[AVAIL Y«3 (Qatnell Imuetaitg Sibracg Stlfaca, Nrtn $nrk OTIjttE IStBtnrital ffiihrarB THE GIFT OF PRESIDENT WHITE MAINTAINED BY THE UNIVERSITY IN ACCORD- ANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS OF THE GIFT DATE DUE % 3 1 "OS lifyg IOTP ^P 1^ Jl 1 "S^' ^ mR^X^ fi p A ¥ ^ife^WTcv flgfeemi^ Cornell University Library PR 3581.M42 1871 V.3 The life of John Milton: narrated in con 3 1924 016 650 644 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924016650644 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. TEE LIFE OF JOHN MILTON, AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. Vol. I. (1608-1639.) 18s. Vol. 11. (1639-1643.) 16s. Vol.111. (1643-1649.) 18s. [T!ie rest of the Work m preimratim. MILTON'S POETICAL WORKS. The Cambridge Edition. The Golden Treasury Edition. The Globe Edition. 1 Vol. Globe 8vo. 3s. W.; gilt edges, 4s. Gd. • [These Editions nearly ready. ESSAYS, BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL. Chiefly on English Poets. 8vo. 12s. Qd. (To he republished, with Additions.) BRITISH NOVELISTS AND THEIR STYLES Being a Critical Sketch of the History of British Prose Fiction. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY. A Review, with Criticisms ; including some Comments on Mr. Mill's Answer to Sir William Hamilton. New and cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. GOLDSMITH'S MISCELLANEOUS WORKS With Biographical Essay. Globe 8vo. 3s. Sd. MACMILLAN & CO., LONDON". THE LIEE JOHN MILTON HISTORY OF HIS TIME. AM THE LIFE '^?/ . f'/ JOHN MILTON: NARRATED IN CONITEXION WITH THE POLITICAL, ECCL^ISIASTICAL, AND LITEEAKY HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. BT DAVID MASSON, M.A., LL.D., PROJTESSOR OF KHETOKIC AND ENGLISH LITEKATUKE IN THE UNIVERSITY OP EDINBURGH. VOL. in. 1643—1649. MACMILLAN AND CO. 1873. ' lOUNi I i [Tho Right of Translation is reserved.] LONDON ; «. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, DREAD STREET HILL. CONTENTS. BOOK I. JULY 1643— MAECH 1643-4. HISTORY: — FiKST Eight Months of the Westminster Assembly: Civil Wae and the Long Paeliament continued. BIOGRAPHY: — Milton- still in Aldeesoatb Stheet : His Mabriage Misfortune : His First Divorce Treatise. CHAP. PAGE ■ I. The "Westminster Assembly in Session — The Solemn League and Covenant : Scottish Commissioners in the Assembly — Debates on Churoh-Govemment : Apologetiml Narration of the Inde- pendents — Parliamentary Proceedings — Scottish Auxiliary Army in England S II. Milton unhappy in his Marriage : His First Divorce Tract : Two Editions of it 42 BOOK 11. MAECH 1644— MAECH 1646, HISTORY: — The Yeah of Marston Moor : Civil War, Long Parlia- ment, AND Westminster Assembly continued — Struggle of Intje- PENDENOY with PeBSBYTERIANISM : TOLERATION CONTROVERSY : ENG- LISH Sects and Sectaries — Peesbyterian Settlement voted — N"Ey\r Model of the Army. BIOGRAPHY: — Milton among the Sectaries: His Second Divorce Pamphlet, Tract on Eovcation, Areopagitica^ Tetrachorhox, and colasterion. chap. pagf I. Inactivity of the Scottish Auxiliaries — Spread of Independency and Multiplication of Sects — Visitation of the University of Cambridge — Battle of Marston Moor — Fortnight's Vacation of the Westminster Assembly (July 23 — August 7, IQii), Principle of Toleration and State of the Toleration Contro- versy : Synopsis of English Sects and Sectaries in 1644. Resumption of Assembly's Proceedings : Denunciation of Picked Sectaries and Heretics — Cromwell's Interference for Independency : Accommodation Order of Parliament — Presbyterian Settlement voted — Essex beaten and the War flagging : Self-denying Ordinauco and New Model of the -Army — Parliamentary Vengeances : Death of Laud ... 83 VI CONTENTS. ClIAr. PAGE II. Milton among the Sectaries, and in a "World of Disesteem" : Story of Mrs. Attaway — Samuel Hartlib, John Durie, and John Amos Comeiiius : Schemes of a Eeformed Education, and Project of a London University — Milton's Tract on Education, and Method with his Pupils — His Second Divorce Tract, or CompDation from Bucer — Mr. Herbert Palmer's Attack on Milton from the Pulpit — Milton and the Stationers' Company : Their Accusation of him in a Petition to the Commons — His Arcnpagitica, or Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing — Anger of the Stationers, and their Complaint against Milton to the Lords ; Consequence of the Complaint — The Divorce Question continued : Publication of Mr. Herbert Palmer's Sermon, and farther Attacks on Milton by Prynne, Dr. Featley, and an Anonymous Pamphleteer — Tetradiordon and Colasteriqn : Their Replies to the Assailants 186 BOOK III. APRIL 1645— AUGUST 164S. HISTORY: — Sixteen Months of the Nevc Model, and of the Long Parliament and Westminster Assembly continued. — Battle op Naseby and its Consequences : Episode of Montrose in Scot- land : Flight of the King to the Scots and Conclttsion of the Civil War. — Progress op the Toleration Controversy and op THE Struggle between the Presbyterians and the Indepen- dents. — London and Lancashire Prbsbyterianized. £IOGIiAPSy:—^i.rviiN of Milton's Wipe : His Removal from Aldersgate Street to Barbican : First Edition op his Poems : Three more Sonnets : Continued Presbyterian Attacks on Milton : His Retaliation : Troubles of the Pov^ell Family. CHAP. PAGE I. Composition of the New Model, and View of the Work lying before it— First Actions of the JTew Model— Cromwell retained in Command : Battle of Naseby : Other Successes of the New Model- Poor Performance of the Scottish Auxiliary Ai-my— Episode of Montrose in Scotland— Fag-end of the War in England, and Flight of the King to the Scots — Fallen and Risen Stars 325 11. Work in Parliament and the Westminster Assembly duiing the Sixteen Months of the New Model— The two continued Church Controversies— Independency and Sectarianism in the New Model : Toleration Controversy continued • Crom- wels part iu it: Lilburue and other Pamphleteers: Sion College and the Corporation of London : Success of the Presbytenans in Pariiameiit— Presbyterian Frame of Church Government completed : Details of the Arrangement— The Eecnutmg of the Commons : Eminent Recruiters— Effects of the Recruiting : Alliance of Independency and Erastian- ism: Check given to the Presbyterians: Westminster Assembly rebuked and curbed— Negotiations round the CONTENTS. Vll King at Newcastle — Tbreateiied Rupture between the Scots and the English : Argyle's Visit to London : The Nineteen Propositions — Parliament and the Assembly reconciled : Presbyterianizing of London and Lancashire : Death of Alexander Henderson 382 III. Effects of Milton's Areopagitica — His Intention of another Marriage : His Wife's Return and Reconciliation with him — Removal from Aldersgate Street to Barbican — First Edition of Milton's Collected Poems : Humphrey Moseley the Book- seller — Two Divorce Sonnets and Sonnet to Henry Lawes — Continued Presbyterian Attacks on Milton : His Anti-Pres- byterian Sonnet of Reply — Surrender of Oxford : Condition of the Powell Family — The Powells in London ; More Family Perplexities : Birth of Milton's first Child , . . 431 BOOK IV. AUGUST 1«46— JANUARY 164S-!I. HISTORY: — The Last Two Years and a Half of the Ef.ign of Chakles I. : — I. His CONTINUED CAPTIVITY WITH THE SoOTS AT NEWCASTLE, AND Failure of his Negotiations with the Prbsby- TEEIANS ; IT. His Captivity at Holmby House, and the Quarrel BETWEEN THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT AND THE EnRLISH A»MY; III. 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. BIOQRAPHT : — Milton in Barbican and in High Holbokn.— 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. CHAP. PAOE I. 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 Mun-ay 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 viii CONTENTS. CHAP ''*'"' Second Stage of tlie Captivity : At Holmby House : Feb. 1646-7 —June 1647. The King's Manner of Life at Holmby— New Omens in his favour from the Eelations of Parliament to its own Army— Proposals to disband the Army and recon- struct part of it for service in Ireland— Summary of Irish Affairs since 1641— Army's Anger at the Proposal to dis- band it— View of the State of the Army : Medley of Keli- gious Opinions in it : Passion for Toleration : Prevalence of Democratic Tendencies : The Levellers— Determination of the Presbyterians for the Policy of Disbaudment, 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 613 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 Anny upon London : Military Occupation of the City : The Mob quelled, Parliar ment reinstated, and the Eleven expelled — Generous Treat- ment of the King by the Army : His Conferences with Fairfax, Cromwell, and Iretou — The Army's Scads of Pro- posals, and Comparison of the same with the Nineteen Pro- yosjWores of the Parliament — The King at Hampton Court, still demurring privately over thcffeattfe of Proposals, but playing them off publicly against the NineUm, Propositions: Aimy at Putney— Cromwell's Motion for a Recast of the Nitieteen Propositions and Re-application 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 . . 54,7 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 Method of the Four Bills Indignation of the Scots : their Complaints of Breach of the Covenant— Army Rendezvous at Ware : Suppression of a Mutiny 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 of No Farther Addresses to the King : Severance of the Scottish Alliance— f/ie Engage- ment, or Secret Treaty between Charles and the Scots in CONTENTS. IX the Isle of Wight— Stricter guard of the King in Carisbrooke Castle : His Habits in his Imprisonment — First Enmours of The Scottish Engagement : Royalist Programme of a Second Civil Wak,— Beginnings of The Second Civil WAiR : Eoyalist Risings : CromweD 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 in 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 Ti-eaty by the Independents — Disgust of the Army with the Treaty : Revocation of tlieir Concordat with Parliament, and Resolution to seize the Political Mastery : Formation of a Republican Party — Petitions for Justice on the King : The Grand Army Remonstrance — Cromwell in Scotland : Restoration of the Argyle Govern- ment there : Cromwell at Pontefract : His Letter to Ham- mond — The King removed from the Isle of Wight to Hurst Castle — The Army again in possession of London .... 676 II. Troubles in the Barbican Household : Christopher Milton's Composition Suit : Mr. Powell's Composition Suit : Death of Mr. PoweU : His Will : Death of Milton's Father— Sonnet ^ XIV. and Ode to John Rous — Italian Reminiscences : Lost Letters from Carlo Dati of Florence : Milton's Reply to the last of them — Pedagogy in the Barbican : List of Milton's known Pupils : Lady Ranelagh — Educational Reform still a Question : Hartlib again : 'The Invisible College : Young Robert Boyle and William Petty — Removal from Barbican to High Holborn — Meditations and Occupations in the House in High Holborn : MUton's Sympathies with the Anny Chiefs and the Expectant Republicans — Still under the Ban of the Presbyterians : Testimony of the London Ministers against Heresies and Blasphemies : Milton in the Black List — — Another Letter from Carlo Dati : Translation of Nine Psalms from the Hebrew — Milton through the Second Civil War : His personal Interest in it, and Delight in the Army's Triumph : His Sonnet to Fairfax— Birth of Milton's Second ■ — Child : Another Letter from Carlo Dati 631 III. The Two Houses in the Grasp of the Army : Final Efforts for the King: Pride's Purge and its Consequences — The King broughtfrom Hurst Castle to Windsor : Ordinance for his Trial passed by the Commons alone : Constitution of the Court — The Trial in Westminster Hall : Incidents of the Seven suc- cessive Days : The Sentence — Last Three Days of Charles's Life : His Execution and Burial 692 BOOK I. JULY 1643— MARCH 1643-4. HISTORY : — First Eight Months of the Westminster Assembly : Civil "War and the Long Parliament continued. BIOGRAPHY : — Milton still in Aldersgate Street: His Mabbiage Misfortune : His First Divorce Treatise. VOL. III. THE LIFE OF JOHN MILTON, WITH THE HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. CHAPTER I. THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY IN SESSION — THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT : SCOTTISH COMMISSIONERS IN THE ASSEMBLY DEBATES ON CHUECH-GOVBRNMENT : APOLOGBTICAL NARRATlOIf 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 openiag 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 toill 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 after vizards 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- B 2 4 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. meiit.1 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 Piirliament. 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 n,ear him ; and a table ran through 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 OP 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 Eegulations which 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. ' TheOrdinance of Parliament autho- that day rizmg the change of the place of meet- 2 Lia-htfoot'a ■N^,^+,>= „* a i , ing to the Jerusalem Chamber is dated WorksTed 1824^ Vo? fju^''^'^}'\ = Sept. 23, 1643 : see Lords Journals for ^ud BailUe; II. IwlloQ ^^^ ' ^ ' 1643-44.] Til?: WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY IN SESSION. 5 'On July 5 the Commons had mled 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 England " 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. Accordingly, 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 fiist revising Committee, of which Dr. Burges 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 " ; " III. Of the going down of Christ into Hell " ; " IV. Of the Eesurrection of Christ " ; " V. Of the Holy Ghost " ; " VI. Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salva- tion" ; " VII Of the Old Testament"; "VIII Of the 6 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTODT 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 the 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 30) ; 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 Fiennes, was on the point of yielding to Prince Eupert. 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 readUy 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 " uniformity 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, June 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 af 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 Fast 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.^ Pive 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 TIMK. —one iteia of the 'busiiiess 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 Armyn, >Sir Harry Vane the younger, Mr. Hatcher, and Mr. Darley, from the Parliament; and Stephen Mai-shall 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 General 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 had 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 vjould shed their blood, as fellow-soldiers ■with Englishmen, in the fields of England ! 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 siibscribing 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 HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. entrusted, produced a draft of the proposed Covenant. The English Commissioners did not altogether like this draft; hut, after a good deal of discussion, and apparently some suggestions from Vane tending to vagueness in the religious pai-t and greater prominence of the civil, the draft was modified into a shape in which it was agreed to unani- mously. On the 17th 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. Robert 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, 11. 81—90 : Bui-net's Hamiltons, 298—307. " 1643-44.] THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. 11 Maitland 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. 28 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 time 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 ' Acts of Scottish Assembly of 1643 ; already on that day been called in be- and Baillie's Letters, IL 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 hia 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 vei-y day of his repentant satisfaction." See Commons Journals of reappearance in the Assembly. He had the two dates named. 12 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. finaUy adjusted, the two Houses of ParKament were swift in enacting it. On the 21st of Septemher, they ordered that it should he 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 220 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, aU 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 CromweU, 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, onwards for some years, the test of being a Parliamentarian in England was "Have you signed the Covenant ? " and the test of willingness to hecome a Parliamentarian, and of fitness to be forgiven for past malignancy or lukewarmness, was " Will you now sign the Covenant 1 " 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 Natiotial Scottish Covenant, peculiar to themselves ; and there was the Solemn League 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, real!}', and constantly, through the grace of God, endeavour, in our several places and callings, the pre^ servation of the Reformed 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, XIIL 10—16; Baillie, 172— 174; Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857), 11. 98, 99, and 102 ; Neal, III. 65—70; I. 137, 138. Stevenson, 515, 616; Pari. Hist. IlL 14 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOBY 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-goveru- ment by Archbishops, Bishops, their Chancellors and Commissaries, Deans, Deans and Chapters, 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 EeHgion and Liberties of the Kingdoms ; that the world may bear witness with our consciences of our loysilty, 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 aU such as have been or shall be Incendiaries, Malignants, or evU Instruments, by hindering the Eeformation of Eeligion, 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 Union to all posterity, and that justice may be done upon the wilful opposers thereof in manner expressed in the precedent Article. VL We shall also, according to our places and callings, in this common cause of Eeligion, Liberty, and Peace of tbe 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 1643-11] SCOTTISH COMMISSIONEES IN THE ASSEMBLY. 15 Kingdoms, and the 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 agaiust all lets and iaipediments whatsoever ; and what we aie 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 be 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 Eushworth, 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 Beligion 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 Bi-itish mind of the time, with traced by a diligent reader in the pro- individual theorists excepted. It be- ceedings of the Lords and Commons on longed to the Boyalists equally with the this subject as recorded in their Journals Parliamentarians ; the only difference between Aug. 31 and Sept. 15. The beingthattheobjectsfor "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 AND HISTORY OP HIS TIME. formality ; and the reader has now therefore to add to the list of the Assembly the following Scotchmen : — DIVINES. Alexandee Henderson : since 1639 one of the ministers of Edinburgh, and since 1640 Rector of the University of Edinburgh (annually re-elected) : cetat. 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 supereminent composure, comprehen- siveness, and breadth of brow. Although the Scottish Presbyterian rale was that no churchman should have authority in State a&irs, it had to be practically waived in his case : he was a Cabinet Ministerwithout 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 you may look in Encyclopsedias 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 1688 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 en4ure 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) : atat. 31.— He had flashed into notice in Scotland in 1637, when he was only four-andttwenty years of age. He was then but tutor in the household of the Earl of CaSsilis ; but he had written " A Dispnte against the Engliih-Popish, Ceremonies obtruded 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 bis appointment to the parish of Wemyss (1638) ; and hence his previous mission to London, in company with Hender- son, Baillie, and Blair (1640-41). Returning froin that mission, he had been translated from Wemyss to Edinburgh ; but hardly had he settled in Edmburgh when he was again sent off to London on this new business. His wife and family jomed 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 65, 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. •" ■/ ^ j Robert Baillie ; Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow (formerly minister of Kilwinning m Ayrshire): osta^. 4l.— Baillie also had been on the former Scot1;ish Commission to London ; and it was sorely against his will that he was appointed on this second one. He followed Hendei-son and Gillespie in November 1 643, leaving his wife and family in Glasgow. He also remained fully three years in London, attending the Assembly punctually, but not ?rhf,"lfTTf\ Fort-'nately, however, he kept up his habit of jotting down fJl ^^f} ,""",« 'i" conespondence all he saw and heard. Raillie's Letteu and Journals (first properly edited by Mr. David Laing in 1842) are C3„« "ost graphic books of contemporary memoir to be found in any shSof ;^ni^r ^^^ °' narration in his pithy native Scotch is nothing short ot genms. Whenever we have an account from Baillie of anything he saw or was present at, it is worth all other accounts put togeS fo? accuracy and vividness. So in his account of Strafford's tri£ ; and so in h°s account of his first impressions of the Westminster Assembly 1643-44.] SCOTTISH COMMISSIONERS IN THE ASSEMBLY. .17 Samuel Ruthekford : one of the ministers of St. Andrews, and also Professor of Di\'iraty in the University there '(formerly minister of Anwoth, Kirkcud- bright) : atat. 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 ane 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), .""> 1613-44.] 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 {a/nth, p. 6), they had crawled on through five Articles more : viz.— "XL Of Jusf-ification hy Faith"; " XIL Of Good. Works"; "XIII. Of Worlcs lefare Justification"; "XIV. Of Works of Siopererogation" ; "XV. Of Christ alone with- 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 stiff er 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) Chukch 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 Widpws), 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 thia 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 Idghtfoot's Notes, p. 17. 2 20 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. joined with tlie Erastian Divines, Lightfoot and Coleman, and with the Independents, in wholly or partially opposing lay-eldership, against the advocacy of their brethren, Marshall, Calamy, l^Tewcomen, Young (four of the Smectymnuans), Sea- man, Herle, Walker, Whitaker and others, hacked 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 solema 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 chui'ch, 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 1 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) Peesbyterial Government oe Congregationalism :— This controversy, M'hich had been underlying the whole course 1613-44.] 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 surroimding 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 of&ce-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. Fierce and hot waxed the war between the two systems. Much turned on the practice of the apostolic 22 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. clmrches 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 Nye, 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 BaiUie 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 jndg- " 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.] APOLOGETWAL 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 ? 1 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 - 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 (y the Westminster Assembly two preceding may be traced in detail — there is a fairish popular account, com- Lightfoot's Notes travei*sing, with great pil§d from Lightfoot and Gillespie, but minuteness, the whole of the time under charged with the author's strong per- notice ; and Gillespie's beginning at sonalPj'esbyteriajiism. The traditional Feb. 2,1643-4. Pregxed to Gillespie's partof the story of Gillespie's fight with Notes, as edited by Meek in 1846, there Selden (which had come down, I believe, is, however, a very useful set of o^cial through the careful Scottish Church minutes of the prooeedjngs from Oct. antiquary, Wodrow) is given by Mr. 17, 1643, onwards, by the Scribes of the Hetheriugton in his History of the As- Assembly ; which may be compared sembly, but more fully and interest- with Lightfoot's more extensive jot- ingly in his Memoir of Gillespie, prs- tings. There are excellent and luminous fixed to Meek's Edition of Gillespie's notices of the Assembly's proceedings Notes. during most of the time indicated in ^ 1 find it registered at Stationers' BailKe, II. 106^17*. Nfial js v;ery con- Hall, Dec. 30, 1643. 24 LIFE OF MILTON- AND IlISTOHY OF HIS TIME. had been in Holland, and an exposition of their differences from tlieir 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, shoidd 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 Csesar 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 aU 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 Noah'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 survivors in this ark should find themselves confronted with another population, which, having survived somehow on 1643-44.] ANSWERS TO THE APOLOGJLTICAL NARRATION. 25 chance 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. What, then, were they to do ? In the first place, as they believed Noah to be within thcdr 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 Apologetical 'Narration and other pleas for Congregationalism. Eutherford's Tew/perate 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 Narration were 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- pendentSj especially one entitled M. S. to A. S. (a title changed in a second edition into " A JReply of Tvm of the Brethren 26 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIMR. to A. S. ") ; again " A. S." responded ; and so the controversy went on, pamphlets thickening on pamphlets.^ PROCEEDINGS OF PAKLIA.MENT 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 Suppression of un- popular Rites 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 chxiTches 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-churches within the Parliament's bounds that had not already been Puritanized by private effort. Then, again, on the 20 th of ISTovember, 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 Rous. Ought not Sternhold Alt^lJ'"^^ AXD IIISTOEY 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 Iktates 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 Eaiil OF Loudoun, High Chancellor of Scotland; Loed Maitland (already in London as Scottish Commissioner to the West- minster Assembly) ; Sir Akciiibald Johnstone of Waeeiston (due in London at any rate as a Commissioner to the Assembly) ; and Me. Eobert Baeclat, Provost of Irvine in Ayrshire. These Commissioners having presented their Com- mission to the English Parliament, Feb. 5, the Parliament were moved to appoint soiae of its trustiest men from the ^ 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 their 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 Eael op Noethtjmberland, the Eael of Essex, the Eael of Waewick, the Eael of Manchestee, Viscount Saye and Sele, Loed "Whaeton, Loed Roheets, "William Pibreepoint, Sir Henry Vaiie, Senr., Sie Philip Stapleton, Sie William "Waller, Sir G-ilbeet Gereard, Sir "William Aemtn, Sie Arthur Haseleig, Sir Henry Vane, Junr., John Crewe, Egbert "Wallop, Olivee St. John, Samuel Browne, John Glynn, and Olivee Ceomwell. 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 that 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 8th 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 Marshall preaching 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 = Rusliworth, V. 376 ; Pari. Hist. III. 16, 1643-4 ; and Baillie, II. 141, 142. 186-7 ; and Baillie, II. 118. CHAPTEE II. MILTON UNHAPPY IN HIS MAEEIAGE : HIS FIRST DIVOECE TRACT : TWO EDITIONS OF IT. We left Milton in his house 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 REPENTS HIS MARRIAGE. 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 dishonourable 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 " opioious 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- " siilted many eminent authors, write the said book of " Divorce, with intentions to be separated from her." ^ On aU grounds PhUlips'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 return, that roused Milton's indignation, put the thought of divorce into his 1 Phillips's Memoir ; Aubrey's Lives ; aad Wood's Fasti Oxon. I. 482-3. 44 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. mind, and induced him to write his first Divorce Tract, 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 hefore, 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, Bestor'd, to ilie good of loth Sexes, from the Bondage of Canon Law and oth&r mistakes, to Christian Freedom, guided by the Mule of Charity; wherein 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. 52. 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." ^ 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 wiU. be observed, was anonymous ; but the words " Written by J. Milton," penned on the title-page by the same hand that penned the date "Aug. Ist," show that the authorship was no secret from the aU-prying Thomasoa In short, on evidence absolutely conclusive, Milton's first I Copy in British Museum Library : Press-mark, ^^l±IiH^ 1643-44.] MILTON KEPENTS HIS MAERIAGE. 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 te the place for a word had taken pains to obtain copies of or two about the collector of those publications of the immediately pro- King's Pamphlets in the British Mu- ceding years ; and after that his work seum among which I hare had so had been facilitated by the notoriety of frequently to range for the purpoisbs of his passion fSr colletJting. Booksellers this work, and to which, like other in- and authors (Milton for one) seem occa- quirers into English History frohi 1640 sionally to have sent copies of their to 1660, I owe more items of informa- pamphlets to Thomasoni "Exact care tion than I can count. — George Thoma- hath been taken," he hitaself tells us son was a London bookseller of the in the Intrbduotion to a MS. catalogne Civil War time ; his place of business of tiis treasures, " that the very day is being the " Eose and Crown " in St. written upon most of them that they Paul s Churchyard. He was of Boyalist came out;" and this care of his has sympathies ; but his hobby was to fixed the dates of many publications collect impartially all the pamphlets, that would else have been unknown or broad-sheets, &o., that teetaed from the but vaguely known. — For farther par- English press on both sides, and not ticulars of this interesting person, an only those that teelned 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 eurrent English questions. He chances of Parliamentarian pUlage, and began this labour in 1641, and pursued aiistory of the fortunes of his oolleo- 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 JI/emo»Vs 3.3,000 pamphlets, &o. on Enghsh 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 jolting 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. Whep he began to collect in 1641, he 46 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY 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 Porest Hill on her granted two months of leave till Michaelmas. What are we to make of this discrepancy? One is puzzled. That at man should have occupied himself on a Tract on Divorce ere his honeymoon was well over- should have Ayritten 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 been the agony of a deadly discovery of his wife's utter 1643-44.] Milton's fikst divoece tkeatisb, 47 unfitness for him when as yet she had not been two months his wife. It must have been the unutterable pain of the dis-illusioned 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, before, 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 sure 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, 1643.2 jt -^yas 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, having oo- Milton j hut the words seem to imply oasion, 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 misrfated 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 unlikellest thing of all. lady, and she had no fondness for 48 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY, 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 heen submitted to the reading of England. 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 benefits of conjugal society, which are solace and peace, is a greater reason of divorce than natural frigidity, especially if there be no children, and that there be 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 literaUsts ; 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 conclusion was 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, tyrannj"-, 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 eonsciouaness 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 Eeformation 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.] MILTOH'S FIRST DIVOECB 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 diyine 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 iirst edition ; it is not nearly so full in the second. VOL. III. E 50 LIFE OF MILTON 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 unite"; " two incoherent and uncombining 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 Idndle one another, not with the fire of love, but with a hatred irrecon- cilable, who, were they severed, would be straight Mends in any other relation"; "two carcases chained unnaturaUy together, or, as it may happen, a living soul bound to a dead corpse"; "enough to abase the mettle of a generous spirit and smk him to a low and vulgar pitch of endeavour in aU his actions ":— such are a few specimens of the phrases with which the tract abotKids.i But one passage may he quoted entire: — "But some are ready to object that the disposition ought seriously in'v^ZS mfTl^l^L°'.T ^''T** *''«'«• ^°'' of the phra.es, 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 unliveUness and natural sloth which is really unfit for conversation t 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, becaase their wild affections, xmsettling 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 purposes 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 round 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 two hundred and twenty-eight years ago, and join in the gossip which it then began to circulate through the town. In the lobby of E 2 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. Hwr case is to be pitied ; shame if it is not I 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 waU 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 moody in his house ; he walked moodily in the streets ; we can hear him muttering to himself, we can see his teeth clenched. Mornuig and evening, day after day, he is in a great despair. And why ? 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 Ipund 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 world. He would rouse his countrymen on the whole subject of the Law of Marriage. Who knew but his voice might be heard ? Who knew but that, were it loud enough, there would 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 ! ^ This phrase is in one of the inserted passages in the seoond edition. 54 LIFE OF MILTON AND inSTOEY 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. Eeally, thotigh 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. Prom all that we know of the youth and early manhood of Milton, we should certainly have predicted of him, with whatever heterodoxy in other liiatters, 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 feais 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 established moralities of the marriage-institution. Had he been happily 1643-44.] MILTON'S FIRST DIVORCE TREATISE. 55 married, had he found himself vinited at last to oue 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 agamst 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 shotdd 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 ! No 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 himseK, 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 OP 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 Discipline 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. From thte 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 whom 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 aU 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 ' J° *,^« dedication to Parliament which I saw and was partaker of, your of his Tetraclmrdon, published March vows and solemn covenants " 1644-5, he uses these words, " That 1643-44.] THE LADY MARGARET LEY. 57 relaxation for him in society more general than that of his wife-deserted household. "Our 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 office 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 (Peb. 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 Treasurership 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 four days after that ominous 58 LISPK OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. dissolution of Charles's tUrd Parliament wMcli 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 Fuller's, and they probably express the character of the Earl that had come down among his countrymen.^ The Ear] 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 — Elizabefh, 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.; Bionysia, 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 Phoebe, to ... . Biggs, of "Hurst, in com. Berks., Esq."^ AH 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 Karonage (1676), Vol. II. p. 20 ; Fviller's Worthies, WiltsUre (ed. pp. 451, 452 ; Wood's Athena, II. 1840), III. 328-9 441, 443 ; Clar. Hist, (one toI. ed. 1843), s Dugdale, ut 'mpra 16iZ-ii.] THE LADY MAUGAHET LKY. 59 — Jane, daughter of Lord Butler of Bramfleld, 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 ofi&cer 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." 1 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 Cl.ir. Life, ed. 184 p. 1141. 60 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. It is not from PhiUips alone that we liear of Milton's friendsliip with the Lady Margaret. Milton has himself commemorated it in one of his Sonnets : — "To THE Lady Mabgaebt Let. 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 breaMng of that Parliament Broke him, as that dishonest victory At Chseronea, fatal to liberty, Killed with report that old man eloquent : Though later born than to have known the days Wherein your father fiourished, 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.] IWO 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 Euth, Chosen thou hast ; and they that overween, And at thy growing virtues fret their spleen, No anger find in thee, but pity and ruth. Thy care is fixed, and zealously attends To fiU 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.' AVho 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 vii-Viie," 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, "growing rirtues." before the draft of the Sonnet to Lady 62 LIFE OP MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. Through the cold winter of 1643-4, 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 aU sorts of literary odds and ends.i 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 tiU 1649) 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 ' Wood'sAth. III. 745 and Cunning- edit. 1754.) The letter is dated "Lond. ham's London : Article Jt^ka Pruon. 24 Jan.," no year given ; but the dates 2 Howell's Famihai- Letters : Book are worthleaa, beins aft6rthoiis'ht3 Spenoerj, knight, (pp. 453—457 of suooesaive batches. 1643-44.] Milton's divorce tebatisb 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 skUl " 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, &c." ? ^ Hall, it wiU 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 T " 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. 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." i 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: Eedor'd to the good of both Sexes, from the bondage of Canon Law, and other mistakes, to the true meq,ning of Scripture in the Law and Gospel compar'd. Wherin are set down the had consequences of alolishing or condemning of Sin, that which the Law of God allowes, and Christ aholisht not Now the second time revised and mvAih augmented. Ln Two Books: to the Parlament of England with the Assembly. The Author J. M." Underneath this title, the text Matth. xiii. 52 is 1 This paBSfige, fitting in here with ton's .Judgment of MarUn Buoer conm-n - chronological exactness, occurs in Mil- ing Divorce, rnblishedi" July 1644 1643-44.] MILTON'S DIVORCE TEKATISE : SECOND EDITION. 65 repeated from the title-page of tlie 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, Lniprinted 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 88 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 Assembly," 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, fo;:ming ten pages, come in lieu of a single paragraph of two pages in the first edition ; Chapters IV., V., VL, 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 , T. -^ TV, T, 1 12. E.e. 5 1 Bnt, Mus. Pregs-mark, — =-1= . ' ]41 VOL, in. ff 66 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. and Anteros, or Zove and Its Reciprocation. The passage is characteristic and may be quoted : — Marriage is a covenant the very heing 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-bom, yet hath a brother wondrous ]ike Mm, 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 Apogseum, 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 purple feathers ; his silken braids untwine and slip their knots ; and that original and fiery virtue given him by Fate aU on a sudden goes out and leaves him un- deified and despoiled of aU 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 m 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 1 The manner of the interpolation is MUton, perceiving that such a poetic 80 curious that it deserves a note. Fable might be objected to as fitter for 1643-44.] MILTON'S DIVORCE TREATISE : SECOND EDITION. 67 effect only. Very frequently, however, the additions are of new reasonings, or farther interpretations of Scripture. Ahove 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 thorough-going authority on his side in one of the German theologians of the Eeformation period— Paul Fagius (1504-1550). " I 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, Parseus (1548-1622), Perkins (1558-1602), Eivetus (1572-1651)— are respect- fully cited, sometimes as furnishing a favourable hint, but sometimes as requiring reply and correction. JSTot 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 norel" than for contain too many of those gratuitous a controversial treatise, insinuates an grandeurs, those upward arcs and oir- 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 ' This explanation, referring to the she stands." Id this phrase Milton liir- second edition of the Doctrine and nished his critics with a weapon which Discipline of Divorce, does not occur in they might have used against himself. that treatise itself, but in the Judg- Even now the most general objection tneni of Martin Bucer, published some to his prose writings would be that they months afterwards. F 2 68 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. " hasten to be acquainted with that noble volume written by " our learned Selden, ' Of the Law of Nature, and, of Nations;' " a work more useful and more worthy to be perused, 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 Jv/re Naturali et Gentium juxta Disciplinam Hebrceorwrn, published in 1640. His work more expressly on Divorce, entitled JJooor Hebraica, sive Be 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 paid 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 Error 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 then unchewed notions and suppositions. Against which notorious injury and abuse of man's free soul to testify, and oppose 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, 1648-44.] Milton's divoece 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 lahour 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 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 oflfended 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 shall be set to overfront us, under the banners of Sin, what wuuder 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 bothj 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 70 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. upon US to fulfil, not only without Charity, but against her. No place 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. Supreme Senate, if charity he 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 ; hut 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 1 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 Eeligion 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 ? Mean- while what opposition he woiild 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 th^it 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 divoycement^ ap,d 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 Hushtend's pleasure; but, in reality, it can^e io, this, The husband, in modern times, had still, he mai^tained^ 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 howse. The right was a purely persojial one. Friends, indeed, might interfere with their good offices ; nay it would be fitting, and perhaps necessary, that there should be a Sjolemn formality "m, presence of the minister and other grave selected elders," who should admonish the man of the seriousness of the step he was 9|bout to take. But, if he persisted in taking it — if " he shall have protested, on "the faith of the ete^B^l Qospel and the hope he has of a " happy resurrection,, that otherwise than thus he canniot do, " and thinks himself and this his case not contained in that " prohibition of divorce vfhich Qhris,t 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 capable of reconciling " — ^then the Church hiad 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 dissolution of marriage, occurs near the end of the treatise in both editions ; and it indicates, I think, 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 stUl 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 throughout the second edition of his treatise, as throughout the first, are the unmatohableness 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, however, 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 intellectual 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 this positive or aggressive honesty, and are at the same time socially sufferable by reason of the importance of what they 1648-44.] MILTON'S DIVOECE DOCTEINE : 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 Miltcm, it appears from his Address to the Parliament and the Assembly, there had dawned the idea that, as there had come dgwn 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 Commandments. 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 hy 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 HISTOEY 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 wh^t we have just been saying, was a transcendental or q, priori moralist at his heart's core), the field of human endeavour was overstrewn by a multi- plicity of mere " scareerftw sins," one's duty in respect of which was simply to march up to them, one after another, and pluck them up, eveyy stick of them individually, with its stuck-on cJd hat aujd all its waving tatters. (2.) One notes, in Milton's first Divorce Tract, as in much else of his controversial wjiting, a preference for the theo- retical over what may be called the practical style of argu- ment. 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 DIVOKCE DOGTEINE : REMARKS. 75 estimation. What provision is to be made for this 1 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 nov, 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 affair ; Mary Powell was prohably 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 he 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 Maiy 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 is that Milton, in his 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 distiflct word about any counterpart right for a woman who has married an unsuitable husband to give him a biU of divorce- ment and send him back to his mother. On the whole subject of the woman's interests in the affair MUton 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 Parseus, 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, hut to release afflicted wives, certainly it is not " only a dispensation, but a most merciful law; and why it 1643-44.] MILTON'S DIVOECE DOCTKINE : REMAEKS. 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 ia 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 uiihappily married, more than the woman similarly situated. For 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 Parseus that divorce edition. There is but the germ of it in had been given for the relief 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 power to cut the knot, but in the IDcelihood that her husband, finding the marriage unhappy also for him, would desire for his own sake to cut the knot, or might be driven by her management to that extremity. In short, we have here, as another consequence of Milton's unfortunate marriage, the beginning of that peculiarly stern form of the notion of woman's natural and essential inferiority to man which ran with visible effects through his whole sub- sequent life. If not his 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, had 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 world. 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 Ms Divorce Treatise was ready ; she was just eighteen when the second and fuller edition appeared. Surely, biit 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. ISTever with her will shall her daughter go back to that dreadful man in Aldersgate Street! Mr. Powell acquiesces; brothers and sisters acquiesce ; Oxford 1643-41] WHAT THEY THOUGHT AT FOREST HILL. 79 Eoyalism near at hand acquiesces, so far as it is consulted ; the bride 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 ! BOOK II. MARCH 1644— MARCH 1645. HISTORY: — The Year of Marston Moor: Civil "War, Long Parliament, and Westminster Assembly continued — Struggle of Independency with Presbyterianism : Tolera- tion Controversy : English Sects and Sectaries — Presby- terian Settlement voted — New Model of the Army. BIOGRAPHY: — Milton among the Sectaries: His Second Divorce Pamphlet, Tract on Edvcation, Areopagitica Tetrachorbon, and Colasterion. VOL. III. CHAPTEE I. INACTIVITY OF THE SCOTTISH AUXILIARIES SPREAD OF INDEPENDENCY AND MULTIPLICATION OF SECTS — VISITATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE BATTLE OF MARSTON MOOR FORTNIGHT'S VACA- TION OF THE ■WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY (jULY 23— AUGUST 7, 1644). PRINCIPLE OP TOLERATION AND STATE OP THE TOLERA- TION CONTROVERSY ; SYNOPSIS OF ENGLISH SECTS AND SECTARIES IN 1644. RESUMPTION OF ASSEMBLY'S PROCEEDINGS : DENUN- CIATION OF PICKED SECTARIES AND HERETICS — CROMWELl's INTERFERENCE FOR INDEPENDENCY : ACCOMMODATION ORDER OF PARLIAMENT — PRESBYTERIAN SETTLEMENT VOTED — ESSEX BEATEN AND THE WAR FLAGGING: SELF-DENYING ORDINANCE AND NEW MODEL OF THE ARMY — PARLIAMENTARY VENGEANCES. The English Parliamentarians hoped great things from the Scottish auxiliary array. The Eoyalists, on the other hand, were both angry and alarmed. In anticipation, indeed, of the coming-in of the Scots, the King had ventured on a very questionable step. He had summoned what may be called an Anti-Paeliament to meet him at Oxford on the :22nd of January 1643-4, to consist of all members who had been expelled from the two Houses in Westminster, and all that might be willing, in the new crisis, to withdraw from those rebellious Houses. On the appointed day, accordingly, there had rallied round the King at Oxford 49 Peers and 141 Com- moners ; which was not a bad show against the 22 Peers and 280 Commoners who met on the same day in the two Houses at Westminster. But little else resulted from the con- vocation of the Anti-Paeliambnt. In fact, many who had gone to it had done so with a view to negotiations for peace Such negotiations were at least talked of. In addition tc G 2 84 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. vehement denimciations of the doings of the Parliament, there were some abortive attempts at friendly intercourse. All which having failed, the Anti-Parliament was prorogued April 16, 1644, after having sat nearly three months.. Par- liaments, even when they were Eoyalist Parliaments, were not the agencies that Charles found pleasantest. He trusted rather to the arbitrament of the field. INACTIVITY OF THE SCOTTISH AUXILIARY ARMY: SPREAD OF INDEPENDENCY IN ENGLAND: MULTIPLICATION OF SECTS. N"o sudden blow was struck by the Scots. They had fastened themselves, in proper military fashion, on the north of England, and their presence there was useful; but that was all. It was a great disappointment to Baillie. He had expected that the appearance of his dear countrymen in Eng- land would put an end to the mere military " tig-tagging," as he had called it, of Essex and Waller, a,nd quicken imme- diately the tramp of affairs. His belief all along had been that what was needed in England was an importation of Scottish impetuousness to animate the heavy English, and teach them the northern trick of carrying aU things at the double with a hurrah and a yell. It was a sore affliction, therefore, to the good man that, from January 1643-4, on through February, March, April, May, and even June, the 21,000 Scots under Leslie should be in England, and yet be stirring so little. Instead of fighting their way southwards into the heart of the country, they were still squatting in the Northumbrian coal-region, and sticking there, not without some bad behaviour and disorder. Doubtless, it was all right in strategy, and Leslie knew what he was about; but oh, that it could have been otherwise ! For of what use a great Scot- tish victory would have been at that time to the cause of Presbyteriauism f Faster, more massively, more resistlessly than all the argumentations of Henderson, Gillespie, and Eutherford, aided by those of the Smectymnuans, with Vines, Palmer, Purges, and the rest of the English Presbyterians, such a victory would have crushed down the contentiousness 1644-45.] INACTIVITY OF THE SCOTTISH ARMY. 85 of the Five Dissenting Brethren, and swept the propositions of complete Scottish Presbytery through the Westminster As- sembly. Parliament, receiving these propositions, would have passed them with alacrity; and what could the English nation have done but acqiiiesce ? But, alas ! as things were ! The Pive Dissenting Brethren and the other " thraward wits " in the Assembly could still persevere in their struggle with the Presbyterian majority, debating every proposition that implied a surrender of Congregationalism, and conscious that in so impeding a Presbyterian settlement they were pleasing a growing body of their fellow-countrymen. What though London was staunchly and all but universally Presbyterian ? Throughout the country, and, above all, in the Army, the case was different. The inactivity of the Scots was affording time for the spirit of Independency to spread, and was giving rise to awkward questions. ' It began actually to be said of the Westminster Assembly, that it " did cry down the truth with votes, and was an Anti-Christian meeting which would erect a Presbytery worse than Bishops." In the Army especially such Anti-Presbyterian sentiments, and question- ings of the infallibility of the Scots, had become rife. " The " Independents have so managed matters," writes Baillie, April 26, "that of the officers and sojers in Manchester's " army, certainly also in the General's (Essex's), and, as I " hear, in Waller's likewise, more than two parts are for " them, and these of the far most resolute and confident men "for the Parliament party." As regarded Essex's army and Waller's, Baillie afterwards found reason to think that this was a great exaggeration ; but it appears to have been true enough respecting Manchester's. By that time there was no doubt either who was at the head of these Army Independents. It was Cromwell — now no longer mere " Colonel Cromwell," but "Lieutenant-general Cromwell," second in command in the Associated Counties under Manchester. As early as April 2 Baillie speaks of him as "the great Independent." With such a man to look up to, and with patrons also in the two Houses of Parliament, little wonder that the Indepen- dents in the Army began to feel themselves strong, and to 86 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. regard ■ the drift of the Westminster Assembly and the Londoners towards an absolute Presbyterianism as a move- ment innocent enough while it consisted in talk only, but to be watched carefully and disowned in due time. All might be retrieved, however ! What hope there might yet be in a great Scottish success ! With this idea BaiUie still hugged himself. "We are exceeding sad and ashamed," he had written, April 19, " that our army, so much talked " of, has done as yet nothing at all." But again, May 9, " We trust God will arise, and do something by our Scots " army. We are afflicted that, after so long time, we have " gotten no hit of our enemy ; we hope God will put away " that shame. Waller, Manchester, Fairfax, and all, gets " victories ; but Leslie, from whom all was expected, as yet " has had his hands bound. God, we hope, will loose " them, and send ms matter of praise also." The victories of Waller, Manchester, and Fairfax, here referred to by Baillie, had been nothing very considerable — mere fights' in their several districts, heard of at the time, but counting for little now in the history of the war ; but they contrasted favourably with what could be told of the Scots. What was that ? It was that they had summoned Newcastle to surrender, but had advanced beyond that town, leaving it untaken. When Baillie wrote the last-quoted passage, however, they were more hopefuUy astir. Fairfax, with his northern-English force, had joined them at Tadcaster in Yorkshire; the Earl of Manchester had been summoned northwards to add what strength he could bring from the Associated Counties ; and the enterprise on which the three conjoined forces were to be engaged— the Scots, Fairfax's men, and Manchester's — was the siege of York. It was a great business on aU grounds ; and on this amongst others, that the Marquis of Newcastle was shut up in the city Might not the Scots retrieve their character in this business ? It was Baillie's fervent prayer. But a dreadful doubt had occurred to him. What if the Scots, mixed as they now were with the English Parliamentarian soldiers before York, and in contact with the Independents among them under Man- 1644-45.] SPEEAD OF INDEFE^tDENCY : AEMY INDEPENDENCY. 