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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Milton's England, by Lucia Ames Mead
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Milton's England
+
+Author: Lucia Ames Mead
+
+Release Date: December 1, 2010 [EBook #34526]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILTON'S ENGLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Milton's England
+
+
+
+
+  _UNIFORM VOLUMES_
+
+  Dickens' London BY FRANCIS MILTOUN
+
+  Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top           $2.00
+  The Same, 3/4 levant morocco             5.00
+
+  Milton's England BY LUCIA AMES MEAD
+
+  Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top            2.00
+  The Same, 3/4 levant morocco             5.00
+
+  Dumas' Paris BY FRANCIS MILTOUN
+
+  Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top      _net_ 1.60
+                                _postpaid_ 1.75
+  The Same, 3/4 levant morocco       _net_ 4.00
+                                _postpaid_ 4.15
+
+  L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
+  New England Building
+  Boston, Mass.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: _JOHN MILTON_
+
+_From the miniature painted in 1667 by William Faithorne_]
+
+
+
+
+  Milton's England
+
+
+  By Lucia Ames Mead
+
+  _Author of "Great Thoughts for Little Thinkers,"
+  "Memoirs of a Millionaire," "To Whom Much Is Given"_
+
+
+  Illustrated
+
+
+  L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
+  BOSTON PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+  _Copyright, 1902_
+  BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
+  (INCORPORATED)
+
+
+  _All rights reserved_
+
+
+  Fifth Impression, April, 1908
+
+
+  _COLONIAL PRESS
+  Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
+  Boston, 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.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF MILTON'S ENGLAND]
+
+Milton's Residences in London
+
+   1. Bread Street, 1608-1624.
+   2. St. Bride's Churchyard, in 1639 or 1640.
+   3. Aldersgate Street, 1640-1645.
+   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.
+
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF MILTON'S LONDON]
+
+Map of Milton's London
+
+   1. Clarendon House.
+   2. St. James's Field.
+   3. St. James's Palace.
+   4. The New River.
+   5. St. James's Park.
+   6. Westminster Abbey.
+   7. Pall Mall.
+   8. Whitehall.
+   9. Scotland Yard.
+  10. Charing Cross.
+  11. St. Martin's Field.
+  12. The Temple.
+  13. Lincoln Inn Fields.
+  14. Gray's Inn Fields.
+  15. Holborn.
+  16. Hatton Garden.
+  17. St. John's Gate.
+  18. Smithfield.
+  19. Charterhouse Yard.
+  20. Barbican.
+  21. Jewin Street.
+  22. St. Giles's Cripplegate.
+  23. St. Paul.
+  24. Bread Street.
+  25. City Wall.
+  26. Austin Friars.
+  27. St. Ethelburga.
+  28. St. Helen's.
+  29. Crosby Hall.
+  30. Bishopsgate Street.
+  31. Aldgate.
+  32. Whitechapel Street.
+  33. St. Olave.
+  34. The Minories.
+  35. Custom House.
+  36. St. Saviour's.
+  37. Bedlam.
+  38. Moorfields.
+  39. Artillery Yard.
+  40. Aldersgate Street.
+  41. Cheapside.
+  42. Lambeth Palace.
+  43. Petty France.
+  44. Birdcage Walk.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                      PAGE
+
+     I. THE LONDON INTO WHICH MILTON WAS BORN                    11
+
+    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.--ARTILLERY WALK                                 110
+
+   VII. CHALFONT 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. ETHELBURGA'S.--ST.
+        GILES'S, CRIPPLEGATE                                    164
+
+    XI. GRESHAM COLLEGE.--AUSTIN FRIARS.--GUILDHALL.--ST.
+        MARY'S, ALDERMANBURY.--CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.--ST.
+        SEPULCHRE'S                                             184
+
+   XII. CHARTERHOUSE.--ST. JOHN'S GATE.--ST.
+        BARTHOLOMEW'S.--SMITHFIELD                              202
+
+  XIII. ELY PLACE.--INNS OF COURT.--TEMPLE CHURCH.--COVENT
+        GARDEN.--SOMERSET HOUSE                                 221
+
+   XIV. WHITEHALL.--WESTMINSTER ABBEY                           240
+
+    XV. THE PRECINCTS OF THE ABBEY.--WESTMINSTER PALACE.--
+        ST. MARGARET'S                                          264
+
+   XVI. LAMBETH PALACE.--ST. SAVIOUR'S.--LONDON BRIDGE          277
+
+  XVII. THE PLAGUE.--THE FIRE.--WREN.--LONDON REBUILT           293
+
+
+
+
+List of Illustrations
+
+
+                                                               PAGE
+
+  JOHN MILTON                                        _Frontispiece_
+
+  OLD ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL                                       47
+
+  CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE                                    62
+
+  PART OF WHITEHALL                                             101
+
+  IN MILTON'S HOUSE AT CHALFONT ST. GILES                       113
+
+  ST. CATHERINE CREE CHURCH IN 1736                             157
+
+  CHURCH OF ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT IN 1737                       163
+
+  CHURCH OF ST. GILES CRIPPLEGATE IN 1737                       178
+
+  THE CHARTERHOUSE                                              203
+
+  ST. JOHN'S GATE, CLERKENWELL                                  209
+
+  SOMERSET HOUSE                                                239
+
+  WESTMINSTER ABBEY AS MILTON KNEW IT                           250
+
+  WESTMINSTER HALL                                              274
+
+  IN LAMBETH PALACE                                             280
+
+  THE ROYAL EXCHANGE                                            295
+
+  BOW STEEPLE, CHEAPSIDE                                        304
+
+
+
+
+Milton's England
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE LONDON INTO WHICH MILTON WAS BORN
+
+
+To 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, nevertheless, 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 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 beginning 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 advancement--is the one that we are to consider. Milton's life
+covered sixty-six of its one hundred years. It began with the destruction
+of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and included the brilliant period of
+exploration and adventure just before Milton's birth, in which Hawkins,
+Drake, and Raleigh, and other ambitious 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 contemporaries, 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,
+explicitly 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 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.
+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 southeasterly 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 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 discerned, 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 feet high, and was finished by bastions and additional
+defences at the angles. Though scant traces of any of the original
+construction now remain, much of the Roman wall, and, at all events, a
+complete wall of mingled Roman and mediæval 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 Romans after their occupation of it for three
+centuries, 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 property 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 terminations 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 prevalence 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, Paddington, 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 remnant 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 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.
+
+Clerkenwell, 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 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 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 outside 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 windows 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 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
+establishments 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
+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 numbers supported in this earlier period by St.
+Paul's alone. The cathedral body included the bishop, dean, the four
+archdeacons, the treasurer, the precentor, 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,
+carpenters, 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 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. Bartholomew'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 the monastery of White Friars or Carmelites, and beyond these the
+ancient site of the Knights Templar, 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 establishments, 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 catalogue, 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 "Papey." A portion of the
+"college" of Whittington 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 magnificence 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 abandonment
+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 displacing:
+
+"You have in the earlier Gothic less wonderful construction, less careful
+masonry, far less expression 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 without 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 waywardness 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--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 impertinent when blazoned everywhere, and are
+wholly devoid of beauty when they reproduce by the hundred 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 sanctuaries; 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 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 Architecture 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, removed. Suppose Walter Scott had written, instead of "the old
+clock struck two from a turret adjoining 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 pediments, and triglyphs, and all the classic forms,
+even when pure and unvulgarised by decadent Renaissance 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:
+
+  "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 expression 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 modern world can not plead poverty as
+its excuse for ugliness. Even the village cottage of three centuries 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.
+
+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, exception must be made to
+much delightful domestic architecture 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 decoration, 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 aristocracy 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 written 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 common men can enjoy; some concession to the
+simplicities 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 stooping, of conceding, for an instant. Whatever
+excellence 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 anything I do is in its
+proud breeding, its rigid formalism, 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."
+
+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 proportioned 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 perfect 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 Westminster 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 substituted 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 Charterhouse, 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 antedated and accompanied Milton's boyhood.
+Hundreds 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 artificers,
+housed their apprentices within them. They 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 thorough dissolution of religious
+houses, London became a far more commercial and prosaic place. Green
+convent gardens were sold for the erection of narrow wooden tenements;
+ancient dormitories, refectories, and chapels were pulled down or
+transformed 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 imagination of thousands. Drake and Hawkins, Frobisher and Raleigh
+were adding new lustre to an age hitherto unparalleled in prosperity and
+enterprise. Emerson's description of the Englishman as having a
+"telescopic appreciation of distant gain" was exemplified.
+
+England was rich in poets, great even in Shakespeare's time. Of two
+hundred and forty who published 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 such a proportion of accomplished men.
+Every man tried his hand at verses, and learned to sing a madrigal, 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 instructor, 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
+complained that there were those who "spent £300 a year upon this noxious
+weed." No vital statistics existed to show the average of longevity. But
+certain it is that, with modern sanitation and cleanliness, 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 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 parishes 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,
+Cripplegate,--almost the only ones that still remain within the city.
+There were no sewers and no adequate pavement until 1616. House refuse was
+not 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 pretentious 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--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 amenities 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 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 beginning 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 possibility 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
+bowshot 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 9th 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.
+
+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 babyhood,
+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 harmonised. 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 fingers 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 sculptures 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
+goldsmiths' 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 describes 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 frame, uniformly builded, four stories high,
+beautified 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 mercantile 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 inscription, 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."
+
+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 crossing 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
+circumference. 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."
+
+
+[Illustration: OLD ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL
+
+The two upper views show the porch by Inigo Jones. The two lower views
+show the "Lesser Cloisters." Milton's school stood at the rear of the
+church.
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+As Milton was early destined for the Church, his unusually thoughtful
+disposition and quick perception 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 Gallery, 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 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 westward 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 largest cathedral in all England. Upon the southwest 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 likewise a prison. The nave was of
+transitional Norman 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 whatsoever 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 Cambridge, Oliver Cromwell, in
+his maiden speech in Parliament, declared that flat popery was being
+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 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 education 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 Edward Winslow were sailing with him in the
+_Mayflower_, when Doctor Harvey had told London 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 had reference,
+curiously, to the number of fishes in Simon Peter's miraculous draught.
+Over the windows were inscribed the words in large capital letters:
+"_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 eligible; 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 1608-1635 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 remarkable 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 banished 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 midnight; which indeed was the first cause of
+injury to my eyes, to whose natural weakness there were also added
+frequent headaches." Philips writes:
+
+"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
+beginning in Hebrew.
+
+It was in his last year at school that he paraphrased 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, beginning:
+
+  "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 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
+
+
+The 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 gentleman 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
+visitor to the university town finds the old carrier honoured by a
+memorial; for he became a public benefactor, and among many generous gifts
+bequeathed 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 Bainbrigge, 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 maintenance.
+Christ's College, as regards numbers, then stood nearly at the head of the
+sixteen colleges 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 portrait, 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: "_Hic fuit grandis ille impostor
+carnifex perditissimus_;" and it is as "impostor" and "butcher" that
+two-thirds of Englishmen would have described him before Carlyle
+resurrected the real man.
+
+Emmanuel College is preëminently 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 regicide, 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 barbarous tongue. Francis
+Higginson, the minister to Salem, and the ancestor of Colonel Thomas W.
+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 English
+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 Edwards, 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 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 Maurice, "the realisation in plain prose of the dreams which
+haunted Milton his whole life long."
+
+
+[Illustration: CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
+
+A, Chapel; B, Library; C, Dining-Hall; D, Head Master's Rooms; E, Kitchen;
+F, Master's Garden; H, Tennis Court.
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+Sidney Sussex, Christ's, and Emmanuel Colleges were erected during the
+Tudor period, Christ's College, founded in 1505, being the earliest of the
+three. The buildings of the latter now present a more 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 exquisite 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 Go." Charles Robert Darwin, the
+Copernicus of the nineteenth century, entered Christ's with the intention
+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 Holbein, 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 Latin and worse Greek and Hebrew, which this prescription must
+have caused, finally rendered it a dead letter. Smoking was a universal
+practice, and boxing matches, dancing, bear fights, and other forbidden
+games were not unknown. Bathing in the sedgy little Cam was prohibited,
+but was nevertheless 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 stockings 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 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 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 was 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 Cambridge, 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 alternate 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 Milton's college days--must
+appeal to every lover of beauty. One loves to think of the young poet
+musing here upon those well-known lines in "Il 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 service 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, 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 resolved 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 Separatists that they went to Holland. They sought a
+refuge where they might worship God according to the dictates of their own
+conscience, without interference 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
+foundation of church government in New England. Presbyterianism 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 influenced by it.
+
+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 Templars 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 mentioned. 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 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 students,
+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 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
+prisoners. So great was the poverty and suffering incident 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 Cambridge possesses, and as Mr.
+Edmund Gosse asserts, "the most precious manuscript of English literature
+in the world," is the packet of thirty loose and ragged folio leaves
+covered with Milton's handwriting, which since 1691 has lain in Trinity
+College 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 temptation 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 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 condescends 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 "Il Penseroso," before
+he reached the perfect phrase,--"endless morn of light,"--experimented
+with no less than six others: "ever-endless light," "ever glorious,"
+"uneclipsèd," "where day dwells without night," and "in cloudless 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
+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 priceless thing in its minutest features." When it
+is remembered that no line of Shakespeare's remains in his own
+handwriting, and nothing of any consequence 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 pregnant
+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 Puritans, but one to its poets--Spenser, Milton, Pope,
+Gray, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, and Tennyson, 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 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 with 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 Cambridge 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
+Cambridge 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."
+
+"Don't be a tuft-head. The style is more favoured by errand boys than
+gentlemen."
+
+"Don't by any chance sport a tall hat in Cambridge. 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
+
+
+On 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
+buying 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 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 landscape, pausing
+some morning in the autumn on his early walk to listen to the far sound of
+the huntsman'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 connections 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 uncertain
+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, 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-fringèd 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 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-preserved; 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 composer 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 following 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 "Il
+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
+suggested 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 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
+standing 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 independence will remember Runnymede and Magna Charta
+Island. And he will find nothing more consonant 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 trespass, 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
+
+
+One 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 Scudamore to the man whom he most desired to see,--the
+great Hugo Grotius, a man of stupendous erudition 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 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 Superba," 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, Milton 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 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 hospitality 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 Cæsars 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 mediæval 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
+wanderings. From Venice he turned back through Verona and Milan, and
+paused a little in Geneva, which was 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 profligacy 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 Philips 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 Churchyard, 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. 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 Doctor Diodati, the father of his dearest
+friend, whose recent death he mourned in a touching elegy written 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
+observations on the doings of the newly assembled Long Parliament by an
+occasional "gaudy-day," in company with some "young sparks of his
+acquaintance."
+
+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. Milton'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 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 hundred 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 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 goodbye. 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 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 process 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, studying not only Greek and
+Latin, but Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, and Italian.
+
+Milton's noble "Areopagitica"--a plea for freedom of the press--was
+written during these melancholy, 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 housekeeping in the Barbican.
+
+This was a larger house than the one in Aldersgate 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 commodious 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 Barbican to-day, close to old London wall,
+will find nothing that Milton saw.
+
+Here he published the first edition of his collected 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 portrait 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 composed 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 Milton'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 anything 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, just after the march of Fairfax and 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
+republican at heart, and busied himself with the writing of a history of
+England, and compiling of a Latin dictionary 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, Milton
+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 20th, 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 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 Holborn 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 and the statue of Charles I., which on the year of Milton's death
+replaced it on its site, was at this time kept in careful concealment.
+
+St. Martin's Lane was a genuine shady lane, bordered 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
+shilling 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: PART OF WHITEHALL
+
+The Banquet-Hall by Inigo Jones is in the centre at the rear.
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+MILTON AT WHITEHALL.--SCOTLAND YARD.--PETTY FRANCE.--BARTHOLOMEW
+CLOSE.--HIGH HOLBORN.--JEWIN STREET.--ARTILLERY WALK
+
+
+Milton 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 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 vehement controversy with Salmasius brought on
+the blackness of great darkness which, at the age of forty-three, for ever
+shut his world 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 motherless 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 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 neighbour 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. Charles II. had it later all laid out by the
+famous French landscape artist, Le Nôtre.
+
+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 married Katharine Woodcock, daughter of a Captain
+Woodcock of Hackney, in the church of St. Mary Aldermanbury, on November
+12, 1656. Her coming 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 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 closing days of Cromwell's
+life. Under Richard Cromwell, 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 Soeur,
+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 hangman'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 populace, and seen himself haled in a cart to Tyburn gallows.
+Says Masson: "Absolutely no man could less expect to be pardoned at the
+Restoration than Milton," and "there is no greater historical 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 companions 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 Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, which
+had been disinterred and were on their way to Tyburn to be 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 1661, 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 nearest 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 beheaded, 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 handsome, but lame, and had
+a defect of speech. It fell to Mary and little eleven-year-old Deborah to
+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
+popular 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" Milton may have read
+ten years before; of Evelyn and of the poet Cowley; of Bishop Jeremy
+Taylor; of George Fox, the valiant Quaker, and the philosophers, 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 Ellwood's arrest for attending the Quaker meeting in
+Aldersgate Street. Three months were spent 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 spectacle. One heavenly day
+in a quiet library reading of Dido and Æneas 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
+traditions 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 removed to a house in Artillery
+Walk, leading to Bunhill Fields. This was on the roadway which is 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 Artillery 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
+
+
+If 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 Buckinghamshire, 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 feature of the place is the mortuary chapel of the Russells,
+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.
+
+
+[Illustration: IN MILTON'S HOUSE AT CHALFONT ST. GILES]
+
+
+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 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 Angelo and Beethoven. We linger reverently in the
+little house made dear to England by his presence 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
+Americans, 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 landmark. 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 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 accommodations 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 distant, 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 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 of 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: "Lord, 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 beautiful 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
+portrait 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 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 kingdom.
+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. Thereafter it was made a regular cemetery, and was surrounded
+with a brick wall, and became what Southey called, "the Campo Santo of the
+Dissenters." 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 century, and was found to be that of Milton's
+contemporary,--George Fox,--the tailor with the leather suit, who founded
+the sect of the uncompromising democrats who called no man "Lord," who
+used no weapons but their tongues, and who thundered 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 christened, 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 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 Pobedonostzeff 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 imaginary treason in some
+lines; but he relented, and the world was spared its greatest epic poem
+since the Æneid.
+
+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. Thirteen 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
+apprenticeship, and had them taught embroidery in gold and 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 "pronounced 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
+undutiful;" but everything else to his "loving wife, Elizabeth." Just one
+month before he had completed 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
+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 scattered all over England,
+teaching the rising generation 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 portraits of the many noted 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 Cæsar, 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
+
+
+Except 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 remains practically as
+it was built over eight hundred 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 allowed 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 time; the armory for warlike provisions; the treasury 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 southeast 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 semicircular
+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 picture in it, more vividly than we in our later age,
+that scene when from sunset until sunrise forty-six noblemen 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, 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, afterward 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 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 marvelling 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," continues More, "'ye shall see in what wise
+that sorceress 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 chamberlain answered, and said: 'Certainly, my lord,
+if they have so heinously done they be worthy heinous punishment.' 'What,'
+quoth the Protector, 'thou servest me ill with ifs and with ands; I tell
+thee they have so done, and that I will make good on thy body,
+traitor!... I will not to dinner until I see thy head off.' Within an
+hour, the lord chamberlain'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
+daughters 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."
+
+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 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? Where 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, including 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
+freedom 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 conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot were immured
+in these dungeons, and then hanged, cut down, and disembowelled 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
+committed 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 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 members. "Then
+appeared such a spectacle of passions as the like had seldom been seen in
+such an assembly; some weeping, some expostulating, some prophesying 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 Parliament 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 confinement, even when it brought on
+consumption. 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
+dedicated 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-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 consecrated
+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 Fénélon
+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
+preëminently the representative, in practice and in theory, of serene
+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 temptation 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 Washington, 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 Harvard 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
+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
+outward enjoyments, for those I shall meet with hereafter 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 suggestions the
+reverse of commonplace. Looking thither the sensitive beholder feels with
+deep emotion the fact brought home to him, that to men of English speech,
+the earth has scarcely a spot more memorable 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 imprisoned children, so children
+standing there have wondered 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 coming 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 14th of
+June in 1662 in the full glory of the summer, Vane, in the strength of his
+manhood, 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 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
+acclamations 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 waistcoat, a silence fell, and calmly, serenely, he addressed
+the throng around him. His address displeased the officers, and the
+trumpets were commanded 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
+dishonoured 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 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 programme 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
+UNDERSHAFT
+
+
+At 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 kingdoms
+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, and assumed nearly its present shape about one
+hundred years before Milton's age.
+
+From its nearness to the Tower, the church became 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 together, 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 provided, 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 visitors may be the
+baptismal register, in which is recorded the baptism, during Milton's
+early manhood, 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 for
+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, was 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 "Whittington'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," 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 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 tottered, 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 defaced." 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 consequence 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 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
+monuments, 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
+published until 1825. On the unveiling of his monument, James Russell
+Lowell, in his address, spoke of Pepys as "a type perhaps of what is now
+called 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 perfect 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 English language, or in any other. There was no parallel to
+the character of Pepys in respect of naïveté unless it were found in that
+of Falstaff, and Pepys showed himself, too, "like Falstaff, on terms of
+unbuttoned familiarity with himself.... Pepys's naïveté was the
+inoffensive vanity of a man who loved to see himself in the glass." It was
+questionable, 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 in his twenty-seventh year.
+Ten years later, when he feared blindness, he ceased writing it. He
+bequeathed 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 teaching 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 Antichrist as well. The title of
+one book illustrates the orthography of his day: "The Hunting and Fynding
+of the Romish Fox: which more than seven years hath been among the
+Bysshoppes of England, 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 naïvely
+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 frightened
+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 likewise 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 worse to go to see Saint Ghastly 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 thereabouts, 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 Monument 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, distinct and quaint. In all those
+dusty registers that the worms are eating, there is not a line but made
+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
+destruction by the Puritans, and remained with the almshouses to a late
+period. To the American, to whom the word "almshouse" signifies the
+English "workhouse,"--an institution of paupers where all live in
+common,--little idea is conveyed of the comfortable, and usually quaint
+and picturesque retreat 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
+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 Elizabeth 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 mentioned 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 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 Commercial
+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.
+
+
+[Illustration: ST. CATHERINE CREE CHURCH IN 1736
+
+The steeple dates from about 1505. The old church was pulled down in 1628,
+and the present one finished in 1630. Cree Church is a corruption of
+Christ-Church.
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+But for Milton's haunts, we need not wander farther east than Aldgate; for
+though Whitechapel Street was thickly lined with houses for some distance
+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 consecrated two years later by the
+ill-fated Archbishop Laud. The ceremonies which he used on this occasion
+savoured so much of Popery, however, that 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 VIII., 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 Throckmorton, whose daughter married Walter
+Raleigh, who was chamberlain of the exchequer, ambassador, and chief
+butler of England. The stories of his fruitless embassy to Mary Queen of
+Scots to prevent her marriage with Darnley, and the records 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 16th, the "lion sermon" 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 Shakespeare."
+
+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 prominent building, every
+church, and almost every monument 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 incalculable 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), travelling 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
+deciphering 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 prejudiced 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
+Undershaft, 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 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 Leathersellers' Company.... I passed within, and mounting 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 observed 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 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
+casements 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 monuments, 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 permitting 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 therefore 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 our knowledge of ancient London allowed in his extreme
+old age to live in unappreciation and neglect.
+
+
+[Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT IN 1737
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+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 explanations
+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 century. The date of the handsome organ is 1695.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+CROSBY HALL.--ST. HELEN'S.--ST. ETHELBURGA'S.--ST. GILES'S, CRIPPLEGATE
+
+
+Passing by the tiny churchyard of St. Andrew Undershaft, by several narrow
+and obscure passages amid crowded business 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. Doubtless his reference is to a high
+turret which once surmounted it, but of which no traces now remain. This
+was before the more pretentious Tudor buildings 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 and in other places in the suburbs, and
+in their dwelling houses in the City itself. They were like midsummer
+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 himself, 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 restaurant, 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 daughter, 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 appears 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. Determined to wreak speedy
+vengeance, he ordered, after the arbitrary method of the times, his
+instant decapitation. 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 contained
+not bread, but his own naughty Elizabeth, who was trundled off by her
+lover in disguise.
+
+When their baby came, some time later, grandpapa 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 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 borrow 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 attending; 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 footmen; and my desire is that you defray all the 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 mistress in the halls of Crosby Place. The latter's
+epitaph 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 to-day. A wine cellar with finely groined roof
+probably 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 afterward devout worshippers sang psalms
+beneath its carved oak roof, which had echoed for two hundred years to
+sounds of mirth and feasting.
+
+A little to the left of Crosby Hall, through a low gateway, the sightseer
+passes from the noisy thoroughfare into a quiet court. Its pavement covers
+the ancient garden of Crosby Place. But it is not all paved. A small green
+churchyard still occupies 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 thereupon was canonised. From remote antiquity a church
+in her honour has stood here. Three centuries 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 proportions 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 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 direction. 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 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
+Bancroft, 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
+Cæsar. The inscription is in form of a legal document 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 portrait 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 contrasted 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 standing the refectory and
+cloisters, and the old hall of the nuns, which was later used by the
+Company 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 destruction over
+the many houses in the land which sheltered 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 thoroughfare of Bishopsgate Street,
+but a short distance from St. Helen's, the student of antiquities may see,
+almost 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 mentioned as early as 1366. Here
+Chaucer may have knelt to say his Paternosters.
+
+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 Canterbury will recall the font in which this king was baptised into
+the faith of his wife.
+
+Not far down Bishopsgate Street, upon the opposite 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
+Constantinople, 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 Cromwell and
+Milton were fighting for the rights of Englishmen, 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 Bishopsgate Street, past his quaint dwelling-house, he
+must have seen the mulberry-trees planted in the park 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 Sunday, 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. Certainly 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. High walls
+of business blocks of nondescript style replace the gaps made by the
+recent fire, which fortunately 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. GILES CRIPPLEGATE IN 1737
+
+Dedicated to St. Giles, who lived about the year 700; founded in 1090;
+destroyed by fire in 1545, and rebuilt within the Liberty but without the
+City of London.
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+The church is on the site of an older one of 1090, and was built about one
+hundred years before Milton'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 contains 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 figure, 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 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 Elizabeth 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
+Protestantism." 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
+  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 the 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 commanded 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, authentic records of our Church, whilst its venerable
+author yet lived."
+
+Frobisher, the great navigator, is also buried within the church.
+
+On the left wall, as one faces the choir, is a curious 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 teaching 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 persons 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
+promise 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 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 undermine. 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.--GUILDHALL--ST. MARY'S,
+ALDERMANBURY.--CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.--ST. SEPULCHRE'S
+
+
+Through 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 Exchange 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 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 north of the Bank. Originally the
+church was cruciform, 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 eminent 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 superintended 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 industrious folk produced many new stuffs
+unknown to 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
+Winchester was compelled to part with all his possessions in Austin
+Friars. At about this time the tower, declared to be "one of the
+beautifullest 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 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, 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 suggest 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 terrible 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 reproduction of the one that
+perished in the fire: it 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 remaining 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 attained 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 accomplished 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. "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 populi_.
+
+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 Christians 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 Wriothesley 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 faltered,
+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 England's history.
+
+Among them was that of Throckmorton for complicity 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 noontide, 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 interest. 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 disinterested affection the world owes
+all that it calls Shakespeare; they alone collected his dramatic writings,
+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 himselfe had lived to have set forth and
+overseene his own writings, but since it hath been ordained 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 numbers, 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, 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 published 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 12th 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, Edward 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
+disappearance 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.
+
+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 Thursdays, same dinner as
+Sundays. Other days, no flesh--Monday, milk porridge; Wednesday, furmity;
+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.
+
+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
+anything, 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,--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 stockings 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 "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 standing 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 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 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
+protomartyr 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. BARTHOLOMEW'S.--SMITHFIELD
+
+
+When 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 Charterhouse 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
+without a Christian prayer said over them, the Bishop 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE CHARTERHOUSE
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+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, 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-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 encroachments 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 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 12th 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 company 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 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."
+
+We pass up, as Milton may have done, the broad carved oak staircase of the
+period antedating Sutton'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 fireplace 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: ST. JOHN'S GATE, CLERKENWELL
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+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.
+Nothing 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 establishments around London was built
+here. The history of the Knights of St. John is one of the longest and
+most romantic of mediæval histories. The prototype of their ancient
+hospital was in Jerusalem, where the knights of the order lived lives of
+abstinence and charity. The English establishment in Clerkenwell was
+founded in 1100 A. D., only a generation 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 Jerusalem 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 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 gunpowder, 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, probably no church has more of
+interest than St. Bartholomew's at Smithfield. Within the century that saw
+the White Tower of the Conqueror begun, a monastery and church rose on
+this site. "A pleasant-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
+clustered 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 found lurking behind dark, uncanny-looking
+tenements.... 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 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 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
+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 parish, 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, 8.
+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 remembered that the Puritans who remained at
+home 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 discovered 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 present
+structure dates from a period early in the eighteenth century.
+
+Directly opposite St. Bartholomew's Church, in 1849, excavations three
+feet below the surface exposed to view a mass of unhewn stones, blackened
+as by fire, and covered with ashes and human bones, 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 Londoners of the early nineteenth 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, 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 jugglers. 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 annoyance 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,
+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 during 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 worship 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.
+
+"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 purport, 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-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
+
+
+Holborn 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. Etheldreda, 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 gardens and the palaces of
+Milton's day. In Chaucer's 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 Protestants, 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 mediæval 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.
+
+In the Plantagenet and Tudor period, vineyards, kitchen garden, and
+orchard surrounded the magnificent 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 open
+quarrel between the ill-matched pair.
+
+In the time of Charles I., a pageant almost unparalleled in magnificence
+was arranged in Ely Place. 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; consequently this famous masque
+came off. Mr. Lawes, the famous musician and friend of Milton, was set to
+composing music for the occasion. On an evening in 1633, when Milton was
+living at Horton, the magnificent procession wended its way through crowds
+of enthusiastic spectators toward Whitehall. 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 accompanied 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
+imaginable 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 exists to-day than the
+various Inns of Court that lead north and south from Holborn. As the
+sightseer 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. Occasionally 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 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, next 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 disconsolately 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 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
+architectural 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 antedate 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.
+
+At number 24 of the "Old Buildings," the secretary of Oliver Cromwell
+lived from 1645 to 1659, where his correspondence was discovered behind a
+false ceiling. The tradition that the Protector was overheard to discuss
+with him here about the kidnapping 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 compassion 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.
+
+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 repetition 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. 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 finished in 1240.
+
+In early times, the discipline of the knights was most severe. The Master
+himself scourged disobedient 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 supposed, 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, carried off the books, deeds, and rolls of
+remembrance, and, in vengeance on the Knights Hospitallers, 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. Discussions on legal questions
+sometimes waxed boisterous, 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 surmounted
+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 centuries.
+
+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,
+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
+wandered 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;
+whereupon 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 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 probably 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."
+
+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 "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
+abeyance, 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
+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 pendants, is especially characteristic of the
+work of that period. The screen is an elaborate one of Renaissance work,
+more interesting for its age and associations 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 richness
+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.
+
+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 learning 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,
+because 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 understood his Puritan seriousness than Cowper; none 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 centuries
+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 Bedford, 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 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 frequented 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 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: SOMERSET HOUSE
+
+This view represents the house as it stood in Milton's boyhood, previous
+to the alterations by Inigo Jones. Adjoining it is the Savoy, and
+immediately behind it is the only view extant of Exeter House.
+
+_From an ancient painting in Dulwich College._]
+
+
+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,
+demolished in 1775, is used for many important public purposes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+WHITEHALL.--WESTMINSTER ABBEY
+
+
+Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, discloses in
+its cramped and dingy quarters little if anything 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 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 Westminster,
+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 magnificence,
+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 farewell 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 possessions, 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 became 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 William III., made money flow like water in
+Whitehall, except during the short domination of the Puritan party. James
+I., 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 111
+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 James 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 ceremonies 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, and north of it the Privy
+Gardens. The front consisted 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 embroidery, 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 fourscore thousand
+pounds, besides a great feather stuck all over with diamonds; as were also
+his sword, 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 27th 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 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
+beforehand, 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 beginnings 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 republican 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 farewell 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-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 Marvell'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 principle 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
+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 objected 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 Cromwell. Every
+Monday he dined with all his officers above the captain's rank. Milton, as
+his Latin secretary, 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 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 violence 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 magnanimous 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 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 inexpressible 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: WESTMINSTER ABBEY AS MILTON KNEW IT
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+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 Exchange. 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 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 England
+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 monument of 1631 to Jane Hill. At
+the rear of the lady's 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 Cambridge, in 1623, Milton may have attended the funeral
+of this man, whose great work, "Britannia" 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, presents 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 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 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 monuments 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
+mournful 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
+"Faërie 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
+Dryden, Drayton, Cowley, and Francis Beaumont, Milton's famous
+contemporaries. If the poet could 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
+pollution 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 protested.
+The former wrote:
+
+  "What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones
+  The labour of an age in pilèd 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 Anstruther, and Sir Robert Ayton,--famous men of
+Milton's time.
+
+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
+beautiful 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 Cromwell, 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 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 disease 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 escorted 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 to adventure their lives that they might be pompously buried, he
+was with all solemnity possible 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, 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
+I., 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 displeased the king that he immured her in the Tower,
+where, bereft of reason by her miseries, she died when Milton was a boy.
+
+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 Republic 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 born in 1608-9,
+the same 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 ambulatory was interred in
+1643 the body of the redoubtable 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."[2]
+Two 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 superintended its repairs. During the Civil War he suffered
+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 Edward I., has never left the Abbey except
+when it was taken to Westminster Hall, when Oliver Cromwell was there
+installed as Lord Protector.
