium, which extends over the aisles and semi-
circular east end, probably was used in ancient days
to permit the queen and her ladies to attend the
celebration of the mass, unseen by the congregation
below. The chapel was dismantled before Milton's
time. But doubtless as he entered it he could pic-
ture in it, more vividly than we in our later age, that
scene when from sunset until sunrise forty-six noble-
men and gentlemen knelt and watched their armour,
before King Henry IV., on the next day, bestowed
upon them the newly created Order of the Bath.
In this chapel, while he was kneeling in prayer,
the lieutenant of the Tower received an order to
murder the young Edward V. and his brother, and
refused to obey it. Here Queen Mary attended mass
for her brother, Edward VI.
In the present armory, once the council chamber,
flMlton's En^la^ 129
King Richard II. was released from prison, and
sceptre in hand and the crown on his head, abdicated
in favour of Henry IV. Shakespeare thus depicts
the scene, and puts the following words into the
mouth of the mournful king :
" I give this heavy weight from off my head,
And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand,
The pride of kingly sway from out my heart;
With mine own tears I wash away my balm,
With mine own hands I give away my crown,
With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,
With mine own breath release all duteous oaths,
My manors, rents, revenues I forego ;
My acts, decrees, and statutes I deny.
God pardon all oaths that are broke to me,
God keep all oaths unbroke are made to thee.
Make me that nothing have with nothing grieved,
And thou with all pleased that hath all achieved !
Long may'st thou live in Richard's seat to sit,
And soon lie Richard in an earthen pit!
God save King Henry, unkinged Richard says,
And send him many years of sunshine days ! "
On this same spot, in 1483, the Protector, after-
ward Richard III., came in among the lords in
council, and asked the Bishop of Ely to send to
his gardens in Ely Place, off Holborn, for some
strawberries. The terror which royalty inspired
and with good reason in that day is well described
by Sir Thomas More, who was himself a prisoner in
130 flMlton's
less than a half century after the scene which he
so graphically describes :
" He returned into the chamber, among them, all
changed, with a wonderful sour, angry countenance,
knitting the brows, frowning and frothing and
gnawing of the lips; and so sat him down in his
place, all the lords much dismayed and sore mar-
velling of this manner of sudden change, and what
thing should him ail." Then asking what should
be the punishment of those who conspired against
his life, and being told that they should be punished
as traitors, he then accused his brother's wife and
his own wife. " ' Then,' said the Protector," con-
tinues More, " ' ye shall see in what wise that sorcer-
ess and that other witch . . . have by their sorcery
and witchcraft wasted my body ! ' And therewith
he plucked up his doublet sleeve to his elbow upon
his left arm, and he shewed a werish withered arm,
and small as it was never other. And thereupon
every man's mind sore misgave him, well perceiving
that this matter was but a quarrel ... no man was
there present but well knew that his arm was ever
such since his birth. Nevertheless the lord chamber-
lain answered, and said : ' Certainly, my lord, if they
have so heinously done they be worthy heinous pun-
ishment.' * What,' quoth the Protector, * thou serv-
est me ill with ifs and with ands; I tell thee they
flDUton'8 England 131
have so done, and that I will make good on thy
body, traitor! ... I will not to dinner until I see
ihy head off.' Within an hour, the lord chamber-
lain's head rolled in the dust."
The author of the " Utopia," being a knight, was
leniently treated while in the Tower. He paid
ten shillings a week for himself and five shillings
for his servant. Occasionally his friends came to
see him, and urged in vain that he should propitiate
Henry VIII. and his wife, Anne Boleyn, against
whose marriage he had objected. But he remained
immovable. " Is not this house as nigh heaven as
my own ? " he asked, serenely, when wife and daugh-
ters pleaded with him to reconsider. Lady More
petitioned Henry for her husband's pardon, on the
ground of his illness and her poverty ; she had been
forced to sell her clothing to pay her husband's fees
in prison. But Henry had no mercy on the gentle
scholar, the greatest English genius of his day, and
who had been lord chancellor of England.
For a time he was allowed to write, but later,
books and writing materials were removed; yet he
occasionally succeeded in writing to his wife and
daughter Margaret on scraps of paper with pieces
of coal. " Thenceforth," says his biographer, " he
caused the shutters of his cell to be closed, and spent
most of his time in the dark."
132 flDUton's England
When the end came, his sentence to be hanged at
Tyburn was commuted by the king to beheadal at
Tower Hill. Cheerful, and even with a tone of jest,
he said to the lieutenant on the scaffold, " I pray
thee, see me safely up, and for my coming down, let
me shift for myself." He removed his beard from
the block, saying, " it had never committed treason,"
and told the bystanders that he died " in and for the
faith of the Catholic Church," and prayed God to
send the king good counsel. More's body was buried
in St. Peter's Church, where that of the fair young
Anne Boleyn herself was soon to lie. His head,
after the savage custom of the time, was parboiled
and affixed to a pole on London Bridge.
Dark and bloody were the associations that centre
around the Tower in the century preceding Milton's.
Few of these have touched the popular heart more
than those which cluster around the girl-queen of
nine days the fair Lady Jane Grey. In the Brick
Tower, where she was imprisoned, she wrote her last
brave, pathetic words to her father and sister upon
the leaves of her Greek Testament. From her prison
window she saw the headless body of her boy-
husband pass by in a cart from Tower Hill, and
cried : " Oh, Guildford ! Guildford ! the antepast
is not so bitter that thou hast tasted, and which I
soon shall taste, as to make my flesh tremble; it
flDilton's England 133
is nothing compared with that feast of which we
shall partake this day in heaven."
When she was ready to lay her fair young head
upon the block, she cried : " I pray you all, good
Christian people, to bear me witness that I die
a true Christian woman." " Then tied she the
handkerchief about her eyes, and feeling for the
block, she said, ' What shall I do ? W r here is it ? '
One of the standers-by guiding her thereunto, she
laid her head down upon the block, and then
stretched forth her body, and said : ' Lord, into
thy hands I commend my spirit.' ' So perished this
girl of eighteen, whose beauty, learning, and tragic
fate make her one of the most pathetic figures in
history.
The most interesting parts of the Tower, includ-
ing St. Peter's Church, the dungeons, Raleigh's cell,
and the spot where he wrote his " History of the
World," are not shown to ordinary visitors. They
can be seen, however, by the receipt of a written
order from the Constable of the Tower, and should
not be missed by any student of English history.
Even a few moments spent in those dark lower vaults
help the torpid imagination of those who live in
freedom as cheap and common as the air they
breathe to realise through what horror and bloody
sweat of brave men and women in the past his free-
134 /HMlton's England
dom has been bought. Though these dungeons
now are clean and a few modern openings through
the massive walls admit some feeble rays of light,
it is not difficult to conjure up the black darkness,
filth,, and vermin, and noisome odours of the past,
or the shrieks of saint or sinner, who, like Anne
Askew and Guy Fawkes, suffered upon the rack.
Only two years before Milton's birth, the conspira-
tors of the Gunpowder Plot were immured in these
dungeons, and then hanged, cut down, and dis-
embowelled while they were still living.
In Milton's youth, in 1630, while he was writing
Latin verses at Christ's College, Cambridge, that
brave, heroic, noble soul, Sir John Eliot, was com-
mitted to the Tower. Those were sad days for
England. Free speech in Parliament was throttled.
The nation's ancient liberties were in jeopardy.
Says the historian, Green : " The early struggle for
Parliamentary liberty centres in the figure of Sir
John Eliot. . . . He was now in the first vigour
of manhood, with a mind exquisitely cultivated,
and familiar with the poetry and learning of his day,
a nature singularly lofty and devout, a fearless and
vehement temperament. But his intellect was as
clear and cool as his temper was ardent. What he
believed in was the English Parliament. He saw
in it the collective wisdom of the realm, and in that
/IDUton's England 135
wisdom he put a firmer trust than in the statecraft
of kings." Of the memorable scene in Parliament
in which he moved the presentation to the king of a
remonstrance, in the session of 1628, a letter of
the times gives a description. By royal orders the
Speaker of the House stopped him, and Eliot sat
abruptly down amid the solemn silence of the mem-
bers. " Then appeared such a spectacle of passions
as the like had seldom been seen in such an assembly ;
some weeping, some expostulating, some prophesy-
ing of the fatal ruin of our kingdom, some playing
the divines in confessing their sins and country's
sins. . . . There were above an hundred weeping
eyes, many who offered to speak being interrupted
and silenced by their own passions."
Says President Theodore Roosevelt of Sir John
Eliot : " He took his stand firmly on the ground that
the king was not the master of Parliament, and of
course this could but mean ultimately that Parlia-
ment was master of the king. In other words, he
was one of the earliest leaders of the movement
which has produced English freedom and English
government as we now know them. He was also
its martyr. He was kept in the Tower, without air
or exercise, for three years, the king vindictively
refusing to allow the slightest relaxation in his con-
finement, even when it brought on consumption.
136 /IDUton's EnglanD
In December, 1632, he died; and the king's hatred
found its last expression in denying to his kinsfolk
the privilege of burying him in his Cornish home."
At last the " man of blood," who had tried to
wrest England's liberties, himself perished upon the
scaffold at Whitehall, and in his condemnation the
same author cites his treatment of Sir John Eliot as
one of his greatest crimes. " Justice was certainly
done, and until the death penalty is abolished for all
malefactors, we need waste scant sympathy on the
man who so hated the upholders of freedom that
his vengeance against Eliot could be satisfied only
with Eliot's death; who so utterly lacked loyalty,
that he signed the death-warrant of Strafford when
Strafford had merely done his bidding; who had
made the blood of Englishmen flow like water, to
establish his right to rule; and who, with incurable
duplicity, incurable double-dealing, had sought to
turn the generosity of his victorious foes to their
own hurt."
These grisly tales of executions and of scenes of
fortitude we close with a few words on that valiant,
noble soul, Sir Harry Vane, to whom Milton dedi-
cated the well-known sonnet beginning : " Vane,
young in years, but in sage counsel old."
Speaking before the Phi Beta Kappa of Harvard
University, Wendell Phillips, America's silver-
flDtlton's JEnQlanfc 137
tongued orator, uttered a memorable word upon the
man whose governorship of Massachusetts for two
years of its infant history makes the name of Vane
for ever dear to the American descendants of the
Puritans :
"... Roger Williams and Sir Harry Vane, the
two men deepest in thought and bravest in speech of
all who spoke English in their day, and equal to any
in practical statesmanship. Sir Harry Vane in
my judgment the noblest human being who ever
walked the streets of yonder city I do not forget
Franklin or Sam Adams, Washington or Fayette,
Garrison or John Brown. But Vane dwells an
arrow's flight above them all, and his touch conse-
crated the continent to measureless toleration of
opinion and entire equality of rights. We are told
we can find in Plato ' all the intellectual life of
Europe for two thousand years.' So you can find in
Vane the pure gold of two hundred and fifty years
of American civilisation, with no particle of its
dross. Plato would have welcomed him to the
Academy, and Fenelon kneeled with him at the altar.
He made Somers and John Marshall possible ; like
Carnot, he organised victory; and Milton pales
before him in the stainlessness of his record. He
stands among English statesmen preeminently the
representative, in practice and in theory, of serene
138 flDilton's Englanfc
faith in the safety of trusting truth wholly to her
own defence. For other men we walk backward,
and throw over their memories the mantle of charity
and excuse, saying reverently, ' Remember the temp-
tation and the age.' But Vane's ermine has no stain ;
no act of his needs explanation or apology; and in
thought he stands abreast of the age like pure
intellect, belongs to all time. Carlyle said, in years
when his words were worth heeding, ' Young men,
close your Byron and open your Goethe.' If my
counsel had weight in these halls, I should say,
' Young men, close your John Winthrop and Wash-
ington, your Jefferson and Webster, and open Sir
Harry Vane.' It was the generation that knew Vane
who gave to our Alma Mater for a seal the simple
pledge, Veritas." Wendell Phillips, in his Har-
vard address on the " Scholar in the Republic."
To the profligate Charles II. few men must have
seemed more dangerous than the man who had
dared to teach that the king had three " superiors,
God, Law, and Parliament." The man who had
once walked through the stately halls of Raby Castle
as its master found a Tower cell his last earthly
abiding-place.
When Sir Harry Vane was arraigned as a " false
traitor," he made his own defence, well knowing
what the end would be, but determined, for the sake
/IMlton's England 139
of England and the cause he loved, to put his plea on
record. For ten hours he fought for his life without
refreshment, then later, in his prison, wrote out the
substance of his plea. Though, as his biographer
relates. " he had torn to pieces as if they were so
much rotten thread the legal meshes in which his
hunters sought to hold him fast," his doom was
sealed. Something was gained when the original
sentence of hideous torture and dismemberment was
commuted into simple beheading. The day before
his execution, Vane said to his children : " Resolve
to suffer anything from men rather than sin against
God. ... I can willingly leave this place and out-
ward enjoyments, for those I shall meet with here-
after in a better country. I have made it my
business to acquaint myself with the society of
Heaven. Be not you troubled, for I am going home
to my Father."
" As one goes through Eastcheap to-day, out
upon the open space of Tower Hill, he finds himself
among prosaic surroundings. Over the pavement
rattles the traffic from the great London docks close
at hand. High warehouses rise at the side; the
sooty trail of steamers pollutes the air toward the
river. In one direction, however, the view has sug-
gestions the reverse of commonplace. Looking
thither the sensitive beholder feels with deep emotion
i4 /BMlton's JEnglant)
the fact brought home to him, that to men of Eng-
lish speech, the earth has scarcely a spot more mem-
orable than the ground where he is standing.
There rise, as they have risen for eight hundred
years, the gray walls of the Tower, the moat in
the foreground, the battlemented line of masonry
behind ; within, the white keep, with its four turrets.
. . . As mothers have shed tears there for impris-
oned children, so children standing there have won-
dered which blocks in the grim masonry covered
the dungeons of their fathers and mothers. Again
and again, too, through the ages, all London has
gathered, waiting in a hush for the dropping of the
drawbridge before the Byward Tower, and the com-
ing forth of the mournful train, conducting some
world-famous man to the block draped with black,
on the scaffold to the left, where the hill is highest.
. . . On the 1 4th of June in 1662 in the full glory
of the summer, Vane, in the strength of his man-
hood, was brought forth to die." Thus writes
James K. Hosmer in his scholarly biography of
Vane. He quotes an eye-witness, who relates how
cheerfully and readily Vane went from his chamber
to the sledge which took him to the scaffold, and
how " from the tops of houses, and out of windows,
the people used such means and gestures as might
best discover, at a distance, their respects and love
flDilton's
to him, crying aloud, ' The Lord go with you, the
great God of Heaven and Earth appear in you
and for you.' When asked how he did, he answered,
' Never better in my life.' Loud were the acclama-
tions of the people, crying out, ' The Lord Jesus
go with your dear soul.' ' As Vane stepped upon
the scaffold, clad in a black suit and cloak and scarlet
\\aistcoat, a silence fell, and calmly, serenely, he
addressed the throng around him. His address dis-
pleased the officers, and the trumpets were com-
manded to silence him. His words, however, had
been well prepared and delivered in writing to a
friend, so that the world to-day knows with what
dignity and truth he spoke. His prayer, however,
was not thus broken. " Thy servant, that is now
falling asleep, doth heartily desire of thee, that thou
shouldst forgive his enemies, and not lay this sin
to their charge. ... I bless the Lord that I have
not deserted the righteous cause for which I suffer."
The heads of Cromwell and Bradshaw hung on
the poles of Westminster Hall when Vane's fell.
Blake's and Ireton's bodies had been flung into dis-
honoured graves. Pym and Hampden had died
early in the civil strife. Algernon Sidney was to
be a later victim. In Jewin Street the blind Milton
was solacing himself in an uncertain seclusion and
quietude, with the preparation of his " Paradise
142 rtMlton's
Lost." Everything the Puritans had stood for
seemed eclipsed. But the truths these men had lived
and died for could not die. Says Lowell, writing
for his countrymen : "It was the red dint on
Charles's block that marked one in our era."
The reign of the Stuarts was doomed, and the
Nemesis of what they stood for was assured. Says
John Richard Green : " England for the last two
hundred years has done little more than carry out in
a slow and tentative way, but very surely, the pro-
gramme laid down by Vane and his friends at the
close of the Civil War." It was government of
the people, by the people, for the people, for which
Vane and Washington and Lincoln lived. Without
the foresight and the valour of the brave man who
died on Tower Hill the work accomplished by the
two later heroes might not have been assured.
CHAPTER IX.
ALL HALLOWS, BARKING. ST. OLAVE's. ST.
CATHERINE CREE's. ST. ANDREW UNDER-
SHAFT
; T the end of Great Tower Street is the
church of All Hallows, Barking, anciently
known as " Berkynge Church by the
Tower." The edifice, which is situated close to
Mark Lane Station on the Metropolitan Railway,
ranks as the oldest parish church with a continuous
history as such in the city of London. One hundred
and fifty years before the union of the seven king-
doms under Egbert, over four hundred years before
the Conqueror and the building of the White Tower,
a thousand years before the boy Milton visited its
historic site, the foundation of the church was laid.
For six hundred years a close connection existed
between the court and this church when the Tower
was a royal residence.
Some traces of old Norman work remain, but the
present building belongs to the Perpendicular type,
43
144 flDilton's
and assumed nearly its present shape about one
hundred years before Milton's age.
From its nearness to the Tower, the church be-
came the burial-place of some of its victims. Here
was placed the headless body of Lord Thomas
Grey, uncle of Lady Jane, who was beheaded in
1554 for taking part in the rebellion under Wyatt.
The heart of Richard the Lion Heart was once
placed under its high altar. After his execution on
Tower Hill, the body of Archbishop Laud rested
here some years, and was " accompanied to earth
with great multitudes of people, whom love or
curiosity or remorse of conscience had drawn to-
gether, and decently interred . . . according to the
rites and ceremonies of the Church of England, in
which it may be noted as a remarkable thing, that
being, whilst he lived, the greatest champion of the
Common Prayer Book ... he had the honour,
being dead, to be buried in the form therein pro-
vided, after it had been long disused and almost
reprobated in most of the churches of London."
Two hundred and fifty years later an Archbishop
Laud Commemoration was celebrated here, and
where the scaffold stood on Tower Hill services
were held.
The chief interest of the church for American vis-
itors may be the baptismal register, in which is
/IMlton's Enalanfc 145
recorded the baptism, during Milton's early man-
hood, of Sir William Penn's infant son, the apostle
of peace, who was destined to found a great state
in the New World. The Great Fire of 1666 touched
the church so closely that Pepys tells us the " dyall
and part of the porch was burnt." Its interior is
beautifully preserved. Its old brasses attract so
many who desire to make rubbings that a snug sum
tor church purposes has been raised by the small
fees charged. The church possesses the oldest
indenture for the construction of an organ known
in England. Its date is 1519.
On the south side of Tower Street, at number 48,
w r as formerly a public house painted with the head
of the Czar of Muscovy. Here Peter the Great,
when he was studying the dockyards and maritime
establishments of England under William III., used
to resort with his attendants and smoke his pipe
and drink beer and brandy. Near by is Muscovy
Court, a present reminder of the ancient name.
A little farther north, on Hart Street, once stood
the richly decorated timber house, called " Whit-
tington's Palace." According to doubtful tradition
this was where the famous Dick Whittington, with
princely magnanimity, burnt the royal bond for a
debt of 60,000, when Henry V. and his queen came
to dine with him. '' Never had king such a subject,"
146 flDtlton's England
Henry is reported to have said, when Whittington
replied to the hero of Agincourt, " Surely, Sire,
never had subject such a king." This palace, with
its whole front of diamond-paned windows, stood
in Milton's time.
Near by, on Hart Street, is the church of St.
Olave, which with All Hallows, Barking, escaped
the Great Fire, and stands as it stood in Milton's
life. The tourist must time his visit to it on a
week day to the noon hour, as, unlike All Hallows,
Barking, it is not open all day.
The monastery of the Crutched Friars must have
covered in ancient days a large part of the parish
of this church. Its dimensions are of the smallest
it is only fifty-four feet long. Its name takes
us back to the times of the Danish settlement, for
St. Olave is but the corruption of St. Olaf. the
Norwegian saint who was the martyred king of
the Northmen. The body of this saint rests in
the great cathedral at Trondheim, Norway. His
history is closely connected with the immediate
region. As a boy of twelve he started on his career
as viking; later he fought with Ethelred against
the usurping Danes in London. The latter held
the bridge which connected the walled town with
low-lying Southwark across the Thames. The
struggle waxed desperate, when the bold Norwegian
rtMlton's England 147
at a critical juncture fastened cables to the bridge,
and then ordered his little ships, which were attached
to them, to row hard down stream. The piles tot-
tered, the bridge, which swarmed with the Danes,
fell, and those that were not drowned were driven
away. When William the Conqueror sailed up
the Thames a half century later, the stories of the
intrepid Olaf, who had become Norway's king and
had died in battle, must have been fresh in mind.
Not only this church, but others in the city were
erected in his name. The present structure was
probably built about 1450, and was repaired about
the time that Milton returned to London from Italy.
During the Reformation, in 1553, St. Olave's had
" a pair of organes." During the Civil War in
1644, an ordinance was passed that all organs in
churches " should be taken away and utterly de-
faced." It is very certain that the music-loving
Milton, who joyed to hear
"... the organ blow, to the full-voiced choir below "
must have mourned this stern decree. In conse-
quence of this, most organ builders for sixteen years
were obliged to work as carpenters and joiners.
The famous diarist, Pepys, who attended St.
Olave's, writes on June 17, 1660: "This day the
organs did begin to play at Whitehall Chapel, where
148 flMlton's jn0lan&
I heard very good musique, the first time that ever I
remember to have heard the organs and singing
men in surplices in my life." On April 20, 1667, he
records : " To Hackney Church, and found much
difficulty to get pews. That which I went chiefly
to see was the young ladies of the schools, whereof
there is great store, very pretty, and also the organ,
which is handsome, and tunes the psalms and plays
with the people, which is mighty pretty, and makes
me mighty earnest to have a pair at our church "
which meant St. Olave's.
About the time of Pepys's writing, a peal of six
remarkably sweet-toned bells was placed in the
tower. In the church are quaint brasses and monu-
ments, the most interesting of which is the tomb
of Pepys. An elegant monument of alabaster, with
a bust of Pepys, taken from his portrait in the
National Gallery, was unveiled in 1884. It bears
the dates: " b. 1632, d. 1703." The monument
is near the door where Pepys used to enter the
church from Seething Lane.
Pepys, like Milton, was educated at St. Paul's
School. His fame rests chiefly on his diary, which
was written in cipher, and not deciphered and pub-
lished until 1825. On the unveiling of his monu-
ment, James Russell Lowell, in his address, spoke
of Pepys as " a type perhaps of what is now called
's Englanfc 149
a Philistine. We have no word in English which
is equivalent to the French adjective ' bourgeois,'
but at all events, Samuel Pepys was the most per-
fect type that ever existed of the class of people
whom this word describes. He had all its merits,
as well as many of its defects." With all these
defects, perhaps in spite of them, Lowell maintained,
Pepys had written one of the most delightful books
that it was man's privilege to read in the Eng-
lish language, or in any other. There was no paral-
lel to the character of Pepys in respect of naivete
unless it were found in that of Falstaff, and Pepys
showed himself, too, " like Falstaff, on terms of
unbuttoned familiarity with himself. . . . Pepys's
naivete was the inoffensive vanity of a man who
loved to see himself in the glass." It was ques-
tionable, he said, whether Pepys could have had any
sense of humour at all, and yet permitted himself
to be so delightful. The lightest part of the diary
was of value historically, for it enabled us to see
the London of two hundred years ago, and, what
was more, to see it with the eager eyes of Pepys.
It was not Pepys the official, the clerk of the acts
and secretary of the Admiralty, who had brought
that large gathering together it was Pepys the
diarist.
Pepys's diary was begun in 1660, when he was
i5 flDtlton's BnQlant)
in his twenty-seventh year. Ten years later, when
he feared blindness, he ceased writing it. He be-
queathed it in six volumes, written in cipher as
above stated, with his library of three thousand
books, to his old college, Magdalen, at Cambridge,
and it is now its greatest treasure. Pepys was no
Puritan. His comments on the Calvinistic teach-
ing of his pastor, Daniel Mills, are characteristic.
In 1666, he writes: " Up and to church, where Mr.
Mills, a lazy, simple sermon upon the Devil's having
no right to anything in this world ; " and again he
writes : " Mr. Mills made an unnecessary sermon
on original sin, neither understood by himself nor
the people." He writes that when he invited the
reverend gentleman to dinner on a Sunday, he
" had a very good dinner and very merry."
Among the notable men buried near Pepys is
William Turner, an early Puritan, who was educated
under Latimer and died in 1568. He wrote the
earliest scientific work by any Englishman on
botany. His great object was to learn the materia
medica of the ancients throughout the vegetable
kingdom. But he wrote against the Roman Anti-
christ as well. The title of one book illustrates the
orthography of his day : " The Hunting and Fynd-
ing of the Romish Fox: which more than seven
years hath been among the Bysshoppes of England,
flMlton's England is 1
after that the Kynges Hyghnes, Henry VIII. had
commanded hym to be driven out of hys Realme."
Of Sir James Deane, a merchant adventurer to
India, China, and the Spice Islands, it is recorded
that he gave generous bequests, and directed 500
to be expended on his funeral, a vast sum for
those days, yet probably no more than was customary
for wealthy men.
Of Sir John Mennes, who is buried here, Pepys
tells us that " he brought many fine expressions of
Chaucer which he doats on mightily," and naively
adds, " and without doubt he is a very fine poet."
Droll, lively, garrulous Pepys! Who would have
dreamed that this boyish writer was in reality a
great military authority, and in a large measure
responsible for the care of England's navy ?
As in All Hallows, Barking, and several old
" city " churches, the visitor will notice in St.
Olave's the remarkable, wrought-iron " sword-
stands," used in Elizabeth's reign and placed in the
pews of distinguished persons. The pulpit, with
its elaborate carving, said to have been done by
Grinling Gibbons, is one that was removed from
the " deconsecrated " church of St. Benet.