87 Chester and Cromwell, should themselves catch the prevailing distemper? Writing, May 19, to his friend Mr. Blair, a chaplain in the Scottish army, Baillie gives him a warning hint on the subject. " We hear," he says, " that their horse " and yours are conjoined, and that occasions may fall out " wherein more of them may join to you. We all conceive "that our silly simple lads are in great danger of being " infected by their company ; and, if that pest enter in our " army, we fear it may spread." ^ Here there must come in an explanation : — The Army- Independency which was alarming the Presbyterians, and of which they regarded Cromwell as the head, was a thing of much larger dimensions, and much more composite nature, than the mild Independency of Messrs. Goodwin, Burroughs , Nye, Simpson, and Bridge, within the Westminster Assembly. The Independency of these five Divines consisted simply in their courageous assertion pf the Congregationalist principle of church-organization in the midst of the overwhelming Presbyterianism around them, and in their claim that, should their reasonings for CongTCgationalism prove in vain, and should the Presbjrterian system be established in England, there should be at all events "an indulgence " under that system, for themselves and their adherents, " in some lesser differences." The " lesser differences " for which they thus prospectively craved an indulgence had not been specifically stated ; but it is pretty clear that they were not, to any great extent, differences of theological belief, but were rather those dif- ferences which would arise from the conscientious per- severance of a minority in Congregationalist practices after a Presbyterian rule had been established nationally. "You know that we do not differ from you in theological doctrines " is what the Five Dissenting Brethren virtually said to the Presbyterians; "your teaching is our teaching, and what you call errors we call errors : our difference lies wholly, or all but wholly, in the fact that we hold every particular congregation of Christians to be a church within itself, whereas you maintain the interconnectedness of congregations, 1 Baillie, Vol. II. from p. 128 to p. 197. 88 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OP HIS TIME. and the right of courts of office-bearers from many congrega- tions to review and control what passes within each: now, as you, being undoubtedly in the majority, are about to establish Presbytery in England, but as we cannot in con- science abandon our Congregationalism, could you not manage at least to allow in the new national system such a toleration of Congregationalist practices as would satisfy us, the minority, and prevent us from going again into exile ?" Such was the Independency of the Dissenting Five in the "Westminster Assembly. But, as we know, from our previous survey of the history of Independency in Eng- land, in Holland, and in America, the word " Independency " had come to have a much larger meaning than that in which it had originated. It had come to mean not merely the principle of Congregationalism, or the Inde- pendency of Congregations, but also all that had in fact arisen from the action of that principle, in England, HoUand, or America, in the shape of miscellaneous dissent and hetero- doxy. It had come to mean the Congregationalist principle plus all its known or conceivable consequences. Erom pohcy it was in this wide sense that the Presbyterians had begun to use the term Independency. "You are certainly Inde- pendents," the Presbyterians of the Assembly virtually said to Messrs Goodwin, Burroughs, and the rest of the Five; "but you are the best specimens of a class of which the varieties are legion : were all Independency such as yours, and were Independency to end with you, we might see our way to such a toleration as you demand — ^which, on personal grounds, we should like to do : but the principle of Congre- gationalism has already generated on the earth— in England, in HoUand, and in America— opinions beyond yours, and some heresies at which even you stand aghast; and it is of these, as well as of you, that we are bound to think when we are asked to tolerate Independency." Now it was of this larger and more terrible Independency that the Presbyterians had begun to see signs in the Parliamentary Army and through England generaUy. In other words, sects and sectaries of aU sorts and sizes had begun to be heard of— 1644-45.] ARMY INDEPENDENCY: MULTIPLICATION OF SECTS. 8i some only transmissions or re-manifestations of oddities of olc English Puritanism, others importations from Holland anc New England, and others products of the new ferment of thi English mind caused by the Civil War itself. In especial, i was believed, Anabaptists and Antinomians had begun ti abound. Now, though, in politeness, the Presbyterians wen willing occasionally to distinguish between the orthodo; Independents and the miscellaneous Sectaries, yet, as th Congregationalist principle, which was the essence of Inde pendency, was credited with the mischief of having generate! all the sects, and as it was for this Congregationalist principl that toleration was demanded, it was quite as common b huddle all the Sects and the orthodox Congregationalist together under the one name of Independents. Nor couh the Congregation alists of the Assembly very well object ti this. True, they might disown the errors and extrava gancies of the sects, and declare that they themselves wer as little in sympathy with them as the Presbyterians. The; might also argue, as indeed they anxiously did, that du uniformity in the essentials of Christian belief and practic' would be as easily maintained in a community organize! ecclesiastically on the Congregationalist principle as in on organized in the Presbyterian manner. Still, in arguing s£ they must have had some latitude of view as to the amoun of uniformity desirable. If every congregation were to b' independent within itself, and if moreover congregation might be formed on the principle of elective affinities, o the concourse of like-minded atoms, it was difficult to se* why Congregationalism should not be expected to evolvi sects, and why therefore this progressive evolution of sect should not be accepted as a law of religious life. Had no the Pive Independents of the Assembly avowed it as one o their principles that they would not be too sure that th^ opinions they now held would remain always unchanged Eeserving this liberty of going farther for themselves, hov could they refuse toleration for those who had already goni farther? Claiming for themselves a toleration in aU sucl differences as did not affect their character as good subjects 90 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. they could not but extend the benefit of the same plea to at least a proportion of the Sectaries. But to what proportion ? Where was toleration to stop ? At what point, in the course of religious dissent, did a man become a bad subject ? To these questions no definite answers were given by the Five Dissentients of the Assembly ; but they could not but. enter- tain the questions. Hence their Independency, though mUd and moderate so far as they were themselves concerned, was really in organic connexion with the larger Independency that had begun to manifest itself in the Army and elsewhere. " The Cougregationalist principle and Liberty of Religious Difference to a certain extent/' said the Independents of the Assembly. "Yes, Liberty of Eeligious Difference!" said the Army Independents, simplifying the formula. Throughout the first half of 1644, therefore, we are to think of the Presbyterian majority ia the Westminster Assembly as not only fighting against the Independency or Congre- gationalism proper which was represented within the walls of the Assembly by men whom they could not but respect, though complaining of their obstinacy, but also bent on saving England from that more lax or general Independency, nameable as Army-Independency, which they saw rife through the land, and which included toleration not merely of Con- gregationalism, but also of Anabaptism, Antinomianism, and other nondescript heresies. BaiUie's groanings in spirit over the multiplication of the sectaries, and the growth of the Toleration notion, are positively affecting. " Sundry of&cers and soldiers in the army," he writes, April 2, " has fallen from their way [i.e. from Independency proper] to Antinomianism and Anabaptism." Again, later in the same month, " The number and evil humour of the Antinomians and Anabaptists doth increase;" and more fully, on the 19th, "They [the Independents] over all the land are making up a faction to their own way, the far most part whereof is fallen oflF to Anabaptism and Antinomianism : sundry also to worse, if worse needs be— the mortality of the soul, the denial of angels and devils; and cast off aU sacraments; and many blasphemous things. All these are from New England." By May 9 he 164i-45.] MDLTIPLICATION OF SECTS. 9 had begun to despair of the English altogether : " The humoi] of this people is very various and inclinable to singularitie; to differ from all the world, and one from another, and short] from themselves : no people had so much need of a Presbytery, According to BailKe, it was precisely owing to the absence c a well-organized Presbyterian system in England that a those wild growths of opinion had been possible ; and, whil they increased the difficulty of establishing Presbyterianisi in England, they were the best demonstration of its necessity Therefore, he would not despair. There was yet a faint hop that the Independent Divines in the Assembly might be mad ashamed of the tag-rag of Anabaptists, Antinomians, and whs not, that hung to their skirts, and so might be brought t an accommodation with the Presbyterians. But, failing tha the Presbyterians must stand firm, must face Independenc and all its belongings both in Parliament and in the Arm; and try at length to beat them down. Of course, Bailli and his Scottish brethren were doing their best to assis the English Presbyterians in this labour. Auti-Toleratio pamphlets had appeared, and more were in preparatioi But help was particularly desired from the Eeformed Churche abroad, and most particularly from Holland. Had not Hollan nursed this very Independency which was troubling Englanc and was not the example of Holland the greatest argumer with the Independents and others for a toleration of sects Eepresenting all this to his correspondent, William Spanj Scottish preacher at Campvere, BaUlie urges him again an again to do what he can to get any eminent Dutch divine of his acquaintance to write treatises against Independence Heresy, and Toleration. He names several such, as likely t do this great service if duly importuned. There could be n more helpful service to England — except one ! Oh if thei could yet be a great Scottish victory on English soil ! Tho would be worth all the pamphlets in the world ! ^ 1 Baillie, II. 146, 157, 168, 177, elsewhere on the Continent, and wei 179, 181, 183-4, 191-2, 197, &o.— Several much made of by the Presbyterians . manifestoes against Independency, such the Assembly, and put in circulatic as Baillie wanted, did come, in due through England, time, from Divines in Holland and 92 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. VISITATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE : BATTLE OF MARSTON MOOR. Notwithstanding all this anarchy of ecclesiastical opinion, the practical or political mastery of affairs remained in the hands of Parliament, and was firmly exercised by Parliament in a direction satisfactory to the Westminster Assembly as a whole. For, whatever might he the ultimate settlement between Independency and Presbyterianism, there was a certain general course of " Eeformation " to which mean- while all were pledged, Independents and Sectaries no less than Presbyterians ; and on this course all could advance unanimously, even while battling with each other on the ecclesiastical questions which the Independents desired to keep open. For example, during those very months of 1644 in which Independency had been taking such increased dimensions, there had been fully executed that great Visita- tion and purgation of the University of Cambridge which had been entrusted to the Earl of Manchester by Parliamentary Ordinance in January (see ant^, pp. 32, 33). The Earl, going to Cambridge in person in February 1643-4, with his two chaplains, Messrs. Ashe and Good, had been engaged in the work through the months of March and April, summoning refraetoiy Heads of Colleges and Fellows before him, examining complaints against them, and putting them in most cases to the test of the Covenant. The result, when complete (which it was not till 1645), was the ejection, on one ground or another, of about one half of the Felloios of the various Colleges of Cambridge collectively, and of eleven out of the sixteen Reads of Houses, and the appointment of persons of Parliamentarian principles to the places thus made vacant. Of the crowd of those who were turned out of Cambridge Fellowships, and the crowd of those who were put in to succeed them, we can take no account in this History. Yet a process which presents us with the vision of about 150 rueful outgoers from comfortable livelihoods in one University, met at the doors by as many radiant comers-in, can have been no unimportant incident, even in a national revolution. What 16«-45.] VISITATION OF CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY. 9: became of all the rueful outgoers is a question that migh interest us yet. It interested FuUer ten years after th( event. Even then he could give no other answer, he said than that proverbial one which the survivors of Nicias' unfortunate expedition against the Sicilians used to give a Athens when they were asked about the fate of such or sucl a comrade who had never returned, "H reOvrjicev 'q BiBdcrKe rypdiifjLaTa, " He is either dead or teaching a school some where." Schoolmastering, according to Fuller, was the refugi of most of the ejected Cambridge Fellows of 1644-5.^ More conspicuous persons, and with resources that probabb exempted them from the prospect of so painful a fate, wer the ejected Heads of Houses. Most of these were ejected a once in March and April 1644 ; and, apart from our acquirec interest in Cambridge University, there are reasons for remem bering them individually, and notiug those who came in thei places: — Of the sixteen Heads of Houses, it is to be pre mised, one — Dr. Eichard Love, of Bennet or Corpus Christi- was a member of the Assembly, and therefore all right while four others managed, by taking the Covenant, or b; other " wary compliance " during the Visitation, to stay ir Among these four, it does not surprise us to learn, was Di Thomas Bainbrigge of Christ's, Milton's old durus magistei with whom he had had that never-forgotten tiff in his under gTaduateship (Vol. I. pp. 135 — 141) ; the others were Ur. Edei of Trinity Hall, Dr. Eainbow of Magdalen, and Dr. Batchcroi of Caius. The ejections were as follows : — Trinity College : — Master ejected, Dr. Thomas Cumber (o6. 1654) Master put in, Mr. Thomas Hill, one of the Assembly Divine! St. John's College : — Master ejected, Dr. "William Bbalb (died s Madrid, 1651) ; Master put in, Mr. John Arrowsmith, one c the Assembly Divines. Emanuel College: — Master ejected, Dr. Eichard Holdswort: {oh. 1649) ; Master put in, Dr. Anthont Tucknet, one c the Assembly Divines. Queen's College : — There was a complete sweep of this CoUegi not a Fellow or Foundationer of any kind being left. Presider ejected, Dr. Edward Martin (survived the Eestoration and wa made Dean of Ely) ; President put in, Mr. Herbert Palmei one of the Assembly Divines. 94 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. Clare Hall : — Master ejected, Dr. Thomas Paskb (survived the Restoration and had his reward) ; Master put in, Ralph Cud- WOKTH, B.D., afterwards the celebrated author of the " Intel- lectual System." He was of Somersetshire birth, and, though now only 27 years of age, had acquired a high Cambridge reputation, as Fellow and Tutor of Emanuel College, where he had been educated. Peterhousb : — Master ejected. Dr. John Cosins (already under the ban of Parliament and a refugee in France : he survived the Restoration and became Bishop of Durham) ; Master put in, Mr Lazarus Seaman, one of the Assembly Divines. Pembroke College : — Master ejected, Dr. Benjamin Lanby (sur- vived the Restoration and held several Bishoprics in succes- sion) ; Master put in, Mr. Riohaed Vines, one of the Assembly Divines. King's College : — Provost ejected, Dr. Samuel Collins (see Vol. I. pp. 92, 93) ; Provost put in, Mr. Benjamin Whichoot, cetat. 34. He had been a Fellow of Emanuel College, and was a friend of Cudworth's. A peculiarity in his case was that he was dis- pensed from taking the Covenant on his appointment, and succeeded, by his interest with the ruling powers, in obtaining a like dispensation for most of the Fellows of the College. He survived the Restoration, conformed then, and is still re- membered as one of the chiefs of the English Latitudinarians. Sidney-Sussex College : — Master ejected. Dr. Samuel Ward (see Vol. I. p. 95) } Master put in, Mr. Richard Minshull, a Fellow of the College, regularly elected to the Mastership by the other Fellows. He survived the Restoration, conformed then, and retained the Mastership till his death. Jesus College: — Master ejected. Dr. Richard Sterne (great- grandfather of Laurence Sterne, the novelist). He was a strong Laudian and Royalist, and had already been in prison on that account. He lived in retirement till the Restoration; after which he was made successively Bishop of Chester, and (1664) Archbishop of York. Master put in, Mr. Thomas Young, one of the Assembly Divines, Milton's old preceptor, and the chief of the " Smectymnuans." It was a special com- pliment to Young that he, not an English Universitv man at all, but a naturalized Scot, had been chosen for a Cambridge Mastership. Catherine Hall :— Master ejected (not tHl 1645, however, and then on a fresh occasion). Dr. Ralph Brownrigge, nominal Bishop of Exeter since 1642 (ob. 1659); Master put in, Mr. William Spurstow, one of the Assembly Divines, and one of the "amectymnuans." 1 1 Authorities for this account of of the Universitv of Oairibriflo-c (nHJt Mane , ester's Visitation of Cambridge 1840), pp. 233-239 and NeTs Pu^i and its results are Fuller's History tans, III. 107— 119 ' 1644-45. VISITATION OF CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY. 95 Thus began, in 1644, a new era in the history of Cambridge University, which extended to the Eestoration. Episcopalian principles were discharged out of the government of the Uni- versity ; and, under the live retained Masters and the eleven new ones, there was inaugurated a system of rule and teach- ing in accordance, more or less in the different Colleges, with the ascendant State-policy of the Puritans. With the exception of Cudworth, Whichcot, and MinshuU, it will have been noted, all the newly-appointed Masters were members of the Westminster Assembly, and leading men among the Pres-. byterian majority of that body. They do not appear to have ceased attendance on the Assembly in consequence of their appointments, but only to have divided their time thence- forward as well as they could between the Assembly and Cambridge. It is also to be noted that some of them, includ- ing Thomas Young, retained their former livings along with their new Masterships.^ There were similar instances of retention of livings among those appointed to Fellowships, and to other offices throughout the country under the patronage of the Parliament. The excuse was the dearth for the time of fully qualified ministers of the right Parliamentarian strain ; 1 The following is a note famished Yoimg, S.T.D., Vicair of Stowmmrhtt, to Mr. David Laing by the Rev. John Suffolk, by Mr. David Laing (Edin. Struthers of Prestonpans, one of an 1870), p. 39. — These accurate and valu- acting Committee recently appointed able " Notices" of a man who figures so by the Church of Scotland for tran- interestingly in Milton's Biography had scribing and editing the original not appeared till Vol. II. of this work Minutes of the Westminster Assembly, was quite printed, or they might have preserved in Dr. Williams's Librai-y, saved me some research for that volume London; — "1643-4, March 15. — A as well as for its predecessor. Prefixed letter read from the Earl of Manchester, to them Mr. Laing gives a portrait of stating that he cast out Drs. Beale, Young, after a photograph taken from .Cosins, Sterne, Martin, Laney, mas- the original picture long preserved in ters, from their Masterships in Cam- the Vicarage of Stowmarket, but now bridge University, and, subject to the in the possession of H. C. Mathew, Assembly's approval, nominated Mr. Esq. of Felixstow, near Ipswich. The Palmer, Mr. Arrowsmith, Mr. Vines, portrait represents Young with hair Mr. Seaman, and Mr. Young in their not at all of the short Puritan cut, but places. The Assembly offered their long, and flowing fully on both sides to congratulations, but desired that their his shoulders ; and the face is really brethren should meanwhile not be fine, with handsome features, and a withdrawn from the Assembly." Mr. rich and mild look. Another interest- Struthers adds that, though Dr. Light- ing insertion in Mr. Laing's little foot, in his Notes of the Assembly, volume is a facsimile of Young's hand- states that Mr. Vines and Mr. Yoimg writing, from a Latin inscription in a desired to be excused from the new presentation copy of his Dies Dominica, appointments, there is no notice of any still extant. The hand is neat and such declinature in the MS. minutes.— careful ; and, what is rather curious, it See Biographical Notices of Thomas has a resemblance to Milton's. 96 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. but the fact did not escape comment. Was Plurality one of the very few institutions of Prelacy -which Presbyterian god- liness was willing to preserve ? Presh from his energetic Visitation of Cambridge, the Earl of Manchester was away, as we have seen, in May 1644> with his Lieutenant-general, Cromwell, to add the force of the Associated Eastern Counties to the forces of the Scots and Fairfax, then {ibout to besiege the Marquis of Newcastle in York. The joint forces, numbering some 25,000 men in all, were hopefully conducting the siege when the approach of Prince Eupert out of Lancashire, with a EoyaHst army of over 20,000, compelled them to raise it, in order to oppose him (June 30). He avoided them, relieved York, and then, having added the Marquis's garrison to his own force, risked all for a great victory. The result was the Battle of Maeston Moor, about seven miles to the west of York, fought on the evening of July 2, 1 644. It was " the bloodiest battle of the whole war," the number actually slain on the field on both sides in three hours being no fewer than 4,150. But of these by far the most were on the King's side, and the battle was a disastrous rout for that side, and a victory for the Parliamentarians incalculably greater than any they had yet had. Eupert, with a shred of his army, escaped southwards ; the Marquis of Newcastle, making his way to the sea^coast, embarked for the Continent, with his two sons, his brother Sir Charles Cavendish, General King, Lord Pauconberg, the Earl of Carnwath, Bishop Bramhall, and about eighty other Eoyal- ists of distinction, and was no more seen in England till the Eestoration. York surrendered to the victors, July 5 ; and, save that Newcastle and some other towns remained to be taken, the whole Forth of England was lost to the King and brought within the sway of Parliament. Seldom had there been such consequences from a battle of three hours.i When the news of the battle reached London (July 5), there was nothing but joy. Within a few days, however, the joy passed into a question between the Independents and ' Clf- Hist. 490-492; Pari. Hist. 151-154 ; Markham's Fairfax, 151- III. 277, 278; Carlyles Cromwell, I. 178, tor a detailed modern account. 1644-46.] BATTLE OF MARSTON MOOE. 97 the Presbyterians, or at least the Scots among them. Which part of the conjoint army had behaved best in the battle, and to -which general did the chief honours of the day belong? Glad wovdd Baillie have been to •welcome Marston Moor as at last that great success of the Scots for which he had been longing and praying. No such pleasure could he have. More and more, as detailed accounts of the battle arrived, it became clear that the Scots could claim only a little of the merit of the victory — that the mass of them had behaved rather ill ; that the luck or the generalship of Field-marshal Leven had deserted him, and he had been carried far away in a ruck of fugitives ; and that, in fact, with the exception of David Leslie, the Scottish Major-general, who really did good service, no Scot in command had shown much head, or been of any considerable use, at Marston Moor. But, worse and worse for Baillie's feelings, not only did it appear that the victory had been gained by the English of the joint army rather than by the Scottish contingent, but gradually the rumour was con- firmed, which had been first borne to London on the wings of the wind, that the Englishman by whose conduct, if by that of any one man, the fate of the battle had been decided, was Lieutenant-general Cromwell. " The left wing, which I com- " manded, being our own horse, saving a few Scots in our " rear, beat aU the Prince's horse. God gave them as stubble " to our swords. We charged their regiments of foot with " OUT horse, and routed all we charged." These sentences of Cromwell's own, written on the third day after the battle in a letter to his brother-in-law. Colonel Valentine Walton, are his private statement of the truth which became public. In vain it was represented in London that Cromwell's paramount prowess in the battle was a fiction of himself and the Inde- pendents ; in vain did the Presbyterians try to distribute the merit among Fairfax, David Leslie, and Major-general Craw- ford — another Scot, not in the Scottish contingent, but serving in Manchester's army as next in command under Cromwell, and already known as representing Presbyterianism in that army in opposition to Cromwell's Independency ; in vain did this Crawford, when he came to London, asseverate that VOL. III. H 98 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. Cromwell, having been slightly -wounded in the neck, had"; retired before the crisis, and that the real work in Cromwell's part of the battle had devolved on David Leslie and himself. It was a comfort to Baillie to believe all this ; but London was persuaded otherwise. For London and for aU England Cromwell stood forth as the hero of Marston Moor. The victory to which Baillie had looked forward as a triumph for Presbyterianism had been gained mainly by the " great Inde- pendent" of the English army, and went to the credit of Independency.^ Three weeks after the battle of Marston Moor (July 23, 1644) the Westminster Assembly, with permission of Parlia- ment, adjourned for a fortnight's vacation. We will share this vacation, and make it the opportunity for some farther inquiry, on our own account, into the two subjects which were of paramount interest at that moment. They were the subjects, if I may so say, that had for some time past been chalked up on the black board for the consideration of all England, and to the discussion of which the Assembly and the Parliament were to address themselves with fresh fervour when the Assembly came together again after their vacation. These were : — I. The Principle of Toleration. II. The English Sects and Sectaries. THE PEINCIPLE OF TOLBEATION : STATE OF THE TOLERATION CONTROVERSY IN 1644. The history of the modern idea of Toleration could be- written completely only after a larger amount of minute and. special research than I am able here to bestow on the subject. Who shall say in the heads of what stray and solitary men, scattered through Europe in the sixteenth century, nant^-. 1 Baillie, II. 201, 203-4, 209, and 146—150 • Fuller's Wnr-tv^io^ v^-i 211 ; Cariyle's Cromwell, I.' 162-3 and Mre; mUe^TUeLZtm): U-it 644-45.] HISTORY OF THE TOLERATION PRINCIPLE. 99 rari in gwrgite vasto, some form of the idea, as a purely speculative conception, may have been lodged ? Hallam finds it in the " Utopia" of Sir Thomas More (1480—1535), and in the harangues of the Chancellor I'Hospital of France (1505 — 1573) ;' and there may have been others. But the history of the idea, as a practical or political notion, lies within a more precise range. Out of what within Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the practical form of the idea bred ? Out of pain, out of suffering, out of persecution : not pain inflicted constantly on one and the same section of men, or on any two opposed sections alternately ; but pain revolv- ing, pain circulated, pain distributed till the M'hole round of the compass of sects had felt it in turn, and the only principle of its prevention gradually dawned on the common conscious- ness ! In every persecuted cause, honestly conducted, there was a throe towards the birth of this great principle. Every persecuted cause claimed at least a toleration for itself from the established power; and so, by a kind of accumulation, the cause that had been last persecuted had more of a ten- dency to toleration in it, and became practically more tole- rant, than the others. This, I think, might be proved. The Church of England was more tolerant than the Church of Eome, and Scottish Presbyterianism or Scottish Puritanism was more tolerant (though the reverse is usually asserted) than the Church of England prior to 1640. Not to the Church of England, however, nor to Scottish Presbyterianism, nor to English Puritanism at large, does the honour of the first perception of the full principle of Liberty of Conscience, and its first assertion in English speech, belong. That honour has to be assigned, I believe, to the Independents generally, and to the Baptists in particular. The principle of religious liberty is almost logically bound up with the theory of the Independency of particular churches. Every particular church being a voluntary con- course of like-minded atoms, able to declare themselves converts or tme Christians, it follows that the world, or civil society, whether called heathen or professedly Christian, is J Hallam's Const. Hist. (10th edit.), I. 122, Note. H 2 100 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF JIIS TIME. only the otherwise regulated medmm or material in which these voluntary concourses or whirls take place. It follows that there must be large expanses or interspaces of the general material always unabsorhed into the voluntary concourses, and that for the secular power, which governs the general medium, to try to stimulate the concourses, or to bring all into them, or to control any part of the procedure of each or any of them, would be a mingling of elements that are incom- patible, of necessary worldly order with the spiritual kingdom of Christ. And so it was maintained, against the Eoman Catholics, and against the Confessions of aU the various established Protestant Churches, that there could be, and ought to be, no Imperial or National Church. This being the principle of some of the early Protestant movements that went beyond Luther, Zuinglius, or Calvin, and perplexed these Eeformers, little wonder that flashes of the fullest doctrine of Liberty of Conscience should be found among the records of those movements, whether on the Continent or in England.^ Little wonder, either, that the principle of Tolera- tion should be discernible in the writings of Eobert Brown, the father of the crude English Independency of Elizabeth's reign.^ But it is one thing to hold a principle vaguely or latently as implicated in a principle already avowed, and another thing to extricate the implied principle and kindle it, as on the top of a lighthouse, on its own account. It is found, accordingly, that the early English Separatists collectively were much slower in this matter than Brown himself had been. They wanted toleration for themselves, and perhaps a general mildness in the administration of religious affairs ; but they could not rid themselves of the notion, held alike by all the established churches, whether Prelatic or Presbyterian, that it is the duty of the prince, or the civil power, in every 1 See notices of such flashes, among KnoUys Society " (1846) Mr Under- &e English Baptists of the reign of hiU writes as a zealous Baptist, but Henry VIII., and among the oonti- with judgment and research nental Anabaptists, _ in Mr Edward = Bailfie (Dusvasive, Part' I. 81) ex- Bean UnderhilPs "Histon^l Introduc- pressly makes it a reproach agkinst tion" to the Iteprmt of Old Tracts on brown that he held the Toleration iMeHy of Conscience by the Hanserd doctrine. 1644-45.] TOLEEATIOK A BAPTIST - PfilNCIPLE IN 1611. 101 state to promote true religion and suppress false. Passages which we have already had occasion to quote (Vol. II. 569, 570) from the writings of Barrowe, Greenwood, and even of the liberal Eohiason, the father of Congregationalism proper, prove beyond all dispute that these chiefs of the Separatists and Semi-Separatists who followed Brown in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign and ia the reign of James had not worked out Toleration iato a perfect or definite tenet. They did want something that they called a Toleration ; but it was a limited and ill-defined Toleration. There was, however, one body or band of Separatists in James's reign who had pushed farther ahead, and grasped the idea of Liberty of Conscience at its very utmost Strangely enough, as it may seem at first sight, they were the Separatists of the most intense and schismatic type then known, the least conciliatory in their relations to other churches and communions. They were the poor and despised Anglo-Dutch Anabaptists who called John Smyth (Vol. IL 539, 540) their leader. In a Confession, or Declaration of Faith, put forth in 1611 by the English Baptists in Amster- dam, just after the death of Smyth, this article occurs : " The " magistrate is not to meddle with religion, or matters of con- " science, nor compel men to this or that form of religion; " because Christ is the King and Lawgiver of the Church and " Conscience." It is believed that this is the first expression of the absolute principle of Liberty of Conscience in the public articles of any body of Christians. Contact with the Dutch Arminians may have helped Smyth's people to a per- ception of it ; and it certainly did not please the English Psedobaptist Independents of Holland when it appeared among them. Eobinson, for example, objected to it, as he was bound to do by the views of the civil magistrate's power which he maintained. He attributed the invention of such an article to the common inability of ignorant men to dis- tinguish between the use of an ordinance and its abuse. In other words, he thought the remnant of Smyth's Baptists had been rather silly in leaping to the conclusion that, because there had been much abuse of the interference of the civil power in matters of religion, and it had led to all sorts of 102 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. horrors, there was nothing left but to set up the principle of absolute non-interference. The principle of the Anglo-Dutch Baptists, with the same exact difference between the Baptists and the rest of the Independents on the Toleration point, was imported into England. It is supposed that the person who had the chief hand in drawing up the Confession of the English Baptists of Amsterdam, after Smyth's death, was Smyth's successor in the Baptist ministry there, Thomas Helwisse (Vol. II. 540 — 544). Now, this Helwisse, returning to England shortly after 1611, drew round him, as we saw, the first congregation of General or Arminian Baptists in London ; and this obscure Baptist congregation seems to have become the depositary for all England of the absolute principle of Liberty of Conscience expressed in the Amsterdam Confession, as distinct from the more stinted principle advocated by the general body of the Independents. Not only did Helwisse's folk differ from the Independents generally on the subject of Infant Baptism and Dipping ; they differed also on the power of the magistrate in matters of belief and conscience. It was, in short, from their little dingy meeting-house, somewhere in Old London, that there flashed out, first in England, the absolute doctrine of Eeligious Liberty. "Religious Peace : or, A Plea for Liberty uf Conscience," is the title of a little tract first printed in 1614, and presented to King James and the English Parliament, by " Leonard Busher, citizen of London." This Leonard Busher, there is reason to believe, was a member of Helwisse's con- gregation ; and we learn from the tract itself that he was a poor man, labouring for his subsistence, who had had his share of persecution. He had probably been one of Smyth's Amsterdam flock who had returned with Helwisse. The tract is, certainly, the earliest known English publication in which full liberty of conscience is openly advocated. It cannot be read now without a throb. The style is simple and rather helpless ; but one comes on some touching passages. Thus :— " May it please your Majesty and Parliament to understand that by fire and sword to constrain princes and peoples to receive that one true religion of the Gospel is wholly against the mind and mer- 1641-45.] TOLEKATION: BAPTIST TRACTS OF 1614-15. 103 ciful law of Ckrist." "Persecution is a Work well pleasing to all false propliets and bishops, but it is contrary to tbe mind of' Christ ■who came not to judge and destroy men's lives, but to save them! And, though some men and women believe not at the first hour, yet may they at the eleventh hour, if they be not persecuted to death before. And no king nor bishop can or is able to command jEaith. That is the gift of God, who worketh in us both the will and the deed of his own good pleasure. Set him not a day, there- fore, in which, if his creature hear not and believe not, you will imprison and burn him. ... As kings and bishops cannot com- mand the wind, so they cannot command faith ; and, as the wind bloweth where it listeth, so is every man that is born of the Spirit. You may force men to church against their consciences, but they will believe as they did before when they come there." " Kings and magistrates are to rule temporal afiairs by the swords of their temporal kingdoms, and bishops and ministers are to rule spiritual affairs by the word and Spirit of God, the sword of Christ's temporal kingdom, and not to iiltermeddle one with another's authority, office, and function." " I read that Jews, Christians, and Turks are tolerated in Con- stantinople, and yet are peaceable, though so contrary the one to the other. If this be so, how much more ought Christians not to force one another to religion ! And how much niore ought Christians to tolerate Christians, whenas the Turks do tolerate them ! Shall we be less merciful than the Turks ? or shall we learn the Turks to persecute Christians 1 It is not only unmerciful, but unnatural and abominable, yea monstrous, for one Christian to vex and destroy another for difference and questions of religion." Buster's tract of 1614 was not the only utterance in the same strain that came from Helwisse's conventicle of London Baptists. In 1615 there appeared in print " Objections answered iy way of Dialogue, wherein is proiiedL, hy the Lav; of God, hy the Law of our Land, and hy His Majesty's many testimonies, that no man ought to he persecuted for his Beligion, so he testifie his allegeance by the oath appointed hy Law." The author, or one of the authors, of this Dialogue, which is even more explicit in some respects than Busher's tract, is pretty clearly ascertained to have been John Murton, Hel- wisse's assistant (Vol. II. 544, 581). Helwisse himself is not heard of after 1614, and appears to have died about that time. But his Baptist congregation maintained itself in London side by side with Jacob's congregation of Independents, established in 1616 (Vol. II. 544). As if to signalize stiU farther the 104 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. discrepancy of the two sets of Sectaxies on the Toleration point, there was put forth, as we saw, in that very year, by Jacob and the Independents, a Confession of Faith, contain- ing this article : " We believe that we, and Eill true visible " churches, ought to be overseen and kept in good order and " peace, and ought to be governed, under Christ, both " supremely and also subordinately, by the civil magistrate ; " yea, in causes of religion, when need is." The year 1616 was the year of Shakespeare's death. Who that has read his Sonnet LXVI. can doubt that he had carried in his mind while alive some profound and peculiar form of the idea of Toleration ? In Bacon's brain, too, one may detect some smothered tenet of the kind ; and even in the talk of the shambling King James himself there had been such occasional spurts about Liberty of Conscience that, though he had burnt two of his subjects for Arianism, Helwisse's poor people were fain, as we have just seen, to cite " His Majesty's many testimonies" for the Toleration they craved. And yet not to any such celebrity as the king, the philosopher, or the poet, had the task of vindicating for England the idea of Liberty of Conscience been practically appointed. To all intents and purposes that honour had fallen to two of the most extreme and despised sects of the Puritans. The despised Indepen- dents, or semi-Separatists of the school of Eobinson and Jacob, and the still more despised Baptists, or thorough Sepa- ratists of the school of Smyth and Helwisse, were groping for the pearl between them ; and, what is strangest at first sight, it was the more intensely Separatist of these two sects that was groping with most success. How is this to be explained ? Partly it may have been that the Baptists were the sect that had been most persecuted— that they were the ultimate sect, in the English world, in respect of the necessary qualification of pain and suffering accumulated in their own experience, while the Kobinsonian Independents might rank as only the penultimate sect in this respect. But there is a deeper reason. Paradoxical as the statement may seem, there was a logical connexion between the extreme Separatism of the Baptists, the tightness and exclusiveness of their own terms 1644-45.] TOLEKATION : STATE OF THE IDEA IN 1616. 105 of communion, and their passion for religious freedom. This requires elucidation : — It was on the subject of the Baptism of Infants that the ordinary Congregationalists and the Bap- tist Congregationalists most evidently stood aloof from each other. There had been vehement controversies between them on the subject. Independent congregations had ejected and excommunicated such of their members as had taken to the doctrine of Antipsedobaptism ; and Smyth's rigid Baptists, in turn, would not hold communion with Psedobaptist Indepen- dents. We are apt now to dwell on the narrow-mindedness, the unseemliness, of those bickerings of the two sects over the one doctrine on which they differed. It is to be observed, how- ever, that even here they illustrated their faith in the principle which was the essence of their common Congregationalism : to wit, that the true security for sound faith and good govern- . ment in the Church of Christ lay in the power lodged in every particular congregation of judging who were fit to belong to it, and of constant spiritual supervision of each of the members of it by aU, so that the erring might be admonished, and the unfit ejected. It was the supreme virtue, the all-suf&cient efficacy, of this power of merely spiritual censure, as it might be exercised by congregations or particular churches, each within itself, that both sects were continually trying to demonstrate to Prelatists and Presbyterians. Their very argu- ment was that truth and 'piety Avould prosper best in a system of Church-government which trusted all to the vigilance of the members of every particular congregation over each other, their reasonings among themselves, their practice of mutual admonition, and, in last resort, their power of excommuni- cating the unworthy. Hence perhaps even the excess of the controversial activity of the two sects against each other, and the frequency of their mutual excommunications, are not without a favourable significance. Here, however, it was the Baptists, rather than the Independents collectively, that had pushed their theory of the all-sufficiency of congregational censure to its finest issue. To both sects the world or civil society presented itself as a medium in which there might be Christian vortices, concourses of true Christian souls, that 106 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIMJE. should constitute, when numbered together and catalogued un- erringly in the books of heaven, the Church or Kingdom of Jesus, To both sects it seemed a thing to be striven for that as much of civil society as possible should be brought into these vortices or concourses ; nay, the aspiration of both v^^as that the whole world should be Christianized. But, looking about them, they knew, in fact, that the vortices or concourses did and could involve but a small proportion of the society in which they occurred. They knew that there must be large tracts of unbelief, profanity, and false worship in every so-called Christian nation, left utterly unaffected by any of the true associations of Christ's real people ; besides the huge wilder- ness of heathenism and idolatry lying all round in the dark lands of the world. It was on the platform of this contem- plation that the Independents generally and the Baptist section of them had parted company. The Independents generally held that it was the duty of the civil power in a State to promote the formation of churches in that State, and to see, in some general way, that the churches formed were not wrong in doctrine or in practice. They held that the civil authority might lawfully compel all its subjects to some sort of hearing of the Gospel with a view to their belonging to churches or congregations, and might even assist the preacher by some whip of penalties on those who remained obstinate after a due amount of hearing. They held, in fact, that every State is bound to use its power towards Christianizing all its subjects, and may also institute missions for the propagation of true Christianity in idolatrous or heathen lands. To all this the Baptists, or some of their leaders, had learnt to oppose an emphatic "No." They held that the world, or civU society, and the Church of Christ, were distinct and immiscible. They held that the sword of the Temporal Power must never, under any circumstances, aid the sword of the Spirit. They held that the formation of churches in any State must be a process of the purest spontaneity. They held that, while every person in a civilized State is a subject of that State in all matters of civil order, it ought to be at the option of that person, and of those with whom he or she 16i4-45.] TOLERATION: FKOM 1616 TO 1640. 107 might voluntarily consort, to determine whether he or she should superadd to this general character of subject the farther character of being a Christian and a member of some particular church. The churches formed spontaneously in any State were to be self-subsisting associations of like-minded units, believing and worshiping, and inflicting spiritual cen- sures among themselves, without State-interference ; and Christianity was to propagate itself throughout the world by its own spiritual might and the missionary zeal of apostolic individuals.' From 1616 onwards this Baptist form of the idea of Liberty of Conscience had been slumbering somewhere in the English heart. Even through the dreadful time of the Laudian terror- ism it might be possible for research to discover half-stifled expressions of it. Other and less extreme forms of the Toleration idea, however, were making themselves heard. Holland had worked out the speculation, or was working it out, through the struggle of her own Arminians for equal rights with the prevailing Calvinists ; and it was the singular honour of that country to have, at all events, been the iirst in Europe to exhibit something like a practical solution of the problem, by the refuge and freedom of worship it afforded to the religious outcasts of other nations. Then among the so- called Latitudinarian Divines of the Church of England — Hales, Chillingworth, and their associates — there is evidence of the growth, even while their friend Laud was in power, of an idea or sentiment of Toleration which might have made that Prelate pause and wonder. Not, of course, the Baptist idea ; but one which might have had a greater chance practi- cally in the then existing conditions of English life. Might there not be a Toleration with an Established or State Church ? While it might be the duty of the civil magistrate, or at least a State-convenience, to set up one Church as the Church of the > Among my authorities for this dency in England (1848), Vol. III., sketch of the history of the idea of Chapters I. and II. ; and the Eepnnt of Toleration as far as 1616, I ought to Old Tracts on Ubertyof ConscieMehj mention Hanbury's Histoncal Memo- the Hanserd KnoUys (Baptist) booiety, vials relating to the IndependenU, Vol. with the Introductory Notices there I., andmore particularly Chapters XIII. prefixed to Btisher s tract and Murton a -XV • Fletcher's History of hyUpen- by Mr. Edward Bean Underhill. 108 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OP HIS TIME. nation, and so to afford to aU the subjects tlie means of instruction in that theology and of participation ia that worship which the State thought the best, might not State- interference with religion stop there, and might not those who refused to conform be permitted to hold their conventicles freely outside the Established Church, and to believe and wor- ship in their own way ? Some such idea of Toleration, but still with perplexing limitations as to the amount of deviation that should be tolerated, was, I believe, the idea that had dawned on the minds of men Hke the loveable Hales and the hardy ChU- liagworth. It is much the sort of Toleration that accredits itself to the average British mind yet. But how greatly the history of the Church of England might have been altered had such a Toleration been then adopted by the Church itself ! As it was, it remained the half-uttered irenicon of a few specula- tive spirits. Nowhere on earth prior to 1640, unless it were in Holland, was Toleration in any effective form whatsoever any- thing more than the dream of a few poor persecuted sectaries or deep private thinkers. Less even than in the Church of England is there a trace of the idea in the Scottish Presby- terianism that had then re-established itself, or in the Eng- lish Presbyterianism that longed to establish itself. Scottish Presbyterianism might iadeed plead, and it did plead, that it was so satisfactory a system, kept the souls of its subjects in such a strong grip, and yet without needing to resort, except in extreme cases, to any very penal procedure, that wherever it existed Toleration would be unnecessary, inasmuch as there would be preciously little error to tolerate. Personally, I believe, Henderson was as moderate and tolerant a man as any British ecclesiastic of his time. In no Church where he bore rule could there, by possibility, have been any approach to the tetchy repressiveness, or the callous indifference to suffering for the sake of conscience, that characterized the English Church-rule of Laud. But Henderson, though the best of the Presbyterians, was stiU, par excellence, a Presby- terian ; and therefore the Toleration that lay in his disposition had not translated itself into a theoretical principle. As for the English Presbyterians, what they wanted was toleration for 1644-45.] TOLEEATION : FROM 1640 TO 1644. IQQ themselves, or the liberty of being in the English Church, or in England out of the Church, without conforming ; or, if some of them went farther, what they wanted was the substi- tution of Presbytery for Prelacy as the system established with the right to be intolerant. Finally, even in the New England colonies, where Congregationalism was the rule, there were not only spiritual censures and excommunications of heretics, but whippings, banishments, and other punish- ments of them, by the Civil power.