+
+A few of the scenes that the great minster witnessed in Milton's time may
+be alluded to. The funeral of James I. in 1625 was the most magnificent
+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 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 materially 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
+
+
+During 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, 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 questions 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 hundred and forty-nine were several members, like Archbishop
+Usher, who were defenders of Episcopacy. 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 Dissolution, 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 authorities refused to
+surrender the keys. The Pyx no longer holds the regalia, which, after the
+Restoration, 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 geographer, Hakluyt, and
+Sir Christopher Wren. Hakluyt, who died the same year that Shakespeare
+died, 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 "whatsoever 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 13th, 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 exceptions at that." "Good Charles," replied Raleigh, "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
+doublet, 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
+medicine, 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, Westminster, 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."
+
+In this prison, afterward, John Hampden and Sir John Eliot were confined,
+and Richard Lovelace, 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 abandoned sought its shelter. The Sanctuary at
+Westminster was only one of thirty known to have been contemporaneous with
+it in the monasteries of England before the Dissolution.
+
+The magnificent royal palace of Westminster, which was built by Edward the
+Confessor, and 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 Chamber," 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 inconvenient
+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
+patriotism 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 ponderous phraseology
+of the time, cried out against the 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 magnificent
+buildings, his riots, his excesses, what are they but the visible
+evidences of an express exhausting 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 follower: "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 Remonstrance; 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 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 punished. 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
+Parliament 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 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 interference as that have been endured
+either by Elizabeth 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 have reflected on the queen. In those days the 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 cabinet, listened
+to the trial of Strafford, 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 commercial 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 coronation 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 roof
+is unsupported. The roof of Irish oak is said to be always free from
+spiders and insects.
+
+
+[Illustration: WESTMINSTER HALL
+
+Begun 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 a Bible in the other, was saluted as Lord Protector.
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+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 was in
+recent years presented by Mr. Childs of Philadelphia. This depicts
+numerous scenes from "Paradise Lost" and from Milton'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 inscription 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."
+
+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 inscription 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 Renaissance
+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
+before 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 highway between the Tower and
+Lambeth. The venerable 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 history 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 Blackfriars
+was 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 history 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 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 hospitality that was offered was excessive and
+encouraged 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 addition 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 may be gathered from the authentic list
+of his household: "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.
+
+
+[Illustration: IN LAMBETH PALACE
+
+_From an old print._]
+
+
+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 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 opening 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 contained 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
+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 get
+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 compared 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 à Becket, to which Dean Stanley tells
+us "the watermen of the Thames doffed their caps as they rode in their
+countless barges."
+
+The small room at the top of the tower is wainscoted 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 annulment 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 residence,
+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, 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 system
+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 earnest men. But,
+while the ceremonies permitted in the church two generations later were
+practically those that Laud had so zealously striven for, the 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 successor, 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 benevolences 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 enthusiasm 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,
+"Massachusetts," in other years brought a smile to the lips of every
+American who chanced to learn it, no 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 façade 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 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 preceding Milton, beneath its three-light window, the Bishops
+of Winchester and London, and others acting 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 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 contemporaries, 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 "Il
+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
+connected 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 had nearly touched its zenith of
+creative power. The parish boasts that some of the most magnificent
+masterpieces of the world's literature were written within its borders by
+this, its most distinguished parishioner, and England's greatest son. In
+his youth Milton may well have attended the funeral of the great Bishop
+Andrewes, whose recumbent 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 literary 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 parishioners: "Your sacrament of the
+Mass is no sacrament 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 massive piers. Much of its picturesqueness
+must have resulted from the irregularity of the breadth of its 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. 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 waterfalls 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 and thirty years, was as long
+in building as King Solomon's Temple, and, at the time, probably surpassed
+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 scrivener'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.
+
+  "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, Billingsgate, 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 filled 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," Billingsgate 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
+
+
+In 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 unæsthetic; but that earth floors covered with rushes, mixed
+with greasy bones and decaying cabbage 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 cartman, and blacksmith, and craftsman, housed in
+his narrow tenements near Smithfield or in Southwark, 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
+fortunate 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 by the bonfires which were kept burning
+in vain hope of purifying the atmosphere. Physicians, ignorant, but
+heroic, remained at their posts, cupping and blistering, and uselessly
+tormenting the helpless folk who with pathetic confidence 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 possessed 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: Erected in 1564-70 by Sir Thomas Gresham, and burned in the
+Great Fire in 1666.
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+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. Conditions were the same as in Chicago before the
+conflagration 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 Monument, 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 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 approach 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 Highgate, and several miles in circle, some under tents, some under
+miserable hutts and hovells, many without a rag or any necessary utensils,
+bed or board, who from delicatenesse, riches, and easy accommodations 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.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "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 Exchange, 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 All Hallows Barking, St. Ethelburga's, St.
+Andrew 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 College,
+Oxford, and was there noted by John Evelyn as a "miracle of a youth," "a
+prodigious young scholar," who showed him "a thermometer, a monstrous
+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 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
+mathematicians. 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 Cambridge, and the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford. He then
+visited Paris, where he saw Bernini, and made 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 emperor.
+
+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 approached
+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 relegated to the country, and the
+churches with their spires were to be placed in prominent positions on the
+main thoroughfares.
+
+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 discarded,
+Wren was to make the new city his monument. 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
+rubbish 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. 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, and
+large gardens were provided for the less insane. Over the gate were placed
+two figures representing 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.
+
+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, Aldermanbury; St. Edmund the
+King's; St. Lawrence's, Jewry; St. Michael's, Cornhill, where he attempted
+Gothic work; the beautiful St. Stephen's, Wallbrook; St. Olave's, Jewry;
+St. Martin's, Ludgate; St. Michael's, Wood Street; St. Dionis's,
+Langbourne Ward; St. George's, Botolph Lane; and the Custom House.
+
+No interior, either of these or those that followed these, is so perfect
+as St. Stephen's, Wallbrook. Architecturally speaking, it has been
+questioned 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 necessities 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. 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: BOW STEEPLE, CHEAPSIDE
+
+_From a print published in 1798._]
+
+
+The lofty spire of the church rises to an altitude of 226 feet, a trifle
+higher than Bunker Hill Monument, 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
+hundred 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."
+
+From the days when little Dick Whittington, a forlorn runaway, heard from
+far Bow bells summon him back to London, the bells have played a notable
+part in the life of Londoners. A true cockney 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 admired when this new
+spire of Wren's was rising upon the ruins of the old, and close beside the
+birthplace 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.
+
+
+
+
+Index
+
+
+  Aldersgate Street, 89, 122.
+
+  Aldgate, 155.
+
+  All Hallows, Barking, 143.
+
+  All Hallows Church, Bread St., 42, 45, 306.
+
+  All Hallows, Staining, tower of, 155.
+
+  Amersham, 116.
+
+  Andrewes, Bishop, 289.
+
+  "Arcades," 81.
+
+  "Areopagitica," 94.
+
+  Artillery Walk, 110, 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, 120.
+
+  Browne, Robert, 68.
+
+  Buckingham, Duke of, 243, 256.
+
+  Buckinghamshire, 112-119.
+
+  Bunhill Fields, 111, 120.
+
+  Burke, Edmund, 116.
+
+  Burleigh, 226.
+
+
+  Cæsar, Sir Julius, 174.
+
+  Cambridge, 57-77;
+    university life in Milton's time, 64.
+
+  Camden, William, 252, 266.
+
+  Caxton, William, 269.
+
+  Chalfont St. Giles, 111, 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, Earl of, 259.
+
+  "Comus," 80, 82, 96.
+
+  Conventual establishments, 22.
+
+  Covent Garden, 237-239.
+
+  Cranmer, Archbishop, 280.
+
+  Cromwell, Oliver, 59, 92, 101, 141, 180, 228, 244, 248, 249, 256-258,
+    261.
+
+  "Cromwell, Ode to," Milton's, 104, 106.
+
+  Cromwell, Richard, 105, 111.
+
+  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, 111, 115.
+
+  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 schoolmaster, 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, 111.
+
+  Guild Hall, The, 189-193.
+
+
+  Hakluyt, Richard, 266.
+
+  Hampden, John, 117-119, 268.
+
+  Hatton, Sir Christopher, 223.
+
+  Haw, The, 51.
+
+  Heminge and Condell, monument to, 193.
+
+  Henry VIII., 249.
+
+  Heylin, Peter, 261.
+
+  Hobson, 57.
+
+  Holbein, 157, 241.
+
+  Holborn, 98, 106, 225.
+
+  Hooker, Richard, 234.
+
+  Horton, 78-84, 92.
+
+
+  "Il 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.
+
+  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 topography, 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, 110.
+
+  Milton, Sarah, mother of the poet, 43, 83.
+
+  Milton Street, 111.
+
+  Minshull, Elizabeth, Milton's wife, 110, 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 College, 63.
+
+  Pall Mall, 100.
+
+  "Paradise Lost," 89, 105, 107, 111, 114, 120-122, 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, 111, 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 III., 129, 165, 190.
+
+  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. 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, 110.
+
+  St. Mary le Bow, church of, 305.
+
+  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 Westminster, 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.
+
+  Throckmorton, Sir Nicholas, 157, 193.
+
+  Tower Hill, 139, 144.
+
+  Tower of London, The, 126-136.
+
+  Toynbee Hall, 156.
+
+  Trafalgar Square, 99, 100.
+
+  Trinity College Library, Milton manuscript in, 73, 89.
+
+  Turner, William, 150.
+
+  Tyndale, 201.
+
+
+  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, 101, 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.
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+[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.'"
+
+[2] 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 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?"
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
+
+Images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest
+paragraph break.
+
+Punctuation has been corrected without note.
+
+"Thockmorton" has been corrected to "Throckmorton" in the index.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Milton's England, by Lucia Ames Mead
+
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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Milton's England, by Lucia Ames Mead.
+    </title>
+
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+    p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;}
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+    .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right; font-style: normal;}
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+
+    hr {width: 33%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; clear: both;}
+
+    table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
+
+    .poem {margin-left:15%;}
+    .note {margin-left: 30%; margin-right: 30%;}
+    .index {margin-left: 20%;}
+
+    .right {text-align: right;}
+    .center {text-align: center;}
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+    .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;}
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+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Milton's England, by Lucia Ames Mead
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Milton's England
+
+Author: Lucia Ames Mead
+
+Release Date: December 1, 2010 [EBook #34526]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILTON'S ENGLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>Milton&#8217;s England</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<table class="border" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td colspan="3" align="center"><strong><i>UNIFORM VOLUMES</i></strong></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><strong>Dickens&#8217; London</strong></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><span class="smcap">By Francis Miltoun</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right">$2.00</td></tr>
+<tr><td>The Same, &#190; levant morocco</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right">5.00</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><strong>Milton&#8217;s England</strong></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><span class="smcap">By Lucia Ames Mead</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right">2.00</td></tr>
+<tr><td>The Same, &#190; levant morocco</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right">5.00</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><strong>Dumas&#8217; Paris</strong></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><span class="smcap">By Francis Miltoun</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top</td><td align="right"><i>net</i></td><td align="right">1.60</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><i>postpaid</i></td><td align="right">1.75</td></tr>
+<tr><td>The Same, &#190; levant morocco</td><td align="right"><i>net</i></td><td align="right">4.00</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><i>postpaid</i></td><td align="right">4.15</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="3" align="center">L. C. PAGE &amp; COMPANY<br />New England Building<br />Boston, Mass.</td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/frontis.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><i>JOHN MILTON</i><br /><i>From the miniature painted in 1667 by William Faithorne</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/title_page.jpg" alt="Milton's England by Lucia Ames Mead" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><i>Copyright, 1902</i><br /><span class="smcap">By L. C. Page &amp; Company</span><br />(INCORPORATED)</p>
+<p class="center"><i>All rights reserved</i></p>
+<p class="center">Fifth Impression, April, 1908</p>
+<p class="center"><i>COLONIAL PRESS</i><br /><i>Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds &amp; Co.<br />Boston, U. S. A.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[Pg i]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><small>THIS LITTLE STUDY<br />OF BYGONE DAYS AND ANCIENT PLACES<br />
+IS INSCRIBED TO THE<br />PURITAN SCHOLAR AND DEAR FELLOW PILGRIM<br />
+WHO WANDERED WITH ME<br />ONE HAPPY SUMMER THROUGH<br />MILTON&#8217;S ENGLAND.</small></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[Pg ii]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/map_1_tmb.jpg" alt="" /><br />
+<a href="images/map_1.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></div>
+<p class="center">MAP OF MILTON&#8217;S ENGLAND</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><strong>Milton&#8217;s Residences in London</strong></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td align="right">1.</td><td>Bread Street, 1608-1624.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">2.</td><td>St. Bride&#8217;s Churchyard, in 1639 or 1640.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">3.</td><td>Aldersgate Street, 1640-1645.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">4.</td><td>The Barbican, 1645-1647.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">5.</td><td>Holborn, near Lincoln&#8217;s Inn, 1647-1649.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right">6.</td><td>Charing Cross, opening into Spring Gardens,<br />seven months in 1649.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">7.</td><td>Whitehall, by Scotland Yard, 1649-1652.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">8.</td><td>Petty France, now York Street, 1652-1660.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">9.</td><td>Bartholomew Close, and a prison, 1660.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">10.</td><td>Holborn, near Red Lion Square, in 1660.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">11.</td><td>Jewin Street, 1661-1663 or 1664.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right">12.</td><td>Artillery Walk, by Bunhill Fields Cemetery, 1664-1665,<br />and from 1666 to November, 1674.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/map_2_tmb.jpg" alt="" /><br />
+<a href="images/map_2.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></div>
+<p class="center">MAP OF MILTON&#8217;S LONDON</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><strong>Map of Milton&#8217;s London</strong></p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td align="right">1.</td><td>Clarendon House.</td><td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
+    <td align="right">16.</td><td>Hatton Garden.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">31.</td><td>Aldgate.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">2.</td><td>St. James&#8217;s Field.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">17.</td><td>St. John&#8217;s Gate.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">32.</td><td>Whitechapel Street.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">3.</td><td>St. James&#8217;s Palace.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">18.</td><td>Smithfield.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">33.</td><td>St. Olave.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">4.</td><td>The New River.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">19.</td><td>Charterhouse Yard.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">34.</td><td>The Minories.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">5.</td><td>St. James&#8217;s Park.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">20.</td><td>Barbican.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">35.</td><td>Custom House.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">6.</td><td>Westminster Abbey.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">21.</td><td>Jewin Street.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">36.</td><td>St. Saviour&#8217;s.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">7.</td><td>Pall Mall.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">22.</td><td>St. Giles&#8217;s Cripplegate.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">37.</td><td>Bedlam.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">8.</td><td>Whitehall.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">23.</td><td>St. Paul.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">38.</td><td>Moorfields.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">9.</td><td>Scotland Yard.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">24.</td><td>Bread Street.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">39.</td><td>Artillery Yard.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">10.</td><td>Charing Cross.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">25.</td><td>City Wall.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">40.</td><td>Aldersgate Street.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">11.</td><td>St. Martin&#8217;s Field.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">26.</td><td>Austin Friars.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">41.</td><td>Cheapside.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">12.</td><td>The Temple.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">27.</td><td>St. Ethelburga.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">42.</td><td>Lambeth Palace.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">13.</td><td>Lincoln Inn Fields.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">28.</td><td>St. Helen&#8217;s.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">43.</td><td>Petty France.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">14.</td><td>Gray&#8217;s Inn Fields.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">29.</td><td>Crosby Hall.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">44.</td><td>Birdcage Walk.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">15.</td><td>Holborn.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right">30.</td><td>Bishopsgate Street.</td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table width="65%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td align="right"><small>CHAPTER</small></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">The London into Which Milton Was Born</span></td>
+<td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Milton&#8217;s Life on Bread Street</span></td>
+<td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Milton at Cambridge</span></td>
+<td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Milton at Horton</span></td>
+<td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Milton on the Continent.&mdash;In St.
+Bride&#8217;s Churchyard.&mdash;At Aldersgate Street.&mdash;The Barbican.&mdash;Holborn.&mdash;Spring Gardens</span></td>
+<td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Milton at Whitehall.&mdash;Scotland Yard.&mdash;Petty
+France.&mdash;Bartholomew Close.&mdash;High Holborn.&mdash;Jewin Street.&mdash;Artillery Walk.</span></td>
+<td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_101"><ins class="correction" title="original: 110">101</ins></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Chalfont St. Giles.&mdash;Artillery Walk.</span></td>
+<td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_112">112</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">The Tower.&mdash;Tower Hill</span></td>
+<td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">All Hallows, Barking.&mdash;St. Olave&#8217;s.&mdash;St.
+Catherine Cree&#8217;s.&mdash;St. Andrew Undershaft</span></td>
+<td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Crosby Hall.&mdash;St. Helen&#8217;s.&mdash;St.
+Ethelburga&#8217;s.&mdash;St. Giles&#8217;s, Cripplegate</span></td>
+<td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_164">164</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Gresham College.&mdash;Austin Friars.&mdash;Guildhall.&mdash;St.
+Mary&#8217;s, Aldermanbury.&mdash;Christ&#8217;s Hospital.&mdash;St. Sepulchre&#8217;s.</span></td>
+<td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_184">184</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Charterhouse.&mdash;St. John&#8217;s
+Gate.&mdash;St. Bartholomew&#8217;s.&mdash;Smithfield.</span></td>
+<td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_202">202</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Ely Place.&mdash;Inns of
+Court.&mdash;Temple Church.&mdash;Covent Garden.&mdash;Somerset House</span></td>
+<td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_221">221</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Whitehall.&mdash;Westminster Abbey</span></td>
+<td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_240">240</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">The Precincts of the Abbey.&mdash;Westminster
+Palace.&mdash;St. Margaret&#8217;s</span></td>
+<td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_264">264</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Lambeth Palace.&mdash;St. Saviour&#8217;s.&mdash;London Bridge</span></td>
+<td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">The Plague.&mdash;The Fire.&mdash;Wren.&mdash;London Rebuilt</span></td>
+<td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_293">293</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p>
+<h2>List of Illustrations</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">John Milton</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#frontis"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Old St. Paul&#8217;s Cathedral</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_46">47</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Christ&#8217;s College, Cambridge</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Part of Whitehall</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_100">101</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">In Milton&#8217;s House at Chalfont St. Giles</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_113">113</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">St. Catherine Cree Church in 1736</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_156">157</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Church of St. Andrew Undershaft in 1737</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_163">163</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Church of St. Giles Cripplegate in 1737</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_179">178</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Charterhouse</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_203">203</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">St. John&#8217;s Gate, Clerkenwell</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_208">209</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Somerset House</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_239">239</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Westminster Abbey as Milton Knew It</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_250">250</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Westminster Hall</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_275">274</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">In Lambeth Palace</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_280">280</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Royal Exchange</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_294">295</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Bow Steeple, Cheapside</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_305">304</a></td></tr></table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+<h1>Milton&#8217;s England</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+<h3>THE LONDON INTO WHICH MILTON WAS BORN</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_t.jpg" style="margin-top: -0.5em; margin-bottom: -0.5em;" alt="T" /></span>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 &#8220;London,&#8221; has an interest which surpasses that of any spot
+on earth. Though in his school-days he was taught nothing of the city&#8217;s
+topography and little of its local history, while he has laboriously
+learned outlandish names on every continent, nevertheless, in his mind&#8217;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&mdash;its
+mighty, historic past and its complex, stupendous present&mdash;is to know the
+religion, the art, the science, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> politics,&mdash;the development, in short,
+of the Anglo-Saxon race.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s most noble sons.</p>
+
+<p>Three periods of a hundred years each stand out above all others since the
+Christian era in their significance and richness of accomplishment.</p>
+
+<p>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 beginning 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</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Gutenberg made thought cosmopolite<br />
+And stretched electric wires from mind to mind.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In this period Italian art made its most splendid achievements, and
+Luther, Calvin, and Columbus gave man new freedom and new possibilities.</p>
+
+<p>The middle period&mdash;the one in which England made her greatest contribution
+to human advancement&mdash;is the one that we are to consider. Milton&#8217;s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> life
+covered sixty-six of its one hundred years. It began with the destruction
+of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and included the brilliant period of
+exploration and adventure just before Milton&#8217;s birth, in which Hawkins,
+Drake, and Raleigh, and other ambitious and not too scrupulous sea-rovers
+sought, like Cecil Rhodes, jewels and gold, empire, expansion, and renown.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s great Puritan contemporaries, who, fighting for the rights
+of Englishmen, fought the world&#8217;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 &#8220;divine right of kings,&#8221; but only,
+explicitly and emphatically, by the will of the English people.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> William Bradford must, more than most
+others, have significance.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+James&#8217;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 &#8220;Fleet,&#8221;
+flowed from the hills in the northwest in a southeasterly direction into
+the Thames. Just east of the last named was the little brook called
+&#8220;Wallbrook,&#8221; 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&mdash;the
+Fleet&mdash;was tidal, and formed the western bulwark of London for centuries.
+It emptied into the Thames where now is Blackfriars Bridge.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> the time of the Romans and Saxons, though its marshes have
+largely disappeared. But the other smaller streams are now obliterated,
+though in Milton&#8217;s time their course could still partly be discerned, and
+their degradation into drains was not complete.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> feet high, and was finished by bastions and additional
+defences at the angles. Though scant traces of any of the original
+construction now remain, much of the Roman wall, and, at all events, a
+complete wall of mingled Roman and medi&aelig;val work, encircled the site of
+the ancient city limits in Milton&#8217;s day, and its gates were nightly locked
+until long after his death.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>In Roman days the whole enclosure was crossed by two great
+streets,&mdash;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 <i>chepe</i>, from the Saxon word meaning <i>sale</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Of the Saxon period, which followed the sudden and mysterious abandonment
+of their city by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> Romans after their occupation of it for three
+centuries, 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 property 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 terminations of
+<i>ton</i>, <i>ham</i>, <i>worth</i>, <i>stoke</i>, <i>stow</i>, <i>fold</i>, <i>garth</i>, <i>park</i>, <i>hay</i>,
+<i>burgh</i>, <i>bury</i>, <i>brough</i>, <i>borrow</i>. Philologic study of continental terms
+displays no such marked emphasis upon the idea of property and demarkation
+lines. Says the learned Taylor: &#8220;It may indeed be said, without
+exaggeration, that the universal prevalence throughout England of names
+containing this word, <i>Homes</i> [viz., <i>ham</i>, <i>ton</i>, etc.], gives us the
+clue to the real strength of the national character of the Anglo-Saxon
+race.&#8221; Kensington, Brompton, Paddington, Islington, are but a few of the
+local names which illustrate in their suffix the origin of the word
+town&mdash;originally a little hedged enclosure. [German <i>zaun</i> or hedge.] The
+most important remnant of the Saxon influence is to be found in the
+syllable <i>ing</i> 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&#8217;s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> son; Wellington, the
+village of Wells&#8217;s son, or the Wells clan. Family settlements are
+traceable by this syllable <i>ing</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Chipping</i> or <i>chepe</i> was the old English term for market-place, and
+Westcheap and Eastcheap were the old London markets of Saxon days. When
+the word <i>market</i> takes the place in England of the old Anglo-Saxon
+<i>chipping</i>, we may assume the place to be of later origin.</p>
+
+<p>The Saxons, unlike the Romans, were not road-makers, and when they applied
+the English word <i>street</i>, corrupted from the Latin <i>strata</i>, as in the
+case of Watling Street&mdash;the ancient road which they renamed&mdash;we shall
+usually find that it marks a work of Roman origin.</p>
+
+<p>Clerkenwell, 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. <i>Hithe</i>, which means landing-place, has in later
+times largely disappeared, except at Rotherhithe near Greenwich.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> 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&#8217;s
+Lane, and whose black and grimy churchyard was doubtless green in Milton&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s, Danes, is said to mark the spot where tradition assigns a
+settlement of Danes.</p>
+
+<p>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. <i>By</i>, meaning first a farm and
+later a village, is one which occurs some six hundred times. To this day
+our common term, a <i>by-law</i>, recalls the Dane.</p>
+
+<p>The names of the street on which Milton was born and of those in the near
+neighbourhood to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s Priory outside the city, part of the church of St.
+Bartholomew&#8217;s the Great, and part of St. Ethelburga&#8217;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 windows 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 &#8220;dog tooth&#8221;
+decoration; &#8220;pleated&#8221; capitals; carvings, more or less grotesque, of human
+or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> animal forms. English Norman, like English Gothic, never equalled the
+French work in both these styles.</p>
+
+<p>In Milton&#8217;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
+establishments 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+the century when Milton&#8217;s grandfather was young, can scarcely be conceived
+to-day when the adjuncts of the Church have shrunk almost to nothingness.
+In Milton&#8217;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
+&#8220;London&#8221; details the numbers supported in this earlier period by St.
+Paul&#8217;s alone. The cathedral body included the bishop, dean, the four
+archdeacons, the treasurer, the precentor, 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,
+carpenters, masons, painters, carvers, and gilders.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> one-fourth of the whole city population was needed to supply these
+demands.</p>
+
+<p>From Norman London there remained, besides St. Paul&#8217;s vast monastic house,
+the priory of St. Bartholomew&#8217;s, the house of St. Mary Overie&#8217;s, the
+hospital of St. Katharine&#8217;s, and the priory of the Holy Trinity. In
+Plantagenet London, we find the priory of Crutched&mdash;that is,
+Crossed&mdash;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&#8217;s, Bishopsgate, whose noble ruins
+had not disappeared more than a century after Milton&#8217;s death. Farther west
+and north of Broad Street stood the splendid house of Austin Friars; still
+farther west was St. Martin&#8217;s le Grand, and just beyond, the foundation of
+the Gray Friars or Franciscans. Christ&#8217;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&mdash;the
+Dominicans&mdash;whose name to-day is perpetuated in Blackfriars Bridge.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> the monastery of White Friars or Carmelites, and beyond these the
+ancient site of the Knights Templar, whose Temple church, in Milton&#8217;s day,
+as well as ours, alone remained. North of the Norman St. Bartholomew&#8217;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&#8217;s stood the Norman priory of St. John&#8217;s of
+Jerusalem. Adjacent to it lay the twin foundation&mdash;the priory of Black
+Nuns.</p>
+
+<p>South of the Thames lay two great establishments, Bermondsey and St.
+Thomas&#8217;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 catalogue, 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.</p>
+
+<p>Milton must have seen several &#8220;colleges&#8221; as well as monasteries; among
+these were St. Michael&#8217;s College on Crooked Lane, and Jesus Commons, and a
+&#8220;college&#8221; for poor and aged priests, called the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> &#8220;Papey.&#8221; A portion of the
+&#8220;college&#8221; of Whittington still remained, and on the site of the present
+Mercers&#8217; Chapel stood a college for the education of priests, whose
+splendid church remained until the Great Fire.</p>
+
+<p>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 magnificence 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 abandonment
+of nature&#8217;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&#8217;s
+age was fast displacing:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>&#8220;You have in the earlier Gothic less wonderful construction, less careful
+masonry, far less expression 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&mdash;not a shadow without meaning and not a line without 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 waywardness 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 <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>build&mdash;how wonderfully can I hang this
+arch in air? and the catastrophe was instant&mdash;architecture became in
+France a mere web of woven lines,&mdash;in England a mere grating of
+perpendicular ones. Redundance was substituted for invention, and geometry
+for passion.&#8221; (&#8220;The Two Paths.&#8221;)</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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 impertinent when blazoned everywhere, and are
+wholly devoid of beauty when they reproduce by the hundred some instrument
+of prosaic use.</p>
+
+<p>Plantagenet London, and its many remnants of domestic architecture, in
+Milton&#8217;s day, illustrated fully Ruskin&#8217;s dictum that &#8220;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 sanctuaries; 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, <i>not</i>
+of the churches.... Gothic was formed in the baron&#8217;s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> castle and the
+burgher&#8217;s street. It was formed by the thoughts and hands and powers of
+labouring citizens and warrior kings.&#8221; (&#8220;Crown of Wild Olive.&#8221;)</p>
+
+<p>In a memorable passage in his lectures on Architecture 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 <i>tower</i> and <i>turret</i>, and the mental pictures that they
+conjure up, removed. Suppose Walter Scott had written, instead of &#8220;the old
+clock struck two from a turret adjoining my bedchamber,&#8221; &#8220;the old clock
+struck two from the landing at the top of the stair.&#8221; &#8220;What,&#8221; he asks,
+&#8220;would have become of the passage?&#8221; &#8220;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,&mdash;words everlastingly poetical and powerful,&mdash;is a most
+true and sure index that the things themselves are delightful to you.&#8221; As
+to stylobates, and pediments, and triglyphs, and all the classic forms,
+even when pure and unvulgarised by decadent Renaissance 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:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+&#8220;The Grecian gluts me with its perfectness<br />
+Unanswerable as Euclid, self-contained,<br />
+The one thing finished in this hasty world.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But ah! this other, this that never ends,</span><br />
+Still climbing, luring fancy still to climb,<br />
+As full of morals, half divined, as life,<br />
+Graceful, grotesque, with ever new surprise<br />
+Of hazardous caprices, sure to please,<br />
+Heavy as nightmare, airy light as fern,<br />
+Imagination&#8217;s very self in stone!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Of the type of architecture most favoured by Milton&#8217;s contemporaries, Ruskin says:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Renaissance architecture is the school which has conducted men&#8217;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.&#8221; This is a strong expression 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 modern world can not plead poverty as
+its excuse for ugliness. Even the village cottage of three centuries 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>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, exception must be made to
+much delightful domestic architecture that has the Tudor stamp and is
+distinctly English, and unknown on the Continent.</p>
+
+<p>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 decoration, can equal the severe but pompous lines of the
+Renaissance in conveying a sense of pride. Says Ruskin: &#8220;There is in them
+an expression of aristocracy 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 written 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 common<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> men can enjoy; some concession to the
+simplicities 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 stooping, of conceding, for an instant. Whatever
+excellence 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 anything I do is in its
+proud breeding, its rigid formalism, 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&#8217;s
+worship, but this was good for man&#8217;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&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s dictum. Ruskin himself has
+done homage to their genius and the greatness of their work. &#8220;There were
+of course,&#8221; he says, &#8220;noble exceptions.&#8221; 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&#8217;s hands. Under any
+dome and architectural reminder of Roman thought and life, whether it be
+Wren&#8217;s mighty St. Paul&#8217;s, or his small and exquisitely proportioned St.
+Stephen&#8217;s, Wallbrook, almost in its shadow, the worshipper must feel
+something akin to Ruskin&#8217;s sentiment. A meek and contrite heart feels
+alien and uncomforted amid its perfection.</p>
+
+<p>But Ruskin&#8217;s word chiefly concerns the more perfect Gothic of the
+Continent, and the manifestations there&mdash;worse than any in England&mdash;of
+riotous and insolent excess in its Renaissance work. The most ostentatious
+and offensive monument in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>Westminster 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.</p>
+
+<p>Yet to a large extent the England of the splendid Tudor period and the
+England of the Stuarts substituted 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 Charterhouse, new in Milton&#8217;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&#8217;s heads. In the quaint beam and
+plaster front of Staple&#8217;s Inn on Holborn still remains the ancient type of
+domestic architecture which antedated and accompanied Milton&#8217;s boyhood.
+Hundreds 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 artificers,
+housed their apprentices within them. They<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> 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&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>With Henry VIII. and the widespread and thorough dissolution of religious
+houses, London became a far more commercial and prosaic place. Green<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+convent gardens were sold for the erection of narrow wooden tenements;
+ancient dormitories, refectories, and chapels were pulled down or
+transformed for more secular purposes. Crutched Friars&#8217; Church became a
+carpenter&#8217;s shop and tennis court; Shakespeare and his friends erected a
+playhouse on the site of the Black Friars&#8217; monastery. A tavern replaced
+the church of St. Martin&#8217;s le Grand, and far and wide traces of the
+despoiler and rebuilder were manifest.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s visions. Not
+only dreams of wealth without labour, but golden actualities had dazzled
+the imagination of thousands. Drake and Hawkins, Frobisher and Raleigh
+were adding new lustre to an age hitherto unparalleled in prosperity and
+enterprise. Emerson&#8217;s description of the Englishman as having a
+&#8220;telescopic appreciation of distant gain&#8221; was exemplified.</p>
+
+<p>England was rich in poets, great even in Shakespeare&#8217;s time. Of two
+hundred and forty who published verses, forty are remembered to-day. Yet
+of England&#8217;s six million people, half could not read at all. Never was
+there among people of privilege<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> such a proportion of accomplished men.
+Every man tried his hand at verses, and learned to sing a madrigal, 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 instructor, wrote Latin, but many others were
+accomplished in those severer studies which ladies in a later age
+neglected.</p>
+
+<p>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, <i>e. g.</i>, honey was poured
+over mutton. Tobacco cost eighteen shillings a pound, and King James
+complained that there were those who &#8220;spent &pound;300 a year upon this noxious
+weed.&#8221; No vital statistics existed to show the average of longevity. But
+certain it is that, with modern sanitation and cleanliness, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s lifetime, they
+included the city of Westminster and the parishes 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.</p>
+
+<p>In 1682 Sir William Petty, speaking of the five plagues that had visited
+London in the preceding hundred years, remarks: &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In Milton&#8217;s boyhood common folk were crowded into such narrow, wooden
+tenements as one may still see within the enclosure of St. Giles&#8217;s Church,
+Cripplegate,&mdash;almost the only ones that still remain within the city.