St. Olave's had one of the churchyards in which
the victims of the plague were buried in great
numbers, and of which Pepys writes : " It fright-
is 2 rtMlton's
ened me indeed to go through the church, to see
so many graves lie so high upon the churchyard
where people have been buried of the plague." The
gruesome skulls and crossbones, carved over its
gateway, are a dismal reminder of the horrors of
that time. In the chapter on the "City of the
Absent," in his " Uncommercial Traveller," Dickens
thus graphically describes his visit to it : " One of
my best beloved churchyards, I call the churchyard
of Saint Ghastly Grim; touching what men in
general call it, I have no information. It lies at the
heart of the City, and the Blackwall Railway shrieks
at it daily. It is a small, small churchyard, with
a ferocious strong spiked iron gate, like a jail. This
gate is ornamented with skulls and cross-bones,
larger than the life, wrought in stone; but it like-
wise came into the mind of Saint Ghastly Grim
that to stick iron spikes atop of the stone skulls,
as though they were impaled, would be a pleasant
device. Therefore the skulls grin aloft, horribly
thrust through and through with iron spears. Hence
there is attraction of repulsion for me in Saint
Ghastly Grim, and having often contemplated it in
the daylight and the dark, I once felt drawn toward
it in a thunder-storm at midnight. * Why not ? ' I
said ; ' I have been to the Colosseum by the light
of the moon ; is it wcrse to go to see Saint Ghastly
flDUton's EtiQlanfc 153
Grim by the light of the lightning?' I repaired
to the Saint in a hackney cab, and found the skulls
most effective, having the air of a public execution,
and seeming, as the lightning flashed, to wink and
grin with the pain of the spikes."
In the chapter on " A Year's Impressions," in
which Dickens depicts repeated visits to the deserted
churches of the London of the past, he, with a deft
touch, describes the commercial atmosphere which
now impregnates all of what poetry, history, and
romance remain to-day.
" From Rood Lane unto Tower Street, and there-
abouts, there was often a subtle flavour of wine. In
the churches about Mark Lane, for example, there
was a dry whiff of wheat, and I accidentally struck
an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock
in one of them. One church near Mincing Lane
smelt like a druggist's drawer. Behind the Monu-
ment the service had the flavour of damaged
oranges, which, a little farther down toward the
river, tempered into herrings and gradually toned
into a cosmopolitan blast of fish. . . . The dark
vestries and registers into which I have peeped, and
the little hemmed-in churchyards that have echoed to
my feet, have left impressions on my memory, dis-
tinct and quaint. In all those dusty registers that
the worms are eating, there is not a line but made
iS4 /BMlton's England
some heart leap, or some tears flow, in their day.
Still and dry now, still and dry, and the old tree
at the window, with no room for its branches, has
seen them all out. These churches remain like the
tombs of the old citizens who lie beneath them -
monuments of another age. They are worth a
Sunday exploration, for they echo to the time when
the City of London really was London; when the
Prentices and Trained Bands were of mark in
the state; when even the Lord Mayor himself was
a reality."
In Milton's day, on the street of the Crutched
Friars, named from the ancient convent of Crossed
Friars, was the row of almshouses built by Sir
John Milborne in 1535 in honour of God and the
Virgin. In some way, the relief of the Assumption
of the Virgin at the entrance gate escaped destruc-
tion by the Puritans, and remained with the alms-
houses to a late period. To the American, to whom
the word "almshouse" signifies the English "work-
house," an institution of paupers where all live
in common, little idea is conveyed of the com-
fortable, and usually quaint and picturesque re-
treat which " almshouse " signifies to the English
mind. In many London suburbs one may see little
rows of cottages within walled gardens, where, in
quiet and comfort and serenity, aged couples spend
A&Uton's En0lan& 155
their last days, in some ways the happiest of their
lives, though it be in an almshouse.
At 53 Fenchurch Street, in Milton's time, stood
the Queen's Head Tavern, where the Princess Eliza-
beth dined on pork and peas after her release from
the Tower in 1554. The modern building erected
on the site bears a commemorative statue of her.
Mincing Lane, in the vicinity, was named from
houses which belonged to the Minchuns or nuns of
Saint Helen's. Near its entrance is the Hall of the
Clothworkers' Company, whose badge is a ram;
within are gilt statues of James I. and Charles I.,
which were saved from the Great Fire. Its garden
was once the churchyard of All Hallows, Staining,
whose fine old tower, which escaped the Fire, still
stands as when Milton strolled past and gazed on
it. The church, which was demolished recently, was
reputed to have been the earliest stone church in
the city. " Stane " is the Saxon word for stone,
and the word " Staining " indicates the fact men-
tioned above.
Passing north to Aldgate, Milton must have seen
the great gate, which was not destroyed until 1760.
It was the chief outlet to the eastern counties from
the time of the Romans until its destruction.
In the dwelling over the gate, according to Loftie,
the poet Geoffrey Chaucer lived in 1374. This
is 6 flMlton's
gate, however, was pulled down just before Milton's
birth, and rebuilt the year after he was born, in
1609. When he saw it, a gilded statue of James I.
adorned its eastern side, and on the west were
statues of Peace, Fortune, and Charity.
Aldgate to-day is the entrance into that sordid,
dismal region, known as Whitechapel, where within
easy walking distance from the site of the ancient
gate is its chief attraction to all tourists. On Com-
mercial Street, standing in a group, are the little
church of St. Jude, and close beside it that Social
Settlement, reared in memory of the gentle Oxford
scholar and philanthropist, Arnold Toynbee. This
is one of the few beautiful oases in a desert of
squalor and commonplaceness, which the name
Whitechapel now signifies to most readers.
But for Milton's haunts, we need not wander
farther east than Aldgate; for though Whitechapel
Street was thickly lined with houses for some dis-
tance even in his day, little of interest remains.
Turning back through Leadenhall Street, one sees a
little gray stone church, with a low tower and round-
arched windows, known as St. Catherine Cree's.
This was rebuilt in Milton's youth in 1629, and con-
secrated two years later by the ill-fated Archbishop
Laud. The ceremonies which he used on this occa-
sion savoured so much of Popery, however, that
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flMlton's England 157
they were later brought against him, and helped to
accomplish his downfall. In an older church, upon
this site, the famous Hans Holbein, to whom we are
indebted for his portraits of Henry VIIL, Sir
Thomas More, and other famous Englishmen, was
buried in 1554, after his death by the plague.
Within the church may be seen the effigy in armour
of a man who played an important part in England
when Milton's father was a boy. To-day, only the
historian recalls the name of Sir Nicholas Throck-
morton, whose daughter married Walter Raleigh,
who was chamberlain of the exchequer, ambassa-
dor, and chief butler of England. The stories of
his fruitless embassy to Mary Queen of Scots to
prevent her marriage with Darnley, and the rec-
ords of his trial, imprisonment, and death of a
broken heart must have been as familiar to the youth
of Milton's time as the life of Disraeli or Joseph
Chamberlain is to Cambridge youth to-day.
Above the gateway, in the churchyard, is a ghastly
memorial to the builder of it in the form of a
shrouded skeleton on a mattress. In Shakespeare's
time, within this churchyard, which is now much
smaller than it was then, and is concealed by modern
buildings, scaffolds were erected on all sides, and
religious plays were performed on Sundays.
Every year, on October i6th, the " lion sermon "
is* flMlton's
is preached within the church in memory of an
ancient worthy, who in 1648 gave it the sum of
200, in remembrance of his delivery from a lion's
paws in Arabia. As at St. Olave's, the noon hour,
when daily service is performed for the benefit of
the one or two worshippers who may stray in, is
the time to visit this historic church.
The first edition of " Paradise Lost " bears the
imprint : " Printed, and are to be sold by Peter
Parker, under Creed Church near Aldgate, 1667."
" Creed Church " was this same Catherine Cree's.
A little north of Leadenhall, at the entrance to
the ancient street called St. Mary Axe, stands the
church of St. Andrew Undershaft, another of the
churches which remain, of those that Milton saw
within the city walls. Its name recalls the ancient
English custom of the May-day dance. A lofty
May-pole, higher than the tower of the church, once
stood beside it, and was pulled down on " Evil
May Day," in the reign of Henry VIII., about the
time the church was built, 1520-32. It is a gray
stone edifice, well preserved, and well worth a visit
if for no other end than to see the tomb of the
learned and devoted chronicler, Stow a name dear
to every student of ancient London and of English
history. Of his " Survey," Loftie says : " It was a
wonder even in the age which produced Shake-
speare."
/IMlton's England 159
Stow was bred a tailor, but in middle life retired
on a modest competence, and for forty years almost
immediately preceding Milton's birth had with
unparalleled industry studied the history of his city
and native land. His collection for the Chronicles
of England, now in the British Museum, fills sixty
quarto volumes. Every street of London and promi-
nent building, every church, and almost every monu-
ment and inscription, are faithfully recorded in his
volumes on London and Westminster. To him
and to his editor, Strype, who has continued his
work until a later period, modern London, and all
who love her and her long history, owe an incalcula-
ble debt of gratitude.
But so little was his invaluable service recognised
in his day that his great collection of books aroused
suspicion in some quarters, and his outspoken words
on public questions stirred up the jealous and
malevolent, as his biographer shows. He was
reduced to poverty in his old age, for he had spent
his substance in his great enterprise. Like a genuine
historian, he sought original sources, and " made
use of his own legs (for he could never ride), trav-
elling on foot to many cathedral churches and other
places where ancient records and charters were ; and
with his own eyes to read them." He studied the
records in the Tower, and was expert in decipher-
160 flDilton's
ing old wills and registers and muniments belonging
to monasteries. He seems to have been somewhat
conservative; perhaps, as his biographer suggests,
" being a lover of antiquity and of the old Religious
Buildings and monuments, he was the more preju-
diced against the Reformed Religion, because of the
havoc and destruction those that pretended to it
made of them in those days." One instance of
Protestant fanaticism that tended to make him more
opposed to zeal without knowledge was that a
curate of St. Paul's, which was his parish, inveighed
" fervently against a long Maypole called a Shaft
in the next Parish to his, named St. Andrew Under-
shaft, and calling it an Idol; which so stirred up
the devotion of many hearers that many of them
in the afternoon went, and with violence pulled it
down from the place where it hung upon hooks ; and
then sawed it into divers pieces, each householder
taking his piece as much as hung over his door
or stall, and afterward burnt it."
Sir Walter Besant, in a delightful chapter in his
" London," describes an imaginary visit to the
learned man, and a stroll with him through the
town five years before Milton opened his eyes in
Bread Street : " I found the venerable antiquary
in his lodging. He lived it was the year before
he died with his old wife in a house over against
MONUMENT TO JOHN STOW
St. Andrew Undershaft.
/IMlton's Engla^ 161
the Church of St. Andrew Undershaft. The house
itself was modest, containing two rooms on the
ground floor, and one large room, or solar, as it
would have been called in olden time, above. There
was a garden at the back, and behind the garden
stood the ruins of St. Helen's Nunnery, with the
grounds and gardens of that once famous house,
which had passed into the possession of the Leather-
sellers' Company. ... I passed within, and mount-
ing a steep, narrow stair, found myself in the library
and in the presence of John Stow himself. The
place was a long room, lofty in the middle, but with
sloping sides. It was lit by two dormer windows;
neither carpet nor arras nor hangings of any kind
adorned the room, which was filled so that it was
difficult to turn about in it, with books, papers,
parchments, and rolls. They lay in piles on the
floor, they stood in lines and columns against the
walls; they were heaped upon the table. I ob-
served too that they were not such books as may be
seen in a great man's library, bound after the
Italian fashion, with costly leather, gilt letters,
golden clasps, and silken strings. Not so; these
books were all folios for the most part ; their backs
were broken ; the leaves, where any lay open, were
discoloured, many of them were in the Gothic black
letter. On the table were paper, pens, and ink, and
162 flfcilton's
in the straight-backed armchair sat the old man
himself, pen in hand, laboriously bending over a
huge tome. He wore a black silk cap; his long
white hair fell down upon his shoulders. The case-
ments of the window stood open, and the summer
sunshine poured warm and bright upon the scholar's
head."
In an age of many elaborate and tasteless monu-
ments, Stow's is singularly interesting and tasteful
An almost life-size figure of him is seated, dressed
in a long robe, before a table on which rests a book
in which he is writing. The whole is placed within
a niche in the tomb; upon the sculptured sides, the
artist has carved, among other devices, a beggar's
wallet, indicative of Stow's poverty, for which
James I. in his old age issued him letters patent per-
mitting him to solicit aid. These letters grant " to
our loving subject, John Stow, who hath to his own
great charge, and with neglect to his ordinary means
of maintenance, for the general good of Posteritie,
as well as the present age, compiled and published
diverse necessary books and chronicles, and there-
fore we in recompense of his painful labours, and
for the encouragement of the like . . . authorise
him and his deputies to collect among our loving
subjects their contributions and kind gratuities."
Thus was the man who has chiefly contributed to
/Mlton's England 163
our knowledge of ancient London allowed in his
extreme old age to live in unappreciation and
neglect.
The visitor cannot but query, as he surveys the
handsome monument erected to him by his wife,
how this was paid for, but there are many explana-
tions that suggest themselves.
Many a time may Milton as a boy and man have
stood before this tomb, and viewed the fine timber
roof and the late Perpendicular windows, which
to-day remain just as he saw them. If the modern
visitor would study the fashions of his day, he can
do no better than inspect such monuments as the
costly Hammersley erected here. The date thereon
is 1636, when Milton was a young man of twenty-
eight. The absence in the life-size kneeling figure
of the huge stiff crinoline on the tombs of a little
earlier date shows that the fashions changed as
sharply as in the latter half of the nineteenth cen-
tury. The date of the handsome organ is 1695.
CHAPTER X.
CROSBY HALL. ST. HELENAS. ST. ETHELBURGA^S.
ST. GILES'S, CRIPPLEGATE
^ASSING by the tiny churchyard of St.
Andrew Undershaft, by several narrow
and obscure passages amid crowded busi-
ness blocks, one comes upon the famous Crosby
Hall on Bishopsgate Street. This presents to-day
one of the most picturesque examples of the beam
and plaster houses of the fifteenth century to be
found in England. It was, says Stow, " the highest
at that time in London," that is, about 1475. Doubt-
less his reference is to a high turret which once sur-
mounted it, but of which no traces now remain.
This was before the more pretentious Tudor build-
ings of the next century, of whose high towers
Stow's biographer says : " He could not endure the
high turrets and buildings run up to a great height,
which some citizens in his time laid out their money
upon to overtop and overlook their neighbours. Such
sort of advanced works, both towers and chimneys,
they built both in their summerhouses in Moorfields
164
flMlton's nglant> 165
and in other places in the suburbs, and in their dwell-
ing houses in the City itself. They were like mid-
summer Pageants, ' not so much for use and profit
as for show and pleasure,' ' bewraying,' said he, ' the
vanities of men's minds. And that it was unlike to
the disposition of the ancient citizens, who delighted
in the building of hospitals and almshouses for the
poor; and therein both employed their wits, and
spent their wealth in the preferment of the common
commodity of this our city/ '
Crosby House was, as Sir Thomas More relates,
where Richard, Duke of Gloucester, " lodged him-
self, and little by little all folks drew unto him, so
that the Protector's court was crowded and King
Edward's left desolate." Here he probably planned
his treasonable and malicious scheme for the death
of the little princes. In his play of " Richard III.,"
Shakespeare mentions Crosby Hall more than once;
doubtless he knew it well, for ten years before
the birth of Milton it seems evident that he resided
in a house hard by. It is quite certain that it is to
his immortalising Crosby Hall that its preservation
to this day is due, when almost everything else that
was contemporaneous in secular architecture has
disappeared in its vicinity.
The building has been much restored, and its
banquet-hall is now utilised for a first-class restau-
166 rtMlton's Englanfc
rant, where he who will may dine where dukes and
princes dined four centuries ago. Sir Thomas More
lived here for several years, and here doubtless
wrote his life of the base king, to the echo of whose
voice these walls had once resounded. Sir Thomas
sold the place to that dear friend to whom he
wrote with a coal a sad letter of farewell from his
Tower cell before his execution. Later, his daugh-
ter, who loved the place where her dear father had
passed so many days, hired it, and came here to live.
Some years later, in 1594, the rich mayor of
London, Sir John Spencer, bought the place, and
entertained an ambassador from Henry IV. to King
James I. An interesting incident of this visit is
related in the memoirs of this ambassador. It ap-
pears that much scandal had been wrought by the
mad pranks and rioting of the attendants of former
envoys. What, then, was the horror of the French
duke, when he discovered that one of the young
nobles in his train, on going out of Crosby Hall in
quest of sport, had got into a fight and murdered
an English merchant close by in Great St. Helen's.
The duke, determined on making an example, bade
all his servants and attendants range themselves in
a row against the wall, and taking a lighted torch,
he looked sharply in the face of each in turn until
he found the terrified face of the guilty man. Deter-
/IMlton's England 167
mined to wreak speedy vengeance, he ordered, after
the arbitrary method of the times, his instant decapi-
tation. But the lord mayor pleaded for mercy, and
the youth's life was spared; whereupon, the duke
records, " the English began to love, and the French
to fear him more."
This same Lord Spencer, Mayor of London, had
one fair daughter, a gay deceiver of her honoured
sire, and as much a lover of fine clothes and service
as any modern dame who orders gowns from
Worth's, or buys her jewels on Bond Street. She
loved, or at all events made up her mind to marry
the Earl of Northampton, a man who was persona
non grata to her father, who had no mind to wed
his daughter, the greatest heiress in England, to this
gentleman. But the young folks were not daunted.
One day when the mayor gave a sixpence to the
baker's boy, who had come with a covered barrow
to bring bread, he learned later that the barrow con-
tained not bread, but his own naughty Elizabeth,
who was trundled off by her lover in disguise.
When their baby came, some time later, grand-
papa was wheedled into a reconciliation, and the gay
young bride again lived in Crosby Place, the past
forgiven. As an illustration of what wealthy ladies
in Milton's boyhood demanded for their pleasure,
a quotation from her letter written to her husband
168 flDUton's
shortly after marriage, may prove entertaining : " I
pray and beseech you to grant me, your most kind
and loving wife, the sum of 2,600 quarterly to be
paid. Also I would, besides that allowance, have
600 quarterly to be paid, for the performance of
charitable works; and those things I would not,
neither will be, accountable for. Also I will have
three horses for my own saddle, that none should
dare to lend or borrow ; none lend but I, none bor-
row but you. Also I would have two gentlewomen
. . . when I ride a hunting or a hawking, or travel
from one house to another, I will have them attend-
ing; so for either of these said women, I must and
will have for either of them a horse. Also I will
have six or eight gentlemen. And I will have my
two coaches, one lined with velvet to myself, with
four very fine horses; and a coach for my women,
lined with cloth and laced with gold, otherwise with
scarlet and laced with silver, with four good horses.
Also I will have two coachmen. Also, at any time
when I travel, I will be allowed not only coaches and
spare horses for me and my women, but I will be
having such carriages as shall be fitting for all;
orderly, not pestering my things with my women's
nor theirs with their chambermaids, nor theirs with
their washmaids. . . . And I must have two foot-
men; and my desire is that you defray all the
flDtlton's Englanfc 169
charges for me. And for myself, besides my
yearly allowance, I would have twenty gowns
of apparel. Also I would have to put me in my
purse 2,000 and 200, and so you to pay my debts.
Also I would have 6,000 pounds to buy me jewels,
and 4,000 to buy me a pearl chain. Now, seeing I
have been and am so reasonable unto you, I pray you
do find my children apparel and their schooling, and
all my servants, men and women, their wages. . . .
So for my drawing-chambers in all houses, I will
have them delicately furnished, both with hangings,
couch, canopy, glass, carpet, chairs, cushions, and
all things thereunto belonging. ... I pray you
when you be an earl to allow me 2,000 more than
I now desire, and double attendance."
The Countess of Pembroke, sister of Sir Philip
Sidney and friend of Ben Jonson, once lived as mis-
tress in the halls of Crosby Place. The latter's epi-
taph upon her is well known :
" Underneath this sable hearse
Lies the subject of all verse :
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
Death, ere thou canst find another
Good and fair and wise as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee."
Crosby Hall originally occupied far more ground
than is indicated by that part of it which stands
170 flMlton's England
to-day. A wine cellar with finely groined roof prob-
ably belonged to a crypt of its chapel, which has
vanished. In its great hall, fifty-four feet long and
forty feet high, one sees to-day, in beautiful modern
workmanship, the arms of St. Helen's Priory, the
earliest proprietor of the place ; of Sir John Crosby,
its builder ; of the " crook-backed tyrant," Richard,
and of the wise, the gentle, the learned author of
the " Utopia." Its " louvre," or opening in the roof,
is found in ancient halls in lieu of a chimney. This
hall, however, has a regular fireplace, but perhaps of
later construction. The louvre now is closed by the
same piece of woodwork that formerly was raised
above it. The beautiful carved roof itself is now as
it was over four centuries ago, the chief glory of the
place. Beneath it the most accomplished musicians
of the past discoursed sweet music, and the noble,
the learned, and the fashionable gathered at the
hospitable board. Not unlikely, the author of
" Comus " and " Lycidas," in the days before its
owner fought under Charles I., may have been
among their company.
In Milton's blind old age, Crosby Hall became a
Presbyterian meeting-house, and for a century after-
ward devout worshippers sang psalms beneath its
carved oak roof, which had echoed for two hundred
years to sounds of mirth and feasting.
< 73
ac "o
S3 Z.
C/5 O
SI
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flDUton's jEnalanfc 171
A little to the left of Crosby Hall, through a low
gateway, the sightseer passes from the noisy thor-
oughfare into a quiet court. Its pavement covers
the ancient garden of Crosby Place. But it is
not all paved. A small green churchyard still occu-
pies a part of the site of the ancient priory of St.
Helen's, and surrounds the low Gothic church to
which one descends a few steps from the modern
pavement.
Helena, the mother of Constantine, according to
tradition, discovered the tomb of Christ and there-
upon was canonised. From remote antiquity a
church in her honour has stood here. Three cen-
turies before Milton's day, the Benedictine nuns
built a priory close by the ancient church. They built
their church, and finally, getting possession of St.
Helen's, incorporated it with their own. To-day the
ends of the two naves, with a little cupola at the
intersection, present an irregular and picturesque
aspect; the interior, likewise, by its irregularities,
recalls the curious origin of the structure. An
agreeable harmony of differing forms and propor-
tions has been accomplished. The old, old church,
dim even on a sunshiny June day, is pervaded by a
strange charm. Business has crowded to its very
walls ; but the rumble of the streets is dulled by the
intervening structures of modern prosaic type that
172 flDUton's
hem in its peaceful solitude. Unlike the last three
churches of which we have spoken, its doors are open
all day long, and the traveller has not to make painful
search amid warehouses and down cross streets for
the sexton's keys. St. Helen's is large enough and
beautiful enough to lure the frequent visitor; and
perhaps it is a welcome refuge to many a perplexed
and overwearied man of business, who, for a few
moments, now and then, flees from his office and
commercial cares, to rest and lift his thoughts to
heavenly things within this sanctuary.
St. Helen's is noted for its tombs, and has been
called the Westminster Abbey of the " City." Here
lies that noted and remarkable man, Sir Thomas
Gresham. The visitor to the upper floor of the
National Portrait Gallery, in those rooms where
hang the portraits of the Elizabethan era, will
remember the strong face and figure, elegantly clad,
of the man whose bones rest here, and of whom we
shall have more to say in connection with his
college and the exchange which rose under his direc-
tion. His monument is a large marble slab full of
fossil shells, and raised table high. The date is
1579. From the beautiful, great window of the
Nun's Church, the coloured rays of his own arms fall
on his tomb.
Upon the wall behind it are niches ; one of them
/IMlton's Englanfc 173
faced by a little carved arcade, through which, it
is said, the nuns who were in disgrace listened to
the mass from the crypt below. A large ugly piece
of masonry on the same wall near the farther end
once contained the embalmed body of Francis Ban-
croft, whose face was visible through the glass lid
of his coffin. A few years since both body and tomb
were placed within the crypt. According to his will,
on the occasion of an annual memorial sermon for
which he had arranged, his body was exhibited to
certain humble folk for whom he had erected, in
expiation of his misdeeds, the almshouses now at
Mile End. Browning has with characteristic power
depicted the Roman Jew scourged to the Christian
church, and forced to hear a sermon once a year for
his conversion. Perhaps some later poet may find
as gruesome a theme for his sarcastic pen in the
scene which imagination conjures up when these
feeble and aged recipients of the gift of this erratic
snob were yearly brought to listen to the tale of his
benefactions, and to gaze upon his shrivelling corpse.
Bancroft as a magistrate had been so unpopular
that the people tried to upset his coffin on its way to
the tomb, and pealed the bells.
The oldest monument in the church is to Thomas
Langton, chaplain, buried in the choir in 1350. One
tomb bears the remarkable name of Sir Julius
174 flMlton'8
Caesar. The inscription is in form of a legal docu-
ment with a broken seal, in which Sir Julius gives
his bond to Heaven to surrender his life whenever it
shall please God to call him. If one would see Sir
Julius as Milton saw him, let him look upon his por-
trait that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery
with his great contemporaries.
The obdurate father-in-law, the rich Sir John
Spencer of Crosby Hall, is commemorated, by his
son-in-law, the Earl of Northampton, in a stately
alabaster tomb. The figures of Sir John and his
wife rest under a double canopy, and at their feet
kneels the runaway daughter, in the enormous stiff
crinoline of 1609, the date of her father's death.
Some thousand men in mourning cloaks are said
to have attended his funeral. The tomb of Sir
John Crosby and his wife, of 1475, the beautiful
and perfectly preserved tomb of Oteswich and his
wife, of the time of Henry IV., and the fine figure of
a girl reading, are a few of the works of art that
deserve careful attention. The beauty of that which
antedates the Tudor and Stuart periods, as con-
trasted with the works of art of those periods, is
almost as marked as it is at Westminster Abbey.
