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UNIVERSITY O^F TAJJFORMIA AT LO:
THE LIFE
JOHN MILTON:
NARRATED IN CONNEXION WITH
THE POLITICAL, ECCLESIASTICAL, AND LITERARY
HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
BY
DAVID MASSON, M.A, LL.D., Litt.D.,
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
AND HISTORIOGRAPHER ROYAL FOR SCOTLAND
VOL. IIL 1648—1649.
JVUIF EDITION
ILontion
MACMILLAN AND CO,
AND NEW YORK
1896
9564-5'
All rujhts reserved
CONTENTS.
BOOK I.
JULY 1G43— MARCH 1G43-4.
BISTOEV : ^ First Eight Months of the Westminster Assembly: Civil War and the Long Parliament continued.
BIOGRAPHY :—M.\vy:o's still in Aldersgate Street: His Marriage Misfortune : His First Divorce Treatise.
CHAP. PAGE
I. The Westminster Assembly in Session, July 1643 : Its first
Business — The War going against the Parliament : Resolu- ' tion to call in the aid of the Scots : Negotiations for the purpose in Edinburgh : Invention of the Solemn League and Covenant between the two Kingdoms : Account of that Document — List of the Scottish Commissioners admitted into the Westminster Assembly — Debates in the Assembly on Church Government : Emergence of the Controversy between Presbyterianisra and Independency : Apoloyctical Narration of the Five Independents in the Assembly : Presbyterian Answers to it — Parliamentaiy Proceedings to Feb. 1643-4 : Puritanising of the Church Service : Ejection of Prelatic Parish Ministers, and Order for the Visitation of Cambridge University — State of the War : Arrival of the Scottish Auxiliary Army in England — Stringent imposition thenceforward of the Solemn League and Covenant on the English— Death of Pym 3
II. Story of the Desertion of Milton by his Wife : Milton's resent- ment, and determination to repudiate his Marriage : Pub- lication, Aug. 1643, of his Treatise entitled The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce Restored : Account of the Treatise : Biographical Reflections — Milton's acquaintance with the Lady Margaret Ley, and his Sonnet to her : His Sonnet to another and anonymous Lady — Public sensation caused by Milton's Divorce Treatise : Oi")probrious Notices of it by James Howell and Bishop Hall — Publication, Feb. 1643-4, of a second and much enlarged Edition of the Treatise : Milton's open Dedication of the same to the Parliament and the Westminster Assembly jointly — Characteristic ])assage from the Dedication : Examination of the Actual Doctrine of the Treatise in its completed form : Appended Remarks 42
Viu CONTENTS.
BOOK II.
JIARCII 1G44— MARCH 1G45.
HISTORY.— The Yeah of Maustox Moor: Civil War, Long Paklia- MENT, AXD Westminster Assembly continued — Struggle of Inde- pendency WITH Presbyterianism : Toleration Controversy : Eng- lish Sects and Sectaries — Presbyterian Settlement voted — New Model of the Army.
BIOGEAPRV:— Milton among the Sectaries: his Second Divorce Pamphlet, his Tract Oiv Education, his Areopagitica, his Tetra-
CHORDOX, AND HIS CoLASTERIOX. CHAP.
I. Inactivity of the Scottish Auxiliaries in England — Spread of In- dependency and Multiplication of Sects — Visitation of the University of Cambridge — Battle of Marston Moor, July 2, 1644 — Fortnight's Vacation qf the Westminster Assembh% July 26— August 7, 1644. History of the Idea of Tolera- tion, and of its evolution more especially among the English Independents and Baptists : Limited Toleration demanded by the Five Independent Divines of the Westminster Assembly : Roger Williams and his Propagation of the Principle of Absolute or Unlimited Toleration : Import- ance of Roger Williams's visit to England in 1643-4, and of the publication in 1644 of his Pamphlet entitled The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Conscience : I\Iilder Tolera- tion Pamphlet by Mr. John Goodwin — Three conceivable forms or degrees of the Toleration Doctrine even now : These competing with each other in the English mind in 1644 : None of them countenanced by the Presbyterians : Anti- Toleration or Universal and Compulsory Conformity to one Established Presbyterian Church the common rallying-cry of all the British Presbyterians in 1644 : Proofs "of this in contemporary Presbyterian Pamphlets : Mr. Thomas Edwards and his Antcqjologia — Presbyterian Argument against Tolera- tion from its practical consequences in the multiplication of Sects, Heresies, and Blasphemies: Edwards's Gancjrccna and other Presbyterian authorities on the subject — Specimens from the Gangrccna of miscellaneous English Heresies and Blasphemies in 1644, and Classified Synopsis of the chief
English Sects and Sectaries of that year. Resumption of
the AVestminster Assembly's Proceedings in August 1644 : Denunciation of prominent Sectaries and Heretics by Divines of the Assembly : Co-operation of the London Stationers' Company in a Petition to Parliament— Cromwell's interfer- ence for Independency and Toleration : Accommodation Order of Parliament, Sept. 1644— The Essentials of Pres- bytery carried in the Assembly, and their new Frame of Church Government and new Directory of Worship sent up to Parliament : Resolutions of Parliament, January 1644-5, for the establishment of the Presbyterian System in England — Essex beaten, and the War flagging : Cromwell in a tempestuous mood : His accusation of the Earl of Manchester for voluntary slackness against the King in the Second
CONTENTS. IX
CHAP. PAGE
Battle of Newbury : Presbyterian hostility to Cromwell, and intrigues for upsetting him : The War thus brought to a crisis on the precise question whether Independency and Toleration or Presbyterianism and No Toleration should have the conduct of it — Ending of the crisis by the 0?-- dinancefor a Neio Modelling of the Army under Sir Thomas Fairfax as Commander-in-Chief, Feb. 1644-5, and TJie Self -Denying Ordinance, excluding all members of either House of Parliament from military or civil office while the War lasted, April 1645 — Parliamentary Vengeances : Execu- tion of Laud 83
II. Milton among the Sectaries and in "a World of Disesteem " : Gossip about him iu London : Story of Mrs. Attaway, the woman -preacher of Coleman Street, and her adoption of
Milton's Doctrine. Account of the Naturalised London
philanthropist, Samuel Hartlib : His correspondence with John Durie, and sympathy with Durie's Scheme for a Union of all the Protestant Churches : His correspondence with the Jloravian Educational Reformer, John Amos Comenius : Sketch of the Life of Comenius, with Account of his Educa- tional Schemes and Publications as far as to 1640 : Par- ticulars of Hartlib's Life and of his connexion with Com- enius and other celebrities in 1641 and 1642 : Project by the Long Parliament for the establishment of a University of London ; Visit of Comenius to London in the interest of that project : Interruption of the project by the Civil War, and migration of Comenius to Sweden — Regret of Hartlib for the departure of Comenius : His continued activity on his own account in English public affairs through 1643 and
1644. Milton one of Hartlib's London acquaintances, and
Milton's Tract on Education addressed to Hartlib — Account of the Tract, with quotations : The Tract not a Treatise on Education generallj', but a Scheme of an Academy for the Education of Gentlemen's Sons : Summary of tlie Details and Peculiarities of the Scheme : Dr. Johnson's Criticism of it : Similarity of the Scheme with Milton's ^Method with
his own Pupils as described by Edward Phillips. Milton
still occupied with his Divorce Speculation : Publication, July 1644, of his Second Divorce Tract, entitled The Judg- ment of Martin Bitcer concerning Divorce : Account of the Tract : The Dedication now to the Parliament only : Ex- tract from the Dedication — Mr. Herbert Palmer's Attack on Milton in a sermon before the two Houses of Parliament, Aug. 13, 1644 : Simultaneous complaint against Milton by the Stationers' Company for his evasion of the Printing Ordin- ance of Parliament. Account of the Printing Ordinance
of the Long Parliament, and of the System of Press Censor- ship established by it — Publication, Nov. 1644, of Milton's Areopagitica, or Speech to Parliament for the Liberty of Un- licensed Printing : Account of the Pamphlet, with Extracts, and definition of its exact purport — Second Complaint against Milton to the Parliament by the Stationers' Company : The Complaint minuted, but Milton let algne — Farther Attacks ou Milton for his Divorce Doctrine by Prynne, Mr. Joseph Caryl, Dr. Featley, and an anonymous Pamphleteer.
Publication, March 1644-5, of Milton's third Divorce
Tract, entitled Tetrachordon, and his fourth and last Divorce Tract, called Colasterion : Account of these Tracts, with
CONTENTS.
(juotation of the ])assages of reply to Mr. Herbert Palmer, Dr. Featley, Mr. Caryl, and Prynne, and of Milton's ferocious invective against the anonymous Pamphleteer 186
BOOK III.
APRIL 1045— AUGUST 1G46.
ITTSTOEY :—SiXTEv:.y Months of the New Model, and of the Long Parliament and Westminster Assembly continued. — Battle of
N.\SEBY AND its CONSEQUENCES : EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOT- LAND : Flight of the King to the Scots and Conclusion of the Civil War. — Progress of the Toleration Controversy and of the Struggle between the Presbyterians and the Indepen- dents.— London and Lancashire Presbyterianized.
BIOGRAPHY: — Return of Milton's Wife: His Removal from Aldersgate Street to Barbican : First Edition of his Poems : Three more Sonnets : Continued Presbyterian Attacks on Milton: His Retaliation: Troubles of the Powell Family.
CHAP.
I. Composition of the New Model Army, with List of its Officers : View of the Work lying before it — First Actions of the New Model : Cromwell retained in it as Lieutenant-General under Fairfax, by special exception from the Self-Denying Ordinance — Battle of Naseby, June 14, 1645 : Other Successes of the New Model — Poor Performance mean- while of the Scottish Auxiliary Army in England.
Retrospect of affairs within Scotland since 1641 : Restless- ness there of the youiig Earl of Montrose : His presentation of himself in the North of England with offers to head a Rising for the King in Scotland : Hesitations about employ- ing him, and failure of his first Attempt : His furtive re-entry into Scotland nevertheless in August 1644 with a Commission of Lieutenancy for his Majesty, and with the title of Marquis of Montrose : His Rendezvous in the Blair Atholl Highlands : Muster round him there of a force of 2300 men, consisting in part of Atholl Highlanders and in part of Irishmen and Lslesmen sent into Scotland by the Marquis of Antrim : Montrose's Major-General, Alaster Macdonald MacColkittoch : Montrose's first Victory in the Battle of Tippermuir, near Perth, Sept. 1, 1644 : Blazing Succession of his subse([uent Battles and Victories through the next twelve months, the last of them at Kilsyth in Stirlingshire, August 15, 1645 : The Argyle or Covenanting Government thus laid in ruins, and all Scotland recovered for the King : Viceregal Court of Triumjih held by Montrose at Bothwell, Sept. 3 : His Proclamation in the King's name of a Scottish Parliament to meet next month in Glasgow : Ex])ectation then that the King, hopeless in England since Naseby, would take refuge in Scotland : Transference of Montrose and the nucleus of his Army, with this expectation, to the Scottish Border country : Alarm
CONTENTS. XI
CHAP. PAGE
meanwhile among the Parliamentarians in England over Montrose's Conquest of Scotland : Hurried despatch of Major-General David Leslie with a detachment from the Scottish Auxiliary Army in England to retrieve the disaster^ if possible : Surprise and defeat of Montrose, and e.xtinction of his year of splendour, by Leslie in the Battle of Phi^ip- haugh, near Selkirk, Sept. 13, 1645: Montrose a Fugitive,, and his Adherents at the mercy of the restored Covenanting
Government. Fag-ends of the Civil War in England
through the winter of 1645 and the sj^ring of 1646 : The New Model Army trampling out the Relics of Royalism in various districts, and the Scottish Auxiliary Army besieging Newark : Desperate condition of the King in Oxford : His flight and surrender of himself to the Scots at Newark, May 5, 1646 : Immediate removal of the Scottish Auxiliary Army, with the King in their charge, to Newcastle : Orders out in the King's name for the surrender of all towns and castles still carrying his flag : First Civil War completely at an end, Aug. 1646. — Reckoning at this date of the Fallen Stars and the Risen Stars of the English Political World : Death of the Earl of Essex 325
IL Work in Parliament and in the Westminster Assembly during the sixteen victorious months of the New Model — View of the Questions still remaining in controversy between the Presbyterians and the Independents — Ferment of Independ- ency and Sectarianism in the New Model Army : Cromwell at the centre of the Ferment : Richard Baxter on Cromwell and his influence in the Army — Prosecution by Parliament of John Lilburne, Henry Burton, John Goodwin, and other Pamphleteers for Independency and Toleration : Cautious Policy meanwhile of the Independent Divines of the West- minster Assembly : Their astute evasion in October 1645 of the Challenge to produce a Congregational Frame of Church Government for comparison with the Presbyterian Frame : Cessation thenceforward by the Presbyterians from all attempts at compromise with the Moderate Independents, and Crusade of the Presbyterians universally for Absolute Presbytery and No Toleration — The Sion College Conclave of London Presbyterian Divines and their Manifesto in this sense : Manifesto of the Corporation of London to the same effect — Presbyterianism at its highest wave in January 1645-6 : Completion at that date of the Frame of the Presbyterian Church Government as established in England : Details of the Arrangement, with an Abstract' of the chief Presbyterian Ordinances and Enactments of the Parliament — Recent Recruiting of the House of Commons : Eminent Recruiters in January 1645-6 — Efl'ects of the Recruiting on the Votes in the House of Commons : Alliance of the Erastians of the Parliament with the Independents : Turning of the tide against the Presbyterians by a Vote in Parliament, March 1646, reserving toitselfthe ultimate "Power of the Keys," i.e. the right of suspension or exclusion from the Communion : Presbyterian and Scottish Protests against this Vote ; Remonstrance against it by the Westminster Assembly : Collapse of the Opposition in view of the final Successes of the New Model : The Assembly's Remon- strance voted a Breach of Privilege by the Parliament, and
xii CONTENTS.
PAOE
the Assembly rebuked and put under curb, April 1646 — Cromwell then back in his place in Parliament and thanked for his Military Services : Accession of young Cromwellians among the Recruiters, and increased strength thereby of the
Independents in Parliament. Riveting of Public Attention
from May 1646 onwards on the negotiations round the King at / Newcastle : The Marquis of Argyle and Alexander Henderson among the Scottish negotiators there : Prospect of a settle- ment with the King on the basis of his adoption of Presbytery and tlie Covenant : Satisfaction of the English Presbyterians with this Prospect, but jealousy and alarm of the English Independents : Vehement Anti-Scottish Demonstrations of the Independents and Threatened Rupture between them and the Scots : The Marquis of Argyle's Visit to London, and his Speech of Conciliation before a Committee of the two Houses, June 2.5, 1646 : Arrival at Newcastle, July 23, of Com- missioners from the English Parliament : Their tender to the King of Nineteen Propositions : Refusal of tlie King to treat on that basis, and the Commissioners back in London, Aug. 12 — The Parliament and the Westminster Assembly substantially reconciled : Presbyterianizing of London and Lancashire : Occupation of the Assembly thenceforward with a new national Confession of Faith and Catechisms: Rous's Jletrical Version of the Psalms — Deatli of Dr. Twisse, the Prolocutor of the Assembly, and Death in Edinburgh, Aug. 19, of Alexander Henderson .... 382
III. Effects of Milton's Areo2Mgitica: Nature of his Public Reputa- tion in 1645 on account of that and his other writings : His Divorce Heresy still the stumbling-block — Continued Circulation of his Divorce Tracts — Hint in the Telrachordon that, if he could not marry again legally, he might be driven to defy the Law : Story of his actual intention of another Marriage: Particularsof the Story from Edward Phillijis: Any such intention frustrated by the Return of Milton's Wife, and his Reconciliation with her, July or August 1645 : Cir- cumstances and manner of the Reconciliation. Milton's
Removal, late in 1645, from Aldersgate Street to a larger house in the neighbouring street called Barbican : Account of the street and of tlie house : Coincidence of Milton's removal to Barbican witli the preparation for the press of a volume of his Collected Poems — The London Book-Trade from 1640 to 1645 : Revival latterly of interest in the Finer Literature, as distinct from Controversial Pamphleteering: Publication of Waller's Poems by Humphrey JMoseley : Account of Moseley and his peculiar Publishing Activity : His application to Milton for Copies of his Poems : Appear- ance, January 1645-6, of the small Volume entitled Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English ami Latin : Description of the Volume and List of its Contents : SigniKcance of the prefixed Motto from Virgil : Moseley's Eulogistic Preface : The prefixed Portrait of ]\lilton liy Marshall, and Milton's
Practical Joke on Marshall in that connexion. Milton's
Public Polemic for Divorce now discontinued, but his Doc- trine not abandoned : His two Scornful Sonnets early in 1646 on the Reception of his Divorce Pamjihlets — His "con- temporary Sonnet of Compliment to the Musjcian Henry Lawes — Fresh Presbyterian Attacks on Milton : His Retalia- tion in his Anti-Presbyterian Sonnet "On the New Forcers
CONTENTS. xni
PAGE
of Conscience " : Explanation of the Allusions in that
Sonnet.- Dispersion of the Powell Family by the Surrender
of Oxford to the Parliament, June 1646 : Im})overished Con- dition of the Family : Estimate of the Remnants at this date of Mr. Powell's Oxfordshire Property and his other Belong- ings : Removal of Mr. and Mrs. Powell, with some of their children, to London, for refuge in ]\Iilton's house : Birth of Milton's first Child, July 29, 1646 : Mr. Powell's Composi- tion Suit for his Delinquency : Composition Suit of Christopher Milton : State of the Barbican Household in August 1646 431
BOOK IV.
AUGUST 1046— JANUARY 1648-0.
HISTORY : — The Last Two Years and a Half of the Reign of Charles L : —
\. His continued Captivity with the Scots at Newcastle, and Failure of his Negotiations with the Presby- terians ; n. His Captivity at Holmby House, and the Quarrel between the English Parliament and the English Army' ; IIL His Captivity with the English Army, and their Pro- posals to him ; IV. His Captivity in the Isle of Wight, and the Second
Civil War ; V. His Trial and Doom.
BIOGRAPHY : — Milton in Barbican and in High Holborn. — Private and Public Anxieties : Ode to Rous, Two more Sonnets, and Translation of Nine Psalms : Other Works in Progress : Letters to and from Carlo Dati.
Charles in his Captivity : — 491
First Stage of the Captivity : Still with the Scots at Newcastle :
Aug. 1646 — Jan. 1646-7. Balancings of Charles between
the Presbyterians and the Independents — His Negotiations in the Presbyterian direction : The Hamiltons his Agents among the Scots — His Attempt to negotiate with the Inde- pendents : Will Murray in London — Interferences of the Queen from France : Davenant's Mission to Newcastle — The Nineteen Propositions unanswered : A Personal Treaty offered — Difficulties between the Scots and the English Parliament — Their Adjustment: Departure of the Scots from England, and Cession of Charles to the English — Westminster Assembly Business, and Progress of the Pres- byterian Settlement 496
i \- CONTEXTS.
CHAP. PAfiE
I. Second Stage of the Captivity : At Holmby House: Feb. 1646-7
— June 1647. The King's Manner of Life at Holmby — New
Omens in his favour from tlie Relations of Parliament to its own Army — Pro[)Osals to disband the Army and recon- struct part of it for service in Ireland — Summarj'^ of Irish Affairs since 1641 — Army's Anger at the Proposal to dis- band it — View of the State of the Army : Medley of Reli- gions Opinions in it : Passion for Toleration : Prevalence of Democratic Tendencies: The Levellers — Determination of the Presbyterians for the Policy of Disbandment, and Votes in Parliament to that effect — Resistance of the Army; Petitions and Remonstrances from the Officers and Men : Regimental Agitators — Cromwell's Efforts at Accommoda- tion : Fairfax's Order for a General Rendezvous — Cromwell's Adhesion to the Army — The Rendezvous at Newmarket, and Joyce's Abduction of the King from Holmby — West- minster Assembly Business : First Provincial Synod of London : Proceedings for the Purgation of Oxford University 513
Third Stage of the Captivity : The King with the Army : June
— Nov. 1647. Effects of Joyce's Abduction of the King —
Movements of the Army : Their Denunciation of Eleven of the Presbyterian Leaders : Parliamentary Alarms and Con- cessions— Presbyterian Phrenzy of the London Populace: Parliament mobbed, and Presbyterian Votes carried by Mob- law : Flight of the two Speakers and their Adherents : Re- storation of the Eleven — March of the Army upon London : Military Occupation of the City : The Mob quelled, Parlia- ment reinstated, and the Eleven expelled — Generous Treat- ment of the King by the Army : His Conferences with Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton — The Army's Heads of Fro- 'poscils, and Comparison of the same with the Nineteen Pro- 2)ositions of the Parliament — The King at Hampton Court, still demurring privately over the Reads of Proijosals, but playing them off publicly against the Nineteen Propositions : Army at Putney — Cromwell's Motion for a Recast of the Nineteen Propositions and Reapiilication to the King on that Basis : Consequences of the Compromise — Intrigues at Hampton Court : Influence of the Scottish Commissioners there : King immoveable — Impatience of the Army at Putney : Cromwell under Suspicion : New Activity of the Agitatorships : Growth of Levelling Doctrines among the Soldiers : Agree- ment of the People — Cromwell breaks utterly with the King : Meetings of the Army Officers at Putney: Proposed Con- cordat between the Army and Parliament — The King's Escape to the Isle of Wight 547
Fourth Stage of the Captivity : In the Isle of Wight : Nov. 1647
— Nov. 1648. Carisbrooke Castle, and the King's Letters
thence — Parliament's New ^lethod of the Four Bills — Indignation of the Scots : Their Complaints of Breach of the Covenant — Army Rendezvous at Ware : Suppression of a ilutiny of Levellers by Cromwell, and Establishment of the Concordat with Parliament — Parliamentary Commis- sioners in the Isle of Wight : Scottish Commissioners also there : the King's Rejection of the Four Bills — Firmness of Parliament : Their Resolutions for No Farther Addresses to the King : Severance of the Scottish Alliance — The Encjarje- ment, or Secret Treaty between Charles and the Scots in
CONTENTS. XV
CHAP.