+There were no sewers and no adequate pavement until 1616. House refuse was
+not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to obtain accurate statistics of the population of London,
+but Loftie estimates that in 1636 seven hundred thousand people lived
+&#8220;within its liberties.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Where now lofty, gray stone buildings of pretentious 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.</p>
+
+<p>New objects of luxury began to be manufactured&mdash;fans, ladies&#8217; 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 <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>naturalised&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Though in the time of Milton&#8217;s father the amenities 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&#8217;s reign, or of that Unitarian
+in 1585 who suffered at the stake for the denial of the divinity of
+Christ&mdash;a theological view with which Milton himself is shown to have had
+much sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 beginning of the
+twentieth century, men&#8217;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 possibility 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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+<h3>MILTON&#8217;S LIFE ON BREAD STREET</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_d.jpg" style="margin-top: -0.5em; margin-bottom: -0.5em;" alt="D" /></span>irectly under
+the shadow of St. Mary le Bow Church, and almost within
+bowshot of old St. Paul&#8217;s, in a little court off Bread Street, three doors
+from Cheapside, John Milton, the son of John Milton, scrivener, was born,
+December 9th 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 &#8220;Paradise Lost.&#8221; 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&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>We know little of Milton&#8217;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 babyhood,
+but the little John&#8217;s elder sister, Anne, and younger brother,
+Christopher, grew with him to middle life.</p>
+
+<p>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 harmonised. 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 fingers upon the organ keyboard.</p>
+
+<p>The Bread Street of Milton&#8217;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 &#8220;Standard in Cheap&#8221;&mdash;an ancient monument in hexagonal
+shape, with sculptures<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>Only a few steps from his father&#8217;s house the little John found himself in
+the thickest traffic and bustle of the city. Here were mercers&#8217; and
+goldsmiths&#8217; shops, and much coming and going of carts, and occasionally
+coaches, which, as the antiquarian Stow declared, &#8220;were running on wheels
+with many whose parents had been glad to go on foot,&#8221; for coaches were but
+newly come into fashion. As the little lad stood at the street corner
+looking east and west along Cheapside,&mdash;the ancient market-place,&mdash;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 describes a row built by Thomas
+Wood, goldsmith, of &#8220;fair large houses, for the most part possessed of
+mercers,&#8221; and westward, beginning at Bread Street, &#8220;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> frame, uniformly builded, four stories high,
+beautified toward the street with the goldsmiths&#8217; 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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 mercantile 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 inscription, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p class="center">&#8220;<span class="smcap">Milton<br />
+Born in Bread Street<br />
+1608<br />
+Baptised in Church of All Hallows<br />
+Which Stood here Ante<br />
+1878.</span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The register of his baptism referred to him as &#8220;John, sonne of John
+Mylton, Scrivener.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>Further south, on the same side as All Hallows, were &#8220;six almshouses
+builded for poor decayed brethren of the Salter&#8217;s Company,&#8221; and beyond
+this the church of St. Mildred, the Virgin. Upon crossing Basing Lane,
+Milton saw the most noted house upon the street, known as &#8220;Gerrard Hall.&#8221;
+This was an antique structure &#8220;built upon arched vaults and with arched
+gates of stone brought from Caen in Normandy,&#8221; 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
+circumference. Small boys in Bread Street may well have stood in awe of
+such a cane.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the famous &#8220;Mermaid&#8221; Tavern was in Bread or Friday Street or
+between them seems doubtful, but Ben Jonson&#8217;s lines plainly indicate Bread
+Street:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;At Bread-street&#8217;s Mermaid having dined and merry,<br />
+Proposed to go to Holborn in a wherry.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 288px; height: 500px;"><img src="images/fp_46_tmb.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><a href="images/fp_46.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></p>
+<p class="center">OLD ST. PAUL&#8217;S CATHEDRAL</p>
+<p class="note">The two upper views show the porch by Inigo Jones. The two lower views
+show the &#8220;Lesser Cloisters.&#8221; Milton&#8217;s school stood at the rear of the church.</p>
+<p class="center"><i>From an old engraving.</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>As Milton was early destined for the Church, his unusually thoughtful
+disposition and quick perception must have given promise of his
+fulfillment of his father&#8217;s hope. At the age of ten he was writing verses.
+At this time, a Dutch painter, Jansen, reputed to be &#8220;equal to Van Dyck in
+all except freedom of hand and grace,&#8221; was employed to paint the
+scrivener&#8217;s little son, as well as James I. and his children and various
+noblemen.</p>
+
+<p>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 Gallery, and be placed beside the striking and noble
+likeness of the poet in middle life.</p>
+
+<p>The lines which were written beneath the first engraving of it may have
+been the poet&#8217;s own:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;When I was yet a child, no childish play<br />
+To me was pleasing; all my mind was set<br />
+Serious to learn and know, and thence to do<br />
+What might be public good; myself I thought<br />
+Born to that end, born to promote all truth<br />
+And righteous things.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> 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&#8217;s School, within five minutes&#8217; walk, should
+have been selected?</p>
+
+<p>When Milton went to school in 1620, St. Paul&#8217;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&#8217;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 westward 224 feet, which, with the nave, made
+the entire length 580 feet. When Jones&#8217;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 largest cathedral in all England. Upon the southwest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> corner
+was a tower once used as a prison, and also as a bell and clock tower.
+This was the real Lollards&#8217; tower, rather than the one at Lambeth which is
+so called. The northwest tower was likewise a prison. The nave was of
+transitional Norman 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.</p>
+
+<p>Ben Jonson makes constant allusion to &#8220;Paul&#8217;s.&#8221; Here he studied the
+extravagant costumes of the day. According to Dekker, the tailors
+frequented its aisles to catch the newest fashions: &#8220;If you determine to
+enter into a new suit, warn your tailor to attend you in Paul&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Bishop Earle, writing when Milton was twenty years of age, describes St.
+Paul&#8217;s as follows: &#8220;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 <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>whatsoever 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&#8217; sanctuary.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Well may John Milton senior have cautioned his young son not to tarry in
+&#8220;Duke Humphrey&#8217;s Walk,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 Cambridge, Oliver Cromwell, in
+his maiden speech in Parliament, declared that flat popery was being<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+preached at Paul&#8217;s Cross. When Cromwell&#8217;s day of power was come, and the
+cathedral during the war was sometimes used to stable horses, Paul&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>Of the architecture of the bishop&#8217;s palace, which stood at the northeast
+of the cathedral, we know nothing, but we know that it existed in Milton&#8217;s
+school-days. Adjoining the palace was a &#8220;Haw,&#8221; 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 &#8220;Haw&#8221; was a small edition of the Pisan Campo Santo.</p>
+
+<p>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 &#8220;Lesser Cloisters,&#8221; doubtless to distinguish it from
+the other cloisters in the &#8220;Haw.&#8221; During his most impressionable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> 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 education in Milton&#8217;s age may be accused of, it can not be
+denied that they developed industry, reverence, and moral courage&mdash;three
+qualities which with all our child study and pedagogical improvements are
+perhaps less common to-day than they were then.</p>
+
+<p>About the year 1620, when William Bradford was writing his famous journal,
+and John Carver and Edward Winslow were sailing with him in the
+<i>Mayflower</i>, when Doctor Harvey had told London folk that man&#8217;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&#8217;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> had reference,
+curiously, to the number of fishes in Simon Peter&#8217;s miraculous draught.
+Over the windows were inscribed the words in large capital letters:
+&#8220;<i>Schola Catechizationis Puerorum In Christi Opt. Max. Fide Et Bonis
+Literis</i>.&#8221; On entering, the pupils were confronted by the motto painted on
+each window: &#8220;<i>Aut Doce, Aut Disce, Aut Discede</i>&#8221;&mdash;either teach or learn
+or leave the place. There were two rooms, one called the <i>vestibulum</i>, 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 <i>cathedra</i>, and under a bust of Colet said to
+have been a work of &#8220;exquisite art.&#8221; Stow tells us that somewhat before
+Milton&#8217;s time the master&#8217;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 eligible; 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&#8217;s master was Doctor
+Alexander Gill, who from 1608-1635<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> held the mastership of St. Paul&#8217;s
+School. A progressive man was this same reverend gentleman&mdash;a great
+believer in his native English and in spelling reform. Speaking of Latin,
+this remarkable Latin master said: &#8220;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.&#8221; He was also an
+advocate of the retention of good old Saxon words as against the invasion
+of Latinised ones. &#8220;But whither,&#8221; he writes, &#8220;have you banished 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!&#8221; Under Mr. Gill&#8217;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: &#8220;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 midnight; which indeed was the first cause of
+injury to my eyes, to whose natural weakness there were also added
+frequent headaches.&#8221; Philips writes:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>&#8220;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.&#8221; During these
+years the boy probably learned French and Italian, as well as made a
+beginning in Hebrew.</p>
+
+<p>It was in his last year at school that he paraphrased the ninety-fourth
+Psalm, beginning:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;When the blest seed of Terah&#8217;s faithful son<br />
+After long toil their liberty had won,<br />
+And passed from Pharian fields to Canaan&#8217;s land<br />
+Led by the strength of the Almighty&#8217;s hand,<br />
+Jehovah&#8217;s wonders were in Israel shown,<br />
+His praise and glory were in Israel known.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Likewise Psalm one hundred and thirty-six, beginning:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Let us with a gladsome mind<br />
+Praise the Lord, for he is kind:<br />
+For his mercies aye endure,<br />
+Ever faithful, ever sure.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The present St. Paul&#8217;s School is now splendidly housed in a great
+establishment in Hammersmith. But Milton&#8217;s school and the one which arose
+on its ashes after the Great Fire are remembered by the following
+inscription: &#8220;On this site, A. D. 1512 to A. D. 1884, stood St. Paul&#8217;s
+School, founded by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> Dr. John Colet, Dean of St. Paul&#8217;s.&#8221; 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&#8217;s School
+is to receive a noble statue of the great scholar.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+<h3>MILTON AT CAMBRIDGE</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_t.jpg" style="margin-top: -0.5em; margin-bottom: -0.5em;" alt="T" /></span>he schoolmate
+whom Milton most loved was a physician&#8217;s son, Charles
+Diodati, almost exactly his own age, who went to Cambridge a little in
+advance of him.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Hobson&mdash;drove from the Bull&#8217;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 gentleman intent on hiring a nag, that &#8220;Hobson&#8217;s choice&#8221; 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+visitor to the university town finds the old carrier honoured by a
+memorial; for he became a public benefactor, and among many generous gifts
+bequeathed 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.<small><a name="f1.1" id="f1.1" href="#f1">[1]</a></small></p>
+
+<p>Under the mastership of Doctor Thomas Bainbrigge, Milton became a &#8220;lesser
+pensioner&#8221; in February, 1624, at Christ&#8217;s College. Students were
+classified according to social rank and ability to pay, and Milton stood
+above the poorer students, called &#8220;sizars,&#8221; who had inferior
+accommodation; he probably paid about &pound;50 a year for his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> maintenance.
+Christ&#8217;s College, as regards numbers, then stood nearly at the head of the
+sixteen colleges 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 portrait, painted in middle life, hangs in the
+dining-hall. Doctor William Everett, in what is the best book on life in
+Cambridge,&mdash;his &#8220;On the Cam,&#8221;&mdash;thus sums up his estimate of the Protector:
+&#8220;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.&#8221; A Royalist has written in a note that is appended to
+Cromwell&#8217;s name in the college books: &#8220;<i>Hic fuit grandis ille impostor
+carnifex perditissimus</i>;&#8221; and it is as &#8220;impostor&#8221; and &#8220;butcher&#8221; that
+two-thirds<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> of Englishmen would have described him before Carlyle
+resurrected the real man.</p>
+
+<p>Emmanuel College is pre&euml;minently 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 regicide, 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&#8217;s Church in Boston, England, to go to the little settlement of
+Winthrop&#8217;s, which had changed its earlier names of &#8220;Shawmut&#8221; and
+&#8220;Trimountaine&#8221; to &#8220;Boston&#8221; 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 barbarous tongue. Francis
+Higginson, the minister to Salem, and the ancestor of Colonel Thomas W.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+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&#8217;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&#8217;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 <i>Mayflower</i> 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 English
+refugees at Leyden.</p>
+
+<p>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 Edwards, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> and of the
+architects of national constitutions and ideals.</p>
+
+<p>Though most of the New England Puritan leaders came from Cambridge, Oxford
+furnished several of the great Puritans who remained at home&mdash;Pym, Vane,
+John Eliot, and Hampden.</p>
+
+<p>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 Maurice, &#8220;the realisation in plain prose of the dreams which
+haunted Milton his whole life long.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 500px; height: 374px;"><img src="images/fp_62_tmb.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><a href="images/fp_62.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></p>
+<p class="center">CHRIST&#8217;S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE</p>
+<p class="note">A, Chapel; B, Library; C, Dining-Hall; D, Head Master&#8217;s Rooms; E, Kitchen; F, Master&#8217;s Garden; H, Tennis Court.</p>
+<p class="center"><i>From an old engraving.</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Sidney Sussex, Christ&#8217;s, and Emmanuel Colleges were erected during the
+Tudor period, Christ&#8217;s College, founded in 1505, being the earliest of the
+three. The buildings of the latter now present a more <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>commonplace
+appearance than when the &#8220;Lady of Christ&#8217;s,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 exquisite green lawns around it, and birds, blossoms, and
+trees make the spot seem a paradise regained.</p>
+
+<p>Among the students of Christ&#8217;s College, none in later years brought it
+such renown as two men of widely differing types&mdash;the authors of
+&#8220;Evidences of Christianity&#8221; and &#8220;The Origin of Species.&#8221; 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 &#8220;Little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> Go.&#8221; Charles Robert Darwin, the
+Copernicus of the nineteenth century, entered Christ&#8217;s with the intention
+of studying for the ministry. He left it to journey on the <i>Beagle</i>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Masson tells us that in Milton&#8217;s college days the daily routine was chapel
+service at five o&#8217;clock in the morning, followed sometimes by a discourse
+by one of the fellows, then breakfasts, probably served in the students&#8217;
+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 Holbein, of the eminent men who had
+been their predecessors.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner, if they supped at seven, and attended evening service, they
+could do much as they pleased otherwise. In Milton&#8217;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> Latin and worse Greek and Hebrew, which this prescription must
+have caused, finally rendered it a dead letter. Smoking was a universal
+practice, and boxing matches, dancing, bear fights, and other forbidden
+games were not unknown. Bathing in the sedgy little Cam was prohibited,
+but was nevertheless a daily practice.</p>
+
+<p>In many colleges the undergraduates wore &#8220;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 stockings of divers colours reversed one upon
+another.&#8221; Some had &#8220;fair roses upon the shoe, long frizzled hair upon the
+head, broad spread bands upon their shoulders, and long, large merchants&#8217;
+ruffs about their necks, with fair feminine cuffs at the wrist.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The portrait of Milton, which hangs in a spacious apartment used by the
+dons at Christ&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>Corporal punishment was then still in vogue, and delinquents under
+eighteen years old were not infrequently chastised in public. In fact, at
+Trinity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> College, &#8220;there was a regular service of corporal punishment in
+the hall every Thursday evening at seven in the presence of all the
+undergraduates.&#8221; Masson discredits the story that Milton was once
+subjected to corporal punishment.</p>
+
+<p>In Milton&#8217;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 &#8220;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&#8217;s directions, turn to the west door.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Milton seems to have attended plays at the university, and to have been a
+critical observer. Toland quotes him as saying: &#8220;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The Cambridge of Milton&#8217;s time was 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&#8217;s College Chapel&mdash;in fact, the most beautiful building in either
+Oxford or Cambridge, despite Mr Ruskin&#8217;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 alternate 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&mdash;old in Milton&#8217;s college days&mdash;must
+appeal to every lover of beauty. One loves to think of the young poet
+musing here upon those well-known lines in &#8220;Il<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> Penseroso&#8221; which this
+stately building may have inspired.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;But let my due feet never fail<br />
+To walk the studious cloisters pale,<br />
+And love the high, embowered roof,<br />
+With antick pillars massy proof,<br />
+And storied windows, richly dight,<br />
+Casting a dim religious light.<br />
+There let the pealing organ blow,<br />
+To the full voiced Quire below,<br />
+In service high and anthem clear,<br />
+As may with sweetness through mine ear<br />
+Dissolve me into ecstasies,<br />
+And bring all heaven before mine eyes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In King&#8217;s Chapel Queen Elizabeth attended service several times, and
+listened with delight to a Latin sermon from the text &#8220;Let every soul be
+subject unto the higher powers.&#8221; On the afternoon of the same Sunday she
+returned to the antechapel and witnessed a play of Plautus.</p>
+
+<p>Among many buildings which were very old even in Milton&#8217;s time must be
+mentioned the church of St. Benedict on Bene&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>A generation before Milton&#8217;s time Robert Browne,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> 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 resolved to &#8220;satisfy his conscience without any regard to
+license or authority from a bishop.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>When the Pilgrim Fathers fled from Austerfield and Scrooby in 1608, it was
+as Brownists or Separatists that they went to Holland. They sought a
+refuge where they might worship God according to the dictates of their own
+conscience, without interference of bishop or presbyter. It was Browne&#8217;s
+doctrine, not only of the absolute separation of Church and state, but
+also of the independence of each individual congregation, that laid the
+foundation of church government in New England. Presbyterianism 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&#8217;s doctrine as the present generation is with that of Maurice and
+Martineau, and Milton must have been much influenced by it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>Opposite St. John&#8217;s Chapel is the little round church of the Holy
+Sepulchre. This is the earliest of the four churches in England built by
+the Templars which still remain. It is similar to the Temple church in
+London, and was probably begun a little later than St. Benedict&#8217;s, which
+has just been mentioned. It is questionable whether the students of
+Milton&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>In Milton&#8217;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&#8217;s fountain, built in
+1602, which is a fine example of good English Renaissance work. During
+four years of Milton&#8217;s residence, part of St. John&#8217;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> to Milton when he mused
+beside its shady banks where</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,<br />
+His mantle hairy and his bonnet sedge<br />
+Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge<br />
+Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>During these studious years, while Milton walked among the colleges where
+Chaucer, Bacon, Ben Jonson, and Erasmus had likewise walked as students,
+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&#8217;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> 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
+prisoners. So great was the poverty and suffering incident to this
+calamity, that the king appealed to the country for aid to the stricken
+town.</p>
+
+<p>During these years of quiet growth, Milton&#8217;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 &#8220;a birthday gift for Christ,&#8221; and thus appeared his poem,
+&#8220;On the Morning of Christ&#8217;s Nativity.&#8221; Three or four years earlier he had
+written on the death of his baby niece, Mrs. Philips&#8217;s child, his lines
+&#8220;On the Death of a Fair Infant.&#8221; The revelation of self in his sonnet &#8220;On
+His Being Arrived to the Age of Twenty-Three,&#8221; makes the latter the most
+interesting of these early flights of song.</p>
+
+<p>The most precious literary treasure which Cambridge possesses, and as Mr.
+Edmund Gosse asserts, &#8220;the most precious manuscript of English <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>literature
+in the world,&#8221; is the packet of thirty loose and ragged folio leaves
+covered with Milton&#8217;s handwriting, which since 1691 has lain in Trinity
+College 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 &#8220;Comus&#8221; were torn out and stolen by
+some unknown thief. Mr. Gosse, in a delightful article in the <i>Atlantic
+Monthly</i>, upon &#8220;The Milton Manuscripts at Cambridge,&#8221; gives reins to his
+imagination in picturing the sudden temptation of this man, who, passing
+down the long ranges of &#8220;storied urn and animated bust,&#8221; which adorn the
+interior of Wren&#8217;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,&mdash;&#8220;and now the devil is raging in the visitor&#8217;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> bequeath. Among
+literary criminals, I know not another who so burdens the imagination as
+this wretched mutilator of &#8216;Comus.&#8217;&#8221; 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&#8217;s note-book, they teach
+the impatient and inaccurate that genius condescends 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&#8217;s pen. &#8220;How it staggered me to see the fine things
+in their ore! interlined, corrected! as if their words were mortal,
+alterable, displaceable at pleasure!&#8221; 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 &#8220;L&#8217;Allegro&#8221; and &#8220;Il Penseroso,&#8221; before
+he reached the perfect phrase,&mdash;&#8220;endless morn of light,&#8221;&mdash;experimented
+with no less than six others: &#8220;ever-endless light,&#8221; &#8220;ever glorious,&#8221;
+&#8220;uneclips&egrave;d,&#8221; &#8220;where day dwells without night,&#8221; and &#8220;in cloudless birth of
+night.&#8221; The authorities of Trinity College, having of late realised the
+invaluable service to men of letters that this glimpse into the poet&#8217;s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+workshop would be, have issued a limited edition, in sumptuous form, of a
+perfect facsimile of the Milton manuscripts. &#8220;Now, for the first time,&#8221; as
+Mr. Gosse remarks, &#8220;we can examine in peace, and without a beating heart
+and blinded eyes, the priceless thing in its minutest features.&#8221; When it
+is remembered that no line of Shakespeare&#8217;s remains in his own
+handwriting, and nothing of any consequence of Chaucer&#8217;s or Spenser&#8217;s, Mr.
+Gosse cannot be accused of over-statement when he says that to all lovers
+of literature this volume is &#8220;a relic of inestimable value. To those who
+are practically interested in the art of verse, it reads a more pregnant
+lesson than any other similar document in the world.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Some day the great university may add to its charms not only an adequate
+memorial to its Puritans, but one to its poets&mdash;Spenser, Milton, Pope,
+Gray, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, and Tennyson, who have enriched it by
+their presence, and have made Cambridge <i>par excellence</i> the university of
+the poets. It must be remembered that Chaucer and Shakespeare were not
+university men.</p>
+
+<p>The time for a pilgrimage to Cambridge is term time, when window-boxes,
+gay with blossoms, brighten gray old walls within the &#8220;quads,&#8221; and when
+the streets are enlivened by three thousand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> 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&#8217;s cosy study; the visitor will find it lined with books,
+rackets, and boxing-gloves, and decorated with trophies and photographs of
+some one else&#8217;s sister. Bits of college gossip and local slang, hints of
+college traditions, prejudices, and customs pleasantly vary the tourist&#8217;s
+hours spent over the fine print of Baedeker and in search for the tombs of
+eminent founders.</p>
+
+<p>Even if one is a tourist and not a &#8220;fresher,&#8221; he will find it profitable
+to study contemporary Cambridge through &#8220;The Fresher&#8217;s Don&#8217;t,&#8221; written by
+&#8220;A Sympathiser, B. A.,&#8221; and addressed to freshers &#8220;in all courtesy.&#8221; As to
+dress, the &#8220;fresher,&#8221; among other pieces of sage advice, is told: &#8220;Don&#8217;t
+forget to cut the tassel of your cap just level with the board. Only
+graduates wear long tassels.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t wear knickerbockers with cap and gown, nor carry a stick or
+umbrella. These are stock eccentricities of Fresherdom.&#8221; (The genuine
+Cambridge student would rather be soaked to his skin and risk pneumonia,
+than encounter the derisive grin which an umbrella would evoke.)</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t aspire to seniority by smashing your cap or tearing your gown, as
+you deceive no one.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>&#8220;Don&#8217;t be a tuft-head. The style is more favoured by errand boys than
+gentlemen.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t by any chance sport a tall hat in Cambridge. It will come to
+grief.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Under other headings, the following injunctions may be selected:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t sport during your first month. You will only earn the undesirable
+appellation of &#8216;Smug.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t speak disrespectfully of a man &#8216;Who only got a third in his Trip.,
+and so can&#8217;t be very good.&#8217; Before you go down your opinion will be &#8216;That
+a man must be rather good to take the Trip. at all.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t mistake a Don for a Gyp. The Gyp is the smarter individual.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t forget that St. Peter&#8217;s College is &#8216;Pot-House,&#8217; Caius is &#8216;Keys,&#8217;
+St. Catherine&#8217;s is &#8216;Cats,&#8217; Magdalene is &#8216;Maudlen,&#8217; St. John&#8217;s College Boat
+Club is &#8216;Lady Margaret,&#8217; and a science man is taking &#8216;Stinks.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t forget that Cambridge men &#8216;keep&#8217; and not &#8216;live.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+<h3>MILTON AT HORTON</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_o.jpg" style="margin-top: -1em; margin-bottom: -0.5em;" alt="O" /></span>n leaving Cambridge,
+when he was nearly twenty-four years old, Milton
+retired to his father&#8217;s new home at Horton, about seventeen miles west of
+London. Here he tells us that, &#8220;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
+buying books, or for that of learning something new in mathematics, or in
+music, in which sciences I then delighted.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As Milton&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> 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 landscape, pausing
+some morning in the autumn on his early walk to listen to the far sound of
+the huntsman&#8217;s horn, and presently to see the merry rout of gaily clad
+dames and cavaliers dash by, leaping fearlessly the hedgerows and barred
+gates.</p>
+
+<p>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 connections 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&#8217;s former home, which
+remained until 1798, when it was pulled down. The old tavern of uncertain
+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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> sprites, and nymphs who
+peopled his youthful dreams.</p>
+
+<p>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 &#8220;Comus&#8221; which
+Milton wrote in Horton:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;By the rushy-fring&egrave;d bank,<br />
+Where grows the willow and the osier dank,<br />
+My sliding chariot stays,<br />
+Thick set with agate and the azurn sheen<br />
+Of turkis blue and emerald green<br />
+That in the channel strays:<br />
+Whilst from off the waters fleet<br />
+Thus I set my printless feet<br />
+O&#8217;er the cowslip&#8217;s velvet head<br />
+That bends not as I tread.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 &#8220;1612.&#8221; The battlemented stone
+tower is draped with ivy and topped with reddish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> 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-preserved; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s clamour had not broken in upon his peace.</p>
+
+<p>Probably at the request of his friend, the composer Lawes, he wrote his
+&#8220;Arcades&#8221; in honour of the Countess Dowager of Derby, who had been
+Spenser&#8217;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 &#8220;Queen&#8217;s
+Walk.&#8221; It was in this verdant theatre that Milton&#8217;s &#8220;Arcades&#8221; was
+performed by the young relatives of the countess. Among these were Lady
+Alice and her boy-brothers, who on the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>following year took part in
+Milton&#8217;s &#8220;Comus,&#8221; which he wrote anonymously to be played at Ludlow Castle
+upon the Welsh border, when the children&#8217;s father was installed as lord
+president of Wales. Besides these longer poems, Milton wrote his &#8220;Il
+Penseroso&#8221; and &#8220;L&#8217;Allegro&#8221; at Horton, as well as the noble elegy
+&#8220;Lycidas,&#8221; 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&#8217;s home.</p>
+
+<p>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
+suggested the antique, classic world in which his whole nature revelled.
+He walked in &#8220;twilight groves&#8221; of &#8220;pine or monumental oak;&#8221; he listened to
+&#8220;soft Lydian airs&#8221; and curfew bells, to the lark&#8217;s song, and Philomel&#8217;s.
+He watched &#8220;the nibbling flocks,&#8221; the &#8220;labouring clouds,&#8221; and saw,
+&#8220;bosomed high in tufted trees,&#8221; towers and battlements arise, and beheld
+in vision his&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">&#8220;Sabrina fair,...</span><br />
+Under the glassy, cool translucent wave<br />
+In twisted braids of lilies knitting<br />
+The loose train of her amber dropping hair.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He lived in a world enchanted by the magic of his genius. Yet in his
+little world of loveliness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> 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&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">&#8220;who little reckoning make</span><br />
+Than how to scramble at the shearers&#8217; feast ...<br />
+Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold<br />
+A sheephook&mdash;or have learnt aught else the least<br />
+That to the faithful herds-man&#8217;s art belongs!<br />
+What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;<br />
+And when they list, their lean and flashy songs,<br />
+Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;<br />
+The hungry sheep look up and are not fed<br />
+But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw<br />
+Rot inwardly and foul contagion spread.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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
+standing 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: &#8220;Heare lyeth the Body of Sarah Milton, the
+wife of John Milton, who died the 3rd of April, 1637.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The American visitor to Horton on the day that commemorates his country&#8217;s
+declaration of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>independence will remember Runnymede and Magna Charta
+Island. And he will find nothing more consonant 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&#8217;s in 1215 brought tyrant John to
+sullen submission to their just demands.</p>
+
+<p>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 trespass, 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,&mdash;who knows?&mdash;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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+<h3>MILTON ON THE CONTINENT.&mdash;IN ST. BRIDE&#8217;S CHURCHYARD.&mdash;AT ALDERSGATE
+STREET.&mdash;THE BARBICAN.&mdash;HOLBORN.&mdash;SPRING GARDENS</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_o.jpg" style="margin-top: -1em; margin-bottom: -0.5em;" alt="O" /></span>ne year
+after his mother&#8217;s death, and probably just after Christopher&#8217;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&#8217;s England, scant
+space must be allowed to this year or more spent among the <i>savants</i> and
+the unwonted sights of France and Italy. In Paris the young scholar was
+introduced by Lord Scudamore to the man whom he most desired to see,&mdash;the
+great Hugo Grotius, a man of stupendous erudition 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.</p>
+
+<p>Passing through Provence, Milton entered Italy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> 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, &#8220;La Superba,&#8221; 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, &#8220;grown old,&#8221; he writes, &#8220;a prisoner to the
+Inquisition for thinking in Astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and
+Dominican licensers thought.&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>Going by way of Siena, on its rocky height, Milton passed on to Rome in
+the autumn, and here spent two months in the splendid city of the Popes,
+in which great St. Peter&#8217;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> Leonora
+Baroni, the Jenny Lind of his time, to whom he wrote exuberant panegyrics
+in Latin.</p>
+
+<p>In November, Milton drove to Naples, a hundred miles away, where he was
+favoured with the hospitality 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.</p>
+
+<p>Milton had planned to visit Sicily and Greece, but he writes: &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>War, however, had not yet broken out, and Milton lingered another two
+months in Rome, little aware of the relics of the C&aelig;sars that lay buried
+in the Forum under the cow-pasture of his time.</p>
+
+<p>Another visit to Florence, where he was again the centre of attraction,
+was followed by trips to the quaint medi&aelig;val 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
+wanderings. From Venice he turned back through Verona and Milan, and
+paused a little in Geneva, which was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> 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: &#8220;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 profligacy 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s battle.</p>
+
+<p>On his return to England Milton did not take up his residence again in his
+father&#8217;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&#8217;s Churchyard, near Fleet Street, within
+view of Ludgate Hill and St. Paul&#8217;s. Here in the winter of 1639-40 he
+began teaching the little Philips<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> 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&#8217;s Churchyard, 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 &#8220;Paradise Lost&#8221; and &#8220;Samson,&#8221; are
+Scriptural, and thirty-eight, including &#8220;Alfred and the Danes&#8221; and &#8220;Harold
+and the Normans,&#8221; are on British subjects. Like the young Goethe who
+projected &#8220;Faust,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>Says Edward Philips, the elder nephew whom he taught: &#8220;He made no long
+stay in his lodgings on St. Bride&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At that time the entrance to the street from St.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> Martin&#8217;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 &#8220;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.&#8221; 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&#8217;s-le-Grand side. In 1657 Howell says:
+&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;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&#8217;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> Doctor Diodati, the father of his dearest
+friend, whose recent death he mourned in a touching elegy written 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
+observations on the doings of the newly assembled Long Parliament by an
+occasional &#8220;gaudy-day,&#8221; in company with some &#8220;young sparks of his
+acquaintance.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was in Aldersgate Street that Milton began writing his vehement
+pamphlets, and it was Thomas Underhill, at the sign of the &#8220;Bible&#8221; 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. Milton&#8217;s future career was a
+complete refutation of Wordsworth&#8217;s conception of him as a lonely star
+that dwelt apart. The gentle author of &#8220;Comus&#8221; and the composer of elegant
+sonnets had changed his quill for that &#8220;two-handed engine&#8221; which was to
+smite prelate and prince.</p>
+
+<p>During these days the post brought daily news of the horrors of the
+insurrection in Ireland; Milton<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> read &#8220;of two and twenty Protestants put
+into a thatched house and burnt alive&#8221; in the parish of Kilmore; of naked
+men and pregnant women drowned; of &#8220;eighteen Scotch infants hanged on
+clothiers&#8217; tenterhooks;&#8221; of an Englishman, wife, and five children hanged,
+and buried when half alive; of eighty forced to go on the ice &#8220;till they
+brake the ice and were drowned.&#8221; 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 &#8220;monster&#8221; to this day throughout this much
+tormented and turbulent Irish people.</p>
+
+<p>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 hundred and fifty years
+later by some of their own officers.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> 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&#8217;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&#8217;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 &#8220;stilling-house,&#8221;
+&#8220;cheese-press house,&#8221; &#8220;wool-house,&#8221; of their two coaches, one wain, and
+four carts. It was a merry household, and one well-to-do in worldly goods.</p>
+
+<p>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 &#8220;feasting held for
+some days in celebration of the nuptials, and for entertainment of the
+bride&#8217;s friends.&#8221; Then the relatives bade the bride goodbye. But the young
+wife, having been brought up and lived &#8220;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> company came to her;&#8221; consequently at
+the end of a month her preoccupied husband gave consent to the girl&#8217;s
+request to pay a visit home, with the promise of returning in September.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s letters or to return; during the following months the irate man,
+thus deserted, wrote his pamphlets on &#8220;Divorce,&#8221; while all England was
+astir with the meeting of the famous Westminster Assembly, the spread of
+Independency, and the king&#8217;s defeat at Marston Moor. During these days
+also Milton wrote his remarkable scheme for the education of gentlemen&#8217;s
+sons, in which he showed himself as radical and original and as ready to
+make learning a delightful and not an odious process as did Rousseau and
+Froebel a century or more later. Marvellous was the work accomplished by
+Milton&#8217;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, studying not only Greek and
+Latin, but Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, and Italian.</p>
+
+<p>Milton&#8217;s noble &#8220;Areopagitica&#8221;&mdash;a plea for freedom of the press&mdash;was
+written during these <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>melancholy, wifeless months, while the din of civil
+war was in the air, and he mused in wrath and bitterness over his
+country&#8217;s miseries and his own.</p>
+
+<p>The fortunes of the Powell family had waned with the king&#8217;s cause. One
+day, when Milton called on a relative who lived near by his home, on the
+site of the present post-office, &#8220;he was surprised,&#8221; writes his nephew,
+&#8220;to see one whom he thought to have never seen more, making submission and
+begging pardon on her knees before him.&#8221; 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 housekeeping in the Barbican.</p>
+
+<p>This was a larger house than the one in Aldersgate Street, and only a
+three minutes&#8217; walk from it. It remained until Masson&#8217;s lifetime and had,
+he says, &#8220;the appearance of having been a commodious enough house in the
+old fashion.&#8221; &#8220;And I have been informed,&#8221; he adds, &#8220;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.&#8221; The
+visitor to the noisy, bustling Barbican to-day, close to old London wall,
+will find nothing that Milton saw.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>Here he published the first edition of his collected poems. The title-page
+tells us that the songs were set to music by the same musician, Henry
+Lawes, &#8220;Gentleman of the King&#8217;s Chapell,&#8221; who had engaged him to write the
+&#8220;Arcades&#8221; and &#8220;Comus.&#8221; It was to be &#8220;sold at the signe of the Princes Arms
+in Paul&#8217;s Churchyard, 1645.&#8221; 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:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;That an unskilful hand had carved this print<br />
+You&#8217;d say at once, seeing the living face;<br />
+But finding here no jot of me, my friends,<br />
+Laugh at the botching-artist&#8217;s mis-attempt.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately this was the only published portrait 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.</p>
+
+<p>By strange coincidence this house, where Milton lived when &#8220;Comus&#8221; was
+first published, was but a few yards distant from the town house of the
+earl in whose honour the masque had been composed a dozen years or more
+before this. With him was the &#8220;Lady Alice,&#8221; now nearly twenty-four years
+old, who, as a girl of eleven, had sung <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>Milton&#8217;s songs in Ludlow Castle.