^ And so we arrive at 1640. Then, immediately after the meeting of the Long Parliament, Toleration rushed into the air. Everywhere the word " Toleration " was heard, and with aU varieties of meanings. A certain boom of the general principle runs through Milton's Anti-Episcopal pamphlets, and through other pamphlets on the same side. But this is not all. The principle was expressly argued in certain pamphlets set forth in the interest of the Independents and the Sectaries generally, and it was argued so well that the Presbyterians caught the alarm, foresaw the coming battle between them and the Independents on this subject of Tole- ration, and declared themselves Anti-Tolerationists by antici- pation. It was in May 1641, for example, that Henry Burton published his anonymous pamphlet called The Protestation Protested (Vol. II. 591-2). The main purpose of the pamphlet was to propound Independency in its extreme Brownist form, as refusing any National or State Church whatever ; but, on the supposition that this theory was too much in advance of the opinion of the time, and that some National Church must inevitably be set up, a toleration of dissent from that Church was prayed for. "The Parliament now being about a Ee- " formation," wrote Burton, " what government shall be set up " in this National Church, the Lord strengthen and direct " the Parliament in so great and glorious a work. But let it " be what it will, so as stUl a due respect be paid to those 1 HaUaai's account of the rise and Prophesying" (1647), the fii-st substan- progress of the Toleration idea in Eng- tial assertion of Liberty of Conscience m land (Hist, of Europe, 6th ed. II. 442, England— an injustice to a score or two &c.) is very unsatisfactory. Heaov iuiv of preceding champions of it, and to one makes Jeremy Taylor's "L-'rerty of or two entire corporate denominations. 110 LIFE OF MILTON ANB HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. " congregations and churclies -which desire an exemption, " and liberty of enjoying Christ's ordinances in such purity " as a National Church is not capable of." This is the Toleration principle as it had been transmitted among the Independents generally, or perhaps it is an advance on that. Such as it was, however. Burton's plea for Toleration roused vehement opposition. It was attacked ferociously, as we saw, by an anonymous Episcopal antagonist, believed to be Bishop Hall (Vol. II. p. 593). It was attacked also by Presby- terians, and notably by their champion, Mr. Thomas Edwards, in his maiden pamphlet called " Reasons against the Indepen- dent Government of particular Congregatio7is" (Vol. II. p. 594). But Edwards did not go unpunished. His pamphlet drew upon him that thrashing from the lady-Brownist, Katharine Chidley, which the reader may remember (Vol. II. p. 595). This brave old lady's idea of Toleration outwent even Bur- ton's, and corresponded more with that absolute idea of Toleration which had been worked out among the Baptists. For example, Edwards having upbraided the Independents with the fact that their Toleration principle had broken down even in their own Paradise of New England, what is Mrs. Chidley's answer ? " If they liave banished any out " of their Patents that were neither disturbers of the peace " of the land, nor the worship practised in the land, I am " persuaded it was their weakness, and I hope they will •' never attempt to do the like." Clearly, from whomsoever in 1641 the Parliament and the people of England heard a stinted doctrine of Toleration, they heard the full doctrine from Mrs. Chidley. The Parliament, however, was very slow to be convinced. Petitions of Independent congregations for toleration to themselves were coolly received and neg- lected ; the Presbyterians more and more saw the importance of making Anti-Toleration their raUying dogma; more and more the caU to be wary against this insidious notion of Toleration rang through the pulpits of England and Scotland.^ f^^ ^ ' uw"™ "1??'^ extracts from pendencv, Vol. Ill Chan VI the pamphlets mentioned in this para- ^' 1641-45.] TOLERATION AND THE ASSEMBLY. HI The debates in 1643 and 1644 between the five Indepen- dent or Dissenting Brethren of the Westminster Assembly and the Presbyterian majority of the Assembly brought on a new stage of the Toleration controversy. A notion which might be scorned or ridiculed while it was lurking in Ana- baptist conventicles, or ventilated by a she-Brownist like Mrs. Chidley, or by poor old Mr. Burton of Friday Street, could compel a hearing when maintained by men so re- spectable as Messrs. Goodwin, Burroughs, Bridge, Simpson, and Nye, whom the Parliament itself had sent into the Assembly. The demand for Toleration which these men addressed to the Parliament in their famous Afologttical Narration of January 1643-4 gave sudden dignity and pre- cision to what till then had been vulgar and vague. It put the question in this form, "What amount of N'oncon- formity is to be allowed in the new Presbyterian Church which is to be the National Church of England?"; and it distinctly intimated that on the answer to this question it would depend whether the Apologists and their adherents could remain in England or should be driven again into exile. Care must be taken, however, not to credit the Apologists at this period with any notion of absolute or universal Toleration. They were far behind Mrs. Chidley or the old Baptists in their views. ' They were as yet but learners in the school of Toleration. Indulgence for ihem- selves " in some lesser differences,'' and perhaps also for some> of the more reputable of the other sects in their different " lesser differences," was the sum of their published demand. They too, no less than the Presbyterians, professed disgust at the extravagances of the Sectaries. It was not so much, therefore, the Toleration expressly claimed by the Five Dis- senting Brethren for themselves, as the larger Toleration to which it would inevitably lead, that the Presbyterians con- tinued to oppose and denounce. As far as the Five Brethren and other such respectable Dissentients were concerned, the Presbyterians would have stretched a point. • They would have made arrangements. They would have patted the Five Dissenting Brethren on the back, and said, " It shall be made 112 LIFE OP MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. easy for you ; we will jdeld all the accommodation you can possibly need; only don't call it Toleration." The Dissenting Brethren were honest enough and clear-headed enough not to be content with this personal compliment. Nor, in fact, could the policy have been successful. For there were now champions of the larger Toleration with voices that resounded through the land and were heard over those of the Five Apologists. Precisely that middle of the year 1644 at which we have stopped in our narrative was the time when the principle of absolute Liberty of Conscience was proclaimed, for the benefit of all opinions whatsoever, in tones that could never more be silenced. About the middle of 1644 there appeared in London at least three pamphlets or books in the same strain. One of these, "The Compassionate Samaritan unbinding the Con- science," need be remembered by its name only ; but the other two must be associated with their authors. One bore the striking title " The Bloudy Tenant \i.e. Bloody Tenet] of Persecution for cause of Conscience, discussed in a Conference between Truth and Peace," (pp. 247) ; the other bore, in its first edition, the simple title, "M. S. to A. S.," and, in its second edition, in the same year, this fuUer title "A Beply of Two of the Brethren to A.S., t&c; with a Plea for Liherty of Conscience for the Apologists Chv/rch-way, against the Cavils of the said A. S." Though both were anonymous, the authors were known at the time. The author of the first was that Americanized Welshman, Eogee Williams, whose strange previous career, from his first arrival in New England in 1631, on to his settlement among the Narraganset Bay ludians in 1638, and his subsequent vagaries of opinion and of action, has ah-eady been sketched (Vol. XL 560—563, and 600—602). He had been over in England, it wiU be remem- bered, since June 1643, in the capacity of envoy or commis- sioner from the Ehode Island people, to obtain a charter for erecting Ehode Island and the adjacent Providence Plantation into a distinct and independent colony. He had been going about -England a good deal, but had been mostly in London, in the society of the younger Van-, and iu frequent contact 1644-45.] TOLERATION: ROGER WILLIAMS. 113 with other leading men iu Parliament and in the West- minster Assembly. The Bloody Tenent was an expression, in printed form, of opinions he had been ventilating frankly enough in conversation, and was intended as a parting-gift to England before his return to America. The title must have at once attracted attention to it and given it an advantage over the other tract. The author of that other tract was our other well-known friend Mr. John Goodwin, Vicar of St. Sbephen's, Coleman Street, whom the Presbyterians had put in their black books as an Arminian, Socinian, and what not (Vol. II. 582 — 584). Goodwin's piece may have been out first, for it is heard of as in circulation in May 1644, while Williams's book is not heard of, I think, till June or July. But, on all grounds, Williams deserves the priority.^ Well may the Americans be proud of Eoger Williams. His Bloody Tenent is of a piece with aU his previous career. It is a rapid, hurried book, written, as it tells us, during the author's stay in England, " in change of rooms and corners, yea sometimes in variety of strange houses, sometimes in the fields in the midst of travel." One particularly notes the frequent " &c.'.' in its sentences, as if much crowded on the writer's miad from moment to moment which he could indicate only by a contraction. But there is dash in the book, the keenest earnestness and evidence of a mind made up, and every now and then a mystic softness and richness of pity, yearning towards a voluptuous imagery like that of the Song of Solomon. The plan is straggling. Eirst there is a list of twelve positions which the book proves, or heads under which its contents may be distributed. Then there is an address or dedication to " the Eight Honourable Both Houses of the High Court of Parliament," followed by a separate address " To every Courteous Eeader." Then there comes a copy of " Scriptures and Seasons written long since by a Witness of Jesus Christ, close prisoner in Newgate, against 1 For statements in this paragraph graphical Introduction," pp. xxiii.-iv. : authorities are — Apologetic Narration Jackson's Life of John Goodmn, p. 114 (1644) ; Hanbury's Historical Memorials, et seq. ; Baillie's Letters, II. 180, 181, and II. 341 et seq. ; Reprint of The Bloody 211, 212, and Commons Journals, Aug. Tenent by the Hansen! KnoUys Society 9, 1644. (1848), with Mr. Underbill's "Bio- VOL. III. I 114 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. Persecution in cause of Conscience" — in fact, an extract from a tract on Liberty of Conscience by Murton, or some other London Baptist, iu 1620. A copy of these Scriptures and Eeasons against Persecution had, it seems, been submitted in 1635 to Mr. Cotton of Boston for his consideration ; and Mr. Cotton had drawn up a Eeply, defending, from Scripture, past universal practice, and the authority of Calvin, Beza, and others of the Eeformers, the right of the civil magis- trate to prosecute and punish religious error. This Eeply of Cotton's in favour of persecution is printed at length by Williams ; and the first part of the real body of his own book consists of a Dialogue between Truth and Peace over the doctrine which so respectable a New England minister had thus espoused. When this Dialogue is over, there ensues a second Dialogue of Truth and Peace over another New Eng- land document in which the same " bloody tenet " of perse- cution had been defended— to wit a certain " Model of Church and Civil Power " drawn up by some New England ministers in concert, and in which Mr. Cotton had had a hand, though Mr. Eichard Mather appears to have been the chief author.^ The texture of Williams's treatise, it will be thus seen, is loose and composite. But a singular unity of purpose and spirit runs through it. Here is the opening of the first Dialogue : — Truth. In what dark corner of the world, sweet Peace, are we two met ? How hath this present evil world banished me from all the coasts and corners of it I And how hath the righteous God in judgment taken thee from the earth : Rev. vi. 4. Peace. It is lamentably true, blessed Truth : the foundations of the world have long been out of course ; the gates of Earth and Hell have conspired together to intercept our joyful meeting and our holy kisses. With what a wearied, tired wing have I flown over nations, kingdoms, cities, towns, to find out precious Truth ! Truth. The like inquiries in my flights and travels have I made for Peace, and still am told she hath left the Earth and fled to Heaven. Peace. Dear Truth, what is the Earth but a dungeon of dark- ness, where Truth is not ? 1 Some particulars in this desoription Society's E«print of it ; but the desorip- of the treatise are from Mr. Underhill's tioii in the main is from the Bloidy Introduction to the Hanserd Knollys Teiient itself. 1644-45.] TOLERATION: ROGEE WILLIAMS. 115 Truth. And what is the Peace thereof hut a fleeting dream thine ape and counterfeit ? ' Peace. Oh ! where is the promise of the God of Heaven, that Eighteousness and Peace shall kiss each other ? Truth. Patience, sweet Peace ! These Heavens and Earth are growing old, and shall be changed like a garment : Psalm cii. They shall melt away, and he burnt up with all the works that are therein ; and the Most High Eternal Creator shall gloriously create new Heavens and new Earth, wherein dwells righteousness : 2 Pet. iii. Our kisses then shall have their endless date of pure and sweetest joys. Till then both thou and I must hope, and wait, and bear the fury of the Dragon's wrath, whose monstrous lies and furies shall with himself be cast into the lake of fire, the second death : Eev. xx. Peace. Most precious Truth, thou knowest we are both pursued and laid for. Mine heart is fuU of sighs, mine eyes with tears. Where can I better vent my full oppressed bosom than into thine, whose faithful lips may for these few hours revive my drooping, wandering spirits, and here begin to wipe tears from mine eyes, and the eyes of my dearest children. Truth. Sweet daughter of the God of peace, begin. And so Truth and Peace hold their long discourse, evolving very much that doctrine of the absolute Liberty of Con- science, as derivable from, or radically identical with, the idea of the utter distinctness of the Church of Christ from the world or civil society, which had been propounded first by the Brownists and Baptists, and had come down as a tradition from them. But it is evolved by Williams more boldly and passionately than by any before him. There is a fine union throughout of warmth of personal Christian feeling with in- tellectual resoluteness in accepting every possible consequence of his main principle. Here are a few phrases from the marginal summaries which give the substance of the Dialogue, page after page : — " The Church and civil State confusedly made all oue"j "The civil magistrates bound to preserve the bodies of their subjects, and not to destroy them for conscience sake"; "The civil sword may make a nation of hypocrites and anti-Christians, but not one Christian"; "Evil is always evil, yet permission of it may in case be good"; "Christ Jesus the deepest politician that ever was, and yet he com- mands a toleration of anti- Christians " ; " Seducing teachers, either Pagan, Jewish, Turkish, or anti-Christian, may yet be obedient subjects to the civil laws"; "Christ's lilies may I 2 116 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. flourish in his Church, notwithstanding the abundance of weeds in the world permitted "; " The absolute sufficiency of the sword of the Spirit"; "A National Church not insti- tuted by Christ Jesus"; "The civil commonweal and the spiritual commonweal, the Church, not inconsistent, though independent the one on the other"; " Forcing of men to god- liness or God's worship the greatest cause of breach of civil peace " ; " Master of a family under the Gospel not charged to force all under him from their consciences to his"; "Few magistrates, few men, spiritually and Christianly good: yet divers sorts of goodness, natural, artificial, civil, &c. "; " Per- sons may with less sin be forced to marry whom they cannot love than to worship where they cannot believe "; " Christ Jesus never appointed a maintenance of ministers from the unconverted and unbelieving : [but] they that compel men to hear compel men also to pay for their hearing and conver- sion "; " The civil power owes three things to the true Church of Christ — (1) Approbation, (2) Submission [i.e. interpreted in the text to be personal submission of the civil magistrate to church-membership, if he himself believes], (3) Protection"; " The civil magistrate owes two things to false worshippers — (1) Permission, (2) Protection." ^Whoever has read this string of phrases possesses the marrow of Williams's treatise. At the end of it there is an interesting discussion of the question whether only church-members, or "godly persons in a particular church-estate," ought to be eligible to be magistrates. To Williams, who was a pure democrat in politics, and was founding the new State of Ehode Island on the basis of the equal suffrages of all the colonists, this was an important practical question. He decides it with great good sense, and clearly in the negative. Without denying that the appointment of godly persons to civU. offices was a thing to be prayed for, and, wherever possible, peaceably endeavoured, he points out that the principle that only Christian persons should be entrusted with civil rule is practi- cally preposterous. Five-sixths of the world had never heard of Christ, and yet there were lawful enough civil states in those parts of the world. Then, in a Christian monarchy, 1644-45.] TOLERATION: EOGER WILLIAMS. 117 what a convulsion, -what a throwing away of the henefits of hereditary succession, if it had to be inquired, whenever the throne became vacant, whether the next heir was of the right sort religiously. Finally, in any Christian colony or town, would it not be a turning of everything upside down, and a premium upon hypocrisy, to make church-membership a necessary qualification for magistracy, and so, wheu a magis- trate lapsed into what was thought religious error, and had to be excommunicated by his church, to have to turn him out of his civil office also ? Williams, it is to be remembered, had held these views while'he was yet only a Congregationalist generally, and before he had become a Baptist. Though he found them among the Baptists, therefore, he may be said to have recovered them for Independency at large, and to have been the first to impregnate modern " Independency " with them through and through. Nay, as he had himself gone out of the camp of the mere Baptist Congregationalists when he published his treatise, — as he had begun to question whether there was any true Visible Church in the world at all, any perfect pastorate in any nation, anything else under the sun of a Christian kind than a chance-medley of various preaching and effort into which God might sooner or later send new shafts of light and direction from heaven — in the view of all this, Williams has to be regarded as the father of a specu- lation thai cannot be contained within the name of Inde- pendency, even at its broadest. If we were forced to adopt a modern designation for him, we should call him the father of all that, since his time, has figured, anywhere in Great Britain, or in the United States, or in the British Colonies, under the name of Voluntaryism. This involves a restriction on the one hand. Since his time, there has been an abundance of speculation in the world as to the true duties and limits of the power of a State even in civil matters; and the prevailing effect of these specu- lations has been to hand over more and more of the care of human well-being and human destinies, in everything whatsoever, to the liberty of individuals, the pressure of 118 LIFE OF MrLTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. their competing desires, and their powers of voluntary asso- ciation, and so to reduce the function of the magistrate, or any power of corporate rule, to a thing becoming small by degrees and beautifully less. Of late, this tendency, victorious already in many matters, has tried to assert itself in the question of Education. It has been maintained that there should be no attention on the part of the State to the educa- tion of the citizens, but that, in the matter of learning to read and write and of all farther learning or mental training, the individuals born into a community should be left to their hereditary chances, the discretion or kindness of those about them, and their own power of gradually finding out what they need, and buying it or begging it. Now with this direction of modern speculation the intentions of Eoger Williams had nothing to do. He was a democrat in politics, and, as such, he might have gone on to new definitions of what, in secular matters, should be left to the individual, and what should be still regulated by the majority; but what these definitions would have been must be left to inference from the records of his farther political life in Ehode Island. Eespecting Schools and Universities he did, indeed, hold that they were not to be regarded as the nurseries of a clergy, the appendages of a Church, or the depositaries and supports of any religious creed. " For any depending of the Church of Christ on such schools," he wrote, " I find not a tittle in the Testament of Christ Jesus." He would certainly, therefore, have been for no expenditure of public money on the religious education of the young, and he would have been for the extraction of all theological teaching out of existing schools and universities. But he " honoured schools," he says, " for tongues and arts," and I have found no trace in him of a notion that State support of schools and universities for such secular learning is illegitimate. His Voluntaryism, so far as it was declared, or, I believe, intended, was wholly Voluntaryism in the matter of Church and Eeligion. In that sphere, however, his Voluntaryism was absolute, and went as far as anything calling itself Voluntaryism that has since been heard of in the English-speaking world. 1644-45.] TOLERATION : ROGER WILLIAMS. 119 Williams's Bloodxj Tenant, as I have said, was his parting gift to the English nation before his return to America. It was out in June or July 1644; and in September of the same year Williams, after a stay of about fifteen months in and near London, was on his way back to New England. He had succeeded in the immediate object of his mission. For, during his stay in England, the management of the Colonies, till then in the hands of Commissioners under the Crown, was transferred (Nov. 2, 1643) to a Parliamentary Commission of Lords and Commoners, at the head of which was the Earl of Warwick as Lord High Admiral, and among the members of which were Lord Saye and Sele, Pym, the younger Vane, Sir Arthur Haselrig, and Oliver Cromwell. Before such Commissioners, with Vane as his personal friend, Williams had had little difficulty in making out his case; and he had obtained from them a Patent, dated March 14, 1643-4, associating "the towns of Providence, Portsmouth, and Newport," into one body-politic by the name of " the Incorporation of Providence Plantations in Narraganset Bay in New England." This Patent gave a carte blanche to the colonists to settle their own form of government by voluntary consent, or vote, among themselves ; and, having it in his pocket, Williams might hope, on his return to America, to set up, in the polity of Ehode Island and its adjacencies, such an example of complete civil democracy combined with absolute religious individualism as the world had never yet seen. The Bloody Tenent might be left in England as an exposition of his theory in the sphere of Eeligion until this practical Transatlantic example of it should be ready I He had shrewdly taken care, however, to have the Patent in his pocket before issuing the Bloody Tenent. Had that book been out first, he might have had some difficulty in obtaining the Patent even from such Commissioners for the Colonies as he had to deal with. Possibly, however, they granted it with full knowledge of Williams, and were willing, through him, to try a bolder experiment in the American wilds than it was possible to promote or to announce in England.^ 1 Palfrey'.'! New England, I. 633-4, and II. 215 ; and Garamell's Life of Williams, 119, 120. 120 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. While we have been so long with Koger Williams, his colleague in the Toleration heresy, John Goodwin, has been ■waiting. He was fifty-one years of age, or six or seven years older than Williams. Eather late in life, he had begun to find himself a much-abused man in London. For, though he had sided with the Parliamentarians zealously from the first, and had even, it appears, taken the Covenant,' his theology was thought to be lax,^ and the interpretation he was putting on the Covenant was not the common one. He thought that the oath to seek " reformation of religion " and to " endeavour to bring the Church of God in the three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity," did not necessarily imply acceptance of the Presbyterian system which the Assembly were bent iipon bringing in. Therefore, when the Five Dissenting Brethren of the Assembly appealed to Parha- ment in their Apologetieal Narration, they found a champion outside in Goodwin. His championship took the form of that answer to " A. S." (i.e. the Scotsman, Adam Steuait, author of the first printed attack on the Apologetic Narration) which we have mentioned as appearing with the brief title M. S. to A. S., and again, in a second edition, with the fuller title A Reply of Two of the Brethren to A. S., <&c. ; with A Flea for Liberty of Conscience, &c. As the second title implies, Goodwin had associates in the work ; but it was principally his, and the part on Toleration wholly his. So far as the tract concerns itself with the question between Presbytery and Congregationalism, Goodwin avows himself a Congrega- tionalist. And yet he was not at one in all points with the five Assembly-men. " I know I am looked upon," he after- wards wrote, " by reason partly of my writings, partly of my practice, as a man very deeply engaged for the Independents' cause against Presbytery. But the truth is, I am neither so whole for the former, nor yet against the latter, as I am, I believe, generally voted in the thoughts of men to be." ^ This 1 That Goodwin had taken the Cove- Assembly on that and other grounds nxnt appears from words of his own in (see Baillie's Lettera, II 111 and Light- a tract of 1646 quoted in Fletcher's foot's Notes, Nov. 8 and 9, 1643). ,^ mu^ Independency, IV. 47. 3 Quoted, from the Preface to Good- \ Ihe suspicion of Goodwin's Socini- win's AnapoloqesiaMes Anapologias, by anism was as early as November 1643, Fletcher, IV. 46. when ho got into trouble with the 1644-45.] TOLEIiATION: JOHN GOODWIN. 121 was written in 1646 ; but even in 1644 he fought so much for his own hand that the Independents of the Assembly may- have but half liked his partnership. His Toleration doctrine, at all events, though uttered in their behalf, was too strong doctrine even for them. Hear what Baillie writes to his friend Spang, at Campvere, in Holland, just after the appear- ance of Goodwin's tract for the Independents : " M. S. against " A. S., is John Goodwin of Coleman Street : he names you " expressly, and professes to censure the letter of Zeeland. " He is a bitter enemy to Presbytery, and is openly for a full " liberty of conscience of all sects, even Turks, Jews, Papists, " and all to be more openly tolerate than with you [i.e. than " even in Holland]." ^ Baillie's representation of Goodwin's Toleration doctrine is fair enough. It is not so deep, so excep- tionless, and so transcendentally reasoned as Eoger Williams's ; and indeed there was none of the sap and mystic richness of nature in Goodwin that we find in Williams, but chiefly clear courage, and strong cool sense. For most practical purposes, however, Goodwin's Toleration was thorough. He was for tolerating not merely the orthodox Congregationalists and such more heterodox sects as might be thought respectable, but all religions, sects, and schisms whatsoever, if only the professors of them were otherwise peaceable in the State. Not, of course, that they were not to be reasoned with and proved false publicly ; or that heretics in congregations were not to be admonished, and, if obdurate, excommunicated ; or that a whole church tainted with a great heresy ought not to be put under a ban by all other churches, and communion with it renounced. All this was assumed in the theory of Church- Independency which was common to Goodwin and Williams. True, Williams, now that he had passed beyond the Baptists and saw no true Church anywhere on earth, must have begun to doujbt also the efficacy and validity of even spiritual censures, as exercised by the so-caUed churches, to regard as a mere agency of troublesome moonshine that incessant 1 Baillie, II. 180, 181. Goodwin's busy agent, at Trevere [Campvere] . . . mention of Spang, referred to by Baillie, whence the Letter [i.e. the Zeeland Let- is as follows : — " There is a Scottish ter in favour of Presbytery] came." Church, of which one Spang is a very 122 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. •watchfulness of each other's errors on which Independency- relied, and so to luxuriate in a mood of large charity, sighing over all, and hoping more from prayer and longing and pious well-doing all round than from censures and disputations. To Goodwin, on the other hand, troubled with no such visionary ideas, and fully convinced that a very good model of a Church had heen set up in Coleman Street, the right and efficacy of disputation against error, and of ministerial vigilance against error in particular churches, seemed more important, or at least more worth insisting on in a public plea for Toleration. Williams and Goodwin did not differ theoretically, but only practically, over this item in the exposition of their doctrine. The sole difference, of theo- retical import, was that Goodwin, in dwelling on the duty of disputation by Christian ministers against false religions and dangerous opinions in society round about them, and of vigilance against minor heresies in their own congregations, talked vaguely of a right on the part of the civil magis- trate to admonish ministers in this respect should they be negligent or forgetful of their duty. This, as we Jinow, would have grated on "Williams. Perhaps, however, Good- win, even here, was only throwing a sop to Cerberus. At aU events, he comes out finally a thorough Tolerationist. What- ever minister or magistrate may do towards confuting and diminishing error, there is a point at which they must both stop. There is not to be a suppression of false religions, sects and schisms, by fining, imprisoning, disfranchising, banish- ment, death, or any civil punishment whatsoever; and, when it comes to that, they are all to be tolerated.' We are now prepared to classify the various forms in which the Toleration Doctrine was urged on the English mind in the year 1644. There were three grades of the doctrine : — I. Absolute Liberty of Conscience, and No National Church, or State-interference with Religion, of any Icind whatsoever. This was, in fact, more than Toleration, and Toleration is hardly the fit name for it. The advocates of this idea were 1 Jackson's Life of Goodwin, pp. 116, 117 ; Hanbury's Memorials, II. 341 365. 1644-45.] TOLERATION : THREE FORMS OP THE DOCTRINE. 123 Eoger Williams, perhaps the Baptists generally, also Burton in a certain way ; but, above all, Eoger Williams. He did not think there could be Liberty of Conscience, in the perfect and absolute sense, where there was a National Church, even if free dissent were allowed from that Church. For, by the establishment of a Church, he held, a substantial worldly premium was put on certain religious beliefs, and an advan- tage conferred on a portion of the community at the expense of all ; and to be compelled to pay for, or even to acknow- ledge politically, a Church which one did not approve, was in itself inconsistent with true Liberty of Conscience, whatever freedom of nonconformity might be left to individuals. Accordingly, if Eoger Williams, at that crisis, had been a statesman of England, instead of a mere commissioner from an infant colony in America, his advice would have been in this strain : — " It is agreed that the Episcopal or Prelatic Church, called hitherto the Eeformed Church of England, is no longer to exist. That is settled ; and the question is. What Church Eeformation shall there now be ? My answer is sweeping and simple. Let there be no National Church, no Church of England, at all, of any kind or form whatsoever. Let England henceforth be a civil State only, in which Chris- tianity shall take care of itself, and all forms of Christianity and all other religions shall have equal rights to protection by the police. Confiscate for the use of the State all the existing revenues of the defunct Church and its belong- ings, giving such compensation for life-interests therein as may seem reasonable ; but create no new Church, nor stump of a Church, round which new interests may gather. Do not even implicate the State so far in the future of Eeligion as to indicate to the subjects any form of Church as esteemed the best, or any range of option among Churches as presumably the safest. Leave the formation and the sustentation of Christ's Church in the English realm, and everywhere else, entirely to the unseen power of the Spirit, and the free action of those whom the Spirit may make its instruments." Eor nothing like this was the Long Parlia- ment, or any other legislature in the world, then prepared ; 124 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. and Williams knew it. But he had faith in the future of his speculation. In America, whither he was to carry it back, he hoped to be able to exhibit it in practice on a small scale in the new colony he was founding ; and" there could be no harm, he thought, in leaving the leaven to ferment in the denser society of England. II. Unlimited Toleration round an Established National Church. So we may express a form of Tolerationism in which there was a concurrence of persons, and perhaps of bodies of persons, who yet differed from each other in the motives for their concurrence. WUliams, of course, accepted this form of Tolerationism, as next best to his own absolute Voluntaryism, Individualism, and universal Liberty of Con- science. " If there is to be in England a National or State Church of some kind (which I think wrong, and so wrong that I wiU take no part in the debate what kind of National Church would be best, whether a Prelatic, Presbyterian, or any other), at least, when you have set up such a Church, let there be a perfect toleration for all subjects of the realm round about that Church, no compulsion on any of them to belong to that Church, no pains and penalties for any pro- fession of belief or disbelief, or any form of worship or no- worship, out of that Church." These are not Williams's own words, but they exactly express his meaning ; and, in fact, he intended his Bloody Tenent to be a plea for toleration in this practical sense, if it should fail in winning people to his higher and more peculiar idea of real Liberty of Conscience. And a most eloquent plea it was. He insists again and again on the necessity that there should be no limits to the toleration of Eeligious Difference in a state. He argues expressly that not only orthodox or slightly heterodox dissen- ters should have the benefit of such toleration, but all kinds of dissentients without exception. Papists, Jews, Moham- medans, Pagans, or Infidels. He knew what a hard battle he was fighting. " I confess I have little hope," he said, " till " those flames are over, that this discourse against the doctrine " of persecution for cause of conscience should pass current, I " say not amongst the wolves and lions, but even amongst the 1644-45.] TOLERATION : THREE FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 125 " sheep of Christ themselves. Yet, libermn animam meam : " I have not hid within my breast my soul's helief." He trusted, doubtless, that his treatise might have some effect, if not for its highest purpose, at least as a practical plea for unlimited toleration round the new National Church of England that was to be. And here most of the Baptists were in the same predicament with Williams. They would have preferred no National Church at all ; but, as there was to be a National Church, they wanted the amplest toleration round it. Burton also was pretty nearly in the same cate- gory. He too doubted the lawfulness of a State Church of any kind, but was earnest that, if such must be established, it should not be coercive. He did not formally demand un- limited toleration, and indeed conceded something in words to the effect that in cases of " known heresy, or blasphemy, or idolatry," offenders would have to- be "obnoxious to the Civil Power ; " but I rather think that the concession was prudential, and that his heart did not go with it. I will retain him therefore among the Unlimited Tolerationists. Far outshining him in this class, however, was John Good- win. Well, but were the advocates of unlimited toleration in connexion with an Established Church exclusively persons who would have prevented the formation of such a Church if they could, or doubted its righteousness and propriety, and who only insisted on Toleration with such a Church as a practical necessity to which they were driven ? Were there no theorists in that time who positively desired an Established Church on its own account, and for the general good of the community, but who had worked out the conclu- sion that such a Church might consist, and ought to consist, with universal Eeligious Toleration, or the freest liberty of Nonconformity and Dissent ? In view of the fact that this is the theory of Establishments evolved by some of the best ecclesiastical spirits in our own later times, the question is interesting. My researches do not enable me to give a very precise answer to it applicable to the exact year 1644. If there were such theorists, however, they were, I should say, among those wiser and younger sons of the Episcopal Church 126 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. of England who would fain have preserved that Episcopal Church, but had privately made up their minds that Laud's basis for that Church was untenable, and that a very different basis must be substituted. One thinks of ChiUingworlh, Hales, and the rest of that " Latitudinarian " brotherhood ; one thinks of Jeremy Taylor; one thinks of the candid FuUer ; one thinks even of the Calvinistic Usher. ChUling- worth had died at Chichester, Jan. 30, 1643-4, at the age of forty-one, an avowed Eoyalist, and indeed a Eoyalist prisoner- at-war, tended on his death-bed by Presbyterians.^ Whatever hardy cogitations had been in his mind, pointing to a revived Episcopal Church of England with an ample toleration within it and round about it, had gone prematurely to the grave. The others were still alive, also pronounced Eoyalists, and acting or suffering more or less on that side ; and what- ever thoughts they had in the direction under notice were irrelevant to their immediate duty and opportunities, and had to wait for utterance at a more convenient season.^ On the whole, however, I judge that any such thoughts in their minds (even in Jeremy Taylor's as yet) fell considerably short of the Unlimited Toleration advocated by WiUiams and John Goodwin, and, if they could have been ascertained and measured, would have referred their owners rather to the next category than to the present. 1 Wood's Ath. III. 93, 94 ; and Life " are two theological Mopuffi's, or scare- of ChiUingworth prefixed to the Oxford "crows, which they who uphold a edition of his Works. " party in rehgion use to fright away " Yet there lutd been one recent " such as, maMng inquiry into it, are utterance of Hales relating to the idea " ready to relinquish and oppose it if of Toleration. It was in the form of A " it appear either erroneous or suspi- Fract concerning Schism and Schism- " cious. For, as Plutarch reports of Paget, pp. 138-141 ; with more of the Satbatk Quetthn, I. 152-3, 157-8, accurate particulars ui Cox s Literature and 162. 1644-45.] S'SNOPSIS OF ENGLISH SECTS: MOETALISTS, ETC. 157 admirer, and entitled " To His wortliy Friend the Author, upoa his Booke," there occur these lines : — " The heU-hatehed doctrine of th' immortal soul Discovered makes the hungry Furies howl. And teare their snakey haire, with grief appaled To see their error-leading doctrine quailed, Hell undermined and Purgatory blown Up in the air." There are Latin quotations in the Tract; and som« of the physiolo- gical arguments by which the author seeks to refute the opinion of "the Soulites," as he calls them, are rather nauseous. On the whole, were it not for the appended concession of a Eesurrection, or New Creation, and an Immortality somehow to ensue thence, the doctrine of the Tract might be described as out-and-out Materialism. Possibly, in spite of the concession, this is what the author meant to drive at. Among some of his followers, however, a milder ver- sion of his doctrine seems to have been in favour, not quite denying the existence of a soul, but asserting that the soul goes into sleep or temporary extinction at death, to be re-awakened at the ' Eesurrection. 1 Arians, Sooinians, and other Anti-Trinitarians : — Since 1614, when Legate and Wightman had been burnt for Arianism ,(Vol. I. p. 46), this and other forms of the Anti-Trinitarian heresy had been little heard of in England. But in the ferment of the Civil War they were reappearing. A Thomas Webb, a young fellow of twenty years of age, had been shocking people in London and in country- places by awful expressions against the Trinity ; one Clarke had been doing the same ; one Paul Best had been cii'culating manu- scripts in which there were " most horrid blasphemies of the Trinity, of Christ, and of the Holy Ghost ;" and John Biddle, of Gloucester, master of the school there, and of whom, from his career at Oxford, high hopes had been formed, had begun to be "free of his discourses in a Socinian direction." Baillie adds Mr. Samuel Eichardson, one of the Baptist ministers of London, to the number of those whose TVinitarianism was questionable, and charges the Baptists generally with laxity on that point. In short, there was an alarm of Arian- ism, and other forms of Anti-Trinitarianism, as again abroad in England. Mr. Nye, the Independent, had been heard to say that "to his knowledge the denying of the Divinity of Christ was a " growing opinion, and that there was a company of them met about " Coleman Street, a Welshman being their chief, who held this " opinion." Coleman Street appears, indeed, to have been a very hot- bed of heresy. For here it was that John Goodwin (Vol. II. 582-4, and anti, pp. 120 — 122) had his congregation. He had not revealed himself fully; but the public had had a taste of him in recent pam- ^ Paget, pp. 148, 149 ; Gangrcena, Part II. 99 and 121 ; but mainly tha Part I. pp. 22, 23 ; BaiUie's Dissuasive, fract (jited. 158 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. phlets. Baillie, on rumour, reports him as a gocinian ; and Edwards, •who came into conflict with him in due time, and deTotes many consecutive pages of Billingsgate to him in the Second Part of his Gangrmna, tells us that he held "many wicked opinions," being " an Hermaphrodite and a compound of an Arminian, Socinian, I jhertine, Anabaptist, &c." From the same authority we learn that the Presbyterians had nicknamed him " the great Eed Dragon of Coleman Street." "What'he really was we have a,beady seen in part for ourselves, and shall yet see more fully.^ Anti-Scbiptubists : — " One wicked sect," says Old Ephraim, " denieth the Scriptures both of the Old and E'ew Testament, and " account them as things of nought ; yea, as I am credibly informed, " in public congregations they vent these their damnable opinions." He gives no names ; but Edwards mentions " one Marshal, a brick- layer, a young man, living at Hackney," who made a mock of the Scriptures in his harangues, and asserted that he himself " knew the mystery of God in Christ better than St. Paul." A companion of this Marshal's told the people that " the Scripture was their golden calf and they danced round it." A PriscUla Miles had been speak- ing very shockingly of the Scriptures at I^orwich. But the most noted Anti-Scripturist seems to have been a Clement Wrighter, a Worcester man, living in London, of whom Edwards gives this terrible character — " Sometimes a professor of religion and judged "to have been godly, who is now an arch-heretic and fearful " apostate, an old wolf, and a subtle man, who goes about corrupt- " ing, and venting his errors : he is often in Westminster Hall and " on the Exchange ; he comes into public meetings of the Sectaries "upon occasions of meeting to draw up petitions for the Parliament " or other businesses. This man about seven or eight years ago (i.e. " about 1638) fell off from the communion of our churches to " Independency and Brownism ; from that he fell to Anabaptism " and Arminianism, and to Mortalism, holding the soul mortal (he " is judged to be the author, or at least to have had a great hand in " the Book of the Mortality of the Soul). After that he fell to be " Seeker, and is now an Anti-Scripturist, a Questionist and Sceptick, " and I fear an Atheist." Specimens of his sayings about the Bible are given ; and altogether one has to fancy Wrighter as an oldish man, sneaking about in public places in London on soft-soled shoes, and with bundles of papers under his arm. I have seen a little thing printed by him in Feb. 1645-6, under the title of " The Sad Case of Clement Writer," in which he complains of injustice, to the extent of 1,5001., done him by the late Lord Keeper Coventry and other judges in some suit that had lasted for twelve years.^ 1 Paget, 132—136 ; Gangrcena, Part Letters, II. 192, and Jackson's Life of I. pp. 21, 22, 26, 33, Part II. 19— John Goodwin (1822), pp. 3 and 14. 39, and Part III. Ill and 87 ; BaiUie's a Paget, 149 ; Qangroena., Part I. 26 Dismanve, Part II. p. 98 ; also Wood's —28 : BaiUie's Dissvasive, Part II. 121. Athense, III. 593 (for Biddle) ; BailUe's 1644-45.] SYNOPSIS OF ENGLISH SECTS : SCEPTICS, ETC. 159 Sceptics, or Qubstionists : — They were those who, according to Edwards, " questioned everything in matters of religion, holding " nothing positively nor certainly, saving the doctrine of pretended " liberty of conscience for all, and liberty of prophesying." Many besides Wrighter had reached this stage through their anti-Scrip- turism, and were free-thinkers of the cold or merely rational order, distinct from the devout and enthusiastic Seekers.^ Atheists : — Although Edwards charitably hints his fear that Mr. Wrighter had at last sunk into this extreme category, it is remarkable that neither he nor Paget ventures to reckon Atheists among the exist- ing Sects. Probably, therefore, there was no body of persons to whom, with any pretext of plausibility, the name could be applied. But we are advised of individuals here and there whom their neigh- bours suspected of Atheism. ; and, if Edwards is to be believed, there was alive a certain John Boggis, an apprentice to an apothecary in London, who, though at present only a young Anabaptist preacher, and disciple of Captain Hobson, was to go within a year or two to such unheard-of lengths about Great Yarmouth that even Wrighter must have disowned him.^ Such were the English Sects and Sectaries that had begun to be talked of in 1644. Not that they were bounded off strictly from each other in divisions according with their names. On the contrary, they shaded off into each other; and there were mixtures and combinations of some of them. Moreover, as the chief of them held by the Congregationalist principle in some form, and hoped to flourish by taking advantage of that principle, it was not unusual for Presby- terian writers to include these along with the Congrega- tionalists proper in the one lax designation of Independents. At aU. events, the Sects hung on to the Independents through that principle of Toleration or Liberty of Con- science which the Independents had propounded, at first mildly, but with a tendency to less and less of limitatioii. All the Sects, less or more, were Tolekationists ; the heresy of heresies in which they all agreed with each other, and with the Independents, was Libeety of Conscience. ' Oangraena, Part I. p. 13. 2 Ibid. Part II. 133, 134 ; and Baillie's Dissuasive, Part II. 99. 160 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. RESUMPTION OF PEOCEEDINGS BY THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY : DENUNCIATION OF PICKED SEOTAEIES AND HEEETICS. The foregoing survey of English Sects and Sectaries and of the state of the Toleration Controversy in 1644 has been our employment, the reader must he reminded, during the fortnight's vacation of the Westminster Assembly from July 23 to August 7 in that year. Something of the same kind was the vacation-employment of the members of that Assembly too, and especially of the Presbyterian majority. For they had been driven out of their previous calculations by the battle of Marston Moor (July 2). That battle had been won mainly by Cromwell, the head of the Army- Independents, and it went to the credit of Independency. All the more necessary was it for the Presbyterians of the Assembly to bethink themselves of indirect means of argu- ment against the Independents. The means were not far to seek. Let this horrible Hydra of Sects, all bred out of Inde- pendency, be dragged into light ; and would not respectable Independency itself stand aghast at her offspring ? The word Toleration had been mumbled cautiously within the Assembly, and had made itself heard with some larger liking in Parlia- ment, and still greater applause among the hasty thousands of the Parliamentary soldiers and the populace ! Let it be shown what this monstrous notion reaUy meant, what herds of strange creatures and shoals even of vermin it would permit in England ; and would England ratify the mon- strosity, or the Independency consociated with it, even for twenty Cromwells, or ten Marston Moors ? So, in the fort- night's vacation, reasoned Messrs. Marshall, Lightfoot, Calamy, Palmer, Vines, Spurstow, Kewcomen, Herle, Burges, and other English Presbyterians, incited rather than repressed by the Scottish anxiety of Eutherford, Gillespie, BaiUie, and (I am afraid) Henderson. Accordingly, when the Assembly resumed its sittings (Wednesday, Aug. 7, 1644), its first work was to fall passion- ately on the Sects and the arch-heresy of Toleration. " The 1644-45.] WESTJHNSTEE ASSEMBLY ON HERETICS. 161 " first day of our sitting, after our vacance," says Baillie, " a " number of complaints were given in against the Anabaptists' " and Antinomians' huge increase and insolencies intolerable. " Notwithstanding Mr. Nye's and others' opposition, it was "carried that the Assembly should remonstrate it to the " Parliament.''-^ And they did remonstrate it, without a day's delay. Friday, May 9, as we learn from the Lords Journals, it was represented to the House of Lords, through Mr. Marshall, by order of the Assembly, '* That they have been informed of " the great growth and increase of Anabaptists and Antinomians " and other Sects.; and that some Anabaptists have delivered " in private houses some blasphemous passages and dangerous " opinions : They have acquainted the House of Commons " therewith ; and, &c."^ Turning to the Commons Journals of the same day we find; accordingly, a column and a half on the same subject, with many details. Dr. Surges and Mr. Marshall had appeared before the Commons on the same errand from the Assembly : had told the Honourable House that many ministers and gentry all through England had long desired to petition it "to prevent the spreading opinions of Anabaptism and Antinomianism ; " that- they had been persuaded to forbear ; but that now " these men have cast off all affection and are so imbitterated " that farther forbearance would be wrong, and the Assembly cannot but represent to the House that "it is high time to suppress them." That the Commons might not be left in the vague, a Mr. Picot in Guernsey, and a Mr. KnoUes, recently in Cornwall (Hanserd KnoUys ?), of the Anabaptist sort, with a Mr. Eandall, a Mr. Penrose, and a Mr. Simson, as of a worse sort still (see EandaU among the Antinomians and FamiUsts in our synopsis), were denounced by name, as proper culprits to begin with. What could the poor House of Commons do ? Agreeing with the Lords, they promised to do What they could. They would take the whole subject into their grave consideration ; they empowered the Committee for Plundered Ministers, with a certain addition to lieir number, to arrest and examine the 1 Baillie's Letters, II. 218; corrQbo- day (p. 299). rated by Lightfoot's Notes on' ttie very ^ Lords Journals, Aug. 9, 1644. VOL. III. M l62 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOET OF HIS TIME. particiilar culprits named; and, to prove their heartiness meanwhile, they resolved, on that very day, " That Mr. "White do give order for the p.uhlic burning of one Mr. Williams his book, intituled, &c., concerning the Tolerating of all sorts of Religion." ^ This " one Mr. Williams," as the reader will be aware, was Eoger Williams, then on his way back to America; and " his book " was The Bloody Tenent. There must have been much hypocrisy,, and much cowardice, in the English House of Commons on that day. Where was the younger Sir Harry Vane ? Probably he was in the House while they passed the order, and wondering how far Eoger Williams had got on his voyage, and meditatively twirling his thumbs. A good stroke of business by the Westminster Assembly in two days after their vacation ! But they followed it up. There were frequent Solemn Fasts, by Parliamentary order, in those days, when all London was expected to go to church and listen to sermons by divines from the Westminster Assembly. Tuesday, the 13th of August, 1644, was one of those Solemn Fast-days — an " Extraordinary Day of Humilia- tion ;" and the ministers appointed by the Assembly to preach in chief — i. e. to preach before the two Houses of Parliament, and .the Assembly itself, in St. Margaret's, Westminster — were Mr. Thomas HlR and Mr. Herbert Palmer. These two gentlemen, it seems, did their duty. They satisfied even Bailhe. " Mr. Palmer and Mr. Hill," he says, " did preach that day to " the Assembly two of the most Scottish and free sermons " that ever I heard anywhere. The way here of all preachers, " even the best, has been to speak before the Parliament with " so profound a reverence as truly took all edge from their " exhortations, and made all applications of them toothless " and adulatorious. That style is much changed, however : " these two good men laid well about them, and charged " public and Parliamentary sins strictly on the backs of the " guilty."