PAGE
the Isle of Wight— Stricter guard of the King in Carisbrooke Castle : His Habits in his Imprisonment— First Rumours of Th^ Scottish Engagement : Royalist Programme of a Second
Civil War. Beginnings of The Second Civil War :
Royalist Risings : Cromwell in Wales : Fairfax in the South- east : Siege of Colchester— Revolt of the Fleet : Commotion among the Royalist Exiles abroad : Holland's attempted Rising in Surrey— Invasion of England by Hamilton's Scot- tish Army : Arrival of the Prince of Wales off the South- east Coast : Blockade of the Thames— Consternation of the Londoners : Faintheartedness of Parliament : New Hopes of the Presbyterians : Their Ordinance against Heresies and Blasphemies : Their Leanings to the King': Independents now a struggling minority : Charge of Treason against Cromwell in his absence- The Three Days' Battle of Preston and utter Defeat of the Scots by Cromwell : Surrender of Colchester to Fairfax : Return of the Prince of Wales to Holland :
Virtual End of The Second Civil War. Parliamentary
Treaty with the King at Newport : Unsatisfactory Results- Protests against the Treaty by the Independents— Disgust of the Army with the Treaty: Revocation of their Con'cordat with Parliament, and Resolution of the Army to seize the Political Mastery: Formation of a Republican Party- Petitions for Justice on the King : The Grand Army Remonstrance— GromwaW in Scotland : Restoration of the Argyle Government there : Cromwell at Pontefract : His Letter to Hammond— The King removed from the Isle of AVight to Hurst Castle— The Army again in possession of London g^g
II. Continued Troubles in the Barbican Household : Issue of Christopher Milton's Composition Suit : Mr. Powell's Insol- vency, and the Perplexities of his Composition Suit : Death of Mr. Powell : Copy of his Will : Inferences from it as to the prospects of his Widow and Family : Death of Milton's Father, 1646-7 — Milton's Sonnet "On the Religious ]\Iemoiy of Mrs. Catherine Thomson " : Traces of Presenta- tion Copies of his Collected Prose Pamphlets : Application to Milton by John Rous, Librarian of the Bodleian, for another Copy of the Moseley Volume of his Poems, to supply the loss of one that had been sent to Oxford along with the Prose Pamphlets : Milton's Latin Ode to Rous in reply— The Reminiscences of Italy and Messages to Italian Friends in the ]\Ioseley Volume of Milton's Poems : Lost Letters from Carlo Dati of Florence to Milton : Arrival at last of a Letter from Dati acknowledging receipt of a Copy of the Epitaphhtm Damonis : Milton's Latin Letter to Dati in reply, April 21, 1647— Pedagogy in the Barbican : List of Milton's known Pupils, with Notices in particular of Cyriack Skinner, Henry Laurence, the young Earl of Barrimore, and lus cousin Richard Jones, afterwards third Viscount and tirst Earl of Ranelagh : Account in this connexion of the Boyle Family and its Branches, and of Catherine Boyle, Viscountess Ranelagh, the mother of the last-named boy,
and one of Milton's special Friends. Educational Reform
still a Question of the Day : Hartlib and his Schemes again : His Enthusiastic Interest now in a newly-founded Club of Natural Philosophers in London, called The Invisible College : Theodore Haak, Wallis, Wilkins, Dr. Jonathan Goddard,
THE LIFE OF JOHN MILTON,
WITH THE
HISTOKY OF HIS TIME.
CHAPTEE I.
THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY IN SESSION THE SOLEMN LEAGUE
AND COVENANT : SCOTTISH COMMISSIONERS IN THE ASSEMBLY
DEBATES ON CHURCH -GOVERNMENT : APOLOGETICAL NARRATION
OF THE INDEPENDENTS PARLIAMENTARY PROCEEDINGS SCOTTISH
AUXILIARY ARMY IN ENGLAND.
The Westminster Assembly held its first formal meeting in Henry the Seventh's Chapel on Saturday, July 1, 1643, after the impressive opening ceremonial of a sermon preached before a great congregation in the Abbey Church by the appointed Prolocutor, Dr. Twisse, on the text John xiv. 18, " I will not leave you comfortless." About 69 of the members were present at that first meeting, many who attended afterwards not having yet come up from the country. Among the 69 were the few of "the Episcopal persuasion" who afterwards dropped off; and these were conspicuous by their canonical dresses among the bulk of the members in all sorts of plain Puritan suits. The average attendance subsequently seems to have been from 60 to 80. The place of meeting for some time continued to be King Henry the Seventh's Chapel ; but this was changed, when the weather grew colder, for the celebrated Jerusalem Chamber, also in the close vicinity of the Houses of Parlia-
4 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
ment.^ None but members of the Assembly were allowed to be present, and there was no deviation from this rule except on the very rarest occasions and by special authority from Parliament. The Assembly sat commonly from nine in the morning till one or two p.m. The Prolocutor sat at one end of the room on a raised chair ; his two Assessors were near him ; and a table ran tlirough the whole length of the room, at one end of which sat the Scribes, close to the Prolocutor, while the members were seated in tiers at the sides and other end. The forms of debate and voting were very much those of the House of Commons. Besides the meetings of the Assembly as such, there were afternoon meetings of Com- mittees for the preparation of business for the Assembly. There were three such chief Standing Committees, to one or other of which every member belonged.^
FIRST BUSINESS OF THE ASSEMBLY : REVISION OF THE ARTICLES.
Not till Thursday, July 6, or indeed Saturday, July 8, was the Assembly constituted for actual business. On the first of these days the Kegulations whicli had been drawn up by the two Houses of Parliament for the procedure of the Assembly were duly received ; and on the second all the members of Assembly present took the solemn Protestation which had been settled for them by the Commons with the concurrence of the Lords. It was in these terms : " I, A. B,, " do seriously and solemnly protest, in the presence of " Almighty God, that in this Assembly, wherein I am a " member, I will not maintain anything in matters of Doctrine " but what I think in my conscience to be truth, or in point " of Discipline but what I shall conceive to conduce most to " the glory of God and the good and peace of His Church." So sworn, the members were ready for their first work. That also had been rigidly prescribed for them by Parliament.
' The Ordinance of Parliament autho- that day.
rizing the change of the place of meet- ~ Lightfoot's Notes of Assembly :
ing to the Jerusalem Chamber is dated Works (ed. 1824), Vol. XIII. pp. 4, 5 ;
Sept. 23, 1643 : see Lords Journals for and Baillie, II. 107—109.
1643-44.] THE WESTMINSTEE ASSEMBLY IN SESSION. 5
On July 5 the Commons had ruled and the Lords had agreed " that the Assembly, in their beginning, in the first place " shall take the ten first Articles of the Church of Enc^land " into their consideration, to vindicate them from all false " doctrine and heresy." In other words, it was the pleasure of Parliament that the first business of the Assembly should consist in a revision and amendment of the Thirty-nine Articles, and that, by way of a commencement in this business, or specimen to Parliament of the manner in which it might be done, they were to confine themselves at first to the first Ten of the Articles. Accordino-lv, the Assembly at once addressed themselves to this busi- ness. It was with a view to it that they first adopted that machinery of Committees which was to be employed subsequently, with so much effect, in all the deliberations. The Divines of the Assembly were distributed, in the order in which their names stood in the Ordinance calling the Assembly, into three Committees for preparatory revision of the said Articles in such a manner that the whole Assembly might more clearly exercise its final judgment on them; while a fourth Committee, in which the lay-members were included, was to assist the others by procuring the most correct copies of the text of the Articles. To the first revising Committee, of which Dr. Purges was appointed chairman, were entrusted the first four Articles; to the second, of which Dr. Stanton was chairman, the fifth, sixth, and seventh Articles ; and to the third, which had Mr. Gibbon for chairman, the eighth, ninth, and tenth.
Imagine the Assembly collectively in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, and its Committees distributively there or in other places of meeting, busy day after day, through the rest of the hot month of July, and then into August, over its appointed revision of the Articles. " /. Of Faith in the Holy Trinity " ; " II. Of the Word, or Son of God, which was made very Man " ; " ///. Of the going down of Christ into Hell " ; " IV. Of the Resurrection of Christ " ; " V. Of the Holy Ghost " ; " VI. Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salva- tion " ; " VIL Of the Old Testament " ; " VIIL Of the
6 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
Three Creeds " ; " IX. Of Original or Birth Sin " ; " X. Of Free Will": imagine the Articles under these headings discussed successively, sentence by sentence and clause by clause, most of the sentences and clauses allowed to pass without change as perfectly satisfactory, but here and there at intervals a phrase modified or omitted, or a slight addition made, so as to bring the meaning more sharply into accord with the letter of Scripture or the Calvinistic system of doctrine. Such mere imagination of tlie general process will suffice, and it is unnecessary to take account of the actual changes proposed in the phraseology of particular Articles. For, in fact, these first weeks of the Assembly's pains over the Articles of the Church were to be labour wasted. Before the end of August, and while they were still probing through the first Ten Articles, events had taken such a course that the Assembly was called upon to co-operate with the Parliament in matters of greater urgency.
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT : SCOTTISH COMMISSIONERS TO THE ASSEMBLY.
The war, which had been on the whole in the King's favour hitherto, was going more and more against Parliament. In the north, Lord Fairfax had been beaten at Atherston Moor by the Earl of Newcastle (June 3 0) ; Sir William Waller, the hitherto unconquered, had been beaten twice in the south-west (at Lansdowne, July 5, and at Eoundway Down, July 13); the Queen, coming from the north, had joined the King in his quarters, amid great rejoicing, after their seventeen months of separation ; and Bristol, ineffi- ciently defended by Nathaniel Piennes, was on the point of yielding to Prince Rupert. It was time, in short, to do what it had long been in the mind of Parliament to do — call in once more the aid of the Scots.
On this the Parliament had already resolved. As it was judged likely, however, that the Scots would listen more readily to the application for armed aid if it were accom-
1643-44.] THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. 7
panied with some distinct proof of a desire for " uniforiinty of religion " between the two kingdoms, the Assembly was required to assist Parliament in pleading with the Scots. The Scottish Convention of Estates was then sitting (it had met, by express call, Jmie 22) ; and the Scottish General Assembly was to meet on the 2nd of August. Let there be Commissioners from both the English Parliament and the Westminster Assembly to these two bodies ; let the Assembly write letters to the Scottish Assembly, backing the political application with religious arguments ; let every exertion be made to secure a new alliance with the Scottish nation ! Accordingly, while the Assembly was pursuing its revision of the Articles, or occupying itself with such incidental matters as the appointment of ministers to preach before the two Houses, and the recommendation of a East Day ex- traordinary in London, their thoughts, like those of Parlia- ment, were chiefly fixed on the issue of their joint embassy to Edinburgh.^
The Scots had foreseen the application. Three courses were before them. They might remain neutral ; they might interfere as " redders," or mediators between the King and the English Parliament ; or they might openly side with the Parliament and help it in the war. Great efforts had been made by the King to induce the Scots to the first course.^ Five or six of the Scottish noblemen who were with the King at Oxford had been sent back among their countrymen to labour for this end. All in vain. It had become clear to Argyle, Loudoun, Warriston, and the other Scottish leaders, that neutrality would be ruinous. Things were in this state when the Commissioners from the English Parliament and the Westminster Assembly arrived in Edin- burgh (Aug. 7). The Scottish Convention of Estates was then still sitting ; and the General Assembly of the Scottish Kirk, with Alexander Henderson again its Moderator (the third time he had been raised to this Presidency), was in the middle of its annual fortnight or so of Scottish ecclesiastical business
1 Lightfoot's Notes for July 1643 ; ~ Burnet's Dukes of Hamilton (ed.
and my MS. chronology of events. 1852), pp. 279—298.
8 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
— one item of the business this time being, I find, " the late extraordinar multiplying of witches," especially in Fifeshire. Both the Convention and the Assembly had been anxiously waiting for the English Commissioners, and were delighted when they arrived. They were six in all — Sir William Ai'niyn, Sir Harry Vane the younger, Mr. Hatcher, and Mr. Darley, from the Parliament ; and Stephen ]\Iarshall and Philip Nye from the Westminster Divines. And what moving letters they brought with them — official letters from the Parliament and the Westminster Assembly to the Scottish Convention of Estates and General Assembly, and also a more private letter signed by about seventy English Divines ! And how the Scots were impressed by the letters ! The private letter of the seventy Divines in especial was "so lamentable " that, when it was read in the Ceneral Assembly, " it drew tears from many." And how all were struck by the ability and gravity of young Sir Harry Vane, and liked him and Stephen Marshall, but did not take so much to Mr. Nye, because of his known Independency ! In short, in conferences between the English Commissioners and Commissioners appointed by the Scottish Convention and General Assembly to meet them, it was all arranged. There was, indeed, still some lingering question at first among the Scottish leaders whether it might not do to " go as redders or friends to both, without siding altogether with the Parlia- ment " ; but Warriston alone " did show the vanity of that notion and the impossibility of it." And so Vane and the other Commissioners could write to England that their mission had been successful, and that the armed aid of the Scottish nation might be expected.
Ay, but there was a special condition. The Commissioners liad come to treat about " Scottish assistance to Parliament and a uniformity of religion," and it was the prospect held out in the second phrase that most reconciled the Scots to all that was involved in the first. The extension of Scottish Presbyterianism over all England and Ireland, or, at all events, the union of the two kingdoms in some common form of Church-government not essentially differing from Scottish
1643-44.] THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. 9
Presbyterianism — for that object the Scots would strike in ; for that object they would shed their blood, as fellow-soldiers with Englishmen, in the fields of England I Now the English Commissioners, like wary men, and probably in accordance with their instructions, would fain have avoided any too definite a pledging of England to a particular eccle- siastical future. Nye, in especial, as an Independent, must have desired to avoid this ; and Vane, as a man who did not know how far from his present opinions continued reasoning might carry him, may have felt with Nye. Hence, on the religious question, they tried to get off with generalities. If there were a league between the two kingdoms for their civil liberties, would not a uniformity in Church matters naturally follow ? But this was not quite satisfactory to the Scottish Commissioners. " The English were for a civil league, we for a religious covenant," says Baillie ; and the event has made the sentence memorable historically. Let England and Scotland unite first in subscribing one and the same docu- ment, swearing one and the same oath, which should base their alliance on a certain amount of mutual engagement in the matter of Eeligion ! To such oaths of mutual allegiance the Scots, among themselves, had long been accustomed. They called them " Covenants." This agency of " Covenant- ing " had been a grand agency in Scottish History. Was not the present liberation of Scotland, the destruction of Episcopacy root and branch within its borders, the result of the " National Covenant " sworn to only five years and a half ago — that Covenant being but the renewal, with slight additions, of a document which had done not unimportant work in a former age ? Why not have another Covenant for the present emergency — not that National or purely Scottish Covenant, but a Covenant expressly framed for the new purpose, and fit to be a religious pact between the two kingdoms ? So argued the Scots with the English Com- missioners ; and, that the English Commissioners might see what was meant, Alexander Henderson, who was probably the author of the idea, and to whom, at any rate, the pre- paration of any extremely important document was always
10 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
entrusted, produced a draft of the proposed Covenant. The English Commissioners did not altogether like this draft; but, after a good deal of discussion, and apparently some suggestions from Vane tending to vagueness in the religious part and greater prominence of the civil, the draft was modified into a shape m which it was agreed to unani- mously. On the 1 7 th of August it was reported by Hender- son to the General Assembly, and passed there not only unanimously and with applause, but with a most unusual show of emotion among old and young ; and on the same day it passed the Scottish Convention. " This seems to be a new period and crise of the most great affair," writes Baillie, recording these facts.^
Baillie was right. The Solemn League and Covenant, as Henderson's amended document of August 1643 was called (not the same thing at all, it is to be remembered, as the Scottish National Covenant of 1638, though generally confounded therewith), became a most potent in- strument in England. This, however, could not be foreseen at first. It remained to be seen whether the English Parlia- ment would adopt the document which had been agreed to by their Commissioners in Edinburgh. In the faith that they would, or that they might be induced to do so, the Scottish General Assembly, before its rising (Aug. 19), not only sent cordial and sympathetic answers to the letters received from the Parliament and the Westminster Divines, but also complied with that request of the Parliament which desired the nomination of some Scottish ministers to be members of the Westminster Assembly. The ministers nominated were Henderson, Mr. Ptobert Douglas, Baillie, Mr. Samuel Eutherford, and Mr. George Gillespie ; but it was thought right, if only to accustom the English to the principle of lay-eldership, to associate with these ministers the Earl of Cassilis, Lord Maitland, and Johnstone of Warris- ton. Of the eight Commissioners so appointed three were to be a quorum. Accordingly, Henderson, Gillespie, and Lord
1 Acts of Scottish General Assembly of 1643 ; Baillie's Letters, II. 81—90 : Burnet's Hamiltons, 298—307.
1643-44.] THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT, 11
Maitlancl sailed for London at once (Aug. 30), leaving the others to follow more at leisure.^
When Henderson reached London, he found his "Covenant" the universal topic. The Parliament had lost no time in referring the document to the Westminster Divines for their consideration ; and there had been three or four days of de- bate over it in that Assembly (Aug. 2 8 and onwards). Some members, especially Dr. Cornelius Burges, took exceptions. On the whole, however, the feeling of the Assembly decidedly was that the Covenant was a splendid invention, might be adopted with a few verbal changes, and might lead to fine results. This was reported to Parliament Aug. 31 ; and Dr. Burges, continuing in his captiousness against this judgment of the Assembly, found himself in disgrace. The two Houses then proceeded to examine the Covenant for themselves. They also proposed some modifications of the document, and referred it back, with these, to the Assembly (Sept. 14). The arrival of Henderson and his two colleagues at this nick of tune accelerated the conclusion. On the 15th of September, when they first appeared among the Westminster Divines, and Henderson first opened his mouth in the Assembly and expounded the whole subject of the relations between the two kingdoms, all opposition came to an end. The document passed, with only the modifications that had already seemed reasonable, and to which the Scots Commissioners had assented ; and, " after all was done, " Mr. Prolocutor, at the desire of the Assembly, gave thanks " to God for the sweet concurrence of us in the Covenant." The words are Lightfoot's ; who adds that, to make the joy complete. Dr. Burges came in radiant and repentant, express- ing his complete satisfaction now with the Covenant, and begging to be forgiven.^ The Covenant having thus been
1 Acts of Scottish Assembly of 1643 ; already on that day been called in be- and Baillie's Letters, II. 96—98. fore the Commons and had explained
2 Burges had actually been suspended ' ' that it was very true he had unhappily by Parliament from being a member of taken exception to some things in the the Assembly for his contumacy in this Covenant," but that "he hears there affair, Sept. 2, 1643 ; but he was re- had been a review of this Covenant," stored on his own humble petition, and such an alteration "as will give him Sept. 15, the very day of his repentant satisfaction." See Commons Journals reappearance in the Assembly. He had of the two dates named.
12 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
finally adjusted, the two Houses of Parliament were swift in enacting it. On the 21st of September, they ordered that it should be printed and published, and subscribed and sworn to by the whole English realm; and, on Monday the 25th, to set the example, there was a solemn meeting of the members of the two Houses and of the Divines of the Assembly in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, at which 2 2 0 of the Commons and all the Divines then present swore
to the new pact, and signed it with their names. This was
but the beginning. The Covenant was thenceforth the Shibboleth of Parliamentarianism. In London first, and then gradually through England, in towns, parishes, and parish churches, wherever Parliament prevailed, all had to sign it or swear to it if they would be considered friends to the cause of Parliament and allowed action and standing- room as true Englishmen. Oliver Cromwell, as a member of the House of Commons, signed it — if not among the 220 of the Commons who signed it originally on the 25th of September (at which time there is proof that he was absent from London), at least in due course ; and Milton must have signed it, as a London householder. But, in fact, the signing went on for months and months, the Eoyal Pro- clamation from Oxford forbidding the Covenant (Oct. 9) only increasing the zeal for it. From Sept. 1643,. on wards for some years, the test of being a Parliamentarian in England was " Have you signed the Covenant ? " and the test of willingness to become a Parliamentarian, and of fitness to be forgiven for past malignancy or lukewarmness, was " Will you noiv sign the Covenant ? " Such was the strange fortune of the hurried paper drawn up by Henderson's pen in some
room in the High Street of Edinburgh. In Scotland, it
need hardly be said, the Covenant was sworn to with alacrity. As the document was, in its very nature, a pact between the two kingdoms, proposed by the Scots, it was useless for them to swear until they had seen whether the English would accept the pact. But, as soon as it was known in Scotland that the Covenant had been adopted by the English and that the swearing in England had begun, the Scots did their part.