+The earl loved music, and his children&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>About the time that Milton&#8217;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&#8217;s husband for protection. Mother Powell seems
+to have been a woman of strong personality, and the new baby was
+christened &#8220;Anne&#8221; for her. Within two months, both the Milton and Powell
+grandfathers were buried from the house in Barbican. In the burials at St.
+Giles&#8217;s Cripplegate appears, in March, 1646, the record: &#8220;John Milton,
+Gentleman, 15.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>While worrying over the settlement of the Powell estates and brother
+Christopher&#8217;s as well, Milton continued his teaching; his pupil writes:
+&#8220;His manner of teaching never savoured in the least anything of pedantry.&#8221;
+Cyriack Skinner, grandson of the great Coke, to whom he wrote two sonnets
+in later years, was his pupil in the Barbican.</p>
+
+<p>In 1647, just after the march of Fairfax and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> Cromwell through the city,
+Milton removed to a smaller house in High Holborn, &#8220;among those that open
+backward into Lincoln&#8217;s Inn Fields,&#8221; which had been laid out by Inigo
+Jones. Here he ceased playing the schoolmaster, became definitely a
+republican at heart, and busied himself with the writing of a history of
+England, and compiling of a Latin dictionary 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.</p>
+
+<p>By his bold tractate on the &#8220;Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,&#8221; which was
+written during the terrible days of the king&#8217;s trial and execution, Milton
+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 &#8220;Secretary for
+Foreign Tongues.&#8221; 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 20th, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> read by government
+officials in all countries, and not into the &#8220;wheedling, lisping jargon of
+the cringing French,&#8221; as his nephew calls it. His salary was a trifle over
+&pound;288&mdash;worth about five times that sum to-day. Sometimes an early breakfast
+at High Holborn was necessary in order to meet the council at seven <span class="smcaplc">A.M.</span>
+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&#8217;s Park.
+Opposite, at Charing Cross, was the palace of the Percys, later called
+&#8220;Northumberland House,&#8221; and next to it, where now stands the Grand Hotel,
+was the home of Sir Harry Vane. Queen Eleanor&#8217;s Cross had been taken down
+in 1647 and the statue of Charles I., which on the year of Milton&#8217;s death
+replaced it on its site, was at this time kept in careful concealment.</p>
+
+<p>St. Martin&#8217;s Lane was a genuine shady lane, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>bordered 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&#8217;s in the Fields.</p>
+
+<p>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
+shilling an hour were carried about in sedan-chairs. The latter tells us
+that &#8220;the chairmen serve you for porters to run on errands, as your
+gondoliers do at Venice.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>St. James&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 500px; height: 351px;"><img src="images/fp_100_tmb.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><a href="images/fp_100.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></p>
+<p class="center">PART OF WHITEHALL</p>
+<p class="center">The Banquet-Hall by Inigo Jones is in the centre at the rear.</p>
+<p class="center"><i>From an old engraving.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+<h3>MILTON AT WHITEHALL.&mdash;SCOTLAND YARD.&mdash;PETTY FRANCE.&mdash;BARTHOLOMEW
+CLOSE.&mdash;HIGH HOLBORN.&mdash;JEWIN STREET.&mdash;ARTILLERY WALK</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_m.jpg" style="margin-top: -1em; margin-bottom: -0.5em;" alt="M" /></span>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&#8217;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> still quite new. This
+apparently was not on the site of the present Horse Guards, which was
+built in 1753.</p>
+
+<p>At Scotland Yard, Milton&#8217;s only son, John, was born, and here his
+protracted labours in his vehement controversy with Salmasius brought on
+the blackness of great darkness which, at the age of forty-three, for ever
+shut his world 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&#8217;s also.</p>
+
+<p>In 1652 Milton moved to Petty France, now York Street, near the Bird Cage
+Walk, which was so named from the king&#8217;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&#8217;s name, soon
+followed her to the grave.</p>
+
+<p>The household then consisted of the poet, his nephew and amanuensis John,
+and his three motherless 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> 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&#8217;s. &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jeremy Bentham, who over a century later was landlord of the house and
+lived close by, placed a tablet on the rear wall inscribed &#8220;Sacred to
+Milton, Prince of Poets.&#8221; After 1811 Bentham&#8217;s tenant was William Hazlitt;
+before that his friend James Mill occupied the house.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Scudamore, who had given Milton an introduction to Grotius, was his
+next-door neighbour at York Street. To-day the loftiest apartment house in
+London stands upon the unmarked site of Milton&#8217;s house. The frequent walk
+which Milton took to Whitehall, with a guide to his dark steps, during his
+eight years&#8217; residence here, led him half a mile across St. James&#8217;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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> Charles II. had it later all laid out by the
+famous French landscape artist, Le N&ocirc;tre.</p>
+
+<p>Occasional sonnets&mdash;those to Cromwell, Vane, &#8220;On his Blindness,&#8221; and &#8220;On
+the Late Massacre in Piedmont&#8221;&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>After four years of widowerhood, when his little girls were sadly in need
+of a mother, Milton married Katharine Woodcock, daughter of a Captain
+Woodcock of Hackney, in the church of St. Mary Aldermanbury, on November
+12, 1656. Her coming 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&#8217;s Church beside the Abbey, and the sorrowing husband
+was again left in his blindness to bring up his three motherless little
+daughters.</p>
+
+<p>After eighteen years, the poem, sketched out in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> St. Bride&#8217;s Churchyard,
+was resumed, and in the lonely house in Petty France, the first lines of
+&#8220;Paradise Lost&#8221; were dictated, just before the closing days of Cromwell&#8217;s
+life. Under Richard Cromwell, 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&#8217;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 S&oelig;ur,
+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 hangman&#8217;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> populace, and seen himself haled in a cart to Tyburn gallows.
+Says Masson: &#8220;Absolutely no man could less expect to be pardoned at the
+Restoration than Milton,&#8221; and &#8220;there is no greater historical puzzle than
+this complete escape.&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>Though Milton lay in some prison for a little time, during which his
+&#8220;infamous&#8221; books &#8220;were solemnly burnt at the Session house in the Old
+Bailey by the hand of the common hangman,&#8221; he was soon a free man, though
+many of his companions were meanwhile hanged and quartered, or like Goffe
+and Whalley fled beyond seas and even there scarcely escaped the king&#8217;s
+swift avengers.</p>
+
+<p>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 Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, which
+had been disinterred and were on their way to Tyburn to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>In 1661, 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 nearest St. Giles&#8217;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 beheaded, 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&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>During these fruitful years in Jewin Street, while &#8220;Paradise Lost&#8221; was
+growing apace, Milton had about him his motherless and ill-educated girls.
+The oldest, about seventeen years of age, was handsome, but lame, and had
+a defect of speech. It fell to Mary and little eleven-year-old Deborah to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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 &#8220;Comus&#8221; to Ludlow Castle; of Richard Baxter, whose
+popular book, &#8220;The Saints&#8217; Everlasting Rest,&#8221; Milton had doubtless read
+when it appeared five years before; of Pepys, now secretary to the
+Admiralty; of Izaak Walton, whose &#8220;Complete Angler&#8221; Milton may have read
+ten years before; of Evelyn and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> of the poet Cowley; of Bishop Jeremy
+Taylor; of George Fox, the valiant Quaker, and the philosophers, Hobbes,
+and John Locke, who was then at Oxford; and the budding poet, John Dryden.</p>
+
+<p>We learn from Richardson that Milton usually dictated &#8220;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.&#8221; 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,
+&#8220;was a gentleman of great note for learning throughout the learned world,&#8221;
+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 Ellwood&#8217;s arrest for attending the Quaker meeting in
+Aldersgate Street. Three months were spent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> 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 spectacle. One heavenly day
+in a quiet library reading of Dido and &AElig;neas with Milton, the next in an
+English hell of bestiality, filth, and cruelty&mdash;a memorable experience for
+a young man of twenty-two, was it not?</p>
+
+<p>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 &#8220;no
+news to hear of his wedding, but if she could hear of his death, that
+would be something.&#8221; 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&#8217;s home near Cannon Street. She proved an
+excellent wife, and was of a &#8220;peaceful and agreeable humour.&#8221; There are
+traditions 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.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after his marriage, the Milton family removed to a house in Artillery
+Walk, leading to Bunhill Fields. This was on the roadway which is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> 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 Artillery 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 &#8220;Grub&#8221; Street,
+since changed to &#8220;Milton&#8221; Street, partly perhaps to commemorate the fact
+of the poet&#8217;s residence in the neighbourhood. In June, 1665, while the
+Great Plague had begun its desolating course, Milton had completed the
+last lines of &#8220;Paradise Lost.&#8221; It was then that young Ellwood came to his
+assistance, and engaged for him &#8220;a pretty box in Giles-Chalfont,&#8221; whither
+he was driven with his wife and daughters.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+<h3>CHALFONT ST. GILES.&mdash;ARTILLERY WALK</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_i.jpg" style="margin-top: -1em; margin-bottom: -0.5em;" alt="I" /></span>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 Buckinghamshire, among the
+Chiltern hills.</p>
+
+<p>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,&mdash;one of the loveliest villages in all
+England,&mdash;beside the tiny Chess, where Matthew Arnold loved to angle. A
+delightful hostelry is the &#8220;Bedford Arms,&#8221; where he always &#8220;put up.&#8221; The
+chief <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>feature of the place is the mortuary chapel of the Russells,
+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.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 500px; height: 328px;"><img src="images/fp_112_tmb.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><a href="images/fp_112.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></p>
+<p class="center">IN MILTON&#8217;S HOUSE AT CHALFONT ST. GILES</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>As one drives toward Chalfont, he enters it at the end farthest from
+Milton&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> young Ellwood came to greet him, fresh
+as he was from another imprisonment; he returned with his comments the
+manuscript of &#8220;Paradise Lost,&#8221; which Milton had loaned to him, and added:
+&#8220;Thou hast said much here of Paradise lost, but what hast thou to say of
+Paradise found?&#8221; To which the poet answered nothing at the time, but, as
+the result proved, the query brought later a fitting response in &#8220;Paradise
+Regained.&#8221; 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&#8217;s
+house at Stratford lacks. The man Shakespeare&mdash;the successful
+dramatist&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> Angelo and Beethoven. We linger reverently in the
+little house made dear to England by his presence there.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s feet doubtless have trod.</p>
+
+<p><i>En route</i> to Beaconsfield the traveller will not fail to pause at
+Jordan&#8217;s, a plain, square structure in a leafy grove, beside a green God&#8217;s
+Acre. It was the Quaker meeting-house in Milton&#8217;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&#8217;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
+Americans, 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.</p>
+
+<p>At Beaconsfield we drive through a broad country road to the Saracen&#8217;s
+Head&mdash;a conspicuous landmark. We turn our steps at once to the gray old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+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&mdash;Edmund Burke.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;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&mdash;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. &#8220;The fact is,&#8221; quoth this worthy,
+&#8220;John Knox traduced Mary Queen of Scots; now I&#8217;ve no use for a man who
+isn&#8217;t good to the ladies.&#8221; On being reminded that Elizabeth did worse and
+cut<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> her head off, he condoned that as being &#8220;probably an affair of
+state.&#8221; A lover of poets was this sexton. &#8220;I&#8217;ve read &#8217;em all,&#8221; he said,
+&#8220;but my favourite is Pope.&#8221; Isaac Watts likewise shared his approval, and
+he volunteered upon the spot a number of his hymns from memory. &#8220;But I
+take a lugubrious view of life,&#8221; continued this digger of many graves,
+&#8220;for it&#8217;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.&#8221; Shakespeare would have found a gravedigger
+to his mind in the sexton of Amersham.</p>
+
+<p>Amersham does not offer so favourable accommodations for the night as does
+Wendover, which has a choice of hostelries, and is but a few minutes&#8217; 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 distant, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> which recall the foregrounds in the brilliant
+paintings of Van Eyck.</p>
+
+<p>The reader of Puritan history is reminded of that mournful day after the
+battle of 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: &#8220;Lord, Thou hast
+been our dwelling-place in all generations.&#8221; 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 beautiful epitaph to his wife. When they
+marched back beneath the beeches their voices rang out with the lines of
+Psalm Forty-three: &#8220;Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou
+disquieted within me? hope in God.&#8221; Says a writer of that time: &#8220;Never
+were heard such piteous cries at the death of one man, as at Master
+Hampden&#8217;s.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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
+portrait 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&#8217;s Court, an imposing brick mansion of the Tudor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> period, once
+owned by Cromwell&#8217;s youngest daughter and her husband. It stands in a
+park, and contains the greatest collection of Cromwelliana in the kingdom.
+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&#8217;s demands for ship money. Near by lies the
+field whose tax was in question. The sum was paltry,&mdash;only twenty
+shillings,&mdash;but, like George Third&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>Ellwood records that &#8220;when the city was cleansed and become safely
+habitable,&#8221; 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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> Thereafter it was made a regular cemetery, and was surrounded
+with a brick wall, and became what Southey called, &#8220;the Campo Santo of the
+Dissenters.&#8221; 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 century, and was found to be that of Milton&#8217;s
+contemporary,&mdash;George Fox,&mdash;the tailor with the leather suit, who founded
+the sect of the uncompromising democrats who called no man &#8220;Lord,&#8221; who
+used no weapons but their tongues, and who thundered with them to such
+purpose as to make men quake.</p>
+
+<p>While Milton was on the point of publishing his &#8220;Paradise Lost,&#8221; 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&#8217;s birthplace,
+which he still owned. It wiped out the church where he was christened, the
+school where he had studied, and came so far north as almost to bury his
+father&#8217;s grave under the walls of St. Giles&#8217;s, Cripplegate. Amid the
+horror of smoke and the sound of distant explosions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>The precious manuscript of &#8220;Paradise Lost&#8221; 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 Pobedonostzeff two hundred
+and fifty years later, held that liberty of conscience was a &#8220;highly
+plausible thing,&#8221; but did not work well in practice, and he came near
+suppressing the volume, so tradition says, for imaginary treason in some
+lines; but he relented, and the world was spared its greatest epic poem
+since the &AElig;neid.</p>
+
+<p>The many booksellers around St. Paul&#8217;s suffered terrible losses, and Pepys
+estimates that books to the value of &pound;150,000 were burnt in the vicinity.
+Most of them were hurriedly stowed in the crypt of old St. Paul&#8217;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 &pound;5 down and three times as much at certain future
+dates, to sell his copyright to Samuel Symons, printer. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>Thirteen 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 &#8220;Paradise Lost&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>While John Milton was expecting &pound;15 or &pound;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 &pound;700.
+But John Dryden knew a poet when he read him. After reading &#8220;Paradise
+Lost,&#8221; he exclaimed: &#8220;This man cuts us all out, and the ancients, too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>About 1670, Milton&#8217;s three daughters left their father&#8217;s home. Knowing
+that they needed to be fitted for self-support, he paid for their
+apprenticeship, and had them taught embroidery in gold and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> silver.
+Doubtless bright silks and gay patterns were much more to their mind than
+their father&#8217;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&mdash;some
+of them men of rank and note.</p>
+
+<p>He is described as wearing at this time his light brown hair parted from
+the crown to the middle of the forehead, &#8220;somewhat flat, long and waving,
+a little curled.&#8221; His voice was musical and he &#8220;pronounced the letter r
+very hard.&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>As his end drew near he told his brother that he left only the residue of
+his first wife&#8217;s property to their three daughters, who had &#8220;been very
+undutiful;&#8221; but everything else to his &#8220;loving wife, Elizabeth.&#8221; Just one
+month before he had completed his sixty-sixth year, John Milton died on a
+Sunday night, November 8, 1674. He was buried beside his father in St.
+Giles&#8217;s, Cripplegate, and was followed to the grave by many friends. What<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+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:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;How blessed is he born or taught<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who serveth not another&#8217;s will,</span><br />
+Whose armour is his honest thought,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And simple truth his highest skill.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+&#8220;This man is freed from servile bands,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of hope to rise or fear to fall;</span><br />
+Lord of himself, though not of lands,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And having nothing, yet hath all.&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>Milton&#8217;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: &#8220;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.&#8221; The latest descendants of John and
+Christopher Milton died about the middle of the eighteenth century, but
+their sister Anne&#8217;s posterity may perhaps be traced to-day.</p>
+
+<p>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 scattered all over England,
+teaching the rising generation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> their fathers&#8217; estimation of the relative
+worth of names in England&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>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 portraits of the many noted men who were Milton&#8217;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 C&aelig;sar, Samuel
+Butler, Hobbes, Dryden, Ireton, Algernon Sidney, Sir Christopher Wren, and
+the Chandos Shakespeare portrait. Milton&#8217;s own portrait in middle life,
+which is little known, is most impressive, and very different from the
+common portraits.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+<h3>THE TOWER.&mdash;TOWER HILL</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_e.jpg" style="margin-top: -1em; margin-bottom: -0.5em;" alt="E" /></span>xcept Westminster
+Abbey, no spot in England is so connected with every
+phase of England&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;s time and
+Milton&#8217;s. Built of durable flint stones, it has withstood time&#8217;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> remains practically as
+it was built over eight hundred years ago.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s Tower must have delighted any
+London lad. The wild beasts were not very numerous,&mdash;only a few lions and
+leopards and &#8220;cat lions,&#8221;&mdash;but no doubt they were as satisfactory as the
+modern &#8220;Zoo&#8221; to eyes that were unsatiated with such novelties. Whether
+small boys were allowed for sixpence to see the rich display of state
+jewels is not quite clear, yet it is certain that they were shown to
+strangers.</p>
+
+<p>Says that indefatigable antiquarian, Stow, whose old age almost touched
+the babyhood of Milton: &#8220;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> time; the armory for warlike provisions; the treasury of the
+ornaments and jewels of the Crown; and general conserver of the records of
+the king&#8217;s courts of justice at Westminster.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In Milton&#8217;s boyhood, the royal palace in the southeast 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 semicircular
+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&#8217;s time. But doubtless as he
+
+entered it he could picture in it, more vividly than we in our later age,
+that scene when from sunset until sunrise forty-six noblemen 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>In the present armory, once the council chamber,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> 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:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;I give this heavy weight from off my head,<br />
+And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand,<br />
+The pride of kingly sway from out my heart;<br />
+With mine own tears I wash away my balm,<br />
+With mine own hands I give away my crown,<br />
+With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,<br />
+With mine own breath release all duteous oaths,<br />
+My manors, rents, revenues I forego;<br />
+My acts, decrees, and statutes I deny.<br />
+God pardon all oaths that are broke to me,<br />
+God keep all oaths unbroke are made to thee.<br />
+Make me that nothing have with nothing grieved,<br />
+And thou with all pleased that hath all achieved!<br />
+Long may&#8217;st thou live in Richard&#8217;s seat to sit,<br />
+And soon lie Richard in an earthen pit!<br />
+God save King Henry, unkinged Richard says,<br />
+And send him many years of sunshine days!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>On this same spot, in 1483, the Protector, afterward 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&mdash;and with good reason in that day&mdash;is well described by
+Sir Thomas More, who was himself a prisoner in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> less than a half century
+after the scene which he so graphically describes:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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 marvelling of this manner of sudden change, and what
+thing should him ail.&#8221; 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&#8217;s wife and his own wife.
+&#8220;&#8216;Then,&#8217; said the Protector,&#8221; continues More, &#8220;&#8216;ye shall see in what wise
+that sorceress and that other witch ... have by their sorcery and
+witchcraft wasted my body!&#8217; 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&#8217;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 chamberlain answered, and said: &#8216;Certainly, my lord,
+if they have so heinously done they be worthy heinous punishment.&#8217; &#8216;What,&#8217;
+quoth the Protector, &#8216;thou servest me ill with ifs and with ands; I tell
+thee they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> have so done, and that I will make good on thy body,
+traitor!... I will not to dinner until I see thy head off.&#8217; Within an
+hour, the lord chamberlain&#8217;s head rolled in the dust.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The author of the &#8220;Utopia,&#8221; 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. &#8220;Is not this
+house as nigh heaven as my own?&#8221; he asked, serenely, when wife and
+daughters pleaded with him to reconsider. Lady More petitioned Henry for
+her husband&#8217;s pardon, on the ground of his illness and her poverty; she
+had been forced to sell her clothing to pay her husband&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>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. &#8220;Thenceforth,&#8221;
+says his biographer, &#8220;he caused the shutters of his cell to be closed, and
+spent most of his time in the dark.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>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, &#8220;I pray thee, see me safely up,
+and for my coming down, let me shift for myself.&#8221; He removed his beard
+from the block, saying, &#8220;it had never committed treason,&#8221; and told the
+bystanders that he died &#8220;in and for the faith of the Catholic Church,&#8221; and
+prayed God to send the king good counsel. More&#8217;s body was buried in St.
+Peter&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>Dark and bloody were the associations that centre around the Tower in the
+century preceding Milton&#8217;s. Few of these have touched the popular heart
+more than those which cluster around the girl-queen of nine days&mdash;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: &#8220;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> is nothing
+compared with that feast of which we shall partake this day in heaven.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>When she was ready to lay her fair young head upon the block, she cried:
+&#8220;I pray you all, good Christian people, to bear me witness that I die a
+true Christian woman.&#8221; &#8220;Then tied she the handkerchief about her eyes, and
+feeling for the block, she said, &#8216;What shall I do? Where is it?&#8217; One of
+the standers-by guiding her thereunto, she laid her head down upon the
+block, and then stretched forth her body, and said: &#8216;Lord, into thy hands
+I commend my spirit.&#8217;&#8221; So perished this girl of eighteen, whose beauty,
+learning, and tragic fate make her one of the most pathetic figures in
+history.</p>
+
+<p>The most interesting parts of the Tower, including St. Peter&#8217;s Church, the
+dungeons, Raleigh&#8217;s cell, and the spot where he wrote his &#8220;History of the
+World,&#8221; 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
+freedom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> 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&#8217;s birth, the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot were immured
+in these dungeons, and then hanged, cut down, and disembowelled while they
+were still living.</p>
+
+<p>In Milton&#8217;s youth, in 1630, while he was writing Latin verses at Christ&#8217;s
+College, Cambridge, that brave, heroic, noble soul, Sir John Eliot, was
+committed to the Tower. Those were sad days for England. Free speech in
+Parliament was throttled. The nation&#8217;s ancient liberties were in jeopardy.
+Says the historian, Green: &#8220;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> wisdom he
+put a firmer trust than in the statecraft of kings.&#8221; 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 members. &#8220;Then
+appeared such a spectacle of passions as the like had seldom been seen in
+such an assembly; some weeping, some expostulating, some prophesying of
+the fatal ruin of our kingdom, some playing the divines in confessing
+their sins and country&#8217;s sins.... There were above an hundred weeping
+eyes, many who offered to speak being interrupted and silenced by their
+own passions.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Says President Theodore Roosevelt of Sir John Eliot: &#8220;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 Parliament 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 confinement, even when it brought on
+consumption.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> In December, 1632, he died; and the king&#8217;s hatred found its
+last expression in denying to his kinsfolk the privilege of burying him in
+his Cornish home.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At last the &#8220;man of blood,&#8221; who had tried to wrest England&#8217;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. &#8220;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&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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
+dedicated the well-known sonnet beginning: &#8220;Vane, young in years, but in
+sage counsel old.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Speaking before the Phi Beta Kappa of Harvard University, Wendell
+Phillips, America&#8217;s <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>silver-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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;... 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&mdash;in my judgment the noblest
+human being who ever walked the streets of yonder city&mdash;I do not forget
+Franklin or Sam Adams, Washington or Fayette, Garrison or John Brown. But
+Vane dwells an arrow&#8217;s flight above them all, and his touch consecrated
+the continent to measureless toleration of opinion and entire equality of
+rights. We are told we can find in Plato &#8216;all the intellectual life of
+Europe for two thousand years.&#8217; 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 F&eacute;n&eacute;lon
+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
+pre&euml;minently the representative, in practice and in theory, of serene<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+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, &#8216;Remember the temptation and the age.&#8217; But
+Vane&#8217;s ermine has no stain; no act of his needs explanation or apology;
+and in thought he stands abreast of the age&mdash;like pure intellect, belongs
+to all time. Carlyle said, in years when his words were worth heeding,
+&#8216;Young men, close your Byron and open your Goethe.&#8217; If my counsel had
+weight in these halls, I should say, &#8216;Young men, close your John Winthrop
+and Washington, your Jefferson and Webster, and open Sir Harry Vane.&#8217; It
+was the generation that knew Vane who gave to our Alma Mater for a seal
+the simple pledge, Veritas.&#8221;&mdash;<i>Wendell Phillips, in his Harvard address on
+the &#8220;Scholar in the Republic.&#8221;</i></p>
+
+<p>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 &#8220;superiors, God,
+Law, and Parliament.&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>When Sir Harry Vane was arraigned as a &#8220;false traitor,&#8221; he made his own
+defence, well knowing what the end would be, but determined, for the sake<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+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, &#8220;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,&#8221; 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: &#8220;Resolve to suffer anything from men
+rather than sin against God.... I can willingly leave this place and
+outward enjoyments, for those I shall meet with hereafter 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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 suggestions the
+reverse of commonplace. Looking thither the sensitive beholder feels with
+deep emotion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> the fact brought home to him, that to men of English speech,
+the earth has scarcely a spot more memorable than the ground where he is
+standing. There rise, as they have risen for eight hundred years, the gray
+walls of the Tower,&mdash;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 imprisoned children, so children
+standing there have wondered 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 coming 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 14th of
+June in 1662 in the full glory of the summer, Vane, in the strength of his
+manhood, was brought forth to die.&#8221; 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 &#8220;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> to him, crying aloud, &#8216;The Lord go with
+you, the great God of Heaven and Earth appear in you and for you.&#8217; When
+asked how he did, he answered, &#8216;Never better in my life.&#8217; Loud were the
+acclamations of the people, crying out, &#8216;The Lord Jesus go with your dear
+soul.&#8217;&#8221; As Vane stepped upon the scaffold, clad in a black suit and cloak
+and scarlet waistcoat, a silence fell, and calmly, serenely, he addressed
+the throng around him. His address displeased the officers, and the
+trumpets were commanded 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. &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The heads of Cromwell and Bradshaw hung on the poles of Westminster Hall
+when Vane&#8217;s fell. Blake&#8217;s and Ireton&#8217;s bodies had been flung into
+dishonoured 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 &#8220;Paradise<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> Lost.&#8221; 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: &#8220;It was the red dint on
+Charles&#8217;s block that marked one in our era.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The reign of the Stuarts was doomed, and the Nemesis of what they stood
+for was assured. Says John Richard Green: &#8220;England for the last two
+hundred years has done little more than carry out in a slow and tentative
+way, but very surely, the programme laid down by Vane and his friends at
+the close of the Civil War.&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+<h3>ALL HALLOWS, BARKING.&mdash;ST. OLAVE&#8217;S.&mdash;ST. CATHERINE CREE&#8217;S.&mdash;ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_a.jpg" style="margin-top: -1em; margin-bottom: -0.5em;" alt="A" /></span>t the
+end of Great Tower Street is the church of All Hallows, Barking,
+anciently known as &#8220;Berkynge Church by the Tower.&#8221; 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 kingdoms
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Some traces of old Norman work remain, but the present building belongs to
+the Perpendicular type,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> and assumed nearly its present shape about one
+hundred years before Milton&#8217;s age.</p>
+
+<p>From its nearness to the Tower, the church became 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 &#8220;accompanied to earth with
+great multitudes of people, whom love or curiosity or remorse of
+conscience had drawn together, 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 provided, after it had been long disused and almost
+reprobated in most of the churches of London.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Two hundred and fifty years later an Archbishop Laud Commemoration was
+celebrated here, and where the scaffold stood on Tower Hill services were
+held.</p>
+
+<p>The chief interest of the church for American visitors may be the
+baptismal register, in which is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> recorded the baptism, during Milton&#8217;s
+early manhood, of Sir William Penn&#8217;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 &#8220;dyall and part
+of the porch was burnt.&#8221; Its interior is beautifully preserved. Its old
+brasses attract so many who desire to make rubbings that a snug sum for
+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.</p>
+
+<p>On the south side of Tower Street, at number 48, was 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.</p>
+
+<p>A little farther north, on Hart Street, once stood the richly decorated
+timber house, called &#8220;Whittington&#8217;s Palace.&#8221; According to doubtful
+tradition this was where the famous Dick Whittington, with princely
+magnanimity, burnt the royal bond for a debt of &pound;60,000, when Henry V. and
+his queen came to dine with him. &#8220;Never had king such a subject,&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> Henry
+is reported to have said, when Whittington replied to the hero of
+Agincourt, &#8220;Surely, Sire, never had subject such a king.&#8221; This palace,
+with its whole front of diamond-paned windows, stood in Milton&#8217;s time.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> 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 tottered, 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&#8217;s
+king and had died in battle, must have been fresh in mind.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>During the Reformation, in 1553, St. Olave&#8217;s had &#8220;a pair of organes.&#8221;
+During the Civil War in 1644, an ordinance was passed that all organs in
+churches &#8220;should be taken away and utterly defaced.&#8221; It is very certain
+that the music-loving Milton, who joyed to hear</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;... the organ blow, to the full-voiced choir below&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>must have mourned this stern decree. In consequence of this, most organ
+builders for sixteen years were obliged to work as carpenters and joiners.</p>
+
+<p>The famous diarist, Pepys, who attended St. Olave&#8217;s, writes on June 17,
+1660: &#8220;This day the organs did begin to play at Whitehall Chapel, where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> 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.&#8221; On April 20, 1667, he
+records: &#8220;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&#8221;&mdash;which meant St.
+Olave&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p>About the time of Pepys&#8217;s writing, a peal of six remarkably sweet-toned
+bells was placed in the tower. In the church are quaint brasses and
+monuments, 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: &#8220;b. 1632,
+d. 1703.&#8221; The monument is near the door where Pepys used to enter the
+church from Seething Lane.</p>
+
+<p>Pepys, like Milton, was educated at St. Paul&#8217;s School. His fame rests
+chiefly on his diary, which was written in cipher, and not deciphered and
+published until 1825. On the unveiling of his monument, James Russell
+Lowell, in his address, spoke of Pepys as &#8220;a type perhaps of what is now
+called<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> a Philistine. We have no word in English which is equivalent to
+the French adjective &#8216;bourgeois,&#8217; but at all events, Samuel Pepys was the
+most perfect 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.&#8221; With
+all these defects, perhaps in spite of them, Lowell maintained, Pepys had
+written one of the most delightful books that it was man&#8217;s privilege to
+read in the English language, or in any other. There was no parallel to
+the character of Pepys in respect of na&iuml;vet&eacute; unless it were found in that
+of Falstaff, and Pepys showed himself, too, &#8220;like Falstaff, on terms of
+unbuttoned familiarity with himself.... Pepys&#8217;s na&iuml;vet&eacute; was the
+inoffensive vanity of a man who loved to see himself in the glass.&#8221; It was
+questionable, 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&mdash;it was Pepys the diarist.</p>
+
+<p>Pepys&#8217;s diary was begun in 1660, when he was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> in his twenty-seventh year.
+Ten years later, when he feared blindness, he ceased writing it. He
+bequeathed 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 teaching of his pastor, Daniel Mills, are
+characteristic. In 1666, he writes: &#8220;Up and to church, where Mr. Mills, a
+lazy, simple sermon upon the Devil&#8217;s having no right to anything in this
+world;&#8221; and again he writes: &#8220;Mr. Mills made an unnecessary sermon on
+original sin, neither understood by himself nor the people.&#8221; He writes
+that when he invited the reverend gentleman to dinner on a Sunday, he &#8220;had
+a very good dinner and very merry.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>materia medica</i> of the ancients throughout the vegetable
+kingdom. But he wrote against the Roman Antichrist as well. The title of
+one book illustrates the orthography of his day: &#8220;The Hunting and Fynding
+of the Romish Fox: which more than seven years hath been among the
+Bysshoppes of England,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> after that the Kynges Hyghnes, Henry VIII. had
+commanded hym to be driven out of hys Realme.&#8221; Of Sir James Deane, a
+merchant adventurer to India, China, and the Spice Islands, it is recorded
+that he gave generous bequests, and directed &pound;500 to be expended on his
+funeral, a vast sum for those days, yet probably no more than was
+customary for wealthy men.</p>
+
+<p>Of Sir John Mennes, who is buried here, Pepys tells us that &#8220;he brought
+many fine expressions of Chaucer which he doats on mightily,&#8221; and na&iuml;vely
+adds, &#8220;and without doubt he is a very fine poet.&#8221; 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&#8217;s navy?</p>
+
+<p>As in All Hallows, Barking, and several old &#8220;city&#8221; churches, the visitor
+will notice in St. Olave&#8217;s the remarkable, wrought-iron &#8220;sword-stands,&#8221;
+used in Elizabeth&#8217;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 &#8220;deconsecrated&#8221; church of St.