^ As the sermons themselves remain in print, we have the means of verifying BaiUie's description. It is quite correct. Not only in the " Epistle Dedicatory " to his sermon when it was printed did Mr. Hill denounce the Toleration ' Commons Journals, Aug. 9, 1644. s BaiUie's Letters, II. 220, 221. 1644-45.] SERMONS BY HILL AND PALMEK. 163 doctrine, and make a marginal reference to Eoger "Williams's "Bloody Tenent " as a book not too soon burnt ; but in the sermon itself, the subject of which was the duty of " advanc- ing Temple- work " (Haggai i. 7, 8), he openly attacked two classes of persons as the chief "underminers of Temple-work." First, he said, there were those who would allow nothing to be jure divine in the Church, but held that all matters of Church-constitution were to be settled by mere prudence and State-convenience — in other words, the Erastians. They are lectured, but are let off more easily than the second sort .of underminers : viz. " such who would have a toleration of all ways of Eeligion in this Church." Parliament is reminded that all tendency to this way of thinking is unfaithfulness to the Covenant, and is told that " to set the door so wide open as to tolerate aU religions " would be to " make London an Amsterdam," and would lead to — in fact, would certainly lead to — Amsterdamnation ! So far Mr. Hill ; but Mr. Palmer was even more bold. Preaching on Psalm xcix. 8, this delicate little creature laid about him most manfully. Parliament are rebuked for eluding the Covenant, for too great tenderness in their dealings with delinquents, and for re- missness in the prevention and punishment of false doctrine. They are exhorted to extirpate heresy and schism, especially Antinomianism and Anabaptism, and are warned at some length against the snare of Toleration. "Hearken not — I " earnestly exhort every one that intends to have any regard at " all to his solemn Covenant and oath in this second article — " to those that offer to plead for Tolerations ; which I wonder " how any one dare write or speak for as they do that have " themselves taken the Covenant, or know that you have. " The arguments that are used in some books, well worthy to " be burnt, plead for Popery, Judaism, Turcism, Paganism, " and all manner of false religions, under pretence of Liberty " of Conscience." This is clearly an allusion to John Good- win ; and in the sequel Mr. Palmer makes another personal allusion of still greater interest. In order to show what a social chaos would result from toleration of error on the plea of Liberty of Conscience, he gives instances of some of the M 2 164 LIFE OP MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. horrible opinions that would claim the benefit of the plea, and among these he names Milton's Divorce doctrine, then circu- lating in a book which the author had been shameless enough to dedicate openly to Parliament itself. The particulars will be given, and the passage quoted, in due time ; the fact is enough at present.^ Not content with direct remonstrance to Parliament on the subject of the increase of sects and heresies, nor with the power of exhorting it on the subject through the pulpit, the Presby- terians of the Assembly, I find, resorted to other agencies. They had great influence in the City, and it occurred to them, or to some of them, to stir up the Stationers' Company to activity in the matter. The Stationers, indeed, had a com- mercial interest, as well as a religious interest, in the suppres- sion of the obnoxious books and pamphlets, most of which were published without the legal formaKties of licence and registration. It is without surprise therefore that we find this entry in the Commons Journals for Saturday, Aug. 24, 1644 : " Ordered that the Petition from the Company of Stationers be read on Monday morning next," followed by this, other as the minute of the first business (after prayers) at the next sitting, (Monday, Aug. 26) : " The humble Petition of the Company " of Stationers, consisting of Booksellers, Printers, and Book- " binders, was this day read, and ordered to be referred to the " consideration of the Committee for Printing, to hear all " parties and to state the business, and to prepare an Ordi- " nance upon the whole matter and to bring it in with aU " convenient speed ; and they are, to this purpose, to peruse " the Bill formerly brought in concerning this matter. They 1 The title of Hill's eermon is "The that the best are liable unto, uprni which Seiuonfor England sSelfe-Reflectwnand God is provoked sometimes to tahe ven- Advanmng Tmple-worh : ducovered in a geance. The whole is applved spedaltii bei-mon preacJud to the two Houses of Par- to a mxyre carefuU obsmiance of our late ImineMat Margarets, Westminster, Aug. Covenant, and particularly against the ?Jr •',•!■"■* "■■"'J'^t^-'^ordinary day ungodly Toleration pleaded for under of Humhation By &c London : pretence of Idbertu of Conscience. By, Printed by Muhard Cotes, for John Bel- d:c. London ; P,4« by G. M. for 1% lamy and Philemon Stfphem: 1644. Unda-hiU at the Bible in Wood Street, -The title of Palmer's 13 j' The Gla^se 1641" Neither sermon impresses one ofGtods Prondence towards hisFatth- now very favom-ably in respect of m Ones; EeU fwth in, a ^nmn, either spirit or abiUty. I expected &o. [occasion and date as in Hill's] ; Palmei's to be better wherem u discovered the great failings 16i4-45.J DENUNCIATION OF PICKED HEEETICS. 165 " are diligently to inquire out the authors, printers, and pub- " lishers of the Pamphlets against the Immortality of the Soul " and Concerning Divorce." It had been determined, it seems, that Palmer's denunciation of Milton in his sermon a fortnight before should not be a hrutum fulmen. To the incident, as it affected Milton himself, we shall have to refet again. Mean- while it belongs to that stage of the action of the Westminstea Assembly on EngUsh politics which we are now trying to illustrate. The Assembly, we have shown; besides still carrying on within itself the main question between Presbyterianism and Congregationalism, had begun a wider war against Schism, Sectarianism, the whole miscellany of English h eresies, and especially the all-including heresy of Toleration. They opened the campaign, by private agreement among themselves, in August 1644'; and by the end of that month they had suc- ceeded in Tousing Parliament to some action on the subject, and had directed attention to at least nine special offenders, deserving to be punished first of all. These were — the Ana- haptists, Picot and Hanserd BJiollys ; the Antintfmians, Pen- rose and Simson ; the Antinomian and Eamilist, Eandall ; the Seeker and Tolerationist, Eoger Williams ; the Indepen- dent, semi-Socinian, and Tolerationist, John Goodwin ; the Anti-Scripturist and Mortalist, Clement Wrighter; and Mr. John Milton of Aldersgate Street, author of a Treatise on Divorce. For, though the Committee of Parliament had been instructed to inquire out the author of the Divorce Treatise, this was but a form. The second edition, dedicated to the Parliament and the Assembly, and with Milton's name to it in full, had been out more than six months. Of the nine persons mentioned, only Clement Wrighter, the Mortalist (if indeed the tract on Man's Mortality was from his pen), had to be found out. Was there to be no check to this Presbyterian inquisitor- ship ? Whence could a check come ? The few Independents in the Assembly, just because they were fighting their own particular battle, had to be cautious against too great an extension of their lines. Not from tlum, therefore, but from 166 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. the freer Independency of the Army, which was in fact by this time a composition of all or many of the sects, could the check be expected. Thence, in fact, it did come. In short; while the Presbyterians in London were in the flush of their first success against the Sectaries and the Tolerationisfcs, in walked Oliver Cromwell. CKOMWBLL'S interference foe TOLERATION : ACCOMMODATION ORDER OF PARLIAMENT. Events had been qualifying Cromwell more and more for the task. His Independency, or let us call it Tolerationism, had been long known. As early as March 1643-4, when he had just become Lieutenant-general in the Earl of Manchester's army, he had been resolute in seeing that the officers and soldiers in that army should not be troubled or kept down for Anabaptism or the like. This had been the more neces- sary because the next in command under him, the Scottish Major-general Crawford, was an ardent and pragmatic Pres- byterian. " Sir," Cromwell had written to Crawford on one occasion, when an Anabaptist colonel had been put under ^disgrace, " the State, in choosing men to serve it, takes no " notice of their opinions ; if they be willing faithfully to " serve it, that satisfies. I advised you formerly to bear with " men of different minds from yourself: if you had done it " when I advised you to it, I think you would not have had " so many stumbling-blocks in your way. It may be you "judge otherwise; but I tell you my mind."i Ever since that time there had been a vital difference between the Presbyterian Major-general Crawford and his superior, the Lieutenant-general. Gradually, according to Baillie, Man- chester, who was " a sweet, meek man," and greatly led by Cromwell, had been brought over more to the Presbyterian way by Crawford's reasonings. It had come to be a question, in fact, whether Cromwell and comfort or Crawford and precision should prevail in Manchester's army. Marston Moor (July 2) had settled that. CromweU, as the hero of 1 Carlylo'3 Cromwdl (ed. 1857), I. p. 148. 16i4r-iS.} CROMWELL'S INTERFERENCE FOR TOLERATION. 161 Marston Moor, was not a man to be farther opposed o: thwarted ; the Independents, who had mainly won Marstor Moor, were not men to submit longer to Presbyteriaa as- cendancy in the regulation of the army, or to see thai: large-faced English chief pestered and counterworked by e peevish Scot. Yes, but was Cromwell the hero of Marstor Moor^ or had Marston Moor been won mainly by the Inde- pendents? These were the questions which Crawford, evei since the battle, had been tryiag to keep open. He had been trying, as we have seen, to keep them open in London, though with but small success ; and in the Army his tongue had, doubtless, been louder and more troublesome. At last Cromwell made up his mind. Either Crawford must cease to be Major-general of Manchester's army, or he must cease to be Lieutenant-general. It was on this business that, in Septem- ber 1644, he came up to London. . There had been letters on the subject before from both parties in the Army, the Indepen- dents pressing for Crawford's dismissal, and the Presbyterians for retaining him. But now Manchester, Cromwell, and Craw- ford had, aU three, come up personally to argue the matter out. Cromwell, it appears, was in one of those moods of ungovernable obstinacy which always came upon him at the right time. " Our labour to reconcile them," writes BaiHie, " was vain: Cromwell was peremptor; notwithstanding the " kingdom's evident hazard, and the evident displeasure of our " [the Scottish] nation, yet, if Crawford were not cashiered, " his [Cromwell's] colonels would lay down their commis- " sions." There was a plot in all this, Baillie thought. The real purpose of the Independents was to bring Manchester out of the clutches of Presbyterianism, or, if that could not be done, to get him to resign, so that Cromwell might succeed to the chief command ; in which case the Independents would be able to " counterbalance " the Presbyterians, and " overawe the Assembly and Parliament both to their ends." It was a very proper plot, too, as every day was proving. What was the last news that had reached London ? It was that Essex, the General-in-chief, had been totally beaten by the King in Cornwall (Sept. 1) — Essex himself obliged to escape 168 LIFE OS MILTON AUD HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. by ship, leaving his army to its fate ; the horse, under Sir WilUam Balfour, to fight their way out by desperate exer- tion; and the foot, under Skippon, to think of doing the same, but at last to surrender miserably. Waller's army, also, was by this time nowhere. It had perished by gradual deser- tion. Evidently, it had become a question of some moment for the Parliamentarians who had won Mairston Moor, and who shoidd be chief in -Manchester's army.^ The special business which had brought OromweU to London was, in fact, but a metaphor of the general business then occu- pying the English nation. - "Whether a pragmatical Presbyterian Scot should regulate the discipline of an English Parhamen- tarian army, and whether the Westminster Assembly should establish a Presbyterian Inquisitorship over the whole mind of England, were but forms of the same question. Little wonder, then, that Crorawell, finding himself in London on the smaller form of the business, resolved to move also in the larger. And he did. " This day," writes BaiUie on Friday the 13th of September 1644, " Cromwell has obtained an Order " of the House of Commons to refer to the Committee of both " Kingdoms the accommodation or toleration of the Indepen- " dents — a high and unexpected Order ! " Three days after- wards BaiQie is still full of the subject. " While Cromwell is " here," he says, "the House of Common!?, without the least " advertisement to any of lis [Scottish Commissioners], or of " the Assembly, passes an Order that the Grand Committee of " both Houses, Assembly, and us, shall consider of the means " to unite us and the Independents, or, if that be foiind impos- " sible, to «ee 'how they may be tolerate. This has much " affected us." On turning to the Commons Journals we find the actual words of the Order : "Ordered, That the Committee " of Lords and Commons appointed to treat with the Commis- " sioners of Scotland and the Committee of the Assembly do " take into consideration the differences in opinion of the " members of the Assembly in point -of Church-government, " and do endeavour a union if it be possible ; and, in case 1 Bafflie's Letters, II. 229, 23Q ; Rush- 1853), I. 302, 308 : Oarlyle's Cromwell, worlh, V. 699 et seq. ; Whitlocke (ed. (ed. 1867), I. 158. 1644-45.1 ACCOMMODATION ORDER OF PARLIAMENT. 169 " that cannot be done, do endeavour the finding oat some " ways how far tender consciences, who cannot in all things " submit to the common Eule which shall be established, may " be borne with, according to the Word, and as may stand " with the public peace, that so the proceedings of the As- " sembly may not be so much retarded." Mr. Solicitor St, John appears as the reporter of the Order. Cromwell, in faet^ had quietly formed a little phalanx of the right men to carry the thing through. The younger Vane was one of them. Even Stephen Marshall, the Presbyterian and Smectymnuan, had to some extent aided in the contrivance, without con^ suiting any of his brethren 6f the Assembly: The Order came upon the Presbyterians like a thunder-clap, For, as they rightly interpreted, it was nothing less than a design to carry in Parliament a Toleration-clause to be inserted in the BUI for establishing Presbytery before that Bill was ready to be drafted. Of this BaiUie and his ' friends com- plained bitterly. Was it not unfair to Pr'esbyterianism thus to anticipate so ostentatiously that there would be many whom it would not satisfy? Was not this framing of a Toleration-clause, to be inserted into a Bill before the Bill itself was in being, like a solicitation to the English people to prefer the clause to the body of the BiU, and so to continue dubious about Presbytery, instead of cultivating faith in its merits? So argued Baillie and the Presbyterians. But. indeed, theysaw more behind the Accommodation Order. The Toleration it sought to provide might seem, from the wording, only a moderate Toleration in the interest of the Independents of the Assembly and their immediate adherents. From what BaiUie says, one infers that Mr. Solicitor St. John and Mr. Marshall had been drawing up %he Order in this moderate form, and that CromweU and Vane would fain have had more. " The great shot of CromweU and Vane," says BaiUie, " is to have a Uberty for all religions, without any exceptions." And of Vane he distinctly says that he was " offended with the SoHcitor" for putting only differences about Church- government into the Toleration Ordinance, and not also diiferences " about free grace, including liberty to the Anti- 170 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. nomians and to all Sects." At aU events, he had recently, in the presence of the Scottish Commissioners themselves, been reasoning " prolixly, earnestly, and passionately " for universal Toleration. Probahly Cromwell and Vane were content in the meantime with what the long-headed Solicitor saw he could pass. It could be stretched when necessary. The form was _St. John's, but the deed was Cromwell's.^ After the check of this Accommodation Order of Sept. 13, 1644, the Presbyterians of the Assembly seem to have pro- ceeded somewhat more temperately. Not 1;hat they gave up the fight. Their preachers before Parliament still followed in the strain of HiH and Palmer. In a Fast-day Sermon before the two Houses on Sept. 12, the day before the Order, the Smectymnuan, Matthew Wewcomen, had again had a slap at Toleration; on Sept. 25 Lazaras Seaman was again at it, and actually named in his sermon four dangerous books for Liberty of Conscience, including Goodwin's and Williams's — the burning of which last did not seem enough to the Eabbi, for " the shell is sometimes thrown into the fire when the kernel is eaten ; " the respected Calamy, also a Smectymnuan, is at it again, Oct. 22, telling the Parliament that, if they do not put down Anabaptism, Antinomianism, and Tolerationism of all religions, then they are the Anabaptists, the Antinomians, the Tolerationists ; Spurstow, a third of the Smectymnuans, is not done with it on Nov. 5.^ In the Assembly itself also the question of heresy, blasphemy, and their suppression, occasionally turned up. Oct. 17, for example, there was offi- cially before the Assembly the case of a John Hart, who bad been maldng a reputation for himself in Surrey by this hideous joke: — "Who made you? My Lord of Essex. — Wbo " redeemed you ? Sir W. Waller. — ^Who sanctified and pre- " served you ? My Lord of Warwick." This led to a conver- sation in the Assembly on the increase of blasphemy, and to a new remonstrance to Parliament on the subject.^ Again, on 1 The authoritieB for the interesting Sept. 13, 1644. facts related in this paragraph— which 2 jjy ^^tw from a volume of the Par- seem to have shpped out of Tiew of most liamentary Sermons of 1644, kindly lent modem writers on the history of the me by Mr. David Laing period— are BaUUe, II. 226, 229, 231, 3 Lightfoofs Notes at date named, and 236, 237 ; and Commons Journals, 1644-45.] PROGRESS MADE BY THE ASSEMBLY. 171 the 22nd of November, there was a report to the Assembly of some fresh " damnable blasphemies," more of the doctrinal kind, and savouring of Mortalism and Clement Wrighter.i Nor had the Assembly agreed to let even ordinary Ahabap- tism and Antinomianism alone; for they had again memo- rialized Parliament on the subject, and had had a rather satisfactory response from the Commons, Nov. 15, in the form of a promise to consider the whole matter, and an order meanwhile that no person should be permitted to preach unless he were an ordained minister in the English or some other Eeformed Church, or a probationer intending the miniS' try and duly licensed by those authorized by Parliament to give such licence.^ On the whole, however, from September 1644 onwards through October and November, to the end of the year, there was rather an abatement of the inquisitorial zeal of the Assembly. PROGRESS OF THE ASSEMBLY'S MAIN WORK: PRESBYTERIAN SETTLEMENT VOTED BY PARLIAMENT. In those months, indeed, the Assembly was unusually active over its main work. For, though we have seen chiefly the spray of its miscellaneous interferences with afifairs, it must be remembered that it had been called together for a vast mass of substantial work, and that it had been steadily prosecuting that work, in Committees, Sub-committees, and the daily meetings of the whole body. The work expected by Parliament from the Assembly consisted of (1) the compila- tion of a Confession of Faith, or Articles of Religion, which should supersede the Thirty-nine Articles, and be the Creed of the new National Church of England about to be estab- lished ; (2) the composition of a Catechism or Catechisms, which should be a manual or manuals for the instruction of the people, and especially the young, in the theology of the Articles ; (3) the devising of a Frame of Discipline or Church- government, to come in lieu of Episcopacy, and form the con- stitution of the new National Church ; and (4) the prepara- 1 Lightfoot's Notes at date named. » Commons Jouraals, Not. 16, 1644. 172 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. tiorn of a Directory of Worship, which should supplant the Liturgy, &C., and settle the methods and forms to be adopted in worship, and on such occasions as baptisms, marriages, and funerals. Here was a mass of work which, at the ordi- nary rate of business in ecclesiastical councUs, might well keep the Assembly together for two or three years. "What amount of progress had they made at the date at which we have now arrived? Naturally, on first meeting, they had begun with the busi- ness of the new Articles, or Confession of Faith. The particular form in which, by the order of Parliament, they had addressed themselves to this business, was that of. a careful revision of ihe Thirty-nine Articles. With tolerable unanimity (anti, pp. 5, 6 and 18, 19), they had gone on in this labour for three months, or till Oct. 12, 1643 ; by which time they had Calvin- ized fifteen of the Articles.^ Then, however, they had been interrupted in this labour. The Scottish League and Cove- nant having come into action, and the Scottish Commissioners having become an influence at the back of the English Par- liament, the Assembly had been ordered to proceed to what seemed the more immediately pressing businesses of tiie new Model of Chiirch-government and the new Directory of Wor- ship. The business of a ^Confession of Faith thus lying over till it could be resumed at leisure, the Assembly had, for more than a year, been occupied with the Church-government question and the Directory. What tough and tedious work they had had with the Church-government question we have seen. Still, even in this question they had made progress. Beating the Congregationahsts by vote on proposition after proposition, the Presbyterian majority had, by the end of October 1644, carried all the essentials of Presbytery through the Assembly, and referred them confidently to Parliament.^ Add to this that a new Directory of Worship had been drawn up. The Congregationalist Brethren had been far more acqui- 1 Whoever wants to oompaa-e the columns in History of tlie Westminster Westminster Assembly's Calvinized AssemUy of Divines (1841), published Version of the first fifteen Articles at Philadelphia, U.S., by the "Pres- with the original Articles will find the byterian Board of Publication." two sets printed conveniently in parallel ^ jjajiug H. 2.32. 1644-45.] PRESBYTEEIAN SETTLEMENT yOTED. 173- escent in this business; and, though many points in. it hadi occasioned minute discussion, the Assembly were able, on the. 21st of ISTovember, to transmit to Parliament, unaijimously, a Directory, in which everything in the shape of Liturgy ob. Prelatic ceremonial was disallowed, and certain plain forms, like those of the Scottish Presbyterian worship, prescribed instead.^ By the end of 1644, therefore, the Westmiaster Assembly h9.d substaatially acq;uitted itself of two oijt of four of the pieces of work expected from it by Parliament — the New Directory of Worship and,' the Mw Frame of (Jhwch.- government ; and it only remained for Parliament to sanction or reject what the Assembly had concluded under these two heads. During November and December 1644, and January. 1644-5, accordingly,, there was- n3.uch discij^sion iiji botji Houses of all the points of Eeligion and Church-government which the new Directory and the new Prame were to settle. The debates of the Houses during these months, indeed, were, very mu,ch those pf the Assembly over again; — tho Lords and. Commons, thoijgh laymen, examining each proppsition qind each clause for themselves, and insisting on proofs from Scrip- ture and the like. January 1644-5 wa^ the gi;eat month. Oa the 4th of that month an Ordinance from the Commons passed, the Lords, aibolishiaag the use of the Prayer-book;, adopting and confirming the new Westminster Directory, and ordering it to be printed. On the 23i;d of the same month, the follow^, ing Eesolutions were adopted by the Commons : — " Eesohed : That there shall be fixed Congregations — that is, a. certain company of Christians to meet in one Assembly ordinarily, for pubHc worship : when believers multiply to such a number that they cannot conveniently meet in one place, they shall be divided, into distinct and fixed Congregations, for the better administration of such ordinances as belong to them, and the dischaige of mutual duties. " Resolved : That the ordinary way of dividing Christians into, distinct Congregations, and most expedient for edification, is by the, respective bounds of their dwellings.' " Resolved : That the minister and other Church-officers in each particular Congregation sha,!! join in the government of the Church in such manner as shall be established by Parliament. i BailUe, II. 240 and 242-3. 174 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. " Resolved : That these officers shall meet together at convenient and set times for the well-ordering of the affairs of that Congrega- tion, each according to his office. " Mesolved : That the ordinances in a particular Congregation are Prayer, Thanksgiving, and Singing of Psalms ; the "Word read, though there follow no immediate explication of what is read ; the "Word expounded and applied; Catechising; the Sacraments ad- ministered ; Collection made for the Poor ; Dismissing of the people with a Blessing. " Resolved : That many particular Congregations shall he under one Presbyterial government. "Resolved: That the Church be governed by Congregational, Classical, and Synodical Assemblies, in such manner as shall be established by Parliament. " Resolved : That Synodical Assemblies shall consist both of Provincial and National Assemblies." Dry and simple as these Kesoliitions look, they were the outcome of fifteen months of deliberation, and they were of immense significance. They declared it to he the will of Parliament that England thenceforth should he a Presbyterian country, like Scotland. Just as Scotland was a little country, with her 1,000 parishes or so, the inhabitants of each of which were understood to form a particular congregation, meeting statedly for worship, and taught and spiritually disciplined by one Minister and certain other church-officers called Lay Elders, so England was to "be a large country of some 10,000 or 12,000 parishes and parochial congregations, each after the same fashion. As in Scotland the parishes or congregations, though mainly managing each its own affairs, were not inde- pendent, but were bound together in groups by the device of Presbyteries, or periodical courts consisting of the ministers and ruling elders of a certain number of contiguous parishes meeting to hear appeals from congregations, and otherwise exercise government, so the ten times more numerous parishes of England were similarly to be grouped into Presbyteries or Classes (Classes was the more favourite English term), each Classis containing some ten or twelve congregations. Thus in London alone, where there were about 120 parishes, there ought to be about twelve Classes or Presbyteries. Finally, the Presbyteries were to be interconnected, and their proceed- ings supervised, as in Scotland, by periodical Synods of the 1644-45.] PKESBYTEEIAN SETTLEMENT VOTED. 175 ministers and ruling elders of many Presbyteries — say of all the Presbyteries of one large shire, or of several small shires taken as a convenient ecclesiastical district. In Scotland the practice was for all the ministers and ruling elders within the bounds of a Provincial Synod to attend the Synod personally; but in England, on account of her size, the plan of Synods of elected representatives might be advisable — which, however, would not affect the principle. In any case, the annual National Assembly of the whole Church, which, under the new Presbyterian system, would be to England the same Ecclesi- astical Parliament that the General Assembly in Edinburgh was to Scotland, must necessarily, like that Assembly, be constituted representatively. Nothing less than all this was implied in the eight Eesolutions of the Commons on Friday, Jan. 23, 1644-5. By an order of Monday the 27th, however, Mr. Ecus, who had been commissioned to report the Eesolu- tions to the Lords, was instructed to report only four of them — the 3rd, the 6th, the 7th, and the 8th. The answer of the Lords on the following day was " That this House agrees with " the House of Commons in all the Votes now brought up con- " cerning Church-government." In refraining from sending Tip all the eight Votes, the Commons appear to have thought it best not yet positively to determine against the Congrega- tionalists on one or two points, including that of strict parochialism. But in the four Votes sent up to the Lords and agreed to by them, all the essentials of Presbytery were involved ; so that from the 28th of January 1644-5 it stood registered in the Acts of Parliament that England should be Presbyterianized.^ At this stage of the proceedings we may leave the West- minster Assembly for a while. On the 26th of December, Johnstone of Warriston and Mr. Barclay had left it, in order to be present at the Scottish Convention of Estates, which was to meet at Edinburgh on the 7th of January ; ^ and on the 6th of January BaiHie and Gillespie left it, on a weary horse-journey, in order to be present at the General Assembly 1 Commoijs and Lords Journals of dates given. " Baillie, II. 251. 176 LIFE OiF MILTON AND, HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. of the Scottish Kirk, which was to meet at the same place on the 22ii.d.'i Henderson and Eutherford remained in London. What tidiings were carried hy the Scottish Commissioners to Edinburgh of the great things which the Lord had up to that time done for the cause of Presbytery and true Eeligion in England may be, read to this day in the records of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish General Assembly of 1645. Baillie's exulting speeah in the Assembly is really worth ieading.2 SufBce it -to say here that there was great rejoicing in Edinburgh and in all Scotland ; that the Geneml Assembly unanimously ratified the Westminster Directory of Worship ^■Feb. 3) and the Westminster Frame of Presbyterial govern- ment (Feb. 10) ; and that the S.cottish Parliament (Feb. 6) approved and established, for, Scotland, the Directory already ^tablished for England. Let us add ths^t Baillie had a plea- sfint holiday, revisited his wife and family in Glasgow, and would faia have been allowed to 'remain in his own country thenceforth. But this coiild not be. Both he and Gillespie had to obey orders, and prepare, with sighs, for a return to London in Marchf STATE OF THE WAE : SELF-DENXINq OKpiNANCE AND NEW MODEL. Dui-ing the six months the transactions of which, as far as the Westminster Assembly was concerned, w.e have thus presented in sum.mary (Sept. 1644— March 1645), the hurry ©f more general events in England had been veiy marked. Of what use was the pTeparation of a Presbyterian Form of Church-government, and a Presbyterian Directory of Worship, for England, so long as it remained uncertain whether Eng- land might not be once again the King's, and the Parlia- ment under his feet? And, T^eally, there was this danger. Marston Moor had been a great blow to the King : it had spoilt his cause in the whole of the North. But Essex's 1 .BaUlie, II. 250. minster Assembly to the Scottish Gene- OKR OK? S'™"/" Bailhes Letters, II. ral Assembly, fcoth of date Jan. 6, 1646, 265-257. .But see also Letter of Soot- in Acts erf d^neral Assembly oi the tish Commissioners and Letter of West- Kirk. 1644-45.] THE WAR FLAGGING. 177 defeat in Cornwall (Sept. 1) had come as a terrible set-off. In the confidence of that victory, the King was on the move out of the West back to Oxford (Sept. 30), sending procla- mations before him, and threatening a march upon London itself. The taking of Newcastle by the Scots under Leven (Oct. 19) was a return of good fortune for the Parliament at the right moment ; at least it provided the Londoners again with their long-missed coals. But it had come now to be a contest between the King's main force and the combined forces of Parliament in the South-English midlands. In the second Battle of Newbury (Sunday, Oct. 27) the issue was tried — ^the Earl of Manchester's army, with Cromwell second in it, having been joined to the recruited armies of Essex and Waller in order to resist the King. Manchester and Waller were the real Parliamentary commanders, Essex being ill. It was a severe battle. The King had, on the whole, the worst ; but he got off, as Cromwell and others thought, less thoroughly beaten than he ought to have been.^ From the date of this second Battle of Newbury, accordingly, Cromwell became the spokesman of a dissatisfaction with the military and political conduct of the cause of Parliament as deep and as wide-spread throughout England as that dissatisfaction with the conduct of the religious question of which he liad made himself the spokesman six weeks before. What Cromwell had thought when he moved the Accommo- dation Order of Sept. 13 had been virtually this : " Here are you discoursing about strict Presbytery and what differences from it may be tolerated, when the real question is whether we shall have a free England for Presbytery or anything else to exist in, and how we can carry with us all honest men who win fight to make such a free England." And now, when, after the second Battle of Newbury, he again reappeared in Parliament, it was in this prolongation, or profounder state, of the same mood : — " The time has come when I must speak out. We, of this nation, must turn over a new leaf. We have been lighting the King now for more than two years, and we are very much as we were when we began. And 1 Roshworth, V. 721—730; Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857), I. 15P. VOL. III. N 178 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. why? Because the men who command our armies against the King do not want really to beat him ; because they want only to seem to be beating him; because the picture they love to look on, as their heaven on earth to come, is a picture of their gracious sovereign, after he has been beaten no more than could be helped, surrounded by themselves as his reconciled and pardoned ministers and chatting pleasantly with them over the deeds of the campaigns. I say nothing personally of my Lord of Essex, or of Sir William Waller : they are most honourable men. But I speak generally as I feel. If the King is to be beaten, it can only be by generals who want to beat him, who wiU beat him to bits, who will use all means to beat him, who will gladly see in their armies the men who have the right spirit in them for beating him. Are these the Presbyterians only ? I trow not. I know my men ; and I tell you that many of those that you call Independents, that you call Anabaptists, Sectaries, and what not, are among the stoutest and godliest in England, and will go as far as any. Some weeks ago I complained to you of Major-general Crawford, because he would trouble these men, and would have no soldiers of Parliament in my Lord Manchester's army that did not agree with his own notions of Eehgion and Church-government. Now I complain of my Lord Manchester himself. In this last Battle of Newbury, I tell you, the King was beaten less than he might have been. He was allowed to get off. I advised pursuing him, and my Lord Manchester would not. It was that over again which has been from the first. And now I speak out what has long been in my mind, and what brave men in thousands are thinking. Before the Lord, we must turn over a new leaf in this War. We must have an Army of the right sort of men, and men of the right sort to command that Army." This is a pvirely imaginary speech of Cromwell's ; but it is an accurate expression of several months of English history. The shrewdest of men at all times, and also the most sincere, he was yet always the most tempestuous when the fit time came, and it was the characteristic of his life that he carried every- thing before him at such times by his bursts and tempests. 1644-45.] CEOMWELL TEMPESTUOUS. 179 There can be no doubt that, after the second Battle of New- bury, Cromwell was in one of his paroxysms. Of his vehe- mence against Manchester at that time, and of Manchester's recriminations on him, one may read at large in Kushworth and elsewhere.^ The brief account of Baillie, who had not yet left London, and was in the centre of the whole affair, will be sufficient here. " Lieutenant-general Cromwell," writes Baillie, Dec. 1, "has publicly, in the House of Commons, " accused my Lord of Manchester of the neglect of fighting " at Newbury. That neglect indeed was great-; for, as we " now are made sure, the King's army was in that posture " that they took themselves for lost aU-utterly. Yet the fault " is most injustly charged on Manchester : it was common to " all the general officers then present, and to Cromwell him- " self as much as to any other. Always my Lord Manchester " has cleared himself abundantly in the House of Lords, and " there has recriminate Cromwell as one who has avowed his " desire to abolish the nobility of England ; who has spoken " contumeliously of the Scots' intention in coming to Eng- " land to establish their Church-government, in which Crom- " well said he would draw his sword against them ; also " against the Assembly of Divines ; and has threatened to " make a party of Sectaries, to extort by force, both from " King and Parliament, what conditions they thought meet. " This fire was long under the emmers ; now it's broken " out, we trust, in a good time. It's like, for the interest " of our nation, we must crave reason of that darling "of the Sectaries [i.e. bring Cromwell to a reckoning], " and, in obtaining his removal from the army — which '' himself by his over-rashness has procured — to break the " power of that potent faction. This is our present diffi- ?' cile enterprise : we had need of your prayers."' In this account Baillie mixes up the proceedings in the Commons on the 25th of November when Cromwell exhibited his charge against Manchester, and in the Lords a few days after when Manchester gave in his defence and countercharge, with 1 Rushworth, V. 732—736 ; Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857), I. 159, 160. 2 Baillie, II. 243—245. N 2 180 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. current gossip, apparently true enough, of Cromwell and Ms awful sayings in private. Evidently Eaillie thought Crom- well had ruined himself. Even the hero of Marston Moor could not beard aU respectahle England in this way, and it should not be the fault of the Scottish Commissioners if he did not iind himself shelved ! Little did BaiHie know with what great things, beyond all Scottish power of resistance or machination, Cromwell's fury was pregnant. While BaHlie was writing the passage above quoted, the Scottish Commissioners, along with the Lord-general Essex, and some of Essex's chief adherents, including Denzil Holies and Sir PhiUp Stapleton, were consulting how they might trip Cromwell up. At a conference late one night at Essex-house, to which Whitlocke and Maynard were invited, the Scottish Chancellor Loudoun moved the business warily in a speech which Whitlocke mischievously tries to report in its native Scotch — " You ken vary weele that Lieutenant-general Crom- well is no friend of ours," &c. ; " Tou ken vary weele the accord 'twixt the twa kingdoms," &c. Loudoun wanted to know, especially from the two lawyers, whether the Scottish plan of procedure in such cases would have any chance in Eng- land, in other words whether Cromwell could be prosecuted as an ince-ndiary; for " you may ken that by our law in Scotland we clepe him an incendiary whay kindleth coals of contention and raiseth differences in the State to the public damage." Whitlocke and Maynard satisfied his lordship that the thing was possible in law, but suggested the extreme difficulty there would be in proof, represented Cromwell's great influence in the Parliament and the country, and in fact discouraged the notion altogether. Holies, Stapleton, and others were still eager for proceeding, but the Scots were impressed and thought delay would be prudent. And so, Whitlocke tells us, the Presbyterian intriguers parted at two in the morning, and he had reason to believe that Cromwell knew all that had passed before many hours were over, and that this pre- cipitated what followed.-^ On Wednesday the 9th of December, at aU events, the 1 Whitlooke's Memorials (edit. Oxford, 1853), L 343 ei seq. 1644-45.] SELF-DENYING OEDINANCE AND NEW MODEL. 181 Commons having met in grand committee on the condition of the kingdom through the continuance of the war, there was for a time a dead silence, as if something extraordinary was ex- pected, and then Cromwell rose and made a short speech. It was very solemn, and even calm, but so hazy and general that the practical drift of it could not possibly have been guessed but for the sequel. Almost the last words of the speech were, "I hope we have such true English hearts, and zealous " affections towards the general weal of our mother-country, " as no members of either House will scruple to deny them- " selves, and their own private interests, for the public good." The words, vague enough in themselves, are memorable as having christened by anticipation the measure for which CromweU, as he uttered them, was boring the way. For, after one or two more had spoken in the same general strain, Mr. Zouch Tate, member for Northampton, did the duty assigned him, and opened the bag which contained the cat. He made a distinct motion, which, when it had been seconded by young Vane, and debated by others (Cromwell again say- ing a few words, and luminous enough this time), issued in this resolution, " That no member of either House of Parlia- " ment shall during the war enjoy or execute any office or "command, military or civil; and that an ordinance be " brought in to that effect." This was on the 9th of December ; and on the 19th of that month the ordinance itself, having gone through all its stages, passed the Commons. All London was astounded. " The House of Commons," writes BaiUie, Dec. 26, " in one hour has ended all the quarrels which was " betwixt Manchester and Cromwell, all the obloquies against " the General, the grumblings against the proceedings of many " members of their House. They have taken all office from " aU members of both Houses. This, done on a sudden, in " one session, with great unanimity, is still more and more ad- ^' mired by some, as a most wise, necessary, and heroic action; "by others as the most rash, hazardous, and unjust action "that ever Parliament did. Much may be said on both '' hands, but as yet it seems a dream, and the bottom of it is •" not understood." To the House of Lords the Self-denying 182 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. Ordinance was by no means palatable. They demurred, con- ferred with the Commons about it, and at last (Jan. 15) rejected it. Their chief ground of rejection being that they did not know what was to be the shape of the Army to be officered on the new principle, the Commons immediately produced their scheme in that matter. The existing armies were to be weeded, consolidated, and recruited into one really effective army of 21,000 men (of which 6,000 should be horse in ten regiments, 1,000 should be dragoons in ten single companies, and 14,000 should be foot in regiments of not less than 1,200 each), the whole to cost 44,955Z. per month, to be raised by assessment throughout the kingdom. This army, it was farther resolved by the Commons (Jan. 21), should be commanded in chief by the trusty and popular Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had done so well in the North, and, under him, by the trusty and popular Major-general Skippon, whose character for buU-headed bravery even the disaster in Cornwall had only more fully brought out." On the 28th of January the New Model complete passed the Commons. The Lords hesitated about some parts of it, and were especially anxious for a provision in it incapacitating all from being officers or soldiers in the new army who should not have taken the Covenant : there were conferences on this point, and a kind of compromise on it by the Commons ; and on the loth of February the Ordinance for New Modelling of the Army was finally passed. The Self-denying Ordinance was then re-introduced in a changed form, and it passed the Lords, April 3, 1645. It ordained that all members of either House who had since November 20, 1640, been appointed to any offices, military or civil, should, at the end of forty days from the passing of the Ordinance, vacate these offices, but that ' I find, from the Commons Journals, was a subsequent division, Feb. 7, on that there was a division on the ques- the question whether Fairfax's choice tion whether Fairfax should be ap- of officers under him should be subject pointed commander-in-chief of the to Parliamentary revision. Cromwell New Model— the state of the vote being was one of the Tellers for the Noes- yeas 101 against Noes 69, or a majority i.e. he wanted Fairfax to have full of 32/ot- the appointment. The Tellers powers. The other side, however, beat for the majority were the younger Vane this time by a majority of 82 against 63. and Cromwell ; for the minority, Denzil After all it was arranged satisfactorily Holies and Sir Philip Stapleton. There between Fairfax and Parhament. leU-iS.] VENGEANCES : DEATH OF LAUD. 183 all other officers in commission on the 20th of March, 1644-5, should continue in the posts they then held. Thus the year 1645 (beginning, in English reckoning, March 25) opened with new prospects. Essex, Manchester, Waller, and all the officers under them, retired into ordinary life, "with thanks and honours — Essex, indeed, with a great pension; and the fighting for Parliament was thenceforward to be done mainly by a re-modelled Army, commanded by Fairfax, Skippon, and officers under them, whose faces were unknown in Parliament, and whose business was to be to fight only and teach the art of fighting. It was high time ! For another long bout of negotiations with the King, begun as early as Nov. 20, 1644, and issuing in a formal Treaty of great ceremony, called " The Treaty of Uxbridge," had ended, as usual, in no result. Feb. 22, it had been broken off after such a waste of speeches and arguments on paper that the account of the Treaty occupies ten pages in Clarendon and fifty-six folio pages in Eushworth. It was clear that the year 1645 was to be a year of continued war.^ PAELIAMBNTAEY VENGEANCES : DEATH OP LAUD. Ere we pass out of the rich general history of this year 1644, the year of Marston Moor, we must take note of a few vengeances and deaths with which it was wound up. The long-deferred trial of poor Laud, begun March 12, 1643-4, after he had been more than three years a prisoner in the Tower, and they might have left him there in quiet, had straggled on through the whole of 1644. The interest in it had run, like a red thread, through the miscellany of other events. The temper of the people had been made fiercer by the length of the war, and there was a desire for the old man's blood. The Presbyterian ministers of the Assembly, I find, fostered this desire. In that very sermon of Herbert Palmer's 1 For this story of the Self-denying Uxbridge Treaty is narrated in Qlaren- Ordinance and the New Modelling of don's Hist, (one-volume ed. 1843), pp. the Army authorities are — Rushworth, 520 —530, and in Rushworth, V. 787 — VI. 1—16 ; Baillie, II. 247 ; Carlyle's 842. Cromwell (ed. 1857), L 160—163. The 184 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. before Parliament (Aug. 13) in which he had called for the extirpation of heresy and schism, and denounced Milton, there was an express passage on the duty of " doing justice upon " Delinquents impartially and without respect of persons."i Calamy in his sermon, Oct. 22, followed, and told the Parlia- ment, " All the guilty blood that God requires you in justice " to shed, and you spare, God will require the blood at your " hands." ^ Mr. Francis Woodcock, preaching Oct. 30, was even more decided. His sermon, which was on Eev. xvi, 15, is a very untastefuUy-worded discourse on the propriety of always being on the watch so as not to be taken by surprise without one's garments ; and, among the rather ludicrous images which his literal treatment of the subject suggests, we come upon a passage describing one of four pieces of raiment which the State ought never to be caught without. He calls it the " Eobe of Justice," and adds, " Would God " this robe were ofter worn, and dyed of a deeper colour in " the blood of Delinquents. It is that which God and man " calls for. God repeats it. Justice, Justice ; we, echoing God, " cry Justice, Justice ; and let me say, perhaps we should not " see other garments so much rolled in blood, did we not see "these so little."* BaDlie, I am glad to think, was more tender-hearted. There was, indeed, one Delinquent for whom BaUlie would have had no mercy — Dr. Maxwell, the Scottish ex-Bishop of Boss, who had published at Oxford, in the King's interest, " a desperately malicious invective " against Scottish Presbytery and its leaders. " However I could hardly con- " sent to the hanging of Canterbury himself, or of any Jesuit," Baillie had written, July 16, 1644, after his first indignant sight of this book, "yet I coiild give my sentence freely against that unhappy liar's [Maxwell's] life." But, indeed, the Scottish Commissioners and the Scottish nation were conjoined as parties with the English Presbyterians and the English Parliamentarians generally (Prynne ruthlessly busy in getting up the evidence) in the long prosecution of Laud. It was all over on the 10th of January, 1644-5. On that ' Palmers Sermon, p. 48. J Calamy's Sermon » Woodcock's Sermon, pp. 30, 31. 1, p. 27 164445.] EXECUTIONS. 185 day Laud, aged 72, laid his liead upon the block on a scaffold in Tower Hill. Hanging had been commuted, with some difficulty, to beheading. He died brave, raspy, and High- Church to the last.^ Minor executions about the same time were those of Hugh Macmahon and Lord Maguire for their concern in the Irish rebellion and massacre, Sir Alexan- der Carew for treachery at Plymouth, and the Hothams, father and son, for treachery at Hull. One Eoger L'Estrange, a younger son of a Norfolk family, had been condemned to be hanged in Smithfield for an underhand attempt to win the town of Lynn for the King; but he was reprieved, lay in Newgate for some years, and lived for sixty years longer, to be known, even in Queen Anne's time, as Sir Eoger L'Estrange, the journalist. 1 Eushworth's main account of the Troubles and Tiyal of William Laud," trial and last days of Laud is in Vol. edited by Wharton, in two vols, folio, V. pp. 763—786. The " History of the appeared in 1695—1700. CHAPTEE II. MIJLTON AMONG THE SECT ABIES, AND IN A " WORLD OF DISESTEEM " : STORT OF MRS. ATTAWAT SAMUEL HARTLIB, JOHN DURIB, AND JOHN AMOS COMENIUS: SCHEMES OF A REFORMED EDUCATION, AND PROJECT OF A LONDON UNIVERSITY— MILTON's TRACT Olf EDVCATION, AND METHOD WITH HIS PUPILS — HIS SECOND DIVORCE TRACT, OB COMPILATION FROM BUOEB MB. HERBERT PALMEE'S attack ON MILTON FEOM THE PULPIT MILTON AND THE stationers' COMPANY : THEIR ACCUSATION OF HIM IN A PETITION TO THE COMMONS HIS J REOPAGITICA, OB SPEECH FOB THE LIBERTY OF UNLICENSED PRINTING ANGER OF THE STATIONERS, AND THEIR COMPLAINT AGAINST MILTON TO THE LORDS : CONSEQUENCE OF THE COMPLAINT THE DIVORCE QUES- TION CONTINUED : PUBLICATION OF MR. HERBERT PALMBB's SERMON, AND FABTHEB ATTACKS ON MILTON BY PBYNNE, DB. FBATLEY, AND AN ANONYMOUS PAMPHLETEER TETRACHORBON AND COLASTERION: THEIR REPLIES TO THE ASSAILANTS. EvEK since August 1643, when Milton had published his extraordinary Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, hut more es- pecially since Feb. 1G43-4, when he had published the second and efilarged edition of it, with his name in full, and the dedication to Parliament and the Westminster Assembly, his reputation with orthodox English society had been definite enough. He was one of those dreadful Sectaries! Nay he was a Sectary more odious than most ; for his was a moral heresy. What was Independency, what was Ana- baptism, what was vague Antinomianism, compared with this heresy of the household, this loosening of the holy relation on which all civil society depended ? How detestable the doctrine that, when two married people found they had made a mistake in coming together, or at least when the husband could declare before God and human witnesses his irrecon- 1644-45.] MILTON AMONG THT3 SECT ABIES. 187 cilable dissatisfaction with his wife, then it was right that the two should be separated, with liberty to each to find a new mate ! True, it was an able man who had divulged this heresy, one who had brought applauses from Cambridge, who was said to have written beautiful English poems, who had served the cause of Parliament by some splendid pamphlets for Chiirch-reformation and against Episcopacy, and who had in these pamphlets encountered even the great Bishop Hall. All this only made the doctrine more dangerous, the aberration more lamentable. This Mr. Milton must be avoided, and denounced as a Sectary of the worst kind ! Some said it was all owing to the conduct of his wife, a rank Eoyalist, who had deserted him and gone back to her friends ! If that were the case, he was to be pitied; but perhaps there were two sides to that story too ! There must have been much gossip of this kiad, about Milton and his Divorce Treatise, in the booksellers' shops near St. Paul's, and even round the Pariiament in Westmin- ster, in the early months of 1644. The gossip may have affected Milton's relations with some of his former friends and acquaintances. If Bishop Hall, when he first saw the treatise, and perceived its literary ability, " blushed for his age " that so " scandalous " a thing should have appeared, and if even Howell the letter-writer, in his prison, thought it the impudent production of "a, poor shallow-brained puppy,'' what could Milton's orthodox and reverend Smectymnuan friends — Marshall, Calamy, Young, Wewcomen, and Spurstow — think or say about it ? Shocked they must have been ; and, knowing Milton's temper, and with what demeanour he would front any remonstrances of theirs, they probably left him alone, and became scarcer in their visits to Aldersgate Street. It would not do to keep up the Smectymnuan connexion too visibly after what had happened. Or, if Young could not break off so easily, but would still call to see his old pupil, and to talk with old Mr. Milton about the Bread Street days, how the good man must have yearned to speak sometimes when the old gentleman was out of the way, and he and Milton were alone. " my dear Mr. Milton, how much we 188 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. are all concerned about that pamphlet ! I am not going to argue it with you; I know you too well, and how little influence my reasonings could have with you now in any such matter ; and it is my comfort at least to be able to teU, some of my Assembly friends that, if they knew you as well as I do, they would be sure that nothing you do but is done in a great spirit and with a high intention. But, dear me ! it is a terrible opinion you have broached ! " To something like this Milton may have listened, more or less patiently ; or he may have imagined it in Young's mind, if it was not uttered. The mutual regard between Young and his old pupil did not suffer so much from the trial but that we find Milton still willing to acknowledge publicly the connexion that had subsisted between them. On the whole, it is certain that one consequence of the ■outcry about Milton's treatise among the London Presby- terians, and especially among the city clergy and the Divines of the Assembly, was to drive Milton more and more into the society of those who had begun to dislike and to dread the ascendancy of the Presbyterians. Finding himself, almost from the first publication of the treatise, as he tells us, in " a world of disesteem " on account of it; he naturally held intercourse more and more with those who, though they may not have approved of liis particular heresy, yet, as being themselves voted heretics on other accounts, were more easy in their judgments of aU extreme opinions. I believe, in fact, that, could Milton's acquaintanceships in London from the winter of 1643-4 onwards be traced and recovered, they would be found to have been chiefly among the Independents, Ana- baptists, Antinomians, Seekers, and other Tolerationists. What were the religious opinions of the Lady Margaret Ley, that ''woman of great wit and ingenuity," and her husband " Captain Hobson, a very accomplished gentleman," with both of whom he was so intimate about this time, and who, as Phillips tells us, "had a particular honour for him and took much delight in his company," must be left to conjecture.