1643-44.] THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. 13
There was some little grumbling at first over the verbal changes that had been made by the English in the text of the Covenant ; but this ceased, and it was even agreed that the changes were for the better. Accordingly, on the 13th of October 1643, most of the Scottish nobles in Edinburgh, including 18 of the Privy Council, swore solemnly to the Covenant in one of the city churches ; and from that day on, for weeks and months, there was a general swearing to the Covenant by the whole people of Scotland, as by the Parlia- mentarians in England, district by district, and parish by parish. Thus the Scots came now to have two Covenants. There was their own National Scottish Covenant, peculiar to themselves ; and there was the Solemn Lcarjue and Covenant, in which they were joined with the English Parliamentarians.^ And what was this Solemn League and Covenant, the de- vice of Henderson and the Scots for linking the Scottish and English nations in a permanent civil and religious alliance ? The document is not nearly Henderson at his best, and it has not the deep ring, the fervour and fierceness, of the old Scottish Covenant. For its purpose, however, it was efficient enough, and not so very illiberal either, the necessity of such a league being allowed, and the time and other things considered. Here are the essential parts : —
We, Noblemen, Barons, Knights, Gentlemen, Citizens, Burgesses, Ministers of the Gospel, and Commons of all sorts, in the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland .... with our hands lifted up to the most high God, do swear : —
I. That we shall sincerely, really, and constantly, through the grace of God, endeavour, in our several places and callings, the pre- servation of the Keformed Religion in the Church of Scotland, in Doctrine, Worship, Discipline and Government, against our common enemies ; [also] the Reformation of Religion in the Kingdoms of England and Ireland, in Doctrine, Worship, Discipline and Govern- ment, according to the Word of God and the example of the best Reformed Churches : and we shall endeavour to bring the Churches of God in the three Kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uni- formity in Religion, Confession of Faith, Form of Church-Govern- ment, Directory for Worship and Catechising, that we and our
1 Lightfoot, Xin. 10 — 16; Baillie, 172— 174; Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857), IL 98, 99, and 102 ; Neal, IIL 65—70 ; I. 137, 138. Stevenson, 515, 516; Pari. Hist. III.
14 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
posterity after us may, as brethren, live in faith and love, and the Lord may delight to dwell in the midst of us.
II. That we shall in like manner, without respect of persons, endeavour the extirpation of Popery, Prelacy {i.e. Church-govern- ment by Archbishops, Bishops, their Chancellors and Commissaries, Deans, Deans and Chajiters, Archdeacons, and all other ecclesiastical Officers depending on that Hierarchy), Superstition, Heresy, Schism, Profaneness, and whatsoever shall be found to be contrary to sound doctrine and the power of godliness ; lest we partake in other men's sins, and thereby be in danger to receive of their plagues, and that the Lord may be one and his Name one in the three Kingdoms.
III. We shall with the same sincerity, reality, and constancy in our several vocations, endeavour with our estates and lives mutually to preserve the rights and privileges of the Parliaments, and the liberties of the Kingdoms, and to preserve and defend the King's Majesty's person and authority, in the preservation and defence of the true Religion and Liberties of the Kingdoms ; that the world may bear witness with our consciences of our loyalty, and that we have no thoughts or intentions to diminish his Majesty's just power and greatness.
IV. We shall also with all faithfulness endeavour the discovery of all such as have been or shall be Incendiaries, Malignants, or evil Instruments, by hindering the Reformation of Religion, dividing the King from his People, or one of the Kingdoms from another, or making any faction or parties among the People contrary to the League and Covenant ; that they may be brought to public trial, and receive condign punishment as the degree of their offences shall require or deserve, or the supreme judicatories of both Kingdoms respectively, or others having power from them for that effect, shall judge convenient.
V. And, whereas the happiness of a blessed Peace between these Kingdoms, denied in former times to our progenitors, is by the good Providence of God granted unto us, and hath been lately con- cluded and settled by both Parliaments, we shall, each one of us, according to our places and interest, endeavour that they may remain conjoined in a firm Peace and LTnion to all posterity, and that justice may be done upon the wilful opposers thereof in manner expressed in the precedent Article.
VI. We shall also, according to our places and callings, in this common cause of Religion, Liberty, and Peace of the Kingdoms, assist and defend all those that enter into this League and Covenant in the maintaining and pursuing thereof, and shall not suffer our- selves, directly or indirectly, by whatsoever combination, persuasion, or terror, to be divided and withdrawn from this blessed union and conjunction, whether to make defection to the contrary part, or give ourselves to a detestable indifferency and neutrality in this cause, which so much concerneth the glory of God, the good of the
1643-44.] SCOTTISH COMMISSIONEES IN THE ASSEMBLY. 15
Kingdoms, and tlie honour of the King ; but shall all the days of our lives zealously and constantly continue therein against all oppo- sition, and promote the same according to our power against all lets and impediments whatsoever ; and what we are not able ourselves to suppress or overcome we shall reveal and make known, that it may be timely prevented or removed : all which we shall do as in the sight of God. . . .^
One effect of the Solemn League and Covenant was to clear away from the Westminster Assembly the few Anglicans who had till then tried to hang on to it. Dr. Featley alone, of this party, persisted in keeping his place for some time longer ; but, on the discovery that he was acting as a spy in the King's interest and corresponding with Usher, he was expelled by the Parliament, sequestrated from his livings, and committed to prison (Sept. 30). On the other hand, the Assembly had now an accession of strength in the Com- missioners deputed to it from the Kirk of Scotland. Two of these, Mr, Douglas and the Earl of Cassilis, never made their appearance ; but the other six duly took their places, though not all at once. They were admitted by warrant of the Parliament, entitling them " to be present and to debate upon occasion " ; but, as Commissioners from the Church of another nation, they declined being considered " members " in the ordinary sense. Practically, however, this was a mere
1 Rushworth, V. 478-9, and Lords portant Article of the six is the First,
Journals, Sept. 18, 1643. "Not so pledging to a recognition and defence
very illiberal either," I have said of the of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, League and Covenant in the text ; and and to an endeavour after a Reforma- the reader of the Second Article, pledg- tion of Religion in England and Ireland ing to "endeavour the extirpation of " according to the Word of God," with Popery, Prelacy, Superstition, Heresy, a view to uniformity in the three King- Schism, Profaneness," will naturally doms. The insertion of the caution demur. This Article, however, was but "according to the word of God " is said a repetition of what all, of both nations, to have been owing to Vane, who did who might sign the Covenant, including not want to pre-commit the English too the English Parliament, were, by past much to exact Scottish Presbytery. — actions and resolutions, already pledged The few other changes made by the to, neck-deep or more. The illiberality English Parliament and Westminster is to be charged not upon this particular Assembly in Henderson's original Edin- League and Covenant, but upon the burgh draft of the Covenant may be entire British mind of the time, with traced by a diligent reader in the pro- individual theorists excejated. It be- ceedings of the Lords and Commons on longed to the Royalists equally with the this subject as recorded in their Journals Parliamentarians ; the only difference between Aug. 31 and Sept. 15. The beingthat the objects for "extirpation" parenthetical definition of Prelacy in in their policy were and had been the Art. II. was a suggestion of the As- Calvinisms and Presbyterianisms that sembly's ; the bringing in of Ireland were now exulting in the power of into the Covenant seems to have been a counter-extirpation. The most im- notion of the Commons.
16 LIFE OF MILTON AXD HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
formality ; and the reader has now therefore to add to the list of the Assembly the following Scotsmen : —
DIVINES.
Alexander Henderson : since 1639 one of the ministers of Edinburgh, and since 1640 Rector of the University of Edinburgh (annually re-elected): atat. 60. — As Henderson has appeared again and again in this History, I have only to add here that my researches have more and more convinced me that he was, all in all, one of the ablest and best men of his age in Britain, and the greatest, the wisest, and most liberal, of the Scottish Presbyterians. They had all to consult him ; in every strait and conflict he had to be appealed to, and came in at the last as the man of superemincnt composure, comprehen- siveness, and breadth of brow. Although the Scottish I'resliyterian rule was that no churchman should have authority in State att'airs, it had to be practically waived in his case : he was a Cabinet Minister without office. The tradition in Scotland is perfectly just which recollects him as the second founder of the Reformed Church in that part of the island, its greatest man after Knox. Such is the tradition ; and yet j'ou may look in Encyclopa'dias and such-like works of reference published of late years in Scotland, and not find Henderson's name. The less wonder that he has never received justice in general British History ! I undertake, however, that any free- minded English historian, investigating the course of even specially English History from 1638 to 1646, will dig up the Scottish Henderson for himself and see reason to admire him. — Henderson, it will be remembered, had been in London, on the Anglo-Scottish business, before. But his stay then had been for but seven months (Nov. 1640 — June 1641). Now, as Scottish Commissioner to the Westminster Assembly, he was to remain in England for the best part of three years (Aug. 1643 — Aug. 1646). It was the easier for him to give this service to English Parliamentarianism because he was an unmarried man. His Edinburgh congregation and Edinburgh University had to endure his absence as well as they could. Letters between Edinburgh and London could go and come by sea in ten or twelve days.
George Gillespie : one of the ministers of Edinburgh (formerly minister of the parish of Wemyss in Fifeshire) : a'tat. 31. ^He had flashed into notice in Scotland in 1637, when he was only four-and -twenty years of age. He was then but tutor in the household of the Earl of Cassilis ; but he had written " yl Dispute uijainst tlte English- Popish Ceremonies ohtntded upon the Church of Scotland " ; and the publication of this treatise, happening opportunely in the crisis of the Scottish revolt against Laud's novelties, attracted immediate attention to him, and caused him to be regarded as one of the young hopes of Scottish Presbyterianism. Hence his ajipointment to the parish of Wemyss (1638) ; and hence his previous mission to London, in company with Hender- son, I3aillie, and Blair (1640-41). Returning from that mission, he had been translated from Wemyss to Edinburgh ; but hardly had he settled in Edinburgh when he was again sent off to London on this new business. His wife and family joined him in London. He took a very active part in the business of the Assembly. He died in 1648, soon after his return to Scotland, aged only 35, leaving various writings besides his first one. Among these were Notes of the Proceedings of the Assembly, chiefly during 1644. They were first published from the MSS. in 1846.
Robert Baillie : Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow (formerly minister of Kilwinning in Ayrshire) : atat. 41. — Baillie also had been on the former Scottish Commission to London ; and it was sorely against his will that he was appointed on this second one. He followed Henderson and Gillespie in November 1643, leaving his wife and family in Glasgow. He also remained fully three years in London, attending the Assembly pimctually, but not speaking much. Fortunately, however, he kept up his habit of jotting down in his note-books and his correspondence all he saw and heard. Baillie's Letters and Journals (first properly edited by Mr. David Laing in 1842) are among the most graphic books of contemporary memoir to be found in any language. His faculty of narration in his pithy native Scotch is nothing short of genius. Whenever we have an account from Baillie of anything he saw or was present at, it is worth all other accounts put together for accuracy and vividness. So in his account of Strafford's trial ; and so in his account of his first imjiressions of the Westminster Assembly.
1643-44.] SCOTTISH COMMISSIONEES IN THE ASSEMBLY. 17
Samuel Rutherford : one of the ministers of St. Andrews, and also Professor of Divinity in the University there (formerly minister of Anwoth, Kirkcud- bright) : (ttat. 43. — Of him, as of the others, we have had to take note before. Much of his celebrity in Scottish ecclesiastical history and in the history of Scottish theology had yet to be acquired ; but for sixteen years he had been known as one of the most fervid spirits and most popular preachers in all Scotland. In what mood he accepted his commission to the Westminster As- sembly may be judged from a private letter of his from St. Andrews, Oct. 20, 1643. " My heart beareth me witness," he there says, "and the Lord who is greater knoweth, my faith was never prouder than to be a common rough barrowman in Anwoth, and that I could not look at the honour of being ana mason to lay the foundations for many generations, and to build the waste places of Sion in another kingdom, or to have ane hand in the carved work in the cedar and almug trees in that new Temple." He went to London along with Baillie in November 1643, his wife and family either accompanying him or following him. He also remained in London three years or more, burying two of his children there. He was a much more frequent speaker in the Assembly than Baillie.
LAY COMMISSIONERS.
John, Lord Maitland (eldest son of the Earl of Lauderdale), cefaf. 27. — This young nobleman, who had a long and strange career before him, was now one of the most zealous of the Scottish Covenanters, and was selected by the Scottish Kirk, as one of the lay -elders to be sent to the Westminster Assembly, on account of his great ability and learning. He accompanied Henderson and Gillespie, and took his place in the Assembly in August 1643 : and, from his first arrival in London, he was much courted by the Parlia- mentary leaders. Baillie and the rest were proud of their young noble. This was hardly, however, on account of his personal appearance ; for he was a large-bodied young fellow, red-haired, of boisterous demeanour, and with a tongue too big for his mouth, so that he spluttered and frothed when he spoke. Ah ! could the Scots but have foreseen, could the j'oung fellow him- self but have foreseen, what years would bring about !
Sir Archibald Johnstone of Warriston, Knt. : one of the Judges of the Scottish Court of Session (hence byj courtesy "Lord Warriston"): ceiat. circ. 35. — He had been, as we know, a leader among the Scottish Covenanters since 1637, and his knighthood and judgeship, conferred on him by the King in Edinburgh in 1641, had been the reluctant recogni- tion of his activity during the four preceding years. Beside Henderson
and Argyle there is no man of the Scottish Presbyterians of that time more worthy of mark than Warriston. He had prodigious powers of work, re- quiring but three hours of sleep out of the twenty-four : and he was unusu- ally crafty and long-headed, always ready with lawyer-like expedients. Bishop Burnet, who was his nephew, adds, "He went into very high notions of lengthened devotions, in which he continued many hours a day : he would often pray in his family two hours at a time, and had an unexhausted copiousness that way. What thought soever struck his fancy during these effusions, he looked on it as an answer of prayer, and was wholly determined by it," Such descriptions, and even parts of his own correspondence, might picture him as a kind of fanatical Machiavelli ; but he seems to have been much hked and trusted by all who knew him. Baillie, for instance, addresses him familiarly and heartily as " Archibald " in his more private letters. He had much of his career still before him. — His judgeship and other business in Edinburgh pre- vented him from going to London along with the other Commissioners ; but he took his place in the Westminster Assembly Feb. 1, 1643-4, and was for some time afterwards in England.
[Besides Lord Maitland and Lord Warriston, there were admitted into the Westminster Assembly from time to time other Scottish lay-commissioners, either to make up for the absence of the Earl of Cassilis originally appointed, or for other reasons. Thus in September 1643, when Henderson, Gillespie, and Lord Maitland took their places, Robert Meldrum, a confidential agent of the Scots in London, was admitted along with them ; and the Earl of Loudoun, Lord Balmerino, and even Argyle himself, sat in the Assembly at various times subsequently.]
VOL. Ill C
18 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
Every respect was paid to the Scottish Commissioners in London. They had Worcester House in the City assigned, or rather re-assigned, them for a residence, with St. Antholin's church again made over to them for their preachings ; ^ and they had a special bench of honour in the Assembly. And from that bench, day after day, week after week, month after month, they laboured to direct the Assembly, and, to a great extent, did direct it. For, as the mainly Presbyterian character and composition of the Assembly at its first meeting had been the result of the influence of Scottish example and of continued Scottish action in England for a year or two, so it was to Henderson's Covenant, and to the presence of the Scottish Commissioners in London, that the Assembly, while yet in its infancy, was indebted (if it was a debt) for a new impulse or twist in the strict Presby- terian direction. English Presbyterianism might be willing, but it was vague and uninformed ; whereas here, in the Scottish Commissioners, were men who knew all about Presbyterianism, had every detail of it at their fingers' ends, had studied it nearly all their lives, and had worked it practically for five years. What a boon to England to be able to borrow for a year or two such a group of Scottish instructors ! It was as if a crowd of Volunteers, right- minded and willing to learn, had secured a few highly- recommended regulars to be their drill-sergeants.
DEBATES IN THE ASSEMBLY : PRESBYTERIANISM AND INDE- PENDENCY : THE APOLOGETIC NARRATION OF THE IN- DEPENDENTS.
It was not till October 12, 1643, that the real debating in the Assembly began. Till then they had been occupied with matters in which they could be pretty nearly of one
1 Memoir of Baillie, by David Laing, house, is made the residence of the
in BaiUie's Letters and .Journals, p. li. Scottish Commissioners ; but Mr. Laing
In Cunningham's " London," and else- points out that it was Worcester House
where, Worcester House in the Strand, or Worcester Place in the City, which
on the site of the present Beaufort had been the mansion of John Tiptoft,
Buildings, afterwards Lord Clarendon's Earl of Worcester.
1643-44.] DEBATES IN THE ASSEMBLY. 19
mind, including their revision of the Thirty-nine Articles. In that business, where we left them at the Tenth Article {anU, p. 6), they had crawled on through five Articles more : viz. — "XL Of Justification ly Faith" ; " XII. Of Good Works " ; " XIII. Of Works before Justification " ; " XIV. Of Works of Supererogation " ; " XV. Of Christ alone ivith- out Sin " ; and on the 12th of October they were busy over Article XVI. " Of Sin after Baptism." But on that day they received an order from the two Houses (and Scottish influence is here visible) to leave for the present their revision of the Thirty-nine Articles, and proceed at once to the stiffer questions of the new form of Church-government and the new Directory of Worship for England.^ Of these questions the Assembly chose the first to begin with. On what a sea of troubles they were then launched !
(1) Church Officers and Offices. — Under this heading alone they had debates extending over nearly three months (Oct. 1643 — Jan. 1643-4), and labouring successively through such topics as these — Christ's Priesthood, Prophet- ship, and Kingship, with the nature of his Headship over the Church ; the Church officers under Christ men- tioned in Scripture (Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Doctors or Teachers, Bishops or Overseers, Presbyters or Elders, Deacons, and Widows), with the nature of their functions respectively, and the proper discrimination between those of them that were extraordinary and temporary and those that were to be ordinary and permanent in the Church ; the settling there- from of the officers properly belonging to each modern Christian congregation, and especially whether there should be ruling lay-elders along with the pastor or minister, and, if so, what should be their exact duties. Gradually, in the course of this long discussion, carried on day after day in the slowest syllogistic way, the differences of the Inde- pendents and the Erastians from the Presbyterian majority of the Assembly came out. On the question of lay-eldership, indeed, there was a more extensive contest. Such English Presbyterians as Mr. Vines, Mr. Palmer, and Mr. Gataker,
1 Lightfoot's Notes, p. 17.
20 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
joined with the Erastian Divines, Lightfoot and Coleman, and with the Independents, in wholly or partially opposing lay-eldership, against the advocacy of their brethren, Marshall, Calamy, Newcomen, Young (four of the Smectymnuans), Sea- man, Herle, Walker, "Whitaker and others, backed by the Scottish Commissioners. On the whole, however, the votes were decidedly in favour of the Scottish Presbyterian arrange- ment of church offices. Henderson occasionally waived a point for the sake of accommodation.
(2) Ordination : — This subject and its adjuncts occupied the Assembly during some fourteen sittings in January 1643-4. Ordination having been defined to be " the solemn setting apart of a person to some public church office," it was voted, not without opposition, that such ordination is always to be continued in the church, and consequently that there should not be promiscuous preaching by all and sundry, but only preaching by authorized persons. But then who were to ordain ? What were to be the qualifications for being ordained to the pastoral office ? How far were the congrega- tions or parishioners to have a voice in the election of their pastors ? What was to be the ceremonial of ordination ? On these points, or on some of them, the Independents fought stoutly, being carefully on their guard against anything that might endanger their main principle of the completeness of every congregation of believers within itself. Selden also interposed with perturbing Erastian arguments. On the whole, however, in this matter also the drift of the Assembly was as the Presbyterians wished. While it was agreed that " in extraordinary cases something extraordinary may be done until a settled order can be had," it was voted that even in such cases there should be a " keeping as near as possibly may be to the rule " ; which rule was indicated, so far at least, by the resolution that " preaching Presbyters may ordain," or that Bishops are not required for the act. But, before this subject of Ordination could be carried farther, it melted into a larger one.