+Benet.</p>
+
+<p>St. Olave&#8217;s had one of the churchyards in which the victims of the plague
+were buried in great numbers, and of which Pepys writes: &#8220;It frightened<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+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.&#8221; The gruesome
+skulls and crossbones, carved over its gateway, are a dismal reminder of
+the horrors of that time. In the chapter on the &#8220;City of the Absent,&#8221; in
+his &#8220;Uncommercial Traveller,&#8221; Dickens thus graphically describes his visit
+to it: &#8220;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 likewise 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. &#8216;Why
+not?&#8217; I said; &#8216;I have been to the Colosseum by the light of the moon; is
+it worse to go to see Saint Ghastly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> Grim by the light of the lightning?&#8217;
+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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In the chapter on &#8220;A Year&#8217;s Impressions,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;From Rood Lane unto Tower Street, and thereabouts, 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&#8217;s drawer. Behind the Monument 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, distinct and quaint. In all those
+dusty registers that the worms are eating, there is not a line but made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+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&mdash;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In Milton&#8217;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
+destruction by the Puritans, and remained with the almshouses to a late
+period. To the American, to whom the word &#8220;almshouse&#8221; signifies the
+English &#8220;workhouse,&#8221;&mdash;an institution of paupers where all live in
+common,&mdash;little idea is conveyed of the comfortable, and usually quaint
+and picturesque retreat which &#8220;almshouse&#8221; 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+their last days, in some ways the happiest of their lives, though it be in
+an almshouse.</p>
+
+<p>At 53 Fenchurch Street, in Milton&#8217;s time, stood the Queen&#8217;s Head Tavern,
+where the Princess Elizabeth 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.</p>
+
+<p>Mincing Lane, in the vicinity, was named from houses which belonged to the
+Minchuns or nuns of Saint Helen&#8217;s. Near its entrance is the Hall of the
+Clothworkers&#8217; 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. &#8220;Stane&#8221; is the Saxon word
+for stone, and the word &#8220;Staining&#8221; indicates the fact mentioned above.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>In the dwelling over the gate, according to Loftie, the poet Geoffrey
+Chaucer lived in 1374. This<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> gate, however, was pulled down just before
+Milton&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>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 Commercial
+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.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 500px; height: 356px;"><img src="images/fp_156_tmb.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><a href="images/fp_156.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></p>
+<p class="center">ST. CATHERINE CREE CHURCH IN 1736</p>
+<p class="note">The steeple dates from about 1505. The old church was pulled down in 1628,
+and the present one finished in 1630. Cree Church is a corruption of Christ-Church.</p>
+<p class="center"><i>From an old engraving.</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>But for Milton&#8217;s haunts, we need not wander farther east than Aldgate; for
+though Whitechapel Street was thickly lined with houses for some distance
+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&#8217;s. This was rebuilt
+in Milton&#8217;s youth in 1629, and consecrated two years later by the
+ill-fated Archbishop Laud. The ceremonies which he used on this occasion
+savoured so much of Popery, however, that <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>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 VIII., 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&#8217;s father was a boy. To-day, only the historian recalls
+the name of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, whose daughter married Walter
+Raleigh, who was chamberlain of the exchequer, ambassador, and chief
+butler of England. The stories of his fruitless embassy to Mary Queen of
+Scots to prevent her marriage with Darnley, and the records of his trial,
+imprisonment, and death of a broken heart must have been as familiar to
+the youth of Milton&#8217;s time as the life of Disraeli or Joseph Chamberlain
+is to Cambridge youth to-day.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>Every year, on October 16th, the &#8220;lion sermon&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> is preached within the
+church in memory of an ancient worthy, who in 1648 gave it the sum of
+&pound;200, in remembrance of his delivery from a lion&#8217;s paws in Arabia. As at
+St. Olave&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>The first edition of &#8220;Paradise Lost&#8221; bears the imprint: &#8220;Printed, and are
+to be sold by Peter Parker, under Creed Church near Aldgate, 1667.&#8221; &#8220;Creed
+Church&#8221; was this same Catherine Cree&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p>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 &#8220;Evil May Day,&#8221; 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&mdash;a name dear to every student
+of ancient London and of English history. Of his &#8220;Survey,&#8221; Loftie says:
+&#8220;It was a wonder even in the age which produced Shakespeare.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>Stow was bred a tailor, but in middle life retired on a modest competence,
+and for forty years almost immediately preceding Milton&#8217;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 prominent building, every
+church, and almost every monument 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 incalculable debt of
+gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>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 &#8220;made use of his own legs (for he could
+never ride), travelling on foot to many cathedral churches and other
+places where ancient records and charters were; and with his own eyes to
+read them.&#8221; He studied the records in the Tower, and was expert in
+deciphering<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> old wills and registers and muniments belonging to
+monasteries. He seems to have been somewhat conservative; perhaps, as his
+biographer suggests, &#8220;being a lover of antiquity and of the old Religious
+Buildings and monuments, he was the more prejudiced against the Reformed
+Religion, because of the havoc and destruction those that pretended to it
+made of them in those days.&#8221; One instance of Protestant fanaticism that
+tended to make him more opposed to zeal without knowledge was that a
+curate of St. Paul&#8217;s, which was his parish, inveighed &#8220;fervently against a
+long Maypole called a Shaft in the next Parish to his, named St. Andrew
+Undershaft, 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sir Walter Besant, in a delightful chapter in his &#8220;London,&#8221; 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: &#8220;I found the
+venerable antiquary in his lodging. He lived&mdash;it was the year before he
+died&mdash;with his old wife in a house over against<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> 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&#8217;s Nunnery, with the grounds and
+gardens of that once famous house, which had passed into the possession of
+the Leathersellers&#8217; Company.... I passed within, and mounting 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 observed too that they were
+not such books as may be seen in a great man&#8217;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> 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
+casements of the window stood open, and the summer sunshine poured warm
+and bright upon the scholar&#8217;s head.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In an age of many elaborate and tasteless monuments, Stow&#8217;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&#8217;s
+wallet, indicative of Stow&#8217;s poverty, for which James I. in his old age
+issued him letters patent permitting him to solicit aid. These letters
+grant &#8220;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 therefore 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.&#8221; Thus was the man who has chiefly
+contributed to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>our knowledge of ancient London allowed in his extreme
+old age to live in unappreciation and neglect.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 500px; height: 391px;"><img src="images/fp_162_tmb.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><a href="images/fp_162.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></p>
+<p class="center">CHURCH OF ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT IN 1737<br /><i>From an old engraving.</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>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 explanations
+that suggest themselves.</p>
+
+<p>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 century. The date of the handsome organ is 1695.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+<h3>CROSBY HALL.&mdash;ST. HELEN&#8217;S.&mdash;ST. ETHELBURGA&#8217;S.&mdash;ST. GILES&#8217;S, CRIPPLEGATE</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_p.jpg" style="margin-top: -1em; margin-bottom: -0.5em;" alt="P" /></span>assing by
+the tiny churchyard of St. Andrew Undershaft, by several narrow
+and obscure passages amid crowded business 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, &#8220;the highest at that
+time in London,&#8221; that is, about 1475. Doubtless his reference is to a high
+turret which once surmounted it, but of which no traces now remain. This
+was before the more pretentious Tudor buildings of the next century, of
+whose high towers Stow&#8217;s biographer says: &#8220;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> and in other places in the suburbs, and
+in their dwelling houses in the City itself. They were like midsummer
+Pageants, &#8216;not so much for use and profit as for show and pleasure,&#8217;
+&#8216;bewraying,&#8217; said he, &#8216;the vanities of men&#8217;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.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Crosby House was, as Sir Thomas More relates, where Richard, Duke of
+Gloucester, &#8220;lodged himself, and little by little all folks drew unto him,
+so that the Protector&#8217;s court was crowded and King Edward&#8217;s left
+desolate.&#8221; Here he probably planned his treasonable and malicious scheme
+for the death of the little princes. In his play of &#8220;Richard III.,&#8221;
+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.</p>
+
+<p>The building has been much restored, and its banquet-hall is now utilised
+for a first-class restaurant,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> 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 daughter, who loved
+the place where her dear father had passed so many days, hired it, and
+came here to live.</p>
+
+<p>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 appears 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&#8217;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. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>Determined to wreak speedy
+vengeance, he ordered, after the arbitrary method of the times, his
+instant decapitation. But the lord mayor pleaded for mercy, and the
+youth&#8217;s life was spared; whereupon, the duke records, &#8220;the English began
+to love, and the French to fear him more.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;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 <i>persona non grata</i> 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&#8217;s boy, who had come with a
+covered barrow to bring bread, he learned later that the barrow contained
+not bread, but his own naughty Elizabeth, who was trundled off by her
+lover in disguise.</p>
+
+<p>When their baby came, some time later, grandpapa 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&#8217;s
+boyhood demanded for their pleasure, a quotation from her letter written
+to her husband<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> shortly after marriage, may prove entertaining: &#8220;I pray
+and beseech you to grant me, your most kind and loving wife, the sum of
+&pound;2,600 quarterly to be paid. Also I would, besides that allowance, have
+&pound;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 borrow 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 attending; 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&#8217;s nor
+theirs with their chambermaids, nor theirs with their washmaids.... And I
+must have two footmen; and my desire is that you defray all the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> 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 &pound;2,000 and &pound;200,
+and so you to pay my debts. Also I would have &pound;6,000 pounds to buy me
+jewels, and &pound;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 &pound;2,000 more than I now desire, and double attendance.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Countess of Pembroke, sister of Sir Philip Sidney and friend of Ben
+Jonson, once lived as mistress in the halls of Crosby Place. The latter&#8217;s
+epitaph upon her is well known:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Underneath this sable hearse<br />
+Lies the subject of all verse:<br />
+Sidney&#8217;s sister, Pembroke&#8217;s mother.<br />
+Death, ere thou canst find another<br />
+Good and fair and wise as she,<br />
+Time shall throw a dart at thee.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Crosby Hall originally occupied far more ground than is indicated by that
+part of it which stands<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> to-day. A wine cellar with finely groined roof
+probably 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&#8217;s Priory, the earliest
+proprietor of the place; of Sir John Crosby, its builder; of the
+&#8220;crook-backed tyrant,&#8221; Richard, and of the wise, the gentle, the learned
+author of the &#8220;Utopia.&#8221; Its &#8220;louvre,&#8221; 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
+&#8220;Comus&#8221; and &#8220;Lycidas,&#8221; in the days before its owner fought under Charles
+I., may have been among their company.</p>
+
+<p>In Milton&#8217;s blind old age, Crosby Hall became a Presbyterian
+meeting-house, and for a century afterward devout worshippers sang psalms
+beneath its carved oak roof, which had echoed for two hundred years to
+sounds of mirth and feasting.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>A little to the left of Crosby Hall, through a low gateway, the sightseer
+passes from the noisy thoroughfare into a quiet court. Its pavement covers
+the ancient garden of Crosby Place. But it is not all paved. A small green
+churchyard still occupies a part of the site of the ancient priory of St.
+Helen&#8217;s, and surrounds the low Gothic church to which one descends a few
+steps from the modern pavement.</p>
+
+<p>Helena, the mother of Constantine, according to tradition, discovered the
+tomb of Christ and thereupon was canonised. From remote antiquity a church
+in her honour has stood here. Three centuries before Milton&#8217;s day, the
+Benedictine nuns built a priory close by the ancient church. They built
+their church, and finally, getting possession of St. Helen&#8217;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 proportions 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> 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&#8217;s keys. St. Helen&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>St. Helen&#8217;s is noted for its tombs, and has been called the Westminster
+Abbey of the &#8220;City.&#8221; 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 direction. 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&#8217;s Church, the
+coloured rays of his own arms fall on his tomb.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the wall behind it are niches; one of them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> 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
+Bancroft, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+C&aelig;sar. The inscription is in form of a legal document 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 portrait that hangs in the National
+Portrait Gallery with his great contemporaries.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;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 contrasted with the works of art of those periods, is almost
+as marked as it is at Westminster Abbey.</p>
+
+<p>When Milton lived he must have seen still standing the refectory and
+cloisters, and the old hall of the nuns, which was later used by the
+Company<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> of Leathersellers. The whole group of buildings, with the
+adjacent gardens, must have formed a highly picturesque reminder of the
+days before King &#8220;Hal&#8221; had ruthlessly swept his besom of destruction over
+the many houses in the land which sheltered nuns and friars.</p>
+
+<p>During Milton&#8217;s life there stood on Bishopsgate Street the first
+charitable institution for the insane that was ever established. Its name,
+&#8220;Bethlehem Hospital,&#8221; was corrupted into Bedlam, and has become a term of
+general application to scenes of disorder. Just after Milton&#8217;s death, it
+was removed to Southwark, where the gray dome of the present structure
+rises conspicuous amid the London smoke.</p>
+
+<p>Passing northeast along the crowded thoroughfare of Bishopsgate Street,
+but a short distance from St. Helen&#8217;s, the student of antiquities may see,
+almost 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&#8217;s
+boyhood, this church was ancient, and had been standing for at least three
+hundred and fifty years, for it is mentioned as early as 1366. Here
+Chaucer may have knelt to say his Paternosters.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s
+at Canterbury will recall the font in which this king was baptised into
+the faith of his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Not far down Bishopsgate Street, upon the opposite<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> side from St.
+Ethelburga&#8217;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&#8217;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
+Constantinople, he did much to improve England&#8217;s trade in the East. On his
+return, when Milton was a schoolboy of a dozen years at St. Paul&#8217;s School,
+he brought, among his other treasures, a great diamond, valued at &pound;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 Cromwell and
+Milton were fighting for the rights of Englishmen, and Charles&#8217;s strength
+was failing, this same Paul Pindar provided funds for the escape of Queen
+Henrietta Maria and her children.</p>
+
+<p>He gave &pound;10,000 for the restoration, before the fire, of St. Paul&#8217;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 Bishopsgate Street, past his quaint dwelling-house, he
+must have seen the mulberry-trees planted in the park<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> to please James I.
+by his devoted subject. These ancient mulberry-trees disappeared only
+within the memory of men now living.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s,
+Cripplegate, is not easily entered on Sunday, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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. Certainly they are the type that the Romans were wont to
+use. The policeman assures us that there are mysterious &#8220;submarine&#8221;
+passages leading from this wall, and one may well believe almost anything
+as one thinks of the strange sights that it has witnessed. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>High walls
+of business blocks of nondescript style replace the gaps made by the
+recent fire, which fortunately 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&#8217;s time.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 500px; height: 366px;"><img src="images/fp_178_tmb.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><a href="images/fp_178.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></p>
+<p class="center">CHURCH OF ST. GILES CRIPPLEGATE IN 1737</p>
+<p class="note">Dedicated to St. Giles, who lived about the year 700; founded in 1090;
+destroyed by fire in 1545, and rebuilt within the Liberty but without the City of London.</p>
+<p class="center"><i>From an old engraving.</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The church is on the site of an older one of 1090, and was built about one
+hundred years before Milton&#8217;s birth. It is late Perpendicular, and has
+some good detail.</p>
+
+<p>As one enters the church from the garden, the first monument on his right
+is Milton&#8217;s, which contains his bust, under a Gothic canopy. The poet&#8217;s
+bones lie by his father&#8217;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 figure, 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&#8217;s
+or another&#8217;s, and leaves a grain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> of comfort in the thought that perhaps
+his honoured remains still rest untouched by vandals.</p>
+
+<p>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 Elizabeth Bourchier knelt
+before him, to be joined in holy wedlock, that one day he would be
+entitled not only &#8220;Protector of England,&#8221; but &#8220;Protector of
+Protestantism.&#8221; 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&#8217;s
+lusty kin beyond the sea has said:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;He lived to make his simple oaken chair<br />
+More terrible, more grandly beautiful,<br />
+Than any throne before or after of a British king.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+One of the few who have a right to rank<br />
+With the true Makers; for his spirit wrought<br />
+Order from Chaos; proved that right divine<br />
+Dwelt only in the excellence of truth;<br />
+And far within old Darkness&#8217; hostile lines<br />
+Advanced and pitched the shining tents of Light<br />
+Nor shall the grateful Muse forget to tell,<br />
+That&mdash;not the least among his many claims<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>To deathless honour&mdash;he was <span class="smcap">Milton&#8217;s</span> friend,<br />
+A man not second among those who lived<br />
+To show us that the poet&#8217;s lyre demands<br />
+An arm of tougher sinew than the sword.&#8221;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">&mdash;<i>&#8220;A Glance Behind the Curtain,&#8221; Lowell.</i></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Says the historian Marsden: &#8220;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 commanded to be chained up in churches by the side of the
+homilies and the English Bible;... thus the &#8216;Book of Martyrs&#8217; stood
+amongst the high, authentic records of our Church, whilst its venerable
+author yet lived.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Frobisher, the great navigator, is also buried within the church.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>On the left wall, as one faces the choir, is a curious 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 teaching 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: &#8220;Who is God? Where is God? How
+many persons are there in the Godhead? Keep still there&mdash;don&#8217;t answer
+until it is your turn. When God put Adam and Eve out of Eden, what did he
+promise them?&#8221; &#8220;That they should be saved,&#8221; mumbles one youngster. &#8220;Whom
+did he promise should save them?&#8221; &#8220;His Son.&#8221; &#8220;What do we call his Son?&#8221;
+&#8220;Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.&#8221; 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 &#8220;opening exercises,&#8221; 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> 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 undermine. This modern Sunday
+school is the one blot upon the memory of the beautiful old church so dear
+to every lover of Milton.</p>
+
+<p>On a week day one may stand on Redcross Street, and behold, as did the
+travellers in &#8220;The Hand of Ethelberta,&#8221; &#8220;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&mdash;there never is&mdash;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+<h3>GRESHAM COLLEGE.&mdash;AUSTIN FRIARS.&mdash;GUILDHALL&mdash;ST. MARY&#8217;S,
+ALDERMANBURY.&mdash;CHRIST&#8217;S HOSPITAL.&mdash;ST. SEPULCHRE&#8217;S</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_t.jpg" style="margin-top: -0.5em; margin-bottom: -0.5em;" alt="T" /></span>hrough
+Milton&#8217;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 Exchange 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, &#8220;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.&#8221; 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> 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&#8217;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 &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>After the Fire, Gresham College was temporarily used for an Exchange,
+where merchants met. &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Except &#8220;London stone&#8221; 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> north of the Bank. Originally the
+church was cruciform, with choir, transepts, and a &#8220;most fine, spired
+steeple, both small and straight.&#8221; 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. &#8220;to the Dutch nation in London, to
+be their preaching place.&#8221; 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 eminent 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 superintended 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 industrious folk produced many new stuffs
+unknown to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 &pound;100. Just before Milton&#8217;s birth the fourth Marquis of
+Winchester was compelled to part with all his possessions in Austin
+Friars. At about this time the tower, declared to be &#8220;one of the
+beautifullest and rarest spectacles&#8221; 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>If the visitor waits after service, he may see in the pastor&#8217;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&mdash;Barnato Brothers&mdash;may attract his attention in a window close to the
+gray church walls. Here the ambitious and ill-starred king of African
+mines,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> Barney Barnato, brought his power to bear upon the men on &#8217;Change
+a decade since. A decade hence his name, like John a Lasco&#8217;s, will be
+remembered by few. These names and the associations they suggest are no
+unfitting theme for meditation on a Sunday morning stroll amid the stony
+streets of London past and present.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s London remains above the crypt.</p>
+
+<p>A clergyman, writing the year after the Great Fire, thus describes it, as
+he saw it during that terrible conflagration: &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The present roof is as nearly as possible a reproduction of the one that
+perished in the fire: it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>The crypt is reputed to be the finest now remaining 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.</p>
+
+<p>The Guildhall was founded in 1411, in the time of Henry IV., and when
+Milton was a boy had attained 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, &#8220;marvellously
+abashed,&#8221; listened in dead silence, as the accomplished 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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> &#8220;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.&#8221; Then the recorder was summoned to use his efforts with the
+people. &#8220;But all this no change made in the people, which alway after
+stood as they were amazed.&#8221; At last some servants of the duke, and
+&#8217;prentices and lads &#8220;thrusted into the hall amongst the press,&#8221; began
+suddenly to cry out aloud: &#8220;King Richard, King Richard,&#8221; and &#8220;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 <i>with one voice</i>, and no man saying nay.&#8221; Thus a bold <i>coup</i>,
+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 <i>vox populi</i>.</p>
+
+<p>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 <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>Christians 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&#8217;Arc
+to her inquisitors: &#8220;I have read that God made man; but that man can make
+God, I never yet read.&#8221; 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 Wriothesley 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 faltered,
+and unsaid what conscience taught. Those were tales to freeze the life
+from out young hearts, that grandames told in Milton&#8217;s boyhood. To the men
+of his day, Guildhall stood chiefly connected with some of the most
+remarkable trials in England&#8217;s history.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>Among them was that of Throckmorton for complicity in Sir Thomas Wyatt&#8217;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&#8217;s is mentioned, and for whom a London
+street is named.</p>
+
+<p>The church of St. Mary Aldermanbury is one that few visitors to London
+ever enter, but the follower in Milton&#8217;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 <i>bery</i> 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 noontide, in its shady retreat,
+the seats are filled with loiterers who chat or meditate or read their
+papers around the central monument.</p>
+
+<p>This monument, though modern, is of great interest. It records the fact
+that J. Heminge and Henry Condell, Shakespeare&#8217;s fellow actors and
+personal friends, lived many years in this parish, and are buried here.
+Says the inscription: &#8220;To their <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>disinterested affection the world owes
+all that it calls Shakespeare; they alone collected his dramatic writings,
+regardless of pecuniary loss, and without the hope of any profit gave them
+to the world.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;First Folio: &#8216;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.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Extract from Preface: &#8216;It had been a thing, we confesse, worthie to have
+been wished, that the author himselfe had lived to have set forth and
+overseene his own writings, but since it hath been ordained 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 numbers, 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.&#8217;&#8221; In 1656 Milton&#8217;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&#8217;s blindness. It has
+a square tower capped by a square bell turret about ninety feet in height.</p>
+
+<p>The register of the church, which was preserved,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> records that: &#8220;The
+agreement and intention of marriage between John Milton, Esq., of the
+parish of Margaret&#8217;s in Westminster, and Mrs. Katharine Woodcocke of
+Mary&#8217;s in Aldermanbury, was published 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 12th of
+November, by Sir John Dethicke, Knight and Alderman, one of the Justices
+for the Peace in the City of London.&#8221; A justice instead of a clergyman was
+prescribed by the Marriage Act which was then in force.</p>
+
+<p>Judge Jeffreys of bloody memory is buried in the church (d. 1689).</p>
+
+<p>A little west of it is Christ&#8217;s Hospital, which, since its establishment
+in 1552 by the boy-king, Edward VI., until the summer of 1902, has been
+one of the most noted of London schools. Its revenue is about &pound;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
+disappearance from the street of the bright-eyed, bare-headed lads, whose
+quaint costume has for centuries given their school its name of &#8220;Blue Coat
+School.&#8221; Anciently the boys wore caps, but now they go bare-headed through the year.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>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. &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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 Thursdays, same dinner as
+Sundays. Other days, no flesh&mdash;Monday, milk porridge; Wednesday, furmity;
+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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>Stow mentions that &#8220;the King granted all Church Linnen formerly used in
+the Churches of London&#8221; 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: &#8220;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 &#8216;Amen,&#8217; 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.&#8221; He describes the grace said by one boy in
+the pulpit, and the boys and girls quietly seating themselves while
+&#8220;multitudes of city and court&#8221; came to witness it.</p>
+
+<p>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
+anything, that Milton saw. Christ&#8217;s Church, beside it, where Richard
+Baxter lies buried, was built by Wren a little after his time.</p>
+
+<p>Where so many famous men in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were
+to be numbered as <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>students,&mdash;Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, and
+others,&mdash;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&#8217;s. A visitor from Boston, Massachusetts, is interested to know that
+in 1626, one little lad in yellow stockings 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 &#8220;Accidence,&#8221; which went through many
+editions. Often as he wandered over the &#8220;rocky nook with hilltops three,&#8221;
+where &#8220;twice each day the flowing sea took Boston in its arms,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;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 &#8220;Grecians&#8221;
+and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> &#8220;Deputy-Grecians,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>Old Newgate was a foul prison in Milton&#8217;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&#8217;s Church. From its tower the knell
+was struck for executions at the neighbouring Newgate, and many a time
+must the boys in Christ&#8217;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 standing on the
+scaffold in front of Newgate. St. Sepulchre&#8217;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Here lyes one conquered, who hath conquered kings;<br />
+Subdued large territories and done things<br />
+Which to the world impossible will seem<br />
+But that the Truth is held in more esteem,...<br />
+Or shall I tell of his adventures since,<br />
+Done in Virginia, that large Continente?<br />
+How that he subdued kings unto his yoke,<br />
+And made those Heathen flee as wind doth smoke,<br />
+And made their land, being of so large a Station,<br />
+An habitation for our Christian nation.&#8221;...</p>
+
+<p>The above-mentioned &#8220;kings&#8221; 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&#8217;s day was not unlike his
+posterity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> three centuries later in the time of Cecil Rhodes and of
+Philippine campaigns.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s work after his death.
+Dean Milman tells us: &#8220;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&#8217;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
+protomartyr of the English Church, but, with due respect for Tyndale, the
+protomartyr of the English Bible.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Among the most eminent men buried at St. Sepulchre&#8217;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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+<h3>CHARTERHOUSE.&mdash;ST. JOHN&#8217;S GATE.&mdash;ST. BARTHOLOMEW&#8217;S.&mdash;SMITHFIELD</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_w.jpg" style="margin-top: -0.5em; margin-bottom: -0.5em;" alt="W" /></span>hen Milton
+was a lad at St. Paul&#8217;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 Charterhouse 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&#8217; reign.</p>
+
+<p>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
+without a Christian prayer said over them, the Bishop <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>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&#8217;s boyish heart than those of a nearer time, which his
+father&#8217;s life had almost touched.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 500px; height: 290px;"><img src="images/fp_202_tmb.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><a href="images/fp_202.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></p>
+<p class="center">THE CHARTERHOUSE</p>
+<p class="center"><i>From an old engraving.</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Since Milton&#8217;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&#8217;s day, whose
+prayer was: &#8220;Lord, thou hast given me a large and liberal estate; give me
+also a heart to make use thereof.&#8221; In 1611, Thomas Sutton purchased the
+Charterhouse for &pound;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.</p>
+
+<p>The pensioners were originally eighty in number, and the boys, forty-four.
+Hubert Herkomer&#8217;s <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>well-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 encroachments 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, &#8220;each to be made on
+any part of the second Lesson for that day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> at night to be in by eleven o&#8217;clock. Each pensioner has
+a bedroom and sitting-room, and a loaf and butter is brought him for his
+breakfast. About &pound;30 a year are allowed each for clothing and other food,
+and a female attendant is assigned to each half dozen gentlemen.
+Thackeray&#8217;s description of Founder&#8217;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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The custom of the school is on the 12th of December, the Founder&#8217;s Day,
+that the head gown-boy shall recite a Latin oration, in praise of our
+founder and upon other subjects, and a goodly company 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&#8217;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&#8217;s tomb, with its grotesque<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> 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 <i>would</i> 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&mdash;pensioners of the
+hospital, listening to the prayers and psalms. You hear them coughing
+feebly in the twilight&mdash;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, &#8216;Amen,&#8217; under those arches.&#8220;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>We pass up, as Milton may have done, the broad carved oak staircase of the
+period antedating Sutton&#8217;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 fireplace 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&#8217;s Day.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 500px; height: 338px;"><img src="images/fp_208_tmb.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><a href="images/fp_208.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></p>
+<p class="center">ST. JOHN&#8217;S GATE, CLERKENWELL</p>
+<p class="center"><i>From an old engraving.</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>A little to the northwest of Smithfield, where it spans a narrow and
+somewhat squalid street, stands the huge stone gateway of St. John&#8217;s.
+Nothing 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 establishments around London was built
+here. The history of the Knights of St. John is one of the longest and
+most romantic of medi&aelig;val histories. The prototype of their ancient
+hospital was in Jerusalem, where the knights of the order lived lives of
+abstinence and charity. The English establishment in Clerkenwell was
+founded in 1100 A. D., only a generation 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 Jerusalem 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 &#8220;plutocrats&#8221; of the working men<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> of their time. In that
+sweet story, written in Saxon English, by William Morris, of the monk,
+&#8220;John Ball,&#8221; 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&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>The present gateway was not erected until the following century. In the
+reign of Edward VI., the church with the &#8220;graven gilt and enamelled
+bell-tower&#8221; was undermined and blown up with gunpowder, and the stone was
+used for building the Lord Protector&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of Westminster Abbey, probably<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> no church has more of
+interest than St. Bartholomew&#8217;s at Smithfield. Within the century that saw
+the White Tower of the Conqueror begun, a monastery and church rose on
+this site. &#8220;A pleasant-witted gentleman, who was therefore called &#8216;the
+king&#8217;s minstrel,&#8217;&#8221; as Stow relates, was blest with a most singular vision
+on his pilgrimage to Rome. Like Saul of Tarsus, he felt the Lord&#8217;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: &#8220;Except the Tower and its immediate
+neighbourhood, there is no part of London, old or new, around which are
+clustered 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> found lurking behind dark, uncanny-looking
+tenements.... 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Here may Milton, during those dark days of the Restoration, when he
+retired to the seclusion of these narrow streets to 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>An interesting and lovely feature of the church is the oriel window by the
+triforium, opposite Rahere&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+forth, who evidently, had he lived, would have thrown in his lot where
+Milton did. His epitaph contains the lines:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Whose life and death designed no other end,<br />
+Than to serve God, his country, and his friend;<br />
+Who, when ambition, tyranny, and pride<br />
+Conquered the age, conquered himself and died.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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: &#8220;I hear, Sir Walter, that you have erected
+a Puritan foundation.&#8221; &#8220;No, madam,&#8221; was the answer, &#8220;but I have set an
+acorn, which when it becomes an oak, God knows what will be the fruit
+thereof.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In Milton&#8217;s time many Puritans lived in the parish, and a manuscript book
+preserved in the vestry records that there was &#8220;Collected for the children
+of New England uppon 2 Sabath daies following in february, 1643, &pound;2, 8.
+9.&#8221; 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 remembered that the Puritans who remained at
+home<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> were called to wage a fiercer fight with priestcraft, prerogative,
+and privilege than they, with poverty.</p>
+
+<p>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 &pound;1,000, and the thirteen evicted canons were pensioned off.</p>
+
+<p>Close by old St. Bartholomew&#8217;s is Smithfield, so near that, in the reign
+of the Tudors, the ruddy light of martyrs&#8217; 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.</p>
+
+<p>On the south side of Smithfield, in Milton&#8217;s day, rose St. Bartholomew&#8217;s
+Hospital, founded by Henry VIII., upon the site of Rahere&#8217;s earlier one.
+The great Harvey, the physician of Charles I., who discovered 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 present
+structure dates from a period early in the eighteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>Directly opposite St. Bartholomew&#8217;s Church, in 1849, excavations three
+feet below the surface exposed to view a mass of unhewn stones, blackened
+as by fire, and covered with ashes and human bones,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> charred and partially
+consumed. This marked the spot where martyrs, facing eastward toward the
+great gate of St. Bartholomew&#8217;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 Londoners of the early nineteenth century viewed the
+hangings at Newgate.</p>
+
+<p>Of the two hundred and seventy-seven persons who in Mary&#8217;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 &#8220;New England Primer,&#8221; and now treasured in many families as a
+curiosity. No one among its wretched little woodcuts struck such a solemn
+awe into the child&#8217;s mind,&mdash;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. &#8220;That which I have
+preached I will seal with my blood,&#8221; said the indomitable man,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> when
+offered pardon for recantation. &#8220;I will never pray for thee,&#8221; quoth his
+angry questioner. &#8220;But I will pray for you,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 jugglers. In 1615,
+says Howes, &#8220;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 annoyance 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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+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&#8217;s Hall, by reason it was the usual place of
+frays and common fighting during 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.&#8221; In his &#8220;Henry IV.,&#8221;
+Shakespeare makes Page say of Bardolph: &#8220;He&#8217;s gone to Smithfield to buy
+your worship a horse.&#8221; To which Falstaff replies: &#8220;I bought him in Paul&#8217;s,
+and he&#8217;ll buy me a horse in Smithfield; an I could get me but a wife in
+the stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Ben Jonson&#8217;s merry play, &#8220;Bartholomew Fair,&#8221; written in 1613, gives a good
+account of the babel of entreaties and advertising boasts that assailed
+the ears of the unwary customer: &#8220;Will your worship buy any gingerbread,
+gilt gingerbread; very good bread, comfortable bread? Buy any ballads? New
+ballads! Hey!</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Now the fair&#8217;s a filling!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">O, for a tune to startle</span><br />
+The birds of the booths here billing<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yearly with old St. Bartle.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>&#8220;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Buy a mouse-trap, a mouse-trap, or a tormentor for a flea?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Gentlewomen, the weather&#8217;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&#8217; de fire, la! T&#8217;ou shalt ha&#8217;
+the clean side o&#8217; the table-clot&#8217; and de glass vashed!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>From all which, and much more to the same purport, one may judge that
+whether in Ben Jonson&#8217;s time or Browning&#8217;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&#8217;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-headed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
+calf, for all the world like &#8220;The Greatest Moral Show on Earth&#8221; to-day.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+<h3>ELY PLACE.&mdash;INNS OF COURT.&mdash;TEMPLE CHURCH.&mdash;COVENT GARDEN.&mdash;SOMERSET HOUSE</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_h.jpg" style="margin-top: -1em; margin-bottom: -0.5em;" alt="H" /></span>olborn was
+paved long before Milton&#8217;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&#8217;s Inn blocked up the street, and became even in his day &#8220;a mighty
+hindrance to Holborn in point of prospect.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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. Etheldreda, and to
+recall the glories of the past which its Gothic walls have witnessed, will
+be well repaid.</p>
+
+<p>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 gardens and the palaces of
+Milton&#8217;s day. In Chaucer&#8217;s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> 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 &#8220;Fen&#8221; 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 &#8220;tawdry,&#8221;
+so Thornbury declares. For her name was sometimes called St. Audry, and
+some cheap necklaces sold at St. Audry&#8217;s fair at Ely were known as
+&#8220;tawdry&#8221; laces, whence the name was applied to other cheap and showy
+ornaments.</p>
+
+<p>After long continuance in the hands of Protestants, the church has again
+reverted to the faith of those who built it. It is the only instance of a
+&#8220;living&#8221; crypt in London, <i>i. e.</i>, 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 medi&aelig;val quiet and seclusion and tell
+one&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>In the Plantagenet and Tudor period, vineyards, kitchen garden, and
+orchard surrounded the magnificent buildings of Ely Place. Hither, at the
+Duke of Gloucester&#8217;s bidding, as Shakespeare, following history, records,
+the bishop sent hastily for the strawberries for which his garden was
+famous.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn<br />
+I saw good strawberries in your garden there;<br />
+I do beseech you send for some of them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In the reign of Elizabeth, Sir Christopher Hatton was the owner of Ely
+Place. Except a cluster of houses,&mdash;Ely Rents,&mdash;standing on Holborn, the
+land round about this great estate seems to have been unbuilt upon.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Christopher, who rose to be Elizabeth&#8217;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&#8217;s lifetime, Lady Hatton&mdash;a gay and wealthy widow&mdash;was wooed and
+won by the famous Sir Edward Coke. But Hatton House saw many an open
+quarrel between the ill-matched pair.</p>
+
+<p>In the time of Charles I., a pageant almost unparalleled in magnificence
+was arranged in Ely Place.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> 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; consequently this famous masque
+came off. Mr. Lawes, the famous musician and friend of Milton, was set to
+composing music for the occasion. On an evening in 1633, when Milton was
+living at Horton, the magnificent procession wended its way through crowds
+of enthusiastic spectators toward Whitehall. 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 accompanied 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
+imaginable was carried out, and the cost of the whole was no less than
+&pound;21,000, a sum which meant far more in purchasing power than it does
+to-day. Some of the musicians, however, received &pound;100 apiece&mdash;a fee quite
+satisfactory to many a prima donna in our time.</p>
+
+<p>No more characteristic part of Milton&#8217;s London<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> exists to-day than the
+various Inns of Court that lead north and south from Holborn. As the
+sightseer 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. Occasionally 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.</p>
+
+<p>In Gray&#8217;s Inn, to the north of Holborn, Francis Bacon wrote his &#8220;Novum
+Organum,&#8221; which he published in 1620, when Milton was a schoolboy at St.