When Milton lived he must have seen still stand-
ing the refectory and cloisters, and the old hall
of the nuns, which was later used by the Company
flDUton's England 175
of Leathersellers. The whole group of buildings,
with the adjacent gardens, must have formed a
highly picturesque reminder of the days before King
" Hal " had ruthlessly swept his besom of destruc-
tion over the many houses in the land which shel-
tered nuns and friars.
During Milton's life there stood on Bishopsgate
Street the first charitable institution for the insane
that was ever established. Its name, " Bethlehem
Hospital," was corrupted into Bedlam, and has
become a term of general application to scenes of
disorder. Just after Milton's death, it was removed
to Southwark, where the gray dome of the present
structure rises conspicuous amid the London smoke.
Passing northeast along the crowded thorough-
fare of Bishopsgate Street, but a short distance from
St. Helen's, the student of antiquities may see, al-
most concealed by parasitic houses, the little ancient
church of St. Ethelburga. He will need to cross
the street in order to perceive the name inscribed
in large letters upon the church, beneath the short
tower and cupola, and above the clock and the shop
that masks its front. In Milton's boyhood, this
church was ancient, and had been standing for at
least three hundred and fifty years, for it is men-
tioned as early as 1366. Here Chaucer may have
knelt to say his Paternosters.
176 flDilton's Bnglanfc
The visitor should time his coming to the middle
of the day, when the door opening upon the sidewalk
is unlocked, and he may enter into the solemn little
sanctuary, and at the farther end step out into
the tiny garden at the rear. Here, if it be summer,
he may sit in this shady retreat and meditate upon
the history of the bit of ancient wall said by the
verger to be a Roman wall, the fragments of which
are preserved here. The church itself is plain and
bare; simply a Gothic nave, with no side aisles. Its
chief interest to some may be its antique organ, of
uncertain date, but old enough from its appearance
to have been heard by the little lad from Bread
Street whose soul was full of music. One can easily
imagine the father of John Milton, who was himself
so skilled in the great art, bringing his son to every
church within his neighbourhood that boasted such
an instrument.
The church stands on the site of a much older
one, and is named from the daughter of the French
princess, Bertha, who brought to Canterbury, to the
home of her Saxon husband, Ethelbert, the Christian
religion, which was then new to pagan England.
Visitors to the little church of St. Martin's at Can-
terbury will recall the font in which this king was
baptised into the faith of his wife.
Not far down Bishopsgate Street, upon the oppo-
flDilton'5 England 177
site side from St. Ethelburga's, when Milton lived,
stood a house with such a marvellous carved front
with oriel windows, that when it made way for
a modern business block, it was transferred to the
South Kensington Museum, where it may now be
seen in one of its lofty halls. In Milton's youth,
Sir Paul Pindar, its owner, was the richest merchant
in the kingdom, and often loaned money to James I.
and his son Charles. As ambassador to Constanti-
nople, he did much to improve England's trade in the
East. On his return, when Milton was a schoolboy
of a dozen years at St. Paul's School, he brought,
among his other treasures, a great diamond, valued
at 30,000, which he loaned to the king to wear at
his opening of the Parliaments; it was afterward
sold to Charles I. Twenty years later, when Crom-
well and Milton were fighting for the rights of Eng-
lishmen, and Charles's strength was failing, this
same Paul Pindar provided funds for the escape of
Queen Henrietta Maria and her children.
He gave 10,000 for the restoration, before the
fire, of St. Paul's Cathedral. But his loyalty to
the house of Stuart was put to a hard test, for the
king borrowed such enormous sums that he was
all but ruined. When Milton walked down Bishops-
gate Street, past his quaint dwelling-house, he must
have seen the mulberry-trees planted in the park
178 flDtlton's Jn0lan&
to please James I. by his devoted subject. These
ancient mulberry-trees disappeared only within the
memory of men now living.
Passing westward along the northern site of the
old city wall, in search of the few landmarks that
escaped the Great Fire and still remain, we come to
that church of all others most dear to Milton lovers.
St. Giles's, Cripplegate, is not easily entered on Sun-
day, except during hours of service. But a courteous
question to the burly guardian of the peace who
patrols the neighbourhood may effect an unlocking
of the gates and a quiet stroll through the green
garden that surrounds the church upon two sides.
The big policeman is a good talker, and relates with
gusto the ravages of the great fire a few years since,
which came so near as to melt the lead upon the
church roof.
The massive wall which forms a corner of the
green yard is a bastion of the city wall in the time
of Edward IV. Possibly the long, narrow bricks
which still gleam red in the lower part may be a
lingering remnant of the old Roman wall. Cer-
tainly they are the type that the Romans were wont
to use. The policeman assures us that there are
mysterious " submarine " passages leading from this
wall, and one may well believe almost anything as
one thinks of the strange sights that it has witnessed.
- si
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flMlton'8 EttQlaufc 179
High walls of business blocks of nondescript style
replace the gaps made by the recent fire, which fortu-
nately stopped before it touched the narrow, gabled
houses of wood which cluster close about the church.
These give almost the only example to-day in
London of the type of building which housed the
poorer class of Londoners of Milton's time.
The church is on the site of an older one of 1090,
and was built about one hundred years before Mil-
ton's birth. It is late Perpendicular, and has some
good detail.
As one enters the church from the garden, the
first monument on his right is Milton's, which con-
tains his bust, under a Gothic canopy. The poet's
bones lie by his father's, under the pavement near
the choir. According to the evidence of a little book
written about 1790, it seems that his coffin was
opened by irresponsible persons, who found the
lead much decayed and easily bent back the top.
A servant-maid for a consideration let in sightseers
through a window, some of whom, after satisfying
their curiosity in gazing on the well-preserved fig-
ure, snatched hair and teeth and even an arm-bone
to carry away as relics. A later authority questions
whether it is certain that the grave thus desecrated
was indeed Milton's or another's, and leaves a grain
flDilton's
of comfort in the thought that perhaps his honoured
remains still rest untouched by vandals.
Within this church Ben Jonson was married in
1623, and here Oliver Cromwell, a sturdy youth of
twenty-one, married his bride on August 22d in
1620. Little thought the parson, as he and Eliza-
beth Bourchier knelt before him, to be joined in holy
wedlock, that one day he would be entitled not only
" Protector of England," but " Protector of Prot-
estantism." A marvellous man, this Oliver, whose
deeds left much to be forgiven by a later age, for
they sometimes had more of the spirit of Joshua than
of the Founder of the Christian Faith, and yet
as a lover of England, and a minister to the court
of Queen Victoria from England's lusty kin beyond
the sea has said :
" He lived to make his simple oaken chair
More terrible, more grandly beautiful,
Than any throne before or after of a British king.
One of the few who have a right to rank
With the true Makers ; for his spirit wrought
Order from Chaos ; proved that right divine
Dwelt only in the excellence of truth ;
And far within old Darkness' hostile lines
Advanced and pitched the shining tents of Light
Nor shall the grateful Muse forget to tell,
That not the least among his many claims
/IMlton'9 EnQlanfc 181
To deathless honour he was MILTON'S friend,
A man not second among those who lived
To show us that the poet's lyre demands
An arm of tougher sinew than the sword."
" A Glance Behind tJie Curtain" Lowell.
One grave within the church may have been dear
to Milton besides that of his honoured father. As
he lived only one generation removed from the
martyrs of Smithfield, he must often have pored
over the record of their heroism and cruel deaths,
by Fox, the famous martyrologist. Near the west
door lies the slab above his grave. The date is 1587.
Here, no doubt, Milton, who, as has been said, at
different times had dwellings near the church, must
often have entered within its doors and paused.
Says the historian Marsden : " Fox placed the
Church of England under greater obligations than
any writer of his time, and had his recompense in
an old age of poverty and shame. . . . Nor were his
writings undervalued even then ; they were com-
manded to be chained up in churches by the side
of the homilies and the English Bible ; . . . thus the
' Book of Martyrs ' stood amongst the high, au-
thentic records of our Church, whilst its venerable
author yet lived."
Frobisher, the great navigator, is also buried
within the church.
i8a flMlton's England
On the left wall, as one faces the choir, is a curi-
ous doggerel inscription to one Busbie. If it be
on a Sunday afternoon, and the children have
gathered for the Sunday school, it may be interesting
to pause a bit, as we have done, before the epitaph,
and, while copying it, to lend a half ear to the teach-
ing that goes on within hearing. Three small boys
sit on a bench before a solemn youth who holds a
book and instructs their infant minds as follows :
" Who is God ? Where is God ? How many per-
sons are there in the Godhead ? Keep still there
don't answer until it is your turn. When God
put Adam and Eve out of Eden, what did he prom-
ise them ? " " That they should be saved," mumbles
one youngster. " Whom did he promise should
save them? " " His Son." " What do we call his
Son?" "Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."
The next class and all the others scattered through
the church are progressing in Christian nurture in
much the same way, and one wonders whether the
pedagogical skill of the teachers has advanced one
whit in all the hundreds of years since the church
was built. We hear no " opening exercises," no
joyous singing, no tender, earnest talk about right-
doing and the temptations that little boys on Fore
Street may encounter on Monday morning. There
is nothing but a purely formal catechising of these
flDilton's England 183
eager, impressionable little souls as to a theology
that they cannot understand, and a history of the
world which their first lesson on geology will under-
mine. This modern Sunday school is the one blot
upon the memory of the beautiful old church so
dear to every lover of Milton.
On a week day one may stand on Redcross Street,
and behold, as did the travellers in " The Hand of
Ethelberta," " the bold shape of the tower they
sought, clothed in every neutral shade, standing
clear against the sky, dusky and grim in its upper
stages, and hoary gray below, where every corner
of stone was rounded off by the waves of wind and
storm. All people were busy here; our visitors
seemed to be the only idle persons that the city
contained ; and there was no dissonance there
never is between antiquity and such beehive
industry. . . . This intramural stir was a fly-wheel,
transparent by infinite motion, through which Milton
and his day could be seen as if nothing intervened."
CHAPTER XI.
GRESHAM COLLEGE. AUSTIN FRIARS. GUILD-
HALL. ST. MARY'S, ALDERM ANBURY.
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. ST. SEPULCHRE'S.
Milton's lifetime and for nearly
a century after, there stood on Gresham
Street and Basinghall Street the famous
Gresham College, founded in 1579, in honour of
Sir Thomas Gresham, who gave the Royal Ex-
change to the city on condition that the corporation
should institute lectures on divinity, civil law,
astronomy, music, geometry, rhetoric, and physics,
to be delivered at his residence. His dwelling-house
was a spacious edifice of brick and timber, " with
open courts and covered walks which seemed all
so well suited for such an intention, as if Sir Thomas
had it in view, at the time he built his house."
Seven professors were appointed and lectured in the
morning in Latin, in the afternoon in English for
two hours each day. Among the number was Sir
Christopher Wren, who not only was the greatest
architect, but, as is elsewhere said, was one of the
184
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flDtlton's i6nGlan& 185
famous astronomers of his day. It was out of
his lectures on astronomy, which were attended by
learned men, that the Royal Society originated. On
Cromwell's death, all college matters were put in
abeyance, and the college was temporarily turned
into barracks, and so polluted that Bishop Sprat
wrote to Wren that he " found the place in such a
nasty condition, so defiled, and the smells so
infernal, that if you should now come to make use
of your tube [telescope] it would be like Dives
looking out of hell into heaven."
After the Fire, Gresham College was temporarily
used for an Exchange, where merchants met.
" Gresham College became an epitome of this great
city, and the centre of all affairs, both public and
private, which were then transacted in it."
Except " London stone " and bits of the Old
Wall, little more remains to consider among the
important landmarks of the city that was nightly
locked within the city gates, and which still endures
after the Great Fire. Of this little part, Austin
Friars Church, on the site of the Augustinian
Convent, is the most notable. Of the extensive and
magnificent establishment that was founded here
in 1253, nothing to-day remains but the nave of the
great church of former days, which is now reached
through narrow passages from Old Broad Street
186 flDUton's Bnglanfc
north of the Bank. Originally the church was cruci-
form, with choir, transepts, and a " most fine, spired
steeple, both small and straight." Henry VIII. at
the Dissolution bestowed the house and grounds
upon the first Marquis of Winchester, but the church
was given by the young King Edward VI. " to the
Dutch nation in London, to be their preaching
place." From that day to this the Dutch have
worshipped here, and in the days of persecution it
was the religious home of other Continental refugees.
In the generation before Milton, thousands of the
skilled artisans of the Netherlands and France had
fled to England, impoverishing the lands of the
short-sighted tyrants who drove them forth, to add
to English industry and commerce. The most emi-
nent pastor of these exiles was a Polish nobleman,
John a Lasco, who shepherded, not only this flock,
but all the other foreigners in England, and super-
intended their schools as well. He was a friend of
Melanchthon and Erasmus, was with the latter when
he died, and became possessed of his library.
It was to these refugees in London, Norwich, and
other towns that harboured them, that England
owed the introduction of many new, choice flowers,
among them, the gillyflower, carnation, Provence
rose, and others. The handiwork of these indus-
trious folk produced many new stuffs unknown to
flDilton's England 187
English ladies, among others the fine light fabric
known as bombazine. One of the Dutch ladies, who
taught the English to starch and launder cambric
ruffs, was so much sought after and charged such
high fees, that she soon earned herself a competence.
Evidently these strangers paid their way.
The church assigned to them in London once
possessed a marvellous array of tombs of noted men.
The register is crowded with the names of earls and
barons, all of whose monuments were sold by the
impecunious and callous marquis for 100. Just
before Milton's birth the fourth Marquis of Win-
chester was compelled to part with all his posses-
sions in Austin Friars. At about this time the
tower, declared to be " one of the beautiiullest and
rarest spectacles " in the city, was pulled down, and
the choir and transepts were demolished. The size
of the original building may be imagined when we
remember that the length of the nave alone is one
hundred and fifty feet to-day. The chronicler
records that in the beginning of the Dutch services,
the church was filled to overflowing. Whether there
are fewer Dutch in London four centuries later, or
fewer who are glad to worship in their own tongue,
cannot be said. But to-day, the visitor, who on a
Sunday morning walks through the silent and
deserted streets north of the Bank of England, and
i88 flDilton's
penetrates to the seclusion of Austin Friars Church,
will find but a scant congregation of perhaps two
hundred, who gather cosily within the curtains in
the centre of the nave, which shut out the great bare
aisles. If he thinks of the old days when Roger
Williams taught Dutch to his learned pupil, John
Milton, he may let his fancy picture to him these
men, who ranked among the nation-builders of their
day, stepping some Sunday morning under its Gothic
arches from out the greensward that then surrounded
them, and listening to the gospel in the tongue of
those brave exiles who, like them, had fought for
freedom of conscience.
If the visitor waits after service, he may see in
the pastor's room the portrait of John a Lasco, to
whom all the congregation point back with pride, as
the first and greatest preacher in their history ; and
the courteous pastor may point out many things of
interest that would escape the casual observer.
Standing at the front of the church, beside the little
tower at the left, whose beautiful spire no longer
rises aloft, one finds himself in the heart of the
modern business world, relentless, pushing, loving
neither beauty nor the sacredness of age. One sign
Barnato Brothers may attract his attention in
a window close to the gray church walls. Here the
ambitious and ill-starred king of African mines,
flDilton's Enala^ 189
Barney Barnato, brought his power to bear upon
the men on 'Change a decade since. A decade hence
his name, like John a Lasco's, will be remembered
by few. These names and the associations they sug-
gest are no unfitting theme for meditation on a
Sunday morning stroll amid the stony streets of
London past and present.
Further west, amid the district swept by the
Great Fire, stands Guildhall, not as it stood either
before or after the fire, but still worthy of mention
in the category of buildings that withstood the
flames. Only the roof perished in the fire, and its
walls stood intact; but so great have been the
changes since their restoration that very little which
belonged to Milton's London remains above the
crypt.
A clergyman, writing the year after the Great
Fire, thus describes it, as he saw it during that terri-
ble conflagration : " And amongst other things that
night, the sight of Guildhall was a fearful spectacle,
which stood the whole of it together, after the fire
had taken it, without flames (I suppose because the
timber was such solid oake), like a bright shining
wal, as if it had been a palace of gold, or a great
building of burnished brass."
The present roof is as nearly as possible a repro-
duction of the one that perished in the fire : it
IQO /BMlton's
is an open oak roof, and has a central louvre. The
figures of giants in its hall represent Gog and Magog,
who were the Corineus and Gogmagog of the ancient
city pageants. The former was a companion of
Brutus, the Trojan, and according to tradition killed
Gogmagog, the aboriginal giant.
The crypt is reputed to be the finest now remain-
ing in London. It is a portion of the ancient hall
of 1411. The north and south aisles had formerly
mullioned windows, which are now walled up. The
vaulting, with four centred arches, is notable, and
is probably of the earliest of that type.
The Guildhall was founded in 1411, in the time
of Henry IV., and when Milton was a boy had at-
tained a certain venerableness. Within its walls had
taken place, not merely the civic banquets for which
its modern successor is noted, but also many tragic
scenes in English history. Here the evil-minded
Protector who wished to supplant his boy-nephew,
Edward V., had his name presented to the assembled
multitudes as the legitimate monarch, by his oily
courtier, Buckingham. The people, " marvellously
abashed," listened in dead silence, as the accom-
plished orator proclaimed the bastardy of the little
prince, and urged the claims of his ambitious uncle.
The speaker, somewhat disconcerted, explained
again, louder and more explicitly, his meaning.
/Baton's
" But were it for wonder or fear, or that each looked
that other should speak first, not one word was there
answered of all the people that stood before ; but all
were as still as the midnight." Then the recorder
was summoned to use his efforts with the people.
" But all this no change made in the people, which
alway after stood as they were amazed." At last
some servants of the duke, and 'prentices and lads
" thrusted into the hall amongst the press," began
suddenly to cry out aloud : " King Richard, King
Richard," and " they that stood before cast back their
heads marvelling thereat, but nothing they said.
And when the duke and the mayor saw this manner,
they wisely turned it to their purpose, and said it
was a goodly cry and a joyful to hear every man
with one voice, and no man saying nay." Thus a
bold coup, struck with a masterful hand, surprised
an honest people without organised opposition and
leadership, and as so many times in the history of
the Anglo-Saxon race, the voice of a small and
powerful minority was impudently declared to be
vox popull.
One of the saddest sights that the Guildhall
Milton knew ever witnessed was the trial, in the
reign of Henry VIII. . of that young lady, Anne
Askew, whose courage and devotion never were
surpassed within the Colosseum, among the Chris-
192 flMlton's
tians who fought with beasts or were sawn asunder.
Having become a Protestant, she was driven by her
husband, who was a papist, from his home. King
Henry, it might have been supposed, would have
at least taken no action against her, but she was
arrested and examined. The lord mayor of London
asked her whether the priest cannot make the body
of Christ, to which she replied as shrewdly as
Jeanne d'Arc to her inquisitors : " I have read that
God made man; but that man can make God, I
never yet read." She was condemned at Guildhall
to death for heresy. A daughter of a knight, this
delicate lady, reared in comfort, was carried to the
Tower, thrust into a cell, where but for a few brave
friends she would have starved, and then her tender
body was put on the rack, and Chancellor Wriothes-
ley himself applied such power as nearly rent it in
sunder. The story of her cruel death amid the
flames at Smithfield belongs rather to that bloody
spot than to the Guildhall. Her life she could have
saved, even at the last moment, had her heroic soul
ialtered, and unsaid what conscience taught. Those
were tales to freeze the life from out young hearts,
that grandames told in Milton's boyhood. To the
men of his day, Guildhall stood chiefly connected
with some of the most remarkable trials in Eng-
land's history.
flMlton's Bnalanfc 193
Among them was that of Throckmorton for com-
plicity in Sir Thomas Wyatt's attempt against the
Catholic Queen Mary. In those days, when trial
usually meant speedy death, his acquittal, due to his
own forensic skill and eloquence, is recounted in
detail by historians as most remarkable. He it was
whose tomb in St. Catherine Cree's is mentioned, and
for whom a London street is named.
The church of St. Mary Aldermanbury is one that
few visitors to London ever enter, but the follower
in Milton's footsteps will not fail to seek out, a little
west of the Guildhall, this church, whose registers
record that here Milton, at the age of forty-eight,
married his second wife, Katherine Woodcocke.
Aldermanbury derives its name from the ancient
court or bery of the aldermen, which is now held
at the Guildhall. The church stands in its tiny green
churchyard closely surrounded by business blocks,
amidst the bustle of the city ; on a summer noon-
tide, in its shady retreat, the seats are filled with
loiterers who chat or meditate or read their papers
around the central monument.
This monument, though modern, is of great inter-
est. It records the fact that J. Heminge and Henry
Condell, Shakespeare's fellow actors and personal
friends, lived many years in this parish, and are
buried here. Says the inscription : " To their dis-
194 rtMlton'8
interested affection the world owes all that it calls
Shakespeare ; they alone collected his dramatic writ-
ings, regardless of pecuniary loss, and without the
hope of any profit gave them to the world.
" First Folio : ' We have but collected them,
and done an office to the dead, without ambition
of selfe -profit or fame, only to keep the memory of
so worthy a friend alive, as was our Shakespeare.'
" Extract from Preface : ' It had been a thing, we
confesse, worthie to have been wished, that the
author himself e had lived to have set forth and over-
scene his own writings, but since it hath been or-
dained otherwise, ... we pray you do not envy his
Friends the office of their care and paine to have
collected and published them, absolute in their num-
bers, as he conceived them, who as he was a happy
imitator of nature, was a most gentle expression of
it. His mind and hand went together, and what he
thought he uttered, with that easiness that wee have
scarse received from him a blot on his papers.' ' In
1656 Milton's marriage took place in the earlier
church, of very ancient foundation. The present
building was designed by Wren, and was begun
in 1668, during Milton's blindness. It has a square
tower capped by a square bell turret about ninety
feet in height.
The register of the church, which was preserved,
flDilton's Bnglaufc 195
records that : " The agreement and intention of
marriage between John Milton, Esq., of the parish
of Margaret's in Westminster, and Mrs. Katharine
Woodcocke of Mary's in Aldermanbury, was pub-
lished three several market days in three several
weeks . . . and no exception being made against
their intentions, they were according to the act of
Parliament, married on the I2th of November, by
Sir John Dethicke, Knight and Alderman, one of
the Justices for the Peace in the City of London."
A justice instead of a clergyman was prescribed by
the Marriage Act which was then in force.
Judge Jeffreys of bloody memory is buried in the
church (d. 1689).
A little west of it is Christ's Hospital, which,
since its establishment in 1552 by the boy-king, Ed-
ward VI., until the summer of 1902, has been one
of the most noted of London schools. Its revenue is
about 60,000. Its removal to Horsham in the
country will provide the ample playgrounds and
modern accommodations that the times demand;
but even an American, to say nothing of native
Londoners, must feel a pang of regret at the dis-
appearance from the street of the bright-eyed, bare-
headed lads, whose quaint costume has for centuries
given their school its name of " Blue Coat School."
Anciently the boys wore caps, but now they go bare-
headed through the year.
*9 6 flMlton's
The school was originally established on the site
of the Gray Friars Monastery, as a kind of asylum
for poor children. Stow gives the following account
of the opening of the institution. " In the month of
September they took in near four hundred orphans,
and cloathed them in Russet, but ever after they
wore Blue Cloath Coats, whence it is commonly
called the Blue Coat Hospital. Their habit being
now a long coat of blue warm cloth, close to their
arms and Body, hanging loose to their Heels, girt
about their Waist with a red leather girdle buckled,
a round thrum Cap tyed with a red Band, Yellow
Stockings, and Black Low-heeled Shoes, their hair
cut close their Locks short."
" Their fare was Breakfast, bread and beer, 6.30
summer, 7.30 winter. Sunday, beef and pottage for
dinners. Suppers, as good legs and shoulders of
mutton as can be bought. Tuesdays and Thurs-
days, same dinner as Sundays. Other days, no
flesh Monday, milk porridge ; Wednesday, f ur-
mity ; Friday, old peas and pottage ; Saturday, water-
gruel. Rost beef, 12 times a year. Supper, bread
and butter or bread and cheese; Wednesday and
Friday, pudding pies."
This seems to have been a liberal table compared
with that of the famous Winchester school in its
early days, when two meals a day were all that
were allowed, except for invalids,
's England 197
Stow mentions that " the King granted all
Church Linnen formerly used in the Churches of
London " to the hospital, as a superabundance had
been found. Girls as well as boys were lodged and
taught here. Stow tells us of the custom which
prevailed from his day to ours : " One boy being
appointed, goeth up into a pulpit there placed and
readeth a chapter . . . and prayers. At the end of
every prayer all the boys cry ' Amen,' that maketh
a very melodious sound. The boy that reads is
designed for the university. A Psalm is named by
the same boy; and all sing with a good organ that
is placed in the said great Hall." He describes the
grace said by one boy in the pulpit, and the boys and
girls quietly seating themselves while " multitudes
of city and court " came to witness it.
An ancient writer recounts the joy of the half-
starved youngsters when they were first taken into
its dining-hall and saw the baskets heaped with
bread, and knew that there was enough for all.
Among the buildings which are about to be replaced
by mercantile establishments there is little, if any-
thing, that Milton saw. Christ's Church, beside it,
where Richard Baxter lies buried, was built by
Wren a little after his time.
Where so many famous men in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries were to be numbered as students,
198 flDtlton's Bnglanfc
Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, and
others, the one name on its register that would
have most interested Milton was that of William
Camden who studied here, as well as at St. Paul's.
A visitor from Boston, Massachusetts, is interested
to know that in 1626, one little lad in yellow stock-
ings and dark blue coat, who studied Latin here to
some purpose, was Ezekiel Cheever, who became
the master of the Boston Latin School. For thirty
years he taught the Yankee boys in the little wooden
house on School Street at the foot of Beacon Hill,
and made them learn his famous " Accidence," which
went through many editions. Often as he wandered
over the " rocky nook with hilltops three," where
" twice each day the flowing sea took Boston in
its arms," his thoughts must have turned back to the
walled city with its spires and palaces and prisons
which he and Milton knew when they were boys.