(3) Presbyterial Government or Congregationalism: — This controversy, which had been underlying the whole course
1643-44.] DEBATES IN THE ASSEMBLY. 21
of the previous debating, emerged in express terms before the end of January 1643-4. Then began the real tug of the verbal war. It is unnecessary to enumerate all the items of the controversy. The battle was essentially between two principles of church - organization. Was every individual assembly, or association of Christians (it might be of hundreds of persons, or it might be of as few as seven persons, volun- tarily drawn together), to be an independent ecclesiastical organism, entitled to elect its own pastor and other officers, and to exercise the powers of admonition and excommunica- tion within itself — any action of surrounding congregations upon it being an action of mere observation and criticism, and not of power or jurisdiction ; and no authority to belong to meetings of the office-bearers of congregations of the same city or neighbourhood, or to general synods of office-bearers, however useful for various purposes such occasional meetings and synods might be ? This was what the Independents main- tained; and to this the Presbyterians vehemently said Nay. It was not desirable, they said in the first place, that congrega- tions themselves should be mere gatherings of Christians drawn together by chance affinities. That would be to put an end to the parochial system, with all the advantages of orderliness and effective administration that belonged to it. Let every congregation consist, as heretofore, mainly of the inhabitants of one parish or definitely -marked ecclesiastical territory. Then let there be a strict inter-connectedness of all these parochial congregations over the whole land by means of an ascending series of church-judicatories. Let the congrega- tions of the same town or district be connected by a Presby- terial Court, consisting of the assembled ministers and the ruling lay-elders of all the congregations, periodically review- ing the proceedings of the said congregations individually, or hearing appeals from them ; and let these Presbyteries or Presbyterial Courts be in like manner under the authority and review of Synods, embracing many Presbyteries within their bounds, and, finally, of National Assemblies of the whole Church. Pierce and hot waxed the war between the two systems. Much turned on the practice of the apostolic
22 LIFE OF JVIILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME.
churches or primitive Christian communities of Jerusalem, Ephesus, Antioch, Corinth, &c., as it could be gathered from various passages of Scripture ; and great was the display of learning, Hebraic and Hellenistic, over these passages on both sides. Goodwin was the chief speaker for the Independents ; but he was aided by ISTye, Burroughs, Bridge, and Simpson ; and Selden struck in, if not directly for Congregationalism, at least so as to perplex the Presbyterians. On the other side Marshall and the other Smectymnuans were conspicuous, with Vines, Seaman, Burges, Palmer, Herle, and Whitaker. Hen- derson looked on and assisted when required. But no one on this side was more energetic than Henderson's young colleague, Gillespie. His countryman Baillie was in raptures with him, and in writing to Scotland and to Holland could not praise him enough. " Of a truth," he says in one letter, " there is " no man whose parts in a public debate I do so admire. He " has studied so accurately all the points that ever yet came " to our Assembly, he has got so ready, so assured, so solid " a way of public debating, that, however there be in the " Assembly divers very excellent men, yet, in my poor judg- " ment, there is not one who speaks more rationally and to " the point than that brave youth has done ever." On one occasion Gillespie, on a question of sheer learning, dared to grapple even with the great Selden, and with such effect, according to tradition (Scottish !), that even Selden reeled. And so on and on, from January 1643-4, through February, March, and April, the debate proceeded, and there seemed to be no likely end to it. For, though Congregationalism was maintained but by a small knot of men in the Assembly, they fought manfully, inch by inch, and there were various reasons why the majority, instead of overwhelming them by a conclu- sive vote or two, allowed them to struggle on. For one thing, though Baillie thought there was a " woful longsomeness " in the slow English forms of debating at such a time, it was felt by the English members that, in so important a business as the settling of a new constitution for the National Church, hurry would be unbecoming. But, besides this, the Assembly was not a body legislating in its own right. It had been
1643-44.] APOLOGETICAL NARRATION OF INDEPENDENTS. 23
called only to advise the Parliament ; and, though its delibera- tions were with closed doors, was not all that it did from day to day pretty well known, not only in Parliament, but in London and throughout the country ? Might not the little knot of Independents fighting within the Assembly repre- sent an amount of opinion out of doors too large to be trifled with ? ^
None knew this better than the little knot of Independents in the Assembly itself. They had already acted on the know- ledge. Foreseeing that the determination of the great ques- tion in the Assembly would inevitably be against them, they had taken the precaution, before the question came on in its final form, to record an appeal from the Assembly to Parlia- ment and public opinion. This they had done in a so-called Apologetical Narration, presented to Parliament, and pub- lished and put in circulation not later than the beginning of January 1643-4."' It is a tract of some thirty quarto pages, signed openly by the five writers — Thomas Goodwin, Sidrach Simpson, Philip Nye, Jeremiah Burroughs, and William Bridge. Having explained first that they had been in no haste to press their peculiar opinions, and would have pre- ferred to disclose them gradually, but that recent experience had left them no option but to appeal to Parliament as " the supreme judicatory of this kingdom," and " the most sacred refuge and asylum for mistaken and misjudged innocence," they proceed to a historical sketch of their doings while they
1 In Lightfoot's Notes of the Assem- fused in his account of the Assembly,
bly and Gillespie's similar Notes, the and does not seem to have studied its
proceedings which I have endeavoured proceedings well. In Hetherington's
to summarize in this paragraph and the History of the Westminster Assembly
two preceding may be traced in detail — there is a fairish popular account, com-
Lightfoot's Notes traversing, with great piled from Lightfoot and Gillespie. —
minuteness, the whole of the time under Last of all, as not published till 1874,
notice ; and Gillespie's beginning at may be now mentioned the authorita-
Feb. 2, 1643-4. Prefixed to Gillespie's tive volume entitled Minutes of the
Notes, as edited by Meek in 1846, there Sessions of the Westminster Assembly of
is, however, a very useful set of official Divines (Nov. 1644 to March 1649),
minutes of the proceedings from Oct. from Transcripts of the Originals pro-
17, 1643, onwards, by the Scribes of the cured by a Committee of the General
Assembly; which may be compared Assembly of the C'hmrh of Scotland, und
with Lightfoot's more extensive jot- edited by the Rev. Professor Alex. F.
tings. There are excellent and luminous Mitchell, D.D., and the Rev. John
notices of the Assembly's proceedings Struthers, LL.D.
during most of the time indicated in - I find it registered at Stationers'
Baillie, II. 106—174. Neal is very con- Hall, Dec. 30, 1643.
24 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
had been iu Holland, and an exposition of their differences from their Presbyterian brethren. Three principles of prac- tical conduct, they say, had taken firm hold of them — first, that their supreme rule in church-matters, out of themselves, should be the pattern of the primitive or apostolic churches ; secondly, that they would not bind themselves by their present judgment in any matter against a possible future change of judgment ; and, thirdly, that they would study accommoda- tion, as far as they could, to the judgments of others. Acting on these principles, but foreseeing the condemnation of their Congregationalism by the Assembly, they hoped at least that the issue would be so regulated finally by Parliament that they might not be driven into exile again, but might be permitted " to continue in their native country, with the enjoyment of the ordinances of Christ, and an indulgence in some lesser differences," so long as they continued peaceable subjects.^
This appeal to Cassar by the five leading Independents had by no means pleased the rest of the Assembly. Though they acknowledged the great ability and even the moderation of the dissentients, they thought it an unfriendly stroke of policy on their part to have thus sheltered themselves by anticipation under the power outside. But, indeed, it was more than a stroke of personal policy. The five knew that they were speaking not for themselves only, but for all that might adhere to them. Their act reminded the Assembly of what was otherwise becoming apparent — to wit, that the Assembly was after all but an imperfect representation of contemporary English opinion. It was an ark floating on a troubled sea, with its doors and windows well pitched, and perhaps with Noah on board, but not all Koah's family, and certainly not specimens of all the living creatures, even of non-episcopal kinds, that were to survive into the new order of things. What if, on the subsidence of the waters, the sm-vivors in this ark should find tliemselves confronted with another population, which, having survived somehow on
J Neal, III 1.31—133 \ Narration it- morials relating to the Independents, self ; also Hanbury s Historical Me- Vol. IL (1841), pp. 221—230.
1643-44.] ANSWEES TO THE APOLOGETICAL NARRATION. 25
chauce spars and rafts, must be included in the new com- munity, and yet would insist that questions should be kept open in that community that had been settled by votes passed within the ark ? That such was likely to be the case the Presbyterians already had proof.
AVhat, then, were they to do ? In the first place, as they believed Noah to be within their ark, they were to trust to his power, and the veneration that would be accorded to him, when he should re-emerge. In other words, they were to press on the Presbyterian theory in the Assembly, allowing " the Five Dissenting Brethren," as they were now called, the most prolix liberty of speech and reasoning, but always beating them in the final vote so as to secure a thoroughly Presbyterian report to Parliament at the last. But, in the second place, as the Independents had appealed to public opinion against such a contingency, it was neces- sary not only to carry Presbyterianism within the Assembly, but also to argue for it out of doors. Hence, through the year 1644, among the shoals of pamphlets that came from the London press (including Fast -day Sermons, Sermons before the Lords and Commons, &c., by the most eminent members of Assembly) there were not a few pleas for Presby- tery, intended to counteract the effects of the Apologeticcd Narration and other pleas for Congregationalism. Eutherford's Temperate Plea for Paul's Presbytery in Scotland, or Modest Dispute touching Independency of particular Congregations, and the same author's Peaceable Plea for the Government of the Church of Scotland, had preceded the Apologetical Narra- tion; but the express answers to the Narrationwere numerous. One of the most celebrated of these was a pamphlet entitled Some Observations and Annotations upon the Apologetical Narration, addressed to the Parliament and the Assembly by a writer who signs himself merely " A. S.," but is known to have been a certain Dr. Adam Steuart, a Scot residing in London, but who soon afterwards received a call to Leyden. To this pamphlet there were replies on the part of the Inde- ]3endents, especially one entitled M. S. to A. S. (a title changed in a second edition into " A Rep)ly of Tvjo of the Brethren
26 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
to A. S.") ; again " A. S." responded ; and so the controversy went on, pamphlets thickening on pamphlets.^
PROCEEDINGS OF PARLIAMENT TO FEB. 1643-4: STATE OF THE WAR : THE SCOTTISH AUXILIARY ARMY.
Meanwhile, notwithstanding this ominous difference in the Assembly on the great question of Church-government, all parties in the Assembly were co-operating harmoniously with each other and with Parliament in other important items of the general " Eeformation " which was in progress. The chief of these items may be grouped under headings : —
Simplification of Church Service, and Supj^'^'ession of un- popular Bites and Symbols. — This process, which had been going on naturally from the beginning of the Parlia- ment, and more violently and riotously in some places since the beginning of the war, had been accelerated by recent Parliamentary enactments. Thus, in May 1643, just when Milton was preparing to leave London on his marriage holiday, there had been a tearing down, by authority, with the sound of trumpets and amid the huzzas of the citizens, of Cheapside Cross, Charing Cross, and other such street- monuments of too Popish make. At the same time the anti-Sabbatarian " Book of Sports " had been publicly burnt. Then followed (Aug. 27) an ordinance for removing out of churches all " superstitious images, crucifixes, altars," &c. ; the effect of which for the next few months was a more or less rough visitation of pickaxing, chipping, and chiselling in all the parish-chmxhes within the Parliament's bounds that had not already been Puritanized by private effort. Then, again, on the 20 th of November, the House of Commons recommended to the consideration of the Assembly a new English Version of the Psalms, which had been recently executed, and put into print, by the much-respected member for Truro, Mr. Francis Eous. Ought not Sternhold
1 Lowndes's Bibl. Manual, by Bohn, sffj., and 341 et seq., where there are
Article "Steuart, Adam"; Baillie, II. full accounts of the pamphlets, with
216 ; and Hanbury's Hist. Memorials extracts. relating to the Independents, II. 251 et
1643-44.] PROCEEDINGS OF PARLIAMENT. 27
and Hopkins's Version to be disused among other lumber ; and, if so, might not Eous's Version be adopted instead, for use in churches ? It would be a merited compliment and also a source of private profit to the veteran Pm^itan — whom the Parliament, at any rate, were about to appoint to the Provostship of Eton College (worth 800/. a year and more), instead of the Malignant, Dr. Stewart, then with his Majesty. The Assembly did actually take up Eous's Psalter, his friends pressing it on the old gentleman's account, but others not thinking it good enough ; and we find Baillie regretting, Scot-like, when the subject was first brought up, that he had not with him a copy of another version of the Psalms then in MS., by his friend and countryman. Sir William Mure of Eowallan. This version he liked best of any he had seen, and thought decidedly better than Eous's ; and, if he had had a copy, he might have been able to do his friend a good turn ! ^ The adoption of Eous's Psalter was not immediately voted by the Assembly, but lay over along with the general business of the new Directory for Worship. In this business too they were making some private progress in Committee, though retarded by the debates on Church- government ; and there was every likelihood of substantial agreement here. Independents and Erastians were pretty sure to agree with Presbyterians on the subjects of the Liturgy, Sabbath-observance, abolition of Festival-days, and the recom- mendation of a plain and Puritan church-service generally. There were significant proofs of this. Actually on Christmas- day 1643 (who would have thought it?) the Lords and Commons met for business as usual, thus showing the example of contempt of the great holiday — all the more to the delight of the Scottish Commissioners, and of the zealous Puritans of the Assembly and the City, because the Assembly was
1 Commons Journals, Nov. 20, 1643 ; "much honoured friend." Rowallan's
Baillie, II. 101 (and note), and 120 — 121. Psalms remain in MS. to this day ; but
Baillie, at the very time he was pri- specimens of them have been published,
vately wishing he had his friend Row- See Baillie's Letters, pp. 535-6 of Ap-
allan's Psalms to pit against Rous's, pendix. Vol. III. ; where there is an
was becoming acquainted with Rous ; interesting and curious history of Eng-
to whom in a month or two he dedi- lish Versions of the Psalms, by the
cated a sermon of his preached before editor, Mr. David Laing. the Commons. He there calls Rous his
28 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
still weak-hearted enough as a whole to adjourn for that day. It was the Scottish Commissioners, indeed, that had contrived this rebuke to the weaker spirits. And within a week or two thereafter there was this farther Puritan triumph — also the contrivance of the Scottish Commissioners through their friends in Parliament, — that the use of the Liturgy was dis- continued in the two Houses, in favour of extempore prayers by Divines appointed for the duty by the Assembly.^
Ejection of Scandalous and Malignant Ministers. — A some- what wholesale process, described in such terms by the winning side, had been going on, everywhere within the sway of Parliament, for several months. It was part, indeed, of a more general process, for the sequestration to the use of Parliament of the estates of notorious Delinquents of all kinds, which had been the subject of various Parliamentary ordinances. ^ By these ordinances a machinery for the work of sequestration had been established, consisting of a central committee in London, and of committees in all the accessible counties. The special application of this machinery to clerical delinquents had come about gradually. From the very beginningof theParliament(Nov. 1640)there had beenagrand Committee of the Commons, of which Mr. White, member for Southwark, was chairman, for inquiring into the scandalous immoralities of the clergy, and an acting Sub-committee, of which Mr. White also was chairman, for considering how scandalous ministers might be removed, and real preaching ministers put in their places. By the action of these com- mittees month after month — receiving and duly investigating complaints brought against clergymen, either of scandalous lives or of notoriously Laudian opinions and practices — a very large number of clergymen had been placed on the black books, and some actually ejected, before the commencement of the war. But, after the war began, sharper action became necessary. For now the Parliament had to provide for what were called " the plundered ministers " — i.e. for those Puritan
1 Baillie, IL 120 and 130. Journals, Vol. IIL, mh voce " Delin-
2 Commons Journal from March ijuents." See also the main sequestra- 1642-3 onwards. For sequence of pro- ting ordinances (March 31 and Aug. 19, ceedings and dates, see Index to 1643) in Scobell's collection.
1643-44.] PROCEEDINGS OF PARLIAMENT. 29
ministers who, driven from their parsonages in various parts of the country by the King's soldiers, had to flock into London, with their families, for refuge and subsistence. A special Committee of the Commons had been appointed (Dec. 1642) to devise ways and means for the relief of these " godly and well-affected ministers " ; and, as was na- tural, the proceedings of this Committee had become inter- wound with those of the Committee for the ejection of scandalous ministers — Mr. White at the head of the whole agency. And so, in the Commons, we hear ultimately of such determinations as these respecting " scandalous ministers": — July 3, 1643 : "Ordinance to be prepared to enable the Committees (for sequestration) in the several counties to sequester their livings " ; — July 27:" the Com- mittee for plundered Ministers to consider of informations against them and to put them to the proof"; — Sept. 6: " Deputy Lieutenants and Committees in the counties em- powered to examine witnesses against them." The result was the beginning of that " great and general purgation of the clergy in the Parliament's quarters" about which there was such an outcry among the Eoyalists at the time, and which, after having been a rankling memory in the High Church heart for seventy years, became the main text of Walker's famous folio of 1714 on "The Sufferings of the Clergy of the Church of England in the Grand Eebellion." According to that book, and to Eoyalist tradition, it was a ruthless persecution and spoliation of all the best, the most vener- able, and the most learned of the clergy of England. Fuller, however, writing at the time, and corroborated by Baxter, represents the facts more fairly. Not a few of the clergy first ejected, he admits, were really men of scandalous private character, and were turned out expressly on that account ; others, who were turned out for what was called their " false doctrine," or obstinate adherence to that Arminian theology and ceremonial of worship which the nation had condemned, might regard themselves as simply suffering in their turn what Puritan ministers had suffered abundantly enough under the rule of Laud ; and, if gradually the sequestration
30 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
extended itself beyond these two categories of " scandalous ministers " and " ministers of unsound faith," and swept in among " malignants " generally, or those whose only fault was that they were prominent adherents to the King, what was that but one of the harsh natural vengeances of a civil war ? At the beginning of the purgation, at all events, Parliament professed carefulness and even leniency in its choice of victims. A jEifth of the income of every ejected minister was reserved to his wife and family ; and, in order that the public, and even the Royalists, might judge of the equity with which Parliament had proceeded in so odious a business, Mr. White, the chairman of the committees on clerical delinquency, put forth in print (Nov. 19, 1643) his " First Century of Scandalous Malignant Priests," or statement of the cases of one hundred of the sequestered clergy, chiefly in London and the adjacent counties, with the reasons of their ejection. At the time when Mr. White (thenceforward known as " Century White ") put forth this pamphlet, the number of the ejected must have already considerably exceeded one hundred, or perhaps even three hundred ; and, as the war went on, and sequestration be- came more and more co-extensive with " malignancy," the number sw^elled till, as is calculated, some 1,500 or 1,600 clergymen in all, or about a sixth part of the total clergy of England, were thrown out of their livings.^
Filling up of Vacant Livings ly the ajJj^ointinent of Ne%o Ministers. — For the sequestered livings there were, of course, numerous candidates. Not only were there the " plundered " Puritan ministers, most of them congregated in London, to be provided for ; but there were the young Divinity scholars growing up, for whom, even in a state of war, or at least for such of them as took the side of Parliament, it was necessary to find employment. Obviously, however, some order or method had to be adopted in the exercise of the large patronage of vacant livings which had tluis come suddenly
1 Commons Journals of dates July 3, (ed. 1842), III. 458—460 ; Neal's Puri- July 27, and Sept. 6, 1643 ; White's tans, III. 23—34. See also Hallam's First Century ; Fuller's Church History Const. Hist. (10th ed.), IL 164—166.
1643-44.] PROCEEDINGS OF PARLIAMENT. 31
into the hands of Parliament. The phmdered ministers could not be thrust promiscuously, or by mere lottery, into such livings as were vacant. They had all, certainly, the qualifi- cation of being already ordained ; but there were different sorts of persons among them, and some with very little to recommend them except their distress. It was essential that there should be some examination or re-examination of all such petitioners for new livings, in order that the unfit should not be appointed, and that the others might be provided for according to their degrees of fitness. Accordingly, at the request of the two Houses, the Westminster Assembly (Oct. 1643) appointed two-and-twenty of its Divines to be a committee for examining and reporting on the qualifications of all such petitioners for livings as might be referred to it by Parliament. About the same time a provisional arrange- ment was made for the more difficult matter of ordaining new candidates for the Ministry. The whole question of Ordination having yet to be argued and settled in the Assembly (see anU, p. 20), it was felt on all hands that some temporary arrangement was imperative. Accordingly, by the advice of the Assembly, the whole business of deciding who were fit to be ordained, and of duly ordaining such, was entrusted by Parliament to certain committees or asso- ciations of godly ministers, themselves already ordained, appointed for certain centres and districts. The chief Ordain- ing Committee was, of course, that for London and the country round. This committee, to which was assigned not only the ordination of new ministers for its important dis- trict, but also the ordination of all chaplains for the army and navy, consisted of twenty-three associated Presbyters (ten Divines of the Assembly and thirteen parish-ministers of London not in the Assembly), of whom seven were to be a quorum. Whosoever, not already ordained, should presume to preach publicly or otherwise exercise the ministerial office without having been ordained by this association, or one of the others, or at least without a certificate of having been approved by the Examining Committee of the Assembly, was to be reported to Parliament for censure and punish-
32 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME.
ment. The London Divines were enjoined to be careful whom they admitted into their pulpits. In short, it was the object of both the Parliament and the Assembly to proclaim their determination that, while the question of Church- government was being considered, some decent rule of practical order should be carefully observed, and England should not be allowed to lapse, as the Eoyalists were giving out, into a mere anarchy of ranters, preaching cobblers, and every fool his own parson.^
Visitation of the University of Cambridge. — While the scandalous and malignant among the parish clergy were being sequestered and ejected, it was not to be expected that Parliament would spare the Universities. Oxford, for the present, was beyond reach ; but Cambridge was within reach. Was it to be endured that, while the town of Cambridge was the very centre of the Associated Eastern Counties, the most zealously Parliamentarian region in all England, the Uni- versity should be a fortress of malignancy, with many of its Heads of Houses and Fellows notoriously disaffected to Parlia- ment, and showing their disaffection by sermons, publications from the University press, continuance of the forbidden usages and symbolisms in the College chapels, and such other acts of contumacy ? For a long time Parliament had been asking itself this question. As early as June 10, 1643, the subject of " some effectual means of reforming " the University of Cambridge, " purging it from all abuses, innovations, and superstitions," and dealing with conspicuous malignants in it, had been under discussion in the Commons. There had been a reluctance, however, to proceed too rapidly, or so as to incur the Eoyalist reproaches of " invasion of University rights " and " ruin of a great seat of learning." Hence, what- ever dealings with the University had been necessary had been left very much to the discretion of the ordinary agencies representing Parliament in the Associated Counties, at the head of which, since Aug. 1643, had been the Earl of Man- chester. There was even a Parliamentary ordinance (Jan. 6, 1643-4) explaining that, whatever sequestration there might
1 Neal, III. 88—90, and 138—141.
1643-44.] VISITATION OF CAMBRIDGE ORDERED. 33
be of the revenues of individual delinquents in the University, every regard was to be paid to the property of the University as such, and not an atom of it should be alienated. By this time, however, it was felt that the malignancy of the Uni- versity must be dealt with more expressly. Accordingly, on the 22nd of January there was passed "an Ordinance for regulating the University of Cambridge and for removing of scandalous Ministers in the several Associate Counties." By this ordinance it was provided that, " whereas many com- " plaints are made by the well-affected inhabitants of the " associated counties of Essex, Norfolk, Suftblk, Hertford, " Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Lincoln, that the service of '•' the Parliament is retarded, the enemy strengthened, the " people's souls starved, and their minds diverted from any " care of God's cause, by their idle, ill-affected and scandalous " clergy of the University of Cambridge and the Associated " Counties," and whereas " many that would give evidence " against such scandalous ministers are not able to travel to " London," therefore the Earl of Manchester should be com- missioned to take the necessary steps in the University and the Coimties themselves. He was to appoint Committees who were to have " power to call before them all Provosts, " Masters, and Fellows of Colleges, all students and members " of the University, and all ministers in any county of the " Association, and all schoolmasters " ; and, after due inquiry by these Committees, he was to have power " to eject such " as he shall judge unfit from their places, and to sequester " their estates, means and revenues, and to place other fitting " persons in their room, such as shall be approved of by the " Assembly of Divines." A very important ordinance, as we shall see in due time.^
The reader need hardly be reminded by what authority all these acts and changes in the system of England were decreed and carried into effect. Since the beginning of the war the government of England, except where the King's
1 Commons .Journals, June 10, 1643, Jan. 6 and Jan. 22, 1643-4 ; and Neal, and Jan. 20, 1643-4 ; Lords Journals, III. 105—107.