^ 1 It has been in my mind whether Ley's husband, and whom Dugdale the Captnm Hobson who was the Lady describes as "... Hobson of . . . 1644-45.] MILTON AMONG THE SECTARIES. 189 rrom Milton's Sonnet to the Lady Margaret one may safely infer at least that she was a woman of liberal principles as well as wit. Probably her house was the resort of a good many of what would now be called the "advanced " or "strong- minded " Christians of both sexes then in London ; and Milton may there have extended his acquaintance with such, and have even been an object of peculiar interest to some of one sex, as "that handsome,. fair gentleman, now talking to Lady Margaret, who is a great scholar and a poet, and whose wife has left him shamefully, so that he wants to be divorced from her, and has written a book which quite proves it." Mnton's acquaintance with Eoger Williams, at all events, is almost certainly to be dated from Williams's visit to England in 16i3-4, when he was writing his Bloody Tenent; and if Milton, at the same time, did not become acquainted with John Goodwin of Coleman Street, it would be a wonder. STORY OF MRS. ATTAWAY. We must, I am sorry to say, descend lower in the society of London, in and about 1644, than the Lady Margaret Ley's drawing-room, or the level of marked men like Williams and Goodwin, if we would understand how Milton's Divorce opinion had begun to operate, and with what consequences of its operation his name was associated. The reader may re- member a Mrs. Attaway, mentioned by us among both the Baptists and the Seekers, and as perhaps the most noted of all the women-preachers in London {anti, pp. 149, 153). She was, it seems, a " lace-woman, dwelling in Bell Alley in Coleman Street," and preaching on week-day afternoons in that neigh- bourhood, with occasional excursions to other parts of the city where rooms could be had. Sometimes other "preaching- in the Isle of Wight, Esq.," can by pos- it that he was originally " a tailor from sibility have been the same person as BuokinghamsMre (anti, p. 148). The the Baptist preacher, Paul Hobson, who supposition seems so absurd that I was also a Captain in the Parliamentary hardly hke to mention that I spent hours Army, and who figures much in in turning over Paul Hobson's published Edwards's Gangrcena and in other sermons and Baptist treatises in case books of the time, under the express I might come on any confirmation of it name of "Captain Hobson," as a lead- — which I did 7iOt. ing Sectary, though Edwards wiU have 190 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. women" were with her, and the gatherings, though at first of her own sex only, soon attracted curious persons of the other. From the descriptions of what passed in some of them, it would appear that, though the meetings were for worship, and there were regular discourses by Mrs. Attaway and others, free talk and criticism was permitted to all pre- sent, so that the conventicle took on sometimes the aspect of a religious debating society. Well, Mrs. Attaway, among others, had got hold of Milton's Divorce Treatise, and had been reading it. " Two gentlemen of the Inns of Court, civil and well-disposed men," who had gone " out of novelty" to hear her, afterwards told Oatigrcena Edwards of some dis- course they had had with her. " Among other passages she " spoke to them of Master Milton's Doctrine of Divorce, and " asked them what they thought of it ; saying it was a point " to be considered of, and that she, for her part, would look " more into it, for she had an unsanctified husband, that did " not walk in the way of Sion, nor speak the language of " Canaan." Edwards does not give the date of this conversa- tion with Mrs. Attaway; and, thoiigh presumably in 1644, it may have been later. He evidently introduces it, however, in order to implicate MUton in the subsequent break-down, which he also reports, of the poor woman morally. For, if Mr. Edwards is to be believed, Mrs. Attaway did "look more into" Milton's doctrine, and at length acted upon it. Some time in 1645 slie abjured her "unsanctified husband" Mr. Attaway, who, besides being unsanctified, was then absent in the army, leaving her alone in her lace-shop, and trans- ferred herself to a man named William Jenney, an occasional preacher, who was much more sanctified, and was also on the spot. Mr. Jenney had, unfortunately, a wife already, some children by her, and one expected; but he too had been meditating on the Divorce Doctrine, and had used his Chris- tian liberty. Mr. Edwards had been most particular in his investigations. He had actually procured "from a sure " hand the copies of two letters— taken from the original " letters, and compared by a minister with the originals— " one of William Jenney to his wife since he went away 1644-45.] STORY OF MRS. ATTAWAY. 191 " witli Mistress Attaway, the other of Mistress Attaway to " WiUiam Jenney before his going away." He refrains froin printing the letters verbatim, as they were too long ; but he gives extracts. "I thought good to write to you these few " lines," writes Jenney to the deserted Mrs. Jenney, Feb. 15, 1645, " to teU you that, because you have been to me rather " a disturber of my body and soul than to be a meet help for " me ^but I silence ! And, for looking for me to come to " you again, I shall never come to you again any more. I " shall send unto you never no more concerning anything." If this actually was Jenney's letter, Mrs. Attaway was worth ten of him, and deserved a better second. " Dearest friend " and weU-beloved in the Lord," so she had begun the letter sent to him while he was still Mrs. Jenney's, and which had got into Mrs. Jenney's hands, " I am unspeakably sorry in " respect of thy sufferings, I being the object that occasioned " it." The sufferings were Mrs. Jenney's bastings of him because he was always with Mrs. Attaway. In good time, Mrs. Attaway goes on to say, he would be delivered from these. " When Jehoshaphat knew not what to do, he looked " to the Lord. Let us look to Him, believing confidently in " Him with the faith of Jesus ; and no question but we shall " be delivered. In the mean season I shall give up my heart " and affections to thee in the Lord ; and, whatsoever I have " or am in Him which is our Head, thou shalt command it." The event, according to Edwards, was that Mr. Jenney and Mrs. Attaway eloped together, Mrs. Attaway having per- suaded Jenney that she should never die, but that, in obe- dience to a heavenly message, they must go to Jerusalem, and repair that city in anticipation of the bringing of all the Saints to it in ships to be sent from Tarshish. I suspect they went only to Jericho.^ All this on the faith of Mr. Edwards's statements in the Gangrcena. But reaUy one should not judge of even a poor enthusiastic woman, dead two hundred years ago, on that 1 This story of Mrs. Attaway is from Third Part of Gangrcena, pp. 25—27 Edwards's GaTigrceTM, Part II. pp. 31, and 188. See also Baillie's Dusuaske, 32,113—115; Fresk Discover//, appended Part II. pp. 100 and 123-4. to Second Part of Gangrana, p. 9 ; and 192 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. sole authority. Never was there a more nauseous creature of the pious kind than this Preshyterian Paul Pry of 1644-46. He revelled in scandals, and kept a private office for the receipt of aU sorts of secret information, hy word of mouth or letter, that could be used against the Independents and the Sectaries.^ Yet there was a kind of coarse business-Kke con- scientiousness in the toad ; and, though he was credulous and unscrupulous in his collections of scandal, I do not believe he invented documents or lied deliberately. I do not doubt, therefore, that Mrs. Attaway, whether she went ultimately to Jericho or to Jerusalem, did know of Milton's Divorce Doctrine, and had extracted suggestions from it suitable to her circumstances. For, indeed, the Doctrine was likely to find not a few whose circumstances it suited. Mr. Edwards's book is strewn with instances of persons who had even found out a tantamount doctrine for themselves — ^men who had left their wives, or wanted to do so, and wives who had left their husbands, and who, without having seen Milton's treatise, defended their act or their wish on grounds of religion and natural law. Nay, in the frenzy of inquiry which had taken possession of the English mind, everything appertaining to Marriage and the Marriage-institution was being plucked up for fundamental re-investigation. There were actually persons who were occupying themselves intently with questioning the forbidden degrees of Consanguinity and Affinity in mar- riage, and who had not only come to the easy conclusion that marriage with a deceased wife's sister is perfectly legiti- mate, but had worked out a general theologico-physiological speculation to the effect that the marriage of near relatives is in all cases peculiarly proper, and perhaps the more proper in proportion to the nearness of the relationship. This, I imagine, was a very small sect.^ Let us re-ascend into more pleasant air. There was one rather notable person in London, of the highly respectable 1 Kiohard Baxter, ashe himself teUs 2 But, unless Edwards and Baillie us, sent oommunioations from the were both wrong, there was some such country to Edwards. His oorrespon- sect. See Oanarcma, Part III. p. 187, dents were legion, but he concealed and, more particularly, Baillio's Diima- their names. give, Part II. pp. 100 and 122-3. 644-45.] SAMUEL HARTLIB. 193 sort, though decidedly among the free opinionists, whose acquaintance Milton did make about this time, if he had not made it before, and who must be specially introduced to the reader. This was Samuel Hartlib. SAMUEL HARTLIB : JOHN DURIE : JOHN AMOS COMENIUS, AND HIS SPECULATIONS ABOUT A REFORMED EDUCATION PROJECT OF A LONDON UNIVERSITY, Everybody knew Hartlib. He was a foreigner by birth, being the son of a Polish merchant, of German extraction, who had left Poland when that country fell under Jesuit rule, and had settled in Elbing in Prussia in very good circum- stances. Twice married before to Polish ladies, this merchant had married, in Prussia, for his third wife, the daughter of a wealthy Euglish merchant of Dantzic ; and thus our Hartlib, their son, though Prussian-born and with Polish connexions, could reckon himself half-English. The date of his birth was probably about the beginning of the century, i.e. he may have been eight or ten years older than Milton. He appears to have first visited England in or about 1628, and from that time, though he made frequent journeys to the Continent, London had been his head-quarters. Here, with a resi- dence in the City, he had carried on business as a " mer- chant," with extensive foreign correspondences, and very respectable family connexions. One of his aunts (sisters of his mother) had married a Mr. Clark, the son of a former Lord Mayor of London, and afterwards a Sir Eichard Smith, Knight and Privy Councillor, and again a Sir Edward Savage. The other aunt had married a country gentleman, named Peak. A cousin of Hartlib's, the daughter of the first and wealthier aunt. Lady Smith, became the wife of Sir Anthony Irby, M.P. for Boston in the Long Parliament. But it did not require such family connexions to make Hartlib at home in English society. The character of the man would have made him at home anywhere. He was one of those persons, now styled " philanthropists " or " friends of progress," who VOL. III. 194 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. take an interest in every question or project of their time X^romising social improvement, have always some iron in the fire, are constantly forming committees or writing letters to persons of influence, and altogether live for the puhlic. By the common consent of all who have explored the intellectual and social history of England in the seventeenth century, he is one of the most interesting and memorable figures of that whole period. He is interesting both for what he did himself and also on account of the number and intimacy of his contacts with other interesting people.^ An early friend of Hartlib, associated with him long before the date at which we are now arrived, was that Johii TJurie of whom, and his famous scheme for a union of all the Protestant Churches of Europe, we have already had to take some account (Vol. II. pp. 367-8 and 517-8). Their intimacy must have begun in Hartlib's native town of Elbing in Prussia, where, I now find, Durie was residing in 1628, as minister to the English company of merchants in the town, and where, in that very year, I also now find, Durie had the great idea of his life first suggested to him by the Swedish Dr. Godeman.^ Among Durie's first disciples in the idea must certainly have been Hartlib ; and it does not seem improbable that, when Hartlib left Prussia, in or about 1628, to settle in Eng- land, it was with an understanding that he was to be an agent or missionary for Durie's idea among the English. That he did so act, and that he was little less of an enthusiast for Durie's idea than Durie himself, there is the most posi- tive evidence. Thus, in a series of letters, preserved in the State Paper Office, from Durie abroad to the diplomatist Sir Thomas Eoe, of various dates between April 1633 and Feb. ' Memoir of Hartlib by H. Dirokg, notes bsiiig yery miggets of biogra- pp.,2-6, where there are extracts from phical lore ; and it is to be regretted an autobiographical letter of Hartlib that the connected notices of Wor- toWorthington, written in 1660. "The thington, Hartlib, and Durie, post- Diai-y and Correspondence of Dr. John poned by Mr. Crossley until the work Worthington," edited by James Cross- should be completed, have not yet ley, Esq., F.S.A. (Chotham Society), appeared. contains many letters from Hartlib to a Tjjg p^of is in statements of Hart- Worthins'ton, between 1655 and 1662, lib's own in a Tract of his published in but not this one. Mr. Crossley's Diary 1641 under the title of "A Briefe Ke- and Correspondence of Worthington, lation of that which hath been lately .'O far as it has gone, is one of the best attempted to procure Ecclesiasticall edited books known to me, the foot- Peace amongst Protestants." 1644-45.] - HARTLIB AND DURIE. 195 1637-8, there is incessant mention of Hartlib. In the first of these letters, dated from Heiibron April -j^-, 1633, Durie, among other things, begs Eoe "to help Mr. Hartlib " with a Petition of Divines of those quarters concerning an "Edition of a Body of Divinity gathered out of English ■' authors, a work which will be exceeding profitable, but will "reqrure divers agents and an exact ordering of the work.'' In a subsequent letter Durie speaks of having sent Eoe, " by Mr. Hartlib, whose industry is specially recommended," an important proposition made by the Swedish Chancellor Oxen- stiern ; and in still later letters Eoe is requested by Durie to show Hartlib not only Durie's letters to himself, but also letters about the progress of his scheme which he has en- closed to Eoe for the Archbishop of Canterbury (Abbot) and the Bishop of London (Laud). At this point, accordingly, July 20, 1633, there is a letter of Eoe's to the Archbishop, from which it appears that Hartlib was made the bearer of Durie's letter to his Grace. Eoe recommends the blessed work in which Durie is engaged, says that it seems to him and Durie that "there is nothing wanting but the public declaration • of his Majesty and the Church of England " in its favour, and beseeches the Archbishop " to give his counte-; nance to the bearer," described in the margin as " Mr. Hartlib, a Prussian." As Abbot was then within fifteen days of his death, nothing can have come of the application to him ; and, as we already know, his successor Laud was a far less hopeful subject for Durie's idea, even though recommended by Eoe and explained by Hartlib. In fact, he thought it mischievous moonshine ; and, instead of giving Durie the encouragement which he wanted, he wrote to the English agent at Frankfort, instructing him to show Durie no countenance whatever. Durie felt the rebuff sorely. , In England, he writes, he must depend now chiefly on Eoe, who could stQl do much privately, apart from Laud's approbation. " Mr. Hartlib will send anything to Durie which Eoe would have communicated to him in a secret way." So in June 1634; and fourteen months later (Aug. 1636) Durie, who had meanwhile removed to the Hague, 2 196 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. again writes to Eoe and again relies on Hartlib. The Dutch, he says, are slow to take up his scheme ; and he can think of nothing better in the circumstances than that Eoe in England should collect " all the advices and comments of the best divines of the age '' on the subject, and have them printed. His very best agent in such a business would be Hartlib, " a man well known, beloved and trusted by all " sides, a man exceeding painful, diligent and cordially " affected to these endeavours, and one that for such works "had lost himself by too much charity." On independent grounds it would be well to find him " some place suitable "for his abilities, which might rid him of the undeserved "necessities whereunto his public-heartedness had brought " him ; " but in this special employment he would be invalu- able, being " furnished with the Polish, Dutch, English, and " Latin languages, perfectly honest and trusty, discreet, and " well versed in affairs." In the same strain in subsequent letters. Thus, from Amsterdam Dec. ^, Eoe is thanked for having bestowed some gratuity on Hartlib, and Hartlib is described as, next to Eoe, " the man in the world whom Durie " loves and honours most for his virtues and good offices in " Durie's cause." At the same time Durie " prays God to free Hartlib from his straits and set him a little on horse- back," and adds, " His spirit is so large that it has lost itself in zeal to good things." Again, from Amsterdam ^^f , 1635-6, Durie writes to Eoe and encloses a letter to be sent to his (Durie's) diocesan in Hartlib's behalf " Mr. Hartlib," Durie says to Eoe, "has furnished his lordship (the diocesan) "with intelligence from foreign parts for two or three " years, and has not yet got any consideration. Perhaps his " lordship knows not how Hartlib has fallen into decay for " being too charitable to poor scholars, and for undertaking " too freely the work of schooling and education of children. "If Hartlib and Eoe were not in England, Durie would "despair of doing any good." The diocesan referred to is probably Juxon, Bishop of London ; but, two years later, we find Eoe recommending Durie's business and Hartlib personally to another prelate. Bishop Morton of Durham. 1644-45.] HARTLIB AND DUEIE. 197 Writing from St. Martin's Lane, Feb. 17, 1637-8, Sir Thomas " presents the Bishop with a letter from Mr. Durie, and one " from Durie to the writer, from which the Bishop may collect " his state, and his constant resolution to pursue his business " as long as God gives him bread to eat. Such a spirit the "writer has never met, daunted with nothing, and only '•■ relying upon Providence Sir Thomas in Michaelmas " term sent the Bishop a great packet from Samuel Hartlib, " correspondent of Durie, an excellent man, and of the same " spirit. If the Bishop like his way, -Hartlib will constantly " write to him, and send aU the passages both of learning and " public affairs, no man having better information, especially "in re literarid."^ These letters enable us to see Hartlib as he was in 1637, a Prussian naturalized in London, between thirty and forty years of age, nominally a merchant of some kind, but in reality a man of various hobbies, and conducting a general news- agency, partly as a means of income and partly from sheer zeal in certain public causes interesting to himself His zeal in this way, and in private benevolences to needy scholars and inventors, had even outrun prudence ; so that, though he could reckon his means at between 300^. and 400^. a year,^ that had not sufficed for his openhandedness. Durie 's great project for a reconciliation of the Calvinists and Lutherans, and a union of all the Protestant Churches of Europe on som& broad basis of mutual tolerance or concession, had hitherto been his hobby in chief He had other hobbies, however, of a more literary nature, and of late he had been undertaking too freely some work appertaining to "the schooling and education of children." This last fact, which we learn hazily from Durie's letters and Eoe's, we should have known, abundantly and distinctly, otherwise. There are two publications of HartUb's, of the 1 The quotations in this paragraph quoted in Dircks's Memoir (p. 4), where are from the late Mr. Bruoe's accurate he says, "Let it not seem a paradox to abstracts of Durie's and Eoe's letters you, if I tell you, as long as I have (sixteen in all) given in the six volumes lived in England, by wonderful pro- of Calendars of the Domestic State videnoes, I have spent yearly out of Papers from 1633 to 1638. my own betwixt SOJi. and 400i. sterling 2 This appears fj-om the letter of his a year." to Worthington, of da.te Aug. 3, 1660, 198 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OP HIS TIME. years 1637 and 1638 respectively, the first of a long and varied series that were to come from his pen. Now, both of these are on the siihject of Education. " Conatuum Comenianorum Prceludia, ex Bibliothecd S. H. : Oosonice, Excudebat Oulielmm Turnerus, Academice Typogra'phus, 1637" ("Preludes of the Endeavours of Comenius, from the Library of S. H. : Oxford, Printed by William Turner, University Printer, 1637") — such is the general title of the first of these publications. It is a small quarto, and consists first of a Preface "Ad, Ledorem " (to the Header), signed " Samuel Hartlibius," and then of a foreign treatise which it is the object of the publi- cation to introduce to the attention of Oxford and of the English nation ; which treatise has this separate title : — " Porta SapienticB Reserata ; sive Pansophice Christiance Semi- narium : hoc est, Nova, Compendiosa, et Solida omnes Scientias et Artes, et quicquid manifesti vel occulti est quod ingenio humano penetrare, solertice imitari, linguae eloqui, datur, irevius, verms,- melius, quam hactenus, Addiscendi Methodus: Auctore JReverendo Clarissimoque viro Domino Johanne Amoso Gomenio" ("The Gate of Wisdom Opened; or the Seminary of all Christian Knowledge : being a New, Compendious, and Solid Method of Learning, more briefly, more truly, and better than hitherto, all Sciences and Arts, and whatever there is, manifest or occult, that it is given to the genius of man to penetrate, his craft to imitate, or his tongue to speak : The author that Eeverend and most distinguished man, Mr. John Amos Comenius "). So far as I have been able to trace, this is the first publication bearing the name of Hartlib. Copies of it must be scarce, but there is at least one in the British Museum. There also is a copy of what, on the faith of an edtry in the Eegisters of the Stationers' Company, I have to record as his second publication. " Oct. 17, 1638 : Samuel Gillebrand entered for his copy, under the hands of Mr. Baker and Mr. Eothwell, warden, a Book called Comenii Pansophim Prodromus et Didactica Dissertatio (Comenius's Harbinger of Universal Knowledge and Treatise on Education), published by Sam. Hartlib." i When the thing actually appeared, 1 My notes from Stationers' Registers. 16i4-45.] JOHN AMOS COMENIUS. 199 in small duodecimo, it had the date " 1639 " on the title- page. The canvas becomes rather crowded ; but I am bound to introduce here to the reader " that reverend and most dis^ tinguished man, Mr. John Amos Comenius," who had been winning on Hartlib's heart by his theories of Education and Pansophia, prepossessed though that heart was by Durie and his scheme of Pan-Protestantism. He was an Austro-Slav, born in 1592, at Comnia iiL Moravia, whence his name Jan Amos Komensky, Latinized into Joannes Amosius Comenius. His parents were Pro- testants of the sect known as the Bohemian or Moravian Brethren, who traced their origin to the followers of Huss. Left an orphan in early life, he was poorly looked after, and was in his sixteenth year before he began to learn Latin. Afterwards he studied in various places, and particularly at Herborn in the Duchy of ^Nassau ; whence he returned to his native Moravia in 1614, to become Eector of a school at Prerau. Here it was that he first began to study and practise new methods of teaching, and especially of gram- matical teaching, induced, as he himself tells us, by the fame of certain speculations on that subject which had recently been put forth by Wolfgang Eatich, an Educational Eeformer then very active in Germany. From Prerau Comenius re- moved in 1618 to Fulneck, to be pastor to a congregation of Moravian Brethren there ; but, as he conjoined the charge of a new school with his pastorate, he continued his interest in new methods of education. Manuscripts of schoolbooks which he was preparing on his new methods perished, with his library, in a sack of Fulneck in 1621 by the Spaniards ; and in 1624, on an edict proscribing all the Protestant minis- ters of the Austrian States, Comenius lost his living, and took refuge in the Bohemian mountains with a certain Baron Sadowski of Slaupna. In this retreat he wrote, in 1627, a short educational Directory for the use of the tutor of the baron's sons. But, the persecution waxing furious, and 30,000 families being. driven out of Bohemia for their Protestantism, 200 LIFE OF MILTON AUD HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. Comenius had to migrate to Poland. It was with a heavy heart that he did so ; and, as he and his fellow-exiles crossed the mountain-boundary on their way, they looked back on Moravia and Bohemia, and, falling on their knees, prayed God not to let His truth fail utterly out of those lands, but to preserve a remnant in them for himself. Leszno in Poland was Comenius's new refuge. Here again he employed him- self in teaching ; and here, in a more systematic manner than before, he pursued his speculations on the science of teaching and on improved methods for the acquisition of universal knowledge. He read, he tells us, all the works he could find on the subject of Didactics by predecessors or contemporaries, such as Eatich, Bitter, Glaumius, Wolfstirn, Cseeilius, and Joannes Valentinus Andreae, and also the philosophical works of Campanella and Lord Bacon ; but he combined the information so obtained with his own ideas and expe- rience. The results he seems mainly to have jotted down, for future use, in various manuscript papers in his Slavic ver- nacular, or in German, or in Latin; but in 1631 he was induced by the curators of the school at Leszno to send to the press in Latin one book of a practical and particular nature. This was a so-called "Janua Linguarum Beserata" or " Gate of Languages Opened," propounding a method which he had devised, and had employed at Leszno, for rapidly teaching Latin, or any other tongue, and at the same time communicating tlie rudiments of useful knowledge. The little book, though he thought it a trifle, made him famous. " It happened, as I could not have imagined possible," he himseK writes, "that that puerile little work was received " with a sort of universal applause by the learned world. " This was testified by very many persons of different " countries, both by letters to myself congratulating me " earnestly on the new invention, and also by translations " into the various popular tongues, undertaken as if in " rivalry with each other. Not only did editions which we "have ourselves seen appear in all the European tongues, " twelve in number — viz. Latin, Greek, Bohemian, Polish, " German. Swedish, Dutch, English, French, Spanish. Italian, 1644-45.] JOHN AMOS COMENIUS, 201 " and Hungarian ; but it was translated, as we have learnt, " into such Asiatic tongues as the Arabic, the Turkish, the " Persian, and even the Mongolian." The process which Comenius thus describes must have ex- tended over several years. There are traces of knowledge of him, and of his Janua Linguarum Meserata, in England as early as 1633. In that year a Thomas Home, M.A., then a schoolmaster in London, but afterwards Master of Eton, put forth a " Janua Linguarum," which is said by Anthony "Wood to have been taken, " all or most," from Comenius. An actual English translation or expansion of Comenius's book, by a John Anchoran, licentiate in Divinity, under the title of " The Gate of Tongues Unlocked and Opened : or else A Summary or Seed-Plot of all Tongues and Sciences," reached its "fourth edition much enlarged" in 1639, and may be presumed to have been in circulation, in other forms, some years before. But the great herald of Comenius and his ideas among the English was Samuel Hartlib. Not only may he have had to do with the importation of Comenius's Janua Linguarum and the recommendation of that book to such pedagogues as Home and Anchoran ; but he was instru- mental in extracting from Comenius, while that book and certain appendices to it were in the flush of their first European popularity, a summary of his reserved and more general theories and intentions in the field of Didactics. The story is told very minutely by Comenius himself. The Janua Linguarum Reserata was only a proposed im- provement in the art of teaching Language or Words ; and ought not a true system of education to range beyond that, and pro- vide for a knowledge of Things? This was what Comenius was thinking: he was meditating a sequel to his popular little book, to be called "Janua Berum JReserata," or "Gate of Things Opened," and to contain an epitome or encyclopaedia of all essential knowledge, under the three heads of Nature, Scripture, and the Mind of Man. Nay, borrowing a word which had appeared as the title of a somewhat meagre Encyclopedia of the Arts by a Peter Laurenbergius, Comenius had resolved on I'ansophia, or Pansophia Christiana (" Universal Wisdom," 202 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIMJS. or " Universal Christian Wisdom "), as a fit alternative name for this intended Janua Berum. But he was keeping the work back, as one requiring leisure, and could only be per- suaded to let the announcement of its title appear in the Leipsic catalogue of forthcoming books. By that time, however, Hartlib of London had become so dear a friend to Comenius that he could refuse him nothing. Whether there had been any prior personal acquaintance between Hartlib and Comenius, by reason of their German and Slavic con- nexions, I cannot say. But, since the publication of the Janua Linguamm, Hartlib had been in correspondence with Comenius in his Polish home; and, by 1636, his interest in the designs of Comenius, and willingness to forward them, had become so well known in the circle of the admirers of Comenius that he had been named as one of the five chief Comenians in Europe, the other four being Zacharias Schneider of Leipsic, Sigismund Evenius of Weimar, John Mochinger of Dantzic, and John Docemius of Hamburg. Now, Hartlib, having heard of the intended Janua Rerwm or Pansophia of Comenius, not only in the Leipsic catalogue of forthcoming works, but also, more particularly, from some Moravian students passing through London, had written to Comenius, requesting some sketch of it. " Being thus asked," says Comenius, " by the most intimate of my friends, a man " piously eager for the public good, to conununicate some " idea of my future work, I did communicate to him in " writing, in a chance way, what I had a thought of prefixing " some time or other to the work in the form of a Preface ; " and this, beyond my hope, and without my knowledge, "was printed at Oxford, under the title of Gonatuum " Comenianorum Prmlvdia." Here we have the whole secret of that publication from the Oxford University press, in 1637, which was edited by Hartlib and announced as being from his Library. It was not a reprint of any- thing that had abeady appeared abroad, but was in fact a new treatise by the great Comenius which Hartlib had persuaded the author to send him from Poland and had published on his own responsibility. He had apologized to 1644-45.] HAKTLIB AND COMENIUS. 203 Comenius for so doing, on the ground that the publication would " serve a good purpose by feeling the way and ascer- taining the opinions of learned and wise men in a matter of such unusual consequence." Comenius was a little nettled, he says, especially as criticisms of the Pansophic sketch began to come in, which would have been obviated, he thought, if he had been allowed quietly to develope the thing farther before publication. Nevertheless, there the book was, and the world now knew of Comenius not only as ^the author of the little Janua Linguarum, but also as contemplating a vast Janua Renim, or organization of uni- versal knowledge on a new basis. In fact, the fame of Comenius was increased by Hartlib's little indiscretion. In Sweden especially there was an anxiety to have the benefit of the counsels of so eminent a theorist in the business of education. In 1638 the Swedish Government, at the head of which, during the minority of Queen Chris- tina, was the Chancellor Oxenstiern, invited Comenius to Sweden, that he might preside over a Commission for the revision and reform of the schools there. Comenius, however, declined the invitation, recommending that the work should be entrusted to some native Swede, but pro- mising to give his advice ; and, at the same time (1638), he began to translate into Latin, for the behoof of Sweden and of other countries, a certain Bidactica Magna, or treatise on Didactics at large, which he had written in his Bohemian Slavic vernacular nine years before. Hartlib had an early abstract of this book, and this abstract is part of the Comenii FansopMce Frodromtis et Bidactica Bissertatio which he edited in London in the same year, and published in duodecimo in 1639.^ ^ Bayle's Dictionary : Art. Comlnins particulars of Hartlib's early oon- {JeaitrAmos) \ "GescHchte der Fada- nexion with Comenius, have had to be gogik," by Karl von Eaumer (Stutt- culled by me from the curious autobio- gart, 1843), Zweiter Theil, pp. 46-49 ; graphical passages prefixed to or in- " Essays on Educational Reformers," sorted in Comenius's various writings by Robert Hebert Quick (1868), pp. as far as 1642. These form Part I. of 43-47; Wood's Ath. III. 366, and II. iaslaxgeYoYio, O^era Didadica Omnia, 677. The general sketch of Come- piiblished by him at Amsterdam in nius in Bayle, and those by Raumer 1657 ; and the passages in that Part and Mr. Quick, are very good ; but which have supplied particulars for the details in the text, and especially the text will be found at columns 3-4, 318, 204 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. What, after all, were the new notions propounded from Poland, with such universal European effect, by this Protes- tant Austro-Slav, Comenius, and sponsored in England by the Prussian Hartlib ? We shall try to give them in epitome. Be it understood, however, that the epitome takes account only of those works of Comenius which were written before 1639, without including the mass of his later writings, some of which were to be even more celebrated. The Didactica Magna is perhaps the most pregnant of the early books of Comenius. The full title of this treatise is, in translation, as follows : " Didactics at Large : propounding " a universal Scheme for teaching all Things to all persons ; " or a Certain and Perfect Mode of erecting such Schools " through all the communities, towns, and villages of any " Christian Kingdom, as that all the yoxith of both sexes, " without the neglect of a single one, may be compendiously, " pleasantly, and solidly educated in Learning, grounded in " Morals, imbued with Piety, and so, before the years of " puberty, instructed in all things belonging to the present " and the future life." In the treatise itself there are first some chapters of preliminary generalities. Man, says Comenius, is the last and most perfect of creatures ; his destiny is to a life beyon.d this ; and the present life is but a preparation for that eternal one. This preparation involves three things — Knowledge by Man of himself and of all things about him (Learning), Piule of himself (Morals), and Direction of himself to God (Religion). The seeds of these three varieties of preparation are in us by Nature ; never- theless, if Man would come out complete Man, he must be formed or educated. Always the education must be three- fold—in Knowledge, in Morals, and in Eeligion ; . and this combination must never be lost sight of Such education, however, comes most fitly in early life. Parents may do much, but they cannot do all; there is need, therefore, in every country, of public schools for youth. Such schools 326, 403, 442-444, 454-459. Comenius, memory for details respecting the his- hke most such theoretic reformers, tory of his own ideas Ind their reoep- had a vem of egotism, and a strong tion. 1644-45.] COMENIUS: HIS VIEWS OF EDUCATION. 205 should be for the children of all alike, the poor as well as the rich, the stupid and malicious as well as the clever and docile, and equally for girls as for boys ; and the training in them ought to be absolutely universal or encyclopEedic, in Letters, Arts, and Science, in Morals, and in Piety.i Here, at length, in the eleventh chapter, we arrive at the great question. Has such a system of schools been anywhere established ? I^o, answers Comenius, and abundantly proves his negative. Schools of a kind there had been in the world from the days of the Pharaohs and Nebuchadnezzar, if not from those of Shem, but not yet were there schools every- where ; not yet, where schools did exist, were they for all classes ; and, at best, where they did exist, of what sort were they ? Places, for the most part, of nausea and torment for the poor creatures collected in them ; narrow and imperfect in their aims, which were verbal rather than real ; and not even succeeding in these aims ! Latin, nothing but Latin ! And how had they taught this precious and eternal Latin of theirs ? " Good God ! how intricate, laborious, and prolix " this study of Latin has been ! Do not scullions, shoeblacks, 1 For Miltonio reasons, a3 well as for " of medicine and other things useful others, I eannot resist the temptation "to the human race, nay even the to translate here, in a Note, the sub- " prophetical office, and the rattling stance of Comenius's views on the Edu- " reprimand of Priests and Bishops " cation of Women, as given in Chap. IX. [eliam ad Propheticum mumis, et incre- (cols. 4:2-ii} of hls Didactica Magna ; — "paTiAJhs Sacerdofes Mjpiscopoaque, are the " Nor, to say something particularly words ; .and, as the treatise was pre- " on this subject, can any sufficient pared for the press in 1638, one detects " reason be given why the weaker sex " a reference, by the Moravian Brother [sequior sexus, literally "the later in Poland, to the recent fame of Jenny or following sex," is his phrase, bor- Geddesof Scotland]. "Why then should rowed from Apuleius, and, though the " we admit them to the Alphabet, but phrase is usually translated "the in- "afterwards debar them from Books? ferior sex," it seems to have been " Do we fear their rashness ? The chosen by Comenius to avoid that im- " more we occupy their thoughts, the plication], " should be wholly shut out " less room will there be in them for " from liberal studies, whether in the " rashness, which springs generally "native tongue or in Latin. For equally " from vacuity of mind." Some slight " are they God's image ; equally are limitations as to the reading proper for "they partakers of grace and of the young women are appended, but with " kingdom to come ; equally are they a hint that the same limitations would " furnished with minds agile and ca- be good for youth of the other sex ; "pable of wisdom, yea often beyond and there is a bold quotation of the "our sex ; equally to them is there a Scriptural text (1 Tim. ii. 12), "Isvffer " possibility of attaining high distinc- not a woman to teach," and of two well- " tion, inasmuch as they have often known passages of Euripides and Ju- "been employed by God himself for venal against learned women or blue- "the government of peoples, the be- stockings, to show that he was quite " stowing of the most wholesome coun- aware of these passages, but saw no- " sels on kings and princes, the science thing in them against his real meaning. 206 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. " cobblers, among pots and pans, or in camp, or in any other " sordid employment, learn a language different from their " own, or even two or three such, more readily than school- " students, with every leisure and appliance and all imagin- " able effort, learn their solitary Latin? And what a dif- " ference in the proficiency attained ! The former, after a " few months, are found gabbling away with ease ; the latter, " after fifteen or twenty years, can hardly, for the most part, " unless when strapped up tight in their grammars and " dictionaries, bring out a bit of Latin, and that not without " hesitation and stammering." But all this might be remedied. There might be such a Eeformation of Schools that not only Latin, but all other languages, and all the real Sciences and Arts of life to boot, might be taught in them expeditiously, pleasantly, "and thoroughly. What was wanted was right Methods and the consistent practical applieation of these. Nature must supply the principles of the Method of Educa- tion : as aU Nature's processes go softly and spontaneously, so will all artificial processes that are in conformity with Nature's principles. And what are Nature's principles, as transferable into the ^ Art of Education ? Comenius enu- merates a good many, laying stress on such as these : nothing out of season; matter before form; the general before the special, or the simple before the complex ; all continuously, and nothing 'per saltum. He philosophizes a good deal, some- times a little quaintly and mystically, on these principles of Nature, and on the hints she gives for facility, solidity, and celerity of learning, and then sums up his deductions as to the proper Method in each of the three departments of edu- cation, the Intellectual, the Moral, and the Eeligious. Things before words, or always along with words, to explain them ; the concrete and sensible to prepare for the abstract ; example and illustration rather than verbal definition, or to accompany verbal definition : such is his main maxim in the first de- partment. Object-lessons, wherever possible: i.e. if boys are taught about the stars, let it be with the stars over their heads to look at ; if about the structure of the human body, let it be with a skeleton before them ; if about the action 1644-45.] COMENIUS : HIS VIEWS OF EDUCATION. 207 of a pump, or other machine, let it be with the machine actually at hand. " Always let the things which the words " are to designate be shown ; and again, whatever the pupils " see, hear, touch, taste, let them be taught to express the " same ; so that tongue and intellect may go on together." Where the actual objects cannot be exhibited, there may be models, pictures, and the like ; and every school ought to have a large apparatus of such, and a museum. Writing and drawing ought to be taught simultaneously with reading. All should be made pleasant to the pupils ; they ought to relish their lessons, to be kept brisk, excited, wide-awake ; and to- this end there should be emulation, praise of the deserving, always something nice and rousing on the board, a mixture of the funny with the serious, and occasional puzzles, anec- dotes, and conundrums. The school-houses ought to be airy and agireeable, and the school-hours not too long. In order that there may be time to teach all that really ought to be taught, there must be a wise neglect of heaps of things not essential: a great deal must be flung overboard, as far as School is concerned, and left to the .chance inquisitiveness of individuals afterwards. And what sort of things may be thus wisely neglected? Why, in the first place, the non necessaria (things generally unprofitable), or things that contribute neither to piety nor to good morals, and without which there may be very sufficient erudition — as, for example, " the names of the Gentile gods, their love-histories, and their religious rites," all which may be got up in books at any time by any one that wants them ; and, again, the aliena (things that do not fit the particular pupil) — mathematics, for example, for some, and music for those who have no ear; and, again, the particularissima, or those excessive minute- nesses and distinctions into which one may go without end in any subject whatsoever. So, at large, with very com- petent learning, no small philosophical acumen, much logical formality and numeration of propositions and paragraphs,. \)\\t a frequent liveliness of style, and every now and then a crashing shot of practical good sense,. Comenius reasons and argues for a new System of Education, inspired by what 208 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. would now be called Eealism or enlightened Utilitarianism. Objections, as they might occur, are duly met and answered; and one notes throughout the practical schoolmaster, knowing what he is talking about, and having before his fancy all the while the spectacle of a hundred or two of lads ranged on benches, and to be managed gloriously from the desk, as a skilled metallurgist manages a mass of molten iron. He is a decided advocate for large classes, each of " some hundreds," under one head-master, because of the fervour which such classes generate in themselves and in the master; and he shows how they may be managed. Emulation, kindliness, and occasional rebuke, are chiefly to be trusted to for main- taining discipline ; and punishments are to be for moral offences only. How Comenius would blend moral teaching and religious teaching with the acquisition of knowledge in schools is explained in two chapters, entitled "Method of Morals" and "Method of instilling Piety;" and this last leads him to a separate chapter, in which he maintains that, , " if we would have schools thoroughly reformed according to the true rules of Christianity, the books of Heathen authors must be removed from them, or at least employed more cautiously than hitherto." He argues this at length, insisting on the necessity of the preparation of a graduated series of school-books that should supersede the ordinary classics, con- serving perhaps the best bits of some of them. If any of the classics were to be kept bodily for school-use, they should be Seneca, Epictetus, Plato, and the like. And so at last he comes to describe the System of Schools he would have set up in every country, viz. : I. The Infant School, or Mother's own School, for children under six; II. The LuDus Literaehts, or Vernacular Public School, for boys and girls up to the age of twelve ; Til. The Latin School or Gymnasium, for higher teaching up to eighteen or so ; and TV. The UNiVERsrrr (with Travel), for the highest possible teaching on to the age of about five-and-twenty. From the little babble of the Infant School about Water, Air, Fire, Iron, Bird, Fish, Hill, Sun, Moon, &c., all on the plan of exercising the senses and making Things and Words go together, up to 1644-45.] C'OMENIUS : HIS VIKWS OF EDUCATION. 209 the most exquisite training of the University, he shows how- there might be a progress and yet a continuity of encyclo- psedic aim. Most boys and girls in every community, he thinks, might stop at the Vernacular School, without going on to the Latin ; and he has great faith in the capabilities of any vernacular and the culture that may be obtained within it. Still he would like to see as many as possible going on to the Latin School and the University, that there might never be wanting in a community spirits consummately educated, veritable Tro\vfiadei^ and irdvcro^oi. In the Universities apparently he would allow the largest ranging among the classics of all sorts, though still on some principle for organizing that kind of reading. There is, in fact, a mass of details and suggestions about each of the four kinds of schools, all vital to Comenius, and all pervaded by his san- guine spirit, but which one can hardly now read through.^ The iinal chapter is one of the most eloquent and interesting. It is entitled, " Of the Eequisites necessary for beginning the practice of this Universal Method." Here he comes back upon his notion of a graduated series of school-books, or rather of an organization of books generally for the purposes of education. " One great requisite," he says, " the absence " of which would make the whole machine useless, while its "presence would put all in motion, is A Sufficient Appa- " EATUS OF Pammbthodic Books." AH, he repeats, hinges on the possibility of creating such an apparatus. " This is a " work," he adds, " not for one man, especially if he is other- " wise occupied, and not instructed in everything that ought " to be reduced into the Universal Method ; nor is it perhaps " a work for one age, if we would have all brought to abso- " lute perfection. There is need, therefore, of a Collegial " Society {ergo Societate Collegiali est opus). For the con- " vocation of such a Society there is need of the authority and 1 A separate little treatise on the books for "Tlie Vemaeiilar School," management of "The Infant School," under fancy-titles. These do not seem containing advices to parents for home ever to have been published. His use, was written by Comenius in Bohe- Jawaa Li/ngvarum (1631), and one or mian Slavic, and translated thence into two appendages to it, were contribu- German in 1633. It appears in Latin tions to the theory and practice of among hia Opera Didaciica collected. " The Latin School." He wrote also, he tells us, six little VOL. in. P 210 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. " liberality of some King, or Prince, or Eepublic, and also of " some quiet place, away from crowds, with a Library and " other appurtenances." There follows an earnest appeal to persons of all classes to forward such an association, and the good Moravian winds up with a prayer to God.^ A special part of Comenius's system, better known perhaps at the time of which we write than his system- as a whole, was his Method for Teaching Languages. This is explained in Chapter XXII. of his Didactica Magna, and more in detail in his Linguarum Janua Reserata, and one or two writings added to that book : — Comenius, as we already know, did not overrate linguistic training in education. "Languages are "acquired," he says, "not as a part of learning or wisdom, " but as instrumental to the reception and communication of " learning. Accordingly, it is not all languages that are to " be learnt, for that is impossible, nor yet many, for that " would be useless, as drawing away the time due to " the study of Things ; but only those that are necessary- " The necessary tongues, however, are : first, the Vernacular, " for home use ; next, Neighbouring Tongues, for conversa- " tion with neighbours, — as, for example, the German for " Poles of one frontier, and the Hungarian, the WaUachian, " and the Turkish, for Poles of other parts ; next, Latin, as " the common language of the learned, admitting one to the " wise use of books ; and, finally, the Greek and Arabic for " philosophers and medical men, and Greek and Hebrew "for theologians." Not aU the tongues that are learnt, either, are to be learnt to the same nicety of perfection, but only to the extent really needed. Each language should be learnt separately— first, the Vernacular, which ought to be perfectly learnt, and to which children ought to be kept for eight or ten years ; then whatever neighbouring tongue might be desirable, for which a year would be long enough ; next, Latin, which ought to be learnt well, and might be learnt in two years ; and so to Greek, to which he would give one year, and Hebrew, which he would settle in six ^ There is a summary of Comenius's 59). It ia accurate so far as it goes; I)^hca, Magna _Vi Von Baumer's ■ but I have gone to the book itself, treschiohte der Padagogik (pp. 53— 1644-45.] COMENIUS : HIS METHOD FOR LANGUAGES. 211 months. If people should he amazed at the shortness of the time in which he ventured to assert a language like the Latin might be learnt and learnt well, let them consider the principles of his method. Always Things along with Words, and Words associated with new groups of Things, from the most familiar objects to those rarer and farther off, so that the vocabulary might get bigger and bigger ; and, all the while, the constant use of the vocabulary, such as it was, in actual talk, as well as in reading^'and writing ! First, let the pupil stutter on anyhow, only using his stock of words ; correctness would come afterwards,^and in the end elegance and force. Always practice rather than rule, and leading to rule ; also connexion of the tongue being learnt with that learnt last. A kind of common grammar may be supposed lying in the pupil's head, which he transfers instinctively to each new tongue, so that he has to be troubled only with variations and peculiarities. The reading-books necessary for thoroughly teaching a language by this method might be (besides Lexi- cons graduated to match) four in number — I. Vestihulum (The Porch), containing a vocabulary of some hundreds of simple words, fit for babbling with, grouped in little sentences, with annexed tables of declensions and conjugations ; II. Janua (The Gate), containing all the common words in the language, say about 8,000, also compacted into interesting sentences, with farther grammatical aids ; III. Fcdatium (The Palace), containing tit-bits of higher discourse about things, and elegant extracts from authors, with notes and grammatical comments ; IV. Thesaurus (The Treasury), consisting of select authors themselves, duly illustrated, with a catalogue of other authors, so that the pupils might have some idea of the extent of the Literature of the language, and might know what authors to read on occasion afterwards. Comenius himself actually wrote a Vestihulum for Latin, consisting of 427 short sentences, and directions for their use ; and, as we know, his Janua Ling^iarum Beserata, which appeared in 1631, was the publication which made him famous. It is an application of his system to Latin. On the principle that Latin can never be acquired with ease p 2 212 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. while its vocabulary is allowed to lie alphabetically in dead Dictionaries, or in multitudinous variety of combination in Latin authors, about 8,000 Latin words of constant use are collected into a kind of Noah's Ark, representative of all Latinity. This is done in J.,000 short Latin sentences, arranged in 100 paragraphs of useful information about all things and sundry, under such headings as Be Ortu Mundi (Of the Beginning of the World), Be Elementis (Of the Elements), Be Firmamento (Of the Firmament), Be Igne (Of Fire), and so on through other physical and moral topics. Among these are Be Metallis (Of Metals), Be Herhis (Of Plants), Be Insectis (Of Insects), Be Ulceribus et Vulnerihus (Of Sores and Wounds), Be Agricultwra (Of Agriculture), Be Vesiituum Generibus (Of Articles of Dress), Be Puerperio (Of Childbirth), Be Pace et Bello (Of Peace and War), Be Modestia (Of Modesty), Be Morte et Sepultura (Of Death and Burial), Be Providentia Bei (Of the Providence of God), Be Angelis (Of Angels). Comenius was sure that due drill in this book would put a boy in effective possession of Latin for all purposes of reading, speaking, and writing. And, of course, by translation, the same manual would serve for any other language. For, the Noah's Ark of things being much the same for all peoples, in learning a new language you have but to fit on to the contents of that permanent Ark of realities a new set of vocables.