The London tourist, who visits London for the
first time after 1902, will miss seeing one of its
most fascinating sights, for he can never stand in
the great dining-hall of Christ's Hospital on a
Sunday noon and see the procession of pink-cheeked
lads in their knee-breeches and long skirts come
trooping in an orderly procession into the great
hall, bearing great platters of steaming meats and
baskets piled with rolls. The " Grecians " and
AUton'B Englanfc 199
" Deputy-Grecians," and the less distinguished rank
and file will never again pause here to listen to the
Latin grace, nor will gaze at the huge canvas on
the long wall between the galleries at either end.
One wonders what will become of the old desks in
the schoolroom, into which a score of generations of
schoolboys have carved their names, and whether in
their splendid new surroundings they will not look
back half regretfully to the dim old cloisters which
linked them with their great historic past.
Old Newgate was a foul prison in Milton's day.
Here in filthy chambers, gentlemen like'Ellwood,
Defoe, and William Penn were thrown together with
felons. Diagonally across the street from the huge
grim prison of later days, which since 1770 has
stretched its length along the thoroughfare which
bears its name, is St. Sepulchre's Church. From its
tower the knell was struck for executions at the
neighbouring Newgate, and many a time must the
boys in Christ's Hospital and the Charterhouse
School north of it have listened in horrified curiosity
as the bell tolled, and they knew it meant that a
man, blindfolded and with bound hands, was stand-
ing on the scaffold in front of Newgate. St.
Sepulchre's has been much altered since Milton
entered it, perhaps in search of the same monument
that first of all attracts Americans. This is the
200 flDUton's England
monument of that bold discoverer and coloniser,
John Smith, who settled Jamestown in Virginia the
year before Milton was born. Who knows but
Milton may have met him, or have gazed upon the
dark-eyed Princess Pocahontas, who left her native
forests and became the bride of the Englishman
Rolfe, after she had saved the life of the gallant
Captain Smith.
His old tombstone is nearly defaced, and lies
in the side aisle, some yards from its original site.
A replica of the original inscription is placed on
a brass tablet near it :
" Here lyes one conquered, who hath conquered kings ;
Subdued large territories and done things
Which to the world impossible will seem
But that the Truth is held in more esteem, . . .
Or shall I tell of his adventures since,
Done in Virginia, that large Continente ?
How that he subdued kings unto his yoke,
And made those Heathen flee as wind doth smoke,
And made their land, being of so large a Station,
An habitation for our Christian nation." . . .
The above-mentioned " kings " were doubtless
Indian sachems. The Anglo-Saxon satisfaction at
the way the heathen were made to flee like smoke,
and make room for a Christian nation, as shown by
the writer of this effusion, indicates that the white
Christian of Smith's day was not unlike his posterity
flDUton'0 England 201
three centuries later in the time of Cecil Rhodes and
of Philippine campaigns.
John Rogers, the Smithfield martyr, was vicar
of this church. During his residence in Antwerp,
he had made the acquaintance of Tyndale, the
translator of the Bible, and continued Tyndale's
work after his death. Dean Milman tells us :
" There is no doubt that the first complete English
Bible came from Antwerp under his superintendence
and auspices. It bore then and still bears the name
of Matthews's Bible. Of Matthews, however, no
trace has ever been discovered. There is every
reason for believing the untraceable Matthews was
John Rogers. If so, Rogers was not only the proto-
martyr of the English Church, but, with due respect
for Tyndale, the protomartyr of the English Bible."
Among the most eminent men buried at St.
Sepulchre's was Roger Ascham, in 1568. Doubtless
Milton, before writing his own remarkable treatise
on education, must have studied the progressive
theories of this man who taught Latin and Greek
to Queen Elizabeth.
CHAPTER XII.
CHARTERHOUSE. ST. JOHN*S GATE. ST. BAR-
THOLOMEW'S. SMITHFIELD
jHEN Milton was a lad at St. Paul's School,
it is more than likely that he sometimes
visited the boys of Charterhouse. Let us
imagine him on some holiday taking a stroll outside
the city wall through Newgate, over Holborn
Bridge, that arched the Hole Bourne or Fleet, which
flowed southward to the Thames, at Blackfriars;
then up Holborn Hill and to the right to Charter-
house Square. It is still a quiet square of green
shut in by pleasant residences, which replace the
handsome palaces, such as Rutland House, which
stood here during the Stuarts' reign.
If his father accompanied the lad he may have
recalled to him the horror of the pestilence which
three hundred years before had swept from Asia
across Europe. In foul, crowded London, it so
filled the churchyards to overflowing, that in 1348,
when thousands of bodies were flung into pits with-
out a Christian prayer said over them, the Bishop
202
3 ?
's England 203
of London purchased three acres for a burial-ground
upon this spot. Near here fifty thousand bodies were
buried, one above another in deep graves. But
three hundred years is a long time to one who has
lived something less than ten, and perhaps these
grisly tales of a shadowy and forgotten past appealed
less to Milton's boyish heart than those of a nearer
time, which his father's life had almost touched.
Above the monastery doors which rose here after
the Great Plague, might have been seen, only a half
century before, the limb from the dismembered body
of the martyred prior, who fell beneath the wrath
of Henry VIII. He, with divers of his brethren,
perished for their faith as nobly as John Rogers, a
few years later, died for a different one. Heroism
belongs to no one creed. Thus ended the monastic
institution, the House of the Salutation of the
Mother of God, which since 1371 had housed
twenty-four Carthusian friars. Their quiet lives
and austere fasts had been in sharp contrast to those
of the Knights of St. John, their ancient neighbours,
whose habitations perished at about the time when
theirs arose.
Some remains of the old monastery may be seen
within the gates to-day, and doubtless there were
many more reminders of it when Milton was shown
about by his boy-friends. Perhaps the tall youth,
204 /BMlton's
Roger Williams, nine years his senior, whose later
life was to touch his, may have noticed the handsome
lad who read the Latin inscriptions as easily as boys
of his age now read English, and who showed a
marvellous comprehension of the antiquities of the
place.
The visitor to-day on entering the chapel, as
Milton did, may notice at the left of the door a
white marble tablet framed in yellow marble, on
which an American citizen, in memory of the founder
of Rhode Island, almost the only tolerator of all
religious faiths in an intolerant age, has recently
inscribed the fact that Roger Williams studied here.
Since Milton's day the character of Charterhouse
has not much changed, though many buildings have
been added. The present foundation marks the
benevolence of one of the richest merchants of
Elizabeth's day, whose prayer was : " Lord, thou
hast given me a large and liberal estate; give me
also a heart to make use thereof." In 1611, Thomas
Sutton purchased the Charterhouse for 13,000,
from the Earl of Suffolk and his relatives, and made
over twenty manors and lordships and other rich
estates, including the Charterhouse, in trust for
the hospital.
The pensioners were originally eighty in number,
and the boys, forty-four. Hubert Herkomer's well-
jfl&iiton's EttQlanfc 205
known, beautiful painting in the Tate Gallery of the
Charterhouse chapel and the venerable figures of
the aged gentlemen who daily worship here in their
quaint gowns, depicts a scene that Milton saw, and
that the modern visitor may see to-day. Beyond the
huge, pretentious monument of Sutton, that fills one
corner of the chapel, is the side room, where, until
quite recent years, the boys sat at morning service.
Now their numbers are increased, and they are more
happily housed out in the country, where outdoor
sports and rural life can do more for them than
this region, which is now hemmed in by the en-
croachments of commercial London. Stow tells
us that the master was required to be twenty-seven
years old, and that the highest form must every
Sunday set up in the Great Hall four Greek and
four Latin verses, " each to be made on any part
of the second Lesson for that day."
One cannot but feel that the old gentlemen must
sadly miss their sprightly young comrades, and long
for the sound of their merry shouts and whistles.
Their numbers are falling off, for the revenues,
drawn from agricultural sources, are diminishing.
To-day about fifty-five are entered. All must be
over sixty years of age. They have all the freedom
of private citizens, except that they are expected to
dine together in the great panelled dining-hall, and
206 /HMlton's England
at night to be in by eleven o'clock. Each pensioner
has a bedroom and sitting-room, and a loaf and
butter is brought him for his breakfast. About 30
a year are allowed each for clothing and other
food, and a female attendant is assigned to each
half dozen gentlemen. Thackeray's description of
Founder's Day is most touching, and deserves to
be read by all who visit Charterhouse, where he
studied, and in imagination saw the last days of
Colonel Newcome :
"The custom of the school is on the I2th of
December, the Founder's Day, that the head gown-
boy shall recite a Latin oration, in praise of our
founder and upon other subjects, and a goodly com-
pany of old Cistercians is generally brought together
to attend this oration, after which we go to chapel
and have a sermon, after which we go to a great
dinner, where old condisciples meet, old toasts are
given, and speeches made. Before marching from
the oration hall to chapel, the stewards of the day's
dinner, according to the old-fashioned rite, have
wands in their hands, walk to church at the head
of the procession, and sit in places of honour. The
boys are already on their seats with smug fresh
faces and shining white collars; the old black-
gowned pensioners are on their benches, the chapel
is lighted, the founder's tomb, with its grotesque
flDilton's Bnolanfc 207
carvings, monsters, heraldries, darkles and shines
with the most wonderful lights and shadows.
There he sits, Fundator Noster, in his ruff and
gown, awaiting the Great Examination Day. We
oldsters, be we ever so old, become boys again as
we look at that familiar old tomb, and think how the
seats were altered since we were here, and how the
doctor used to sit yonder and his awful eye used to
frighten us shuddering boys on whom it lighted;
and how the boy next us would kick our shins
during the service time, and how the monitor would
cane us afterward because our shins were kicked.
Yonder sit forty cherry-cheeked boys, thinking
about home and holidays to-morrow. Yonder sit
some three-score old gentlemen pensioners of the
hospital, listening to the prayers and psalms. You
hear them coughing feebly in the twilight the
old, reverend black gowns. ... A plenty of candles
light up this chapel, and this scene of youth and age
and early memories and pompous death. How
solemn the well-remembered prayers are here uttered
again in the place where in childhood we used to
hear them! How beautiful and decorous the rite!
How noble the ancient words of the supplications
which the priest utters, and to which generations of
bygone seniors have cried, * Amen,' under those
arches."
208 flDilton's ]En0lan&
We pass up, as Milton may have done, the broad
carved oak staircase of the period antedating Sut-
ton's purchase, when Lord North welcomed the
Princess Elizabeth as his guest and entertained
her royally, five days before her coronation. In
these spacious rooms, with deep-set windows, and
richly decorated ceilings, the cautious princess held
meetings daily with her councillors. The lofty fire-
place and the tapestry hangings that remain recall
in their dim splendour days when lords and dukes
and maids of honour waited in trepidation upon the
behest of the haughty woman who was soon to
become their dread sovereign. It was in one of
these rooms that the pupil orator gave his oration
upon Founder's Day.
One of the rooms not always shown to visitors
should not be missed. It is the long, cosy library of
the pensioners. Here, leaning out of the diamond-
paned windows upon a summer's day, or grouping
themselves in easy chairs about the blazing hearth
in gray November, one loves to think of these lonely
gentlemen, who have seen better days, spending their
last, quiet years among their books.
The visitor to the Charterhouse will not fail
to spend a half day within the vicinity. In spite
of its sordid and commercial aspect, it possesses
many of the most precious relics of the past.
/IMlton's England 209
A little to the northwest of Smithfield, where
it spans a narrow and somewhat squalid street,
stands the huge stone gateway of St. John's. Noth-
ing in its vicinity reveals the fact that once beside it
stood a conventual church, and a bell-tower that
was one of the glories of London, and nothing to
indicate that, centuries before these, one of the
richest and most famous of all the monastic estab-
lishments around London was built here. The
history of the Knights of St. John is one of the
longest and most romantic of mediaeval histories.
The prototype of their ancient hospital was in Jeru-
salem, where the knights of the order lived lives of
abstinence and charity. The English establishment in
Clerkenwell was founded in noo A. D., only a gen-
eration after the coming of the Norman Conqueror.
This was the time of Godfrey of Bouillon and of the
first Crusade. Forty years later the monks in Jeru-
salem became a military order, and thenceforth their
history is one that seemed guided by Joshua
rather than the Prince of Peace. Large gifts and
power led them soon far from the simple habits
of their early days. Of their fights with pirates
and with Turks and with rival Christian bodies, there
is no space to tell. Like the Christian Church itself,
in many periods, they waxed fat and gross, and
became the hated " plutocrats " of the working men
's England
of their time. In that sweet story, written in Saxon
English, by William Morris, of the monk, " John
Ball," we have a picture of the brave men of Kent
who rose in wrath to destroy, as did the Paris mob
of 1793, the men who long had mocked at
their impotence and fed upon their toil. The
rebels marched with spear and bow to London,
and wreaked their vengeance on many, but
especially those whose travesty on the teaching
of the saint whose name they bore had maddened
them to fury. They burnt all the houses belonging
to St. John's, and set on fire the beautiful priory,
which burned seven days. King Richard II., safe in
the Tower, in vain besought his Council for advice
in this extremity. The prior himself did not escape,
but fell beneath the relentless axe of the men of
Kent, as thousands for a like cause fell under the
guillotine in Paris.
The present gateway was not erected until the
following century. In the reign of Edward VI., the
church with the " graven gilt and enamelled bell-
tower " was undermined and blown up with gun-
powder, and the stone was used for building the
Lord Protector's House upon the Strand. To-day
the members of the revived English League of the
Order of St. John hold their meetings in the gate.
With the exception of Westminster Abbey, prob-
/IMlton's Bn0lan& 211
ably no church has more of interest than St. Bar-
tholomew's at Smithfield. Within the century that
saw the White Tower of the Conqueror begun, a
monastery and church rose on this site. "A pleas-
ant-witted gentleman, who was therefore called ' the
king's minstrel/ " as Stow relates, was blest with a
most singular vision on his pilgrimage to Rome.
Like Saul of Tarsus, he felt the Lord's command
to leave his old life and begin anew. Accordingly
on his return to England he established a priory for
thirteen monks, and in 1123 built the Norman
church, part of which stands practically as he left it.
Says a nineteenth-century antiquary : " Except the
Tower and its immediate neighbourhood, there is no
part of London, old or new, around which are clus-
tered so many events interesting in history, as that
of the priory of St. Bartholomew-the-Great and its
vicinity. There are narrow, tortuous streets, and
still narrower courts, about Cloth Fair, where are
hidden away scores of old houses, whose projecting
eaves and overhanging floors, heavy, cumbrous
beams and wattle and plaster walls must have seen
the days of the Plantagenets. There are remains
of groined arches, and windows with ancient tracery,
strong buttresses, and beautiful portals, with toothed
and ornate archways, belonging to times long
anterior to Wyclif and John of Gaunt yet to be
212 /IMlton's
found lurking behind dark, uncanny-looking tene-
ments. . . . When Chaucer was young, and his
Canterbury Pilgrims were men and women of the
period, processions of cowled monks and chanting
boys, with censers and crucifix, wended their way
from the old priory of the Black Friars beside the
Thames; and when Edward III. had spent the
morning in witnessing the tourney of mailed knights
at Smithfield, have they and their attendants, with
all the pomp and pageantry of chivalry, passed
beneath this old gateway to the grand entertainment
of the good prior in the great refectory beyond the
south cloisters. . . . As we go round the Great
Close we pass by some very old houses that occupy
the place where was once the east cloisters. Behind
these houses used to be a great mulberry-tree, only
removed in our own time."
Here may Milton, during those dark days of the
Restoration, when he retired to the seclusion of
these narrow streets to 1 escape observation, have
sometimes ventured. Here sitting on the stone
seat beneath its shade, he may have seen in fancy
the processions of sandalled monks, with rosaries
dangling against their long gray robes, move
silently by as in the olden time, and pass within
the portals of the church. And stepping beneath
its round arches, he may himself have stood, as
CHURCH OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT
Front an old engraving.
fl&ilton's England 213
countless monks and pilgrims before him have done,
before the recumbent painted figure of the tonsured
monk, Rahere, who lies under a beautifully wrought
Gothic canopy of a much later period. Around him
rise the solemn, massive pillars with their cubiform
capitals, which seem scarcely less fresh and solid
than when Rahere gazed on them with pride. Here
are to be seen the slight intimations, even amid
Norman semicircular arches, of the Gothic pointed
arch that was to supersede them in the near future.
Of the four superb arches which once supported the
great central tower, two are the half-circle and two
are slightly pointed.
An interesting and lovely feature of the church is
the oriel window by the triforium, opposite Rahere's
grave, built by the famous Prior Bolton. Here the
prior seems to have had a kind of pew or seat from
whence he could overlook the canons when he
pleased, without their being aware of his presence,
as it communicated with his house. The aisles
form a fine study for the architect. The horseshoe
Moorish arch is much used, as well as the simpler
Norman arch, and there is seen a regular gradation
from one to the other.
Among the tombs that must have most interested
Puritan Milton was one of James Rivers, who died
in 1641 just as the civil war was about to break
flMlton's Bnglaufc
forth, who evidently, had he lived, would have
thrown in his lot where Milton did. His epitaph
contains the lines :
" Whose life and death designed no other end,
Than to serve God, his country, and his friend ;
Who, when ambition, tyranny, and pride
Conquered the age, conquered himself and died."
A tomb that may have interested Milton is that of
Sir Walter Mildmay, the founder of Emmanuel
College, Cambridge, which sent so many Puritans
to the new colonies in Massachusetts. It was this
Mildmay to whom, when he came to court, Queen
Elizabeth said : "I hear, Sir Walter, that you have
erected a Puritan foundation." " No, madam," was
the answer, " but I have set an acorn, which when
it becomes an oak, God knows what will be the
fruit thereof."
In Milton's time many Puritans lived in the par-
ish, and a manuscript book preserved in the vestry
records that there was " Collected for the children
of New England uppon 2. Sabath daies following in
february, 1643, 2 > &- 9-" This was a goodly sum
for those days, and was doubtless much appreciated
by the English cousins, who in their bare pine
meeting-houses beside the tidal Charles remem-
bered that the Puritans who remained at home
flDilton's JEnQlanD 215
were called to wage a fiercer fight with priestcraft,
prerogative, and privilege than they, with poverty.
The church to-day is but a fraction of its former
size, in fact, hardly more than the choir of the noble
building which Rahere erected. The entire length
of the church as it left his hand is supposed to have
been 225 feet. In 1539 Sir Richard Rich bought
church and priory for little more than 1,000, and
the thirteen evicted canons were pensioned off.
Close by old St. Bartholomew's is Smithfield, so
near that, in the reign of the Tudors, the ruddy light
of martyrs' fagots must have cast a glow upon its
roof and its walls must have resounded to the
screams of sufferers in their last agonising moments.
On the south side of Smithfield, in Milton's day,
rose St. Bartholomew's Hospital, founded by Henry
VIII., upon the site of Rahere's earlier one. The
great Harvey, the physician of Charles I., who dis-
covered the circulation of the blood, was physician
to this hospital for thirty-four years, and here, in
1619, he lectured on his great discovery. The pres-
ent structure dates from a period early in the eight-
eenth century.
Directly opposite St. Bartholomew's Church, in
1849, excavations three feet below the surface ex-
posed to view a mass of unhewn stones, blackened as
by fire, and covered with ashes and human bones,
216 rtMlton'8 England
charred and partially consumed. This marked the
spot where martyrs, facing eastward toward the
great gate of St. Bartholomew's, were chained to
the stake. The prior was generally present on such
occasions. An old print of the burning of Anne
Askew displays a pulpit erected for the sermon,
and raised seats for the numerous spectators who
came to view the spectacle with probably no more
shrinking than the Ixmdoners of the early nine-
teenth century viewed the hangings at Newgate.
Of the two hundred and seventy-seven persons
who in Mary's reign here perished for their faith,
none is more lovingly remembered in Old England
or in New England than John Rogers, the first
martyr in the Marian persecution, to whom we have
already referred. For a century or more, Calvinistic
New England taught its children from that quaint
little book known as the "New England Primer," and
now treasured in many families as a curiosity. No
one among its wretched little woodcuts struck such
a solemn awe into the child's mind, making the
courage of the soldier on the battle-field shrink to
nothing in comparison, as that picture where John
Rogers, surrounded by his wife and nine children
and another at the breast, testified to his faith within
the flames. " That which I have preached I will
seal with my blood," said the indomitable man,
/IMlton's England 217
when offered pardon for recantation. " I will never
pray for thee," quoth his angry questioner. " But
I will pray for you," said Master Rogers. History
does not record that his little children saw their
father die, but only that they met him on the way,
and sobbed out their farewells. But enough; we
need not enter on the hideous story of this spot in
the generation that followed this martyr.
In early days, Smithfield, or Smoothfield, was the
Campus Martius for sham fights and tilts. All sorts
of sports, archery, and bowls, and ball games were
played here, and it was a resort for acrobats and jug-
glers. In 1615, says Howes, " The City of London
reduced the rude, vast place of Smithfield into a
faire and comely order, which formerly was never
held possible to be done, and paved it all over, and
made divers sewers to convey the water from the
new channels which were made by reason of the new
pavement; they also made strong rails round about
Smithfield, and sequestered the middle part into
a very fair and civil walk, and railed it round about
with strong rails, to defend the place from annoy-
ance and danger, as well from carts, as all manner
of cattle, because it was intended hereafter that in
time it might prove a fair and peaceable market-
place, by reason that Newgate Market, Moorgate,
Cheapside, Leadenhall, and Gracechurch Street,
flMlton's
were immeasurably pestered with the unimaginable
increase and multiplicity of market folks. And this
field, commonly called West Smithfield, was for
many years called Ruffian's Hall, by reason it was
the usual place of frays and common fighting dur-
ing the time that sword and bucklers were in use.
But the ensuing deadly fight with rapier and dagger
suddenly suppressed the fighting with sword and
buckler." In his " Henry IV.," Shakespeare makes
Page say of Bardolph : " He's gone to Smithfield to
buy your worship a horse." To which Falstaff
replies : " I bought him in Paul's, and he'll buy me
a horse in Smithfield; an I could get me but a
wife in the stews, I were manned, horsed, and
wived."
Ben Jonson's merry play, " Bartholomew Fair,"
written in 1613, gives a good account of the babel
of entreaties and advertising boasts that assailed
the ears of the unwary customer : " Will your wor-
ship buy any gingerbread, gilt gingerbread; very
good bread, comfortable bread? Buy any ballads?
New ballads! Hey!
" Now the fair's a filling !
O, for a tune to startle
The birds of the booths here billing
Yearly with old St. Bartle.
flMlton's Bnalanfc 219
" Buy any pears, pears, very fine pears ! What
do you lack, gentleman? Maid, see a fine hoppy-
horse for your young master. Cost you but a
farthing a week for his provender.
" Buy a mouse-trap, a mouse-trap, or a tormentor
for a flea ?
" What do you lack ? fine purses, pouches, pin-
cases, pipes? a pair of smiths to wake you in the
morning, or a fine whistling bird?
" Gentlewomen, the weather's hot ; whither walk
you? Have a care of your fine velvet caps; the
fair is dusty. Take a sweet delicate booth with
boughs, here in the way, and cool yourself in the
shade, you and your friends. Here be the best
pigs. A delicate show-pig, little mistress, with
sweet sauce and crackling, like de bay-leaf i' de
fire, la! T'ou shalt ha' the clean side o' the table-
clot' and de glass vashed ! "
From all which, and much more to the same pur-
port, one may judge that whether in Ben Jonson's
time or Browning's, whether in Smithfield or in
the modern charity fair, the art of alluring or
browbeating the man with a purse into buying what
he does not want is much the same. Long after
Milton's death, the fair was famous, and drew
gaping throngs to witness mountebanks swing in
mid air, and to view the fat woman and double-
220 flDtlton's jn0lanfc
headed calf, for all the world like " The Greatest
Moral Show on Earth " to-day.
Now Smithfield has banished mountebanks and
bellowing herds. Only the carcases of the latter
may be found in the huge brick market that covers
a large part of the once open space. The original
size of Smithfield was but three acres, but since
1834 it has been over six acres in extent.
CHAPTER XIII.
ELY PLACE. INNS OF COURT. TEMPLE CHURCH.
- COVENT GARDEN. SOMERSET HOUSE
|
^OLBORN was paved long before Milton's
birth, and was a street of consequence,
because of the Inns of Court, which
opened north and south from it. From his time
until 1868 a row of small houses southward from
Gray's Inn blocked up the street, and became even
in his day " a mighty hindrance to Holborn in point
of prospect."
Ely Place, off Holborn, is little known to hasty
tourists who have not time to leave the beaten track
of sightseeing. But any one who has a quiet hour
to spend in the exquisite little church of St. Ethel-
dreda, and to recall the glories of the past which its
Gothic walls have witnessed, will be well repaid.
Ely Place, a rectangle of dull, commonplace
houses, at its entrance gives no glimpse of the
chapel, which is shrinkingly withdrawn a little
among the interloping walls that now replace the gar-
dens and the palaces of Milton's day. In Chaucer's
221
222 /IMlton'5 En$lan&
lifetime, the Bishop of Ely built this very chapel to
the Saxon saint, the daughter of the king of the
West Angles, who was born about the year 630.
She took part in the erection of the Cathedral of
Ely amid the morasses of the " Fen " country, and
was chosen as its patron saint. In 679 she died,
the abbess of the convent of Ely. Singularly
enough, this modest lady gave the origin to the
word " tawdry," so Thornbury declares. For her
name was sometimes called St. Audry, and some
cheap necklaces sold at St. Audry's fair at Ely were
known as " tawdry " laces, whence the name was
applied to other cheap and showy ornaments.
After long continuance in the hands of Protes-
tants, the church has again reverted to the faith of
those who built it. It is the only instance of a
" living " crypt in London, i. e., one in which tapers
burn and kneeling worshippers assemble before
shrines. On any week day, one may in three
minutes turn from Holborn into its mediaeval quiet
and seclusion and tell one's beads, either in the upper
or lower sanctuary, or gaze at the glorious decorated
east window, and on the chaste proportions of an
unspoiled Gothic structure. Its wealth of windows
remotely reminds one of the Sainte Chapelle of
good King Louis, whose jewelled windows in their
slender lofty frames are one of the marvels of the
island in the Seine.
flDUton's England 223
In the Plantagenet and Tudor period, vineyards,
kitchen garden, and orchard surrounded the mag-
nificent buildings of Ely Place. Hither, at the Duke
of Gloucester's bidding, as Shakespeare, following
history, records, the bishop sent hastily for the
strawberries for which his garden was famous.