VOL. Ill D
34 LIFE OF MILTOX AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
troops were in possession, had been in the two Houses of Parliament sitting at Westminster; but since July 1643 it may be said rather to have been in these two Hovises of Parliament vAth the Assembly of Divines. What the reader requires, however, to be reminded of is the smallness numerically of this governing body. The House of Lords, in particular, though still retaining all its nominal dignity and keeping up all its stately forms, was a mere shred of its former self About 29 or 30 persons, out of the total Peerage of England, as we reckoned (Vol. II. pp. 430-31), had avowed themselves Parliamentarians ; so that, had all these been present, the House of Lords would have been but a very small gathering. But, as a certain number even of these were always absent on military duty or on other occasions, it was seldom that more than 14 or 15 Peers were present in the House around Lord Grey of Wark on the woolsack as elected Speaker. Sometimes, when the business was merely formal, the number sank to 4 or 5 ; and I do not think the Lords Journals register, dm-ing the whole time with which we are now concerned, a larger attend- ance than 22. That was the numljer present on the 22nd of January 1643-4, when the ordinance for visiting Cam- bridge University was passed.^ In the Commons, of course, the attendance was much larger. When a " whip " was necessary, between 200 and 300 could be got together. Thus on the 25th of September 1643, which was the day of inaugurating the Covenant, 220 were present ; and on the above-mentioned 22nd of January 1643-4 — an important day for various reasons — as many as 2 8 0 made their appearance, while it was calculated that 100 were absent in the Parlia- mentary service.^ Usually, however, the attendance was much less numerous. On a vote taken Nov. 26, 1643, the division showed 59 against 58, or 117 present; and this appears to be rather above the mark of the attendance in
general. On the whole, one may say that the business of
the nation in the interest of Parliament was carried on
1 As the Lords Journals give the ject is obtainable from them, names of the Peers present each day, 2 parl. Hist. III. 199
very accurate information on this sub-
1643-44.] THE WAR GOING ON LANGUIDLY. 35
habitually during those important months by some 1 2 or 1 5 Parliamentarian Peers, and some 100 Commoners, keeping up the forms of the two Houses, and having for their assessors, and in part for their spurs and tutors, the 60 or 80 Puritan Divines who sat close at hand in the Jerusalem Chamber.
Was all this to last ? Whether it was to last or not depended not a little on the conduct of the Parliament itself, but greatly more on the conduct of the generals and armies that held up its banners in various parts of England. And how, since our last glimpses of the state of the war in the dark month of Hampden's death and the month following that (June and July 1643), had the war been going on ? Much as before. What do we see ? A siege here and a siege there, a skirmish here and a skirmish there, ending sometimes for the Parliament, but as often for the King ; amid all these sieges and skirmishes no battle of any magnitude, save the first Battle of Newbery (Sept. 20, 1643), where Lord Falk- land, weary of his life, was slain, and also the Koyalist Earls of Carnarvon and Sunderland, but otherwise the damage to the King was inconsiderable ; Essex still heavy and solemn, an excellent man, but a woful commander-in- chief ; little Sir William Waller still the favourite and set up against Essex, but confidence in him somewhat shaken by his recent defeats ; the Fairfaxes in the north, and others in other parts, doing at best but respectably ; Cromwell, it is true, a marked man and always successful wherever he appeared, but appearing yet only as Colonel Cromwell ! " For the present the Parliament side is running down the brae," wrote the sagacious Baillie, Sept. 22, 1643; and again, more pithily, Dec. 7, " They may tig-tag on this way this twelvemonth." The only remedy, Baillie thought — the only thing that would change the sluggish " tig-tagging " of Essex and the English into something like what a war should be — was the expected coming-in of the Scots. For this event the English Parliamentarians also longed vehe- mently. " All things are expected from God and the Scots " is Baillie's description of the feeling in London in the
36 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
winter of 1643-4. For, though the bringiug in of a Scot- tish force auxiliary to the English army had been arranged for in the autumn — though it was for that end that the English Parliament had sent Commissioners to Edinburgh, had accepted Henderson's " Solemn League and Covenant," and had admitted Scottish Commissioners into the West- minster Assembly — yet the completing of the negotiations, and the getting togetlier and equipping of the Scottish army for its southward march, had been a work of time. About Christmas 1643 it was understood that the Scots were in readiness to march; but the precise time when they might be expected to cross the border was yet in anxious conjecture.^
It was an unusually severe winter, cold and snowy. The Londoners, in especial, deprived of their coal from New- castle, felt it severely. Baillie particularly mentions the comfortable hangings of the Jerusalem Chamber, and the good fire kept bm-ning in it, as " some dainties in London " at that date, and duly appreciated by the members of the Assembly.2 Among the printed broad -sheets of the time that were hawked about London, I have seen one entitled " Artificial Fire ; or, Coal for Rich and Poor : this beinr/ the offer of an excellent new Invention." The invention consists of a proposal to the Londoners of a cheap substi- tute for coal, devised by a " Mr. Kichard Gesling, Ingineer, late deceased." Mr. Gesling's idea was that, if you take brickdust, mortar, sawdust, or the like, and make up paste- balls thereof mingled with the dust of sea-coal or Scotch coal, and with stable-litter, you will have a fuel much more economical than coal itself. But, though this is the prac- tical proposal of the fly-sheet, its main interest lies in its lamentation over the lack of the normal fuel. " Some fine- " nosed city dames," it says, " used to tell their husbands, ' 0 " husband ! we shall never be well, we nor our children, whilst " we live in the smell of this city's sea-coal smoke ! Pray, a " country-house for our health, that we may get out of this "sea -coal smell!' But how many of these fine -nosed
1 Baillie, II. 83, 99, 104-5, and 114-15. 2 ibjd. n. 106.
1643-44.] SCOTTISH AUXILIARY ARMY WELCOMED. 37
" dames now cry, ' Would to God we had sea - coal ! Oh ! " the want of fire undoes us ! 0 the sweet sea-coal fires " we used to have ! how we want them now ! no fire to " your sea-coal !'.... This for the rich : a word for " the poor ! The great want of fuel for fire makes many " a poor creature cast about how to pass over this cold " winter to come ; but, finding small redress for so cruel an " enemy as the cold makes, some turn thieves that never " stole before — steal posts, seats, benches from doors, rails, " nay, the very stocks that should punish them ; and all to " keep the cold winter away." ^ — If on no other account than the prospect of a reopening of the coal-traftic between Newcastle and London, what joy among the Londoners when the news came that, on Friday the 19th of January 1643-4, the expected Scottish army had entered England by Berwick ! They had entered it, toiling through deep snow, 21,500 strong, and were already — God be praised ! — spreading them- selves over the winter-white fields of the very region where the coal lay black underground. At their head who but old Field-marshal Leslie, now Earl of Leven, Scottish com- mander-in-chief for the third time, and tolerably well acquainted already with the North of England ? Second in command to him, as Lieutenant-general of the Foot, was William Baillie, of Letham, in this post for the second time ; and the Major-general, with command of the horse, was David Leslie, a third Gustavus-Adolphus man, and, though a namesake of the commander-in-chief, only dis- tantly related to him. The Marquis of Argyle accompanied the invaders, nominally as Colonel of a troop of horse ; and among the other colonels of foot or horse were the Earls of Cassilis, Lindsay, Loudoun, Buccleugh, Dunfermline, Lothian, Marischal, Eglinton, and Dalhousie. The expenses of the army, averaging 1,000/. per diem (6f?. a day for each common foot-soldier, 8d. for a horse-soldier, and so on upwards) were, by agreement, to be charged to England.^
1 Folio sheet dated 1644 {i.e. winter 2 Rushw. V. 604-7 ; Pari, Hist. Ill,
of 1643-4, in British Museum Library : 200, 201 ; Baillie, II. 100 and 137. Press-mark, 669, f. |f .
IvG^xV
38 LIFE OF -MILTON AND HISTOllY OF HIS TIME.
The condition on which the Scots had consented thns to aid the English Parliament must not be forgotten. It was the agreement of the two nations in one and the same religious Covenant. In all the negotiations that had been going on between London and Edinburgh, the Scots had always assumed the fulfilment of this condition on the part of the English. And, so far, we have seen, it had already been fulfilled. Since September 1643, when Henderson's Covenant had first been proposed to the English Parliament and the Westminster Assembly, and the Commons and the West- minster Divines had set the example by swearing to it col- lectively in one of the London chm^ches, " the Covenant " had been a phrase familiar to the English mouth. In all the miscellaneous activity of the Parliament for the detection and disabling of " Malignants," there had been no instrument more effective or more commonly used. There were other tests and oaths by which the " malignants " might be dis- tinguished from the " well-affected " ; but the taking or not taking of the Solemn League and Covenant was the test paramount. Wherever the Parliament had power it had been in operation. Since December 20, for example, it had been the law that no one could be a Common Councilman of the City of London who had not subscribed to the Covenant. Still, in this matter of subscription to the Covenant, the English, both as the larger nation and as the less accustomed to Covenants, had remained considerably in arrear of the Scots ; and, when the Scots actually did make their appear- ance in England, there was a sudden refreshing of the memory of the English Parliament on the subject, and a sudden exertion to make up the arrears. " The Scots are among us on the supposition that we have all taken the Covenant ; and lo ! we have not yet all taken it," was virtually the exclamation of the Parliament. Accordingly, that all might be Ijrought in, that there might be no escape, and that there might remain to all time coming a vast register of the names of the Englishmen then living who had pntered into this solemn league with their Scottish neigh- bours, there was passed, on the 5th of February 1643-4, a
1643-44.] COVENANT STRINGENT THROUGH ENGLAND. 39
new and conclusive ordinance on the subject. By this ordinance it was enacted that true copies of the Covenant should be sent to the Earl of Essex and other commanders of the army, and to all governors of towns, &c., to the intent that it might be sworn to by every man in the army ; also that copies should be sent into all the counties, so that they should punctually reach every parish and every parish- minister — the instructions being that every minister should, the next Lord's day after the certified copy of the Covenant reached him, read it aloud to his congregation, discourse and exhort upon it, and then tender it to all present, who should swear to it with uplifted hands, and afterwards sign it with their names or marks. All men over eighteen years of age, whether householders or lodgers, were to take it in the parishes in which they were resident ; and the names of all refusing, whether ministers or laymen, were to be reported.-^ Nay, by an arrangement about the same time, the action of the Covenant was made to extend to English subjects abroad. Notwithstanding all this stringency, there is reason to believe that not a few soldiers in the army, and not a few ministers and others, contrived, in one way or another, to avoid the Covenant, without being called to account for the neglect. "Where a minister otherwise unexceptionable, or an officer or soldier of known zeal and efficiency, had scruples of con- science against signing, the authorities, both civil and mili- tary, appear in many places to have exercised a discretion
and winked at disobedience or procrastination. The case
of the Earl of Bridgewater may here be of some interest, on its own account, and as illustrating what went on generally. The Earl, known to us so long as " the Earl of Milton's Comus," had been living in retirement as an invalid during the war, his wishes on the whole being doubtless with the King, but his circumstances obliging him to keep on fair terms with the Parliament. The test of the Covenant seems to have sorely perplexed the poor Peer. " He says some " things in the Covenant his heart goes along with them, and " other things are doubtful to him ; and therefore desires
1 See Ordinance in Lords Journals, Feb. 5, 1643-4.
40 LIFE OF MILTOX AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
" some time to consider of it." Such was the report to the Lords, Wednesday, Feb. 7, 1643-4, by the Earls of Eutland and Bolingbroke, who had been appointed to deal with him and other absent Peers in the matter. " He shall have time till Friday morning next," was the entry ordered to be made. On the Friday named there is no mention of the subject in the Lords Journals ; but on Saturday the 10th Lords Eutland and Bolingbroke were able to report that it was all right. Two days had convinced the Earl that signing would be best for him.^
Besides this universal imposition of the Covenant by Parliamentary ordinance upon all who had hitherto neglected to take it, there was another immediate effect of the presence of the Scots in England. The two nations being now in arms for the same cause, the fortunes of each nation depending largely on the conduct of the other, and the two national armies indeed having to co-operate strategically, there re- quired to be some common directing power, intermediate between the English Parliament in Westminster and the Scottish Estates in Edinburgh, representing both, and act- ing for both in all matters of military concern. The Scots, on their part, had made provision accordingly. Besides appointing a stationary Committee of the Estates to manage matters from Edinburgh, and another Committee to be with the Scottish army as a kind of Council to the Earl of Leven, they had nominated (Jan. 9, 1643-4) a Special Commission of four persons to go to London with full powers to represent the views and interests of Scotland in the enterprise in which it was now conjoined with England. These were — the Earl OF Loudoun, High Chancellor of Scotland ; Lord Maitland (already in London as Scottish Commissioner to the West- minster Assembly); Sir Archibald Johnstone of Warriston (due in London at any rate as a Commissioner to the Assembly) ; and Mr. Eobert Barclay, Provost of Irvine in Ayrsliire. These Commissioners having presented their Com- mission to the English Parliament, Feb. 5, the Parliament was moved to appoint some of its trustiest men from the
1 Lords Journals of dates cited.
1643-44.] DEATH OF PYM. 41
two Houses to be an English Committee of Consultation with the Scottish Commissioners, and in fact to form, along with them, a joint " Committee of the Two Kingdoms." Such an institution was not at all to the taste of Lord General Essex, inasmuch as it trenched on his powers as commander-in- chief. Some opposition was therefore offered. On the whole, however, the argument that the two kingdoms ought to be " joined in then- counsels as well as in their forces " proved overpowering; and on the 16th of February an ordinance was passed appointing the following persons (7 Peers and 14 Commoners) to be a Committee for the purpose named — the Earl of Northumberland, the Earl of Essex, the Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Manchester, Viscount Save and Sele, Lord Wharton, Lord Eoberts, William Pierrepoint, Sir Henry Vane, Senr., Sir Philip Stapleton, Sir William Waller, Sir Gilbert Gerrard, Sir William Armyn, Sir Arthur Haselrig, Sir Henry Vane, Junr., John Crewe, EoBERT Wallop, Oliver St. John, Samuel Browne, John Glynn, and Oliver Cromwell. Six were to be a quorum, always in the proportion of one Lord to two Commoners, and of the Scottish Commissioners meeting with them two were to be a quorum. There can be no doubt that the object was that the management of the war should be less in Essex's hands than it had been.^
The name of John Pym may have been looked for in the Committee. Alas ! no longer need his name be looked for among the living in this History. He had died on the 8 th of December 1643, when the Scots were expected in England but had not yet arrived. He was buried magnificently in Westminster Abbey, all the Lords and Commons attending, and Stephen Marshallpreaching the funeral sermon. England had lost " King Pym," her greatest Parliamentary man. No one precisely like him was left. But, indeed, he had done his work to the full ; and, had he lived longer, he might have been loved the less ! ^
1 Lords Journals of dates Feb. 5 and - Rushworth, V. 376 ; Pari. Hist, HI.
16, 1643-4 ; and Baillie, II. 141, 142. 186-7 ; and Baillie, II. 118.
CHAPTEE II.
MILTON UNHAPPY IN HIS MARRIAGE : HIS FIRST DIVORCE TRACT: TWO EDITIONS OF IT.
We left Milton in his liouse in Aldersgate Street in or about 1643, waiting for the promised return of his recently- wedded wife at Michaelmas, and meanwhile comfortable enough, with his books, his pupils, and the quiet companion- ship of his old father. We are now seven or eight months beyond that point in our general History. What had hap- pened in the Aldersgate household in the interval ? A tremendous thing had happened. Milton had come to desire a divorce from his wife, and had written and published a Tract on Divorce, partly in the interest of his own private case, but really also with a view to suggest to the mind of England, then likely to be receptive of new ideas, certain thoughts on the whole subject of the English law of Marriage which had resulted from reflection on his own experience. Here is the story : —
" Michaelmas [Sept. 29, 1643] being come," says Phillips, " and no news of his wife's return, he sent for her by letter, " and, receiving no answer, sent several other letters, which " were also unanswered ; so that at last he despatched down " a foot-messenger [to Forest Hill] with a letter, desiring her " return. But the messenger came back not only without an " answer, at least a satisfactory one, but, to the best of my " remembrance, reported that he was dismissed with some " sort of contempt. This proceeding, in all probability, was " grounded upon no other cause but this — viz. : that, the " family being generally addicted to the Cavalier party, as " they called it, and some of them possibly engaged in the
1643-44.] MILTON EEPENTS HIS MAERIAGE. 43
" King's service, who by this time had his head-quarters " at Oxford and was in some prospect of success, they " began to repent them of having matched the eldest " daughter of the family to a person so contrary to them " in opinion, and thought it would be a blot on their " escutcheon whenever that Court should come to flourish " again. However, it so incensed our author that he thought " it would be dishonoiu'able ever to receive her again, after " such a repulse ; so that he forthwith prepared to fortify " himself with arguments for such a resolution, and accord- " ingly wrote," &c. Here Phillips goes on to enumerate Milton's various Divorce Tracts, the first of which in order of time was his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Aubrey corroborates Phillips, but has little on the subject but what he may have picked up from gossip. " She was a . . . . " Eoyalist, and went to her mother near Oxford : he sent " for her after some time, and I think his servant was evilly " entreated," — such are Aubrey's brief notes of the facts ; after which come his own reflections on the rupture : " Two " opinions do not well on the same bolster " ; and " What " man, especially contemplative, would like to have a young '•' wife environed and stormed by the sons of Mars, and those " of the enemy party ? " Finally "Wood, in his Fasti, does little more than repeat Aubrey : " Though he sent divers " pressing invitations, yet he could not prevail upon her to " come back " ; whereupon " he, being not able to bear this " abuse, did therefore, upon consideration, after he had con- " suited many eminent authors, write the said Ijook of " Divorce, with intentions to be separated from her." ^
On all grounds Phillips's authority is the best. And yet there are difficulties in his account. According to that account, it was the non-return of Milton's wife at or about Michaelmas (Sept. 29) 1643, and not only her non-return then, but her obstinate and repeated refusal to return after that date, and the insulting conduct of her family to the messenger he finally sent to urge her retm-n, that roused Milton's indignation, put the thought of divorce into his
1 Phillips's Memoir ; Aubrey's Lives ; and Wood's Fasti Oxon. I. 482-3.
44 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
mind, and indnced him to write his first Divorce Trcact. If so, the tract could hardly have been ready till some weeks after Michaelmas 1643 — say, till about Christmas of the same year. There is proof, however (and I do not think it has been observed before), that Milton's first Divorce Tract was already published and in circulation two months before the Michaelmas in question. The proof is not, where we might expect it, in the books of the Stationers' Company ; for the Tract, like all Milton's previous pamphlets, was published by him, rather defiantly, without the required legal formalities of licence and registration. But there is a precious copy of it in Thomason's great collection of pamphlets, called " the King's Pamphlets," in the British Museum. The title in that copy is as follows : " The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Restor'd, to the good of both Sexes, from the Bondage of Canon Law and other mistakes, to Christian Freedom, guided by the Rule of Charity ; ivherein also many places of Scripture have recovered their long-lost meaning :' seasonable to be now thought on in the Reformation intended." Underneath this title there follows on the title- page the quotation " Matth. xiii. 5 2. Every Scribe instructed to the Kingdome of Heav'n is like the Maister of a house which bringeth out of his treasurie things old and new " ; and at the foot of the title-page is the legend " London, Printed by T. P. and M. S. in Goldsmiths' Alley: 1643."i This printed legend alone would all but determine the publication to have been prior to Christmas 1643 ; but the question is set at rest by a manuscript note on the title-page, " Aug. 1st." The note was put there by, or by the direction of, the collector, Thomason, to indicate the day on which the copy came into his hands, and is to be relied on implicitly. The Tract, it will be observed, was anonymous ; but the words "Written by J. Milton," penned on the title-page by the same hand that penned the date " Aiig. 1st" show that the authorship was no secret from the all-prying Thomason. In short, on evidence absolutely conclusive, Milton's first