+Paul&#8217;s, and when the Leyden Pilgrims in the <i>Mayflower</i> landed on Plymouth
+Rock.</p>
+
+<p>The gardens of Gray&#8217;s Inn, which Bacon set out with trees, became a
+fashionable promenade in Milton&#8217;s old age. Pepys tells us that he took his
+wife there after church one Sunday, &#8220;to observe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> the fashions of the
+ladies, because of my wife&#8217;s making some clothes.&#8221; It was, in short, quite
+as much a dress parade as Fifth Avenue on Easter Sunday in New York.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Burleigh, Elizabeth&#8217;s great minister, was, next to Bacon, the most
+eminent of the members of Gray&#8217;s Inn.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s
+time, Gray&#8217;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&#8217;s throw of them.</p>
+
+<p>Dickens&#8217;s description of the little Staple Inn gives the reader an exact
+impression of the place to-day: &#8220;Behind the most ancient part of Holborn,
+where certain gabled houses some centuries of age still stand looking on
+the public way, as if disconsolately 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> 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, &#8216;Let us play at country,&#8217; 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Walking through the further quadrangle, and following the narrow street
+down past the towering, vulgar conglomeration of every incongruous
+architectural device,&mdash;the new Birkbeck Bank,&mdash;we enter presently the wide
+spaces of Lincoln&#8217;s Inn.</p>
+
+<p>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 antedate Laud&#8217;s time,
+and Laud is said to have wondered that the saints emblazoned on them
+escaped the &#8220;furious spirit&#8221; that was aroused against those &#8220;harmless,
+goodly windows&#8221; of his at Lambeth.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>At number 24 of the &#8220;Old Buildings,&#8221; the secretary of Oliver Cromwell
+lived from 1645 to 1659, where his correspondence was discovered behind a
+false ceiling. The tradition that the Protector was overheard to discuss
+with him here about the kidnapping of the three little sons of Charles I.
+may be dismissed as mythical.</p>
+
+<p>Beside the noble brick gateway of Lincoln&#8217;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 compassion 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.</p>
+
+<p>Of Furnivall&#8217;s, Scroope&#8217;s, and Barnard&#8217;s Inns, and Thavie&#8217;s, oldest of
+them all, we have no space to write. The characteristics of the four great
+inns are stated in the lines:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Gray&#8217;s Inn for walks, Lincoln&#8217;s Inn for wall,<br />
+The Inner Temple for a garden,<br />
+And the Middle for a hall.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>Before crossing Fleet Street, mention should be made of Temple Bar, which
+was erected by Wren four years before Milton&#8217;s death, and marked the
+transition from Fleet Street to the Strand. The &#8220;Old Cheshire Cheese&#8221; 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&#8217;s restaurant, and his fame brings many customers to sit in his old
+seat, which is still carefully preserved.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s throw of Temple Bar.</p>
+
+<p>Of its dimensions and manifold restorations, the ordinary guide-books say
+enough, and make a repetition unnecessary. The round church with its
+interesting arcade of grotesque, sculptured heads, and its rare
+proportions; the choir, &#8220;springing,&#8221; as Hawthorne says, &#8220;as it were, in a
+harmonious and accordant fountain out of the clustered pillars that
+support its pinioned arches,&#8221; are both a delight to every lover of the
+beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Hardly more than a century after the Norman conquest we find the Knights
+Templars on this spot.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> 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 finished in 1240.</p>
+
+<p>In early times, the discipline of the knights was most severe. The Master
+himself scourged disobedient 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.</p>
+
+<p>The interesting recumbent figures clad in mail, upon the Temple floor, are
+not, as is popularly supposed, Knights Templars, but Associates of the
+Temple, who were only partly admitted to its great privileges.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s rebellion.
+The knights leased it to the law students who belonged to the &#8220;King&#8217;s
+Court.&#8221; Therefore, when the rebels reached London, they poured down on the
+haunts of the Temple lawyers,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> carried off the books, deeds, and rolls of
+remembrance, and, in vengeance on the Knights Hospitallers, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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. Discussions on legal questions
+sometimes waxed boisterous, and, as a contemporary said, as &#8220;noisy as St.
+Paul&#8217;s.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In Elizabeth&#8217;s day the Middle Temple abandoned the old Templar arms&mdash;a red
+cross on a silver shield with a lamb bearing the sacred banner surmounted
+by a red cross&mdash;and substituted a flying Pegasus. Both of these emblems
+meet the visitor&#8217;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 centuries.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>An old print of Milton&#8217;s later years shows the gardens of the Inner Temple
+laid out in many straight rows of trees, like apple-trees in orchards,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+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&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">&#8220;those bricky towers,</span><br />
+The which on Thames&#8217; broad back do ride,<br />
+Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers;<br />
+There whilom wont the Temple knights to bide<br />
+Till they decayed through pride.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s time, a fountain of much loftier altitude sparkled and splashed
+here, and for aught we know made music when Milton and Shakespeare
+wandered within the Temple precincts.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until after Milton&#8217;s birth that James I. in 1609 granted the
+whole property to the two societies of the Inner and Middle Temples;
+whereupon 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&#8217;s daughter Elizabeth was married four years
+later, the Temple and Gray&#8217;s Inn men gave a masque, which Sir Francis
+Bacon planned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>In Milton&#8217;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 &#8220;one of
+your own now sitting in Parliament, the chief of learned men reputed in
+this land.&#8221; 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 probably made, and begged those who would know the
+truth to &#8220;hasten to be acquainted with that noble volume written by our
+learned Selden, of &#8216;The Law of Nature and of Nations,&#8217; 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.&#8221; Of his well-known &#8220;Table Talk,&#8221;
+Coleridge observes: &#8220;There is more weighty bullion sense in this book than
+I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>One of the greatest names connected with the Temple is that of Richard
+Hooker, author of the famous &#8220;Ecclesiastical Polity.&#8221; He was for six years
+Master of the Temple&mdash;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 &#8220;Music
+hath charms to soothe the savage breast.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>With the Restoration and the opening of the floodgates of luxury and
+licentiousness, which the stern Puritan had for twenty years kept in
+abeyance, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+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 pendants, is especially characteristic of the
+work of that period. The screen is an elaborate one of Renaissance work,
+more interesting for its age and associations than for its conformity to
+true principles of art. This famous hall witnessed the performance of
+Shakespeare&#8217;s &#8220;Twelfth Night&#8221; 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 richness
+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&#8217;s life touched were Sir Walter Raleigh, John
+Pym, Ireton,&mdash;Cromwell&#8217;s son-in-law,&mdash;Evelyn, Lord Chancellor Clarendon,
+and many others of equal note in their day.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>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,&mdash;Coke, Selden, Bacon, Newton, Milton, and their contemporaries
+across the Channel, Grotius, Spinoza, and Galileo,&mdash;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 learning had its centre as in the England into which Milton was
+born, and in which he lived for two-thirds of a century?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We are apt,&#8221; says Lowell, &#8220;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,
+because they lunched with Plutarch and supped with Plato.&#8221; 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 understood his Puritan seriousness than Cowper; none<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> who
+in boldness, love of liberty, and justice more resembled him than Edmund
+Burke.</p>
+
+<p>Fifty years before Milton&#8217;s birth, as Aggas&#8217;s old map of 1562 gives
+evidence, London had extended but a little way beyond the city walls and
+the Strand. But in Elizabeth&#8217;s prosperous age, noble mansions and
+extensive gardens began to replace the fields, commons, and pastures that
+stretched westward from St. Martin&#8217;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 centuries
+before his time the abbots of Westminster had owned &#8220;fair spreading
+pastures&#8221; here, now all included in the general name of &#8220;Long Acre.&#8221; Part
+of this they are thought to have used for the burial of their dead. In
+Aggas&#8217;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 Bedford, to whom it was given by the Crown in
+1552, at which time it had a yearly value of less than &pound;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> the same artist, and the south was bordered by the garden
+of Bedford House and a grove or &#8220;small grotto of trees most pleasant in
+the summer season.&#8221; 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.
+&#8220;Then,&#8221; said Inigo Jones, &#8220;it shall be the handsomest barn in England,&#8221;
+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.</p>
+
+<p>In the popular dramas written in the last part of Milton&#8217;s lifetime,
+constant allusion is made to the fashionable and even licentious companies
+that frequented 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:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Where Covent Garden&#8217;s famous temple stands,<br />
+That boasts the work of Jones&#8217; immortal hands,<br />
+Columns with plain magnificence appear,<br />
+And graceful porches lead along the square;<br />
+Here oft my course I bend, when lo! from far<br />
+I spy the furies of the football war:<br />
+The &#8217;prentice quits his shop to join the crew,<br />
+Increasing crowds the flying game pursue.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At first, peddlers of fruit and vegetables used the gravelled centre of
+the square for their booths, and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>gradually the market grew into a
+well-recognised establishment, and the open square was finally in 1830
+covered over. In Milton&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 500px; height: 326px;"><img src="images/fp_238_tmb.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><a href="images/fp_238.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></p>
+<p class="center">SOMERSET HOUSE</p>
+<p class="note">This view represents the house as it stood in Milton&#8217;s boyhood, previous
+to the alterations by Inigo Jones. Adjoining it is the Savoy, and
+immediately behind it is the only view extant of Exeter House.</p>
+<p class="center"><i>From an ancient painting in Dulwich College.</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The palace on the Thames known as &#8220;Somerset House&#8221; was in Milton&#8217;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: &#8220;Indeed it is observed that the greatest court nowadays is
+there.&#8221; It was then the residence of the queen mother, whose rooms he
+describes as &#8220;most stately and nobly furnished,&#8221; and he remarks upon the
+echo on the stairs, &#8220;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.&#8221; 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,
+demolished in 1775, is used for many important public purposes.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+<h3>WHITEHALL.&mdash;WESTMINSTER ABBEY</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_s.jpg" style="margin-top: -0.5em; margin-bottom: -0.5em;" alt="S" /></span>cotland Yard,
+the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, discloses in
+its cramped and dingy quarters little if anything 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&#8217;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&#8217;s, another royal palace. He speaks of an immense number of
+swans,&mdash;birds favoured by royalty then as now,&mdash;which floated on the salty
+bosom of the tidal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> 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 Westminster,
+which, although shut in by gates at either end, was an open thoroughfare.
+When Cardinal Wolsey owned Whitehall, it was known as &#8220;York Place,&#8221; and
+did not receive the former title until Henry VIII. had taken possession of
+it. Here the voluptuous monarch visited his great rival in magnificence,
+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 &#8220;little great lord cardinal&#8221; bade a long farewell to all his
+greatness, and with a heavy heart entered his barge at the foot of
+Whitehall stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Henry added many features to his new possessions, 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 <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>became 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&#8217;s time to that of William III., made money flow like water in
+Whitehall, except during the short domination of the Puritan party. James
+I., 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.</p>
+
+<p>The Banquet Hall is in the Palladian style of architecture, and is 111
+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 James 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 ceremonies of the Order of the Garter. The palace was
+planned to cover the whole space from the Thames to St. James&#8217;s Park, and
+from Charing Cross to Westminster. In Milton&#8217;s time of residence in
+Whitehall upon the south was the Bowling Green,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> and north of it the Privy
+Gardens. The front consisted of the existing Banquet Hall,&mdash;the only part
+of the plan of Inigo Jones that ever materialised,&mdash;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 &#8220;Stone Gallery,&#8221; which
+ran along the east side of the Privy Garden. The magnificence which was
+displayed at Whitehall in Milton&#8217;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. &#8220;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&mdash;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 embroidery, 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 fourscore thousand
+pounds, besides a great feather stuck all over with diamonds; as were also
+his sword,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> girdle, hatband, and spurs.&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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 27th of January, 1648-49, the death sentence
+was passed upon Charles I., of whom a few months later one of his
+followers wrote:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Great Charles, thou earthly god, celestial man,...<br />
+Thy heavenly virtues angels should rehearse,<br />
+It is a theam too high for human verse.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> or justice, and after painful hesitation he set his
+seal to the death warrant. Says Masson: &#8220;At the centre of England was a
+will that had made itself adamant, by express vow and deliberation
+beforehand, 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.
+<i>They</i> 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&#8217;s, there was lying on Milton&#8217;s
+writing-table in his house in High Holborn at least the beginnings of a
+pamphlet on which he had been engaged during the king&#8217;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&#8217;s Purge included,
+justify the existing governments of the army chiefs and the fragment of
+Parliament that assisted them, inculcate <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>republican beliefs in his
+countrymen, and prove to them above all this proposition: &#8216;<i>That it is
+lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for any who have the
+power, to call to account a tyrant</i>, 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.&#8217; 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Three days after his sentence the king bade farewell to his sobbing little
+son and daughter at St. James&#8217;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
+&#8220;martyr-king,&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> as Jacobins still call him, now that the end of his
+arbitrary reign had come, behaved with dignity. His last words were: &#8220;To
+your power I must submit, but your authority I deny.&#8221; 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 Marvell&#8217;s well-known
+lines upon this scene will be recalled:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;While round the armed bands,<br />
+Did clasp their bloody hands,<br />
+He nothing common did or mean,<br />
+Upon that memorable scene,<br />
+Nor called the gods with vulgar spite,<br />
+To vindicate his hopeless right;<br />
+But with his keener eye,<br />
+The axe&#8217;s edge did try;<br />
+Then bowed his kingly head,<br />
+Down, as upon a bed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Strangely enough, it was on this very spot where his death forecast the
+dawning of that new principle 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, &#8220;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+tumult divers were hurt, and one or more slain just by the Banqueting House.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The regicides, who felt their bloody deed to be a sad necessity for
+England&#8217;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 &#8220;traitors,&#8221;
+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&#8217;s Palace,
+where crowds came to see it. The authorities objected 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&#8217;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 Cromwell. Every
+Monday he dined with all his officers above the captain&#8217;s rank. Milton, as
+his Latin secretary, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> 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 violence 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s people to the keeping of the Almighty: &#8220;Give them,&#8221; he prayed,
+&#8220;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.&#8221; Probably never by any
+master of Whitehall was such a sincerely devout and magnanimous 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> 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: &#8220;I can
+never forget the inexpressible 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.&#8221; In the
+reign of William III. two fires, in 1691 and 1697, consumed all of the
+palace except the Banquet Hall of Inigo Jones.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 500px; height: 293px;"><img src="images/fp_250_tmb.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><a href="images/fp_250.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></p>
+<p class="center">WESTMINSTER ABBEY AS MILTON KNEW IT</p>
+<p class="center"><i>From an old engraving.</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The Westminster Abbey that Milton knew, unlike the old St. Paul&#8217;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 Exchange. 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 <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>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 England
+to whose sensitive soul the solemn minster spoke more eloquently. With a
+mind richly stored in history, and with the artist&#8217;s eye and prophet&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>In the south aisle of the nave are buried two ladies whom Milton probably
+knew. They are the two wives of Cromwell&#8217;s secretary&mdash;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 monument of 1631 to Jane Hill. At
+the rear of the lady&#8217;s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> 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, &#8220;O rare Ben Jonson,&#8221; which
+slab was later removed to the Poets&#8217; 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&#8217;s Church. Newton&#8217;s tomb near by
+Milton never saw, as the youth of the man of science covered only Milton&#8217;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 Cambridge, in 1623, Milton may have attended the funeral
+of this man, whose great work, &#8220;Britannia&#8221; added new lustre to Elizabeth&#8217;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, presents a speaking likeness, and with his portrait
+in the National Gallery make the eminent scholar seem a personality as
+real as Raleigh&#8217;s. Ben Jonson, who was one of his pupils when he was head
+master of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> Westminster School, lovingly ascribes to him the source of his
+own inspiration:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Camden, most reverend head, to whom I owe<br />
+All that I am in acts, all that I know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Just beyond Camden&#8217;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 &#8220;old, old, very old&#8221; man who died
+in 1635 at the reputed age of one hundred and fifty-two. &#8220;Old Parr,&#8221; 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
+&#8220;piece of antiquity,&#8221; 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, &#8220;for he knew that he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> came raw
+into the world, and thought it no point of wisdom to be broiled out of
+it,&#8221; an opinion quite to be expected of a man who had lived through the
+reigns of all the Tudors.</p>
+
+<p>Further on, within the Poets&#8217; Corner, two monuments especially must have
+been dear to the author of &#8220;Comus&#8221; and &#8220;Lycidas.&#8221; 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, &#8220;for lacke of bread.&#8221;
+Yet Dean Stanley tells us that &#8220;his hearse was attended by poets, and
+mournful 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!&#8221; Of the author of the
+&#8220;Fa&euml;rie Queene&#8221; Milton himself said: &#8220;Our sage and serious Spenser, whom I
+dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas.&#8221; Near by
+to Spenser&#8217;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
+Dryden, Drayton, Cowley, and Francis Beaumont, Milton&#8217;s famous
+contemporaries. If the poet could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> 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: &#8220;I have seen erected in
+the church a bust of that man whose name I once knew considered as a
+pollution of its walls.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>After Shakespeare&#8217;s death there was a strong desire to remove his bones
+from Stratford to the Abbey, upon which Milton and Jonson both protested.
+The former wrote:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones<br />
+The labour of an age in pil&egrave;d stones?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>and Jonson more emphatically exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;My Shakespeare rise! I will not lodge thee by<br />
+Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie<br />
+A little further on to make thee room;<br />
+Thou art a monument without a tomb,<br />
+And art alive still while thy book doth live<br />
+And we have wits to read and praise to give.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In St. Benedict&#8217;s Chapel may be noted the graves of Bishop Bilson, Doctor
+Tunson, Sir Robert Anstruther, and Sir Robert Ayton,&mdash;famous men of
+Milton&#8217;s time.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>In St. Edmund&#8217;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
+beautiful 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&#8217;s boyhood
+years.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>We may be sure that the graves which most interested Milton here were
+those of Oliver Cromwell, 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&#8217;s death and burial in his despatch to the
+Council of Genoa: &#8220;He left the world with unimaginable valour, prudence,
+and charity, and more like a priest or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> 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 disease 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&#8217;s death.&#8221; Cromwell&#8217;s body
+lay in state at Somerset House, and was thence escorted to the tomb by an
+immense throng of mourners, which included the city companies. &#8220;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.&#8221; 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. &#8220;Cromwell caused him to be brought
+up by land to London in all the state that could be; and to encourage his
+officers to adventure their lives that they might be pompously buried, he
+was with all solemnity possible interred in the Chapel of Henry VII.,
+among the monuments of the kings.&#8221; Who can doubt that Milton stood in
+sightless grief beside these tombs,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> before the desecration of &#8220;Oliver&#8217;s
+Vault?&#8221; Only the body of Cromwell&#8217;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 &#8220;regicide&#8221; John Milton. Had he been
+buried later where Cromwell&#8217;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 &#8220;Pindar, Horace, and Virgil of England.&#8221; 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
+I., 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 displeased the king that he immured her in the Tower,
+where, bereft of reason by her miseries, she died when Milton was a boy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>At the eastern end of the north aisle of the chapel of Henry VII. is a
+baby&#8217;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&#8217;s, but a stone&#8217;s throw distant. Of those who were associated
+with Milton&#8217;s public work at Whitehall, was Admiral Edward Popham, general
+of the Fleet of the Republic under Cromwell, who died in 1651. He was
+buried at the state&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;s
+Chapel rests the body of the wife of Colonel Scot, one of the judges of
+Charles I., who was executed at Charing Cross.</p>
+
+<p>At the foot of the steps which lead to the chapel of Henry VII., in
+1674,&mdash;the same year in which Milton died,&mdash;was laid under a nameless
+stone the body of the famous Earl of Clarendon, who was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> born in 1608-9,
+the same 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 ambulatory was interred in
+1643 the body of the redoubtable John Pym, nicknamed &#8220;King Pym&#8221; by the
+Royalists, for as Clarendon himself said: &#8220;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.&#8221;<small><a name="f2.1" id="f2.1" href="#f2">[2]</a></small>
+Two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> years after Pym&#8217;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&#8217;s seat in the
+north aisle of the choir. He was Laud&#8217;s chaplain, and wrote a life of the
+great archbishop; under Charles I. he had for a time supreme authority in
+the Abbey and superintended its repairs. During the Civil War he suffered
+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 Edward I., has never left the Abbey except
+when it was taken to Westminster Hall, when Oliver Cromwell was there
+installed as Lord Protector.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>A few of the scenes that the great minster witnessed in Milton&#8217;s time may
+be alluded to. The funeral of James I. in 1625 was the most magnificent
+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 &#8220;the
+ordinary revenue is clogged with debts, and exhausted with the late king&#8217;s
+funeral and other expenses of necessity and honour.&#8221; The Abbey suffered
+somewhat from the Puritan hatred of images and &#8220;idolatry,&#8221; during the
+Commonwealth. By order of Parliament the sacred vestments were seized and
+burned. Of the curious wax effigies of monarchs who antedated Milton&#8217;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> a visit to the effigies of Westminster Abbey as
+entertaining as a modern boy finds a visit to Madame Tussaud&#8217;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&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that Sir Christopher Wren&#8217;s plan for the completion of the
+Abbey would have materially 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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+<h3>THE PRECINCTS OF THE ABBEY.&mdash;WESTMINSTER PALACE.&mdash;ST. MARGARET&#8217;S</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_d.jpg" style="margin-top: -0.5em; margin-bottom: -0.5em;" alt="D" /></span>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 &#8220;Jerusalem Chamber.&#8221; 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 &#8220;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.&#8221; 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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> 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 questions 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 hundred and forty-nine were several members, like Archbishop
+Usher, who were defenders of Episcopacy. 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 &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>During Milton&#8217;s lifetime the Chapter House, which had become public
+property after the Dissolution,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> 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 &#8220;Pyx,&#8221; held
+the regalia, and was broken open by the officers of the House of Commons,
+in order to make an inventory, when the Church authorities refused to
+surrender the keys. The Pyx no longer holds the regalia, which, after the
+Restoration, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;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 geographer, Hakluyt, and
+Sir Christopher Wren. Hakluyt, who died the same year that Shakespeare
+died,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> in 1616, tells us that his interest in discovery and in naval
+science began when he was a Queen&#8217;s Scholar in &#8220;that fruitful nurserie.&#8221;
+At Oxford he pursued his favourite studies, and read &#8220;whatsoever printed
+or written discoveries or voyages he found extant in Greeke, Latine,
+Italian, Spanish, Portugall, French, or Englishe languages.&#8221; Evelyn says
+in his &#8220;Diary:&#8221; On &#8220;May 13th, 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.&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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,
+&#8220;Sir, take heed you go not too much upon the brave hand, for your enemies
+will take<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> exceptions at that.&#8221; &#8220;Good Charles,&#8221; replied Raleigh, &#8220;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,&#8221; and even so he did. When he had reached the
+scaffold in Palace Yard the next day, and had taken off his gown and
+doublet, 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: &#8220;This is a sharp
+medicine, but it is a physician for all diseases.&#8221; 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: &#8220;So the heart be right, it is no
+matter which way the head lies.&#8221; 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&#8217;s, Westminster, now rises a memorial window presented by
+Americans and inscribed by Lowell in remembrance of Raleigh&#8217;s connection
+with America:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;The New World&#8217;s sons, from England&#8217;s breasts we drew<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Such milk as bids remember whence we came;</span><br />
+Proud of her past, wherefrom our future grew,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This window we inscribe with Raleigh&#8217;s name.&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>In this prison, afterward, John Hampden and Sir John Eliot were confined,
+and Richard Lovelace,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> who was imprisoned for his devotion to Charles I.,
+wrote the well-known lines:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Stone walls do not a prison make,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor iron bars a cage;</span><br />
+Minds innocent and quiet take<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That for a hermitage.&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the
+&#8220;Game and Play of Chess.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In Milton&#8217;s day, a grim old fortress marked the &#8220;Sanctuary,&#8221; 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 abandoned sought its shelter. The Sanctuary at
+Westminster was only one of thirty known to have been contemporaneous with
+it in the monasteries of England before the Dissolution.</p>
+
+<p>The magnificent royal palace of Westminster, which was built by Edward the
+Confessor, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> improved by William the Conqueror, had largely disappeared
+in Milton&#8217;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 &#8220;Star Chamber&#8221; and
+&#8220;Painted Chamber,&#8221; 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 inconvenient
+distance from the House of Lords. Then they were transferred to St.
+Stephen&#8217;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
+patriotism and loyalty to country with subserviency to the will of any
+fallible man whom chance had placed upon the nation&#8217;s throne. Here Eliot,
+in sharp, emphatic words, which contrasted with the ponderous phraseology
+of the time, cried out against the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> gorgeously apparelled and arrogant
+Buckingham: &#8220;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 magnificent
+buildings, his riots, his excesses, what are they but the visible
+evidences of an express exhausting 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.&#8221; Bold words! which took more
+courage than to face the cannon&#8217;s mouth, for his protest then and later
+meant to face a dungeon in the Tower, from which only death gave him
+release.</p>
+
+<p>But Eliot&#8217;s words were a tonic to his fellows, and when they met two years
+later, in 1628, Sir Thomas Wentworth showed himself a worthy follower: &#8220;We
+must vindicate our ancient liberties,&#8221; said he, &#8220;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.&#8221; Of the Petition of
+Right, and the Remonstrance; of the dissolution of Parliament, and the
+eleven years when these walls were silent; of Charles&#8217;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> these
+walls which echoed with the eloquence of England&#8217;s noblest statesmen,
+there is no space to speak.</p>
+
+<p>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 punished. 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
+Parliament 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.</p>
+
+<p>The Painted Chamber was named from its mural decorations, which antedated
+Milton&#8217;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> is now
+preserved within the library of the House of Lords.</p>
+
+<p>Says Knight: &#8220;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&#8217;s own brother, and even passed a bill for that purpose.
+Would any approach to such an interference as that have been endured
+either by Elizabeth or James I.?... and this change, this gain had been
+brought about by the Long Parliament and the great Rebellion.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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 have reflected on the queen. In those days the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> 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 cabinet, listened
+to the trial of Strafford, 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:
+&#8220;Charles Stuart, as a tyrant, traitor, murderer,&#8221; etc., the king is said
+to have laughed in the face of the court. In Pepys&#8217;s diary we get a
+glimpse, a few years later, of the commercial 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 coronation 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 <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>roof
+is unsupported. The roof of Irish oak is said to be always free from
+spiders and insects.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 455px; height: 500px;"><img src="images/fp_274_tmb.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><a href="images/fp_274.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></p>
+<p class="center">WESTMINSTER HALL</p>
+<p class="note">Begun 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&#8217;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 a Bible in the other, was saluted as Lord Protector.</p>
+<p class="center"><i>From an old engraving.</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Close under the shadow of the towering Abbey lies the little church, St.
+Margaret&#8217;s, which must have had peculiarly tender associations in Milton&#8217;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:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Methought my late espoused saint,<br />
+Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The large memorial window to Milton at the west end of the church was in
+recent years presented by Mr. Childs of Philadelphia. This depicts
+numerous scenes from &#8220;Paradise Lost&#8221; and from Milton&#8217;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 inscription by
+Whittier expresses the thought and feeling not only of the New England
+poet, but of every American scholar:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;The New World honours him whose lofty plea<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For England&#8217;s freedom made her own more sure,</span><br />
+Whose song immortal as his theme shall be<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Their common freehold while both worlds endure.&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>Amongst the Puritans who preached here was the famous Richard Baxter,
+author of &#8220;The Saints&#8217; Rest,&#8221; whose glum visage in the National Gallery
+reveals little of the true nobility of his character and of his
+well-ordered mind. The modern inscription by Lowell on Raleigh&#8217;s memorial
+here has been already mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>The church is rich in monuments of figures clad in the fashions of
+Milton&#8217;s time and that which just preceded it, the architectural
+accessories of which indicate the gradual deterioration of Renaissance
+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
+before taking the covenant.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+<h3>LAMBETH PALACE.&mdash;ST. SAVIOUR&#8217;S&mdash;LONDON BRIDGE</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_i.jpg" style="margin-top: -1em; margin-bottom: -0.5em;" alt="I" /></span>n
+Milton&#8217;s day, London Bridge, over the narrowest part of the Thames, was
+the only bridge that spanned the silent highway between the Tower and
+Lambeth. The venerable 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&#8217;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 history 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&#8217;s boyhood the shore between Lambeth Church and Blackfriars
+was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> a haunt of wild fowl and a royal hunting-ground. A grove stood then
+on the site of the long line of St. Thomas&#8217;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 history as the &#8220;Pretender.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the music of the bells was one that our forefathers loved
+apparently more than other folk. &#8220;The English are vastly fond of great
+noises that fill the air,&#8221; wrote Hentzner shortly before Milton&#8217;s birth,
+&#8220;such as firing of cannon, beating of drums, and ringing of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> 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 &#8216;the ringing island.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In Milton&#8217;s time the buildings of Lambeth were less extensive than they
+are to-day. Its beautiful, lofty gateway known as &#8220;Morton&#8217;s,&#8221; 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 hospitality that was offered was excessive and
+encouraged beggary. Stow tells us of the gifts of farthing loaves which
+amounted to the sum of &pound;500 a year. At present the doles amount to about
+&pound;200 a year and are given only to well-known persons. In addition to these
+doles, huge baskets of fragments from the three tables in the long
+dining-halls sufficed, as Strype tells us, &#8220;to fill the bellies of a great
+number of hungry people that waited at the gate.&#8221; Some conception of the
+size of Cranmer&#8217;s establishment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> may be gathered from the authentic list
+of his household: &#8220;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.&#8221; 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 &pound;15,000,
+that he may keep up these establishments; that of the average curate is
+about &pound;100.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 500px; height: 354px;"><img src="images/fp_280_tmb.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><a href="images/fp_280.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></p>
+<p class="center">IN LAMBETH PALACE</p>
+<p class="center"><i>From an old print.</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s
+&#8220;Chronicles of Great Britain,&#8221; which was printed <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>The chapel, built in the last half of the thirteenth century, is the
+oldest part that remains. An opening into Cranmer&#8217;s ancient &#8220;parloir&#8221; 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 contained the windows that were destroyed in
+the Civil Wars, which served as such a theme of controversy in Laud&#8217;s
+trial. He testified as follows: &#8220;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+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&#8217;s Nativity, Last Supper, Resurrection,
+Ascension, and others.... To which I answer first, That I did not get
+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 compared with the story.&#8221; It is related that at
+a dinner of the domestics during Laud&#8217;s primacy, the king&#8217;s jester
+pronounced the grace, &#8220;Give great praise to God, but little Laud to the
+devil,&#8221; for which jest he paid by long imprisonment.</p>
+
+<p>In the so-called &#8220;Lollards&#8217; Tower&#8221; 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 &agrave; Becket, to which Dean Stanley tells
+us &#8220;the watermen of the Thames doffed their caps as they rode in their
+countless barges.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>The small room at the top of the tower is wainscoted 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&#8217; Tower seems to have been an adjunct
+of old St. Paul&#8217;s Cathedral. More probably the prisoners here were
+Episcopalians of Milton&#8217;s own time.</p>
+
+<p>In the dark crypt, the wretched queen, Anne Boleyn, heard from the lips of
+Cranmer the annulment 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 residence,
+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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> 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&#8217;s Cathedral at the bishop&#8217;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&#8217;s way of thinking as one whose system
+demanded submission to absolutism in the state. The student of Milton&#8217;s
+prose writings is familiar with the troublous history of Laud&#8217;s time, and
+the ludicrously trivial matters that then estranged earnest men. But,
+while the ceremonies permitted in the church two generations later were
+practically those that Laud had so zealously striven for, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> result,
+says Gardiner, &#8220;was only finally attained by a total abandonment of all
+Laud&#8217;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.&#8221;
+After Laud&#8217;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 successor, Sheldon, in 1665, in the time of the Great Plague,
+&#8220;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 benevolences to a vast
+amount.&#8221; 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 enthusiasm 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,
+&#8220;Massachusetts,&#8221; in other years brought a smile to the lips of every
+American who chanced to learn it, no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> 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&#8217;s kin beyond the sea who journey hither to study with reverent
+eyes the history of the land from which they came.</p>
+
+<p>Among places of minor interest in Southwark, which doubtless Milton well
+knew, was the &#8220;Tabard Inn,&#8221; the starting-point of Chaucer&#8217;s Canterbury
+Pilgrims. This stood on High Street, and was not demolished until 1875. In
+Milton&#8217;s time it was inscribed: &#8220;This is the Inne where Sir Jeffrey
+Chaucer and the nine and twenty pilgrims lay in their journey to
+Canterbury anno 1380.&#8221; It had then a more modern fa&ccedil;ade than Chaucer saw.