" My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn
I saw good strawberries in your garden there ;
I do beseech you send for some of them."
In the reign of Elizabeth, Sir Christopher Hatton
was the owner of Ely Place. Except a cluster of
houses, Ely Rents, standing on Holborn, the
land round about this great estate seems to have
been unbuilt upon.
Sir Christopher, who rose to be Elizabeth's lord
chancellor, was a striking looking man and a
graceful dancer. He captivated the queen, who
was very susceptible to manly beauty. The state
papers in the Record Office, it is said, disclose her
fond and foolish correspondence with him. In
Milton's lifetime, Lady Hatton a gay and wealthy
widow was wooed and won by the famous Sir
Edward Coke. But Hatton House saw many an
cpen quarrel between the ill-matched pair.
In the time of Charles I., a pageant almost unpar-
alleled in magnificence was arranged in Ely Place.
224 rtMlton's Englanfc
The redoubtable Prynne, who had preached against
all such frivolities in the customary strong language
of the time, had not yet lost his ears, as he did
later, in the pillory. But his strictures had given
offence at the court of Queen Henrietta Maria, who
was minded to amuse herself with masques; con-
sequently this famous masque came off. Mr. Lawes,
the famous musician and friend of Milton, was set
to composing music for the occasion. On an even-
ing in 1633, when Milton was living at Horton, the
magnificent procession wended its way through
crowds of enthusiastic spectators toward White-
hall. One hundred gentlemen on the best horses
that the stables of royalty and the nobility could
offer, all clad in gold and silver, and each accom-
panied by a page and two lackeys carrying torches,
were only one feature of the pageant; the others
were some of them as odd as these were splendid.
Tiny children, dressed like birds, rode on small
horses; every beautiful or fantastic conceit imagin-
able was carried out, and the cost of the whole was
no less than 21,000, a sum which meant far more
in purchasing power than it does to-day. Some of
the musicians, however, received 100 apiece a fee
quite satisfactory to many a prima donna in our
time.
No more characteristic part of Milton's London
AM Item's JEnglanfc 225
exists to-day than the various Inns of Court that
lead north and south from Holborn. As the sight-
seer passes from the jostle and turmoil of the
Thoroughfare, he is transported in a moment into
a silence and seclusion that remind one of a Puritan
Sabbath. Quadrangle opens out of quadrangle,
shut in by rows of unpretentious buildings, whose
monotony is broken by Gothic chapels or Tudor
dining-halls surmounted by carved cupolas. Oc-
casionally a cloistered walk under low Tudor arches,
or a group of highly ornate terra cotta chimneys
is seen, as one wanders around the dim and
shadowy passages. All at once a turn, and behold,
here in the heart of the life of this six million
people of the great overgrown metropolis, still
stretch long reaches of greensward, locked safely
from the intrusion of the public by their handsome
wrought-iron gates.
In Gray's Inn, to the north of Holborn, Francis
Bacon wrote his " Novum Organum," which he
published in 1620, when Milton was a schoolboy at
St. Paul's, and when the Leyden Pilgrims in the
Mayflower landed on Plymouth Rock.
The gardens of Gray's Inn, which Bacon set
out with trees, became a fashionable promenade in
Milton's old age. Pepys tells us that he took his
wife there after church one Sunday, " to observe
226 flDUton's Englanfc
the fashions of the ladies, because of my wife's
making some clothes." It was, in short, quite as
much a dress parade as Fifth Avenue on Easter
Sunday in New York.
Lord Burleigh, Elizabeth's great minister, was,
rext to Bacon, the most eminent of the members of
Gray's Inn.
Its hall, which dates from 1560, is little inferior
to any hall in all the Inns of Court. It has carved
wainscoting, and a timber roof, and windows
emblazoned with the arms of Lord Bacon and Lord
Burleigh. In Milton's time, Gray's Inn marked the
northern limit of the town, and all beyond it was
green fields and country lanes. Therefore we now
turn south and west to explore briefly the numerous
other inns that must often have echoed to the steps
of Milton when he lived almost within stone's
throw of them.
Dickens's description of the little Staple Inn gives
the reader an exact impression of the place to-
day : " Behind the most ancient part of Holborn,
where certain gabled houses some centuries of age
still stand looking on the public way, as if disconso-
lately looking for the Old Bourne that has long since
run dry, is a little nook composed of two irregular
quadrangles, called Staple Inn. It is one of those
nooks, the turning into which, out of the clashing
/IMlton's England 227
street, imparts to the relieved pedestrian the sensation
of having put cotton in his ears and velvet soles on
his boots. It is one of those nooks where a few
smoky sparrows twitter on smoky trees, as though
they called to each other, ' Let us play at country,'
and where a few feet of garden mould and a few
yards of gravel enable them to do that refreshing
violence to their tiny understandings. Moreover,
it is one of those nooks that are legal nooks;
and it contains a little hall with a little lantern in its
roof."
Walking through the further quadrangle, and
following the narrow street down past the towering,
vulgar conglomeration of every incongruous archi-
tectural device, the new Birkbeck Bank, we
enter presently the wide spaces of Lincoln's Inn.
The style of buildings, whether new or old, is
largely Tudor of the type of Hampton Court. The
walls of red brick are inlaid with diagonal lines of
darker bricks. The chapel, of Perpendicular Gothic,
built by Inigo Jones, is raised on arches which leave
a kind of open crypt below, where Pepys tells us
he used to walk. The stained glass windows ante-
date Laud's time, and Laud is said to have wondered
that the saints emblazoned on them escaped the
" furious spirit " that was aroused against those
" harmless, goodly windows " of his at Lambeth.
228 /iDilton's
At number 24 of the " Old Buildings," the secre-
tary of Oliver Cromwell lived from 1645 to l &59>
where his correspondence was discovered behind a
false ceiling. The tradition that the Protector was
overheard to discuss with him here about the kid-
napping of the three little sons of Charles I. may
be dismissed as mythical.
Beside the noble brick gateway of Lincoln's Inn,
which bore the date 1518, it is said that rare Ben
Jonson, in his early days of poverty, was found
working with a trowel in one hand and his Horace
in the other, when some gentlemen, having com-
passion on him, as did Cimabue on the gifted child,
Giotto, rescued him, and let loose the imprisoned
genius who found Shakespeare for a friend, and
the Abbey for his tomb.
Of Furnivall's, Scroope's, and Barnard's Inns,
and Thavie's, oldest of them all, we have no space to
write. The characteristics of the four great inns
are stated in the lines :
" Gray's Inn for walks, Lincoln's Inn for wall,
The Inner Temple for a garden,
And the Middle for a hall."
The modern sightseer finds, as probably Milton
found, much more of interest in the two latter, which
lie south of Fleet Street, than in all the others
combined.
/Mlton's England 229
Before crossing Fleet Street, mention should be
made of Temple Bar, which was erected by Wren
four years before Milton's death, and marked the
transition from Fleet Street to the Strand. The
" Old Cheshire Cheese ' in the ancient and dingy
Wine Office Court, which opens north from Fleet
Street, probably was built a dozen years before
Milton died. It was Doctor Johnson's restaurant,
and his fame brings many customers to sit in his
old seat, which is still carefully preserved.
Between the Tower and Westminster stands
half-way one little edifice more ancient than any
other on that route. It is the little Temple Church
of Norman and transitional design, which stands
secluded from the traffic of the streets within a
stone's throw of Temple Bar.
Of its dimensions and manifold restorations, the
ordinary guide-books say enough, and make a repe-
tition unnecessary. The round church with its
interesting arcade of grotesque, sculptured heads,
and its rare proportions ; the choir, " springing,"
as Hawthorne says, " as it were, in a harmonious
and accordant fountain out of the clustered pillars
that support its pinioned arches," are both a delight
to every lover of the beautiful.
Hardly more than a century after the Norman
conquest we find the Knights Templars on this spot.
230 flDtlton's Bnglanfc
The year after their removal here from Holborn
in 1185, they built their Temple church, the finest
of the four round churches that still remain in
England. The choir, which is one of the most
beautiful specimens of pure early English, was fin-
ished in 1240.
In early times, the discipline of the knights was
most severe. The Master himself scourged dis-
obedient brethren within its walls, and on Fridays
there were frequent public whippings within the
church. In a narrow, penitential cell to be seen
in the church walls, only four and a half feet long
and two and a half wide, a disobedient brother is
said to have been starved to death.
The interesting recumbent figures clad in mail,
upon the Temple floor, are not, as is popularly sup-
posed, Knights Templars, but Associates of the
Temple, who were only partly admitted to its great
privileges.
Shortly after the downfall of the Templars, the
property passed into the hands of the Knights of St.
John of Jerusalem, whose priory, as we remember,
was burned by the wrathful men of Kent in Wat
Tyler's rebellion. The knights leased it to the law
students who belonged to the " King's Court."
Therefore, when the rebels reached London, they
poured down on the haunts of the Temple lawyers,
flDilton's Englanfc 231
carried off the books, deeds, and rolls of remem-
brance, and, in vengeance on the Knights Hospi-
tallers, burned them in Fleet Street. So determined
were these men, goaded by years of tyranny, to put
an end to all the laws that had oppressed them.
In later years, we find that the Temple church
in the time of Henry VIII. , and later still, of
Milton and Ben Jonson, was used in term time
for the students as a place for rendezvous. Dis-
cussions on legal questions sometimes waxed bois-
terous, and, as a contemporary said, as " noisy as
St. Paul's."
In Elizabeth's day the Middle Temple abandoned
the old Templar arms a red cross on a silver
shield with a lamb bearing the sacred banner sur-
mounted by a red cross and substituted a flying
Pegasus. Both of these emblems meet the visitor's
eye as he winds through the labyrinthine passages
of the old quadrangles, and comes at every step
upon some spot rich with the associations of cen-
turies.
Of the well-known story of the origin of the
Wars of the Roses within the Temple Gardens it
is not necessary here to speak.
An old print of Milton's later years shows the
gardens of the Inner Temple laid out in many
straight rows of trees, like apple-trees in orchards,
232 rtMlton's England
which extended down to the wall that bordered
the Thames. North, toward Fleet Street, rows
upon rows of gabled houses, four stories in height,
enclosed quadrangles and courts. The dining-halls,
built in the Tudor period, stand as they stood when
Spenser, in the generation before Milton, wrote of
"those bricky towers,
The which on Thames' broad back do ride,
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers ;
There whilom wont the Temple knights to bide
Till they decayed through pride."
The little Fountain in Fountain Court is dear
to lovers of Dickens, for here Ruth Pinch tripped
by with merry heart to meet her lover. In Queen
Anne's time, a fountain of much loftier altitude
sparkled and splashed here, and for aught we know
made music when Milton and Shakespeare wan-
dered within the Temple precincts.
It was not until after Milton's birth that James
I. in 1609 granted the whole property to the two
societies of the Inner and Middle Temples; where-
upon they presented his Majesty with a precious
gold cup of great weight, which cup was esteemed
by the monarch as one of his most valued treasures.
When the king's daughter Elizabeth was married
four years later, the Temple and Gray's Inn men
gave a masque, which Sir Francis Bacon planned
/iMlton's England 233
and executed. The bridal party came by water and
landed at the foot of the Temple Gardens amid peals
of the little cannon of that day, and with great pomp
and merriment. The king gave a supper to the forty
masquers. This masque, however, did not compare
in splendour with the one given twenty years later,
and already alluded to, which was planned by
members of the Inns of Court meeting in Ely Place.
In Milton's middle life the learned Selden, who
died in 1654, was buried in the choir of the Temple
church. Of him Milton writes that he is " one of
your own now sitting in Parliament, the chief of
learned men reputed in this land." When Milton
was in his thirty-sixth year and had published his
treatise on divorce, he writes of Selden, then in
his sixtieth year, whose acquaintance he had proba-
bly made, and begged those who would know the
truth to " hasten to be acquainted with that noble
volume written by our learned Selden, of ' The Law
of Nature and of Nations/ a work more useful and
more worthy to be perused, whoever studies to be
a great man in wisdom, equity, and justice, than
all those decretals . . . which the pontifical clerks
have doted on." Of his well-known " Table Talk,"
Coleridge observes : " There is more weighty
bullion sense in this book than I ever found in the
same number of pages of any uninspired writer."
234 flDilton's Bnglanb
One of the greatest names connected with the
Temple is that of Richard Hooker, author of the
famous " Ecclesiastical Polity." He was for six
years Master of the Temple a position which
Izaak Walton, who wrote his life, says he accepted
rather than desired. The interest in music in the
seventeenth century is evinced by the fierce contest
which lasted for a year, as to the organ which should
be erected in this church. Two organs were put up
by rivals. The great Purcell performed on one
which was finally selected by Judge Jeffreys of the
Inner Temple. He was a capital musician, and
in his case at least the adage seemed disproved that
(i Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast."
With the Restoration and the opening of the
floodgates of luxury and licentiousness, which the
stern Puritan had for twenty years kept in abey-
ance, the Temple renewed the banquets and merry-
makings of an earlier day. At a continuous banquet
which lasted half a month, the Earl of Nottingham
kept open house to all London, and entertained all
the great and powerful of the time. Fifty servants
waited on Charles II. and his company, while twenty
violins made merry music at the feast.
The Great Fire of 1666 ceased ere it reached the
Temple church, but it was not stopped until many
sets of chambers and title-deeds of a vast number
J
J
<
x -5
3
il
HDUton'8 Jn0lanfc 235
of valuable estates had perished. Another fire only
a dozen years later destroyed much more of the
establishment which Milton knew. Of the Inner
Temple Hall little exists to-day that his eyes rested
on. But the stately Middle Temple Hall, built in
1572, still stands, and is one of the best specimens
of Elizabethan architecture that London boasts.
The open roof of hammer-beam design, with pen-
dants, is especially characteristic of the work of that
period. The screen is an elaborate one of Renais-
sance work, more interesting for its age and asso-
ciations than for its conformity to true principles of
art. This famous hall witnessed the performance
of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" in 1601. The
same strong, oak tables of the days of Bacon, Coke,
and Jonson still stretch from end to end. Viewed
from the western dais, the portraits, armour, and
rich windows combine with the massive furniture
and carved screen to present a scene of sober rich-
ness hardly equalled outside of a few dining-halls
of Oxford and Cambridge which belong to that
same period. Among the eminent men of the
Middle Temple whose lives Milton's life touched
were Sir Walter Raleigh, John Pym, Ireton,
Cromwell's son-in-law, Evelyn, Lord Chancellor
Clarendon, and many others of equal note in their
day.
236 /IDilton's Bnglanfc
Only one who has delved long in the biography
and literature of this great age can realise the
stupendous scholarship of the men of this period,
Coke, Selden, Bacon, Newton, Milton, and their
contemporaries across the Channel, Grotius, Spinoza,
and Galileo, who, with the men of action of
their day, make the century in which they lived one
of the most significant since time began. What
period since the Golden Age of Greece can match
their achievements? Where on earth since the days
of Periclean eloquence and wisdom in Athens could
be found one spot where so much genius and learn-
ing had its centre as in the England into which
Milton was born, and in which he lived for two-
thirds of a century?
" We are apt," says Lowell, " to wonder at the
scholarship of the men of three centuries ago and at
a certain dignity of phrase that characterises them.
They were scholars because they did not read so
many things as we. They had fewer books, but
those were of the best. Their speech was noble, be-
cause they lunched with Plutarch and supped with
Plato." Of the long list of eminent men who
studied here in the century after Milton, perhaps
none was more akin to him in scholarship than the
learned Blackstone; none who more deeply under-
stood his Puritan seriousness than Cowper; none
fl&ilton's England 237
who in boldness, love of liberty, and justice more
resembled him than Edmund Burke.
Fifty years before Milton's birth, as Aggas's old
map of 1562 gives evidence, London had extended
but a little way beyond the city walls and the Strand.
But in Elizabeth's prosperous age, noble mansions
and extensive gardens began to replace the fields,
commons, and pastures that stretched westward
from St. Martin's Lane. One of the busiest spots
in modern London, that is, Covent Garden, begins
to come into prominence in London history just
as Milton reached early manhood. For three cen-
turies before his time the abbots of Westminster had
owned " fair spreading pastures " here, now all
included in the general name of " Long Acre." Part
of this they are thought to have used for the burial
of their dead. In Aggas's old map, a brick wall
enclosed all but the southern side where the houses
and enclosures separated it from the Strand. The
property belonged to John Russell, Earl of Bed-
ford, to whom it was given by the Crown in 1552,
at which time it had a yearly value of less than 7.
To-day his successor holds one of the richest rentals
in the world. In 1631 a square was formed, and
the famous architect Inigo Jones built an open
arcade about the north and east sides. Upon the
west rose a Renaissance church by the design of
238 flDitton'6 ]nalan&
the same artist, and the south was bordered by the
garden of Bedford House and a grove or " small
grotto of trees most pleasant in the summer season."
The duke, in ordering the erection of the chapel,
declared that he would go to no expense for it,
and it might be a barn. " Then," said Inigo Jones,
" it shall be the handsomest barn in England," and
fulfilled his promise. It was the first important
Protestant church erected in England. Only the
portico of the original church remains, as the first
building was destroyed by fire in 1795.
In the popular dramas written in the last part of
Milton's lifetime, constant allusion is made to the
fashionable and even licentious companies that fre-
quented the piazza of Covent Garden, and it is
safe to say that it was never at any time a haunt
of the serious-minded Puritan. The poet Gay,
writing in the next generation after Milton, thus
describes the Covent Garden that he knew :
" Where Covent Garden's famous temple stands,
That boasts the work of Jones' immortal hands,
Columns with plain magnificence appear,
And graceful porches lead along the square ;
Here oft my course I bend, when lo ! from far
I spy the furies of the football war :
The 'prentice quits his shop to join the crew,
Increasing crowds the flying game pursue."
At first, peddlers of fruit and vegetables used the
gravelled centre of the square for their booths, and
W .2
S ,TT *
- .s
E
flMlton'0 Enslatto 239
gradually the market grew into a well-recognised
establishment, and the open square was finally in
1830 covered over. In Milton's later years Covent
Garden was fashionable as a residence for the
nobility. Bishops, dukes, and earls had here their
town houses, and among the titled residents was the
painter, Sir Godfrey Kneller.
The palace on the Thames known as " Somerset
House " was in Milton's lifetime a magnificent
structure; built in 1544-49, it was from the time
of Elizabeth to 1775 a residence much favoured by
royalty. Pepys tells us in 1662: "Indeed it is
observed that the greatest court nowadays is there."
It was then the residence of the queen mother, whose
rooms he describes as " most stately and nobly
furnished," and he remarks upon the echo on the
stairs, " which continues a voice so long as the
singing three notes, concords one after another, they
all three shall sound in concert together a good while
most pleasantly." The site occupied an area of six
hundred feet from east to west and five hundred
from north to south. The present large edifice,
which was erected on the site of the old one, demol-
ished in 1775, is used for many important public
purposes.
CHAPTER XIV.
WHITEHALL. WESTMINSTER ABBEY
[GOTLAND YARD, the headquarters of
the Metropolitan Police, discloses in its
cramped and dingy quarters little if any-
thing that remains of the time when Milton lived
within its precincts. In the days when he dwelt here
and assisted Cromwell as his Latin secretary, some
remnants of the former palace of the Scottish kings,
which once had occupied this site, were still to be
seen. Hard by at one time lived both the greatest
architects of that age of building, Jones and Wren.
From Scotland Yard to Cannon Row, Westminster,
there extended in Milton's lifetime the stately old
palace of Whitehall, built in the Tudor style of
Hampton Court. A writer in the last days of
Queen Elizabeth tells us that it was truly royal;
enclosed on one side by the Thames, on the other
by a park which connects it with St. James's, another
royal palace. He speaks of an immense number
of swans, birds favoured by royalty then as now,
which floated on the salty bosom of the tidal
240
THE KING'S GATE AT WHITEHALL, LEADING TO
WESTMINSTER
Designed by Holbein.
flMlton's England 241
Thames as now they do upon its sweeter waters at
Runnymede and Windsor. He also mentions that
deer were numerous. An open way led through
the palace grounds from Charing Cross to West-
minster, which, although shut in by gates at either
end, was an open thoroughfare. When Cardinal
Wolsey owned Whitehall, it was known as " York
Place," and did not receive the former title until
Henry VIII. had taken possession of it. Here the
voluptuous monarch visited his great rival in mag-
nificence, and at a masque within these walls cast
covetous eyes upon fair Anne Boleyn. Within these
richly tapestried and stately halls a few months later,
the " little great lord cardinal " bade a long fare-
well to all his greatness, and with a heavy heart
entered his barge at the foot of Whitehall stairs.
Henry added many features to his new posses-
sions, among others a stately gateway of three
stories with mullioned windows and octagonal
towers designed by Holbein. Sir Thomas More at
Chelsea had discovered the merits of this artist, and
there presented him to the king, who was a clever
connoisseur in art as well as wives. It was in
Whitehall that Hans Holbein painted the well-
known portrait of the straddling monarch. From
the advent of that shrewd politician, great sovereign,
yet vain and silly woman, Elizabeth, Whitehall be-
242 flDf Item's Bngianfc
came definitely the seat of royalty, though the Tower
theoretically remained so. The library of this
learned woman was well filled with books, not only
English, but French, Latin, Greek, and Italian.
Masques, tournaments, and every form of gorgeous
entertainment, from Wolsey's time to that of Will-
iam III., made money flow like water in Whitehall,
except during the short domination of the Puritan
party. James L, upon the burning of the Banquet
Hall in 1615, determined to commission Inigo Jones,
not only to build a new one, but to build a whole
new palace, of which this hall was but the fortieth
part.
The Banquet Hall is in the Palladian style of
architecture, and is in feet in length, and half as
great in width and height. Its ceiling is decorated
with pictures by Rubens, painted on canvas and sent
from abroad. They represent the apotheosis of
Tames I. and scenes from the life of Charles I. The
original plan, which was not carried out, was to
have included a number of mural paintings by Van
Dyck, which should represent the history and cere-
monies of the Order of the Garter. The palace was
planned to cover the whole space from the Thames
to St. James's Park, and from Charing Cross to
Westminster. In Milton's time of residence in
Whitehall upon the south was the Bowling Green,
flDUton's Bnalanfc 243
and north of it the Privy Gardens. The front con-
sisted of the existing Banquet Hall, the only part
of the plan of Inigo Jones that ever materialised,
the gateways, and a row of low gabled buildings.
Behind these were three courts or quadrangles.
East of the Banquet Hall were a row of offices,
the Great Hall or Presence Chamber, and the Chapel
and private rooms of the king and queen. The art
treasures and library were in the " Stone Gallery,"
which ran along the east side of the Privy Garden.
The magnificence which was displayed at Whitehall
in Milton's early boyhood may be perceived from
the pomp and luxury of George Villiers, afterward
Duke of Buckingham, when he came to make his
fortune at the court of James I. " It was common
with him at any ordinary dancing to have his
cloaths trimmed with great diamonds; hatbands,
cockades, and earrings to be yoked with great and
manifold knots of pearls in short, to be manacled,
fettered, and imprisoned in jewels, insomuch that at
his going over to Paris in 1625, he had twenty-
seven suits of cloaths made, the richest that embroid-
ery, silk, velvet, gold, and gems could contribute;
one of which was a white, uncut velvet, set all over,
both suit and cloak, with diamonds valued at four-
score thousand pounds, besides a great feather stuck
all over with diamonds; as were also his sword,
244 /DMlton's Enslanfc
girdle, hatband, and spurs." He drove in a coach
with six horses, and was carried sometimes in a
sedan-chair, which mode of conveyance then was
new and caused much outcry against the using of
men as beasts of burden.
We have already alluded to the famous masque,
which was planned by members of the Inns of
Court at Ely Place, and carried out in 1633 to
please the queen an entertainment so unique in
its splendour as to be referred to in every account of
Whitehall. But the palace is chiefly notable, not
for scenes of gaiety, but for that mournful sight
which struck terror to the breast of every European
monarch, and horrified every believer in the divine
right of kings. On the 2/th of January, 1648-49,
the death sentence was passed upon Charles I., of
whom a few months later one of his followers
wrote :
" Great Charles, thou earthly god, celestial man, . . .
Thy heavenly virtues angels should rehearse,
It is a theam too high for human verse."
Cromwell hesitated long before he signed the
death warrant. If banishment of the king could
have secured their rights to Englishmen, gladly
would he have urged a milder sentence. But with
the king alive, he felt there was no surety of peace
OLIVER CROMWELL
From a crayon by Cooper at Sidney-Sussex College, Cambridge.
flMlton's J6n0lanfc 245
or justice, and after painful hesitation he set his
seal to the death warrant. Says Masson : " At the
centre of England was a will that had made itself
adamant, by express vow and deliberation before-
hand, for the very hour which now had arrived.
Fairfax had relented . . . Vane had withdrawn
from the work . . . there was an agony over what
was coming among many that had helped to bring
it to pass. Only some fifty or sixty governing
Englishmen, with Oliver Cromwell in the midst of
them, were prepared for every responsibility and
stood inexorably to their task. They were the will
of England now, and they had the army with them.
What proportion of England besides went with
them, it might be difficult to estimate. One private
Londoner, at all events, can be named who approved
thoroughly of their policy, and was ready to testify
the same. While the sentenced king was at St.
James's, there was lying on Milton's writing-table
in his house in High Holborn at least the begin-
nings of a pamphlet on which he had been engaged
during the king's trial, and in which in vehement
answer to the outcry of the Presbyterians generally
... he was to defend all the recent acts of the
army, Pride's Purge included, justify the existing
governments of the army chiefs and the fragment
of Parliament that assisted them, inculcate repub-
246 rtMlton's Englanfc
lican beliefs in his countrymen, and prove to them
above all this proposition : ' That it is lawful, and
hath been held so through all ages, for any who
have the power, to call to account a tyrant, or
wicked king, and, after due conviction, to depose
and put him to death, if the ordinary magistrate
have neglected or denied to do it.' The pamphlet
was not to come out in time to bear practically on
the deed which it justified ; but while the king was
yet alive, it was planned, sketched, and in part
written."