^ Comenius rather smiled at the rush of all Europe upon his Janua Linguarum, or Method for Teaching Languages. That was a trifle in his estimation, compared with the bigger speculations of his Bidactica Magna, and still more with his Pansophice Prodromus or Porta Sapientim Reserata. A word or two on this last little book :— Comenius appears in it as a would-be Lord Bacon, an Austro-Slavic Lord Bacon, a very Austro-Slavic Lord Bacon. He mentions Bacon several times, and always with profound respect {"illustrissimus Verulamms," and so on) ; but it appeared to him that more was wanted than Bacon's Novum Organum, 1644-45.] COMENIUS : HIS PANSOPHIC SPECULATIONS. 213 or Instauratio Magna, with all its merits. A Pansophia was wanted, nay, a Pansophia Christiana, or consolidation of all human knowledge into true central Wisdom, one body of Eeal Truth. Wisdom, Wisdom ! the know- ledge of things in themselves, and in their universal harmony ! What was mere knowledge of words, or all the fuss of pedagogy and literature, in view of that ! Once attained, and made communicable, it would make the future of the world one Golden Age ! Why had it not been at- tained ? What had been the hindrances to its attainment ? What were the remedies? In a kind of phrenzy, which does not prevent most logical precision of paragraphing and of numbering of propositions, Comenius discusses all this; becoming more and more like a Bacon bemuddled, as he eyes his Pansophia through the mist. What it is he cannot make plain to us ; but we see he has some notion of it himself, and we honour him accordingly. Por there are gleams, and even flashes, through the mist. For example, there is a paragraph entitled Scientiarum Laceratio, lamenting the state of division, disconnectedness, and piece-meal dis- tribution among many hands, into which the Sciences had fallen. Though there were books entitled Pansophias, Encyclopsedias, and the like, he had seen none sufficiently justifying the name, or exhausting the universality of things. Much less had he seen the whole apparatus of human intelligence so constructed from its own certain and eternal principles that all things should appear mutually concatenated among themselves from iirst to last without any hiatus ! "Metaphysicians hum to themselves only, Natural Philoso- " phers chaunt their own praises, Astronomers lead on their " dances for themselves, Ethical Thinkers set up laws for " themselves, Politicians lay foundations for themselves, Ma- " thematicians triumph for themselves, and for themselves " Theologians reign." What is the consequence ? Why, that, while each one attends only to himself and his own phantasy, there is no general accord, but only dissonance. " We see " that the branches of a tree cannot live unless they all " alike suck their juices from a common trunk with 214 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. " common roots. And can we hope that the branches of " Wisdom can be torn asunder with safety to their life, " that is to truth ? Can one be a Natural Philosopher who " is not also a Metaphysician ? or an Ethical Thinker who " does not know something of Physical Science ? or a " Logician who has no knowledge of real matters ? or a " Theologian, a Jurisconsult, or a Physician, who is not " first a Philosopher ? or an Orator or Poet who is not all " things at once ? He deprives himself of light, of hand, " and of regulation, who pushes away from him any " shred of the knowable." Prom such passages one has a glimmer of what Comenius did mean by his Pansophia. He hoped to do something himself towards furnishing the world with this grand desideratum. He had in contempla- tion a book which should at least show what a proper Encyclopajdia or Consolidation of Universal Truth ought to be. But here again he invites co-operation. Many hands in many lands would' have to labour at the building of the great Temple of Wisdom.- He appeals to all, "of every rank, age, sex, and tongue," to do what they can. Especially let there be an end to the monopoly of Latin. "We desire " and protest that studies of wisdom be no longer committed " to Latin alone, and kept shut up in the schools, as has " hitherto been done, to the greatest contempt and injury " of the people at large and the popular tongues. Let all " things be delivered to each nation in ' its own speech, " so that occasion may be afforded to all who are men to " occupy themselves with these liberal matters rather than " fatigue themselves, as is constantly the case, with the cares " of this life, or ambitions, or drinking-bouts, or other vanities, " to the destruction of life and soul both. Languages them- " selves too would so be polished to perfection with the " advancement of the Sciences and Arts. Wherefore we, for " our part, have resolved, if God pleases, to divulge these " things of ours both in the Latin and in the vernacular. " For no one lights a candle and hides it under a bushel, but " places it on a candlestick, that it may give light to all." * i Pansopkici LiiriDeKneaHo (i.e. the at Oxford in 1637) in Comemi Opera same treatise which Harthb had printed JDidadica, Part I. cols. 403—454. 16il-45,] HAKTLIB'S PASSION FOK NEW LIGHTS. 215 Such were the varied Comenian views which the good Hartlib strove to bring iato notice in England in 1637-9. Durie and EeconcHiation of the Churches was stUl one of his enthusiasms, but Comenius and Eeformed Education was another. But, indeed, nothing of a hopeful kind, with novelty in it, came amiss to Hartlib. He, as well as Come- nius, had read Lord Bacon. He was a devoted admirer of the Baconian philosophy, and had imbibed, I think, more deeply than most of Bacon's own countrymen, the very spirit and mood of that philosophy. That^the world had got on so slowly hitherto because it had pursued wrong methods ; that, if once right methods were adopted, the world would spin forward at a much faster rate in all things ; that no one could tell what fine discoveries of new knowledge, what splendid inventions in art, what devices for saving labour, increasing wealth, preserving health, and promoting happiness, awaited the human race in the future : all this, which Bacon had taught, Hartlib had taken into his soul. His sympathy with Durie and Eeligious Compromise and his sympathy with Comenius and School Eeform were but special exhi- bitions of his general passion for new lights. The cry of his soul, morning and night, in all things, was Phosphore, redde diem ! Quid gaudia nostra moraris ? Phosphore, redde diem ! ' Naturally this passion had a political side. Through the reign of Thorough, it is true, Hartlib had been as quiet as it became a foreigner in London to be at such a time, and had even been in humble correspondence in Durie's behalf with Bishops, Privy Councillors, and other chiefs of the existing power. But, when the Scottish troubles brought signs of coming change for England, and there began to be stir among the Puritans and the miscellaneous qioidnuncs of London in anxiety for that change, Hartlib found himself in friendly contact and acquaintanceship with some of these ^ This is no fancy-quotation. Hart- motto of Ms life (see Diary of Vrorthing- lib himself, in 1659, uses it in a letter ton, edited by Crossley, I. 163, and to the famous Boyle, as the passionate Boyle's Works, ed. 1744, V. 293). 216 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. forward spirits. One is not surprised, therefore, at the fact, previously mentioned in our History (Vol. II. p. 45), that, when Charles was mustering his forces for the First Bishops' War against the Scots, and Secretary Windebank was busy with arrests of persons in London suspected of complicity with the Scots, Hartlib was one of those pounced upon. Here is the exact official warrant: — "These are to will, " require, and authorize you to make your repair to the " house of Samuel Hartlib, merchant, and to examine him " upon such interrogatories as you shall find pertinent to the " business you are now employed in ; and you are also to " take with you one of the messengers of his Majesty's " Chamber, who is to receive and follow such order and " directions as you shall think fit to give him ; and this " shall be your sufficient warrant in this behalf. — Dated at " my house in Drury Lane, 1 May 1639. — ^Fran. Windebank. " To Eobert Eeade, my Secretary." ' The reader may, at this point, like to know where Hartlib's house was. It. was in Duke's Place, Aldgate. He had been there for more than a year, if not from his first settling in London ; and it was to be his residence for many years to come.^ He was mamed, and had at least one child. — — Reade and the King's officer appear to have discovered nothing specially implicating Hartlib; for he is found living on much as before through the remainder of the Scottish Presbyterian Eevolt, on very good terms with his former Episcopal cor- respondents and others who regarded that Eevolt with dread and detestation. The following is a letter of his, of date Aug. 10, 1640, which I found in his own hand in the State Paper Office. It has not, I believe, been published before, and letters of Hartlib's of so early a date are scarce : besides, it is too characteristic to be omitted : — ti,' Sp* n*^ ^^ "^ ^°™ *® original in Place, London.'- There is nothing of the »-r.U. importance in the letter ; which is •u \-1!^T,^ *''® Ayacough MSS. m the mainly about books Meade would like British Museum there is one (No. 4276) Hartlib to send to certain persons containing a short letter from Joseph named-one of them Dr. Twisse, after- Meade to HMtlib, dated from Christ's wards Prolocutor of the Westminster College, Cambridge, Jime 18 1638, and Assembly. Meade died less than four addressed "To his worthie friend Mr. months after the date of this letter. Samuel Hartlib at his house in Duke s 1644-46.] HAKTLIB : A LETTER OF HIS. 217 " Right Hon. [no farther indication of the person addressed : was it Sir Thomas Eoe 1] " These are to improve the leisure which perhaps you may enjoy in your retiredness from this place. The author of the Schedule of Divers New Inventions [apparently enclosed in the letter] is the same Plattes who about a year ago published two profitable trea- tises concerning Husbandry and Mines. He is now busy in con- triving of some other Tracts, which will more particularly inform all sorts of people how to procure their own and the public good of, these countries.^ Some of my learned friends in France do highly commend one Palissi to be a man of the like disposition and industry. The books which he hath written and printed (some of them in French) are said to contain a world of excellent matter.^ I wish such-like observations, experiments, and true philosophies, were more known to other nations. By this means not only the Heavens, but also the Earth, would declare the glory of God more evidently than it hath done. As for Mr. Dorie, by these en- closed [a number of extracts from letters about Durie's business which Hartlib had received from Bishops and others] your Honour will be able to see how far I am advanced in transactions of his affairs. My Lord Bishop of Exeter [Hall], in one of his late letters unto himself [Durie], uses these following words : ' Perlegi quae,' &c. [A long Latin passage, which may be given in English : ' I have read through what you have heretofore written to the most illus- trious Sir Thomas Roe respecting the procuring of an ecclesiastical agreement. I like your prudence and most sagacious theological ingenuity in the same : should Princes follow the thread of the advice, we shall easily extricate ourselves from this labyrinth of controversies. The Reverend Bishop of Salisbury has a work on the Fundamentals of Faith, which is now at press, designed for the composing of these disputes of the Christian world ; doubtless to the great good of the Church. Proceed busily in the sacred work you have undertaken : we will not cease to aid you all we can with our prayers and counsels, and, if possible, with other helps '] : I hear the worthies of Cambridge are at work to satisfy in like manner the Doctors of Bremen : only my Lord Bishop of Durham [Morton] is 1 Gabriel Plattes, author of "A Dis- book, giving an account of a process of oovery of Subterraneall Treasure ; viz. his for making pure gold artificially, of an manner of Mines and Mineralls though, as he says, not with profit, from the Gold to the Coale : London, One thinks kindly of this poor inven-, 1639, 4to." This is from Lowndes's tive spirit hanging on upon Hartlib Bibliographer's Manual by Bohn; where with his "Schedule of New Inventions," it is added that "Plattes published and of Hartlib's interest in him. several other works chiefly relating to ^ This, I think, must be the famous Husbandry, and is said to have dropped Bernard Palissy, "the Potter," who down dead in the London streets for died in 1590, leaving writings such as want of food." Among other things, Hartlib describes. If so, Hartlib -was a he was an Alchemist ; and in Wood's little behind time in his knowledge, for AthensB by BUss (I. 640-1) there is a one might fancy him speaking of a curious extract from his Mineralogical contemporary. 218 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OP HIS TIME. altogether silent. It may he the northern distractions hinder him from such and the like pacifical overtures. I am much grieved for his hook De KoXvTOTrla corporis Christi [on the Uhiquity of Christ's Body], which is now in the press at Cambridge; for both the Bishop of Lincoln [Williams] and Dr. Hacket told me, from the jiiouth of him that corrects it (an accurate and judicious scholar), that it was a very invective and bitter railing against the Lutheran tenets on that point, insomuch that Dr. Brownrigg had written unto his lordship about it, to put all into a milder strain. I confess others do blame somewhat Mr. D[urie] for certain phrases which he seems to yield unto in his printed treatise with the Danes, ' De Omniprcesentid et orali manducatione ' [Of the Omnipresence and Ilating with the Mouth] ; yet let me say this much — that Eeverend Bucer, that prudent learned man, who was the first man of note that ever laboured in this most excellent work of reconciling the Protestants, even in. the very first beginning of the breach, and ■v^ho laboured more abundantly than they all in it (I mean than all the rest of the Eeformers in his time) : Bucer, I say, yielded so far for peace' sake to Luther and his followers in some harsh-sounding terms and words that the Helvetians began to be suspicious of him, Ifest ho should be won to the contrary side, although the good man did fully afterwards declare his mind when he saw his yielding would do no good. It is not then Mr. D.'s case alone, when so brave a worthy as Bucer goes along with him, a man of whom great Calvin uttered these words when news was brought him of his death, 'Quam multiplicem in Bucero jacturam fecerit Dei Ecclesia-. quoties in mentem venit, cor meum prope lacerari sentio ' [' As often as it comes to my mind what a manifold loss the Church of God has had in Bucer, I feel my heart almost lacerated ']. So he wrote in an epistle to Viret. But enough of this suW^. 1 have had these 14 days no letters from Mr. D.; nor do I long much for them, except I could get in the rents from his tenant to pay the 70 rixdollars to Mr. Avery's brother in London. The Bishop of Exeter seems to be a man of excellent bowels; and, if your Honour would be pleased to second his requests towards my Lord's Grace of Canterbury, or to favour Bishop Davenant's advice in your own way, perhaps some comfortable effects would soon follow. ' My Lady Anna Waller doth highly affect Mr. D. and his endeavours ; and, if any donatives or other preferments should be recommended to be disposed this way by my Lord Keeper (who is a near kins- man of her Ladyship), I am confident she would prove a successful mediatrix in his behalf. If your Honour thinks it fit, I can write also to my Lord Primate [Usher] to intercede with my Lord's Grace [Laud] for Mr. D. He is about to bring forth a great universal work, or Ecclesiastical History. The other treatise, put upon him by his Majesty's special command, ' De Authoritate Begum et Officio Suhditorum' ['On the Authority of Kings and the Duty of Sub- jects'] will shortly come to light. Thus, craving pardon for 1644-45.1 ' HARTLIB : PUBLICATIONS OF HIS. 219 this prolixity of scribbling, I take humbly my leave ; remaining " Your Honour's most obliged and most assured Servant, " Sam. Hartlib.^ "London ; the 10 of Aug. 1640." Three months after the date of this letter the Long Parlia- ment had met, and there was a changed world, with changed opportunities, for Hartlib, as well as for other people. The following digest of particulars in his life for the years 1641 and 1642 will show what he was about : — " A Briefe Eelation of that which hath been lately attempted " to procure Ecclesiasticall Peace amongst Protestants. Published " by Samuel Hartlib. London, Printed by J. E. for Andrew " Crooke, and are to be sold at his shop in Paul's Church- " yard at the sign of the Green Dragon. 1641." This little tract is an exposition of Durie's idea, and a narrative sketch of his exertions in its behalf from 1628 onwards. " A Description,of the famous Kingdom of Macaeia, shewing its " excellent Government, wherein the Inhabitants live in great pro- ■" sperity, health, and happiness; the King obeyed, the Nobles " honoured, and all good men respected ; Vice punished, and ■" Virtue rewarded : An example to other nations. In a Dialogue " between a Scholar and a Traveller. London 1641 " (4to. pp. 15). ^There is a Dedication to Parliament, dated " 25th October 1641," in^which it is said that " Honourable Court will lay the corner- stone of the world's happiness." The tract is an attempt at a fiction, after the manner of "More's Utopia" and Bacon's "New Atlantis," shadowing forth the essentials of good government in the constitu- tion of the imaginary Kingdom of Macaeia (Happy-land, from the Greek [utKapiog, happy). The gist of the thing lies in the jathe? prosaic statement that Macaeia has Pive Councils or Departments of State : to wit. Husbandry, Fishery, Land-trade, Sea-trade, and New Plantations.— — Although there is no author's name to the scrap, it is known to be Hartlib's ; who, indeed, continued to us? the word Macaeia, half-seriously, half-playfully, tUl the Eestorar tion and beyond, as a pet name for his Ideal Commonwealth of perfect institutions.^ In 1641 Hartlib was in correspondence with Alexander Hender- son. The reader already knows how " the Scottish business," or the King's difficulty with the Scots, led to the calling of the Long Parliament, and how for six or seven months (jSTov. 1640 — June 1641) that business intertwined itself with the other proceedings of the Parliament, and Henderson and the other Scottish Commis- ' Copied by me from the original in Orossley (I. 163). Hartlib's original the S.P.O. Macaria is reprinted in the Harleian 2 See Worthington's Diary edited by Misoellauyj Vol. I. 220 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOET OF HIS TIME. sioners, lay and clerical, were in London aU that time, nominally looking after that business, but really co-operating with Pym and the other Parliamentary leaders for the Eeform of both kingdoms, and much lionized by the Londoners accordingly (Vol. IL pp. 189— 192). "Well, Hartlib, who found his way to everybody, found his way to Henderson. He probably saw a good deal of him, if not of the other Scottish Commissioners; for, after Henderson had re- turned to Scotland, at least three letters from Hartlib followed him thither. Here is the beginning of the third : " Reverend and " Loving Brother in Christ : I hope my two former letters were " safely delivered, wherein 1 gave you notice of a purpose taken in " hand here to make Notes upon the Bible. What concurrence " you think fit to give in such a work I leave to your own piety to " determine. Now I have some other thoughts to impart to you, " which lie as a burthen on my heart." The thoughts communicated to Henderson are about the wretched state of the Palatinate, with its Protestantism and its University of Heidelberg ruined by the Thirty Years' "War, and the " sweet-natured Prince Elector " in exile; but Hartlib slips into Durie's idea, and urges theological correspondence of all Protestant divines, in order to put an end to divisions. The letter, which is signed " Your faithful friend and. servant in Christ," is dated "London, Octob. 1641." All this we know because Hartlib kept a copy of the letter and printed it in 1643. " The copy of a Letter written to Mr. Alexander Hinderson : London, Printed in the yeare 1643," is the title of the scrap, as I have seen it in the British Museum. Even so we should not have known it to be Hartlib's, had not the invaluable Thomason written "By Mr. Hartlib" on the title-page, appending "Feb. 6, 1642" (i.e. 1642-3) as the date of the publication. " A Reformation of Schooles, designed in two excellent Treatises : " the first whereof summarily sheweth the great necessity of a " generall Reformation of Common Learning, what grounds of hope " there are for such a Reformation, how it may be brought to passe. " The second answers certaine objections ordinarily made against " such undertakings, and describes the severall parts and titles of " workes which are shortly to follow. "Written many yeares agoe " in Latine by tliat reverend, godly, learned, and famous Divine, " Mr. John Amos Comenius, one of the Seniours of the exiled " Church of Moravia ; and now, upon the request of many, trans- " lated into English and published by Samuel Hartlib for the " general good of the Nation. London : Printed for Michael " Sparke, Senior, at the Blue Bible in Greene Arbour : 1642 " (small 4to. pp. 94). ^This is, in fact, a reproduction in English of the views of Comenius in his Didactica Magna, &c. As I find it registered in the books of the Stationers' Company " Jan. 12, 1641 " (i.e. 1641-2), it must have been out early in 1642. These traces of Hartlib in the years 1641 and 1642 are significant, and admit of some comment : — In the Description 1644-45.] PllOJECT OF A LONDON UJSIVEESITY. 221 of the Kingdom of Macaria, I should say, Hartlib broke out for MmseK. He had all sorts of ideas as to social and economic improvements, and he would communicate a little specimen of these, respecting Husbandly, Fishery, and Com- merce, to the reforming Parliament. But he was still faithful to Durie and Comenius, and three of his recovered utterances of 1641-2 are in behalf of them. His Brief Halation and his Letter to Henderson refer to Durie and his scheme.of Protestant union. It is not impossible that Hartlib was moved to these new utterances in the old subject by Durie's own presence in London ; for, as we have mentioned (Vol. II. p. 367), there is some evidence that Durie, who had not been in London since 1633, came over on a flying visit after the opening of the Long Parliament. It is a coincidence, at least, that the pub- lisher of Hartlib's JBrief Belation about Durie brought out, at the very same time, a book of Durie's own tending in the same direction.^ Quite possibly, however, Durie may have stni been abroad, and Hartlib may have acted for him. In the other case there is no such doubt. When, in Jan. 1641-2, Hartlib sent to the press his new compilation of the views of Comenius under the title of A Beformation of Schools, there was good reason for it. Comenius himself was at his elbow. The great man had come to London. Education, and especially University Education, was one of the subjects that Parliament was anxious to take up. In the intellectual world of England, quite apart from politics, there had for some time been a tradition of dissatisfaction with the existing state of the Universities and the great Public Schools. In especial. Bacon's complaints and suggestions on this sub- ject in the Second Book of his JDe Augmentis had sunk into thoughtful minds. That the Universities, by persistence in old and outworn methods, were not in full accord with the demands and needs of the age ; that their aims were too pro- fessional and particular, and not sufficiently scientific and general ; that the order of studies in them was bad, and some 1 " Mr. Dvu-eus his Eleven Treatises Mr. Crooks in the Stationers' Eegisters, touching Ecclesiastical Peace amongst of date Feb. 16, 1640-1. Pi'otestants " is the title of an entry by 222 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. of the studies barren ; that there ought to be a bold direction of their endowments and apparatus in the line of experimental knowledge, so as to extract from Nature new secrets, and sciences for which Humanity was panting ; that, moreover, there ought to be more of fraternity and correspondence among the Universities of Europe, and some organization of their labours with a view to mutual illumination and collec- tive advance:^ all these Verulamian speculations, first sub- mitted to King James, were lying hid here and there in English intellects, in watch for an opportunity. Then, in a different way, the political crisis had brought Oxford and Cambridge, but especially Oxford, under severe revision. Had they not been the nurseries of Episcopacy, and of other things and principles of which England was now declaring herself impatient ? All this, which was to be more felt after the Civil War had begun and Oxford became the King's head-- quarters, was felt already in very considerable degree during- the two-and-twenty months of preliminary struggle between the King and the Parliament (Nov. 1640— Aug. 1642). Why hot have a University in London? There was Gresham College in the city, in existence since 1597, and doing not ill on. its limited basis ; there was Chelsea College, founded by Dean Sutcliffe of Exeter in 1610, " to the intent that learned men might there have maintenance to answer aU the adver- saries of religion," but which, after a rickety infancy, and laughed at by Laud as " Controversy College," had been lost in lawsuits : why not, with inclusion or exclusion of these and other foundations, set up in London a great University on the best modern principles, abolishing the monopoly of Oxford and Cambridge ? • Of these rumours, plans, or possibilities, due notice had been sent by the zealous Hartlib to Comenius at Leszno.' Ought not Comenius to be on the spot ? What had he been hoping for and praying for but a " CoUegial Society" some- where in some European state to prepare the necessary "Apparatus of Pammethodic Books" and so initiate his new Txi 'oR° .^"^a°*'JJ-" ^^I^'3 '^,'"^^> I- 487 et seq., and Translation of same, IIL 323 et eeq. (Spedding's edition). 1644-45.] COMENIUS IN LONDON. 223 system of Universal Didactics, or again (to take the other and larger form of his aspiration), a visible co-operation of kindred spirits throughout Europe towards founding and building the great "Temple of Pansophia" or "Universal Eeal Knowledge " ? What if these Austro-Slavic dreams of his should be realized on the banks of the Thames ? People were very willing thereabouts; circumstances were favour- able ; what was mainly wanted was direction and the grasp of a master-spirit ! Decidedly, Comenius ought to come over. — All this we learn from Comenius himself, whose account of the matter and of what followed had better now be quoted. " The Pansophice Prodromus," he says, " having "been published-, and copies dispersed through the various " kingdoms of Europe, but many learned men who approved " of the sketch despairing of the full accomplishment of the " work by one man, and therefore advising the erection of a " College of learned men for this express business, in these " circumstances the very person who had been the means of "giving the Prodromus to the world, a man strenuous in " practically prosecuting things as far as he can, Mr. S. H. " [strenuus rerum qud datur ipyoSiuiKTrji;, D. S. JH.], devoted " himself laboriously to that scheme, so as to bring as many " of the more forward spirits into it as possible. And so it " happened at length that, having won over one and another, "he, in the year 1641, prevailed on me also by great en- " treaties to go to him. My people having consented to the "journey, I came to London on the very day of the autumnal " equinox [Sept. 22, 1641], and there at last learnt that I had " been invited by the order of the Parliament. But, as the " Parliament, the King having then gone to Scotland [Aug. 10], " was dismissed for a three months' recess [not quite three " months, but from Sept. 9 to Oct. 20], I was detained there " through the winter, my friends mustering what Pansophic " apparatus they could, though it was but slender. On which " occasion there grew on my hands a tractate with this title, " Via Lueis: Hoc Est, &c. [The Way of Light : That is, A " Eeasonable Disquisition how the Intellectual Light of Souls, " namely Wisdom, may now at length, in this Evening of the 224 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIJIB. " World, be happily diffused through all Minds and Peoples]. " This for the better understanding of these words of the " oracle in Zechariah XIV. 7, It shall come to pass that at " evening time it shall he light. The Parliament meanwhile " having reassembled, and our presence being known, I had " orders to wait until they should have sufficient leisure from " other business to appoint a commission of learned and wise " men from their body for hearing us and considering the " grounds of our design. They communicate also beforehand "their thoughts of assigning to us some College with its " revenues, whereby a certain number of learned and indus- " trious men, called from all nations, might be honourably "maintained, either for a term of years or in perpetuity. "There was even named for the purpose the Savoy in " London ; Winchester College out of London was named ; and " again, nearer the city, Chelsea College, inventories of which " and of its revenues were communicated to us ; so that " nothing seemed more certain than that the design of the "great Verulam, concerning the opening somewhere of a " Universal College, devoted to the advancement of the "Sciences, could be carried out. But the rumour of the " Insurrection in Ireland, and of the massacre in one night " of more than 200,000 English [Oct.-Nov.], and the sudden "departure of the King from London [Jan. 10, 1641-2], and " the plentiful signs of the bloody war about to break out, " disturbed these plans, and obliged me to hasten my return to " my own people. It happened, however, that letters came to " me from Sweden, which had been sent to Poland and thence "forwarded to England, in which that magnanimous and " energetic man, Ludovicus de Geer, invited me to come to " him in Sweden, and offered immediate means of furthering " my studies and those of any two or three learned men I "chose to associate with me. Communicating this offer to " my friends in London, I took my departure, but not without " protestations from them that I ought to let my services be " employed in nothing short of the Pansophic Design."^ 1 Autobiographic Introduction to the of Comenius (1657), containing his " Second Part " of the Opera Didactica Didactic writings from 1642 to 1650. 1644-45.] eOMENIUS IN SWEDEN. 225 This is vety interesting, and, I have no doubt, quite accurate.1 And so, through the winter of 1641-2 and the spring of 1642, we are to imagine Hartlib and Comenius going about London together, Hartlib about forty years of age and Comenius about fifty, the younger man delighted with his famous friend, introducing him to various people, and showing him the chief sights (the law-chambers and house of the great Verulam not omitted, surely), and all the while busy with Pansophic talk and the details of the Pansbphio College, We see now the reason of Hartlib's publication in Jan. 1641-2 of Comenius's two treatises jointly in a book called A Seformation of Schools. It was to help in the business which had brought Comenius to London. It was a great chagrin to Hartlib when the London plan came to an abrupt end, and Comenius transferred himself to Sweden. Thitber we must follow him, for yet one other passage of his history before we leave him : — " Conveyed to "Sweden in August of the year 1642," proceeds Comenius, " I found my new Msecenas at his house at Nortcoping ; and, " having been kindly received by him, I was, after some days " of deliberation, sent to Stockholm, to the most illustrious " Oxenstiern, Chancellor of the Kingdom, and Dr. Johannes " Skyte, Chancellor of the University of XJpsaL These two " exercised me in colloquy for four days ; and chiefly the " former, that Eagle of the North (Aquila Aquilonius). He " inquired into the foundations of both my schemes, the " Didactic and the Pansophic, so searchingly that it was " unlike anything that had been done before by any of my "learned critics. In the first two days he examined the " Didactics, with at length this conclusion : ' Prom an early " age,' said he, ' I perceived that our Method of Studies " generally in use is a harsh and crude one \violentum quid-^ " dam] ; but where the thing stuck I could not find out. At " length, having been sent, by my King of glorious memory " [Gustavus- Adolphus], as ambassador into Germany, I con- " 1 I tave iiot been able to find in the • liame'n't of" wMcli he speaka. ' There Lords or Commons Journals for 1641 may be such, for the Indexes are not and 1642 .any traces of- those communi- ■ perfect'; and there is not the least cations between Comenius- ai)d the Pm'-.' ' reason to doubt the -word of Comenius. VOL. m. Q 226 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. "versed on the subject with various learned men. And, " when I bad heard that Wolfgang Eatich was toiling at an " amended Method, I had no rest of mind till I had got that " gentleman into my presence ; who, however, instead of a " talk on the subject, offered me a big volume in quarto to "read. I swallowed that trouble; and, having turned over " the whole book, I saw that he detected not badly the " maladies of our schools, but the remedies he proposed did " not -seem suffieient. Yours, Mr. Comenius, rest on firmer "foundations. Go on with the work.' I answered that I " had done all I could in those matters, and must now go on " to others. ' I know,' said he, ' that you are toiling at greater " affairs, for I have read your Prodromus Pansophice. "We " will speak of that to-morrow : I must to public business "now.' Next day, beginning to examine, but with greater "severity, my Pansophic Attempts, he opened with this "question, 'Are you a man, Mr. Comenius, that can bear " contradiction ? [Potes7ie contradicenfem ferre ?]' 'I can,' " replied I, ' and therefore that Prodromus or Preliminary " Sketch was (not by me either, but by friends) sent out "first, that it might meet with judgment and criticism. " Which if we admit from all and sundry, why not from men " of mature wisdom and heroic reason ? ' He began, accord- "ingly, to discourse against the hope of a better state of "things conceived as lying in a rightly instituted study of " Pansophia, first objecting political reasons of deep import, " and then the testimonies of the divine Scriptures, which " seem to foretell for the latter days of the world rather dark- "ness and a certain deterioration of things than light and " amended institutions. To all which he had such answers "fVom me that he closed with these words, 'Into no one's "mnd do I think such things have come before. Stand " upon these grounds of yours : either so shall we come some " timQ to agreement, or there will be no way at all left. My " advice, however, is (added he) that you proceed first to do " a good stroke in the School business, and to bring the study "of the Latin tongue to a greater facility, and so prepare '• a broader and clearer way for those bigger matters.' The 1644-W.] COMENIUS IN ELBING. 227 "Chancellor of tlie University did not cease to urge the " same ; iand he suggested this as well : that, if I were un- " willing to remove with my family into Sweden, at all " events I should come nearer to Sweden by taking up my " abode in Prussia, say in Elbing, As my Maecenas, to whom " I returned at Nortcoping [Ludovicus de Geer], thought that " both advices ought to be acquiesced in, and earnestly begged "me that nothing should be done otherwise than had been " advised, whether in respect of the place of my abode, or of " priority to be given to any other task, I agreed at length, " always with the hope that within a year or two there would " be an end of the hack-work." In fact, Comenius went to Elbing in Prussia (Hartlib's native place, as the reader may remember), to be supported there by the generosity of Ludovicus de Geer, with subsidies perhaps from Oxenstiem, and to labour on at a completion of his system of School Education, with a view to its application to Sweden. " But " this good-nature of mine in yielding to the Swedes vehe- " mently displeased my English friends ; and they sought to " draw me back from my bargain by a long epistle, most full " of reasons. ' A sufficient specimen,' they argued, ' had been " given in Didactics ; the path of farther rectification in that " department was open enough : not yet so in Eeal Science. "Others could act in the former department, and every- " where there were rising up Schoolmasters provoking each " other to industry by mutual emulation ; whereas the foun- " dations of Pansophia were not yet sufficiently laid bare. " Infinitely more profit would redound to the public from an " explanation of the ways of true Wisdom than from little " trifles about Latin.' Much more in the same strain ; and " S. H. [Samuel Hartlib] added, ' Quo, moriture, ruis ? " miiioraque viribus audes ? ' in this poetical solecism " [Come- nius calls the hexameter a solecism, I suppose, on account of the false quantity it contains in the word minora], "reproaching my inconsiderateness. Eejoiced by this recall " into the road- royal, I sent on this letter to Sweden ; and, " nothing doubting that they would come round to the argu- " merit's there expressed, I gave mysfelf up wholly to my Q 2 228 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY 01" HIS TIME. "Pansophics, whether to continue in them, or that, at all " events (if the Swedish folk did wish me to dwell on in my "Scholastics and it were my hap to die in that drudgery),, "the foundations of Pansophia, of the insufficient exposi- "tion of which, I heard complaints, might be better dug " down into, so that they might no longer be ignored. But. "from Sweden the answer that came was one ordering me to "persevere in the proposal of first finishing the Didactics; "backed by saws to this effect : ' One would rather the SeWer, "but the earlier Toaust be done first,' 'One doesn't go from "the bigger to the smaller, but wic&y warset/,' and all tiie "rest of it. Nothing was left me but to obey, and plod " on against my will in the clay of logomachies for eight " whole years. Fortunately this was not till I had printed "at Dantzic, in the year 1643, my already-made efforts at "a better detection of the foundations of Pansophia, under " the title of ' Pansophice Diatyposis Ichnograpihica et Or- " thographica,' reprinted immediately at Amsterdam and Paris."! Poor Comenius ! He had a long life before him yet ; but at this point we must throw him off, shunted into his siding at Elbing, to plod there for four years (1642-1646) at his Didactics, while he would fain have been soaring among his Pansophics.^ Letters from his London friend, Hartlib, would reach him frequently in Elbing, and would doubtless en- courage him in the humbler labour since he could not be at the higher. For Haitlib himself, we find, also laid aside the Pansophics for a time, seeing no hope for them in London without the presidency of Comenius, but continued to interest himself in the Didactics. In fact, however, he was never without interests of some kind or another. Thus, in Feb. 1642-3, or when Comenius may have been about a year at Elbing, Hartlib was again at the Durie business. " A Faith- " full and Seasonable Advice, or the Necessity of a Corre- . 1 -Intrbd. to Part II. of Opera Di- - eighi years in all, there was a break of dadiea. these eight years in 1646, when he ret ii Though, as he has- told us, his turned to Swedento report proceedings drudgery at the Didactics continued for to Ijis employers. • 1644-45.] ■ HAHTLIB IN 1643-4. 229 " spondence for the Advancement of the Protestant Cause : " humbly suggested to the Great Councill of England as- " sembled in Parliament : Printed by John Hammond, 1643," is the title of a new tract, of a few pages, which we know to be Hartlib's.1 Then, in July 1643, the Westminsta: Assembly met; and what an accession of topics of interesjt that brought to Hartlib may be easily imagined. There waJs the excitement oi The Solemn League and Covenant [Ayx^.-rrr Sept.), with the arrival in London of the Scottish Commisl- sioners, including HartUb's friend Henderson, to take part in the Assembly; there was the beginning of the great debate between Independency and Presbyteriariism ; nay, in Nov. 1643, Durie was himself appointed a member of the Assembly by the Parliament (Vol. II. p. 517), and so drawn over from the Continent for a long period of service and residence in England. • . That Hartlib was interested in all this, and led into new positions and relationships by it, there is veiy varied proof. ^For example, he was one of the witnesses in Laud's trial, which began Nov. 13, 1643, and straggled on through the rest of that year and the next. His .evidence was wanted by the prosecution in support of that one of the charges against Laud which alleged that he had "endeavoured to cause division and discard between the Church of England and other Eeformed Churches." In proof, of this it was prof posed to show that he had discouraged and impeded Durie in his Conciliation scheme, on the ground that the Calvinistic Churches were alien from the true faith, and that, in parti- cular, he had "caused letters-patent granted by, the King for a collection for the Palatinate ministers to b by Joseph Caryl ; alld the exact date 1034-7i of the publication (Septi 14) is froia a " In Aug. 1660. S«e Letter in JJiroks's TiIS. note in the British Mits6«m copy. MeJnoir, p. 4, 232 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. The acquaintancesliip may have hegiin some years before that. It may have begun in 1639 when Milton, on his return from abroad, took lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard, or in 1640, when he first set up house in Aldersgate Street. .At aU events, when Milton's Anti-Episcopal pamphlets of the next -two years made him a public man, he is not likely to have escaped the cognisance, of Hartlib. I should not wonder if Milton were one of those "more^forward spirits" whom Hartlib wanted to enlist in the great scheme of a Pansophic University of London to be organized by ComeniuSi and whom he tried to bring round Comenius personally during the stay of that theorist in London in 1641-2, when .the, experiment of some such University was really in contemplation by friends in Parliament, and Chelsea had been almost fixed on as the site. But, if so, I rather guess, for reasons which will appear, that Milton gave the whole scheme the cold shoulder, and did not take to the great Comenius. Quite possibly, however, it was not tiU. Comenius was gone, and was fixed down at Elbing in Prussia, that there was any intimacy between Milton and Hartlib. It'may have come about after Milton had been deserted by his wife in July 1643, and when a few pupils, besides the two nephews, he had till then had charge of, were received into his wife-.ti less household. Would not this in itself be an attraction to Hartlib ? Was not Milton pursuing a new method with his .pupils, between which and the method, of Comenius there, were points in common ?• Might not Comenius himself, in his retirement at Elbing, -be interested in hearing of an eminent English scholar and poet who had -views about a Eeform of Education akin to his own ? This is very much fancy, but it is the exact kind of fancy that fits the certainty. That certainty is that,, before the middle of 1644, Milton and Hartlib were ;well acquainted with each other, had met pretty frequently at Milton's house in Aldersgate Street, or at Hartlib's in Duke's Place, and had conversed freely oh niany subjects, and especially on that of ■Education. Nay inore, Hartlib, trying to indoctrinate Milton with the Comenian views on this subject, had found that 1644-45.] Milton's tract on education. 233 Milton had already -certain most positive views of his own upon it, in some things agreeing with the Comenian, hut in others vigorously differing. Hence, after various colloquies, he had made a request to Milton. Would he put a sketch of his views upon pa,per — no elaborate treatise, but merely a sketch, such as one could read in half-an-hour or so, and, if permitted, show to a friend, or print for more general use ? Urged more and more pressingly, Milton complied ; and the result was the appearance, on June 5, 1644, on some book- sellers' counters, of a thin little quarto tract, of eight pages in rather small typfe, with no author's name, and no title- page at all; but simply this heading atop of the text on the first page, "Of Education: To Master Samuel Hartlib," The publication had been duly registered, and the publisher was the same Thomas UnderhiU, of Wood Street, who had published Milton's first three Anti-Episcopal pamphlets. The inference is that the thing was printed by Milton him- self, and not by Hartlib. It would be handier for Hartlib to have it in print than in manuscript.^ Hartlib must have been pleased, and yet not altogether pleased, with the opening of the Tract. Here it is : — "Me. Hartlib, " I am long since persuaded that to say or do aught worth memory and imitation no purpose or respect should sooner move us than simply the love of God: and of Mankind. Nevertheless, to write now the Eeforming of Education, though it be' one of the greatest and noblest designs that can be thought on, and for the want whereof this Nation perishes, I had not yet at this time been induced, but by your earnest entreaties and serious conjurements ; as having my mind for the present half diverted in the pursuance of some other assertions, the knowledge and the use of which cannot but be a great furtherance both to the enlargement of Truth 1 " June 4, 1644 : Tho. UnderhiU proved, by this MS. note of Thomason entered for his copy under the hands of on tlie copy among the King:'3 Pam- Mr. Cranford [the licenser] and Mr. phlets in the BritLsh Museum (Press Man, warden, a little ^act touching , 12. P. e. 12. . i, t> nr t u m^^Uion of Youth." ilCe tnfa-v iS °iark jj^ ), By Mr. Jo^ . Education of Youth," iSie fntiy in ^^^^ YW the Stationers' books ; without which Milton : 5 June, 1644."— Milton re- we should not hare known the pub- printed the tract in 1673, at the end of . Usher's name. The date of the publi- the second edition of his Miner Poems, cation -is fixed, and the fact t^at the with the words " Written aboye twentjr authorship was known at the time is years since-'' added to the original title, 234 LIFE OK JULTOX AND HISTpBY OF HIS TIME. and honest living with, much more peace.^ Nor should the laws of any private friendship have prevailed with me to divide thus, or to transpose, my former thoughts, hut that I see those aims, those actions, which have won you with me the esteem of a person sent hither by some good providence from a far country to be the occasion and the incitement of great good to this Island. And, as I hear, you have obtained the same repute with men of most approved wisdom, and some of highest authority among us ; not to mention the learned correspondence which you hold in foreign parts, and the extraprdinary pains and diligence which you have used in this matter both here and beyond the seas, either by the definite will of God so ruling, or the peculiar sway of nature, which also is God's working. Neither can I think that, so reputed and so valued as you are, you would, to the forfeit of your own discerning ability, impose upon me an unfit and over-ponderous argument, but that the satisfaction which you profess to have received from those incidental discourses which we have wandered into hath pressed, and almost constrained, you into a persuasion that what you require from me in this point I neither ought nor can in conscience defer beyond this time, both of so much need at once and of so much oppor- tunity to try what God hath determined. I will not resist, therefore, whatever it is either of divine or human obligement that you lay upon me; but will forthwith set down in writing, as you request me, that .voluntary Idea which hath long in silence presented itself to me of a better Education, in extent and com- prehension far more large, and yet of time far shorter and of attainment far more certain, than hath been yet in practice. Brief I shall endeavour to be ; for that which I have to say assuredly this Nation hath extreme need should be done sooner than spoken. To tell you, therefore, what I have benefited herein among old renowned authors, I shall spare ; and to search what many modern Januas and Didactics, more than ever I shall read, have projected, my inclination leads me not. But, if you can accept of these few obsen'ations, which have flowered off, and are as it were the 1 This passage the wording of which might have teen otherwise plausible, clearly implies that Milton was prose- will not accord with the particular cuting his Divorce speculation, with -words of the tract now presented; whatever else in addition, sets aside a and the conclusion is that, whether hypothesis (which may have occurred Milton knew Hartlib or not as early a» to the reader as well as to myself) that 1641-2, when Comenius was with him, the Tract on Education though not the tract was not written till shortly pubhshed till June 1644 may have before its publication in June 1644, been written, and in Haj-thb s hands, when Comenius had been two years in as early as 1041-2, when Comenius was Elbing in London. The hypothesis, which 1644-45.] MILTON'S TKACT ON EDUCATION. 23o burnishing of, many studious and contemplative years altogether spent in the search of religious and civil knowledge, and such as pleased you so well in the relating, I here give you them to dis- pose of." What must have pleased Hartlib in this was the tone of re- spectful compliment to himself ; what may have pleased him less was the slighting way in which Comenius is passed over. " To search what many modern Januas and Didactics, more than ever I shall read, have projected, my inclination leads me not," says Milton, quoting in brief the titles of the two best- known works of Comenius. It is as if he had said, " I know your enthusiasm for your Pansophic friend ; but I have not read his books on Education, and do not mean to do so." Tliis was barely polite;'^ but Hartlib was a man of sense; and he would be glad, in reading on, to find that, with what- ever independence Milton had formed his views, not even Comeffius had outgone him in denunciations of the existing system of Education. Thus : — " Seeing every nation affords not experience and tradition enough for all kind of learning, therefore we are taught chiefly the languages of those people who have at any time been most industrious after wisdom ; so that Language is but the instrument conveying to us Things worthy to be known. And, though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not studied the solid things in them as weU as the words and Lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother-dialect only. Hence appear the many mistakes which have made Learning generally so unpleasing and so unsuccessful. First, we do amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek as might be learnt otherwise easily and del^htfully in one year. And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind is our time lost, partly in too oft idle vacan- cies given both to Schools and Universities, partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, and orations, which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the I The manner of the allusion to visit. Like most high-natured men, Ootnenius rather forbids the idea that Milton had a kindly side to the merits Milton had met him during his London of those whom he personally knew. 236 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. final work of a head filled, hj long reading and observing, with elegant maxims and copious invention. These are not matters to he wrung from poor striplings, like blood out of the nose, or the plucking of untimely fruit : besides the ill habit which they get of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom with their untutored Anglicisms, 'odious to read, yet not to be avoided without a well-con- tinued and judicious conversing among pure authors digested, which they scarce taste ; whereas, if, after some preparatory grounds of speech by their certain forms got into memory, they were led to the praxis thereof in some chosen short book lessoned thoroughly to them, they might then forthwith proceed to learn the substance of good Things and Arts in due order, which would bring the whole language quickly into their power. This I take to be the most rational and most profitable way of learning Languages, and whereby we may best hope to give account to God of our youth spent herein. And, for the usual method of teaching Artt, I deem it to be an old error of Universities, not yet well recovered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages, that, instead of be- ginning with Arts most easy (and these be such as are most obvious to the sense), they present their young unmatriculated novices at first coming with the most intellective abstractions of Logic and Metaphysics ; so that they, having but newly left those grammatic flats and shallows where they stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lamentable construction, and now on the sudden trans- ported under another climate to be tossed and turmoiled with their unballasted wits in fathomless and unquiet deeps of controversy, do for the most part grow into hatred and contempt of Learning, mocked and deluded aU the while with ragged notions and babble- ments, while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge ; tiU poverty or youthful years call them importunately their several ways, and hasten them, with the sway of friends, either to an ambitious and mercenary or ignorantly zealous Divinity : some allured to the trade of Law, grounding their purposes not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, which was never taught them, but on promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat -contentions and flowing fees. Others betake themselves to State affairs, with souls so unprincipled in virtue and truS generous breeding that flattery and court-shifts and tyrannous aphorisms appear to them the highest points of wisdom ; instilling their barren hearts with a conscientious slavery, if (as I rather think) it be not feigned. Others, lastly, of a more delicious and airy-spirit, retire themselvesi .knowing no better, to the:enjoymeiits i64i-45.] Milton's tbact on education. 