12. G.F. 17.
1 Copy in British Museum Library : Press-mark, — ' ' — ■".
1643-44.] MILTON EEPENTS HIS MAEEIAGE. 45
Divorce Tract was in print and on sale in London on the 1st of August 1643, or two months before Phillips's fatal Michaelmas.^
One of two suppositions therefore: — (1) If Phillips is right in his statement that Milton's first Divorce Tract was caused by the obstinate refusal of his wife to return to him, and the insulting conduct of her family in detaining her and laughing at his letters and messages, then Phillips's dates in the whole matter of the marriage must be a little wrong. " About "Whitsuntide it was (May 21, 1643) that my uncle left us in Aldersgate Street, on what turned out to be his marriage journey ; in about a month's time he returned, bringing his wife, and some of her relations, with him (June 1643) ; the relations stayed about a week, during which there was much feasting and merriment ; for about a month after they were gone the newly -married wife remained with my uncle ; but then (late in July or early in August 1643), tired of a philo- sophical life, and pining for the society of home, she contrived a request from her family to have her with them during the rest of the summer — to which my uncle consented, on the
1 This may be the place for a word had taken pains to obtain copies of or two about the collector of those publications of the immediately pre- King's Pamphlets in the British Mu- ceding years ; and after that his work seum among which I have had so had been facilitated by the notoriety of frequently to range for the purposes of his passion for collecting. Booksellers this work, and to which, like other in- and authors (Milton for one) seem occa- ([uirers into English History from 1640 sionally to have sent copies of their to 1660, I owe more items of informa- pamphlets to Thomason. "Exact care tion than I can count. — George Thoma- hath been taken," he himself tells us son was a London bookseller of the in the Introduction to a MS. catalogue Civil War time ; his place of business of his treasures, "that the very day is being the "Rose and Crown" in St. written upon most of them that they Paul's Churchyard. He was of Royalist came out " ; and this care of his has sympathies ; bat his hobby was to fixed the dates of many jiublications collect impartially all the pamphlets, that would else have been unknown or broad-sheets, &c., that teemed from the but vaguely known. — For farther par- English press on both sides, and not ticulars of this interesting person, an only those that teemed from the English account of the shifts to which he was press, but also all published abroad that put to save his collection from the bore on current English questions. He chances of Parliamentarian pillage, and began this labour in 1641, and pursued a historj* of the fortunes of his collec- it indefatigably till after the Restora- tion till it came to be part of the Library tion ; so that, at his death in or about of King George III., and so of the 1666, he left a collection of about British Museum, see Edwards's J/e?no?V5 33,000 pamphlets, &c. on English affairs, of Libraries (1859), Vol. I. pp. 456—460. published between 1638 and 1662. The — I may add that I have seen a -pencil making of this collection had been the jotting in Thomason's hand on one of delight of his life ; it had been his the fly-leaves of his collection as fresh anxiety that no single tract, or printed and legible, after 220 years, as if it had scrap of any interest, should escape him. been written yesterday. When he began to collect in 1641, he
46 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
understanding that she was to come back about Michaelmas (Sept. 29, 1643)." Such, re-expressed in words for the nonce, is Phillips's account as we have already given it. But, as the Divorce Tract was published August 1, 1643, it is clear that, if the cause of that Tract was the persistent, protracted, and contemptuous absence of his wife, then Phillips's memory must have been at fault, and he must have somewhat post-dated the marriage itself. The marriage in that case must have been before Whitsuntide 1643 ; and the return of the wife to her relations, her refusal to come back, and Milton's chagrin and anger so occasioned, must have been matters not of after Michaelmas 1643, but of at least a month or two before the August of that year. This is quite a tenable supposition ; for there are other inaccuracies in Phillips, and the register of the place and date of Milton's marriage with Mary Powell has not been found. (2) On the whole, however, Phillips's recollections about the marriage are so circumstantial, and there is such a likelihood of their being true, that, until contradictory records shall be produced, it seems right to accept his dating. But then his explanation of the cause of his uncle's speculations about divorce must be wrong. The cause in that case cannot have been the obstinate refusal of his wife to return ; for the Divorce Tract must have been written and ready for the press while she was still with him in the Aldersgate Street house (July 1643), and it was actu- ally out (Aug. 1) before she can have reached her father's house at Forest Hill on her granted two months of leave till Michaelmas. What are we to make of this discrepancy ? One is puzzled. That a man should have occupied himself on a Tract on Divorce ere his honeymoon was well over — should have written it perseveringly day after day within sound of his newly-wedded wife's footsteps and the very rustle of her dress on the stairs or in the neighbouring room — is a notion all but dreadful. And yet to some such notion, if Phillips's dating is correct, we seem to be shut up. But, if so, more is involved than Phillips knew. The cause of Milton's thoughts about divorce, in that case, must have Ijeen the agony of a deadly discovery of his wife's utter
1643-44.] MILTON'S FIRST DIVORCE TREATISE. 47
unfitness for him when as yet she had not been two months his wife. It must have been the unutterable pain of the disillusioned bridegroom, the gnawing sense of his irretriev- able mistake. The vision must then pass before our minds of scenes in the Aldersgate Street house, the reverse of the happily connubial, hcfore that sudden departure of the bride back to her father's home, and leading to that incident perhaps rather violently. One seems to hear the sound of differences, of conflicting opinions about this and that, of weeping girlish wilfulness opposed to steady and perhaps too austere prohibitions. " Well, then, I will go back to my
mother : I am sm^e I wish I had never " ! " Go " ! And
so the parting may have come about, not wholly by her arrangement, but harshly and with some quarrel on his part. There are not wanting subsequent facts that might lend a plausibility to this version of the story.^ Yet it is the other that one would wish to be true, and that would fit in most naturally with the facts as a whole. That version is that Milton, good-naturedly and perhaps taken by surprise, allowed his wife to go home for two months at her own request, or the request of her relatives, before he had been three months married, and that it was the insult of her non- return that revealed to him his mistake in her, and drove him into his speculations about divorce. Only, then, we repeat, Phillips's dating of the marriage and its incidents requires amendment.
In any case the first edition of Milton's Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce was out in London on the 1st of August 1643.^ It was a pamphlet of forty-eight small quarto pages, with an extra page supplying two omitted passages. The text was printed continuously, without division into chapters :
1 Milton's mother-in-law, ha%'ing oc- Milton ; but the words seem to imply
casion, seven years afterwards (1651), to more than a mere passive consent of
advert to her daughter's return home Milton to his wife's proposal to revisit
so soon after her marriage, distinctly her family.
attributed it to Milton himself. The - The supposition is always open
words are, "He having turned away that, by some oversight, Thomason
his wife heretofore for a long space m isdated his copy, putting ' ' Aug. " for
upon some other occasion." I do not a much later month. But this is the
think Mrs. Powell was a very accurate unlikeliest thing of all. lady, and she had no fondness for
48 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
and there was no author's name either on the title-page or at the end.
Both in matter and in manner the Tract was one of the boldest that had ever been submitted to the reading of Eno-land. Its thesis is laid down near the beginning in these terms : " That indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable, hindering and ever likely to hinder the main henefits of conjugal society, which are solace and peace, is a greater reason of divorce than natural frigidity , especicdly if there he no children, and that there he mutual consent." This thesis Milton sets himself to argue in all sorts of ways — from natural reason and expe- diency ; from the Scripture doctrine of marriage as it might be gathered from the Mosaic Law and the right interpretation of texts in the Old and New Testaments, notwithstanding one or two individual texts (like that of Matth. v. 31, 32) that had been hackneyed and misunderstood by mere literalists ; and from opinions or indications of opinion on the subject that might be found in the works of some of the Protestant Eeformers, and other eminent writers. His conclusionjvas that the notion of the indissolubility of marriage, or even the modified law of England and of other countries, authorizing divorce only for certain gross reasons, were mere relics of superstitious tradition, the concoction of the Canonists and Sacramentalists in the ages of sacerdotal tyranny, unworthy of more enlarged views of justice and liberty, and a canker and cause of incalculable misery in the heart of modern society. Again and again he indicates his consciousness that~ in announcing this conclusion, and trying to rouse his fellow- countrymen to the necessity of at once including a revision of the Marriage Law in the general Keformation then in pro- gress, he is performing a great public service. Thus, at the very opening : " By which [the precedent of certain liberal " hints on the subject by Hugo Grotius], and mine own " apprehension of what public duty each man owes, I con- " ceive myself exhorted among the rest to communicate such " thoughts as I have, and offer them ' now, in this general " labour of Eeformation, to the candid view both of Church
1643-44.] Milton's first divorce treatise. 49
" and Magistrate ; especially because I see it the hope of good " men that those irregular and unspiritual courts have spun " their utmost date in this land, and some better course must " now be constituted. He, therefore, that by adventuring " shall be so happy as with success to ease and set free the " minds of ingenuous and apprehensive men from this need- " less thraldom ; he that can prove it lawful and just to claim " the performance of a fit and matchable conversation no less "essential to the prime scope of marriage than the gift of " bodily conjunction, or else to have an equal plea of divorce " as well as for that corporal deficiency ; he that can but lend " us the clue that winds out this labyrinth of servitude to " such a reasonable and expedient liberty as this — deserves " to be reckoned among the public benefactors of civil and " human life, above the inventors of wine and oil." ^ As such a benefactor, such a champion of a neglected truth and a suppressed human liberty, the anonymous writer offers him- self He knows that he stands alone at present, but he trusts to the power of demonstration addressed to the mind of England, then newly awakened and examining all institutions to their roots.
There is not a word of avowed reference to his own case throughout ; and yet from first to last we are aware of young . Mary Powell in the background. Inability for " fit and matchable conversation " : this is that supreme fault in a wife on which the descant is from first to last, and from which, when it is plainly ingrained and unamendable, the right of divorce is maintained to be, by the law of God and all civil reason, the due deliverance. Hopeless intel- lectual and spiritual incompatibility between husband and wife : it is on this, though not in these exact words, that Milton harps again and again as in his view the clearest invalidation of marriage, the frustration of the noblest and most divine ends of the institution ; an essentially worse frustration, he dares to say in one place, than even that conjugal infidelity which " a gross and boorish opinion, how common soever," would alone resent or recognise. It is
1 This passage is from the first edition : it is not nearly so full in the second. VOL. in. E
50 LIFE OF MILTOX AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
marvellous with what richness of varying language he paints to the reader the horrible condition of a man tied for life to a woman with whom he can hold no rational or worthy conversation. "A familiar and co- inhabiting mischief"; " spite of antipathy to fadge together and combine as they may, to their unspeakable weariness and despair of all sociable delight " ; " a luckless and helpless matrimony " ; " the unfitness and defectiveness of an unconjugal mind " ; " a worse condition than the loneliest single life " ; " uncon- versing inability of mind " ; "a mute and spiritless mate " ; " that melancholy despair which we see in many wedded persons " ; " a polluting sadness and perpetual distemper " ; " ill-twisted wedlock " ; " the disturbance of her unhelpful and unfit society " ; " one that must be hated with a most operative hatred " ; " forsaken and yet continually dwelt with and accompanied " ; " a powerful reluctance and recoil of nature on either side, blasting all the content of their mutual society " ; "a violence to the reverend secret of nature " ; " to force a mixture of minds that cannot imite " ; "two incoherent anduncombining dispositions"; "the undoing or the disheartening of his life " ; " the superstitious and im- possible performance of an ill-driven bargain " ; " bound fast to an uncomplying discord of nature, or, as it oft happens, to an image of earth and phlegm " ; " shut up together, the one with a mischosen mate, the other in a mistaken calling " ; " committing two ensnared souls inevitably to kindle one another, not with the fire of love, but with a hatred irrecon- cilable, who, were they severed, would be straight friends in any other relation " ; " two carcases chained unnaturally together, or, as it may happen, a living soul bound to a dead corpse " ; " enough to abase the mettle of a generous spirit and sink him to a low and vulgar pitch of endeavour in all his actions " : — such are a few specimens of the phrases with which the tract abounds.^ But one passage may be quoted entire : —
" But some are ready to object that the disposition ought seriously
1 Some of the phrases quoted occur tinguish these. Most of the phrases, in passages added in the second edi- and more of the same, occur in the first tion ; but it is not worth while to dis- edition.
1643-44.] MILTON'S FIRST DIVORCE TREATISE, 51
to be considered before. But let them know again that, for all the wariness can be used, it may yet befall a discreet man to be mis- taken in his choice, and we have plenty of examples. The soberest and best-governed men are least practised in these affairs ; and who knows not that the bashful muteness of a virgin may oft-times hide all the unliveliness and natural sloth which is really unfit for conversation 1 Nor is there that freedom of access granted or pre- sumed as may suffice to a perfect discerning till too late ; and, where any indisposition is suspected, what more usual than the per- suasion of friends that acquaintance, as it increases, will amend all? And, lastly, it is not strange though many who have spent their youth chastely are in some things not so quick-sighted while they haste too eagerly to light the nuptial torch : nor is it therefore that for a modest error a man should forfeit so great a happiness, and no charitable means to release him ; since they who have lived most loosely, by reason of their bold accustoming, prove most successful in their matches, because their wild affections, unsettling at will, have been as so many divorces to teach them experience ; whenas the sober man, honouring the appearance of modesty, and hoping well of every social virtue under that veil, may easily chance to meet . . . often with a mind to all other due conversation inaccessible, and to all the more estimable and superior pui-poses of matrimony useless and almost lifeless ; and what a solace, what a fit help, such a consort would be through the whole life of a man is less pain to conjecture than to have experience."
Oh ! and is it come to this ? Then, as now, nothing so common as that such mischances of marriage, heard of by the world, and the rather if published by the sufferers or one of them, should be received only as excellent amusement for people rou.nd about. It is as if the one thing intrinsically and unceasingly comic in the world, for most people, were the fact that it consists of man and woman, as if the institution on which human society is built and by which the succession of earth's generations is maintained, were the one only subject, with most people, for nothing else than laughter. Even now perhaps our disposition to jocosity on this subject, not suf- ficiently entertained by incidents of our own day, will range back to that case of Milton and Mary Powell more than two hundred and fifty years ago, and join in the gossip which it tben began to circulate through the town. In the lobby of
52 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
the House of Commons it must have been heard of : it may- have given a relish to the street-talk of reverend Presbyterian gentlemen walking home together from the Assembly. " Only a month or two married ; his wife gone home again ; and now, instead of proper reticence about what can't be helped, all this hullaballoo of a new doctrine about Divorce ! Just like him ! " This and such-like is what we seem to overhear; this and such- like is what Milton did overhear ; not much more than this and such-like are most of us prepared to say even now when we read the story. And yet the story is surely worth more. One fails to see, after all, that it yields only matter for jest and the repetition of commonplaces. What are the facts ? Two human beings, long dead and gone, but then alive and with the expectation of many years of life before them, had hardly been banded together in church when they found, or thought they found, that their union was for their mutual misery. The one was a poor country-girl in her teens, ruing the fate to which she had committed herself, but with no weapons for her relief but her tears, her terror, and the mitigation of refuge in her father's house. Her case is to be pitied ; shame if it is not ! The other was a man extraordinary — so extra- ordinary that even now we try to follow him in fancy in his walks through the London streets, and any bit of old wall his arm may have touched is a sacred antiquity, and we regard the series of thoughts that was in his mind through any month, or series of months, as something of prime interest in the spirit of the past, a prize that we would give gold to recover. - Well, here was one series of thoughts that was in this man's mind for months and months, and that left effects, indeed, to his life's end. He was nioody in his house ; he walked moodily in the streets ; we can hear^himjnuttering to himself, we can see his teeth clenched. Morning and evening. day after day, he is in a great despaii\_ And \vhy ? Because he has made the most fatal mistake a man can make, and_is gazing on, morning and evening, day after day, into the con- sequences. Lo ! into that life which he had hoped to make worthy of the God who gave it^^, a pattern life, a great poem within whose azure fitness other poems should arise to spin
1643-44.] MILTON'S FIRST DIVORCE TREATISE. 53
their gleaming courses — into this life what had he imported ? Not the solace and bliss of a kindred soul's society, which had been his intent and dream ; but a darkness, a disturbance, a marring melancholy, a daily and hourly debasement, a co- inhabiting mischief! It was enough, he says, to drive a man " at last, through murmuring and despair, to thoughts of Atheism." But was there no remedy ? Ah ! in the very power of putting this question lay the advantage of the strong man over the weak Oxfordshire girl. He could reason, he could delve into the subject, he could revolve it intellectually. What if the plight in which he found him- self were no necessary and irremediable evil ? What if the permanence of marriage once contracted between two persons utterly unsuitable for each other were no decree of God, no real requirement of religion or of social well-being, but a mere superstitious and fallacious tradition, a stupid and pernicious convention among men ? Once on this track, there was light for Milton. Out of his own private mishap there came the suggestion of a great enterprise. He would thunder, if not the mishap itself, at least its public significance, out upon the ,_^svj-'- '^ world. Hejvould rouse his countrymen on the whole subject pj^ '^ of the Law of Marnaga Who knew but his voice might be ^sj--^^ heard ? Who knew but that, were it loud enough, there would JV-^ * be a response of assent from the whole land, and his new idea of Divorce, albeit the proclamation of only one man, might be carried, with other things, in the current Eeformation ? There ran a touch of this sanguine temper, this faith that any ideal might easily be made actual, through all Milton's life ; and it appeared now most conspicuously. His idea, he was aware, was new ; but only let his demonstration be sufficiently thorough, only let him succeed in disturbing the existing apathy and setting the thoughts of the nation astir on the subject, " and then," what ? — " then I doubt not but with one gentle stroking to wipe away ten thousand tears out of the life of men." ^ Alas ! after the hurricane of two hundred years the tear-drops still hang, multitudinous as ever, amid the leaves of that poor forest !
1 This phrase is in one of the inserted passages in the second edition.
\>«-
54 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
" Just like him ! " I have imagined to have been a com- ment on this new appearance of Milton by some gossip of the day who may have known a little of him personally. Keally, though not as intended, the comment would have been just. This whole action of Milton, consequent on his unhappy marriage, was deeply characteristic. And yet there was perhaps no one then living from whom such a course of action could less have been expected. From all that we know of the youth and early manhood of Milton, we should certainly have predicted of him, with whatever heterodoxy in other matters, yet a life-long orthodoxy on the subject of marriage. Think of him as we have seen him heretofore, the glorious youth, cherishing every high ethical idealism, walking as in an ether of moral violet, disdaining customary vice, building up his character consciously on the principle that he who would be strong or great had best be immaculate. Think of him as the author of Comus ; or think of him as he had described himself some years later in one of his Italian Sonnets : —
"Young, gentle-natured, and a simple wooer,
Since from myself I stand in doubt to fly,
Lady, to thee my heart's poor gift would I
Offer devoutly : and, by tokens sure, I know it faithful, fearless, constant, pure,
In its conceptions graceful, good, and high.
When the world roars, and flames the startled sky,
In its own adamant it rests secure, As free from chance and malice ever found.
And fears and hopes that vulgar minds confuse,
As it is loyal to each manly thing And to the sounding lyre and to the Muse.
Only in that part is it not so sound
Where Love hath set in it his cureless sting."
When he wrote thus, to what did he look forward, and to what might others have looked forward for him ? A career, it was probable, of speculative dissent from his contemporaries in many things, and of undaunted courage in the vindication of such dissent, but hardly of dissent from the estabhshed moralities of the marriage-institution. Had he been happily
1643-44.] MILTON'S FIRST DIVOECE TREATISE. 55
married, had he found himself united at last to one such as his dreams had figured, who so likely to have persevered fondly in the traditional doctrine of marriage, to have main- tained the mystic sanctity and the necessary permanence of the marriage-bond, and to have launched denunciations against all who dared to tamper with this article of the established ethics ? But, as it had chanced otherwise, it was not the less characteristic that he himself had been the audacious questioner, the champion of a heresy. Driven by his own experience to investigate, his speculative boldness had brought him at once to a conclusion the novelty of which would have made others hesitate, but had no terrors for him. For (and here was his difference from most men, here was what may be called a Miltonic peculiarity) he would take no benefit from such private dispensation as a man might pass for his own relief in such a case, his neighbours winking at it so long as he did not disturb the forum. He would disturb the forum ! What " Milton " did should be done openly, should be avowed, should be lawful ! Others, circumstanced as he now was, might, if they liked — and there were examples all round, and especially in that Bohemian world of wits and men of letters with which he might be classed, though he abjured the brotherhood — others might, if they liked, adopt a policy of silence and acquiescence, hypocritically bowing to their fate, but taking out their protest in secret consolations ! Xo such policy for him ! The word " illicit " and his name should never be brought into conjunction ! Whatever he did should be according to a rule of right, clear to his own conscience, and held aloft in his hand under the whole roof of Heaven ! And, if such a rule, ratified between himself and Heaven, should chance to conflict with one of the moralities of the existing code of men, there was but one course for him. He would assail the so-called " morality " ; he would blast it out of the beliefs of men ; he would perform for his fellows the service of their liberation, along with himself, from a useless and irrational thraldom ! Or, if that work should prove too hard and toilsome, at least he should have published his own rule in opposition to the
56 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
general superstition, and should walk on, as he had resolved always to walk, unabashed in the daylight !