Three days after his sentence the king bade fare-
well to his sobbing little son and daughter at St.
James's Palace, and walked across the park between
a line of soldiers to the stairs, which then were on
the site of the present Horse Guards. From thence
he crossed the street by a gallery, which led him
past the scaffold draped in black, and into his own
bedchamber in the Banquet Hall. From there, a
little later, he passed through a window, or possibly
an opening in the wall, upon the scaffold, with his
attendant and Bishop Juxon. Two unknown men
in masks and false hair had undertaken the grim
and dangerous task of executioner. For among the
throngs that filled the streets from Charing Cross
down to Westminster there were many who would
readily have torn them in pieces. The " martyr-
flMlton's Bn0lan& 247
king," as Jacobins still call him, now that the end
of his arbitrary reign had come, behaved with
dignity. His last words were : " To your power
I must submit, but your authority I deny." From
the roof of a neighbouring mansion, Archbishop
Usher stood until he sickened at the sight and
swooned, and was carried to his bed. Andrew Mar-
veil's well-known lines upon this scene will be
recalled :
" While round the armed bands,
Did clasp their bloody hands,
He nothing common did or mean,
Upon that memorable scene,
Nor called the gods with vulgar spite,
To vindicate his hopeless right ;
But with his keener eye,
The axe's edge did try ;
Then bowed his kingly head,
Down, as upon a bed."
Strangely enough, it was on this very spot where
his death forecast the dawning of that new princi-
ple of government of the people, by the people, for
the people, which his whole nature loathed, that
London had seen the beginnings of the civil strife.
Here a company of the citizens, " returning from
Westminster, where they had been petitioning
quietly for justice, were set upon by some of the
court as they passed Whitehall, in the which
248 flMlton's Bn0lant>
tumult divers were hurt, and one or more slain
just by the Banqueting House."
The regicides, who felt their bloody deed to be
a sad necessity for England's safety, had no desire
to wreak a mean revenge upon the body of the king.
Unlike those of many far nobler men who had died
as " traitors," his body was not dishonoured, but was
treated with due respect. It was embalmed, and lay
for days under a velvet pall at St. James's Palace,
where crowds came to see it. The authorities ob-
jected to his burial in Westminster Abbey, as the
place was too public, and crowds might gather there.
But they accorded him a burial in St. George's
Chapel, Windsor, whither his body was taken in a
hearse drawn by six horses and followed by four
mourning coaches. His coffin was placed beside
that of Henry VIII. within the choir. The next
month after the death of Charles, the Parliament
voted the use of a large part of Whitehall to Crom-
well. Every Monday he dined with all his officers
above the captain's rank. Milton, as his Latin secre-
tary, and Andrew Marvell must have been often at
his board, and Waller, his kinsman, and perhaps the
youthful Dryden. He was a great lover of music
and entertained those who were skilful in any form
of art. It is through Cromwell that England owns
to-day the Raphael cartoons at Kensington. He
's tt(jlan& 249
purchased many other of the paintings which had
belonged to the magnificent collection of Charles I.
and had been sold. Here his old mother died, and
here in 1658, on a wild August day, amid the tumult
of a storm that raged and howled over a large part
of England, the great heart of the Protector ceased
to beat. On the day that he lay dying, a lad of
fifteen years, named Isaac Newton, turned the vio-
lence of the storm to his account by jumping first
with the wind and then against it, and computing its
force by the difference of the distances.
As the dying Oliver approached his end, he was
much in prayer; an attendant has recorded some
of these last utterances in which he commended
God's people to the keeping of the Almighty : " Give
them," he prayed, " consistency of judgment, one
heart, and mutual love; and go on to deliver them
and with the work of reformation; and make the
name of Christ glorious in the world. Teach those
who look too much on thy instruments, to depend
more upon thyself. Pardon such as desire to
trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are
thy people too." Probably never by any master of
Whitehall was such a sincerely devout and magnani-
mous petition raised to heaven. Of the decapitation
of his dead body and its subsequent history, when
Charles II. was able to wreak his vengeance, we
25 ADilton's I6n0lan&
need not speak. Neither need we rehearse the well-
known record of the dissolute monarch who on the
Restoration set up his profligate court at Whitehall.
Of the last hours of Charles II. Evelyn paints a
loathsome picture : " I can never forget the inex-
pressible luxury and profaneness, gaming, and all
dissoluteness, and as it were total forgetfulness of
God (it being Sunday evening) which I was witness
of : the king sitting and toying with his concubines,
a French boy singing love songs in that glorious
gallery, whilst about twenty of the great courtiers
and other dissolute persons were at basset around a
large table, a bank of at least two thousand pounds
in gold before them. . . . Six days after all was in
the dust." In the reign of William III. two fires,
in 1691 and 1697, consumed all of the palace except
the Banquet Hall of Inigo Jones.
The Westminster Abbey that Milton knew, unlike
the old St. Paul's of his day, was indeed a house of
God, and was not defiled with the intrusion of
hucksters and dandies and the bustle of the Ex-
change. Its lofty walls, ungrimed by smoke, rose
fair and stately; the present towers of the west
front were then unbuilt, and its mass presented a
long, unbroken, horizontal sky-line. Under its
high, embowered roof, Milton may have seen less
warmth of colour than we, for the stained glass
flDUton's Englant) 251
is modern, but he was spared the majority of the
pretentious and tasteless monuments which crowd
the transepts and the side aisles to-day, and for the
most part are in bulk in inverse proportion to their
artistic merit, and to the importance of those whom
they honour. Perhaps there was no man in Eng-
land to whose sensitive soul the solemn minster
spoke more eloquently. With a mind richly stored
in history, and with the artist's eye and prophet's
soul, every stone of this most venerable and beautiful
of English churches must have been dear to him.
It is not within the scope of this little volume even
to touch upon the romantic history of this centre
of English life or to examine its noble architecture,
but only to indicate what may most have touched the
mind and heart of the great scholar and patriot-
reformer who often passed its portals on his walk
from Petty France to Whitehall.
In the south aisle of the nave are buried two
ladies whom Milton probably knew. They are the
two wives of Cromwell's secretary Sir Samuel
Morland, the inventor of the speaking trumpet and
improver of the fire-engine. The inscriptions by
their husband appear in Hebrew, Greek, Ethiopic,
and English. In the north aisle is a curious monu-
ment of 1631 to Jane Hill. At the rear of the lady's
252 /Button's Bnglanfc
figure is a skeleton in a winding-sheet. Among the
memorials of his contemporaries which must have
peculiarly interested Milton was the little slab in
the nave marked, " O rare Ben Jonson," which slab
was later removed to the Poets' Corner. Beneath
a modern paving stone, which now covers the spot,
in an upright posture was placed the coffin of the
poet who in his last days of poverty, in 1637, asked
Charles I. for eighteen inches of square ground in
Westminster Abbey. He died in a house between the
Abbey and St. Margaret's Church. Newton's tomb
near by Milton never saw, as the youth of the man
of science covered only Milton's later years. On
entering the south transept, the first monument that
must have claimed his interest was that of Camden,
the learned antiquary. Just before going to Cam-
bridge, in 1623, Milton may have attended the
funeral of this man, whose great work, " Britan-
nia " added new lustre to Elizabeth's glorious reign.
Camden did for England what Stow did for London,
and preserved the knowledge of the nation of that
day. His bust, in the rich costume of his time, pre-
sents a speaking likeness, and with his portrait in
the National Gallery make the eminent scholar seem
a personality as real as Raleigh's. Ben Jonson, who
was one of his pupils when he was head master of
/IMlton's Enala^ 253
Westminster School, lovingly ascribes to him the
source of his own inspiration :
" Camden, most reverend head, to whom I owe
All that I am in acts, all that I know."
Camden wrote in 1600 the first guide-book of the
Abbey, which, being in Latin, would have served
Milton better than it would the modern visitor.
In an unmarked grave lies the body of Richard
Hakluyt, the great geographer, who died in 1616.
Just beyond Camden's tomb is that of the great
scholar, Casaubon. On its front are plainly scratched
the initials of the gentle angler, Izaak Walton, by
himself, with the date, 1658. A few feet distant on
the pavement a slab marks the grave of the " old,
old, very old " man who died in 1635 at the reputed
age of one hundred and fifty-two. " Old Parr," as
he was known, is said to have been born in 1483,
and married his first wife at the age of eighty,, and
his second in 1605, when he was one hundred and
twenty-two years of age. The Earl of Arundel,
determined to exhibit this " piece of antiquity," had
him carried by litter from Shrewsbury and presented
to Charles I. On being questioned by the king about
religious matters he cautiously replied that he
thought it safest to hold whatever religion was held
by the reigning monarch, " for he knew that he
254 rtMUon s
came raw into the world, and thought it no point of
wisdom to be broiled out of it," an opinion quite
to be expected of a man who had lived through the
reigns of all the Tudors.
Further on, within the Poets' Corner, two monu-
ments especially must have been dear to the author of
" Comus " and " Lycidas." One marks the grave
of Chaucer, who lies under a beautiful Gothic
canopy erected in 1558, after the removal of his
body to this spot ; the other marks that of Edmund
Spenser, who died in 1598 in King Street, hard by,
" for lacke of bread." Yet Dean Stanley tells us
that " his hearse was attended by poets, and mourn-
ful elegies and poems, with the pens that wrote
them, were thrown into his tomb. What a funeral
was that at which Beaumont, Fletcher, Jonson, and,
in all probability, Shakespeare, attended! What a
grave in which the pen of Shakespeare may be
mouldering away ! " Of the author of the " Faerie
Queene " Milton himself said : " Our sage and
serious Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a
better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas." Near by
to Spenser's tomb is the monument to Ben Jonson,
at some distance from his grave, as has just been
said, and close at hand are the memorials to Dry-
den, Drayton, Cowley, and Francis Beaumont,
Milton's famous contemporaries. If the poet could
IN THE POETS' CORNER
flMlton's England 255
have looked forward two generations he might have
seen his own counterfeit presentment in marble upon
these walls. By that time the royalist feeling against
him had abated, and when in 1737 this belated
recognition of his greatness was placed upon the
wall, Doctor Gregory remarked to Doctor Johnson :
" I have seen erected in the church a bust of that
man whose name I once knew considered as a pollu-
tion of its walls."
After Shakespeare's death there was a strong
desire to remove his bones from Stratford to the
Abbey, upon which Milton and Jonson both pro-
tested. The former wrote:
" What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones
The labour of an age in piled stones ?"
and Jonson more emphatically exclaimed:
" My Shakespeare rise ! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further on to make thee room ;
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read and praise to give."
In St. Benedict's Chapel may be noted the graves
of Bishop Bilson, Doctor Tunson, Sir Robert An-
struther, and Sir Robert Ayton, famous men of
Milton's time.
256 flDUton's Bncjlanfc
In St. Edmund's Chapel, farther on, Milton as
a lad of fourteen may have seen in 1622 the young
man interred whose tomb is surmounted by a beau-
tiful figure of a youth in Roman armour. Hard
by under a lofty canopy lie two notable recumbent
figures, which mark the grave of the Earl and
Countess of Shrewsbury, and show the style of
costume of Milton's boyhood years.
Among the monuments of his contemporaries in
the chapel of Henry VII. that must have awakened
a sensation of disgust in the mind of the Puritan
poet, was that of the Duke of Buckingham, whose
barbaric splendour of attire has already been noted,
and who was murdered in 1628. Near by his huge
and ostentatious tomb, so characteristic of the man
whom it commemorates, lie under the pavement the
graves of his king, James I., and his consort.
We may be sure that the graves which most
interested Milton here were those of Oliver Crom-
well, his mother and sister, and his daughter,
Elizabeth Claypole, his son-in-law, Ireton, and
Bradshaw, who was president of the tribunal
which condemned Charles I. The Genoese envoy
of the time thus described Cromwell's death and
burial in his despatch to the Council of Genoa:
" He left the world with unimaginable valour,
prudence, and charity, and more like a priest or
flMIton's England 257
monk than a man who had fashioned and worked
so mighty an engine so few years. . . . His body
was opened and embalmed, and little trace of dis-
ease found therein; which was not the cause of
his death, but rather the continual fever which
came upon him from sorrow and melancholy at
Madame Claypole's death." Cromwell's body lay
in state at Somerset House, and was thence es-
corted to the tomb by an immense throng of
mourners, which included the city companies.
" The effigy or statue of the dead, made most lifelike
in royal robes, crown on head, in one hand the
sceptre and in the other the globe, was laid out on
a bier richly adorned and borne hither in a coach
made for the purpose, open on every side, and
adorned with many plumes and banners-." It is
said that Cromwell especially loved the Abbey, and
instituted the custom of commemorating English
worthies within its walls. Admiral Blake was the
first to receive this honour in 1657. " Cromwell
caused him to be brought up by land to London in
all the state that could be; and to encourage his
officers tc adventure their lives that they might be
pompously buried, he was with all solemnity possi-
ble interred in the Chapel of Henry VII., among the
monuments of the kings." Who can doubt that
Milton stood in sightless grief beside these tombs,
258 flMlton's Englanb
before the desecration of " Oliver's Vault? " Only
the body of Cromwell's daughter was left in peace,
and still remains. His mother and sister were
reburied in the green, and the reader already knows
what was the vile treatment of the other bodies. It
is said that to the royalist dean of Westminster,
Thomas Sprat, we owe the refusal of interment in
the Abbey to the " regicide " John Milton. Had
he been buried later where Cromwell's body had
lain, he too might have been thrust forth. It was
this dean who esteemed Cowley as a superior poet
to Milton, and called the former the " Pindar,
Horace, and Virgil of England." In the south
aisle lie General George Monck and Elizabeth,
Queen of Bohemia, eldest daughter of James I.,
whose marriage we have seen was celebrated by a
merry masque within the Temple grounds. This
was the English princess for whom a part of
Heidelberg Castle was built; she was mother of
Prince Rupert, whose strenuous efforts to save
the fortunes of his uncle, Charles L, did not endear
him to Milton and his friends. In this chapel lies a
wretched victim of her cousin, James I. This is
the Lady Arabella Stuart, whose marriage so dis-
pleased the king that he immured her in the Tower,
where, bereft of reason by her miseries, she died
when Milton was a boy.
/Baton's BnQlanfc 259
At the eastern end of the north aisle of the chapel
of Henry VII. is a baby's cradle-tomb, which has
been the frequent theme of verse. Standing beside
the little marble form of this daughter of James I.,
Milton may have felt a pang of heart as he thought
of his own little one buried in St. Margaret's, but a
stone's throw distant. Of those who were associated
with Milton's public work at Whitehall, was Admiral
Edward Popham, general of the Fleet of the Repub-
lic under Cromwell, who died in 1651. He was
buried at the state's expense in the chapel of
Henry VII., but after the Restoration his monument,
on which is his figure full size in armour, was
removed to John the Baptist's Chapel and the
inscription on it was erased. Opposite his tomb
is the grave of Robert Devereux, third Earl of
Essex, son of Elizabeth's unhappy favourite, who,
after serving King Charles, became General-in-
Chief of the Parliamentarian army in 1642. He
died in 1646, and was buried with high honours by
the Independents. In St. John's Chapel rests the
body of the wife of Colonel Scot, one of the judges
of Charles I., who was executed at Charing Cross.
At the foot of the steps which lead to the chapel
of Henry VII., in 1674, the same year in which
Milton died, was laid under a nameless stone the
body of the famous Earl of Clarendon, who was
260 flDUton'8 England
born in 1608-9, tne sa rne year in which the poet
was born. This famous Tory, the historian of the
Civil Wars and Restoration, was perhaps more
responsible than any other man for creating that
popular detestation of the name of Cromwell which
prevailed until the present generation had been
better instructed by less partisan critics. After two
hundred years his name was inscribed upon the
stone that covers his ashes. Within the Abbey rest
twenty of his relatives and descendants, among
them his royal granddaughters, Queen Mary and
Queen Anne. Not far distant, in the north ambula-
tory was interred in 1643 the body of the redoubt-
able John Pym, nicknamed " King Pym " by the
Royalists, for as Clarendon himself said : " He
seemed to all men to have the greatest influence upon
the House of Commons of any man, and in truth
I think he was at that time (1640), and some
months after, the most popular man and the most
able to do hurt that hath lived in any time." * Two
1 It is interesting here to contrast John Morley's judgment with
that of Clarendon :
" Surrounded by men who were often apt to take other views,
Pym, if ever English statesmen did, took broad ones ; and to impose
broad views upon the narrow is one of the things that a party leader
exists for. He had the double gift, so rare even among leaders in
popular assemblies, of being at once practical and elevated ; a master
of tactics and organising arts, and yet the inspirer of sound and
lofty principles. How can we measure the perversity of a king and
/IMlton's BnQlanfc 261
years after Pym's burial, there was laid close to
his grave the body of William Strode, one of the
five members demanded by Charles I. when he made
his famous entry into the House of Commons with
an armed force in 1641-2. The bodies of both were
exhumed in 1661, and flung with others of their
compatriots into a pit outside the Abbey walls.
There is every reason to assume that Milton would
have attended the funerals of both of these men. A
man whom he must have known well by reputation,
Doctor Peter Heylin, who died in 1662, is buried
beneath the sub-dean's seat in the north aisle of the
choir. He was Laud's chaplain, and wrote a life of
the great archbishop; under Charles I. he had for
a time supreme authority in the Abbey and super-
intended its repairs. During the Civil War he suf-
fered and was deprived of his property, but on the
accession of Charles II., he was reinstated in the
Abbey. It is interesting to note that the coronation
chair of oak, decorated with false jewels, which has
been used at coronations since the time of Ed-
ward I., has never left the Abbey except when it
was taken to Westminster Hall, when Oliver Crom-
well was there installed as Lord Protector.
counsellors who forced into opposition a man so imbued with the
deep instinct of government, so whole-hearted, so keen of sight, so
skilful in resource as Pym ? "
262 /iDUton's
A few of the scenes that the great minster wit-
nessed in Milton's time may be alluded to. The
funeral of James I. in 1625 was the most magnifi-
cent that England had ever seen. The hearse was
fashioned by Inigo Jones. The sermon was two
hours in length. Mourning cloaks were given to
nine thousand persons, and the rest of the outlay
was proportionate. No wonder that Charles I.
within two months sent word to the Commons that
" the ordinary revenue is clogged with debts, and
exhausted with the late king's funeral and other
expenses of necessity and honour." The Abbey
suffered somewhat from the Puritan hatred of
images and " idolatry," during the Commonwealth.
By order of Parliament the sacred vestments were
seized and burned. Of the curious wax effigies of
monarchs who antedated Milton's death, only one
is still preserved. It is that of Charles II. and is
robed in red velvet with collar and ruffles of real
point lace. For a long time it stood above his grave
in the chapel of Henry VII. These waxworks used
to be publicly exhibited, after which the cap was
passed around for contributions. Milton, in his
boyhood, may have gazed in wonder at the gorgeous
figure of Elizabeth arrayed as a later one still is
to-day, in her own jewelled stomacher and velvet
robe embroidered with gold; doubtless he found
flMlton's EnQlanfc 263
a visit to the effigies of Westminster Abbey as
entertaining as a modern boy finds a visit to Madame
Tussaud's to-day. From the time of Edward I. it
was customary to make effigies of kings. Up to the
time of Henry V. the embalmed bodies and not the
effigies were displayed upon the funeral car. At
first these figures were made of wood, with perhaps
the faces and hands of plaster. These were set up
in the church for a season, after which many of
them were preserved in presses standing in a row,
and shown as has been described. In Milton's
time it seems evident that the list included Edward
I. and Eleanor, Edward III. and Philippa, Henry
V. and Katherine, Henry VII. and Elizabeth of
York, James I. and Anne of Denmark, and Henry,
Prince of Wales.
It is probable that Sir Christopher Wren's plan
for the completion of the Abbey would have materi-
ally added to its beauty. His scheme is said to
have included a graceful Gothic spire rising from
the low central tower. The incongruous towers of
the west front were chiefly due to Hawksmore.
CHAPTER XV.
THE PRECINCTS OF THE ABBEY. WESTMINSTER
PALACE. ST. MARGARET'S
'URING the Civil War, the spot within
Westminster which most interested every
reformer was that where, for over five
years, the famous Westminster Assembly gathered.
During that time this body of one hundred and
forty-nine prelates and learned men held over fifteen
hundred sessions, at first in the chapel of Henry
VII., and later in the warmer and cosier apartment
known as the " Jerusalem Chamber." This room
was in the present generation occupied by the
scholars who for years laboured together on the
revised version of the Bible. The Assembly was
called by Parliament " to be consulted with by
them on the settling of the government and liturgy
of the Church, and for the vindicating and clearing
of the doctrine of the Church of England from false
aspersions and interpretations." In that age, when
religious questions were paramount, the work that
devolved upon these men demanded insight, honesty,
and great courage. The members, for the most part,
264
flMlton's England 265
were elected from the different counties and merely
confirmed by Parliament ; but to these, ten members
of the House of Lords and twenty members of the
House of Commons were added. Only those ques-
tions could be considered that should be proposed by
either or both houses of Parliament. Four shillings
a day for his expenses was allowed each clerical
member, with freedom from all other duties except
attendance on the Assembly. Among the one hun-
dred and forty-nine were several members, like
Archbishop Usher, who were defenders of Episco-
pacy. In that age no modern questions as to
inspiration disturbed the minds of devout men, but
church government was to them a matter of such
serious moment as the modern mind can scarcely
understand. As the results of these prolonged and
serious conferences, Dean Stanley says we have the
" Directory, the Longer and Shorter Catechism, and
that famous Confession of Faith which, alone
within these Islands, was imposed by law on the
whole kingdom ; and which, alone of all Protestant
Confessions, still, in spite of its sternness and
narrowness, retains a hold on the minds of its
adherents to which its fervour and its logical
coherence in some measure entitle it."
During Milton's lifetime the Chapter House,
which had become public property after the Dissolu-
266 flMlton's
tion, was used for storing public documents, and
here he may have seen the ancient Domesday Book,
which until within fifty years was treasured there.
At the time of the Commonwealth, the ancient
chamber close by the Chapter House, and known
as the " Pyx," held the regalia, and was broken
open by the officers of the House of Commons, in
order to make an inventory, when the Church au-
thorities refused to surrender the keys. The Pyx no
longer holds the regalia, which, after the Restora-
tion, was transferred to the Tower. The keys of
its double doors are seven, and are deposited with
seven distinct officers of the Exchequer. The door
is lined with human skins. Within the cloisters
Henry Lawes, the musician, was buried in 1662.
Near by the Abbey stands Westminster School,
founded early in the sixteenth century upon the
site of the ancient monastery. The dormitory has
been turned into a noble schoolroom ninety-six feet
in length. Camden, the famous antiquary, was once
master of the school, and among its famous pupils
whose lives touched Milton's, were the poets, George
Herbert, Cowley, who published poems while he
was at school here, and Dryden. Among men
famous in other walks of life were the great geog-
rapher, Hakluyt, and Sir Christopher Wren. Hak-
luyt, who died the same year that Shakespeare died,
flMlton's Engla^ 267
in 1616, tells us that his interest in discovery and
in naval science began when he was a Queen's
Scholar in " that fruitful nurserie." At Oxford he
pursued his favourite studies, and read " whatso-
ever printed or written discoveries or voyages he
found extant in Greeke, Latine, Italian, Spanish,
Portugall, French, or Englishe languages." Evelyn
says in his " Diary : " On " May I3th, 1661, I heard
and saw such exercises at the election of scholars
at Westminster Schools to be sent to the university,
in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, in themes and
extempry verses, as wonderfully astonished me in
such youths, with such readiness and wit, some of
whom not above twelve or thirteen years of age."
Here Milton may have witnessed, on a Christmas-
tide, a play of Plautus or of Terence, given by
the boys of Westminster according to their annual
custom, which is still maintained.
In the seventeenth century, the double Gatehouse
of Westminster, which once stood on the site of the
Royal Aquarium of to-day, held as prisoner Sir
Walter Raleigh, who passed the last night of his life
here. The night before his execution his cousin
called on him; Raleigh tried to relieve his sadness
with pleasantry, when his cousin remonstrated with
the words, " Sir, take heed you go not too much
upon the brave hand, for your enemies will take
268 /iDilton's Bnglaufc
exceptions at that." " Good Charles," replied Ral-
eigh, " give me leave to be merry, for this is the
last merriment that ever I shall have in this world,
but when I come to the last part, thou shalt see I
will look on it like a man," and even so he did.
When he had reached the scaffold in Palace Yard
the next day, and had taken off his gown and doub-
let, he asked the executioner to show him his axe.
When he had taken it in his hands he felt along
the edge, and smiling said : " This is a sharp medi-
cine, but it is a physician for all diseases." Then
he granted his forgiveness to the sheriff who knelt
before him. When his head was on the block, before
the fatal blow, he said : " So the heart be right,
it is no matter which way the head lies." So
perished the bold discoverer and coloniser, the
author and gallant knight, when ten-year-old John
Milton lived in Bread Street. Near the spot where
his body rests in the church of St. Margaret's, West-
minster, now rises a memorial window presented by
Americans and inscribed by Lowell in remembrance
of Raleigh's connection with America:
" The New World's sons, from England's breasts we drew
Such milk as bids remember whence we came ;
Proud of her past, wherefrom our future grew,
This window we inscribe with Raleigh's name."
Iii this prison, afterward, John Hampden and Sir
John Eliot were confined, and Richard Lovelace,
/IMlton's EnQlanfc 269
who was imprisoned for his devotion to Charles I.,
wrote the well-known lines :
" Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage ;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage."
Where Westminster Palace Hotel now stands,
in the ancient Almonry of the Abbey, Caxton set
up his press, and in 1474 printed his first book
the " Game and Play of Chess."
In Milton's day, a grim old fortress marked the
" Sanctuary," or place of refuge for criminals.
From the sacred shelter of this retreat the mother
of the little Edward V. surrendered him with sad
misgiving to his cruel uncle, who carried . him to
the Tower. This spot was a resort for persecuted
saint and guilty sinner. Within its walls he was
as secure as was the ancient Hebrew in his city of
refuge. When Milton lived in Petty France and
passed from there to Whitehall by the Sanctuary, it
had fallen into disrepute and only the most aban-
doned sought its shelter. The Sanctuary at West-
minster was only one of thirty known to have been
contemporaneous with it in the monasteries of Eng-
land before the Dissolution.