237 of ease and luxury, living out their days in feasts and jollity; which indeed is the wisest and the safest course of all these, unless they were with more integrity undertaken. And these are the errors, and these are the fruits of mis-spending our prime youth at the Schools and Universities as we do, either in learning mere Words, or such Things chiefly as were better unlearnt." Having thus denounced the existing system of Schools and Universities, Milton goes on to explain v^hat he would substitute. As he poetically expresses it, he will detain his readers no longer in the wretched survey of things as they are, hut will conduct them to a hill-side where he will point out to them " the right path of a virtuous and noble educa- " tion, laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, " so green, so full of goodly prospect and melodious sounds " on every side, that the Harp of Orpheus was not more " charming." The rest of the tract is a redemption of this promise. To represent it by mere continued quotation would be of small use, and is perhaps unnecessary. "We will, there- fore, try a stricter method. Milton does not formally concern himself in this tract with the complete problem of National Education. In this respect the passion and the projects of Comenius were a world wider than Milton's. Comenius aimed at, and pas-r sionately dreamt of, a system of Education that should, in every country where it was established, comprehend all born in that c'ountrj', of both sexes, and of every rank or class, and take charge of them from their merest infancy on as far as they could go, from the first or Mother's School through the subsequent routine of the Public Vernacular School, the Latin School or Ludios Literarius, and the Unir versity. This last stage of the complete routine might extend to the twenty-fojirth or twenty- fifth year of life ; and, though few could proceed to that stage, and the majority must, from sheer social necessity, drop off in the earlier stages, yet all were to be carried through the -stage of the Vernacular Public School, and progress bey«nd that,. where possible, was not to be denied to girls any more than to boys. Compared- with this, what Milton contemplates, or a.^; 238 UFB OP MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. least discusses, is but an important fragment struck off from the total mass. True, he gives a tolerably broad definition of Education at the outset. "I call therefore a complete " and generous Education," he says, " that which fits a man " to perform, justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the " offices, both private and public, of Peace and War." This definition, if meant as verbally perfect, would not have been satisfactory to Comenius, whose express notion of Education, as we know, was that it included preparation for the life to come as well as for that which now is. But, if he had known Milton, he might have let the omission pass as certainly and most solemnly implied, and might even have Uked, for the sake of effect, the practical and straightforward utilitarianism of the definition. But then, when Milton's pre- cise phrasing of the definition was examined, one could not but guess limits in his mind. " That which fits a rmn to perform" are the words of the definition; and to perform what? "AH the offices, both private and public, of Peace and War" are the words that follow. And, as one reads on, the conjecture suggested by this phrasing is confirmed. By man Milton did not mean Homo, but Vir. When he framed his definition of Education, only one of the sexes was present to his mind ; and throughout the whole tract, fr6m first to last, there is not a single recognition of girl, woman, or anything in female shape, as coming within the scheme proposed. But more than that. Not only is it the education of one sex only that is discussed in the tract, but it is the education only of a portion of that sex, and of that portion only at a particular period of life. There is nothing about the Infant Education, or what we should now call the Primary Education, of male children ; and there is nothing about ways and means for the secondary or higher education of any others than those whose parents could pay for such education out of their own resources. In short, the tract is a proposal of a new method for the education of English gentlemen's sons between the ages of twelve and twenty-one. It is this, and nothing more, except in so far as hints in the general philosophy of education may be implied in the plr- ieii-i5.] MILXOH'S TRACT ON EDUCATION. 239 ticular exposition. Milton himself was careful^ ere tlie close of the tract, to avow that he had so restricted himself. It was a "general view," he said, such as Mr. Hartlib had desired, and meant also " for light and direction" to " such as have the worth in them to make trial," but " not beginning as some have done [e.g. Comenius] at the cradle, which might yet be worth many considerations," and omitting also " many other circumstances" that might have been mentioned had not brevity been the scope. All this it is necessary to remember in justice to the tract. It is a tract on the education of gentlemen's sons, or of such boys and youths as had hitherto been accustomed to go to the English Public Schools and Universities. Within his avowed limits, MUton is very like himself, i.6. very grand and very bold. At the first start, for example, he tells us that he would abolish Universities altogether, or roll Public Schools and Universities into one. Here is his recipe : " First to find out a spacious house and ground about it fit " for an Academy, and big enough to lodge 150 persons '' (whereof 20 or thereabout may be attendants), all under the " government of one who shall be thought of desert suffi- " cient, and ability either to do all or wisely to direct and " oversee it done. This place should be at once both School " and University, not needing a remove to any other house of " Scholarship, except it be some peculiar College of Law or " Physic, where they mean to be practitioners ; but, as for " those general studies which take up all our time from Lilly " to the commencing (as they term it) Master of Art, it " should be absolute. After this pattern, as many edifices " may be converted to this use as shall be needful in every " city throughout this land ; which would tend mvich to the " increase of learning and civility everywhere." Milton clearly did not like the deputation of all the higher educa- tion of England to two seats of learning, like Oxford and Cambridge, but wanted his Academies to be distributed all over England, in numbers proportionate to tlie population, and chiefly in cities. He takes one of these imagined Academies as a model, and 240 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOBY OF HIS TIME. shows how it might he conducted. He divides the subject into the three heads of Studies, Exercises and Amusements, and Diet. On this last, however, he is extremely hrief. "Tor their Diet there cannot be much to say, save only that " it would be best in the same house ; for much time else " would be lost abroad, and many ill habits got ; and that it " should be plain, healthful, and moderate, I suppose is out " of controversy :" i.e. Milton would prefer that all the pupils should be boarded in the Academy, and have their meals there at a common table. It is to the Studies and the Exercises and Amusements that most space is devoted. I. The Studies : — Here Milton appears decidedly as an innovator, but yet with a curious mixture of what would now be called rank. Conservatism. The innovation consists in a total departure from the use and wont of his time, in respect of the nature of the studies to be pursued and the order in which they should be taken. There was to be an end of that wretched torture of Latin and Greek theme- making and versifying, and that dreary toiling amid obsolete subtleties of scholastic Logic and Metaphysics, which he had denounced in a previous passage, and which had made Uni- versity Education, he says, nothing better than " an asinine feast of sow-thistles and brambles.' Instead . of these he •would have studies useful in themselves and delightful to ingenuous young minds. Things rather than "Words; the Facts of Nature and of Life ; Eeal Science of every possible kind : this, together with a persistent training in virtuous and noble sentiment, and a final finish of the highest literary pulture, was to compose the new Education. Here Milton and Comenius are very much at one ; here Milton and, the modem advocates of the Eeal or Physical Sciences in Educa- tion are very much at one. Given a lofty and varied idea of utility, no man has ever been more strenuously utilitarian than Milton was in this tract. The very, novelty of the scheme it proposed consisted; in the proclamation of utility asthe^test- of. the studies to be pursued and as ruling the. order in which they should come. — — What,^ then, was, that "rank conservatism," as some might .call it now. 1644-45.] MILTON'S TRACT ON EDUCATION. 241 which accompanied the novelty ? It was that the medium of liberal education should still be mainly Latin and Greek. A sentence in one of the passages of the tract already quoted has prepared us for this. Language, Milton had there admitted, is valuable in education only as an instrument of real know- ledge, a vehicle of " things worthy to be known." But then all languages were not equally fitted for this function, inas- much as ever}' people could put into its language only what it had in its head or heart, and so different languages had come down freighted with very different weights and worths: of matter. Now, what were the languages pointed out by this principle as apt for the purposes of education ? They were Greek, Latin, and Italian, with (on religious grounds) Hebrew and one or two of its cognates. These were the tongues to be taught, and to be taught in, and mainly, of these, Latin and Greek. Of English there is not one word. This may partly be accounted for. The acquisi- tion of useful information in all kinds of subjects was to be a great part of the education in each of the proposed Miltonic Academies; and at that time information on all kinds of subjects was locked up chiefly in Latin and Greek books. All modern or mediaeval books of information, all the standard text-books in the Sciences and Arts, that had been written by Englishmen themselves or by Continentals, were in the common Latin ; the library of such books, original or translated, in the vernacular was yet but scanty. One could not be learned by means of English alone. Well, but Milton recognised a culture of the feelings, the imagination, the sense of art and nobleness, as also something needed in education, and to be helped by books ; and in this respect, if not in the other, were there not available materials and means in the native English Literature? That Literature contained, at all events, the poetry of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and not a few others, rated more or less highly by Milton himself. That Milton did not, on this account, include some teaching and reading of the vernacular in the curriculum of his Academy, may have arisen from the fact that the best in English Literature was then all recent, and of VOL. ni. R 242 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOET OF HIS TIME. such small bulk collectively that acquaintance with it might be expected as a matter of mere chance and delicious odd hours in window- corners. Here he but followed the custom. All Public or Grammar Schools were Latin and Greek Schools : English at that stage was, by common consent, to shift for itself. And yet there were dissentients from the custom, and advocates of the claims of the vernacular. Comenius, as we have seen, had blown a blast on the subject for all lands ; and in Milton's own school of St. Paul's there had been a rather remarkable tradition of English. Not only had the elder Gill, the Head-master of the school, in Milton's time, been a purist in English, and an inventor of new methods for teaching in and through English (see Vol. I. pp. 60-64), but Gill's predecessor in the school, Mulcaster, had pleaded for English. "Is it not a marvellous bondage," he had written as early as 1582, "to become servants to one tongue, " for learning's sake, the most part of our time, whereas we " may have the very same treasure in our own tongue " with the gain of most time : our own bearing the joyful " title of our liberty and freedom ; the Latin tongue re- " membering us of our thraldom and bondage ? I love Eome, " but London better ; I favour Italy, but England more ; " I honour 'the Latin, but I worship the English."^ After this and the tradition of English in St. Paul's, Milton's total omission of English from the curriculum of his Academy is rather remarkable. There are proofs that, when he wrote his Tract on Education, he had settled in a lower estimate of the worth of aU the previous English Literature than is common now, and that he thought the greatness of English stiU to eome. This may have had something to do with the omission. Possibly, however, he reserved a large daily use of English in his Academy which does not appear in the programme. What does appear in the programme is that the curriculum of eight years or so was to be arranged, not rigidly but in a general way, in four classes or stages, thus : — 1 Eiohard Muloaster's " First Part oi howoTer, is not directly from the took the Elementane ; which _ entreateth itself, but from an extract in the Ap- ^efehe of the Right Writing of our pendix to Mr. Quick's "Essays on Edu- BnglishTung (1682). My quotation, cational Reformers " (1868), pp. 801-2, 164A-i5.} MILTON'S TEACT ON EDUCATION. 243 (1) First Class or Stage {cetat. 12 — 13 ?) :— The business here was to be Latin, Arithmetic, and Elementary Geometry. The Latin rudiments and rules were to he learnt from " some good Grammar, either that now used [Lilly's], or any better," and the Italian or Continental mode of pronouncing Latin, instead of the customary English, was to be carefully taught jfrom the first; but as to the first reading-books to be used along with the Grammar, or any method for simplifying and accelerating entrance into Latin, whether that of Comenius or any other, there is no hint as yet. N"either is there any hint as to the manner of learning Arithmetic and the Ele- ments of Geometry, save that the latter might be picked up " even playing, as the old manner was." On another part of the training of this First Class, however, Milton is more specific. Most especially at this stage, the boys were to be inured to noble and hardy sentiments and a sense of the importance of the education they were beginning ; they were to be " inflamed with the study of Learning and the admira- tion of Virtue " ; nay, they were to be " stu-red up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages." This might be done by reading to them aloud, from Greek or Latin, " some easy and delightful Book of Education" not yet accessible to themselves. "Cebes,^ Plutaech,^ and other Socratic Discourses," are mentioned as fit for the purpose in Greek ; and, in Latin, " the two or three first Books of Quintilian." * Most, however, would depend 1 The niVaf (Table) of CbBES of of Cebes, and at least one in English, Thebes, 'a disciple of Socrates. "This '^ This must be some such portion of nii/af is a philosophical explanation of Plutaech's "Moral Works" aa that a, table on which the whole of human relating to Pedagogy. An English life, with its dangers and temptations, translation of the "Morals," by Phile- was symbolically represented, and mon Holland, had been published in which is said to have been dedicated 1603. by some one to the temple of Cronos at ' I do not find in Lowndes any early Athens or Thebes. The author intro- English translation of QniNTiLiAW's duces some youths contemplating the " Institutes." The iirst two or three table, and an old man who steps among Books of this work are an excellent dis- them undertakes to explain itsmeaning. sertation on the importance of Eduoa- The whole drift of the book is to show tion and survey of what it ought to that only the proper development of include ; and it gives us an idea of ■the mind and the possession of real Milton's purpose that he wanted them virtues can make us truly happy" (Dr. to be read to pupils at the outset. He L. Schmitz in Smith's Diet, of Greek wanted to fire them with high notions and Roman Biog.: Art. Cebes.) There of that business of/ education on which were in Milton's time Latin translations they were entering; e2 244; LIFE OS MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. on the ■ explanations and precepts of the master himself at every opportunity, and on the influence of his own example, " infusing into their young breasts such an ingenuous and noble ardour as would not fail to make many of them renowned and matchless men." Always, too, at evening, there was to be Eeligious teaching and reading of the Bible. (2) Second Class or Stage {cetat. 13 — 16 ?) : — This stage, it must be presumed, was to be considerably longer than the first ; for its business was to consist in Latin continued, with Greek added, and in the acquisition through these tongues, and otherwise, of a knowledge of all the useful Sciences and Arts. Here, indeed, Milton's utilitarian bent, his determina- tion to substitute a pabulum of real knowledge for the studies then customary in schools, asserts itself most conspicuously. Here it is that he approaches most to Comenius in the sub- stance, though with a difference in the manner. For what were the books he would exercise his pupils on at this stage, i. e. as soon as they had got through the Latin Grammar, and could make out a bit of Latin ? First, Gato, Vaeeo, and Columella, the three Latin writers on Agriculture.^ If the language of these unusual authors was difficult for the pupils, " so much the better ; it is not a difficulty beyond their years." They would, at all events, find the matter useful and interesting, and might, by these readings, and due modern comments, be " incited and enabled " for the great work of " improving the tOlage of their country " when they should grow to be men. Hartlib, we may be sure, would like this on its own account ; but Milton had an additional reason for it. The pupils, after having read these writers, would have a good grasp of the Latin vocabulary, and would be masters of any ordinary Latin prose. They might then, therefore, learn Geography, with " the use of the Globes and aU the 1 _Cato is the famous "Cato the Cen- one De Re Rustica ; Columella, the sor of Boman histoi-y, or M. Porolus author of a systematic work on Agri- Cato (B.C. 234-149), among whose pre- culture, in twelve Books, lived in the served writmgs is an agricultural trea- first century of the Christian era. I tise, De Re Rnstica; Va^uo is M. do not know that there were any Eng- Terentms Varro (B.C. 116-28), reputed lish translations of these Latin works the most learned of all the Romans, on Agriculture in Milton's time, and among whose various works is also 1644-45.] MILTON'S TRACT ON EDUCATION. 245 Maps," through any good modern (Latin) treatise on that subject, and also the elements of "Natural Philosophy" in the same way. Milton does not specify any manual on either subject. But, about this time, he says, the pupils would be learning Greek. This they would do " after the same manner as was before prescribed in the Latin ; whereby, the difficulties of Grammar being soon overcome, all the historical Physiology of Aristotle and Theophrastus are open before them, and, as I may say, under contribution." In other words, the first Greek readings of the pupils would be in such works of Aristotle as his " History of Animals," his " Meteorology," and parts of his general " Physics," and in the " History of Plants" of Aristotle's disciple, Theophrastus;^ and the purpose of such readings woiild be to enlarge their know- ledge of the Physical Sciences at the same time that they were breaking themselves into Greek. But now; Latin being thoroughly in their possession, they might be ranging at large, in quest of the same and analogous kinds of information, in Viteuvius (Architecture), Seneca's " Natural Questions," Mela (Geography), Celsus (Medicine), Pliny (Natural Histoiy), and Solinus (Natural History and Oeography).^ What next ? Why, " having thus passed " the principles of Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and " Geography, with a general compact of Physics, they may " descend, in Mathematics, to the instrumental science of " Trigonometry, and from thence to Fortification, Architecture, " Enginry, or Navigation ; and, in Natural Philosophy, they " may proceed leisurely from the History of Meteors, " Minerals, Plants, and Living Creatures, as far as Anatomy. ^ Lowndes mentions no English accessible together in "The rare and translations of Aristotle or Thbo- singular work of Pomponius Mela, that PHBASTUS as early as Milton's time. excellent and worthy Cosmographer, 2 ViTRUTius and Celsub do not seem of the Situation of the World, most to have been translated into English so orderly prepared, and divided every early as Milton's time ; but there were parte by it selfe ; with the Longitude translations of all the others. The and Latitude of everie kingdome, &c. ; works of Seneca, both Moral and whereimto is added that learned worke Natural, had been " done into Enghsh " of Julius SoUnus PolyhisioTf with a by Thomas Lodge (1614) ; Plint's neoessarie table for this Booke, right " Natural Historie of the World," pleasant and profitable for Gentlemen, translated by Philemon Holland, Doctor Merchants, Mariners, and Travellers, of Physic (1601), was a well-known book; Translated into Englyshe by Arthur iind Mela and SoLiNua had been made Golding, gent." lS8d-7.) 246 LIFE OF 3VDXT0N AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME, " Then also in course might be read to them out of some not " tedious writer the Institution of Physio ; that they may " know the tempers, the humours, the seasons, and how to " manage a crudity." Text-books are not mentioned here ; and, though some must have been in view for such subjects as Trigonometry, Fortification, Engineering, and Navigation, yet it is clear, from Milton's language, that he meant a good deal of the miscellaneous instruction to be by lectures and digests of books by the teacher. Nay, there were to be more than lectures. "To set forward all these proceedings in " Nature and Mathematics, what hinders but that they may " procure, as oft as shall be needful, the helpful experiences of " Hunters, Fowlers, Fishermen, Shepherds, Gardeners, Apothe- " caries, and, in the other sciences, Architects, Engineers, " Mariners, Anatomists ; who, doubtless, would be ready, " some for reward, and some to favour such a hopeful Semi- " nary." Hartlib must here have rejoiced again. But there comes in a Miltonic touch at the end. Hitherto he has de- barred the pupils of his Academy, it wUlhave been noticed, from all the ordinary classics read in schools. But, just about the end of this, the second stage of their studies, devoted to the Eeal or Physical Sciences and their applica- tions, he would admit them to such classic readings as would impart a poetic colouring to the knowledge so acquired. In Greek, they might take now to Oepheus, Hesiod, Theo- CEITUS, Arattjs, Nicandee, Oppian, and Dionysius, and in Latin to Luceetius, Manilius, and the Georgics of Viegil.^ 1 Of the Okphio Poems Milton must British Museum, I can see, by my test here have intended those relating to Na- of the shaping of the letter « (Vol. II. tureandherphenomena. Of the" Works p. 121, Note), that, while some of the and Days or"GeorgioB" of Hesiod, notes were written before the joimiey *„ r?„i!!? /^?™.?° ^^}^oy t'^^^slation to Italy, or between 1631 and 1638, •cr _„™ /I Toi , , , others were written after the return mere naa oeen an jjinglish translation by George Chapman (1618); and at least some of the Idylls of Theocritus had . ^ dy lis of Theocritus had from Italy, i. e. after 1639. This proves been m English smoe 1588. The Phceno- that Milton kept using the book in his ma and Jhosenwm of Aratus {circ. B.C. manhood. There was, I think, then no ■i.1 Tl-^!' ^ ^® l^now. a favourite book English translation of it. Neither was with Milton, and he had had a copy of there a translation of the Theriaea and the Paris edition of 1659 in his posses- Alexipharmaka (Poems on Venomous ^^?R_^}fi^^^p-(^?7oi-^-P-^Si,Note), Animals and Poisons) of the Greek with MB. notes of his own in the margin. Nioamder (circ. B.o. 150): nor of the In looking at the specimens of these Balieutics and Kynegetics (Poems on MS. notes focsimiled by the late Mr. Fishing and HimtingVof Oppian (otu Leigh Sotheby.m his Milton iSamS&os, a.d. 210). There was, however, as from the ongmaJ book, now in the early as 1572, an English translation 1644-45.1 MILTON'S TRACT ON EDUCATION. 247 Some of these hooks which were " counted most hard " would be, in the circumstances, facile and pleasant. (3) Third Glass m- Stage {cetat. 16—19 ?) :— The work of this stage was also to be very composite. It was to embrace Ethics, Economics, Politics, Jurisprudence, Theology, Church History and General History, together with Italian, Hebrew, and possibly Chaldee and Syriac, varied throughout by such carefully-arranged leadings in Latin and Greek classics as would harmonize with those studies while they relieved them. For by this stage the reason of the pupils would have been so far matured that they might pass from the Physical to the Moral Sciences. Eor Ethics, they might be led " through all the Moral Works of Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, " Pltjtarch, Xaertius, and those Locrian Eemnants ;' but " still to be reduced, in their nightward studies wherewith " they close the day's work, under the determinate sentence " of David or Solomon, or the Evangels and Apostolic " Scriptures." For Economics and Politics, to follow the Ethics, no books are named ; but the Greek and Latin books in view may be guessed. In Jurisprudence, which was to come next, they would iind the substance "delivered " first, and with best waft-ant, by Moses " ; and then, " as far " as human prudence can be trusted, in those extolled re- " mains of Grecian Lawgivers, Lycurgus, Solon, Zaleucus, " Chaeondas, and thence to aU the Eoman Edicts and Tables, " with their Justinian, and so down to the Saxon and Com- " MON Laws of England and the Statutes." ^ For History, "by Thomas Irvine, gentl." of the Lowndes mentions no translation yet Periegetes or Geographical Poem of of the Memorabilia. The De Offidu DiONYSlus Afer (third oentmy after of Cicero had been translated again Christ). Of the Latin Poems men- and again, and others of his writings. tioned — Luobbtius De Rei-um Natura, The Morals of PLtriAKCH, as we have the Astronomica of Mamilius, and the already soon, were accessible in Eng- Georgics of Vibgil— only the last had lish. The book on the History of Phi- been Englished as yet. They had been losophy by the Greek Diogenes Labh- Englished in 1589 by an Abraham Fie- Tins was not yet in English, but a ming, and in 1628 by Thomas May. Latin translation was extant. By the I There was then no complete Eng- Locbian Remnants seem to be meant lish translation of Plato, but individual reputed remains of those Locbian Dialogues had been translated, and he philosophers from whom Plato had had been accessible complete in Latin derived instruction, since 1484. The Cyropcedia of Xeno- 2 To put this in other words, Milton, PHON had been twice translated into to ground his English students in the English, the second translation (1632) Science of Iaiv6iieva, or treatise on the FRONHiros (who had preceded Agrioola Sphere. Lowndes mentions no English as Roman Governor of Britain, and version of it. Urstisius, who is men- died circ. A.D. 106) was the author of tioned for his Arithmetic, is Cheistiah Stratagematicon Libri IV., a kind of Wuezticitts, an Italian mathematician anecdotic treatise on the Art of War ; (1544^1588) ; Riff I have not farther ^^LiANTjs (time of the Emperor Hadrian) identified; PiTlscus is Bartholomew and PoLYiENUS the Macedonian (second Pitiacus (1561-1613) ; and Joannes dS century) were Greek writers on the Mi- Saceo Bosco is the famous English- htary Art. Though MUton does not man John Holywood (died 1256), whose name them m his tract, he doubtless treatise De Sphcera, often re-edited and had them m view among Military Books re-published, was the most popular to be read. Two of them had been manual of Astronomy in the Middle translated into English — Frontinus, Ages. Villani, the Florentine his- by "Richarde Morysine" (1539), and toriau, died 1348 : DaTITT, the French JEhanus by John Bmgham " (1616- geographer, is unknown to me ; ^1). tiyiNTUs Calaber, the nature of Amesios, author of the Medulla Tim- •whose Poem m 14 Books is sufficiently logice and other theological works, is described in the text (really a native the William Ames (1576-1633) already of Smyrna, but called " Calaber " known to us (Vol. IL p. 579) ; and because the first Imovrn copy of his Wollebius (1536-1626) was a Divine Poem was found in Calabria), lived late of Basle and author of a Compendium m the fourth century ; ApoLLONros T/ieologice Rhodius, so called because he lived lUi-^o.] MILTON'S SECOND DIVOKCE TKACT. 255 morning and evening, for Milton's own readings and medita- tions ; the father sometimes with him for an hour or so of music, hut oftener in his own room, "retired to his rest and devotion, without the least trouhle imaginable;" every hour of the day crammed with work ; even on the Sundays those expositions of the Greek Testament to his pupils, and those dictations to them in Latin of portions of a System of Divi- nity which he had resolved to compile from the Scriptures and the works of the best Protestant theologians ! And yet it was out of this quiet and industrious household that there had burst upon the English public that thunderbolt of the Divorce heresy! A SECOND DIVOECE TRACT: COMPILATION FEOM BUCEE. The Divorce idea still occupied Milton. On the 15th of July, 1644 (five weeks after the publication of the Tract on Education addressed to Hartlib, and five months and a half after the publication of the Second Edition of the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce), there was entered at Stationers' Hall another tract, which appeared on that day, or immediately afterwards, with this title : " The Judgement of Martin Bucer " concerning Divorce. Writt'n to Edward the Sixt, in his Second " Book of the Kingdom of Ghrist. And now Bnglisht. Wherein " a late Booh restoring the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, " is heer confirm'd and justif/d iy the authoritie of Martin " Bucer. To the Parlament of England. John 3, 10 : Art '■' thou a teacher in Israel, and know'st not these things ? " Pvhlisht hy Authoritie. London, Printed hy Matthew " Simmons, 1644." ^ The tract consists of 40 small quarto pages in all; of which, however, only 24 are numbered. These numbered pages, forming the body of the tract, are abridged translations by Milton of the passages from Martin Bucer which he wished to introduce to the English public. They are preceded by six pages of " Testimonies of the high approbation which learned men have given of Martin Bucer" 1 The entry in the Stationers' Hall warden, the Judgment of Martin Bucer Register is as follows : — ''^^t^y 15, 1644 : concerning Divvrce, written to King Matt. Summons ent. for his come, under Edw^ye 6th in the 2nd JBook of the liing-^ the h. of Mr. Downham, and Mr. Parker, dom of Xt. : Englished by Mr. Milton. 256 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. (viz. quotations by Milton from Calvin, Beza, Sturmius, and others, to show what a man Bucer was), and then by eight pages of closer type, addressed by Milton to the Parhament and signed with his name in full At the end, after the numbered pages, there is a postscript of two pages, in which Milton again speaks directly, and winds up the tract. The title-page of the tract indicates Milton's purpose in it. His original Divorce treatise had been put forth as the' result of his own reasonings and meditations, without the knowledge that any had preceded him in the same track to anything like the same extent. While preparing the second edition he had become aware that strong support from learned authorities might be adduced for his doctrine; in especial, he had become aware that he had had a forerunner in the famous Eeformer Paul Fagius. Much of the added matter in the second edition consisted, accordingly, in the citation of Pagius and other witnesses to strengthen his argument. Strangely enough, however, he was still unaware that he might have the benefit of a witness more renowned even than Paul Fagius. Not till May 1644 did he chance to learn this fact. " When the book," he says, " had been now " the second time set forth well-nigh three months, as I best " remember, I then first came to hear that Martin Bucer had " written much concerning Divorce : whom earnestly turning " over, I soon perceived, but not without amazement, in the " same opinion, confirmed with the same reasons, which in " that published book, without the help or imitation of any " precedent writer, I had laboured out and laid together." The particular writing of Bucer's in which Milton found this extraordinary coincidence with his own views was the De Regno Ghristi ad Edw. VI., written by Bucer about 1550, but first published at Basle in 1557. There was reason, Milton is careful to impress on his readers, why Bucer, and Fagius along with Bucer, should be remembered vsdth un- usual reverence by the Protestants of England. Coming over to England in 1549, each with his great continental fame already won, they had been placed in Cambridge by the young Edward VI., then desirous of completing and perfect- 16J4-45.] MILTON'S SECOND DIVOECE TKACT. 257 ing the Eeformation of his kingdom — Bucer as Professor of Divinity, and Fagius of Hebrew. Fagius had died in Cam- bridge in the same year, when he had barely begun to teach ; Bucer, after he had taught for about eighteen months, died in the same place, Feb. 28, 1550-51. Both had thus breathed the last strength of their spirits into the Protestantism of England. Nay, they might be reckoned among the martyrs of English Protestantism ; for, when Mary had succeeded Edward, had not their bodies been dug up, as the bodies of heretics, and publicly burnt to ashes in the Cambridge market-place ? Let all this be remembered, and especially let it be remembered that Bucer had addressed his De Regno Gkristi to Edward VI., and intended its admonitions and instructions for the use of that monarch and his people. In that writing Bucer, though he had been dead a hundred years, was still speaking to the people of England, and telling them what remained to be done before their national reforma- tion could be called thorough. Well, in that treatise there was a great deal about Divorce. Bucer had evidently made a study of the topic, and attached great importance to it. A large portion of the Second Book of the treatise consisted of nothing else ; and it was this portion of the treatise only that Milton, partly in delist and partly in amazement at its accordance with his own doctrine, proposed to recover out of the neglected Latin, and present in plain English. Not that such drudgery of translation was to his taste. " "Whether it " be natural disposition or education in me, or that my " mother bore me a speaker of what God made mine own, " and not a translator," is his proud phrase of explanation why he could " never delight in long citations, much less in whole traductions." Even in this case he would only digest and epitomize. Beginning at Chap. XV. of the Second Book of Bucer's treatise, he would go on to Chap. XLVII. ia- clusively, indicating the contents of the successive chapters by headings, omitting what was irrelevant to his own pur- pose, and translating the passages that were most relevant. This is what is done in the 24 numbered pages which form the body of Milton's tract. They are a concatenation of VOL. m. s 258 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. dryish morsels from Bucer, duly labelled and introduced; but they make it clear that Bucer's notion of marriage was substantially the same as Milton's. As respects Mjlton himself, the portion of his new Tract which is of greatest interest is the prefixed Address to the Parliament. It is noteworthy that, whereas the Second Edition of his original Divorce treatise is dedicated to "the Parliament of England with the Assembly," the new tract is dedicated to the Parliament only. The Address makes the reason of this plain. It is here, in fact, that we first hear from Milton himself of the obloquy to which his Divorce Doctrine had subjected him. It had begun, he now teUs us (and we have already used the information), almost immedi- ately after the publication of the first, and anonymous, edition of his original treatise— his style then betraying him to be the author, and some of the clergy opening loud cry against him in consequepoe. This had induced him to bring out the second edition, not anonymous, but openly acknowledged. Though aware of the declared hostility among the clergy, he had not then deemed it proper to descant on that subject, but had, in courtesy, dedicated the Second Edition to the Assembly in conjunction with the Parliament. Even then he had no doubt from which of the two bodies he would receive the fairer treatment. " I was confident," he says in his present address of the Bucer tract to the Parliament, "if anything " generous, anything noble and above the multitude, were yet " left in the spirit of England, it could |)e nowhere sooner " found, and nowhere sooner understood, than in that House " of Justice and true Liberty where ye sit in Council." Here the Assembly is ignored, and the insinuation is that, though he had included (hem in the dedication, it was rather by way of form than in real trust. This had been in Feb, 1643-4, and now, in July 1644, he knew his position so precisely that there was no need for farther reticence. He had not beeij disappointed in the Parliament. He had had hope in thein ; " nor doth the event hitherto, for some reasons which I shall " not here deliver, fa,il me of what I conceivesd so highly." The words I have put in italics can bear no other constructiou 1644-45.] MILTON'S SECOND DIVORCE TKACT. 259 than that Milton had reason to know, from private assurances, ■which he regarded as confidential, that some leading men in Parliament thought him perfectly entitled to broach his doctrine, and would take care that he should not be troubled for it. He was not uninformed either, he adds, that " divers learned and judicious men," both in and out of Parliament, had " testified their daily approbation " of his treatise. With the Assembly, however, he knew it to be all over. Though from them above aU, by reason of " their profession and supposed knowledge," his treatise had deserved a fair hearing, all that he had received was to be " esteemed the deviser of a new and pernicious paradox." He does not, indeed, name the Assembly while intimating this, but only refers to the clergy generally and dispersedly. That he had the Assembly dis- tinctly in view, however, appears not only from the tenor of the whole, but also from a passage in the Postscript, where he hints that such action was at work against him that he might be stopped any day by the official censorship and pre- vented from printing. If, therefore, this new tract should be permitted to appear, only to the Parliament would he dedi- cate it. But, "while dedicated to the Parliament, it was intended for the Assembly. It was a challenge to them. The Eeverend gentlemen had refused to consider the Doctrine of Divorce when propounded by their contemporary, a private layman and reasoner. They had thought it worthy only of denunciation as an impious paradox, destructive of morality and social order. What would they now say to the same Doctrine exhibited to them, chapter and verse, as the doctrine of one of the great European Eeformers and Divines, whose name was often in their mouths, though they knew so little about him? While the Address to Parliament thus makes clear Milton's consciousness that the Assembly were watching him and might at any time denounce him, there is yet another curious strain in it, interesting as an illustration of the writer's character. Milton was evidently divided between delight in having fouiid Bucer his predecessor in the doctrine and a proud feeling of his own self-earned property in the s2 260 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. same. Not even to Bucer would he yield the palm of this discovery ; nay, generally, he did not care though it should be known that, while he reverenced Bucer and such men of the past, he did not think that God's power to create and endow exceptional human spirits had so exhausted itself in that time and that group of men but that work higher than aught of mere discipleship to any of them might be reserved for himself. Here Milton is in one of his constitutional moods ; and it is interesting to observe with what constancy to it he treats the small fact of a discovered coincidence in opinion between himself and Bucer. The following passage will suffice in this respect, and also as a specimen of the whole tract : — " I may justly gratulate mine own mind with due acknowledg- ment of assistance from above, which led me, not as a learner, but as a collateral teacher, to a sympathy of judgment with no less a man than Martin Bucer. And he, if our things here below arrive him where he is, does not repent him to see that point of know- ledge which he first, and with an unchecked freedom, preached to those more knowing times of England, now found so necessary, though what he admonished were lost out of our memory, yet that God doth now again create the same doctrine in another unwritten table [the tabula rasa of Milton's mind], and raises it up immedi- ately out of his pure oracle to the convincement of a perverse age, eager in the reformation of names and ceremonies, but in reaHties as traditional and as ignorant as their forefathers. I would ask now the foremost of my profound accusers whether they dare affirm that to be licentious, new and dangerous, which Martin Bucer so often and so urgently avouched to be most lawful, most necessary, and most Christian, without the least blemish to his good name among all the worthy men of that age and since who testify so highly of him. If they dare, they must then set up an arrogance of their own against all those churches and saints who honoured him without this exception. If they dare not, how can they now make that licentious doctrine in another which was never blamed or confuted in Bucer or in Fagius 1 The truth is, there wUl be due to them, for this their unadvised rashness, the best donative that can be given them — I mean a round reproof [a hint to Par- liament about the Assembly?] ; now that, where they thought to be most magisteriiil, they have displayed their own want both of read- 1644-45.] MILTON'S SECOND mVOKCE J'KAUT. 261 ijQg and of judgment : first, to be so unacquainted in the writings of Bucer, which are so obvious and so useful in their own faculty ; next, to be so caught in a prejudicating weakness as to condemn that for lewd which, whether they knew or not, these elect servants of Christ commended for lawful, and for new that which was taught by these, almost the first and greatest authors of Eeformation, who were never taxed for so teaching, and dedicated without scruple to a royal pair of the first Reforming kings in Christendom [Edward VI., for whom Bucer's De, Regno ChristiwaiS written, and Christian III. of Denmark, to whom it was dedicated when published at Basle in 1557], and confessed in the public Confession of a most orthodoxal Church and State in Germany [the church and com- munity of Strasburg, in whose Confession, according to Milton, Bucer's Divorce Doctrine had been adopted]. This is also another fault which I must tell them — that they have stood now almost this whole year clamouring afar off, while the Book [Milton's Doc- trine and Discipline, of Divorce^ hath been twice printed, twice bought up, and never once vouchsafed a friendly conference with the author, who would be glad and thankful to be shown an error, either by private dispute or public answer, and could retract as well as wise men before him : might also be worth the gaining, as one who heretofore hath done good service to the Church, by their own confession. . . . However, if we know at all when to ascribe the occurrences of this life to the work of a special Providence, as nothing is more usual in the talk of good men, what can be more like to a special providence of God than in the first Eeformation of England that this question of Divorce, as a main thing to be restored to just freedom, was written, and seriously commended to Edward the Sixth, by a man called from another country to be an instructor of our nation, and now, in this present renewing of the Church and Commonwealth, which we pray may be more lasting, that same question should be again treated and presented to this Parliament by one enabled to use the same reasons without the least sight or knowledge of what was done before. It were no trespass. Lords and Commons, though something of less note were attributed to the ordering of a Heavenly Power. This question, therefore, of such prime concernment to Christian and Civil welfare, in such an extraordinary manner not recovered, but plainly twice-born to these latter ages, as from a divine hand, I tender to yoixr acceptance and most considerate thoughts." 262 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIMK. MR. HERBERT PALMER'S ATTACK ON MILTON FROM THE PULPIT. Whether up to this time (July 1644) there had been any open mention of Milton and his Doctrine in the Westminster Assembly, anything more than muttered thunder among the Divines in their private colloquies, can be but guessed. It is quite possible that he was publicly named, and not by mere implication, among the 'Sects and Sectaries generally. There may even be record of the fact somewhere, though I have found none in Lightfoot's Notes of the Assembly, nor in Gillespie's, nor in Baillie's Letters. But the peal was coming, and this daring challenge to the Assembly in his Bucer tract may have helped to provoke it. When the tract was published, the Assembly was about to break up for that fortnight's vacation (July 23 — Aug. 7) which we have represented as so important a notch in its proceedings. Or, indeed, the Assembly may have been m its vacation when the tract appeared ; for, though registered at the Stationers' Hall July 15, it may not have been in circulation till a week later. At all events, when the As- sembly met again, and when, as we have seen, it fell, as if by concert, on the subject of the multiplication of the Sectaries and their insolences, then Milton was among the first attacked. He was one of a batch of eleven persons, including also Eoger Williams, John Goodwin, Clement Wrighter, and some Ana- baptists and Antinomians, whom the Assembly denoimced to Parliament as prime offenders. This fact, already noticed in its place in our general history ,i has now again' to be pre- sented more in detail. The first publicly to blow the trumpet against Milton, the reader already knows, was Mr. Herbert Palmer. He did sn in his Sermon before the two Houses of Parliament in St. Margaret's, Westminster, on the Extraordinary Day of Humi- liation, Tuesday, Aug. 13, six days after the Assembly had 1 See ant^, pp. 1C0-I66. 1644-45.] MR. HEEBEKT PALMER's ATTACK ON MILTON. 263 resumed its sittings. Here is the particular passage in the Sermon : — " But against a Toleration in general even the Covenant itself, in that very Article [Article II.], hath a reason suitahle to the Text [Psalm xcix. 8]. ' Lest we partake of other men's sins, and be in danger to receive of their plagues,' saith the Covenant ; which in the language of the Text is ' Lest God take vengeance on their in- ventions ' and ours together. It is true that the name of Conscience hath an awful sound nnto a conscientious ear. But, I pray, judge but in a few instances whether all pretence of Conscience ought to be a sufficient plea for Toleration and Liberty : — 1. There be those that say their conscience is against all taking of an oath before a magistrate. Will you allow an universal liberty of this ? What then will become of all our legal and judicial proceedings ? which are confined to this way of proof : and so it was by God appointed, and hath been by all nations practised. 2. There be some that pretend Liberty of Conscience to equivocate in an oath even before a magistrate, and to elude all examinations by mental reservations. Will you grant them this liberty ; or can you, without destroying all bonds of civil converse, and wholly overthrowing of all human judicature ? 3. If any plead Conscience for the lawfulness of Poly- gamy; or for Divorce for other causes than Christ and His Apostles mention {of which a wicked hoolc is abroad and uncensured, though deserving to he burnt, whose Author hath been so impudent as to set his name to it and dedicate it to yourselves) ; or for liberty to many incestuously — will you grant a toleration for all this ? " Palmer goes on to instance four other opinions which might ask for toleration, but which are in their nature so subversive of all authority and all civil order that the bare imagination of their being tolerated is, he thinks, a reductio ad absurdum of the idea of a Universal Toleration. What has been quoted, however, will show whereabouts among the Sectaries he placed Milton. He cited him as the advocate of an opinion so monstrous that no sane person could think of tolerating it. And it is to be noted that, though he gives other instances of such monstrous opinions tending to prac- tical anarchy, Milton is the only person openly referred to in this extreme category, and his book the only book. On the same day, Mr. HUl, Palmer's fellow-preacher before 264 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. Parliament, referred hy implication to Eoger Williams's Bloody Tenent, whicli had been burnt by the hangman a day or two before; and here was Palmer mentioning, with less reserve, Milton's Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce as richly deserving the same fate. WUliams, we know, was happily on his way back to America at the time ; but Milton was at hand, in his house in Aldersgate Street, whenever he should be wanted. To be preached at before the two Houses of Parliament, on a solemn Fast Day, by an eminent Divine of the West- minster Assembly, was, I should say, a ten times greater trial of a man's equanimity in those days than it would be in these to waken one morning and find oneself the subject of a scathing onslaught in the columns of the leading newspaper. It was positively the worst blast from the black trumpet of the wind-god .iEolus then possible for any inhabitant of England; and not even that poor company of suitors to whom, in Chaucer's poem, fickle Queen Fame awarded this black blast from the wind-god, instead of the blast of praise from his golden trumpet which they were expecting, can have been more discomfited than most persons would have been had they been in Milton's place a day or two after Palmer's sermon.^ What did this .lEoIus, but he Took out his blacke trumpe of brass, That fouler than the Devil was, And gan this trumpe for to blow As all the world should overthrow. Throughout every regioun Went this foule trumpe's soun, As swift as pellet out of gun When fire is in the powder run ; And such a smoke gan outwend Out of the foule trumpe's end, Black, blue, greenish, swartish, red. As doth where that men melt lead, Lo ! all on high from the tewelle. And thereto one thing saw I well — 1 Cromwell was away with the Army; with the other Scottish Commissioners; but Vane may have heard Pahner's and he was delighted with Palmer's sermon. Baillie was certainly present, outspokenness. See anU, p 182. 1644-45.] THE STATIONEKS' COMPANy AND BOOK-CENSORSHIP. 265 That, the farther that it ran, The greater waxen it began, As doth the river from a well ; And it stank as the pit of &11.^ THE STATIONERS COMPANY AND ENGLISH BOOK-CENSOESHIP : THE FEINTING OEDINANCE OF JUNE 1643 : MILTON COM- PLAINED OF TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS FOE BEEACH OF THE SAME. Among the haunts and corners of London into which the smoke of Mr. Palmer's pulpit-blast against Milton had pene- trated, and where it had whirled and eddied most persistently, was the Hall of the Stationers' Company, the centre of the London book-trade. Actually, as the reader has been in- formed {antl pp. 164-5), Palmer's sermon, and the general frenzy of the Assembly on the subject of the increase of heresy and schism, had so perturbed the whole society of booksellers -that, on Saturday the 24th of August, the eleventh day after the sermon, they presented a petition to the Commons, exonerating themselves from all respon- sibility in the growing evil, and pointing out that the blasphemous and pernicious opinions complained of were ven- tilated in unlicensed and unregistered pamphlets, grievous to the soul of the regular book-trade, injurious to its pockets, and contrary to the express ordinance, of Parliament. That such was the tenor of the Petition of the Stationers, and that they gave instances of illegal pamphlets of the kind described, and laid stress on Milton's Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce as one most flagrant instance, appears from the action of the House of Commons in consequence. Without a day's delay (Aug. 26), the Commons referred the Petition to "the Com- mittee for Printing," with instructions to hear parties, consider the whole business, consult the existing Parliamentary Ordi- nance for the regulation of Printing, and bring in a new or supplementary Ordinance with all convenient speed. They were likewise "diligently to inquire out" the authors, 1 Chaucer's " House of Fame," III. 546-564. Tewelle is the trumpet's mouth (French tuyau, pipe or nozzle). 266 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. printers, and publishers of the Divorce Pamphlet, and of another, then in circulation, against the Immortality of the Soul. That the Committee might have fresh energy in it for the purpose, four new members were added, viz. Sir Philip Stapleton, Sir Thomas Widdrington, Mr. Stephens, and Mr. Baynton.^ Here then, in the end of August 1644, Milton was not only within the smoke of infamy blown upon him by Palmer's sermon, but also within the clutches of a Parliamentary Committee. They might call him to account not only for publishing dangerous and unusual opinions, but also for having broken the Parliamentary Ordinance for the regula- tion of Printing. We must now explain distinctly what that Ordinance was. Prom the beginning of the Long Parliament, as we know sufficiently by this time, there had been a relaxation, or rather a total break-down, of the former laws for the regula- tion of the Press. In the newly-found liberty of the nation to think and to speak, all bonds of censorship were burst, and books of all kinds, but especially pamphlets on the current questions, were sent forth by their authors very much at their own discretion. The proportion of those that went through the legal ceremonial of being authorized by an appointed licenser, and registered in the Stationers' books by the Company's clerk under farther order from one of the Company's wardens, must, I should say, have been quite inconsiderable in comparison with the number that flew about printed anywhere and anyhow. Milton had been con- spicuously careless or bold in this respect. Not one of his five Anti-Episcopal pamphlets, published in 1641 and 1642, had been licensed or registered ; nor did any one of them bear his name, though he made no real concealment of that, and though each of them bore the printer's or publisher's name, or the address of the shop where it was on sale. Milton's friends, the Smectymnuans, had attended to the legal punc- tualities in some of their publications ; but Milton's practice I See the text of the order, and, pp. members of Committee from the Com- 164-5 ; I now add the names of the new mons Journals, Aug. 26, 1644, 1644-45.] THE STATIONEES' COMPANY AND BOOK-CENSORSHIP. 