It was in August 1643, as we have seen, that Milton put forth anonymously his Doctrine and DisciiMnc of Divorce. From that time, on through the rest of the autumn of 1643 and the winter of 1643-4, we are to fancy him in his house in Aldersgate Street, with his father and his pupils for his companions, and his thoughts much occupied, like those of other Englishmen, with the course of public events. On the whole, the Parliament had no greater admirer than Milton ; and there were particular men in the Parliament that were after his own heart. Prom the Westminster Assembly, too, he seems to have expected good. So far as he had formed views as to the desirable form of Church- government for England, these views, as we have seen (Vol. II. pp. 376-382), might be described as an expectant Presby- terianism, not positively fixed and determined at all points, but kept conveniently fluid. Accordingly, his sympathies, at first, may well have been with the Presbyterians of the Assembly ; among wdiom he could reckon, at any rate, his old tutor Young, and his other friends and fellow-labourers in the Smectymnuan controversy. Or, if some things among the tenets of the small Independent minority had begun to gain upon him, he seems still, through the winter of 1643-4, to have looked forward to some compromise that should be acceptable to England and yet tend to that conformity between the two kingdoms which the Scots desired, and to the furtherance of which they had pledged England by Henderson's international League and Covenant. At all events, Milton did, some time after September 1643, sub- scribe to this League and Covenant with the rest of his Parliamentarian countrymen. There are words of his own which vouch the fact.^
A moody time though the autumn of 1643 and the winter of 1643-4 must have been for Milton, there was some
1 In the dedication to Parliament which I saw and was partaker of, your of his Tetrachordon, published March vows and solemn covenants." 1644-5, he uses these words, "That
1643-44.] THE LADY MAEGARET LEY. 57
relaxation for him in society more general than that of his wife-deserted household. " Oiu' author," says Phillips, " now as it were a single man again, made it his chief " diversion now and then in an evening to visit the Lady " Margaret Ley, daughter to the — Ley, Earl of Marlborough, " Lord High Treasurer of England, and President of the " Privy Council to King James the First. This lady, being " a woman of great wit and ingenuity, had a particular " honour for him, and took much delight in his company ; " as likewise her husband. Captain Hobson, a very accom- " plished gentleman." Phillips seems to be sufficiently accu- rate in this account, but a few details may be added : —
A man still well remembered in England, though he had been dead fifteen years, was James Ley, first Earl of Marl- borough. He had attained to that dignity only in his old age, having advanced to it through a long previous career. Born about 1552, the younger son of a Wiltshire squire, he had passed from Oxford to the study of law at Lincoln's Inn, and had attained to high eminence in his profession before the death of Elizabeth. Emerging from her reign, aged about fifty, he had been appointed by James to an Irish Chief Judgeship (1604); then brought back to England, knighted (1609), baroneted (1620), and made Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench (1621) ; and finally raised by the same King to the great of&ce of Lord High Treasurer of England, and to a peerage with the title of Baron Ley of Ley in Devonshire (1624). In recognition of his long services, Charles, in the first year of his reign (Feb. 5,1626-7), had created for him, when he was almost seventy-four years of age, the Earldom of Marlborough in his native Wiltshire. While thus promoting him, however, Charles appears not to have found him a minister such as he and Buckingham wanted. He had accordingly removed him from the High Treasm-ership in 1628, on the ground of his old age, but in reality to make way for the more compliant Lord Weston, and had shelved him into the less important office of Lord President of the Council. He had died at Lincoln's Inn, March 14, 1628-9, exactly fom- days after that ominous
58 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
dissolution of Charles's third Parliament which announced his determination to have done with Parliaments and begin the reign of " Thorough." The death of the old peer at such a juncture had apparently the less been forgotten by reason of a tradition that the political anxieties of the juncture had had something to do with it. Now, at all events, in the days of the Long Parliament and the Civil War, there was still some respectful recollection of the old Earl of Marlborough as one of the best -liked ministers of James's reign and of the first years of Charles's. " He was " a person of great gravity, ability, and integrity ; and, as " the Caspian Sea is observed neither to ebb nor flow, so " his mind did not rise or fall, but continued the same con- " stancy in all conditions." The words are Puller's, and they probably express the character of the Earl that had come down among his countrymen.^
The Earl had been three times married ; but he had left a family only by his first wife — Mary, daughter of John Petty, of Stoke-Talmage, co. Oxon., Esq. Eleven children had been the issue of this marriage : — to wit (according to Dugdale), " three sons — Henry, James, and William ; and " eight daughters — Elizabeth, married to Morice Carant, of " Looner, in com. Somers., Esq. ; Anne, to Sir Walter Long, of " Draycot-Cerne, in com. Wilts., Knight ; Mary, to Eichard " Erisy, of Erisy, in com. Cornw., Esq. ; Dionysia, to John " Harington, of Kelneyton, in com. Somers., Esq. ; Margaret, "to ... . Hobson, of .... in the Isle of Wight, Esq. ; " Hesther, to Arthur Fuller, of Bradfield, in com. Hertf., Esq. ; " Martha, died unmarried ; and Phcebe, to ... . Biggs, of " Hurst, in com. Berks., Esq." ^ All these children, it would appear, had been born, and most of them married and settled in life, before their father's promotion to the peerage, and while he was yet only James Ley, or Sir James Ley, the eminent lawyer. Indeed, his promotion to the Earldom in his old age had been, in part, a compliment to his third wife
1 Dugdale's Baronage (1676), Vol. II. p. 20 ; Fuller's Worthies, Wiltshire (ed. pp. 451, 452; Wood's Athena;, II. 1840), III. 328-9. 441, 443 ; Clar. Hist, (one vol. ed. 1843), 2 Dugdale, ut s^ipra.
1643-44.] THE LADY MARGAEET LEY. 59
— Jane, daughter of Lord Butler of Bramfield, whose mother was a sister of the Duke of Buckingham ; and it had been specially provided, in the patent of the Earldom, that it should descend, by preference, to his heirs by that lady. That lady having failed, however, to produce heirs, the benefits of the Earldom had reverted to the Earl's family by his first wife, Mary Petty. His eldest son by that wife, Henry Ley, had, accordingly, succeeded him in the title. But this Henry, second Earl of Marlborough, had died in 1638 ; and the actual Earl at the time with which we are now con- cerned (1643) was his son, James, a youth of only some three- and-twenty years, but already serving as a general officer of artillery in the army of the King. He seems, indeed, to have been one of the finest young fellows on that side ; and he had a career before him which was to entitle him, at his death in 1665, to this notice in a summary of his cha- racter by Clarendon : " He was a man of wonderful parts in " all kinds of learning, which he took more delight in than " his title." ^ For the present, however, it is with the good ladies his aunts, the surviving daughters of the first Earl, that we have to do ; or rather only with the fifth of them — the Lady Margaret Ley, the friend of Milton. The husbands of at least two of her sisters (Long of Wilts., and Erisy of Cornwall) being among the Parliamentarians of the Long Parliament, it can hardly be doubted that this lady's husband — Dugdale's " . . . . Hobson of .... in the Isle of Wight, Esq.," and Phillips's " Captain Hobson, a very accomplished gentleman " — was also a Parliamentarian, though of less wealth and note, and not in Parliament. Otherwise, Lady Margaret's house in London could hardly have been one of Milton's evening resorts. What kind of " Captaincy " her husband held, compatible with his being domiciled in London in 1643-4, it might be difficult now to ascertain. Suffice it that he was so domiciled, and that his wife could receive guests not merely as Mrs. Hobson, " a woman of great wit and ingenuity," but as Lady Margaret Ley, the daughter of a well-remembered Earl.
1 Clar. Life, ed. 1843, p. 1141.
60 LIFE OF illLTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME.
It is not from Phillips alone that we hear of Milton's friendship with the Lady Margaret. Milton lias himself commemorated it in one of his Sonnets : —
" To THE Lady Margaret Ley.
Daughter to that good Earl, once President Of England's Council and her Treasury, Who lived in both unstained by gold or fee, And left them both, more in himself content.
Till the sad breaking of that Parliament Broke him, as that dishonest victory At Cha^rouea, fatal to liberty, Killed with report that old man eloquent :
Though later born than to have known the days Wherein your father flourished, yet by you. Madam, methinks I see him living yet ;
So well your words his noble virtues praise That all both judge you to relate them true And to possess them, honoured Margaret."
The " old man eloquent " is Isocrates, the Athenian orator, whose patriotism made him refuse to survive the defeat of the Athenians and Thebans by Philip of Macedon at Chseroneia. This comparison of the lady's father to the famous Greek is perhaps the most poetical turn in the Sonnet. For the rest, it tells us something about the lady herself. She must have been somewhat, if not considerably, older than Milton ; for, though Milton had been twenty years old at the time of the good Earl's death, and might therefore well remember his Treasurership and Presidency of the Council, he speaks of knowing the days wherein the old peer had flourished chiefly through the Lady Margaret's talk about him and them. Her conversation, it would therefore seem, ran much upon her father and his private and political virtues ; and Milton listened respectfully, seeing much in the lady herself of what she praised in her sire. Perhaps Milton would talk to her freely in return of his own concerns. The Lady Margaret Ley, and her husband. Captain Hobson, were probably in his
1643-44.] TWO SONNETS 61
confidence on the subject of his marriage misfortune. The Sonnet was unquestionably written in 1643 or 1644.^
A younger and unmarried lady must then also have been among Milton's acquaintances. How else can we account for this other Sonnet ?
" Lady, that in the prime of earliest youth
Wisely hast shunned the broad way and the green, And with those few art eminently seen That labour up the hill of heavenly truth,
The better part, with Mary and with Ruth, Chosen thou hast ; and they that overween, And at thy growing virtues fret their sj^leen, No anger find in thee, but pity and ruth.
Thy care is fixed, and zealously attends
To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light.
And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure
Thou, when the Bridegroom with his feastful friends Passes to bliss at the mid hour of night. Hast gained thy entrance, Virgin wise and pure."
This Sonnet, to which the heading " To a Virtuous Young Lady " is now prefixed in the editions of Milton, had no such heading prefixed in his own copy.^ Who the young lady was that so won upon Milton at this critical time, and seemed to him so superior to the more commonplace of her sex, we are left uninformed. There is a conjecture on the subject, which may afterwards appear. It is clear, mean- while, that the poor absent Mary Powell may have suffered not only from her own defects, but also from the opportunity of some such contrast.
The Divorce subject continued to occupy Milton. His tract had been rapidly bought, and had caused a sensation.
1 It was printed in the first or 1645 Margaret Ley. In the edition of 1645 edition of Milton's Poems, and it is the Sonnet was printed in the same placed last in the series of Sonnets there order and without a heading. In the contained. The draft of it in the Cam- MS. draft there are several erasures bridge Book of Milton's MSS. is in and corrections. Thus Milton had Milton's own hand — the title "To the originally written ^'■'blooming virtue," Lady Margaret Ley " being likewise in as if with reference to the personal his hand. appearance of the young lady ; but in
2 In the Cambridge MSS. there is a the margin he substitutes the present draft in Milton's own hand immediately reading, " groioing virtues,"
before the draft of the Sonnet to Lady
62 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME.
Through the cold winter of 1 643-4, while the Parliament and the Assembly were busy, and the auxiliary Scottish army was expected, a good many people had leisure to read the strange production, or at least to look into it, and be properly shocked. It seems to have been about this time, for example, that James Howell, the letter-writer, came upon a copy. Or rather the copy must have come upon him ; for the poor man, now past fifty years of age, and ousted from his clerkship to the Privy Council, was in the Fleet Prison for debt, and dependent for his subsistence there on translations, dedica- tions and poems to friends, and all sorts of literary odds and ends.^ In one of his rambling pieces, afterwards published in the form of Letters, mostly without dates, and addressed to friends from feigned places, he thus gives what I take to be his impression of Milton's tract when it first reached him in the Fleet : " But that opinion of a poor shallow-brained " puppy, who, upon any cause of dissatisfaction, would have " men to have a privilege to change their wives, or to re- " pudiate them, deserves to be hissed at rather than confuted ; " for nothing can tend more to usher in all confusion and " beggary throughout the world : therefore that wiseacre " deserves," &c.^ As Mr. Howell's own notions about mar- riage and its moralities were of the lightest and easiest, his severe virtuousness here is peculiarly representative. More interesting on its own account is the opinion of another contemporary — no other than Milton's late antagonist Bishop Hall. In Hall's Cases of Conscience (not published till 1 649) he thus describes the impression which Milton's Divorce pamphlet had made upon him when he first read it in its anonymous form : " I have heard too much of, and once saw, " a licentious pamphlet, thrown abroad in these lawless times " in the defence and encouragement of Divorces (not to be " sued out ; that solemnity needed not ; but) to be arbitrarily " given by the disliking husband to the displeasing and
1 Wood's Ath. III. 7-45, and Cunning- edit. 1754). The letter is dated "Lond. ham's London : Article Fleet Prison. 24 Jan.," no year given ; but the dates
2 Howell's Familiar Letters : Book are worthless, being afterthoughts IV. Letter 7, addressed "To Sir Edward when the Letters were published in Spencer, knight" (pp. 453 — 457 of successive batches.
1643-44.] MILTON'S DIVOKCE TKEATISE TALKED OF, 63
" unquiet wife, upon this ground principally, That marriage " was instituted for the help and comfort of man : where, " therefore, the match proves such as that the wife doth but " pull down aside, and, by her innate peevishness and either " sullen or pettish and froward disposition, bring rather " discontent to her husband, the end of marriage being " hereby frustrate, why should it not, saith he, be in the " husband's power, after some unprevailing means of reclama- " tion attempted, to procure his own peace by casting off this " clog, and to provide for his own peace and contentment in a " fitter match ? ."Woe is me ! to what a pass is the world come " that a Christian, pretending to Eeformation, should dare to " tender so loose a project to the public ! I must seriously " profess that, when I first did cast my eyes upon the front of " the book, I supposed some great wit meant to try his skill " in the maintenance of this so wild and improbable a para- " dox ; but, ere I could run over some of those too well-penned " pages, I found the author was in earnest, and meant seriously " to contribute this piece of good counsel, in way of reforma- " tion, to the wise and seasonable care of superiors. I cannot " but blush for our age wherein so bold a motion hath been, " amongst others, admitted to the light. What will all the " Christian Churches through the world, to whose notice these " lines shall come, think of our woeful degeneration, j&c. ? " ^ Hall, it will be seen, had noted the literary ability of the pamphlet, while amazed by its doctrine.
Neither Howell's nor Bishop Hall's opinion can have reached the author of the pamphlet till long after the date now in view. But other opinions to the same effect had been reaching him. Especially, it seems, the pamphlet had caused a fluttering among the London clergy. The con- sequence had best be told by himself. " God," it seems, " intended to prove me, whether I durst alone take up a " rightful cause against a world of disesteem, and found I " durst. My name I did not publish, as not willing it should " sway the reader either for me or against me. But, when I " was told that the style (which what it ails to be so soon
1 Hall's Works (edit. 1837), VIL 467.
V^
64 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
" distinguishable I cannot tell) was known by most men, and " that some of the clergy began to inveigh and exclaim on " what I was credibly informed they had not read, I took it " then for my proper season both to show a name that could " easily contemn such an indiscreet kind of censure, and to " reinforce the question with a more accurate diligence ; that, " if any of them would be so good as to leave railing, and to " let us hear so much of his learning and Christian wisdom " as will be strictly demanded of him in his answering to " this problem, care was had he should not spend his prepara- " tions against a nameless pamphlet." ^ In other words, he resolved to abandon the anonymous. His pamphlet, easily traced to him from the first by its Miltonic style, had been sold out, or nearly so ; people generally, but clergymen especially, were saying harsh things about it, and about him as its author ; but some of these critics, he authentically knew, had never read the pamphlet, and others were making a point of the fact that it had appeared without its author's name. Well, there should be an end of that ! He would put forth a second edition of the pamphlet, and avow the authorship ! And this he would do the rather because, since the publication of the first edition, he had been looking farther into the literature of the question, and could now fortify his own reasoned opinion with authorities he had been but dimly aware of, or had altogether overlooked.
Accordingly, on the 2nd of February 1643-4, there did come forth a second edition of Milton's first Divorce Tract, with this new title : " The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce : Restord to the good of both Sexes, fro77i the bondage of Canon LaiD, and other mistakes, to the true meaning of Scripture in the Lata and Gospel comp)ard. Wlierin are set clown the had consequences of abolishing or condemning of Sin, that which the Law of God allowes, and Christ abolisht not. Now the second time revis'd and much augmented. In Two Books : to the Parlament of Englctnd with the Assembly. The Author J. 31." Underneath this title, the text Matth. xiii. 52 is
1 This passage, fitting in here with ton's Jttdgmenf of Marf in Burerconcern- chronological exactness, occurs in Mil- iiic/ Divorce, published in July 1644.
1643-44.] Milton's DIVORCE TREATISE : SECOND EDITION. 65
repeated from the title-page of the first edition ; with this new text added, Prov. xviii. 13 : " He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him." Then follows the imprint, " London, Imijrinted in the yeare 1644." In the copy in the British Museum which is my authority, the collector Thomason has put his pen through the final figure 4, and has annexed, in ink, the date " Feb. 2, 1643."^ This fixes the exact date of publication as above, Feb. 2, 1643-4.
This second edition is a great enlargement and improve- ment of the first. The 48 small quarto pages of the first swell into 8 8 pages ; the text is divided into Two Books, each of which is subdivided into Chapters, with carefully- worded headings ; and, on the whole, the treatise is made more inviting in appearance. The bold Introductory Letter, addressed " To the Parliament of England, with the Assevibly" consists of six pages, and is signed not with the mere initials " J. M." which appear on the title-page, but fully " John Milton." The additions in the text consist sometimes of a few words inserted, sometimes of expansions of mere passages of the first edition into two or three pages : in the Second Book they attain to still larger dimensions, so that much of that Book is totally new matter. Thus Chapters I., II., and III., of this Book, forming ten pages, come in lieu of a single paragraph of two pages in the first edition ; Chapters IV., V., VI., and VII., forming together six pages, are substituted for about a single page of the first edition ; and Chapter XXL, consisting of nearly five pages, is an expansion of about a page and a half in the first edition. The additions and expansions appear to have been made on various principles. Sometimes one can see that a passage has been added for the mere poetic enrichment of the text, and to prove that the hand that was writing was not that of a musty polemic, but of an artist, at home in splendours. There is a striking instance in point in Chap. VI. of Book I., where there is interpolated a gratui- tously gorgeous myth or fable, which may be entitled Eros
1 Brit. Mils. Press-mark, — , ^', ' — '-. VOL. III. F
66 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
and Anteros, or Love and Its Reciprocation. The passage is characteristic, and may be quoted : —
. Marriage is a covenant the very being whereof consists, not in a forced cohabitation, and counterfeit performance of duties, but in unfeigned love and peace. And of matrimonial love no doubt but that was chiefly meant which by the ancient sages was thus parabled : That Love, if he be not twin-born, yet hath a brother wondrous like him, called Anteros ; whom while he seeks all about, his chance is to meet with many false and feigning desires that wander singly up and down in his likeness. By them in their borrowed garb Love, though not wholly blind as poets wrong him, yet having but one eye, as being born an archer aiming, and that eye not the quickest in this dark region here below, which is not Love's proper sphere, partly out of the simplicity and credulity which is native to him, often deceived, embraces and consorts him with these obvious and suborned striplings, as if they were his Mother's own sons, for so he thinks them while they subtly keep themselves most on his blind side. But, after a while, as his manner is, when, soaring up into the high tower of his Apogajum, above the shadows of the Earth, he darts out the direct rays of his then most piercing eyesight upon the impostures and trim disguises that were used with him, and discerns that this is not his genuine brother, as he imagined, he has no longer the power to hold fellow- ship with such a personated mate. For straight his arrows loose their golden heads and shed their pui'ple feathers ; his silken braids untwine and slip their knots ; and that original and fiery virtue given him by Fate all on a sudden goes out and leaves him un- deified and despoiled of all his force : till, finding Anteros at last, he kindles and repairs the almost faded ammunition of his Deity by the reflection of a coequal and homogeneal fire. Thus mine author sung it to me ; and, by the leave of those who would be counted the only grave ones, this is no mere amatorious novel (though to be wise and skilful in these matters men heretofore of greatest name in virtue have esteemed it one of the highest arcs that human contemplation circling upwards can make from the glassy sea whereon she stands); but this is a serious and deep verity, showing us that Love in Marriage cannot live nor subsist unless it be mutual.
Unless more is meant than meets the eye by Anteros here in Milton's own case, this interpolation ^ was for literary
^ The manner of the interpolation is Milton, perceiving that such a poetic so curious that it deserves a note. Fable might be objected to as fitter for
1643-44.] Milton's DIVOKCE TREATISE : SECOND EDITION 67
effect only. Veiy frequently, however, the additions are of new reasonings, or farther interpretations of Scripture. Above all, we have in the second edition the results of Milton's ranging in the literature of the question since he had published the first. In that first edition he had been able to make some reference to Hugo Grotius, having; for- tunately at the last moment come upon some notes of Grotius on Matth. v. which he thought reasonable. But since then he had lighted on a more thoroughgoing authority on his side in one of the German theologians of the Eeformation period — Paul Fagius (1504-1550). "1 had learnt," he says, " that Paulus Fagius, one of the chief divines in Germany, " sent for by Frederic the Palatine to reform his dominion, " and after that invited hither in King Edward's days to be " Professor of Divinity in Cambridge, was of the same opinion " touching Divorce which these men so lavishly traduced " in me. What I found I inserted where fittest place was, " thinking sure they would respect so grave an author, at " least to the moderating of their odious inferences." ^ Ac- cordingly, in the second edition, considerable use is made of Fagius, as well as of Grotius, while, as before, other theolo- gians of historical note — Calvin, Beza, Para?us (1548-1622), Perkins (1558-1602), Eivetus (1572-1651)— are respect- fidly cited, sometimes as furnishing a favourable hint, but sometimes as requiring reply and correction. Not the least interesting perhaps of the added passages is this in the last chapter : " That all this is true [i.e. that Divorce is not to be " restricted by Law] whoso desires to know at large with least " pains, and expects not here overlong rehearsals of that " which is by others already judiciously gathered, let him
a "mere amatorious novel" than for contain too many of those gratuitous
a controversial treatise, insinuates an grandeurs, those upward arcs and cir-
apology for its introduction. The clings from the glassy sea. But, in fact,
apology is that some of the wisest and he had his own theory of prose-writing
greatest men had allowed the use on as of other things, and it was not
occasion of those "highest arcs that Addison's, nor any other that has been
human contemplation, circling upwards, common since.
can make from the glassy sea whereon i This explanation, referring to the
she stands." In this phrase Milton fur- second edition of the Doctrine and
nished his critics with a weapon which Discipline of Dicorce, does not occur in
they might have used against himself. that treatise itself, but in the Judg-
Even now the most general objection ment of Martin, Bucer, published some
to his prose writings would be that they months afterwards.