The magnificent royal palace of Westminster,
\vhich was built by Edward the Confessor, and
270 flMlton's Englanfc
improved by William the Conqueror, had largely
disappeared in Milton's time. The Great Hall and
the crypt under the chapel of St. Stephen are
almost all that now remain, but Milton, in addition
to these, saw the chapel itself and its cloisters, and
the famous " Star Chamber " and " Painted Cham-
ber," which were preserved until the fire which
burned the Houses of Parliament in 1834. Previous
to the Dissolution, the Commons had sat within the
ancient Chapter House of the Abbey, at an incon-
venient distance from the House of Lords. Then
they were transferred to St. Stephen's Chapel, an
oblong building ninety feet in length and thirty in
width, which had externally at each corner an
octagonal tower. It was lighted by five windows
on each side, between which its walls were supported
by great buttresses. It had two stories, and the upper
one was occupied by the House of Commons. These
walls have echoed to the ringing words of Eliot,
Hampden, Pym, Sir Harry Vane, and Cromwell,
to Burke and Fox and Pitt, and the long line of
valiant Englishmen who never confounded patriot-
ism and loyalty to country with subserviency to the
will of any fallible man whom chance had placed
upon the nation's throne. Here Eliot, in sharp,
emphatic words, which contrasted with the ponder-
ous phraseology of the time, cried out against the
Abilton's Englaito 271
gorgeously apparelled and arrogant Buckingham:
" He has broken those nerves and sinews of our
land, the stores and treasures of the king. There
needs no search for it. It is too visible. His
profuse expenses, his superfluous feasts, his mag-
nificent buildings, his riots, his excesses, what are
they but the visible evidences of an express ex-
hausting of the state, a chronicle of his waste of
the revenues of the Crown? . . . Through the
power of state and justice he has dared ever to strike
at his own ends." Bold words! which took more
courage than to face the cannon's mouth, for his
protest then and later meant to face a dungeon in
the Tower, from which only death gave him release.
But Eliot's words were a tonic to his fellows,
and when they met two years later, in 1628, Sir
Thomas Wentworth showed himself a worthy fol-
lower : " We must vindicate our ancient liberties,"
said he, " we must reinforce the laws made by our
ancestors. We must set such a stamp upon them, as
no licentious spirit shall dare hereafter to invade
them." Of the Petition of Right, and the Remon-
strance; of the dissolution of Parliament, and the
eleven years when these walls were silent; of
Charles's revival of Star Chamber trials to fill his
empty exchequer by the fines, and the Parliamentary
history of the Civil War, and all that centres around
272 flDUton's
these walls which echoed with the eloquence of
England's noblest statesmen, there is no space to
speak.
The Star Chamber was probably so named from
being anciently ornamented with golden stars. It
stood parallel with the river on the eastern side
of Palace Yard and was formerly the council
chamber of the police. It was a beautiful panelled
room with mullioned windows. The lords who
tried offences were bound by no law, but they
created and defined the offences which they pun-
ished. Every penalty except death could be inflicted.
In such tyrannies the Star Chamber could have
been exceeded only by the terrible Council of Ten
in Venice. One of the first deeds of the new Parlia-
ment of 1641 was to abolish the Star Chamber.
That year a mob of six thousand citizens in Old
Palace Yard had come armed with swords and
clubs, and had seized the entrance to the House of
Lords and called for justice against Lord Strafford.
The Painted Chamber was named from its mural
decorations, which antedated Milton's time at least
three hundred years. It was strangely proportioned,
eighty feet long, twenty broad, and fifty feet high.
Here the Confessor died. Here was the trial of
Charles I. when it was adjourned from Westminster
Hall. Here his death warrant was signed, which
flMlton's EttQlanfc 273
is now preserved within the library of the House of
Lords.
Says Knight : " Amid all the misgovernment of
the reign of Charles II., the rights of the House of
Commons and its true position in the Constitution
were recognised in a manner in which they had never
been in the former days of the monarchy. Attempts
were made to manage the Parliament, and also to
govern without it; but when it was suffered to
meet, its debates were nearly as free as they are
at present, and took as wide a range as they have
ever done since. The Commons for session after
session during this reign discussed the question of
excluding the heir presumptive to the throne, the
king's own brother, and even passed a bill for that
purpose. Would any approach to such an inter-
ference as that have been endured either by Eliza-
beth or James I. ? . . . and this change, this gain had
been brought about by the Long Parliament and the
great Rebellion."
In the time of Milton the pillory stood before
Westminster Hall, and here he may have seen, on
one of his trips from Horton in 1636, the stiff-necked
Prynne branded on either cheek, and exposed with
one ear cut off, according to the barbarous methods
of the time, for writings which were supposed to
Jiave reflected on the queen. In those days the
274 /HMlton's
noble proportions of the hall were partly masked
by neighbouring shops. The architecture and the
long history of this famous hall of William Rufus
are almost as familiar as those of Westminster
Abbey, and therefore need little comment here. The
story of Guy Fawkes and the sentence passed upon
the conspirators here in 1606 was one of the first bits
of English history that a boy born but two years
later would have heard. In 1640, Charles I. and his
queen, concealed behind the tapestry of a dark cabi-
net, listened to the trial of Stratford, which lasted
eighteen days. Nine years later the king sat at his
own trial beneath the banners of his troops, which
had been taken at the battle of Naseby. When the
clerk read the words : " Charles Stuart, as a tyrant,
traitor, murderer," etc., the king is said to have
laughed in the face of the court. In Pepys's diary
we get a glimpse, a few years later, of the com-
mercial uses to which this stately edifice had been
degraded, for we find little booths and stalls for
selling scarfs and trifles were ranged along the walls
of the interior. More than a hundred years later,
part of the hall seems to have been reserved for
stalls, which presumably were removed for coro-
nation days and the great functions, for which its
stately proportions are so well fitted. The building
is one of the most spacious edifices of stone whose
WESTMINSTER HALL
rfegun by William Rufus in 1097. Here William Wallace, Sir Thomas More,
Sir Thomas Wyatt, Robert Devereux (Earl of Essex), Guy Fawkes, the Earl
of Strafford, and Charles I. were condemned to death. The chief access to the
House of Commons in Milton's lifetime was by an archway on the east side,
through which Charles I. passed to arrest the Five Members. Here Cromwell,'
in 1653, wearing the royal purple, and holding a gold sceptre in one hand and J
Bible in the other, was saluted as Lord Protector.
From an old engraving.
..
/IDUton's EnglanO 275
roof is unsupported. 1 .e roof of Irish oak is said
to be always free from spiders and insects.
Close under the shadow of the towering Abbey
lies the little church, St. Margaret's, which must
have had peculiarly tender associations in Milton's
mind. Here he buried his beloved second wife,
whom, from Aldermanbury church, he had taken to
his home in Petty France, near the Abbey, for one
short happy year of married life. It is of her
that he speaks in his beautiful sonnet beginning:
" Methought my late espoused saint,
Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave."
The large memorial window to Milton at the
west end of the church w r as in recent years presented
by Mr. Childs of Philadelphia. This depicts numer-
ous scenes from " Paradise Lost " and from Mil-
ton's life. He is represented as a youth visiting the
aged Galileo, and as the old blind poet dictating his
immortal lines to his two daughters. The inscrip-
tion by Whittier expresses the thought and feeling
not only of the New England poet, but of every
American scholar:
" The New World honours him whose lofty plea
For England's freedom made her own more sure,
Whose song immortal as his theme shall be
Their common freehold while both worlds endure."
276 flbilton's
Amongst the Puritans who preached here was
the famous Richard Baxter, author of " The Saints'
Rest,'"' whose glum visage in the National Gallery
reveals little of the true nobility of his character
and of his well-ordered mind. The modern inscrip-
tion by Lowell on Raleigh's memorial here has been
already mentioned.
The church is rich in monuments of figures clad
in the fashions of Milton's time and that which
just preceded it, the architectural accessories of
which indicate the gradual deterioration of Renais-
sance decoration. The rare old glass of the chancel
window is referred to in every guide-book, and its
remarkable history need not be here detailed. In
the reign of Charles I. fast-day sermons were
preached here, and both houses of Parliament met
here with the Assembly of Divines, and prayed be-
fore taking the covenant.
CHAPTER XVI.
LAMBETH PALACE. ST. SAVIOUR'S. LONDON
BRIDGE
IN Milton's day, London Bridge, over the
narrowest part of the Thames, was the
only bridge that spanned the silent high-
way between the Tower and Lambeth. The ven-
erable pile of buildings which then, as now, was the
chief point of interest on the southern bank, was
usually reached by one of the many barges that
plied up and down and across from shore to shore.
In Milton's boyhood its gray towers had already
marked for three centuries the residence of the
Archbishops of Canterbury. It has now been the
home of more than fifty primates. The student
of English history will find no building, with the
exception of the Tower and the Abbey, which brings
him so closely into connection with the whole his-
tory of England as does Lambeth Palace. It lies
low upon the site of an ancient marsh overflowed by
the Thames at this, its greatest width, this side of
London Bridge. As late as Milton's boyhood the
shore between Lambeth Church and Black friars was
277
278 flDUton's Bnglanb
a haunt of wild fowl and a royal hunting-ground.
A grove stood then on the site of the long line of
St. Thomas's Hospital. Lambeth Bridge, so called,
was at that time simply a landing-place. As every
schoolboy remembers, it was here that on a December
night in 1688, Mary of Modena, the fair queen of
James II., alighted on her flight from Whitehall,
disguised as a washerwoman; under the shelter of
the tower of Lambeth she cowered, awaiting the
coach that was to rescue her, while in an agony of
fear she embraced the parcel of linen which held
concealed the infant who was to be known in his-
tory as the " Pretender."
The visitor to Lambeth will find it worth his
while to pause a few minutes before presenting his
letter of permission to enter the palace, and spend
the brief time in Lambeth Church, if only to see
the quaint old window of the peddler and his dog,
a memorial of the peddler who centuries since gave
an almost worthless acre of land to Lambeth, from
which it has since drawn large revenues. There
is a peal of eight bells in the old gray tower the
music of the bells was one that our forefathers loved
apparently more than other folk. " The English are
vastly fond of great noises that fill the air," wrote
Hentzner shortly before Milton's birth, " such as
firing of cannon, beating of drums, and ringing of
flMlton's England 279
bells. It is common that a number of them who
have got a glass in their heads do get up into some
belfry, and ring bells for hours together, for the
sake of exercise. Hence this country has been called
' the ringing island.' '
In Milton's time the buildings of Lambeth were
less extensive than they are to-day. Its beautiful,
lofty gateway known as " Morton's," which was
built in 1490, is of red brick with stone trimmings,
and has an arched doorway under a large window
in the middle portion. It is perhaps the largest
and best specimen of the early Tudor work that now
remains in England. It is flanked by two massive
square towers five stories high. At this gate, from
earliest times until recently, a dole of money, bread,
and provisions was weekly given to thirty poor
parishioners of Lambeth. In earlier times the hos-
pitality that was offered was excessive and encour-
aged beggary. Stow tells us of the gifts of farthing
loaves which amounted to the sum of 500 a year.
At present the doles amount to about 200 a year
and are given only to well-known persons. In addi-
tion to these doles, huge baskets of fragments from
the three tables in the long dining-halls sufficed, as
Strype tells us, " to fill the bellies of a great number
of hungry people that waited at the gate." Some
conception of the size of Cranmer's establishment
280 rtMlton'8
may be gathered from the authentic list of his house-
hold : " Steward, treasurer, comptroller, gamators,
clerk of the kitchen, caterer, clerk of the spicery,
bakers, pantlers, yeomen of the horse, ushers,
butlers of wine and ale, larderers, squilleries, ushers
of the hall, porter, ushers of the chamber, daily
waiters in the great chamber, gentlemen ushers,
yeomen of the chamber, carver, sewer, cupbearer,
grooms of the chamber, marshal groom ushers,
almoner, cooks, chandler, butchers, master of the
horse, yeomen of the wardrobe, and harbingers."
Over such a rich and splendid household did the
Establishment place the man above all others who
was to be to England its highest embodiment of
the spirit of the young Carpenter of Nazareth.
To-day the Archbishop of Canterbury is given two
residences, and a salary of 15,000, that he may keep
up these establishments; that of the average curate
is about 100.
The great hall, which to-day contains the library,
is on the site of that of Boniface, who built the first
in the thirteenth century. Archbishop Juxon, who
attended Charles I. upon the scaffold, rebuilt the
present edifice after the original model, which had
been destroyed during the Commonwealth. One
of the great treasures of this library is Caxton's
" Chronicles of Great Britain," which was printed
rtMlton's England 281
in 1480 at Westminster. The Mazarin Bible, the
Life of Laud, with the autograph of Charles I., and
many books and manuscripts of great rarity and
value are also preserved here. The library is open
to the public under proper regulations on five days
in the week. Among the names of eminent men
who have served as librarians over this small but
precious library, none interests us more than that
of John Richard Green, the historian of the English
people.
The chapel, built in the last half of the thirteenth
century, is the oldest part that remains. An open-
ing into Cranmer's ancient " parloir " is now the
organ-loft. From the chancel one has a glimpse
of the original beautiful ceiling. The wall pillars
of Purbeck marble in the atrium are said to be one
thousand years old. In this chapel two of the first
American bishops were consecrated. The oak screen
was erected by Archbishop Laud. This chapel con-
tained the windows that were destroyed in the Civil
Wars, which served as such a theme of controversy
in Laud's trial. He testified as follows : " The first
thing the Commons have in their evidence against
me, is the setting up and repairing Popish images
and pictures in the glass windows of my chapel at
Lambeth, and amongst others the picture of Christ
hanging on the cross between two thieves in the
282 rtMlton's England
east window; of God the Father in the form of a
little old man with a glory, striking Miriam with a
leprosy; of the Holy Ghost descending in the
form of a dove; and of Christ's Nativity, Last
Supper, Resurrection, Ascension, and others. . . .
To which I answer first, That I did not set these
images up, but found them there before; Secondly,
that I did only repair the windows which were so
broken, and the chapel, which lay so nastily before
that I was ashamed to behold, and could not resort
to it but with some disdain, which caused me to
repair it to my great cost ; Thirdly, that I made up
the history of these old broken pictures, not by any
pattern in the mass book, but only by help of the
fragments and remainders of them which I com-
pared with the story." It is related that at a dinner
of the domestics during Laud's primacy, the king's
jester pronounced the grace, " Give great praise
to God, but little Laud to the devil," for which jest
he paid by long imprisonment.
In the so-called " Lollards' Tower " at the west
end of the chapel, the only part of the existing
palace that is built of stone, is a niche in which
was placed the image of St. Thomas a Becket, to
which Dean Stanley tells us " the watermen of the
Thames doffed their caps as they rode in their
countless barges."
THE LOLLARDS' TOWER, LAMBETH PALACE
Front an old engraving.
/IMlton's England 283
The small room at the top of the tower is wain-
scoted with oak over an inch thick, upon which
prisoners chained to its iron rings have carved
words in early English and Latin. Through the
oubliette in the floor dead prisoners were doubtless
dropped into the Thames, which in former days
washed the very walls of Lambeth, and swept under
this tower. Whether any Lollards were ever lodged
here is very doubtful, although it is true that Wyclif,
the arch-Lollard, was at one time examined for
his opinions, by the bishops at Lambeth. The
real Lollards' Tower seems to have been an adjunct
of old St. Paul's Cathedral. More probably the
prisoners here were Episcopalians of Milton's own
time.
In the dark crypt, the wretched queen, Anne
Boleyn, heard from the lips of Cranmer the annul-
ment of her marriage with Henry, and was forced
to affirm the disinheritance of her offspring. From
thence she went to the Tower and her doom. In
this same palace, where she lay a prisoner in 1533,
her predecessor, Katharine of Aragon, was a guest
on her arrival in England in 1501. Milton must
doubtless sometime have visited this princely resi-
dence, and have mused upon the martyred Cranmer
and Latimer and Sir Thomas More, and the long
list of kings and queens and men, who, as masters.
284 /HMlton's
guests, or prisoners, have slept within these walls.
Of all the noted men who were connected with
Lambeth in his day, none, of course, so stirred his
spirit as did Archbishop Laud, who lived here, and
exercised his power in the Star Chamber, during
the years when Parliament was silenced. From
1633 until his committal to the Tower on the charge
of treason in 1641 after the assembling of the Long
Parliament, he was master here. It was while here
at Lambeth that he supervised the compilation of
the Service Book; when this was enforced in 1637
upon the Scottish churches, it was so repugnant to
them that the riot begun in Edinburgh, by Jenny
Geddes flinging her stool in St. Giles's Cathedral
at the bishop's head, initiated a national revolt,
which led to the signing of the famous Scottish
National Covenant. Milton at this time, at the
age of thirty, was living at Horton. Little by little
the resolute archbishop came to be looked upon by
men of Milton's way of thinking as one whose sys-
tem demanded submission to absolutism in the state.
The student of Milton's prose writings is familiar
with the troublous history of Laud's time, and the
ludicrously trivial matters that then estranged ear-
nest men. But, while the ceremonies permitted in
the church two generations later were practically
those that Laud had so zealously striven for, the
rtMlton's En0lan& 285
result, says Gardiner, " was only finally attained by
a total abandonment of all Laud's methods. What
had been impossible to effect in a church to the
worship of which every person in the land was
obliged to conform, became possible in a church
which any one who pleased was at liberty to
abandon." After Laud's execution the see of
Canterbury was vacant nearly seventeen years.
Among the many portraits of the archbishops which
hang at Lambeth, the portrait of Laud by Van Dyck
is one of the most admirable. We read that his suc-
cessor, Sheldon, in 1665, in the time of the Great
Plague, " continued in his palace at Lambeth whilst
the contagion lasted, preserving by his charities
multitudes who were sinking under disease and
want, and by his pastoral exertions procured benevo-
lences to a vast amount." Admission to Lambeth
must be obtained by written request, but is by no
means difficult, yet no important spot in London is
so rarely visited by the general public. The enthu-
siasm and intelligence of the resident guide, who
has several times in the last ten years conducted
the writer through its historic precincts, makes an
hour at Lambeth a memorable lesson in English
history. His huge gray cat, whose name, " Massa-
chusetts," in other years brought a smile to the
lips of every American who chanced to learn it, no
286 /iDUton's England
longer purrs a welcome to the dim corridors and
towers of the old palace, but has gone the way of
all his short-lived contemporaries. Let us hope that
his master may for many years to come live to
tell the long, romantic tale of these old walls to all
of England's kin beyond the sea who journey hither
to study with reverent eyes the history of the land
from which they came.
Among places of minor interest in Southwark,
which doubtless Milton well knew, was the " Tabard
Inn," the starting-point of Chaucer's Canterbury
Pilgrims. This stood on High Street, and was not
demolished until 1875. In Milton's time it was
inscribed : " This is the Inne where Sir Jeffrey
Chaucer and the nine and twenty pilgrims lay in
their journey to Canterbury anno 1380." It had
then a more modern facade than Chaucer saw. The
Globe Theatre of Shakespearian fame was then on
the site of the present brewery of Barclay, Perkins,
& Co. The visitor to the region just south of
London Bridge who would see a bit of quaint
domestic architecture that recalls the past, would
do well to seek out, amid the noisy, hideous streets,
a tiny green oasis, bordered by what is known as the
Red Cross Hall and cottages. Thanks to Miss
Octavia Hill and her friends, the little Gothic hall,
with its frescoes of civic heroes, designed by Walter
GOWER'S MONUMENT IN ST. SAVIOUR'S CHURCH,
SOUTHWARK
flDUton's England 287
Crane, and its little row of picturesque gabled
houses, stand here as a rest and solace to weary eyes
and hearts that hunger amid ugliness for beauty.
Just such houses Milton saw at every turn in the
beautiful old London that he knew.
No church in Southwark and only two or three
in London are of so great interest to the antiquarian
as St. Saviour's or St. Mary Overy's, whose curious
name is explained in every guide-book. It has a
record of more than a thousand years. Chaucer,
Cruden, the author of the " Concordance," Doctor
Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Baxter, and
Bunyan were closely connected with this church and
parish. In one of its chapels, in the generation pre-
ceding Milton, beneath its three-light window, the
Bishops of Winchester and London, and others act-
ing for the see of Rome, tried and condemned to
death by the flames seven ministers of Christ. Their
only crime was opposition to the " usurpations of the
Papal Schism." Among these were the rector of
the church in which a half century later Milton was
baptised. Bishop Hooper, who was burned at
Gloucester, and John Rogers, the famous martyr of
Smithfield. Another heretic, more fortunate than
these seven, had just previously been condemned to
the stake and pardoned for the sake of his musical
talents. In this stately edifice, which has recently
288 flDilton's Englanfc
been admirably restored, lies the dust of many dear
to lovers of poetry. Chaucer's fellow poet, friend,
and teacher, John Gower, lies under a lofty Gothic
canopy; his sculptured head rests on three large
volumes, which represent his works. Milton's con-
temporaries, Massinger and Fletcher, lie buried in
the same grave. The latter died of the plague when
Milton was at Cambridge. His well-known poem
on " Melancholy," beginning :
" Hence, all you vain delights,
As short as are the nights
Wherein you spend your folly ! "
was probably familiar to the young poet at Horton,
when he penned his " II Penseroso," although
Fletcher's poem was not published until after that.
Both Massinger and Fletcher are commemorated
by modern windows. The latter's colleague, Francis
Beaumont, whose writings are so indissolubly con-
nected with his, is honoured with a window in which
the friendship of the two is typified by the figures
of David and Jonathan.
The year before Milton's birth, the author of
" Hamlet " and " Lear " doubtless stood within the
choir of this church beside the grave of his young
brother Edmond, an actor, who died at the age of
twenty-seven, when his great elder brother's genius
AUton's Enalanfc 289
had nearly touched its zenith of creative power.
The parish boasts that some of the most magnifi-
cent masterpieces of the world's literature were
written within its borders by this, its most distin-
guished parishioner, and England's greatest son. In
his youth Milton may well have attended the
funeral of the great Bishop Andrewes, whose recum-
bent effigy is on one of the tombs that scholars will
seek out. This man, who knew fifteen languages,
was president of the little company of ten who gave
the world a large part of the King James version
of the Hebrew Scriptures, whose perfection of liter-
ary form has never been equalled. In the Lady-
Chapel may still be seen inscribed upon the windows
the virulent words which would not have as greatly
offended Milton's taste as that of the present parish-
ioners : " Your sacrament of the Mass is no sacra-
ment at all, neither is Christ present in it ; " " From
the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities,
good Lord deliver us."
The London Bridge of Milton's day was one of
England's marvels. Standing on the site of two
or three predecessors, it stood 60 feet above high
water and stretched 926 feet in length. It contained
a drawbridge, and nineteen pointed arches, with mas-
sive piers. Much of its picturesqueness must have
resulted from the irregularity of the breadth of its
flMlton'8
arches. The skilful chaplain who built it doubtless
planned his spans according to the varying depth
and strength of current of the tide, and would have
scorned the modern mechanical habit of disregarding
conditions in order to attain exact uniformity ; thus
his arches varied in breadth from ten to thirty-two
feet. Over the tenth and longest was built a little
Gothic chapel dedicated to the then new saint,
Thomas of Canterbury. In Milton's lifetime, rows
of houses were added to the chapel and stretched
across toward the Southwark side.
Between the chapel and the southern end of the
bridge was a drawbridge, and at the north end
of this was a remarkable edifice of wood in Milton's
boyhood. This was called " Nonsuch House." It
was said to have been built in Holland and brought
over in pieces and put together by wooden pegs. It
stretched across the bridge upon an archway, and
was a curious, fantastic structure, carved elaborately
on three sides. The towers on its four corners bore
high aloft above the neighbouring buildings low
domes and gilded vanes. It stood upon the site of
the old tower whereon the heads of criminals had
been exposed; when it was taken down, the heads
were removed to the tower over the gate upon the
Southwark side. This had four circular turrets, and
was a notable and imposing entrance to the bridge.
dDilton's England 291
At the north end of the bridge was an ingenious
engine for raising water for the supply of the city.
It was originally worked only by the tide flowing
through the first arch ; but for this work several of
the water courses were later converted into water-
falls or rapids, and thereby greatly inconvenienced
navigation. An extension of this simple, early
mechanism lasted as late as 1822.
This bridge, which was to last six hundred
f.nd thirty years, was as long in building as King
Solomon's Temple, and, at the time, probably sur-
passed in strength and size any bridge in the whole
world.
London Bridge is famous the world over in the
nurseries of every English-speaking child. Milton
himself, as the fair-haired little darling in the scriv-
ener's house on Bread Street, probably danced and
sang the ancient ditty, as thousands had done before
him:
" London bridge is broken down,
Dance over, my Lady Lee ;
London bridge is broken down,
With a gay ladee.
" How shall we build it up again ?
Dance over, my Lady Lee ;
How shall we build it up again ?
With a gay ladee.
29* /IMlton's England
" Build it up with stone so strong,
Dance over, my Lady Lee ;
Huzza, 'twill last for ages long,
With a gay ladee."
For centuries before Milton was born, Billings-
gate, a little to the east of London Bridge, had been
one of the city's water-gates, and long before his
time its neighbourhood was rilled with stalls for the
sale of fish, a far more necessary commodity in days
when no fresh meat was to be bought in winter.
When Stow was preparing his " Survey," Billings-
gate was " a large water-gate, port, or harbour for
ships and boats commonly arriving there with fish,
both fresh and salt, shellfish, salt, oranges, onions,
and other fruits and roots, wheat, rye, and grains
of divers sorts."
CHAPTER XVII.
