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diff --git a/34526-8.txt b/34526-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..774829f --- /dev/null +++ b/34526-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7595 @@ +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 + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILTON'S ENGLAND *** + +***** This file should be named 34526-8.txt or 34526-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/5/2/34526/ + +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.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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