+The Globe Theatre of Shakespearian fame was then on the site of the
+present brewery of Barclay, Perkins, &amp; 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>No church in Southwark and only two or three in London are of so great
+interest to the antiquarian as St. Saviour&#8217;s or St. Mary Overy&#8217;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 &#8220;Concordance,&#8221;
+Doctor Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Baxter, and Bunyan were closely
+connected with this church and parish. In one of its chapels, in the
+generation preceding Milton, beneath its three-light window, the Bishops
+of Winchester and London, and others acting for the see of Rome, tried and
+condemned to death by the flames seven ministers of Christ. Their only
+crime was opposition to the &#8220;usurpations of the Papal Schism.&#8221; 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> been admirably restored, lies the dust of many dear to lovers of
+poetry. Chaucer&#8217;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&#8217;s contemporaries, 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 &#8220;Melancholy,&#8221; beginning:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Hence, all you vain delights,<br />
+As short as are the nights<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wherein you spend your folly!&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>was probably familiar to the young poet at Horton, when he penned his &#8220;Il
+Penseroso,&#8221; although Fletcher&#8217;s poem was not published until after that.
+Both Massinger and Fletcher are commemorated by modern windows. The
+latter&#8217;s colleague, Francis Beaumont, whose writings are so indissolubly
+connected with his, is honoured with a window in which the friendship of
+the two is typified by the figures of David and Jonathan.</p>
+
+<p>The year before Milton&#8217;s birth, the author of &#8220;Hamlet&#8221; and &#8220;Lear&#8221;
+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&#8217;s genius<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> had nearly touched its zenith of
+creative power. The parish boasts that some of the most magnificent
+masterpieces of the world&#8217;s literature were written within its borders by
+this, its most distinguished parishioner, and England&#8217;s greatest son. In
+his youth Milton may well have attended the funeral of the great Bishop
+Andrewes, whose recumbent 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 literary 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&#8217;s taste as that of the present parishioners: &#8220;Your sacrament of the
+Mass is no sacrament at all, neither is Christ present in it;&#8221; &#8220;From the
+Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities, good Lord deliver us.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The London Bridge of Milton&#8217;s day was one of England&#8217;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 massive piers. Much of its picturesqueness
+must have resulted from the irregularity of the breadth of its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> 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&#8217;s
+lifetime, rows of houses were added to the chapel and stretched across
+toward the Southwark side.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s
+boyhood. This was called &#8220;Nonsuch House.&#8221; 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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> 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 waterfalls or rapids, and thereby greatly
+inconvenienced navigation. An extension of this simple, early mechanism
+lasted as late as 1822.</p>
+
+<p>This bridge, which was to last six hundred and thirty years, was as long
+in building as King Solomon&#8217;s Temple, and, at the time, probably surpassed
+in strength and size any bridge in the whole world.</p>
+
+<p>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 scrivener&#8217;s house on Bread Street, probably danced and sang the
+ancient ditty, as thousands had done before him:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;London bridge is broken down,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dance over, my Lady Lee;</span><br />
+London bridge is broken down,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With a gay ladee.</span><br />
+<br />
+&#8220;How shall we build it up again?<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dance over, my Lady Lee;</span><br />
+How shall we build it up again?<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With a gay ladee.</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span><br />
+&#8220;Build it up with stone so strong,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dance over, my Lady Lee;</span><br />
+Huzza, &#8217;twill last for ages long,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With a gay ladee.&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>For centuries before Milton was born, Billingsgate, a little to the east
+of London Bridge, had been one of the city&#8217;s water-gates, and long before
+his time its neighbourhood was filled 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 &#8220;Survey,&#8221; Billingsgate was &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+<h3>THE PLAGUE.&mdash;THE FIRE.&mdash;WREN.&mdash;LONDON REBUILT</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_i.jpg" style="margin-top: -1em; margin-bottom: -0.5em;" alt="I" /></span>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&#8217;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 un&aelig;sthetic; but that earth floors covered with rushes, mixed
+with greasy bones and decaying cabbage 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> cartman, and blacksmith, and craftsman, housed in
+his narrow tenements near Smithfield or in Southwark, considered it a
+superfluity.</p>
+
+<p>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
+fortunate 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 by the bonfires which were kept burning
+in vain hope of purifying the atmosphere. Physicians, ignorant, but
+heroic, remained at their posts, cupping and blistering, and uselessly
+tormenting the helpless folk who with pathetic confidence 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 possessed the wretched gravediggers.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 500px; height: 375px;"><img src="images/fp_294_tmb.jpg" alt="The South Prospect of The Royall Exchange" /></div>
+<p class="center"><a href="images/fp_294.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></p>
+<p class="center">Erected in 1564-70 by Sir Thomas Gresham, and burned in the Great Fire in 1666.</p>
+<p class="center"><i>From an old engraving.</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>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 &#8220;New River,&#8221; which
+conducted a supply from Chadswell Springs in Hertfordshire to a reservoir
+at Islington.</p>
+
+<p>The summer of 1666 was likewise hot and dry, and a furious gale blew for
+weeks together. Conditions were the same as in Chicago before the
+conflagration 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&#8217;Leary&#8217;s cow kicked over the lamp in the Windy City of the West. A
+baker&#8217;s oven took fire in Pudding Lane, two hundred and two feet from the
+site of the present Fire Monument, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>Evelyn, in describing the conflagration, says: &#8220;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&mdash;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 approach it. The clouds also and smoke were
+dismall and reached upon computation neere 56 miles in length. The poore
+inhabitants were dispers&#8217;d about St. George&#8217;s Fields and Moorefields, as
+far as Highgate, and several miles in circle, some under tents, some under
+miserable hutts and hovells, many without a rag or any necessary utensils,
+bed or board, who from delicatenesse, riches, and easy <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>accommodations in
+stately and well-furnished houses, were now reduc&#8217;d to extremest misery
+and poverty.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Pepys tells us that the entire lead roof of St. Paul&#8217;s Cathedral, no less
+than six acres by measure, &#8220;fell in, the melted lead running down into the
+streets and into the crypt where books had been carried for safety.&#8221; He
+notes that the fire burned just as many parish churches as there were
+hours from the beginning to the end of the fire.</p>
+
+<p>Dryden, in the long section of his &#8220;Annus Mirabilis&#8221; which describes the
+&#8220;Great Fire,&#8221; has a few lines among his prosaic stanzas which bear
+quotation:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;The ghosts of traitors from the bridge descend,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With bold fanatic spectres to rejoice:</span><br />
+About the fire into a dance they bend,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And sing their sabbath notes with feeble voice.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+&#8220;A key of fire ran all along the shore,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And lightened all the river with a blaze:</span><br />
+The wakened tides began again to roar,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And wondering fish in shining waters gaze.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+&#8220;The rich grow suppliant, and the poor grow proud:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Those offer mighty gain, and these ask more:</span><br />
+So void of pity is the ignoble crowd,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When others&#8217; ruin may increase their store.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>&#8220;The most in fields like herded beasts lie down,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To dews obnoxious on the grassy floor;</span><br />
+And while their babes in sleep their sorrows drown,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sad parents watch the remnants of their store.&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>The king, who for the time being had behaved in manly fashion, went back
+to his dalliance with courtesans and &#8220;the burning lusts, dissolute court,
+profane and abominable lives&#8221; of which Evelyn writes on the day of fast
+and humiliation ordered for the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The fire destroyed eighty-eight churches besides St. Paul&#8217;s, together with
+the city gates, the Exchange, 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 &pound;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> All Hallows Barking, St. Ethelburga&#8217;s, St.
+Andrew Undershaft, of Saxon foundation; St. Olave&#8217;s, of Danish; and St.
+Helen&#8217;s, of Norman foundation; St. Catherine Cree, Austin Friars, which
+was the Dutch church, and St. Giles&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>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 College,
+Oxford, and was there noted by John Evelyn as a &#8220;miracle of a youth,&#8221; &#8220;a
+prodigious young scholar,&#8221; who showed him &#8220;a thermometer, a monstrous
+magnet, and some dials.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> 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 &#8220;something superhuman.&#8221;
+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
+mathematicians. Says Hooke, &#8220;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.&#8221; 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&#8217;s blood to another, in methods
+for noting longitude at sea, and for other studies and inventions too
+numerous to mention.</p>
+
+<p>Wren was a self-taught architect. Before the Fire he erected Pembroke
+College Chapel at Cambridge, and the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford. He then
+visited Paris, where he saw Bernini, and made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> 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&#8217;s cap and gown upon a
+Roman emperor.</p>
+
+<p>London&#8217;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 approached
+St. Paul&#8217;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. &#8220;All churchyards, gardens, and trades that use great
+fires and noisome smells&#8221; were to be relegated to the country, and the
+churches with their spires were to be placed in prominent positions on the
+main thoroughfares.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>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 discarded,
+Wren was to make the new city his monument. Besides St. Paul&#8217;s he built
+within and without the walls fifty parish churches, thirty-six of the
+companies&#8217; halls, the Custom House, and much besides.</p>
+
+<p>During the last eight years of Milton&#8217;s life, the destruction of the walls
+of St. Paul&#8217;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
+rubbish 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&#8217;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&#8217;s son in the presence of the now aged architect and of all London,
+which assembled for the proud spectacle.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> The fair walls, ungrimed by soot
+and smoke, rose fresh and perfect, a monument to one of the greatest
+geniuses of all time.</p>
+
+<p>One building erected the year after Milton&#8217;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&#8217;s time
+situated on Bishopsgate Street Without. &#8220;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,&#8221; 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, and
+large gardens were provided for the less insane. Over the gate were placed
+two figures representing a distracted man and woman. This building had a
+cupola surmounted by a gilded ball; there was a clock within and &#8220;three
+fair dials without.&#8221; Men occupied one end of the building, and women the
+other. Hot and cold baths were provided, and there was a &#8220;stove room,&#8221;
+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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>As if this were not enough for one man&#8217;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&#8217;s in the East in Tower Ward; St.
+Mildred&#8217;s, Bread Street Ward; St. Mary&#8217;s, Aldermanbury; St. Edmund the
+King&#8217;s; St. Lawrence&#8217;s, Jewry; St. Michael&#8217;s, Cornhill, where he attempted
+Gothic work; the beautiful St. Stephen&#8217;s, Wallbrook; St. Olave&#8217;s, Jewry;
+St. Martin&#8217;s, Ludgate; St. Michael&#8217;s, Wood Street; St. Dionis&#8217;s,
+Langbourne Ward; St. George&#8217;s, Botolph Lane; and the Custom House.</p>
+
+<p>No interior, either of these or those that followed these, is so perfect
+as St. Stephen&#8217;s, Wallbrook. Architecturally speaking, it has been
+questioned whether St. Paul&#8217;s itself shows greater genius.</p>
+
+<p>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 necessities 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. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>Bride&#8217;s and St. Mary le Bow. The
+former, which overshadows the spot where Milton conceived the plan of
+&#8220;Paradise Lost,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 372px; height: 500px;"><img src="images/fp_304_tmb.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><a href="images/fp_304.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></p>
+<p class="center">BOW STEEPLE, CHEAPSIDE</p>
+<p class="center"><i>From a print published in 1798.</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The lofty spire of the church rises to an altitude of 226 feet, a trifle
+higher than Bunker Hill Monument, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, which is
+a measuring-rod for many Americans.</p>
+
+<p>St. Mary le Bow is on the site of a Norman church of the Conqueror&#8217;s time,
+and so named because it was built on arches or &#8220;bows&#8221; 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
+hundred 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&#8217;clock,
+but an old couplet shows that they were not always punctual:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Clark of the Bow Bell, with the yellow lockes,<br />
+For thy late ringing, thy head shall have knockes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>To which the clerk responded:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Children of Cheape, hold you all still,<br />
+For you shall have the Bow Bell rung at your will.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>From the days when little Dick Whittington, a forlorn runaway, heard from
+far Bow bells summon him back to London, the bells have played a notable
+part in the life of Londoners. A true cockney is supposed to be one born
+within hearing of these bells. Certainly the boy in Spread Eagle Court
+deserved the title.</p>
+
+<p>The spire of St. Mary le Bow rises a little higher than St. Bride&#8217;s, and
+bears a golden dragon nine feet long.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the side of Bow Church, half hidden behind the tower, is an
+inscription which the pilgrim to Milton&#8217;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 admired when this new
+spire of Wren&#8217;s was rising upon the ruins of the old, and close beside the
+birthplace of the greatest soul ever born to London in all her two
+millenniums of history.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Three poets, in three distant ages born,<br />
+Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.<br />
+The first in loftiness of thought surpassed,<br />
+The next in majesty, in both the last;<br />
+The force of nature could no farther go,<br />
+To make a third she joined the other two.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">THE END.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Index</h2>
+
+<div class="index">
+<p>
+Aldersgate Street, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Aldgate, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.<br />
+<br />
+All Hallows, Barking, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.<br />
+<br />
+All Hallows Church, Bread St., <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>.<br />
+<br />
+All Hallows, Staining, tower of, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Amersham, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Andrewes, Bishop, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Arcades,&#8221; <a href="#Page_81">81</a>.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Areopagitica,&#8221; <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Artillery Walk, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ascham, Roger, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Askew, Anne, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Austin Friars, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Austin Friars&#8217; Church, <a href="#Page_185">185-188</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Bacon, Francis, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bancroft, Francis, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Barbican, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bartholomew Close, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bartholomew Fair, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Baroni, Leonora, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Baxter, Richard, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Beaconsfield, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Beaumont, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bethlehem Hospital, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Billingsgate, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Blake, Admiral, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Blindness, On His,&#8221; Milton&#8217;s ode, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Blue Coat School, <a href="#Page_195">195-199</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Boleyn, Annie, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bread Street, <a href="#Page_42">42-46</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Browne, Robert, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Buckingham, Duke of, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Buckinghamshire, <a href="#Page_112">112-119</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bunhill Fields, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Burke, Edmund, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Burleigh, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+C&aelig;sar, Sir Julius, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cambridge, <a href="#Page_57">57-77</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">university life in Milton&#8217;s time, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Camden, William, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Caxton, William, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Chalfont St. Giles, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Charles I., <a href="#Page_244">244-248</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Charles II., <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Charing Cross, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Charterhouse, <a href="#Page_202">202-208</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cheever, Ezekiel, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Chenies, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Chequer&#8217;s Court, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Cheshire Cheese, The,&#8221; <a href="#Page_229">229</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Christ&#8217;s Church, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Christ&#8217;s College, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Christ&#8217;s Hospital, <a href="#Page_195">195-199</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Civil War, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Clarendon, Earl of, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Comus,&#8221; <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Conventual establishments, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Covent Garden, <a href="#Page_237">237-239</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>Cranmer, Archbishop, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cromwell, Oliver, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256-258</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Cromwell, Ode to,&#8221; Milton&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cromwell, Richard, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Crosby Hall, <a href="#Page_164">164-170</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Danish Remains in London, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Darwin at Christ&#8217;s College, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dickens on Old London Churches, <a href="#Page_152">152-154</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Diodati, Charles, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dryden, John, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dutch in London, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Education, Milton&#8217;s Essay on, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Eliot, Sir John, <a href="#Page_134">134-136</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Elizabethan Age, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Elizabeth, Queen, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ellwood, Thomas, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ely Cathedral, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ely Place, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Emmanuel College, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Evelyn, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Exchange, The Royal, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Fire of London, The Great, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295-298</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Fletcher, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Forest Hill, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Fox, George, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Fox, John, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Fresher&#8217;s Don&#8217;t, The,&#8221; <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Frobisher, Martin, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Galileo, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gatehouse, Westminster, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Geneva, Milton at, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gill, Alexander, Milton&#8217;s schoolmaster, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Globe Theatre, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gog and Magog, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gothic architecture, <a href="#Page_26">26-30</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gray&#8217;s Inn, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Great Hampden, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Great Kimble, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gresham College, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gresham, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Grey, Lady Jane, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Grotius, Hugo, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Grub Street, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Guild Hall, The, <a href="#Page_189">189-193</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Hakluyt, Richard, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hampden, John, <a href="#Page_117">117-119</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hatton, Sir Christopher, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Haw, The, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Heminge and Condell, monument to, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Henry VIII., <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Heylin, Peter, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hobson, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Holbein, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Holborn, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hooker, Richard, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Horton, <a href="#Page_78">78-84</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Il Penseroso,&#8221; <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Inns of Court, <a href="#Page_225">225-235</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ireland, Horrors in, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Italy, Milton in, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+James I., <a href="#Page_262">262</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Jeffreys, Judge, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Jerusalem Chamber, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Jesus College, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Jewin Street, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Jones, Inigo, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Jonson, Ben, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Jordan&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Juxon, Bishop, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+King&#8217;s College Chapel, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.<br />
+<br />
+King, Edward, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Knox, John, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;L&#8217;Allegro,&#8221; <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lambeth Palace, <a href="#Page_277">277-286</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lasco, John a, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span><br />
+Laud, Archbishop, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lawes, Henry, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lincoln&#8217;s Inn, <a href="#Page_227">227-228</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lincoln&#8217;s Inn Fields, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lollard&#8217;s Tower, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>.<br />
+<br />
+London, origin and early topography, <a href="#Page_14">14-25</a>.<br />
+<br />
+London life in Milton&#8217;s time, <a href="#Page_38">38-40</a>.<br />
+<br />
+London Bridge, <a href="#Page_289">289-291</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Long Acre, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lovelace, Richard, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Lycidas,&#8221; <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Manso, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Mary of Modena, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Marvell, Andrew, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Massacre in Piedmont, On the Late,&#8221; <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Massinger, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Mermaid Tavern, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Milborne, Sir John, almshouses built by, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Mildmay, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Milton, Anne, sister of the poet, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Milton, Christopher, brother of the poet, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Milton, Deborah, daughter of the poet, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Milton, John, father of the poet, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Milton, John, son of the poet, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Milton, Mary, daughter of the poet, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Milton, Sarah, mother of the poet, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Milton Street, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Minshull, Elizabeth, Milton&#8217;s wife, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>.<br />
+<br />
+More, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Morland, Sir Samuel, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Morning of Christ&#8217;s Nativity, On the,&#8221; <a href="#Page_72">72</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Newgate, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Newton, Isaac, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Norman remains in London, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Oxford, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Painted Chamber, Westminster, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Paley, William, at Christ&#8217;s College, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Pall Mall, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Paradise Lost,&#8221; <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120-122</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Paradise Regained,&#8221; <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Paris, Milton in, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Parr, Old, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Pembroke, Countess of, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Penn, William, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Pepys, Samuel, <a href="#Page_147">147-150</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Peter the Great, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Petty France, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Philips, Edward, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Philips, John, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Pindar, Sir Paul, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Plague, The Great, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Plantagenet Period, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Powell, Anne, Milton&#8217;s wife&#8217;s mother, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Powell, Mary, Milton&#8217;s wife, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Prynne, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Puritans at Cambridge, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Pym, John, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Queen&#8217;s Head Tavern, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Raleigh, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ranelagh, Lady, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Raphael cartoons, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Reading, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Red Cross Hall, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Red Lion Square, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Renaissance architecture, <a href="#Page_30">30-33</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Richard II., <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Richard III., <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span><br />
+Rogers, John, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Roman remains in London, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Runnymede, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Salmasius, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Andrew Undershaft, church of, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Bartholomew the Great, church of, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211-215</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Bartholomew&#8217;s Hospital, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Bride&#8217;s Church, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Bride&#8217;s Churchyard, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Catherine Crees Church, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Ethelburga&#8217;s Church, <a href="#Page_175">175-176</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Etheldreda&#8217;s Church, <a href="#Page_221">221-222</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. George&#8217;s Chapel, Windsor, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Saint Ghastly Grim,&#8221; <a href="#Page_152">152</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Giles&#8217;s Church, Cripplegate, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178-183</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Helen&#8217;s Church, Bishopsgate, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171-175</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. James&#8217;s Palace, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. James&#8217;s Park, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. John&#8217;s Gate, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. John, Knights of, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Jude&#8217;s Church, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Margaret&#8217;s Church, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Martin&#8217;s Lane, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Martin in the Fields, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Mary Aldermanbury, church of, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Mary Aldermary, church of, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Mary le Bow, church of, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Mary Overy&#8217;s Church, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Olave&#8217;s Church, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Paul&#8217;s, old cathedral, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">new cathedral, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+St. Paul&#8217;s Cross, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Paul&#8217;s School, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">early cathedral body, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+St. Peter&#8217;s Church, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Saviour&#8217;s, Southwark, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Sepulchre&#8217;s Church, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Stephen&#8217;s Chapel, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>.<br />
+<br />
+St. Stephen&#8217;s, Wallbrook, church of, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Samson,&#8221; <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sanctuary, Westminster, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Saxon names in London, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Scotland Yard, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Scudamore, Lord, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Selden, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sidney, Algernon, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sidney Sussex College, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Skinner, Cyriack, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Smithfield, <a href="#Page_215">215-220</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Smith, John, Captain, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Somerset House, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Spencer, Sir John, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Spenser, Edmund, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sprat, Thomas, dean of Westminster, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Spread Eagle Court, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Spring Gardens, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Staple Inn, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Star Chamber, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Stow, John, <a href="#Page_158">158-163</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Strode, William, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sutton, Thomas, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Tabard Inn, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Temple, The, <a href="#Page_228">228-235</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Temple Bar, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Temple Church, The, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Thackeray on the Charterhouse, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<ins class="correction" title="original: Thockmorton">Throckmorton</ins>, Sir Nicholas, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Tower Hill, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Tower of London, The, <a href="#Page_126">126-136</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Toynbee Hall, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Trafalgar Square, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Trinity College Library, Milton manuscript in, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Turner, William, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Tyndale, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Usher, Archbishop, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Vane, Sir Harry, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136-141</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Vane, Milton&#8217;s Ode to, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Waller, Edmund, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Wendover, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Westminster Abbey, <a href="#Page_250">250-266</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Westminster Assembly, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Westminster Hall, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Westminster Palace, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Westminster School, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Whitechapel, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Whitehall, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240-250</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Whittington&#8217;s Palace, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Williams, Roger, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Windsor, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Wolsey, Cardinal, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Woodcocke, Katharine, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Wotton, Sir Henry, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Wren, Sir Christopher, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299-304</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+York Street, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Young, Milton&#8217;s early preceptor, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><b>Footnotes:</b></p>
+
+<p><a name="f1" id="f1" href="#f1.1">[1]</a> ONE OF MILTON&#8217;S TWO EPITAPHS ON HOBSON</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Here lies old Hobson. Death hath broke his girt,<br />
+And here, alas, hath laid him in the dirt;<br />
+Or else, the ways being foul, twenty to one,<br />
+He&#8217;s here stuck in a slough, or overthrown.<br />
+&#8217;Twas such a shifter, that if truth were known,<br />
+Death was half glad when he had got him down;<br />
+For he had any time these ten years full,<br />
+Dodged with him, betwixt Cambridge and the &#8216;Bull,&#8217;<br />
+And surely death could never have prevailed,<br />
+Had not his weekly course of carriage failed.<br />
+But lately finding him so long at home,<br />
+And thinking now his journey&#8217;s end was come,<br />
+And that he had ta&#8217;en up his latest inn,<br />
+In the kind office of a chamberlain,<br />
+Showed him his room, where he must lodge that night,<br />
+Pulled off his boots and took away the light;<br />
+If any ask for him, it shall be said,<br />
+&#8216;Hobson has supt and&#8217;s newly gone to bed.&#8217;&#8221;S</p>
+
+<p><a name="f2" id="f2" href="#f2.1">[2]</a> It is interesting here to contrast John Morley&#8217;s judgment with that of
+Clarendon:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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 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?&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><b>Transcriber&#8217;s Notes:</b></p>
+
+<p>Images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to a nearby paragraph break.</p>
+
+<p>The text in the list of illustrations is presented as in the original text, but the links
+navigate to the page number closest to the illustration&#8217;s loaction in this document.</p>
+
+<p>Punctuation has been corrected without note.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Milton's England, by Lucia Ames Mead
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILTON'S ENGLAND ***
+
+***** This file should be named 34526-h.htm or 34526-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Milton's England, by Lucia Ames Mead
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Milton's England
+
+Author: Lucia Ames Mead
+
+Release Date: December 1, 2010 [EBook #34526]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILTON'S ENGLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Milton's England
+
+
+
+
+  _UNIFORM VOLUMES_
+
+  Dickens' London BY FRANCIS MILTOUN
+
+  Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top           $2.00
+  The Same, 3/4 levant morocco             5.00
+
+  Milton's England BY LUCIA AMES MEAD
+
+  Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top            2.00
+  The Same, 3/4 levant morocco             5.00
+
+  Dumas' Paris BY FRANCIS MILTOUN
+
+  Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top      _net_ 1.60
+                                _postpaid_ 1.75
+  The Same, 3/4 levant morocco       _net_ 4.00
+                                _postpaid_ 4.15
+
+  L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
+  New England Building
+  Boston, Mass.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: _JOHN MILTON_
+
+_From the miniature painted in 1667 by William Faithorne_]
+
+
+
+
+  Milton's England
+
+
+  By Lucia Ames Mead
+
+  _Author of "Great Thoughts for Little Thinkers,"
+  "Memoirs of a Millionaire," "To Whom Much Is Given"_
+
+
+  Illustrated
+
+
+  L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
+  BOSTON PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+  _Copyright, 1902_
+  BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
+  (INCORPORATED)
+
+
+  _All rights reserved_
+
+
+  Fifth Impression, April, 1908
+
+
+  _COLONIAL PRESS
+  Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
+  Boston, 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.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF MILTON'S ENGLAND]
+
+Milton's Residences in London
+
+   1. Bread Street, 1608-1624.
+   2. St. Bride's Churchyard, in 1639 or 1640.
+   3. Aldersgate Street, 1640-1645.
+   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.
+
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF MILTON'S LONDON]
+
+Map of Milton's London
+
+   1. Clarendon House.
+   2. St. James's Field.
+   3. St. James's Palace.
+   4. The New River.
+   5. St. James's Park.
+   6. Westminster Abbey.
+   7. Pall Mall.
+   8. Whitehall.
+   9. Scotland Yard.
+  10. Charing Cross.
+  11. St. Martin's Field.
+  12. The Temple.
+  13. Lincoln Inn Fields.
+  14. Gray's Inn Fields.
+  15. Holborn.
+  16. Hatton Garden.
+  17. St. John's Gate.
+  18. Smithfield.
+  19. Charterhouse Yard.
+  20. Barbican.
+  21. Jewin Street.
+  22. St. Giles's Cripplegate.
+  23. St. Paul.
+  24. Bread Street.
+  25. City Wall.
+  26. Austin Friars.
+  27. St. Ethelburga.
+  28. St. Helen's.
+  29. Crosby Hall.
+  30. Bishopsgate Street.
+  31. Aldgate.
+  32. Whitechapel Street.
+  33. St. Olave.
+  34. The Minories.
+  35. Custom House.
+  36. St. Saviour's.
+  37. Bedlam.
+  38. Moorfields.
+  39. Artillery Yard.
+  40. Aldersgate Street.
+  41. Cheapside.
+  42. Lambeth Palace.
+  43. Petty France.
+  44. Birdcage Walk.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                      PAGE
+
+     I. THE LONDON INTO WHICH MILTON WAS BORN                    11
+
+    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.--ARTILLERY WALK                                 110
+
+   VII. CHALFONT 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. ETHELBURGA'S.--ST.
+        GILES'S, CRIPPLEGATE                                    164
+
+    XI. GRESHAM COLLEGE.--AUSTIN FRIARS.--GUILDHALL.--ST.
+        MARY'S, ALDERMANBURY.--CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.--ST.
+        SEPULCHRE'S                                             184
+
+   XII. CHARTERHOUSE.--ST. JOHN'S GATE.--ST.
+        BARTHOLOMEW'S.--SMITHFIELD                              202
+
+  XIII. ELY PLACE.--INNS OF COURT.--TEMPLE CHURCH.--COVENT
+        GARDEN.--SOMERSET HOUSE                                 221
+
+   XIV. WHITEHALL.--WESTMINSTER ABBEY                           240
+
+    XV. THE PRECINCTS OF THE ABBEY.--WESTMINSTER PALACE.--
+        ST. MARGARET'S                                          264
+
+   XVI. LAMBETH PALACE.--ST. SAVIOUR'S.--LONDON BRIDGE          277
+
+  XVII. THE PLAGUE.--THE FIRE.--WREN.--LONDON REBUILT           293
+
+
+
+
+List of Illustrations
+
+
+                                                               PAGE
+
+  JOHN MILTON                                        _Frontispiece_
+
+  OLD ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL                                       47
+
+  CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE                                    62
+
+  PART OF WHITEHALL                                             101
+
+  IN MILTON'S HOUSE AT CHALFONT ST. GILES                       113
+
+  ST. CATHERINE CREE CHURCH IN 1736                             157
+
+  CHURCH OF ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT IN 1737                       163
+
+  CHURCH OF ST. GILES CRIPPLEGATE IN 1737                       178
+
+  THE CHARTERHOUSE                                              203
+
+  ST. JOHN'S GATE, CLERKENWELL                                  209
+
+  SOMERSET HOUSE                                                239
+
+  WESTMINSTER ABBEY AS MILTON KNEW IT                           250
+
+  WESTMINSTER HALL                                              274
+
+  IN LAMBETH PALACE                                             280
+
+  THE ROYAL EXCHANGE                                            295
+
+  BOW STEEPLE, CHEAPSIDE                                        304
+
+
+
+
+Milton's England
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE LONDON INTO WHICH MILTON WAS BORN
+
+
+To 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, nevertheless, 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 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 beginning 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 advancement--is the one that we are to consider. Milton's life
+covered sixty-six of its one hundred years. It began with the destruction
+of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and included the brilliant period of
+exploration and adventure just before Milton's birth, in which Hawkins,
+Drake, and Raleigh, and other ambitious 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 contemporaries, 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,
+explicitly 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 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.
+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 southeasterly 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 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 discerned, 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 feet high, and was finished by bastions and additional
+defences at the angles. Though scant traces of any of the original
+construction now remain, 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 Romans after their occupation of it for three
+centuries, 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 property 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 terminations 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 prevalence 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, Paddington, 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 remnant 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 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.
+
+Clerkenwell, 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 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 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 outside 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 windows 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 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
+establishments 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
+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 numbers supported in this earlier period by St.
+Paul's alone. The cathedral body included the bishop, dean, the four
+archdeacons, the treasurer, the precentor, 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,
+carpenters, 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 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. Bartholomew'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 the monastery of White Friars or Carmelites, and beyond these the
+ancient site of the Knights Templar, 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 establishments, 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 catalogue, 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 "Papey." A portion of the
+"college" of Whittington 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 magnificence 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 abandonment
+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 displacing:
+
+"You have in the earlier Gothic less wonderful construction, less careful
+masonry, far less expression 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 without 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 waywardness 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--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 impertinent when blazoned everywhere, and are
+wholly devoid of beauty when they reproduce by the hundred 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 sanctuaries; 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 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 Architecture 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, removed. Suppose Walter Scott had written, instead of "the old
+clock struck two from a turret adjoining 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 pediments, and triglyphs, and all the classic forms,
+even when pure and unvulgarised by decadent Renaissance 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:
+
+  "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 expression 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 modern world can not plead poverty as
+its excuse for ugliness. Even the village cottage of three centuries 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.
+
+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, exception must be made to
+much delightful domestic architecture 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 decoration, 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 aristocracy 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 written 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 common men can enjoy; some concession to the
+simplicities 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 stooping, of conceding, for an instant. Whatever
+excellence 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 anything I do is in its
+proud breeding, its rigid formalism, 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."
+
+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 proportioned 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 perfect 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 Westminster 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 substituted 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 Charterhouse, 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 antedated and accompanied Milton's boyhood.
+Hundreds 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 artificers,
+housed their apprentices within them. They 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 thorough dissolution of religious
+houses, London became a far more commercial and prosaic place. Green
+convent gardens were sold for the erection of narrow wooden tenements;
+ancient dormitories, refectories, and chapels were pulled down or
+transformed 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 imagination of thousands. Drake and Hawkins, Frobisher and Raleigh
+were adding new lustre to an age hitherto unparalleled in prosperity and
+enterprise. Emerson's description of the Englishman as having a
+"telescopic appreciation of distant gain" was exemplified.
+
+England was rich in poets, great even in Shakespeare's time. Of two
+hundred and forty who published 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 such a proportion of accomplished men.
+Every man tried his hand at verses, and learned to sing a madrigal, 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 instructor, 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
+complained that there were those who "spent L300 a year upon this noxious
+weed." No vital statistics existed to show the average of longevity. But
+certain it is that, with modern sanitation and cleanliness, 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 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 parishes 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,
+Cripplegate,--almost the only ones that still remain within the city.
+There were no sewers and no adequate pavement until 1616. House refuse was
+not 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 pretentious 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--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 amenities 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 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 beginning 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 possibility 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
+bowshot 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 9th 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.
+
+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 babyhood,
+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 harmonised. 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 fingers 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 sculptures 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
+goldsmiths' 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 describes 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 frame, uniformly builded, four stories high,
+beautified 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 mercantile 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 inscription, 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."
+
+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 crossing 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
+circumference. 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."
+
+
+[Illustration: OLD ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL
+
+The two upper views show the porch by Inigo Jones. The two lower views
+show the "Lesser Cloisters." Milton's school stood at the rear of the
+church.
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+As Milton was early destined for the Church, his unusually thoughtful
+disposition and quick perception 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 Gallery, 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 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 westward 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 largest cathedral in all England. Upon the southwest 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 likewise a prison. The nave was of
+transitional Norman 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 whatsoever 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 Cambridge, Oliver Cromwell, in
+his maiden speech in Parliament, declared that flat popery was being
+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 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 education 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 Edward Winslow were sailing with him in the
+_Mayflower_, when Doctor Harvey had told London 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 had reference,
+curiously, to the number of fishes in Simon Peter's miraculous draught.