THE PLAGUE. THE FIRE. WREN. LONDON
REBUILT
[N the summer of 1665, the Great Plague
appeared in the midst of the alarm over
the Dutch invasion. The three earlier
visitations of the terrible disease during Milton's
youth were to be eclipsed in horror by this, the
last great one that England was to know. Little
connection between dirt and disease existed in the
minds of even scientific men. Dirt was condemned
as unaesthetic; but that earth floors covered with
rushes, mixed with greasy bones and decaying cab-
bage leaves, had any connection with the griping
pain of the groaning child upon the cot, its father
did not dream. Some water was brought in pipes
from Tyburn, but much of it was taken from the
polluted Thames near London Bridge and carried
about the streets in water-carts. How much was
taken for bathing purposes may be imagined. When
a luxurious monarch like Louis XIV. found a bath
no necessity, we need not wonder that the English
293
294 flMlton's England
cartman, and blacksmith, and craftsman, housed in
his narrow tenements near Smithfield or in South-
wark, considered it a superfluity.
The summer of 1665 was hot and oppressive. All
through the pitiless heat the wretched inmates of the
town, whence two hundred thousand of the fortu-
nate ones like Milton had fled, walked around the
gloomy and deserted streets gathering their dead.
By September fifteen hundred were dying every day.
The heat was aggravated b\ the bonfires which were
kept burning in vain hope of purifying the atmos-
phere. Physicians, ignorant, but heroic, remained at
their posts, cupping and blistering, and uselessly
tormenting the helpless folk who with pathetic con-
fidence looked to them for salvation. Some men
became insane, and some died of sheer fright. The
suddenness of the death was one of the most
ghastly features of the scourge. The mother who
nursed her child at morning handed its little corpse
at night to the man with the bell and dreadful cart,
and knew not where its tender limbs were rudely
thrust with the haste of a great terror which pos-
sessed the wretched gravediggers.
Out of a population of less than seven hundred
thousand, probably one hundred thousand perished,
and starvation and poverty stared many others in
the face.
I
> ?
o
II
flDtlton's Bnglanfc 295
Something must have been learned of the need
of purer water, for we find London, after the fire
next year, bestirring itself to get a general supply
of water from a canal forty miles long, called " New
River," which conducted a supply from Chadswell
Springs in Hertfordshire to a reservoir at Islington.
The summer of 1666 was likewise hot and dry,
and a furious gale blew for weeks together. Condi-
tions were the same as in Chicago before the con-
flagration that in November, 1871, swept over 1,687
acres, which covered a territory four miles long
and nearly three miles wide, and entailed a loss of
$300,000,000, though half of the buildings were
of wood. The moment was as propitious for the
fire fiend as when Mother O'Leary's cow kicked over
the lamp in the Windy City of the West. A baker's
oven took fire in Pudding Lane, two hundred and
two feet from the site of the present Fire Monu-
ment, which Wren erected in memory of it that
number of feet in height. The fire began on Sunday
night. It was twenty-four hours before the dazed
citizens attempted organised relief, but then it was
too late. By Tuesday evening the flames had licked
up everything as far west as the Temple. The
resolute king came to the help of the inefficient
mayor, and ordered gunpowder to be used to blow
up buildings and thus create open spaces where the
296 flMlton's England
fire would lack food. By Thursday evening the fire
had practically ceased, and the citizens who had
looked on at the destruction of their homes and
churches and shops and the inestimable treasures of
the past, sought shelter for their weary limbs. No
telegraphic messages of sympathy, no carloads of
provisions from neighbouring cities poured in to
their relief, and homeless children cried for bread.
Evelyn, in describing the conflagration, says :
" All the skie was of a fiery aspect like that of a
burning oven, and the light seen above forty miles
round about for many nights. God grant mine eyes
may never behold the sight who now saw ten
thousand houses all in one flame; the noise and
crackling and thunder of the impetuous flames; the
shrieking of women and children; the hurry of
people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches was
like an hideous storme and the aire all about so hot
and inflamed that at last one was not able to ap-
proach it. The clouds also and smoke were dismall
and reached upon computation neere 56 miles in
length. The poore inhabitants were dispers'd about
St. George's Fields and Moorefields, as far as High-
gate, and several miles in circle, some under tents,
some under miserable hutts and hovells, many with-
out a rag or any necessary utensils, bed or board,
who from delicatenesse, riches, and easy accommo-
flDUton's Englanfc 297
dations in stately and well-furnished houses, were
now reduc'd to extremest misery and poverty."
Pepys tells us that the entire lead roof of St.
Paul's Cathedral, no less than six acres by measure,
" fell in, the melted lead running down into the
streets and into the crypt where books had been
carried for safety." He notes that the fire burned
just as many parish churches as there were hours
from the beginning to the end of the fire.
Dryden, in the long section of his " Annus
Mirabilis " which describes the " Great Fire," has a
few lines among his prosaic stanzas which bear
quotation :
" The ghosts of traitors from the bridge descend,
With bold fanatic spectres to rejoice :
About the fire into a dance they bend,
And sing their sabbath notes with feeble voice.
" A key of fire ran all along the shore,
And lightened all the river with a blaze :
The wakened tides began again to roar,
And wondering fish in shining waters gaze.
" The rich grow suppliant, and the poor grow proud :
Those offer mighty gain, and these ask more :
So void of pity is the ignoble crowd,
When others' ruin may increase their store.
298 ADUton's England
" The most in fields like herded beasts lie down,
To dews obnoxious on the grassy floor ;
And while their babes in sleep their sorrows drown,
Sad parents watch the remnants of their store."
The king, who for the time being had behaved in
manly fashion, went back to his dalliance with
courtesans and " the burning lusts, dissolute court,
profane and abominable lives " of which Evelyn
writes on the day of fast and humiliation ordered for
the occasion.
Though there was not a particle of proof that
the Catholics had anything whatever to do with the
origin of the fire, the frenzy and prejudice of the
populace attributed it to them, and an inscription
to that effect, which later was erased, was placed
upon the monument.
The fire destroyed eighty-eight churches besides
St. Paul's, together with the city gates, the Ex-
change, the Custom House, 13,200 dwelling-houses,
and four hundred streets. A space of 436 acres,
two-thirds of the entire city, was consumed; and
property then valued at 7,335,000 was destroyed.
For six months London remained a chaos of rubbish
heaps. Pepys writes that in March he still saw
smoke rising from the ruins. The eight churches in
the city proper that still remain practically as Milton
saw them have been described in detail. They are
flMlton'0 England 299
All Hallows Barking, St. Ethelburga's, St. An-
drew Undershaft, of Saxon foundation ; St. Olave's,
of Danish; and St. Helen's, of Norman foundation;
St. Catherine Cree. Austin Friars, which was the
Dutch church, and St. Giles's, Cripplegate, just beside
the city wall. Of the six others that were not
destroyed, All Hallows by the wall (Broad Street
Ward) and St. Katherine Coleman (Aldgate) were
rebuilt later. The four that then remained but have
since disappeared were St. Christopher le Stocks,
and St. Martin Outwich (Broad Street Ward), All-
Hallows, Staining (Tower Ward), and St. Alphage,
Aldermanbury.
Forty churches were rebuilt after the fire, and
these were all designed by Sir Christopher Wren,
who when he began his gigantic task was a young
man of thirty-five. Wren, who was a nephew of
the Bishop of Ely, was trained under Doctor Busby
in Westminster School, and then at Wadham Col-
lege, Oxford, and was there noted by John Evelyn
as a " miracle of a youth," " a prodigious young
scholar," who showed him " a thermometer, a mon-
strous magnet, and some dials."
Wren was a little later one of the chief founders
of the Royal Society, and its first meetings were
held in his rooms. As versatile and original as
Da Vinci, he excelled in Latin, mathematics, and
300 /Dillon's England
astronomy, and was a close student of anatomy, and
other sciences as well. Ten years before the Great
Fire he was professor of astronomy in Gresham
College, London, and at the age of twenty-eight, he
was elected to the professorship of astronomy in
Oxford. Before he was thirty and had done any
work in architecture, Isaac Barrow declared him
to be " something superhuman." About this time
he invented an agricultural implement for planting,
and a method of making fresh water at sea. A
year before the Fire he solved a knotty problem in
geometry which Pascal had sent to English mathe-
maticians. Says Hooke, " I must affirm that since
the time of Archimedes there scarce ever met in
one man in so great a perfection such a mechanical
hand and so philosophic a mind." Had Wren never
designed a building he would have been famous for
his achievements in the study of the cycloid, in
rendering practical the use of the barometer, in
inventing a method for the transference of one
animal's blood to another, in methods for noting
longitude at sea, and for other studies and inventions
too numerous to mention.
Wren was a self-taught architect. Before the
Fire he erected Pembroke College Chapel at Cam-
bridge, and the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford. He
then visited Paris, where he saw Bernini, and made
flDUton's Englanfc 3 01
the most of observations of the Louvre and such
Renaissance work as Paris then afforded. His
bent of mind was wholly divergent from the Gothic,
and as it proved, in the few instances in which
he introduced its features into his Renaissance
churches, the result was as incongruous as Chaucer's
cap and gown upon a Roman ernperor.
London's calamity was the opportunity for this
little man of mighty intellect. Four days after the
fire ceased he laid before the king the sketch of his
plan for the restoration of the city. He looked far
into the future, and in vision saw a splendid town
built on a well-conceived, harmonious plan. He
proposed to have Ludgate Hill widen as it ap-
proached St. Paul's, where it would divide into two
broad streets around the cathedral and leave ample
space for its huge mass to be plainly viewed. One
of these streets should lead to the Tower and the
other to the Royal Exchange, which was to be the
centre of the city. Around it should be a great
piazza, from which ten streets were to lead, and on
the outer edge of this piazza would be situated the
Post-Office, the Mint, and other important buildings.
" All churchyards, gardens, and trades that use
great fires and noisome smells " were to be rele-
gated to the country, and the churches with their
i- pi res were to be placed in prominent positions on
the main thoroughfares.
302 f jflDUton's
All this meant present sacrifice for future good;
but the short-sighted and impatient Londoners
thought of the crying needs of the present year
alone. The architect might implore and weep bitter
tears, but all in vain. London must rise again on its
old, congested plan, with its crooked alleyways and
narrow courts. But, though the ground-plan was dis
carded, Wren was to make the new city his monu-
ment. Besides St. Paul's he built within and without
the walls fifty parish churches, thirty-six of the
companies' halls, the Custom House, and much
besides.
During the last eight years of Milton's life, the
destruction of the walls of St. Paul's went on and
the new edifice was assuming shape in the mind
of its creator. The old walls were blown down by
gunpowder explosions and by battering-rams. This
took -about two years, and the clearing away of rub-
bish and building the massive foundations, longer
still. Several schemes were considered and rejected,
and the plan which finally took its present form was
not begun until the funeral wreaths were withered
upon Milton's grave. Into the history of this mighty
structure we may not enter. In 1710 the last stone
of the lantern above the dome was laid by Wren's
son in the presence of the now aged architect and of
all London, which assembled for the proud spectacle.
flDtlton'8 England 33
The fair walls, ungrimed by soot and smoke, rose
fresh and perfect, a monument to one of the greatest
geniuses of all time.
One building erected the year after Milton's
death is worth mentioning as an illustration of the
consideration shown for the insane at that period.
Bethlehem Hospital, which has been referred to,
was in Milton's time situated on Bishopsgate Street
Without. " This hospital stood in an obscure and
close place near unto many common sewers; and
also was too little to receive and entertain the great
number of distracted Persons both men and women,"
writes an old author. But the city with admirable
public spirit gave ground for a better site against
London wall near Moorfields. A handsome brick
and stone structure 540 feet long was erected in
1675, an d large gardens were provided for the less
insane. Over the gate were placed two figures repre-
senting a distracted man and woman. This building
had a cupola surmounted by a gilded ball ; there
was a clock within and " three fair dials without."
Men occupied one end of the building, and women
the other. Hot and cold baths were provided, and
there was a " stove room," where in the winter the
patients might assemble for warmth. Considering
the ignorance of the time, astonishingly good sense
was displayed in all the arrangements, insomuch that
two out of every three persons were reported cured.
flDUton's England
As if this were not enough for one man's work,
Wren of course was busy all these years with the
care of all the churches. Before Milton died he
had been knighted, and lived in a spacious mansion
in Great Russell Square. He had by then rebuilt
St. Dunstan's in the East in Tower Ward; St.
Mildred's, Bread Street Ward; St. Mary's, Alder-
manbury; St. Edmund the King's; St. Lawrence's,
Jewry; St. Michael's. Cornhill, where he attempted
Gothic work; the beautiful St. Stephen's, Wall-
brook; St. Olave's, Jewry; St. Martin's, Ludgate;
St. Michael's, Wood Street; St. Dionis's, Lang-
bourne Ward ; St. George's, Botolph Lane ; and the
Custom House.
No interior, either of these or those that fol-
lowed these, is so perfect as St. Stephen's, Wall-
brook. Architecturally speaking, it has been ques-
tioned whether St. Paul's itself shows greater
genius.
In most of his labours Wren was embarrassed by
lack of adequate funds and the caprice of his
employers. Most of his churches were ingenious
compromises between his ideals and their necessi-
ties or whims. His spires were in the Renaissance
forms, but of endless variations. The most beautiful
are so placed as rarely to be seen to advantage.
Probably the most admired of all of them are St.
BOW STEEPLE, CHEAPSIDE
From <i fririt published in ijqS.
flMlton's Englatto 305
Bride's and St. Mary le Bow. The former, which
overshadows the spot where Milton conceived the
plan of " Paradise Lost," is situated on a little
narrow street called after St. Bride or Bridget, the
Irish maiden, who died in 525. She had a holy well,
which is commemorated by an iron pump within
a niche upon its site.
The lofty spire of the church rises to an altitude
of 226 feet, a trifle higher than Bunker Hill Monu-
ment, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, which is a
measuring-rod for many Americans.
St. Mary le Bow is on the site of a Norman church
of the Conqueror's time, and so named because it
was built on arches or " bows " of stone. This
crypt still remains. The steeple of the later church,
which rang its bells above the head of little John
Milton on Bread Street, close by, was built a hun-
dred and fifty years before his birth; the church
was said to have been a rather low, poor building.
Bow bells were nightly rung at nine o'clock, but an
old couplet shows that they were not always
punctual :
" Clark of the Bow Bell, with the yellow lockes,
For thy late ringing, thy head shall have knockes."
To which the clerk responded :
" Children of Cheape, hold you all still,
For you shall have the Bow Bell rung at your will."
306 flDttton's England
From the days when little Dick Whittington,
a forlorn runaway, heard from far Bow bells sum-
mon him back to London, the bells have played a
notable part in the life of Londoners. A true cock-
ney is supposed to be one born within hearing of
these bells. Certainly the boy in Spread Eagle Court
deserved the title.
The spire of St. Mary le Bow rises a little higher
than St. Bride's, and bears a golden dragon nine
feet long.
Upon the side of Bow Church, half hidden behind
the tower, is an inscription which the pilgrim to
Milton's London will step aside to read. It is
on the tablet which was transferred from All
Hallows Church, in which Milton was baptised,
when it was torn down. It closes with the familiar
lines of Dryden, the poet whom England most ad-
mired when this new spire of Wren's was rising
upon the ruins of the old, and close beside the birth-
place of the greatest soul ever born to London in all
her two millenniums of history.
" Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed,
The next in majesty, in both the last;
The force of nature could no farther go,
To make a third she joined the other two."
THE END.
Inter
Aldersgate Street, 89, 122.
Aldgate, 155.
All Hallows, Barking, 143.
All Hallows Church, Bread St.,
42, 45, 306.
All Hallows, Staining, tower of,
i$S-
Amersham, 116.
Andrewes, Bishop, 289.
" Arcades," 81.
" Areopagitica," 94.
Artillery Walk, no, 119.
Ascham, Roger, 201.
Askew, Anne, 191.
Austin Friars, 24.
Austin Friars' Church, 185-188.
Bacon, Francis, 225.
Bancroft, Francis, 173.
Barbican, 95.
Bartholomew Close, 105.
Bartholomew Fair, 218.
Baroni, Leonora, 87.
Baxter, Richard, 107, 108, 197,
276.
Beaconsfield, 113, 115.
Beaumont, 288.
Bethlehem Hospital, 175, 303.
Billingsgate, 292.
Blake, Admiral, 257.
" Blindness, On His," Milton's
ode, 104.
Blue Coat School, 195-199.
Boleyn, Annie, 132, 283.
Bread Street, 42-46, 1 20.
Browne, Robert, 68.
Buckingham, Duke of, 243,
256.
Buckinghamshire, 112-119.
Bunhill Fields, in, 120.
Burke, Edmund, 1 16.
Burleigh, 226.
Caesar, Sir Julius, 174.
Cambridge, 57-77 ; university
life in Milton's time, 64.
Camden, William, 252, 266.
Caxton, William, 269.
Chalfont St. Giles, in, 112.
Charles I., 244-248, 272, 274.
Charles II., 250, 262, 298.
Charing Cross, 99.
Charterhouse, 202-208.
Cheever, Ezekiel, 198.
Chenies, 112.
Chequer's Court, 118.
'"Cheshire Cheese, The," 229.
Christ's Church, 197.
Christ's College, 59, 62.
Christ's Hospital, 195-199.
Civil War, 87, 92.
Clarendon, EarKof, 259.
" Comus," 80, 82, 96.
Conventual establishments, 22.
Covent Garden, 237-239.
Cranmer, Archbishop, 280.
307
3 o8
Cromwell, Oliver, 59, 92, 101,
141, 180, 228, 244, 248, 249,
256-258, 261.
"Cromwell, Ode to," Milton's,
104, 1 06.
Cromwell, Richard, 105, in.
Crosby Hall, 164-170.
Danish Remains in London, 20.
Darwin at Christ's College, 64.
Dickens on Old London
Churches, 152-154.
Diodati, Charles, 88, 91.
Dryden, John, 122, 248, 297, 306.
Dutch in London, 186.
Education, Milton's Essay on,
94.
Eliot, Sir John, 134-136, 268,
270.
Elizabethan Age, 36.
Elizabeth, Queen, 208, 241, 262.
Ellwood, Thomas, 109, in,
US-
Ely Cathedral, 71.
Ely Place, 221.
Emmanuel College, 60, 62.
Evelyn, 267, 296.
Exchange, The Royal, 184, 298.
Fire of London, The Great, 120,
145, 189, 295-298.
Fletcher, 288.
Forest Hill, 93.
Fox, George, 120.
Fox, John, 181.
" Fresher's Don't, The," 76.
Frobisher, Martin, 181.
Galileo, 86.
Gatehouse, Westminster, 267.
Geneva, Milton at, 87.
Gill, Alexander, Milton's school-
master, 53.
Globe Theatre, 286.
Gog and Magog, 190.
Gothic architecture, 26-30, 34.
Gray's Inn, 225.
Great Hampden, 117.
Great Kimble, 119.
Gresham College, 184.
Gresham, Sir Thomas, 172, 184.
Grey, Lady Jane, 132.
Grotius, Hugo, 85.
Grub Street, in.
Guild Hall, The, 189-193.
Hakluyt, Richard, 266.
Hampden, John, 117-119, 268.
Hatton, Sir Christopher, 223.
Haw, The, 51.
Heminge and Condell, monu-
ment to, 193.
Henry VIII., 249.
Heylin, Peter, 261.
Hobson, 57.
Holbein, 157, 241.
Holborn, 98, 106, 225.
Hooker, Richard, 234.
Horton, 78-84, 92.
" II Penseroso," 68, 82.
Inns of Court, 225-235.
Ireland, Horrors in, 92.
Italy, Milton in, 86.
James I., 262.
Jeffreys, Judge, 196, 234.
Jerusalem Chamber, 264.
Jesus College, 60.
Jewin Street, 107.
Jones, Inigo, 238, 240, 242,
262.
Jonson, Ben, 180, 228, 252.
Jordan's, 115.
Juxon, Bishop, 246, 280.
King's College Chapel, 67.
King, Edward, 82.
Knox, John, 116.
" L'Allegro," 82.
Lambeth Palace, 277-286.
Lasco, John a, 186, 188.
309
Laud, Archbishop, 144, 156, 281,
284.
Lawes, Henry, 81, 96, 97, 224.
Lincoln's Inn, 227-228.
Lincoln's Inn Fields, 98.
Lollard's Tower, 49, 282.
London, origin and early topog-
raphy, 14-25.
London life in Milton's time,
38-40.
London Bridge, 289-291.
Long Acre, 237.
Lovelace, Richard, 268.
" Lycidas," 82, 83.
Manso, 87.
Mary of Modena, 278.
Marvell, Andrew, 104, 108, 247,
248.
" Massacre in Piedmont, On the
Late," 104.
Massinger, 288.
Mermaid Tavern, 46.
Milborne, Sir John, almshouses
built by, 154.
Mildmay, Sir Walter, 214.
Milton, Anne, sister of the poet,
43. 57.83, 89, 124.
Milton, Christopher, brother of
the poet, 43, 83, 92, 97, 124.
Milton, Deborah, daughter of
the poet, 102, 107, 108, 124.
Milton, John, father of the poet,
42, 78, 92, 94, 97.
Milton, John, son of the poet,
102.
Milton, Mary, daughter of the
poet, 98, 107, 108, no.
Milton, Sarah, mother of the
poet, 43, 83.
Milton Street, in.
Minshull, Elizabeth, Milton's
wife, no, 123, 124.
More, Sir Thomas, 131, 166, 241.
Morland, Sir Samuel, 251.
" Morning of Christ's Nativity,
On the," 72.
Newgate, 199.
Newton, Isaac, 249.
Norman remains in London, 21,
24.
Oxford, 62, 67, 93.
Painted Chamber, Westminster,
270, 272.
Paley, William, at Christ's Col-
lege, 63.
Pall Mall, ico.
" Paradise Lost," 89, 105, 107,
III, 114, I2O-I22, 158.
"Paradise Regained," 114.
Paris, Milton in, 85, 88.
Parr, Old, 253.
Pembroke, Countess of, 169.
Penn, William, 115, 145.
Pepys, Samuel, 147-150.
Peter the Great, 145.
Petty France, 102.
Philips, Edward, 89, 94.
Philips, John, 89, 94.
Pindar, Sir Paul, 177.
Plague, The Great, in, 293.
Plantagenet Period, 22, 28.
Powell, Anne, Milton's wife's
mother, 97.
Powell, Mary, Milton's wife,
93. 95 97, 102.
Prynne, 273.
Puritans at Cambridge, 60.
Pym, John, 260.
Queen's Head Tavern, 155.
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 133, 267,
268.
Ranelagh, Lady, 104.
Raphael cartoons, 248.
Reading, 92.
Red Cross Hall, 286.
Red Lion Square, 106.
Renaissance architecture, 30-33.
Richard II., 129.
Richard HI., 129, 165, 190.
310
fn&ex
Rogers, John, 201, 216, 287.
Roman remains in London, 16.
Runnymede, 84.
Salmasius, 102.
St. Andrew Undershaft, church
of, 158.
St. Bartholomew the Great,
church of, 24, 211-215.
St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 215.
St. Bride's Church, 305.
St. Bride's Churchyard, 89.
St. Catherine Crees Church, 156.
St. Ethelburga's Church, 175-
176.
St.ji Etheldreda's Church, 221-
222.
St. George's Chapel, Windsor,
248.
"Saint Ghastly Grim," 152.
St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate,
38, 97, 107, 120, 123, 178-183.
St. Helen's Church, Bishopsgate,
24, 171-175-
St. James's Palace, 100, 246, 248.
St. James's Park, 99, 103.
St. John's Gate, 209.
St. John, Knights of, 209.
St. Jude's Church, 156.
St. Margaret's Church, 104, 268,
275-
St. Martin's Lane, 99.
St. Martin in the Fields, 100.
St. Mary Aldermanbury, church
of, 104, 193.
St. Mary Aldermary, church of,
no.
St. Mary le Bow, church of,
35-
St. Mary Overy's Church, 24,
287.
St. Olave's Church, 146.
St. Paul's, old cathedral, 48, 121,
297 ; new cathedral, 302.
St. Paul's Cross, 50.
St. Paul's School, 48, 52 ; early
cathedral body, 23.
St. Peter's Church, 126, 132.
St. Saviour's, Southwark, 287.
St. Sepulchre's Church, 199.
St. Stephen's Chapel, 270.
St. Stephen's, Wallbrook,
church of, 33, 304.
" Samson," 89.
Sanctuary, Westminster, 269.
Saxon names in London, 17.
Scotland Yard, 101, 102, 240.
Scudamore, Lord, 85, 103.
Selden, 233.
Shakespeare, 165, 255, 288.
Sidney, Algernon, 107.
Sidney Sussex College, 59, 62.
Skinner, Cyriack, 97, 104, 108.
Smithfield, 215-220.
Smith, John, Captain, 200.
Somerset House, 239, 257.
Spencer, Sir John, 166, 174.
Spenser, Edmund, 254.
Sprat, Thomas, dean of West-
minster, 258.
Spread Eagle Court, 45.
Spring Gardens, 99, 101, 103.
Staple Inn, 266.
Star Chamber, 270, 272.
Stow, John, 158-163.
Strode, William, 261.
Sutton, Thomas, 204.
Tabard Inn, 286.
Temple, The, 228-235.
Temple Bar, 229.
Temple Church, The, 229.
Thackeray on the Charterhouse,
206.
Thockmorton, Sir Nicholas, 157,
193-
Tower Hill, 139, 144.
Tower of London, Th, 126-136.
Toynbee Hall, 156.
Trafalgar Square, 99, 100.
Trinity College Library, Milton
manuscript in, 73, 89.
Turner, William, 150.
Tyndale, 201.
flnfcei
Usher, Archbishop, 247, 265.
Vane, Sir Harry, 91, 99, 107,
136-141.
Vane, Milton's Ode to, 104.
Waller, Edmund, 116.
Wendover, 117.
Westminster Abbey, 250-266.
Westminster Assembly, 264.
Westminster Hall, 261, 274.
Westminster Palace, 269.
Westminster School, 266.
Whitechapel, 156.
Whitehall, 99, roi, 240-250.
Whittington's Palace, 145.
Williams, Roger, 61, 188, 204.
Windsor, 79, 248.
Wolsey, Cardinal, 241.
Woodcocke, Katharine, 104, 193,
195. 275-
Wotton, Sir Henry, 85, 124.
Wren, Sir Christopher, 184, 240,
263, 266, 299-304.
York Street, 102.
Young, Milton's early preceptor,
47-
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