68 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
" hasten to be acquainted with that nohle vohime written by " our learned Selden, ' Of the Law of Nature and of Nations ' ; " a work more useful and more worthy to be perused, who- " soever studies to be a great man in wisdom, equity and " justice, than all those Decretals and sumless Sums which " the Pontifical clerks have doted on." The particular work of Selden's here referred to is his folio, De Jure Naturali et Gentium juxta Discijjlinam Jlchrmorum, published in 1640. His work more expressly on Divorce, entitled Uxor Hehraica, sive De Nuptiis ac Divortiis, did not appear till 1646 — i.e. it followed Milton's publications on the subject, and in the main backed the opinion they had propounded. It seems to me not improbable that in 1643-4, when Milton j)aid Selden the compliment we have quoted, he had just made Selden's personal acquaintance. Selden was then in his sixtieth year ; Milton in his thirty-sixth.
After the description given of the second edition of the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce and its differences from the first, it seems necessary to quote only some passages from Milton's opening address in it to the Parliament and the Westminster Assembly : —
.... Error supports Custom, Custom countenances Error ; and these two between them would persecute and chase away all truth and solid wisdom out of human life, were it not that God, rather than man, once in many ages, calls together the prudent and religious counsels of men deputed to repress the encroachments, and to work off the inveterate blots and obscurities wrought upon our minds by the subtle insinuating of EiTor and Custom : who, with the numerous and vulgar train of their followers, make it their chief design to envy and cry down the industry of free reasoning, under the terms of " humour " and " innovation " ; as if the womb of teeming Truth were to be closed up if she presume to bring forth aught that sorts not with their unchewed notions and suppositions. Against which notorious injury and abuse of man's free soul to testify, and opjiose the utmost that study and true labour can attain, heretofore the incitement of men reputed grave hath led me among others ; and now the duty and the right of an instructed Christian calls me through the chance of good or evil report to be the sole advocate of a discountenanced truth : a high enterprise, Lords and Commons,
/
1643-44.] Milton's divorce treatise: second edition. 69
a high enterprise and a hard, and such as every seventh son of a seventh son does not venture on. . . . You it concerns chiefly, worthies in Parliament, on whom, as on our deli- verers, all our grievances and cares, by the merit of your eminence and fortitude, are devolved : me it concerns next, having with much labour and diligence first found out, or at least with a fearless and communicative candour first published to the manifest good of Christendom, that which, calling to witness everything mortal and immortal, I believe unfeignedly to be true. . . . Mark then. Judges and Lawgivers, and ye whose office it is to be our teachers, for I will now utter a doctrine, if ever any other, though neglected or not understood, yet of great and powerful importance to the governing of mankind. He who wisely would restrain the reasonable soul of man within due bounds must first himself know perfectly how far the territory and dominion extends of just and honest liberty. As little must he offer to bind that which God hath loosened as to loosen that which He hath bound. The ignorance and mistake of this high point hath heaped up one huge half of all the misery that hath been since Adam. In the Gospel we shall read a supercilious crew of Masters, whose holiness, or rather ,j )1^_0lA/ whose evil eye, grieving that God should be so facile to man, was to set straiter limits to obedience than God had set, to enslave the dignity of Man, to put a garrison upon his neck of empty and over-dignified precepts : and we shall read our Saviour never more grieved and troubled than to meet with such a peevish madness among men against their own freedom. How can we expect him to be less offended with us, when much of the same folly shall be found yet remaining where it least ought, to the perishing of thousands ? The greatest burden in the world is Superstition, not only of ceremonies in the Church, but of imaginary and scarecrow sins at home. What greater weakening, what more subtle stratagem against our Christian warfare, when, besides the gross body of real transgressions to encounter, we shall be terrified by a vain and shadowy menacing of faults that are not ! When things indifferent I shall be set to overfront us, under the banners of Sin, what wonder if we be routed, and, by this art of our Adversary, fall into the subjec- tion of worst and deadliest offences ! The superstition of the Papist is "Touch not, taste not !" when God bids both ; and ours is "Part not, separate not ! " when God and Charity both permits and commands. " Let all your things be done with charity," saith St. Paul ; and his Master saith " She is the fulfilling of the Law." Yet now a civil, an indifferent, a sometime dissuaded Law of Marriage must be forced
VO LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
ui^on us to fulfil, not only without Charity, but against her. No })lace in Heaven or Earth, except Hell, where Charity may not enter ; yet Marriage, the ordinance of our solace and contentment, the remedy of our loneliness, will not admit now either of Charity or Mercy to come in and mediate or pacify the fierceness of this gentle ordinance, the unremedied loneliness of this remedy. Advise ye well, Sui)reme Senate, if charity be thus excluded and expulsed, how ye will defend the untainted honour of your own actions and proceedings. He who marries intends as little to conspire his own ruin as he that swears allegiance ; and, as a whole people is in proportion to an ill Govern- ment, so is one man to an ill marriage. . . . Whatever else ye can enact will scarce concern a third part of the British name ; but the benefit and good of this your magnanimous example [should they restore liberty of Divorce] will easily spread far beyond the banks of Tweed and the Norman Isles. It would not be the first nor the second time, since our ancient Druids, by whom this Island was the cathedral of philosophy to France, left off their Pagan rites, that England hath had this honour vouchsafed from Heaven — to give out reformation to the world. Who was it but our English Constantino that baptized the Roman Empire ? Who but the Northumbrian Willibrod and Winifrid of Devon, with their followers, were the first Apostles of Germany? Who but Alcuin and Wicklif, our countrymen, opened the eyes of Europe, the one in Arts, the other in Religion 1 Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live, . . .
Milton's idea of the greatness of his enterprise, it will be seen from these passages, had grown and grown the more he had brooded on it. What if in this Doctrine of Divorce he were to be the discoverer or restorer of a new liberty, not for England alone, but actually for all Christendom ? ]\Iean- while what opposition he would have to face, what storms of scurrilous jest and severer calumny ! Might it not have been better to have written his treatise in Latin ? This thought had occurred to him. " It might perhaps more fitly " have been written in another tongue ; and I had done so, " but that the esteem I have for my country's judgment, and " the love I bear to my native language, to serve it first with " what I endeavour, made me speak it thus ere I assay the " verdict of outlandish readers." Yet there might have been
1643-44.] Milton's actual divorce doctrine. 71
a propriety, he feels, in addressing such an argument in the first place only to the learned.
And what, after all, and in precise practical form, was this tremendous proposition of Milton respecting Divorce ? Eeduced out of large and cloudy terms, it was simply this,- — that marriage, as it respected the continued union of the two married persons, was a thing with which Law had nothing whatever to do ; that the two persons who had contracted a marriage were the sole judges of its convenience, and, if they did not suit each other, might part by their own act, and be free again ; at all events, that for husbands the Mosaic Law on the subject was still in force : viz. (Deut. xxiv. 1) "When a man hath taken a wife and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her [in- terpreted as including any moral or intellectual incom- patibility, any unfitness whatever], then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house." Milton avoids as much as pos- sible such reductions of his proposition to harsh practical form, and would have disowned such brief popular sum- maries of his doctrine as Divorce at pleasure, or Divorce at the Hushand's pleasure ; but, in reality, it came to this. The husband, in modern times, had still, he maintained, the old Mosaic right of giving his wife a " bill of divorcement," if she did not satisfy him, and sending her back to her father's house. The right was a purely personal one. Friends, indeed, might interfere with their good offices ; nay it would be fitting, and perhaps necessary, that there should be a solemn formality " in presence of the minister and other grave selected elders," who should admonish the man of the seriousness of the step he was about to take. But, if he persisted in taking it — if " he shall have protested, on ' the faith of the eternal Gospel and the hope he has of a ' happy resurrection, that otherwise than thus he cannot do, ' and thinks himself and this his case not contained in that ' prohibition of divorce which Christ pronounced (Matth. v. ' 31-32), the matter not being of malice, but of nature, and
72 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
" SO not aipable of reconciling " — tlien the Church had done her part to the full, and the man was to be left to his own liberty. This passage, proposing a kind of public oath on the man's part, as a formality to be required in every case of dissolvition of marriage, occurs near the end of the treatise in both editions ; and it indicates, I tliink, Milton's recoil from any rough or free and easy version of his doctrine, and his desire to temper it as much as he could. Essentially, however, the proposal mattered little. The husband was still left sole judge of his wife's fitness or unfitness for him, and whether he should exercise his right of putting her away was a matter finally for his private conscience.
With reference to Milton's own case, it is worth observing that the causes of divorce on which he still rings the changes
; throuo'hout the second edition of his treatise, as throughout t ...
the first, are the unmatchableness of dispositions, the un- fitness of the wife for rational conversation, her intellectual and moral insufficiency or perverseness. There is no word of desertion. I cannot but think that this confirms the view that it was not the absence of Milton's wife that caused his dissatisfaction with his marriage, but that the dissatisfaction preceded the absence and had helped to occasion it.
Narration, rather than criticism, is my business in this work ; and we have not yet done with Milton's Divorce speculation. At this point, how^ever, I may venture on three remarks : —
/ (1.) "What is most noticeable in Milton, underneath his whole conduct here, as in so many other matters, is his iiitellectual courage^ Among men of thought there are, I should say, two grades of honesty. There is passive honesty, or the honesty of never saying, or appearing to say, what one does not think ; and it is a rare and high merit to have attained to this. But there is the greater honesty of always saying, or indeed asserting and proclaiming, whatever one does think. The proportion of those who have disciplined themselves to tlds positive or aggressive honesty, and are at the same time socially sufferable by reason of the importance of what they
1643-44.] Milton's divoece doctrine: remarks. 73
have to say, has always been wonderfully small in the world. Now, Milton was one of this band of intellectual Ironsides. Even within the band itself he belonged to the extremest section. For he dared to question not only the speculative dogmas and political traditions of his time, which others round him were questioning, but even some of the estab- lished " moralities," which few of them were questioning. It is not at all uncommon for men the most free-thinking in matters of religious belief to be immoveably and even fanatically orthodox in their allegiance to all customary moralities. They abide by tradition, and think with the multitude, in ethical questions, if in nothing else. But on Milton, it appears from his Address to the Parliament and the Assembly, there had dawned the idea that, as there had come down in the bosom of society misbeliefs in science, imperfect views of theology, and conventions of political tyranny, so there had come down things even worse, in the form of cobwebbed sacramentalisms and sanctities for private life, factitious restrictions of individual liberty pretending themselves to be Christian rules of holiness. Among the greatest burdens and impediments in man's life, he says, were such pseudo-moralities, such " imaginary and scarecrow sins," vaunting themselves as suckers and corollaries from the Ten Colnmandments. This was a daring track to be upon, but Milton was upon it. He did not believe that the world had arrived at a final and perfect system of morals, any more than at a perfect system of science^ He believed the established ethical customs of men to be subject to revision by enlarged and progressive reason, and modifiable from age to age, equally with their theories of cosmology, their philo- sophical creeds, or anything else. There was no terror for him in that old and ever-repeated outcry about " sapping the foundations of society." He believed that the founda- tions of society had taken, and would still take, a great deal of " sapping," without detriment to the superstructure. He believed that, as we may read in Herodotus of ancient communities established on all sorts of principles, or even whim-principles, and yet managing to get on, and as these
74 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
crude polities had been succeeded by other and better ones, to the latest known in the world, so these last need not look to be permanent. Of a tendency to this state of feeling Milton had given evidences from early youth ; but I do not think I am wrong in fixing on the year 1643 as the time when it became chronic, nor in tracing the sudden enlarge- ^ment of it then beyond its former bounds to the wrench in his life caused by his unhappy marriage. At all events, henceforward throughout his career we shall see the con- tinuous action of this now avowed Miltonism among others. We shall see him henceforward continually acting on the principle that, in addition to the real sins forbidden to man by an eternal law of right and wrong, revealed in his own conscience and authenticated by the Bible (for Milton did believe in such an eternal law, and, however it is to be reconciled with what we have just been saying, was a transcendental or a 2)riori moralist at his heart's core), the field of human endeavour was overstrewn by a multi- plicity of mere " scarecrow sins," one's duty in respect of which was simply to march up to them, one after another, and pluck them up, every stick of them individually, with its stuck-on old hat and all its waving tatters.
(2.) One notes in Milton's first Divorce Tract, as in much else of his controversial writing, a preference for the theo- retical over what may be called the practical style ofjirgu- meni,. The neglect of practical details in his reasoning throughout this particular Tract amounts to what might be called greenness or innocence. What are the questions with which an opponent of the " practical " type would have immediately tried to pose Milton, or which such an one would now object to his doctrine ? No one can miss them. In a case where divorce is desired by the man only, what is to become of the divorced wife ? Is not the damage of her prospects by the fact that she has once been married, if but for a month, something to be taken into account ? It is not in marriage as it may be in other partnerships. The poor girl that has been once married returns to her father or her friends an article of suddenly diminished value in the general
1643-44.] MILTON'S DIVORCE DOCTRINE: REMARKS. 75
estimation. What provision is to be made for this ? Then, should there be children, what are to be the arrangements ? Or again, suppose the case, under the new Divorce Law, of a man who has a weakness for a succession of wives — a private Henry the Eighth. He marries No. 1, and, after a while, on the plea that he does not find that she suits him, he gives her a bill of divorcement ; No. 2 comes and is treated in like manner ; and so on, till the brutal rascal, undeniably free from all legal censure, may be living in the centre of a perfect solar system of his discarded wives, moving in nearer or farther orbits round him, according to the times when they were thrown off, and each with her one or two satellites of little darlings ! To be sure, there is the public oath which, it is supposed, might have to be taken in every case of divorce ; but what would such a blackguard care for any number of such oaths ? Besides, you put it to him by his oath to declare that in his conscience he believes the incom- patibility between himself and his wife to be radical and irremediable, and that he does not find that he comes within Christ's meaning in that famous passage of the Sermon on the Mount in which he Christianized the Mosaic Law of Divorce. What does such a fellow know of Christ's meaning ? He will swear, and according to your new Law he need only swear, according to his own standard of fitness ; which may be that variety is a sine qud non for him, or that No. 2 is intolerable when No. 3 is on the horizon. How, in the terms of the new Law, is such licence to sheer libertinism to be avoided ? These and other such questions are suggested here not as necessarily fatal to Milton's doctrine : in fact, in certain countries, since Milton's time, the most thorough practical consideration of them has not impeded modifica- tions of the Marriage Law in the direction heralded by Milton. They are suggested as indicating Milton's rapidity, his impatience, or, if we choose so to call it, his dauntless faith in ideas and first principles. It is remarkable how little, in his first Divorce Tract, he troubles himself with the anticipation of such -like objections of the practical kind. The reason may partly be that, in his own case, some of
76 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
them, if not all, were irrelevant. There were no children in his case to complicate the affiiir ; Mary Powell was proliably as willing to part from him as he to part from Mary Powell ; and, if she were to relapse into Mary Powell again and he to be free as before, the social expense of their two or three months' mismatch would hardly be appreciable ! Doubtless, however, Milton foresaw many of the practical objections. He foresaw cases, that would be sure to arise under the new law, much more complicated than that of himself and Mary Powell. That he did not discuss such cases may have, there- fore, been partly the policy of a controversialist, resolved to establish his main principle in the first place, and leaving the details of practical adjustment for a future time or for other heads. On the whole, however, the inattention to those prac- tical details which would have formed so much of the matter of most men's reasonings on the same subject was very characteristic.
(3.) My last remark isthatMilton,inhis tract, writes wholly from the man's point of view, and in the man's interest, with a strange oblivion of the woman's. The Tract is wholly a plea for the right of a man to give his wife a bill of divorce- ment and send her home to her father. There is no distinct word about any counterpart right for a woman who has married an unsuitable husband to give him a bill of divorce- ment and send him back to his mother. On the whole subject of the woman's interests in the affair Milton is suspiciously silent. There is, indeed, one passage, in Chap. XV. of the Tract, bearing on the question ; and it is very curious. Beza and Paraeus, it seems, had argued that the Mosaic right of divorcement given to the man had been intended rather as a merciful release for afflicted wives than as a privilege for the man himself. On this opinion Milton thinks it necessary to comment. He partly maintains that, if true, it would strengthen his argument for the restoration of the right of divorce to husbands ; but partly he protests against its truth. " If divorce were granted," he says, " not " for men, but to release afHicted wives, certainly it is not " only a dispensation, bvit a most merciful law ; and why it
1643-44.] Milton's divokce doctrine: remarks. *77
" should not yet be in force, being wholly as needful, I know " not what can be in cause but senseless cruelty. But yet to " say divorce was granted for relief of wives, rather than for " husbands, is but weakly conjectured, and is manifest the
" extreme shift of a huddled exposition Palpably
" uxorious ! Who can be ignorant that woman was created " for man, and not man for woman, and that a husband may " be injured as insufferably in marriage as a wife. What an " injury is it after wedlock not to be beloved, what to be " slighted, what to be contended with in point of house-rule " who shall be the head, not for any parity of wisdom (for " that were something reasonable), but out of a female pride ! " ' I suffer not,' saith Saint Paul, ' the woman to usurp autho- " rity over the man.' If the Apostle could not suffer it, into " what mould is he mortified that can ? Solomon saith that " ' a bad wife" is to her husband as rottenness to his bones, a " continual dropping : better dwell in a corner of the house- " top, or in the wilderness, than with such a one : whoso " hideth her hideth the wind, and one of the four mischiefs " that the earth cannot bear.' If the Spirit of God wrote such " aggravations as these, and, as it may be guessed by these " similitudes, counsels the man rather to divorce than to live " with such a colleague, and yet, on the other side, expresses " nothing of the wife's suffering with a bad husband, is it not " most likely that God in his Law had more pity towards " man thus wedlocked than towards the woman that was " created for another ? " ^ Here was doctrine with a vengeance. Man being the superior being, and therefore with the greater capacity of being pained or injured, God had pitied him, if unhappily married, more than the woman similarly situated. Por him, therefore, and not for the woman, there had been provided the right of divorce ! This is not positively asserted, but it seems to be implied. The woman's relief, in the case
1 This passage occurs in the second idea of Beza and Paraeus that divorce
edition. There is but the germ of it in had been given for the rehef of the
the first edition, in the form of the first wife, and that his dissatisfaction with
sentence, " If Divorce were granted the idea, as promoting the woman too
. . senseless cruelty." The inference much at the man's expense, came after-
is that Milton, when he wrote the first wards, edition, was rather pleased with the
78 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
of a marriage unhappy for her, consisted apparently, accord- ing to Milton, not in her po^Yer to cut the knot, but in the likelihood that her hussband, finding the marriage unhappy also for him, would desire for his own sake to cut the knot, or might be cbiven by her management to that extremity. In short, we have here, as another consequence of Milton's unfortunate marriage, the beginning of that pecviliarly stern form of the notion of woman's natural and essential inferiority to man which ran witli visible effects through his whole sub- sequent life. - .[[f not liis ideal of woman, at least his estimate of what was to be expected from actual women, and what was on the average to be accorded to them, liad been permanently lowered by a bad first experience.
All this while, what of the poor girl whose hard fate it was to occasion this experience in the life of a man too grandly and sternly her superior ? One is bound to think also of her, and to remember, in so thinking, how young she was at the time when her offended husband first theorized his feeling of her defects, and published his theorizings, with her image and memory, though not with her name, involved in them, to the talkative w^orld. She had not been seventeen years and a half old when she had married Milton ; she was of exactly that age when she left him, and the first edition of his Divorce Treatise was ready ; she was just eighteen when the second and fuller edition appeared. Surely, but for that fatal visit. back to Forest Hill, contrived by her or her relatives, matters would have righted themselves. As it was, things could not be worse. Eestored to her father's house at Forest Hill, amid her unmarried brothers and sisters, and all the familiar objects from which she had parted so recently on going to London, the young bride had, doubtless, her little pamphlets to publish in that narrow but sympathising circle. In particular, her grievances would be poured into the con- fiding ears of her mother. That lady, as we can see, at once takes the lead in the case. Never with her will shall her daughter go back to that dreadful man in Aldersgate Street ! Mr. Powell acquiesces; brothers and sisters acquiesce; Oxford
1643-44.] WHAT THEY THOUGHT AT FOREST HILL. 79
Itoyalism near at hand acquiesces, so far as it is consulted ; the hride herself acquiesces, happy enough again in the routine of home, or perhaps beginning to join bashfully again in such gaieties of officers' balls, and the like, as the proximity of the King's quarters to Forest Hill made inevitable. And is not the King's cause on the whole prospering, and is not that in itself another reason for being at least in no hurry to make it up with Milton ? What if it never be made up with him ? It is some time since his letters to Forest Hill by the carrier ceased entirely, and since the foot-messenger he sent down expressly all the way from London with his final letter was met at the gate by Mrs. Powell and told her mind in terms which were doubtless duly reported. And now, they hear, he is going about London as usual, and visiting at Lady Margaret Ley's, and giving his own version of his marriage story, and even printing Tracts in favour of Divorce ! People generally, they say, are not agreeing with him on that subject ; but there is at least one respectable English family that is tempted to agree with him and to wish him all success !