+Over the windows were inscribed the words in large capital letters:
+"_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 eligible; 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 1608-1635 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 remarkable 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 banished 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 midnight; which indeed was the first cause of
+injury to my eyes, to whose natural weakness there were also added
+frequent headaches." Philips writes:
+
+"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
+beginning in Hebrew.
+
+It was in his last year at school that he paraphrased 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, beginning:
+
+  "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 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
+
+
+The 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 gentleman 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
+visitor to the university town finds the old carrier honoured by a
+memorial; for he became a public benefactor, and among many generous gifts
+bequeathed 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 Bainbrigge, 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 L50 a year for his maintenance.
+Christ's College, as regards numbers, then stood nearly at the head of the
+sixteen colleges 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 portrait, 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: "_Hic fuit grandis ille impostor
+carnifex perditissimus_;" and it is as "impostor" and "butcher" that
+two-thirds 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 regicide, 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 barbarous tongue. Francis
+Higginson, the minister to Salem, and the ancestor of Colonel Thomas W.
+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 English
+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 Edwards, 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 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 Maurice, "the realisation in plain prose of the dreams which
+haunted Milton his whole life long."
+
+
+[Illustration: CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
+
+A, Chapel; B, Library; C, Dining-Hall; D, Head Master's Rooms; E, Kitchen;
+F, Master's Garden; H, Tennis Court.
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+Sidney Sussex, Christ's, and Emmanuel Colleges were erected during the
+Tudor period, Christ's College, founded in 1505, being the earliest of the
+three. The buildings of the latter now present a more 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 exquisite 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 Go." Charles Robert Darwin, the
+Copernicus of the nineteenth century, entered Christ's with the intention
+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 Holbein, 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 Latin and worse Greek and Hebrew, which this prescription must
+have caused, finally rendered it a dead letter. Smoking was a universal
+practice, and boxing matches, dancing, bear fights, and other forbidden
+games were not unknown. Bathing in the sedgy little Cam was prohibited,
+but was nevertheless 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 stockings 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 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 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 was 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 Cambridge, 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 alternate 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 Milton's college days--must
+appeal to every lover of beauty. One loves to think of the young poet
+musing here upon those well-known lines in "Il 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 service 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, 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 resolved 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 Separatists that they went to Holland. They sought a
+refuge where they might worship God according to the dictates of their own
+conscience, without interference 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
+foundation of church government in New England. Presbyterianism 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 influenced by it.
+
+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 Templars 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 mentioned. 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 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 students,
+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 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
+prisoners. So great was the poverty and suffering incident 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 Cambridge possesses, and as Mr.
+Edmund Gosse asserts, "the most precious manuscript of English literature
+in the world," is the packet of thirty loose and ragged folio leaves
+covered with Milton's handwriting, which since 1691 has lain in Trinity
+College 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 temptation 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 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 condescends 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 "Il 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 cloudless 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
+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 priceless thing in its minutest features." When it
+is remembered that no line of Shakespeare's remains in his own
+handwriting, and nothing of any consequence 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 pregnant
+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 Puritans, but one to its poets--Spenser, Milton, Pope,
+Gray, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, and Tennyson, 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 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 with 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 Cambridge 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
+Cambridge 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."
+
+"Don't be a tuft-head. The style is more favoured by errand boys than
+gentlemen."
+
+"Don't by any chance sport a tall hat in Cambridge. 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
+
+
+On 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
+buying 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 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 landscape, pausing
+some morning in the autumn on his early walk to listen to the far sound of
+the huntsman'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 connections 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 uncertain
+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, 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 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-preserved; 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 composer 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 following 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 "Il
+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
+suggested 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 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
+standing 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 independence will remember Runnymede and Magna Charta
+Island. And he will find nothing more consonant 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 trespass, 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
+
+
+One 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 Scudamore to the man whom he most desired to see,--the
+great Hugo Grotius, a man of stupendous erudition 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 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 Superba," 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, Milton 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 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 hospitality 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
+wanderings. From Venice he turned back through Verona and Milan, and
+paused a little in Geneva, which was 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 profligacy 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 Philips 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 Churchyard, 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. 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 Doctor Diodati, the father of his dearest
+friend, whose recent death he mourned in a touching elegy written 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
+observations on the doings of the newly assembled Long Parliament by an
+occasional "gaudy-day," in company with some "young sparks of his
+acquaintance."
+
+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. Milton'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 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 hundred 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 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 goodbye. 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 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 process 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, studying not only Greek and
+Latin, but Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, and Italian.
+
+Milton's noble "Areopagitica"--a plea for freedom of the press--was
+written during these melancholy, 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 housekeeping in the Barbican.
+
+This was a larger house than the one in Aldersgate 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 commodious 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 Barbican to-day, close to old London wall,
+will find nothing that Milton saw.
+
+Here he published the first edition of his collected 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 portrait 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 composed 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 Milton'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 anything 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, just after the march of Fairfax and 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
+republican at heart, and busied himself with the writing of a history of
+England, and compiling of a Latin dictionary 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, Milton
+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 20th, 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 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
+L288--worth about five times that sum to-day. Sometimes an early breakfast
+at High Holborn 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 and the statue of Charles I., which on the year of Milton's death
+replaced it on its site, was at this time kept in careful concealment.
+
+St. Martin's Lane was a genuine shady lane, bordered 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
+shilling 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: PART OF WHITEHALL
+
+The Banquet-Hall by Inigo Jones is in the centre at the rear.
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+MILTON AT WHITEHALL.--SCOTLAND YARD.--PETTY FRANCE.--BARTHOLOMEW
+CLOSE.--HIGH HOLBORN.--JEWIN STREET.--ARTILLERY WALK
+
+
+Milton 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 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 vehement controversy with Salmasius brought on
+the blackness of great darkness which, at the age of forty-three, for ever
+shut his world 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 motherless 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 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 neighbour 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. 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 married Katharine Woodcock, daughter of a Captain
+Woodcock of Hackney, in the church of St. Mary Aldermanbury, on November
+12, 1656. Her coming 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 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 closing days of Cromwell's
+life. Under Richard Cromwell, 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 Soeur,
+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 hangman'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 populace, and seen himself haled in a cart to Tyburn gallows.
+Says Masson: "Absolutely no man could less expect to be pardoned at the
+Restoration than Milton," and "there is no greater historical 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 companions 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 Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, which
+had been disinterred and were on their way to Tyburn to be 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 1661, 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 nearest 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 beheaded, 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 handsome, but lame, and had
+a defect of speech. It fell to Mary and little eleven-year-old Deborah to
+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
+popular 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" Milton may have read
+ten years before; of Evelyn and of the poet Cowley; of Bishop Jeremy
+Taylor; of George Fox, the valiant Quaker, and the philosophers, 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 Ellwood's arrest for attending the Quaker meeting in
+Aldersgate Street. Three months were spent 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 spectacle. One heavenly day
+in a quiet library reading of Dido and AEneas 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
+traditions 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 removed to a house in Artillery
+Walk, leading to Bunhill Fields. This was on the roadway which is 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 Artillery 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
+
+
+If 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 Buckinghamshire, 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 feature of the place is the mortuary chapel of the Russells,
+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.
+
+
+[Illustration: IN MILTON'S HOUSE AT CHALFONT ST. GILES]
+
+
+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 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 Angelo and Beethoven. We linger reverently in the
+little house made dear to England by his presence 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
+Americans, 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 landmark. 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 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 accommodations 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 distant, 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 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 of 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: "Lord, 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 beautiful 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
+portrait 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 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 kingdom.
+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. Thereafter it was made a regular cemetery, and was surrounded
+with a brick wall, and became what Southey called, "the Campo Santo of the
+Dissenters." 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 century, and was found to be that of Milton's
+contemporary,--George Fox,--the tailor with the leather suit, who founded
+the sect of the uncompromising democrats who called no man "Lord," who
+used no weapons but their tongues, and who thundered 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 christened, 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 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 Pobedonostzeff 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 imaginary treason in some
+lines; but he relented, and the world was spared its greatest epic poem
+since the AEneid.
+
+The many booksellers around St. Paul's suffered terrible losses, and Pepys
+estimates that books to the value of L150,000 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 L5 down and three times as much at certain future
+dates, to sell his copyright to Samuel Symons, printer. Thirteen 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 L15 or L20 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 L700.
+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
+apprenticeship, and had them taught embroidery in gold and 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 "pronounced 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
+undutiful;" but everything else to his "loving wife, Elizabeth." Just one
+month before he had completed 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
+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 scattered all over England,
+teaching the rising generation 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 portraits of the many noted 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
+
+
+Except 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 remains practically as
+it was built over eight hundred 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 allowed 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 time; the armory for warlike provisions; the treasury 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 southeast 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 semicircular
+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 picture in it, more vividly than we in our later age,
+that scene when from sunset until sunrise forty-six noblemen 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, 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, afterward 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 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 marvelling 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," continues More, "'ye shall see in what wise
+that sorceress 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 chamberlain answered, and said: 'Certainly, my lord,
+if they have so heinously done they be worthy heinous punishment.' 'What,'
+quoth the Protector, 'thou servest me ill with ifs and with ands; I tell
+thee they have so done, and that I will make good on thy body,
+traitor!... I will not to dinner until I see thy head off.' Within an
+hour, the lord chamberlain'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
+daughters 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."
+
+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 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? Where 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, including 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
+freedom 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 conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot were immured
+in these dungeons, and then hanged, cut down, and disembowelled 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
+committed 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 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 members. "Then
+appeared such a spectacle of passions as the like had seldom been seen in
+such an assembly; some weeping, some expostulating, some prophesying 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 Parliament 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 confinement, even when it brought on
+consumption. 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
+dedicated 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-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 consecrated
+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
+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 temptation 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 Washington, 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 Harvard 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
+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
+outward enjoyments, for those I shall meet with hereafter 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 suggestions the
+reverse of commonplace. Looking thither the sensitive beholder feels with
+deep emotion the fact brought home to him, that to men of English speech,
+the earth has scarcely a spot more memorable 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 imprisoned children, so children
+standing there have wondered 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 coming 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 14th of
+June in 1662 in the full glory of the summer, Vane, in the strength of his
+manhood, 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 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
+acclamations 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 waistcoat, a silence fell, and calmly, serenely, he addressed
+the throng around him. His address displeased the officers, and the
+trumpets were commanded 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
+dishonoured 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 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 programme 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
+UNDERSHAFT
+
+
+At 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 kingdoms
+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, and assumed nearly its present shape about one
+hundred years before Milton's age.
+
+From its nearness to the Tower, the church became 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 together, 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 provided, 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 visitors may be the
+baptismal register, in which is recorded the baptism, during Milton's
+early manhood, 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 for
+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, was 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 "Whittington's Palace." According to doubtful
+tradition this was where the famous Dick Whittington, with princely
+magnanimity, burnt the royal bond for a debt of L60,000, when Henry V. and
+his queen came to dine with him. "Never had king such a subject," 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 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 tottered, 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 defaced." 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 consequence 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 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
+monuments, 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
+published until 1825. On the unveiling of his monument, James Russell
+Lowell, in his address, spoke of Pepys as "a type perhaps of what is now
+called 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 perfect 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 English language, or in any other. There was no parallel 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
+questionable, 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 in his twenty-seventh year.
+Ten years later, when he feared blindness, he ceased writing it. He
+bequeathed 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 teaching 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 Antichrist as well. The title of
+one book illustrates the orthography of his day: "The Hunting and Fynding
+of the Romish Fox: which more than seven years hath been among the
+Bysshoppes of England, 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 L500 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 frightened
+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 likewise 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 worse to go to see Saint Ghastly 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 thereabouts, 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 Monument 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, distinct and quaint. In all those
+dusty registers that the worms are eating, there is not a line but made
+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
+destruction by the Puritans, and remained with the almshouses to a late
+period. To the American, to whom the word "almshouse" signifies the
+English "workhouse,"--an institution of paupers where all live in
+common,--little idea is conveyed of the comfortable, and usually quaint
+and picturesque retreat 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
+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 Elizabeth 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 mentioned 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 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 Commercial
+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.
+
+
+[Illustration: ST. CATHERINE CREE CHURCH IN 1736
+
+The steeple dates from about 1505. The old church was pulled down in 1628,
+and the present one finished in 1630. Cree Church is a corruption of
+Christ-Church.
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+But for Milton's haunts, we need not wander farther east than Aldgate; for
+though Whitechapel Street was thickly lined with houses for some distance
+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 consecrated two years later by the
+ill-fated Archbishop Laud. The ceremonies which he used on this occasion
+savoured so much of Popery, however, that 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 VIII., 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 Throckmorton, whose daughter married Walter
+Raleigh, who was chamberlain of the exchequer, ambassador, and chief
+butler of England. The stories of his fruitless embassy to Mary Queen of
+Scots to prevent her marriage with Darnley, and the records 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 16th, the "lion sermon" is preached within the
+church in memory of an ancient worthy, who in 1648 gave it the sum of
+L200, 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 Shakespeare."
+
+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 prominent building, every
+church, and almost every monument 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 incalculable 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), travelling 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
+deciphering 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 prejudiced 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
+Undershaft, 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 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 Leathersellers' Company.... I passed within, and mounting 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 observed 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 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
+casements 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 monuments, 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 permitting 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 therefore 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 our knowledge of ancient London allowed in his extreme
+old age to live in unappreciation and neglect.
+
+
+[Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT IN 1737
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+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 explanations
+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 century. The date of the handsome organ is 1695.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+CROSBY HALL.--ST. HELEN'S.--ST. ETHELBURGA'S.--ST. GILES'S, CRIPPLEGATE
+
+
+Passing by the tiny churchyard of St. Andrew Undershaft, by several narrow
+and obscure passages amid crowded business 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. Doubtless his reference is to a high
+turret which once surmounted it, but of which no traces now remain. This
+was before the more pretentious Tudor buildings 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 and in other places in the suburbs, and
+in their dwelling houses in the City itself. They were like midsummer
+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 himself, 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 restaurant, 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 daughter, 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 appears 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. Determined to wreak speedy
+vengeance, he ordered, after the arbitrary method of the times, his
+instant decapitation. 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 contained
+not bread, but his own naughty Elizabeth, who was trundled off by her
+lover in disguise.
+
+When their baby came, some time later, grandpapa 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 shortly after marriage, may prove entertaining: "I pray
+and beseech you to grant me, your most kind and loving wife, the sum of
+L2,600 quarterly to be paid. Also I would, besides that allowance, have
+L600 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 borrow 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 attending; 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 footmen; and my desire is that you defray all the 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 L2,000 and L200,
+and so you to pay my debts. Also I would have L6,000 pounds to buy me
+jewels, and L4,000 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 L2,000 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 mistress in the halls of Crosby Place. The latter's
+epitaph 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 to-day. A wine cellar with finely groined roof
+probably 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 afterward devout worshippers sang psalms
+beneath its carved oak roof, which had echoed for two hundred years to
+sounds of mirth and feasting.
+
+A little to the left of Crosby Hall, through a low gateway, the sightseer
+passes from the noisy thoroughfare into a quiet court. Its pavement covers
+the ancient garden of Crosby Place. But it is not all paved. A small green
+churchyard still occupies 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 thereupon was canonised. From remote antiquity a church
+in her honour has stood here. Three centuries 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 proportions 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 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 direction. 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 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
+Bancroft, 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
+Caesar. The inscription is in form of a legal document 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 portrait 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 contrasted 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 standing the refectory and
+cloisters, and the old hall of the nuns, which was later used by the
+Company 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 destruction over
+the many houses in the land which sheltered 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 thoroughfare of Bishopsgate Street,
+but a short distance from St. Helen's, the student of antiquities may see,
+almost 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 mentioned as early as 1366. Here
+Chaucer may have knelt to say his Paternosters.
+
+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 Canterbury will recall the font in which this king was baptised into
+the faith of his wife.
+
+Not far down Bishopsgate Street, upon the opposite 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
+Constantinople, 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 L30,000,
+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 Cromwell and
+Milton were fighting for the rights of Englishmen, and Charles's strength
+was failing, this same Paul Pindar provided funds for the escape of Queen
+Henrietta Maria and her children.
+
+He gave L10,000 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 Bishopsgate Street, past his quaint dwelling-house, he
+must have seen the mulberry-trees planted in the park 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 Sunday, 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. Certainly 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. High walls
+of business blocks of nondescript style replace the gaps made by the
+recent fire, which fortunately 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. GILES CRIPPLEGATE IN 1737
+
+Dedicated to St. Giles, who lived about the year 700; founded in 1090;
+destroyed by fire in 1545, and rebuilt within the Liberty but without the
+City of London.
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+The church is on the site of an older one of 1090, and was built about one
+hundred years before Milton'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 contains 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 figure, 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 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 Elizabeth 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
+Protestantism." 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
+  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 the 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 commanded 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, authentic records of our Church, whilst its venerable
+author yet lived."
+
+Frobisher, the great navigator, is also buried within the church.
+
+On the left wall, as one faces the choir, is a curious 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 teaching 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 persons 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
+promise 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 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 undermine. 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.--GUILDHALL--ST. MARY'S,
+ALDERMANBURY.--CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.--ST. SEPULCHRE'S
+
+
+Through 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 Exchange 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 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 north of the Bank. Originally the
+church was cruciform, 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 eminent 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 superintended 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 industrious folk produced many new stuffs
+unknown to 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 L100. Just before Milton's birth the fourth Marquis of
+Winchester was compelled to part with all his possessions in Austin
+Friars. At about this time the tower, declared to be "one of the
+beautifullest 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 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, 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 suggest 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 terrible 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 reproduction of the one that
+perished in the fire: it 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 remaining 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 attained 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 accomplished 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. "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 populi_.
+
+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 Christians 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 Wriothesley 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 faltered,
+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 England's history.
+
+Among them was that of Throckmorton for complicity 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 noontide, 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 interest. 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 disinterested affection the world owes
+all that it calls Shakespeare; they alone collected his dramatic writings,
+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 himselfe had lived to have set forth and
+overseene his own writings, but since it hath been ordained 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 numbers, 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, 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 published 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 12th 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, Edward VI., until the summer of 1902, has been
+one of the most noted of London schools. Its revenue is about L60,000. 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
+disappearance 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.
+
+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 Thursdays, same dinner as
+Sundays. Other days, no flesh--Monday, milk porridge; Wednesday, furmity;
+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.
+
+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
+anything, 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,--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 stockings 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 "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 standing 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 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 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
+protomartyr 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. BARTHOLOMEW'S.--SMITHFIELD
+
+
+When 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 Charterhouse 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
+without a Christian prayer said over them, the Bishop 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE CHARTERHOUSE
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+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, 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 L13,000, 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-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 encroachments 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 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 L30 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 12th 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 company 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 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."
+
+We pass up, as Milton may have done, the broad carved oak staircase of the
+period antedating Sutton'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 fireplace 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: ST. JOHN'S GATE, CLERKENWELL
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+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.
+Nothing 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 establishments 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 Jerusalem, where the knights of the order lived lives of
+abstinence and charity. The English establishment in Clerkenwell was
+founded in 1100 A. D., only a generation 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 Jerusalem 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 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 gunpowder, 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, probably no church has more of
+interest than St. Bartholomew's at Smithfield. Within the century that saw
+the White Tower of the Conqueror begun, a monastery and church rose on
+this site. "A pleasant-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
+clustered 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 found lurking behind dark, uncanny-looking
+tenements.... 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 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 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
+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 parish, 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, L2, 8.
+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 remembered that the Puritans who remained at
+home 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 L1,000, 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 discovered 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 present
+structure dates from a period early in the eighteenth century.
+
+Directly opposite St. Bartholomew's Church, in 1849, excavations three
+feet below the surface exposed to view a mass of unhewn stones, blackened
+as by fire, and covered with ashes and human bones, 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 Londoners of the early nineteenth 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, 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 jugglers. 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 annoyance 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,
+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 during 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 worship 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.
+
+"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 purport, 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-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
+
+
+Holborn 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. Etheldreda, 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 gardens and the palaces of
+Milton's day. In Chaucer's 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 Protestants, 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.
+
+In the Plantagenet and Tudor period, vineyards, kitchen garden, and
+orchard surrounded the magnificent 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 open
+quarrel between the ill-matched pair.
+
+In the time of Charles I., a pageant almost unparalleled in magnificence
+was arranged in Ely Place. 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; consequently this famous masque
+came off. Mr. Lawes, the famous musician and friend of Milton, was set to
+composing music for the occasion. On an evening in 1633, when Milton was
+living at Horton, the magnificent procession wended its way through crowds
+of enthusiastic spectators toward Whitehall. 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 accompanied 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
+imaginable was carried out, and the cost of the whole was no less than
+L21,000, a sum which meant far more in purchasing power than it does
+to-day. Some of the musicians, however, received L100 apiece--a fee quite
+satisfactory to many a prima donna in our time.
+
+No more characteristic part of Milton's London exists to-day than the
+various Inns of Court that lead north and south from Holborn. As the
+sightseer 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. Occasionally 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 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, next 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 disconsolately 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 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
+architectural 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 antedate 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.
+
+At number 24 of the "Old Buildings," the secretary of Oliver Cromwell
+lived from 1645 to 1659, where his correspondence was discovered behind a
+false ceiling. The tradition that the Protector was overheard to discuss
+with him here about the kidnapping 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 compassion 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.
+
+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 repetition 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. 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 finished in 1240.
+
+In early times, the discipline of the knights was most severe. The Master
+himself scourged disobedient 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 supposed, 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, carried off the books, deeds, and rolls of
+remembrance, and, in vengeance on the Knights Hospitallers, 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. Discussions on legal questions
+sometimes waxed boisterous, 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 surmounted
+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 centuries.
+
+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,
+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
+wandered 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;
+whereupon 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 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 probably 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."
+
+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 "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
+abeyance, 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
+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 pendants, is especially characteristic of the
+work of that period. The screen is an elaborate one of Renaissance work,
+more interesting for its age and associations 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 richness
+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.
+
+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 learning 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,
+because 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 understood his Puritan seriousness than Cowper; none 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 centuries
+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 Bedford, to whom it was given by the Crown in
+1552, at which time it had a yearly value of less than L7. 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 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 frequented 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 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: SOMERSET HOUSE
+
+This view represents the house as it stood in Milton's boyhood, previous
+to the alterations by Inigo Jones. Adjoining it is the Savoy, and
+immediately behind it is the only view extant of Exeter House.
+
+_From an ancient painting in Dulwich College._]
+
+
+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,
+demolished in 1775, is used for many important public purposes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+WHITEHALL.--WESTMINSTER ABBEY
+
+
+Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, discloses in
+its cramped and dingy quarters little if anything 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 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 Westminster,
+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 magnificence,
+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 farewell 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 possessions, 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 became 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 William III., made money flow like water in
+Whitehall, except during the short domination of the Puritan party. James
+I., 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 111
+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 James 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 ceremonies 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, and north of it the Privy
+Gardens. The front consisted 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 embroidery, 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 fourscore thousand
+pounds, besides a great feather stuck all over with diamonds; as were also
+his sword, 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 27th 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 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
+beforehand, 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 beginnings 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 republican 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 farewell 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-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 Marvell'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 principle 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
+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 objected 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 Cromwell. Every
+Monday he dined with all his officers above the captain's rank. Milton, as
+his Latin secretary, 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 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 violence 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 magnanimous 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 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 inexpressible 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: WESTMINSTER ABBEY AS MILTON KNEW IT
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+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 Exchange. 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 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 England
+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 monument of 1631 to Jane Hill. At
+the rear of the lady's 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 Cambridge, in 1623, Milton may have attended the funeral
+of this man, whose great work, "Britannia" 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, presents 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 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 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 monuments 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
+mournful 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
+Dryden, Drayton, Cowley, and Francis Beaumont, Milton's famous
+contemporaries. If the poet could 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
+pollution 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 protested.
+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 Anstruther, and Sir Robert Ayton,--famous men of
+Milton's time.
+
+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
+beautiful 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 Cromwell, 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 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 disease 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 escorted 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 to adventure their lives that they might be pompously buried, he
+was with all solemnity possible 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, 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
+I., 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 displeased the king that he immured her in the Tower,
+where, bereft of reason by her miseries, she died when Milton was a boy.
+
+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 Republic 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 born in 1608-9,
+the same 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 ambulatory was interred in
+1643 the body of the redoubtable 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."[2]
+Two 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 superintended its repairs. During the Civil War he suffered
+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 Edward I., has never left the Abbey except
+when it was taken to Westminster Hall, when Oliver Cromwell was there
+installed as Lord Protector.
+
+A few of the scenes that the great minster witnessed in Milton's time may
+be alluded to. The funeral of James I. in 1625 was the most magnificent
+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 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 materially 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
+
+
+During 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, 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 questions 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 hundred and forty-nine were several members, like Archbishop
+Usher, who were defenders of Episcopacy. 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 Dissolution, 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 authorities refused to
+surrender the keys. The Pyx no longer holds the regalia, which, after the
+Restoration, 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 geographer, Hakluyt, and
+Sir Christopher Wren. Hakluyt, who died the same year that Shakespeare
+died, 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 "whatsoever 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 13th, 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 exceptions at that." "Good Charles," replied Raleigh, "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
+doublet, 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
+medicine, 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, Westminster, 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."
+
+In this prison, afterward, John Hampden and Sir John Eliot were confined,
+and Richard Lovelace, 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 abandoned sought its shelter. The Sanctuary at
+Westminster was only one of thirty known to have been contemporaneous with
+it in the monasteries of England before the Dissolution.
+
+The magnificent royal palace of Westminster, which was built by Edward the
+Confessor, and 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 Chamber," 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 inconvenient
+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
+patriotism 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 ponderous phraseology
+of the time, cried out against the 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 magnificent
+buildings, his riots, his excesses, what are they but the visible
+evidences of an express exhausting 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 follower: "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 Remonstrance; 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 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 punished. 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
+Parliament 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 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 interference as that have been endured
+either by Elizabeth 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 have reflected on the queen. In those days the 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 cabinet, listened
+to the trial of Strafford, 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 commercial 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 coronation 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 roof
+is unsupported. The roof of Irish oak is said to be always free from
+spiders and insects.
+
+
+[Illustration: WESTMINSTER HALL
+
+Begun 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 a Bible in the other, was saluted as Lord Protector.
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+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 was in
+recent years presented by Mr. Childs of Philadelphia. This depicts
+numerous scenes from "Paradise Lost" and from Milton'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 inscription 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."
+
+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 inscription 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 Renaissance
+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
+before 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 highway between the Tower and
+Lambeth. The venerable 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 history 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 Blackfriars
+was 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 history 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 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 hospitality that was offered was excessive and
+encouraged beggary. Stow tells us of the gifts of farthing loaves which
+amounted to the sum of L500 a year. At present the doles amount to about
+L200 a year and are given only to well-known persons. In addition 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 may be gathered from the authentic list
+of his household: "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 L15,000,
+that he may keep up these establishments; that of the average curate is
+about L100.
+
+
+[Illustration: IN LAMBETH PALACE
+
+_From an old print._]
+
+
+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 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 opening 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 contained 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
+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 get
+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 compared 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 small room at the top of the tower is wainscoted 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 annulment 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 residence,
+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, 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 system
+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 earnest men. But,
+while the ceremonies permitted in the church two generations later were
+practically those that Laud had so zealously striven for, the 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 successor, 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 benevolences 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 enthusiasm 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,
+"Massachusetts," in other years brought a smile to the lips of every
+American who chanced to learn it, no 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 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 preceding Milton, beneath its three-light window, the Bishops
+of Winchester and London, and others acting 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 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 contemporaries, 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 "Il
+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
+connected 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 had nearly touched its zenith of
+creative power. The parish boasts that some of the most magnificent
+masterpieces of the world's literature were written within its borders by
+this, its most distinguished parishioner, and England's greatest son. In
+his youth Milton may well have attended the funeral of the great Bishop
+Andrewes, whose recumbent 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 literary 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 parishioners: "Your sacrament of the
+Mass is no sacrament 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 massive piers. Much of its picturesqueness
+must have resulted from the irregularity of the breadth of its 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. 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 waterfalls 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 and thirty years, was as long
+in building as King Solomon's Temple, and, at the time, probably surpassed
+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 scrivener'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.
+
+  "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, Billingsgate, 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 filled 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," Billingsgate 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
+
+
+In 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 cabbage 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 cartman, and blacksmith, and craftsman, housed in
+his narrow tenements near Smithfield or in Southwark, 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
+fortunate 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 by the bonfires which were kept burning
+in vain hope of purifying the atmosphere. Physicians, ignorant, but
+heroic, remained at their posts, cupping and blistering, and uselessly
+tormenting the helpless folk who with pathetic confidence 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 possessed 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: Erected in 1564-70 by Sir Thomas Gresham, and burned in the
+Great Fire in 1666.
+
+_From an old engraving._]
+
+
+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. Conditions were the same as in Chicago before the
+conflagration 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 Monument, 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 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 approach 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 Highgate, and several miles in circle, some under tents, some under
+miserable hutts and hovells, many without a rag or any necessary utensils,
+bed or board, who from delicatenesse, riches, and easy accommodations 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.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "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 Exchange, 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 L7,335,000 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 All Hallows Barking, St. Ethelburga's, St.
+Andrew 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 College,
+Oxford, and was there noted by John Evelyn as a "miracle of a youth," "a
+prodigious young scholar," who showed him "a thermometer, a monstrous
+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 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
+mathematicians. 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 Cambridge, and the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford. He then
+visited Paris, where he saw Bernini, and made 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 emperor.
+
+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 approached
+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 relegated to the country, and the
+churches with their spires were to be placed in prominent positions on the
+main thoroughfares.
+
+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 discarded,
+Wren was to make the new city his monument. 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
+rubbish 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. 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, and
+large gardens were provided for the less insane. Over the gate were placed
+two figures representing 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.
+
+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, Aldermanbury; St. Edmund the
+King's; St. Lawrence's, Jewry; St. Michael's, Cornhill, where he attempted
+Gothic work; the beautiful St. Stephen's, Wallbrook; St. Olave's, Jewry;
+St. Martin's, Ludgate; St. Michael's, Wood Street; St. Dionis's,
+Langbourne Ward; St. George's, Botolph Lane; and the Custom House.
+
+No interior, either of these or those that followed these, is so perfect
+as St. Stephen's, Wallbrook. Architecturally speaking, it has been
+questioned 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 necessities 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. 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: BOW STEEPLE, CHEAPSIDE
+
+_From a print published in 1798._]
+
+
+The lofty spire of the church rises to an altitude of 226 feet, a trifle
+higher than Bunker Hill Monument, 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
+hundred 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."
+
+From the days when little Dick Whittington, a forlorn runaway, heard from
+far Bow bells summon him back to London, the bells have played a notable
+part in the life of Londoners. A true cockney 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 admired when this new
+spire of Wren's was rising upon the ruins of the old, and close beside the
+birthplace 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.
+
+
+
+
+Index
+
+
+  Aldersgate Street, 89, 122.
+
+  Aldgate, 155.
+
+  All Hallows, Barking, 143.
+
+  All Hallows Church, Bread St., 42, 45, 306.
+
+  All Hallows, Staining, tower of, 155.
+
+  Amersham, 116.
+
+  Andrewes, Bishop, 289.
+
+  "Arcades," 81.
+
+  "Areopagitica," 94.
+
+  Artillery Walk, 110, 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, 120.
+
+  Browne, Robert, 68.
+
+  Buckingham, Duke of, 243, 256.
+
+  Buckinghamshire, 112-119.
+
+  Bunhill Fields, 111, 120.
+
+  Burke, Edmund, 116.
+
+  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, 111, 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, Earl of, 259.
+
+  "Comus," 80, 82, 96.
+
+  Conventual establishments, 22.
+
+  Covent Garden, 237-239.
+
+  Cranmer, Archbishop, 280.
+
+  Cromwell, Oliver, 59, 92, 101, 141, 180, 228, 244, 248, 249, 256-258,
+    261.
+
+  "Cromwell, Ode to," Milton's, 104, 106.
+
+  Cromwell, Richard, 105, 111.
+
+  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, 111, 115.
+
+  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 schoolmaster, 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, 111.
+
+  Guild Hall, The, 189-193.
+
+
+  Hakluyt, Richard, 266.
+
+  Hampden, John, 117-119, 268.
+
+  Hatton, Sir Christopher, 223.
+
+  Haw, The, 51.
+
+  Heminge and Condell, monument to, 193.
+
+  Henry VIII., 249.
+
+  Heylin, Peter, 261.
+
+  Hobson, 57.
+
+  Holbein, 157, 241.
+
+  Holborn, 98, 106, 225.
+
+  Hooker, Richard, 234.
+
+  Horton, 78-84, 92.
+
+
+  "Il 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.
+
+  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 topography, 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, 110.
+
+  Milton, Sarah, mother of the poet, 43, 83.
+
+  Milton Street, 111.
+
+  Minshull, Elizabeth, Milton's wife, 110, 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 College, 63.
+
+  Pall Mall, 100.
+
+  "Paradise Lost," 89, 105, 107, 111, 114, 120-122, 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, 111, 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 III., 129, 165, 190.
+
+  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. 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, 110.
+
+  St. Mary le Bow, church of, 305.
+
+  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 Westminster, 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.
+
+  Throckmorton, Sir Nicholas, 157, 193.
+
+  Tower Hill, 139, 144.
+
+  Tower of London, The, 126-136.
+
+  Toynbee Hall, 156.
+
+  Trafalgar Square, 99, 100.
+
+  Trinity College Library, Milton manuscript in, 73, 89.
+
+  Turner, William, 150.
+
+  Tyndale, 201.
+
+
+  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, 101, 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.
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+[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.'"
+
+[2] 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 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?"
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
+
+Images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest
+paragraph break.
+
+Punctuation has been corrected without note.
+
+"Thockmorton" has been corrected to "Throckmorton" in the index.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Milton's England, by Lucia Ames Mead
+
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