267 seems to have been the more general one among authors and pamphleteers. Nor did they need to resort any longer to clandestine presses, or to printers and hooksellers who, not being members of the Stationers' Company, had no title to engage in such book-commerce at all, and were liable to pro- secution for doing so. Even regular booksellers and printers ■who were freemen of the Stationers' Company had been in- fected by the general lawlessness, and had fallen into the habit of publishing books and pamphlets without caring whether they were licensed, and without taking the trouble of registering their copyright ; whicli, indeed, they could hardly do if the books were unlicensed. All Milton's Anti- Episcopal pamphlets, I think, were published by such regular printers or booksellers. But worse and worse. Some of the less scrupulous members of the Stationers' Company had found an undue advantage in this lax conduct of the book- business, and had begun to reprint and vend books the copy- right in which belonged to their brethren in the trade. This last being the sorest evil, it was perhaps as much in conse- quence of repeated representations of its prevalence by the authorities of the Stationers' Company as on any grounds of public damage by the circulation of political libels and false opinions, that the Parliament still kept up the fiction of a law, and made attempt after attempt to regain the control of the Press. That they did so is the fact. Entries on the subject — sometimes in the form of notices of petitions from the Stationers' Company, sometimes in that of injunctions by Parliament to the Stationers' Company to be more vigilant — are found at intervals in the Journals of both Houses through 1641 and 1642. Particular books were condemned, and their authors inquired after or called to account, and offending printers and publishers were also brought to trouble. The Parliament had even tried to institute a new agency of censor- ship in the form of Committees for Printing, and licensers appointed by these Committees. Such licensers were either members of Parliament selected for the duty, or Parlia- mentary officials, or persons out-of-doors in whom Parliament could trust. Through 1641 and 1642 I find the following per- 268 UJTE OP MILTON AND HISTORY (.)F HIS TIME. sons, among otliers, licensing books — John Pym, Sir Edward Deering, the elder Sir Henry Vane, Mr. (Century) White, and a Dr. Wykes ; but I find evidence that the Parliament and its Committees for Printing had really, in a great measure, to leave the licensing of books to the Wardens of the Stationers' Company.-^ In short, the Press had escaped all effective supervision whatsoever. This is most strikingly proved by the Stationers' Eegisters for 1642. While for the previous year, ending Dec. 31, 1641, the total number of entries on the Kegister had been 240, the total number in this year, ending Dec. 31, 1642, was only 76 ; of which 76 less than half fell in the second half of the year, when the Civil War had just commenced. Actually, of all the publications which came out this year in England, not more than at the rate of three a fortnight regularly registered throughout the whole year, and hardly more than one a week during the second half of the year! Clearly, censorship and registration had then become an absolute farce. The same state of things continued into the first half of the year 1643. Between Jan. 1 of that year (Jan. 1, 1642-3, as we now mark it) and July 4, 1 find the number of entries to have been not more than 35 — still a preposterously small number in proportion to the crowd of publications which these six months must have produced. But exactly at the middle of this year the Eegisters exhibit a remarkable pheno- menon. Although in the first half of the year only 35 new publications had been registered, the entries in the second half of the year swell suddenly to 333, or ten times as many as in the first half. In the month of July alone there were 63 entries, or nearly twice as many as in the preceding six months together; in August there were 57 ; in September 58; in October 48 ; in November 56 ; and in December 51. Little wonder that, on going over the Eegisters long ago, I made this note in connexion with the year 1643: "Curious year: the swelling out in the latter half, so that only 35 in first half and 333 in second: inquire into causes." I ought to have known the chief cause at the time I made the note. It 1 My MS. notes from the Stationers' Registers for the years named. 1644-45.] PRINTING ORDINANCE OF JUNE 1643. 269 was the passing, in June 1643, of a new, strict, and minutely framed Ordinance for Printing. Forced by tlie public necessities of the case, including the necessity of preventing the diffusion of Eoyalist tracts and sheets of intelligence, or by the trade complaints of the Stationers' Company, or by both combined, the Commons at last addressed themselves to the subject resolutely. On June 10 an " Ordinance to prevent and suppress the Licence of Printing" was read in their House, agreed to, and sent to the Lords; on June 14 the Lords concurred, and signified their concurrence to the Commons ; and, certain farther arrange- ments of detail having been made by the Commons on the 16th, the 20th, and the 21st of the same month, the Ordi- nance forthwith came into operation. The Ordinance (with the omission of clauses relative to printing of Parliamentary papers and to mere piracy of copyrights) is as follows : — " Whereas divers good orders have been lately made by both " Houses of Parliament for suppressing the late great abuses and " frequent disorders in printing many forged, scandalous, seditious, " libellous and unlicensed Papers, Pamphlets and Books, to the " great defamation of Eeligion and Government — ■which orders " (notwithstanding the diligence of the Company of Stationers to " put them in full execution) have taken little or no effect, by " reason the Bill in preparation for the redress of the said disorders " hath hitherto been retarded through the present distractions, and " very many, as well Stationers and Printers, as others of sundry " other professions not free of the Stationers' Company, have tajsen " upon them to set up sundry private printing-presses in corners, " aud to print, vend, publish and disperse Books, Pamphlets and " Papers, in such multitudes that no industry could be sufficient " to discover or bring to punishment all the several abounding " delinquents ... It is therefore ordered that no . . . Book, " Pamphlet, Paper, nor part of any such Book, Pamphlet or Paper, " shall from henceforth be printed, bound, stitched, or put to sale " by any person or persons whatsoever, unless the same be first " approved of and licensed under the hands of such person or per- " sons as both or either of the said Houses shall appoint for the " licensing of the same, and entered in the Ecgister Book of the " Company of Stationers according to ancient custom, and the " Printer thereof to put his name thereto. . . . And the Master " and Wardens of the said Company, the Gentleman-Usher of the " House of Peers, the Sergeant of the Commons House, and their " Deputies ... are hereby authorized and required from time to time 270 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOBY OF HIS TIME. " to make diligent search, in all places where they shall think meet " for all unlicensed priating-presses . . . and to seize and carry " away such printing-presses . . . and likewise to make diligent " search in all suspected printing-houses, warehouses, shops and "other places . . . and likewise to apprehend all Authors, Printers, " and other persons whatsoever employed in compiling, printing, " stitching, binding, publishing and dispersing of the said scandal- " ous, unlicensed and unwarrantable Papers, Books and Pamphlets "... and to bring them afore either of the Houses, or the Com- " mittee of Examinations, that so they may receive such further " punishments as their offences shall demerit. . . . And allJustioes " of the Peace, Captains, Constables and other officers, are hereby " ordered and required to be aiding and assisting to the foresaid " persons in the due execution of all and singular the premises, and " in the apprehension of offenders against the same, and, in case of " opposition, to break open doors and locks. — And it is further " ordered that this Order be forthwith printed and published, to " the end that notice may be taken thereof, and all contemners of " it left inexcusable." Such was the famous Ordinance for Printing of the Long Parliament, dated June 14, 1643. Within a week after- wards it was brought into working trim by the nomination of the persons to whom the business of licensing was to be entrusted. For Books of Divinity a staff of twelve Divines was appointed, the imprimatur of any one of whom should be sufficient — to wit : Mr. Thomas Gataker, Mr. Cali- BUTE Downing, Dr. Thomas Temple, Mr. Joseph Caryl, Mr. Edmund Calamy, Mr. Charles Herle, Mr. Obadiah Sedgwick, Mr. Carter of Yorkshire, Mr. John Downham, Mr. James Ceaneord, Mr. Bacheler, and Mr. John Ellis, junior. The first seven of these, it will be noted (if not also the eighth), were members of the Westminster Assem- bly; the others were, I think, all parish -ministers in or near London. For what we should call Miscellaneous Litera- ture, including Poetry, History, and Philosophy, the licensers appointed were Sir Nathaniel Brent (Judge of the Pre- rogative Court), Mr. John Langley (successor of Gill the younger in the Head-mastership of St. Paul's School), and Mr. Faenabie. The licensing of Law-Books was to belong to certain designated Judges and Serjeants-at-law ; of Books of Heraldiy, to the three Herald Kings at Arms; of Mathe- 1644-45.] MILTON'S NEGLECT OF THE PRINTING OEDINANOE. 271 matical Books, Almanacks, and Prognostications, to the Reader in Mathematics at Gresham College for the time being, or a certain Mr. Booker instead ; and for things of no consequence — viz. "small pamphlets, portraitures, pictures and the like " — the Clerk of the Stationers' Company for the time being was to be authority enough.^ The effects of this new Ordinance of Parliament were immediately visible. Whether because Parliament itself now seemed in earnest for the control of the Press, or because the new staff of licensers were determined to exer- cise their powers and earn their perquisites, or because the Master and Wardens of the Stationers' Company then in office felt their hands strengthened and worked hard (Mr. Samuel Bourne was Master, and Mr. Samuel Man and Mr. Eichard Whittaker were Wardens), certain it is that authors, printers, and publishers were brought at once into greater obedience. Ten times as many books, pamphlets and papers, we have shown, were duly licensed and registered in the second half of the year 1643, or from the date of the new Ordinance onwards, as had been licensed and registered in the preceding half-year.^ Now, it so chanced tha,t the first edition of Milton's Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce had been ready for the press exactly after the new Ordinance had come into operation. What had been his behaviour? He had paid no attention to the Ordinance whatever. He had been one of those " contemners " of it whom the Ordinance itself had taken the precaution of rendering inexcusable by the clause ordering its own publication! The treatise had appeared on or about the 3rd of August, unlicensed and unregistered, just as its predecessors, the Anti-Episcopal pamphlets, had been. Nay, there was this difference, that there was no 1 The Ordinance is printed in the feMijfe«cer«,&o. that were now registered. Lords Journals under date June 14, These news-sheets of the Civil War, 1644. Eushworth prints it under the the infant forms of our newspapers, same date (V. 335-6), and adds the had previously appeared at will ; and names of the licensers, as appointed by there seems to have been particular the Commons June 20 and 21. activity in bringing them under the 2 1 ought to note, however, that the operation of the Ordinance, so as to swelling-out is caused chiefly by the deprive Boyalism of the aid of the shoals of Mercuries, Biumals, ^ctovis, In- Press. 272 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. printer's full name on the title-page of the Divorce treatise, but only the semi-anonymous declaration " Printed by T. P. and M. S. in Goldsmiths' Alley."^ That Milton had acted deU- berately in all this there can be no doubt. Not that we need suppose him to have made it a point of honour to outbrave the new law in general by continuing to publish without a licence; but because, in this particular case, he had no choice but to do so, and did not mind doing so. He wanted to publish his new Doctrine of Divorce : was he to go the round of the twelve Eeverend Gentlemen who had just been appointed licensers of all books of Theology and Ethics, and wait till he found one of them sufficiently obtuse, or sufficiently asleep, to give his imprimatur to a doctrine so shocking? Clearly, nothing remained but to get any printer to undertake the treatise that would print it in its unlicensed state, the printer trusting the author and both running the risk. Whatever hesitations the printer may have had, Milton had none. He had taken no pains to conceal the authorship; and, when he found the doctrine of the treatise in disrepute, he had disdained even the pretence of the anonymous. The second edition, published in February 1643-4, appeared, as the first had done, without licence or registration, and indeed with no more distinct imprint at the foot of the title-page than " London, Imprinted in the yeare 1664 " ; but, to make up for this informality, it contained Milton's dedication to the Parliament and the Assembly signed with his name. It was as if he said, " I do break your Ordinance for Printing, but I let you know who I am that do so." Since then Milton had published two more pamphlets — his Tract on Education, addressed to Hartlib (June 1644), and his Bucer Tract, con- tinuing the Divorce subject (July 1644). In both of these he had conformed to the Ordinance. Both are duly registered in the Stationers' Books, the former as having been licensed by Mr. Cranford {anth, p. 233), the latter by Mr. Downham {ante, p. 255). In licensing the new Divorce Tract, even though it did consist mainly of extracts from Bucer, Mr. Downham must have been either off his guard or very good-natured. 1 See fuU title-page, antt, p, 44. 1644-45.] MILTON ACCUSED BY THE STATIONEES' COMPANY. 273 Milton's carelessness or contempt of the Ordinance for Printing had now found him out. The charge of heresy, or of monstrous and dangerous opinion, preferred against him by Palmer and the clergy, was one about which there might be much argument ipro and con, and with which most Parliamentary men might not be anxious to meddle. But here, in aid of that charge, another charge, much more definite, had been brought forward. The officials of the Stationers' Company were chosen from year to year; and the Master for the year beginning in the middle of 1644 was Mr. Eobert Mead, with Mr. John Parker and Mr. Eichard Whittaker for Wardens. It was these persons, if I mistake not, who thought themselves bound, either by sympathy with the horror caused by Milton's doctrine, or by sheer official duty, to oblige Mr. Palmer and his brethren of the Assembly by pointing out that both the editions of Milton's obnoxious pamphlet had been published in evasion of the law. There can be little doubt that the Assembly divines and the London clergy generally were at the back of the affair ; but it was convenient for them to put forward others as the nominal accusers. " The Stationers' Company," these accusers virtually said, " knows nothing of these two publications, and has none of the discredit of them ; they are not registered in the Com- pany's books, and do not appear to have been ever licensed ; and, if Mr. Milton, who has avowed himself the author, is to be questioned for the doctrine advanced in them, perhaps it would be well that he should at the same time have the imprints on his two title-pages put before him — ' PrinUd hy T. P. and M. S. in Goldsmiths' Alley,' and ' Zon- don, Imprinted in the yeare 1644 ' — and asked how he dared defy the law in that way, and who the printers are that abetted him." Such, studying all the particulars, is the most exact interpretation I can put on the Petition of the Stationers' Company to the Commons, Aug. 24, as it affected Milton. There was a trade-feeling behind it. There was a resentment against certain printers and booksellers (probably quite weU known to the Master and Wardens) for their con- tempt of trade-discipUue, as well as against Milton for bis VOL. m. T 274 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. part in the matter. It was really rather hard on Milton. Tor, doubtless, the new Ordinance for Printing had been passed by Parliament not with a view to any application of it to sound Parliamentarians like him, but as a check upon writers of the other side ; and, doubtless, he was not singular in having neglected the Ordinance. Probably scores of Parliamentarian writers had taken the same liberty. Still, as he had offended against the letter of the law, and as those whom his doctrine had shocked now chose to avail themselves of this offence of his against the letter of the law, he found himself in an awkward position. All depended on the discretion of that " Committee of Printing," reinforced by four additional members, to which the Commons (Aug. 2C) had entrusted the delicate task of dealing with him, and the farther task of revising the Ordinance of the previous year and seeing whether it could be improved or extended. They might trouble him much, or they might let him alone. They let him alone. The Committee, I find, did indeed proceed so far in the general business assigned to them. They must have even drafted some new or supplementary Ordinance for the regulation of Printing, and obtained the agreement of the House to the draft; for, though I am unable to find any record of such proceeding in the Commons' Journals, there is this distinct entry in the Lords' Journals under date Sept. 18, 1644: "A message was brought from " the House of Commons by Mr. Eons and others, to desire " concurrence in two Ordinances — (1) Concerning Ordination " of Ministers, (2) Concerning Printing. The answer returned " was, That this House will send an answer to this message " by messengers of their own." The Lords, it appears in the sequel, did apply themselves to the Ordination Ordinance, so that the Commons received it back amended, and it passed, Oct. 1. But I find no farther mention of the new Printing Ordinance. Cromwell's great Accommodation or Toleration motion, passed in the Commons, in Solicitor St. John's modified form, on the 13th of September, had, it may be remembered, caused a sudden pause among the Presby- terian zealots. It may have helped indirectly to strangle 16U-AB.} MILTON'S AREOPAGITICA. 275 many things ; and I should not wonder if among them was the prosecution of the business prescribed to the Committee of Printing by the Order of Aug. 26. The Accommodation Order was a demand generally for clearer air and breathing-room for everybody, more of English freedom, and less of Scottish inquisitorship. If there had been ever any real intention among the Parliamentary people to proceed against Milton, it had now to be dropped. THE AREOPAGITICA: A SPEECH FOK THE LIBERTY OF UNLICENSED PRINTING. One good effect the incident had produced. It had pre- scribed for Milton a new piece of work. This Parliamentary Ordinance for Printing with which it had been proposed to crush him; this whole system of Censorship and licensing of books that had prevailed so long in England and almost everywhere else ; this delegation of the entire control of a nation's Literature to a state-agency consisting of a few pre- judiced parsons and schoolmasters seated atop, to decide what should go into the funnel, and a Company of Stationers seated below, to see that nothing else came out of the funnel : — ^was not this a subject on which something might be said ? Would it not be more than a revenge if Milton were to express his thoughts on this subject 1 Would it not be a service of moment to England? What might not be hoped for from the Parliament if they were fitly addressed on such a theme ? It was the great question of Liberty in all its forms tha t England was thmenga ged in. Civil Liberty, Liberty of Worship, Liberty of Conscience, were the phrases ringing in the English air. But in the midst of this general clamour for Liberty no one yet had moved for one form of Liberty, which would be a very substantial instalment of the whole, and yet was practicable and perhaps within sight — the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. Let this then be Milton's new undertaking ! In the fact that it had been so clearly assigned to him, nay, forced upon him by circumstances, he began to discern a certain regulation, not quite dependent on T 2 276 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. his own forethought, of the recent course of his life. " When " the Bishops at length had fallen prostrate, aimed at by the " shafts of all, and there was no more trouble from them" he afterwards wrote, reviewing this portion of his life, " then I turned my thoughts to other matters — if I might in "anything promote the cause of true and solid liberty; which " is chiefliest to be sought for not without, but within, and to " be gained not by fighting, but by the right basing and the " right administration of life. When, therefore, I perceived "that there are in all three sorts of liberty, without the " presence of which life can hardly anyhow be suitably gone " through — Ecclesiastical, Domestic or Private, and Civil — " then, as I hq,d already written on the iirst, and as I saw that " the Magistrate was sedulously occupied with the third, I "took to myself that which was left second, viz. Domestic " Liberty. That a] so appearing to consist of three parts — " whether Marriage were rightly arranged, whether the Edu- " cation of Children were properly conducted, and whether, "finally, there were the power of free Philosophising — I " explained what I thought, not only concerning the due con- " tracting of Marriage, but also, if it were necessary, the due " dissolution of the same. ... On that subject I put forth " some books, exactly at that time when husband and wife '•'were often the bitterest enemies, he at home with his " children, and she, the mother of the family, busy ia the "camp of the enemy, threatening death and destruction to "her husband. . . . Then I treated the Education Question " more briefly in one little book. . . . Finally, on the subject ' of the liberation of the Press, so that the judgment of the " true and the false, what should be published and what sup- " pressed, should not be in the hands of a few men, and these " mostly unlearned and of common capacity, erected into a " censorship over books— an agency through which no one " almost either can or will send into the light anything that is " above the vulgar taste-^on this subject, in the form of an " express oration, I wrote riyy Areopagitica."^ In this passage, 1 Tbs Latin of the passage wiU be fljund in the Dtfeiigio Smnda pro Poptdo Jififfitca/no. '^ ^ 1644-45.] MILTON'S AREOPAQITWA. 277 ■written in 1654, there is a sKght anachronism. All Milton's Marriage and Divorce tracts had not yet been published : two of them were stiU to come. At the moment at which we have arrived, however, that mapping out of his labours on the Domestic or Private form of the general c[uestion of Liberty which the passage explains must have already been in his mind. He had written largely on a Eeform in Marriage and Divorce, and more briefly on a Reform in Education. In the Marriage and Divorce subject he had found himself met with an opposition which did not permit him yet to lay it aside ; but meanwhile, in consequence of that opposition, nay, of the very form it had taken, there had dawned on him, by way of interlude and yet of strictly continuous industry, a great third enterprise. In any lull of war with the Titans what is Jove doing ? Fingering his next thunderbolt. Eeleased from all trouble by the Committee of the Commons, and left at leisure in Aldersgate Street, through September, October, and November, 1644, what was Milton doing ? Preparing his Areopagitica. It appeared November 24, a month after the Second Battle of Newbury, and the very day before that outbreak by Crom- well, against the Earl of Manchester for slackness in the battle, which led to the Self-Denying Ordinance and the New- Modelling of the Army. It was a small quarto of 40 pages with this title : — AREOPAQITIOA ; A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicens'd Printing, to the Parlament of England. TovKeiOtpov S' iKtivo, ti Tie SeXei ttoXei XpijffTOV Tt (iovXain' lis fiiaov ipipsiv, ex""- Kal Tavd' 6 XPH^w)', Xa/Mrpos tcO', 6 fir) fle'A&ir, Stya' ri TOvTwv karai uralrepov ttoXu; Euripid. Hicetid. This is true Liberty, when free-bom men Having to advise the public may speak free, Which he who can, and will, deserv's high praise. Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace ; What can be juster in a State than this 1 Euripid, Hicetid^ London, Printed in the yeare 1644. 278 LIFE OF MILTON- AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. There was no printer's or bookseller's name to the pamphlet ; and it came forth unlicensed and unregistered. It would have been indeed absurd to ask one of the Censors to license a pamphlet cutting up the whole system of Censorship. Still here was another deliberate breach of the law by Milton. It was probably to soften and veil the offence that the pamphlet was cast into the form of a continuous Speech or Pleading by Milton to Parliament directly, without recognition of the public in preface or epilogue.' The Areopagitica is now by far the best-known of Milton's pamphlets, and indeed the only one of his prose-works gene- rally read. Knowing his other prose-writings, I have some- times been angry at this choice of one of his pamphlets by which to recollect him as an English prose-writer. I have ascribed it to our c owardly habit of taking delight only in what we alr eady agree with, of liking to read only wha t_ge already think, or have been schooled into considering glorious, axiomatic^^ jid British. A s there are parts of Milton s prose- writmgs that would be even now as discomposing and irri- tating to an orthodox Briton as to an orthodox Spaniard or Eussian, a genuine British reader might be expected per- haps to tend to those parts by preference. Hence there is something not wholly pleasing in the exclusive rush in our country now-a-days upon the Areapagitica as representative of Milton's prose. And yet the reasons for the fact are perhaps sufficient. Though the doctrine of the Treatise is now axiomatic, one remembers, as one reads, that the battle for it had then to be fought, that Milton was the first and greatest to fight it, and that this very book did more than any other to make the doctrine an axiom in Britain. But, besides this historical interest, the book possesses an interest of peculiar literary attractiveness. It is perhaps the most skilful of all Milton's prose- writings, the most equable and sustained, the easiest to be read straight through at once, and the fittest to leave one glowing sensation of the power of the 1 That Not. 24, 1644, was the day of King's Pamphlets in the British Mu- the puDhoation of the Areopagitica I 12 G e 9 learn from Thomason'a MS. note " No- seum ; Press Mark '.„'- verab. 24 " in the copy among the 1641-45.] MILTON S ARBOPAGITICA. 279 author's genius. It is a pleading of the highest eloquence and courage, with interspersed passages of curious information> keen wit, and even a rich humour, such as we do not com- monly look for in Milton. He must have taken great pains to make the performance popular. After an exordium of respectful compliment to the Parlia^ ment, the rhetorical skill of which is as masterly as the sincerity is obvious, Milton announces his purpose. He thi nks so hj ghlv of the Parliamej Lt_that he will pay |Ei5r tEe^supreme compliment of questioning the wisdom of one of their o j?TiTTRlipps'"and~ aa Erng"TSem~tD~T epeal^ — He_then quotes the leading clause of the Printing Ordinance of June 14, 1643, enacting that no Book, Pamphlet, or Paper should thenceforth be printed unless it had previously been approved and licensed by the official censors or one of them. He is to challenge, he says, only that part of the Ordinance. He is not to challenge the part for preventing piracy of copyright ; which he thinks quite just, though he can see that it may be abused so as to annoy honest men and booksellers. From a passage farther on we learn also that Milton did not object to a pro- hibition of anonymous publication ; for he refers with entire approbation to a previous Parliamentary Ordinance, enacting that no book should be printed unless the names of the author and printer, or at least that of the printer, were regis- tered. If Parliament had stopped at that Order, they would have been weU advised ; it is the licensing Enactment of the subsequent Order of June 1643 that he is to reason against. Books, indeed, were things of which a Commonwealth ought to take no less vigilant charge than of their living subjects. " Por Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a " potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose " progeny they are." AH the more reason to beware of violence against books. " As good almost kill a man as kill a good " book. Who kills a man kiUs a reasonable creature, God's " image ; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself, " kills the image of God as it were in the eye. Many a man " lives a burden to the earth ; but a good book is the precious " ILfe-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on 280 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. " purpose to a life beyond life." And how had this slaying of boots, and even the prevention of their birth, by a Censor- ship, grown up ? After a historical sketch of the state of the law and practice respecting books among the Greeks, the Komans, and the early and mediaeval Christians, Milton anives at the conclusion that the system of Censorship and Licensing was an invention of the worst age of the Papacy, perfected by the Spanish Inquisition. He gives one or two specimens of the elaborate iyruprimaturs prefixed to old Italian books, and makes much fun of them. The Papal invention, he continues, had passed on into Prelatic England. " These are the pretty " responsories, these are the dear antiphonies that so bewitched " our late prelates and their chaplains with the goodly echo " they made, and besotted us to the gay imitation of a lordly " imprimatur, one from the Lambeth House [the Archbishop " of Canterbury's Palace, where MSS. had to be left by their " authors for revision by his chaplains], another from the west « end of Paul's [the site of Stationers' Hall]." Yes ! but, whoever were the inventors, might not the invention itself be good? To this question Milton next proceeds, and it leads him into the vitals of the subject. He contends, in the first place, for the scholar's liberty of universal reading at his own peril, his right of unlimited intellectual inquisitiveness. "What though there are bad and mischievous books ? " Books are as meats and viands are, " some of good, some of evil substance, and yet God in that " unapociyphal vision said, without exception, ' Eise, Peter, " kill and eat,' " Good and evil are inextricably mixed up together in everything in this world ; and the very disciphne to virtue and strength consists in full walking amid both, distinguishing, avoiding, and choosing. " I cannot praise a " fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, " that never sallies out to see her adversary, but slinks out of " the race where that immortal garland is to be run for not- " withstanding dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not " innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather ; " that which purifies is trial, and trial is by what is contrary." There is much more in the same strain, a favourite one with 1644-45.] MILTON'S AREOPAGITICA, 281 Milton, with instances of readings in evil books turned to good account. Plato's Censorship of Books, or general regula- tion of literature hy the magistrate, is handled gently, as only Plato's whimsy for his own airy Eepublic. What if the principle of State-licensing were carried out ? " Whatever thing we hear or see, sitting, walking, travelling, or conversing, may be fitly called our book." Well, shall the State regulate singing, dancing, street-music, concerts in the house, looking out at windows, standing on balconies, eating, drinking, dress- ing, love-making ? " It would be better done to learn that "the law must needs be frivolous which goes to restrain " things uncertainly, and yet equally, working to good and to " evil. And, were I the chooser, a dram of well-doing should " be preferred before many times as much the forcible hin- "drance of evil-doing." Besides, suppression even of such tangible things as books by a Censorship was really imprac- ticable, and everybody knew it. In spite of the existing Censorship, were not Eoyalist libels against the Parliament in everybody's hands in London every week, wet from the press ? The system was a monstrous injustice and annoy- ance, and it did not answer its own end. If the end were honestly the suppression of false and bad books, and if that end were in itself proper, and also prac- ticable with sufficient means, all would still depend on the qualifications of the Licensers. And here Milton frankly lets the existing English licensers of Books, and especially the twelve parish-ministers among them, know his opinion of their office : — " It cannot be denied but that he who is made judge to sit upon the birth or death of Books, whether they may be wafted into this world or not, had need to be a man above the common measure, both studious, learned, and judicious : there may be else no mean mis- takes in the censure of what is passable or not ; which is also no mean injury. If he be of such worth as behoves him, there can- not be a more tedious and unpleasing journey-work, a greater loss of time levied upon his head, than to be made the perpetual reader of unchosen books and pamphlets, ofttimes huge volumes. There is no book that is acceptable unless at certain seasons ; hut to be enjoined the reading of that at all times, and in a hand scarce 282 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME, legible, ■whereof three pages would not down at any time in the fairest print, is an imposition which I cannot helieve how he that values time and his own studies, or is hut of a sensible nostril, should be able to endure. In this one thing I crave leave of the present Licensers to be pardoned for so thinking : who doubtless took this office up, looking on it through their obedience to the Parliament, whose command perhaps made all things seem easy and unlaborious to them. But that this short trial hath wearied them out already, their own expressions and excuses to them who make so many journeys to solicit their license (!) are testimony enough. Seeing therefore those who now possess the employment by all evident signs wish themselves well rid of it, and that no man of worth, none that is not a plain unthrif t of his own hours, is ever likely to succeed them, except he mean to put himself to the salary of a press-corrector, we may easily foresee what kind of Licensers we are to expect hereafter — either ignorant, imperious, and remiss, or basely pecuniary. . . . How much it hurts and hinders the Licensers themselves in the calling of their ministry, more than any secular employment, if they will discharge that office as they ought, so that they must neglect either the one duty or the other, I insist not, because it is a particular, but leave it to their own conscience how they will decide it there." Closely following this glance at the Licensers and their business is a description of the true Author and his business, and of the indignities and discomforts put upon him by the Licensing system : — " When a man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist him ; he searches, meditates, is industrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious friends : after all which done he takes himself to be informed in what he writes, as well as any that writ before him. If in this, the most consum- mate act of his fidelity and ripeness, no years, no industry, no former proof of his abilities, can bring him to that state of maturity as not to be still mistrusted and suspected unless he carry all his considerate diligence, all his midnight watchings and expense of Palladian oil, to the hasty view of an unleisured Licenser — perhaps much his younger, perhaps far his inferior in judgment, perhaps one who never knew the labour of book-writing; and, if he be not repulsed or slighted, must appear in print like a punie [child] with his guardian, and his censor's hand on the back of his title, to be his bail and surety that he is no idiot or seducer ; — ^it cannot be but 1044-45.] MILTON'S AREOPAGltlCA. 283 a dishonour and derogation to tlie Author, to the Book, to the privilege and dignity of Learning. And what if the Author shall be one so copious of fancy as to have many things well worth the adding come into his mind, after licensing, while the book is yet under the press — which not seldom happens to the best and dili- gentest 'writers, and that perhaps a dozen times in one book? The Printer dares not go beyond his licensed copy : so often then must the Author trudge to his leave-giver, that those his new insertions may be viewed ; and many a jaunt wiU be made ere that Licenser (for it must be the same man) can either be found, or found at leisure. Meanwhile either the press must stand still (which is no small damage) or the Author lose his accuratest thoughts, and send the book forth worse than he had made it ; which is the greatest melancholy and vexation that can befall. And how can a man teach with authority, which is the life of teaching, how can he be a doctor in his book, as he ought to be or else had better be silent, whenas all he teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition, under the correction, of his patriarchal Licenser, to blot or alter what precisely accords not with the hide- bound humour which he calls his judgment ? " The last half of the pamphlet is perhaps more knotty and powerful than the first. Miltou's well-knowii retrospect of •what he had seen in Italy, with his reminiscence of Galileo, occurs here. But his drift has now been made sufficiently apparent ; and we shall best discharge what remains of our duty by presenting certain pieces of autobiographical informa- tion which the pamphlet supplies : — - We learn, for one thing, that Milton did not stand alone in his detestation of the Censorship, but represented a consider- able constituency in the matter, and had even been solicited to be their spokesman and write this pamphlet. Those very words of complaint, he says, which he had heard, six years before, uttered by learned men in Italy against the Inquisition, it had been his fortune to hear uttered of late by " as learned men" in England against the Licensing Ordinance of the Parliament. " And that so generally," he adds, " that, when " I had disclosed myself a companion of their discontent, I " might say, if without envy, that he whom an honest " qusestorship had endeared to the Sicilians [Cicero] was 284 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. "not more by them importuned against Verres than the " favourable opinion which I had among many who honour " ye, and are known and respected by ye, loaded me with " entreaties and persuasions that I would not despair to lay " together that which just reason should bring into my mind " toward the removal of an undeserved thraldom upon Learning. " That this is not therefore the disburdening of a particular " fancy, but the common grievance of all those who had pre- " pared their minds and studies above the vulgar pitch to " advance truth in others, thus much may satisfy." Again, in a pamphlet the subject of which is Books and Authors, we have naturally some incidental indications of Milton's literary tastes and preferences. The most interest- ing of these are perhaps the following : — He was as fond as ever of Spenser, "our sage and serious poet" as he calls him, " whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Ac[uinas." He thought Arminius "acute and distinct," though perverted. He would be no slave even to Plato, but would take the liberty of quizzing any of the oddities even of that gorgeous intellect. On moral grounds, he could not bear Aristophanes, and wondered how Plato could have re- commended " such trash '' as the comedies of that writer to the tyrant Dionysius. His great liking for Euripides is shown by his taking four lines from that poet's Miketides as the motto for the pamphlet. Lord Bacon is again mentioned reverently, once as " Sir Francis Bacon '' and again as " Vis- count St. Albans." There is a tribute of high admiration to the Parliamentarian peer. Lord Brooke, so recently lost to England, and to the tract on the Natwre of Episcopacy he had left behind him : those " last words of his dying charge which " I know will ever be of dear and honoured regard with ye, " so full of meekness and breathing charity that, next to His " last testament who bequeathed love and peace to his dis- " ciples, I cannot call to mind where I have read or heard " words more mild and peaceful." Selden is again referred to and complimented : " one of your own now sitting in Parlia- ment, the chief of learned men reputed in this land." Ac- quaintance, on the other hand, is implied or avowed, on 1644-45.] . Milton's areopagitica. 285 Milton's part, with some of the most notoriously ribald writers that the world had produced : with Petronius Arbiter, and him of Axezzo "dreaded and yet dear to the Italian Courtiers" and an Englishman whom he wiU not name, "for posterity's sake," but " whom Harry the Eighth nameci in merriment his Vicar of Hell." "We may add, that Wycliffe and Knox are both honourably mentioned in the Areopa- gitica : Knox as the " Eeformer of a Kingdom," and WycUffe as an Englishman who had perhaps had poten- tially in him all that had since come from the Bohemian Huss, the German Luther, or the French Calvin. A more special piece of information supplied, or rather only confirmed, by the Areopagitica, is that Milton, when he wrote it, had broken off utterly from the Presbyterians, and regarded the domination of that party in the Westminster Assembly with complete disgust. " If it come to inquisition- " ing again, and licensing," he says, " and that we are so " timorous of ourselves, and so suspicious of all men, as to " fear each book, and the shaking of every leaf, before we " know what the contents are, — if some, who but of late were " little better than silenced from preaching, shall come now " to silence us from reading, except what they please, — it " cannot be guessed what is intended by some but a second " tyranny over Learning ; and wiU soon put it out of con-^ " troversy that Bishops and Presbyters are the same to us, " both name and thing." Again, a little farther on, ""This " is not, ye Covenants and Protestations that we have made, " this is not to put down Prelaty : this is but to chop an " Episcopacy ; this is but to translate the Palace Metropolitan " from one kind of dominion into another." Again, " A man " may be a heretic in the Truth ; and, if he believe things only " because his pastor says so, or the Assembly so determines, " without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet " the very truth he holds becomes his heresy." Again, " He who " hears what praying there is for light and clearer knowledge " to be sent down among us would think of other matters to " be constituted, beyond the discipline of Geneva, framed " and fabricked already to our hands." Again, of Ecclesias- 286 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. tical Assemblies in general, and tlie Westminster Assembly in particular, " Neither is God appointed and confined where " and out of what place these his chosen shall he first " heard to speak ; for He sees not as man sees, chooses not " as man chooses, lest we should devote ourselves again to " set places, and Assemblies, and outward callings of men, " planting our faith one while in the old Convocation House, " and another while in the Chapel at Westminster ; when all " the faith that shall be there canonized is not sufficient, " without plain convincement and the charity of patient " instruction, to supple the least bruise of conscience, to edify " the meanest Christian who desires to walk in the spirit " and not in the letter of human trust, for all the number " of voices that can there be made — no, though Harry the " Seventh himself there, with all his liege tombs about him, " should lend them voices from the dead to swell their " number." ^ Again, he says that, if the Presbj^erians, them- selves so recently released from Episcopal tyranny, should not have been taught by their own suffering, but should con- tinue active in suppressing others, " it would be no unequal " distribution in the first place to suppress the suppressors " themselves." Milton, however, the Areopagitica proves, had not passed away from Presbyterianism only to become an ordinary Con- gregationalist or Independent. In the fight between the Presbyterians and the Independents of the Assembly he would now, undoubtedly, have taken part with the Indepen- dents ; but Messrs. Goodwin, Nye, and the rest of them, had they interrogated him why, would have found him a strange adherent. For he had passed on into an Independency, if it could be called " Independency," more extreme than theirs, and resembling rather the vague Independency that Cromwell represented, and that was rife in the Army. The very notion of an official "minister of Eeligion," anyhow appointed, had become comical to him. It had come to seem to him 1 The original meeting-place of the ter it was the Jerusalem Chamber- Westminster Assembly, and their meet- which had been the Convocation House ing-place in the summer months, was of the English clergy before the Long Henry the Seventh's Chapel. In win- Parliament. 1644-45.] MILTON'S AREOPAQITICA. 287 supremely ridiculous that there should be anything like a caste of Brahmins or officers of Eeligion in England, by what- ever means that caste should be formed or recruited. To curtail proof under this head, let me give but one extract. It is the richest bit of sheer humour that I have yet found in MUton, and is better and deeper, in that kind, than anything- in Sydney Smith : — BEING BELIGIOUS BT DEPUTY : OR THE USB OF A POPULAR LONDON CLERGYMAN. " There is not any burden that some would gladlier post off tO' another than the charge and care of their Eeligion. There be — who- knows not that there be ? — of Protestants and professors who live and die in as arrant and implicit faith as any lay Papist of Loretto. A wealthy man, addicted to his pleasure and profits, finds Eeligion to be a traffic so entangled, and of so many piddling accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep a stock going on that trade. What should he do 1 Fain he would have the name to be religious ; fain he would bear up with his neighbours in that. What does he therefore but resolves to give over toiling, and to find himself out some factor, to whose care and credit he may commit the whole- managing of his religious affairs : some Divine of note and estima- tion that must be. To him he adheres; resigns the whole ware- house of his Eeligion, with all the locks and keys, into his custody; and indeed makes the very person of that man his Eeligion — esteems his associating with him a sufficient evidence and commendatory of his own piety. So that a man may say his Eeligion is now no more within himself, but is become a dividual movable, and goes and comes near him according as that good man frequents the house. He- entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him ; his Eeligion comes home at night, prays, is liberally supt and sumptuously laid to sleep, rises, is saluted ; and, after the malmsey or some well- spiced brewage, and better breakfasted than He whose morning appetite would have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, his Eehgion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop, trading all day without his Eeligion." What light does the Arecrpagitica throw on Milton's notion of Toleration, or Liberty of Conscience, and on his feelings- towards the Sects and Sectaries generally among whom he was now ranked ? It is not uncommon to regard the Areopagitica- 288 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. as one of the first and greatest English pleas for Liberty of Conscience; and, broadly viewed, it is. But strictly it is not a plea for Liberty of Conscience or for Toleration, but only for the liberty of unlicensed Printing. Milton's views of Liberty of Conscience appear only by implication in the course of this one argument. So far as they do appear, it cannot be said that Milton advocated a Liberty of Con- science so complete and absolute as Eoger Williams's or John Goodwin's. He even saves himself from the imputation of doing so. " If all cannot be of one mind," he says, " this " doubtless is more wholesome, more prudent, and more " Christian, that many be tolerated, rather than all compelled. " I mean not tolerated Popery and open superstition ; which, " as it extirpates aU religious and civil supremacies, so itself " should be extirpate — provided first that all charitable and " compassionate means be used to win and regain the weak. " and the misled. That also which is impious or evU abso- " lutely, either against faith or manners, no law can possibly " permit that intends not to unlaw itself." There are hints also to the efiect that, while Milton wanted liberty of uu- licensed publication for all kinds of books, he did not deny the right of the magistrate to call writers to account, in certain cases, for the opinions they had published. On the whole, therefore, in his theory of Toleration, Milton was decidedly behind some of his contemporaries. One can see, however, that he was uneasy in his exceptions, and had little care for them in comparison with the principle he meant them to limit. Practically he stands forth in the Areopagitica as the advocate of a Toleration that would have satisfied all the necessities of the juncture, by giving full liberty not only to orthodox Congregationalists, but also to Baptists, so-called Antinomians, and Seekers, and perhaps all other Protestant secti^ that had any real rooting at that time in English society. His whole oration breathes the full principle rather than the exceptions. "Give me," he says, " the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according " to my conscience, above all liberties." And he makes a brave defence of the existing Sects, without putting a mark 1644-45.] MILTON'S ARMOPAGITICA. 289 of exclusion on any. Those Sects and Schisms, Sects and Schisms, which weak men were bewailing, and the Presby- terians were calling on Parliament to crush, appeared to Miltoa not only something that must be permitted because it could not be prevented, but positively the finest English phenomenon of the time, and the richest in promise : — " The light which we have gained was given us not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge. It is not the unfrocking of a Priest, the unmitring of a Bishop, and the removing him from off the Presbyterian shoulders, that wiU make us a happy nation. 'So, if other things as great in the Church, and in the rule of life both economical and political, be not looked into and reformed, we have looked so long upon the blaze that Zuinglius and Calvin hath beaconed up to us that we are stark blind. There be who perpetually complain of Schisms and Sects, and make it such a calamity that any man dissents from their maxims. . . . Lords and Commons of England,, consider what Nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors : a Nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to. . . . Now once again, by all concurrence of signs, and by the general instinct of holy and devout men, as they daily and solemnly express their thoughts, God is decree- ing to begin some new and great period in his Church, even to the reforming of Eeformation itself What does He then but re- veal himself to his servants, and, as his manner is, first to his Eng- lishmen — I say, as his manner is, first to us, though we mark not the method of his counsels and are unworthy ? Behold now this vast City, a city of refuge, the mansion-house of Liberty, encompassed and surrounded with His protection. The shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers working, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed Justice in defence of beleaguered Truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas, wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching Eeformation : others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more from a Nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge ? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise VOL. III. U 290 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people, a Nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies? . . . "Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for Opinion in good men is but Knowledge in the making. Under these fantastic terrors of Sect and Schism we wrong the earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and under- standing which God hath stirred up in this city. "What some lament of we rather should rejoice at, should praise rather this pious forwardness among men to reassume the ill-deputed care of their Eeligion into their own hands again. ... As in a body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of art and subtlety, it argues in what good plight aiid constitution the body is, so, when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversy and new invention, it betokens us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatal decay, but casting off the old and wrinkled skin of corruption to outlive these pangs and wax young again, entering the glorious ways of Truth and prosperous virtue destined to become great and honourable in these latter ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant Nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks : methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam ; purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the foun- tain itself of heavenly radiance, while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of Sects and Schisms." After this it is bathos to speak of the Stationers' Com- pany ; but we must do so. For, at the end of the Areopa- ffitica there is a distinct insinuation by Milton that the Ordinance he was asking the Parliament to repeal was less the invention of Parliament itself than of some cunning Stationers. " If we may believe those men," he says, "whose "profession gives them cause to inquire most [i.e. some " worthy booksellers of Milton's acquaintance] it may be " doubted there was in it the fraud of some old patentees " and monopolizers in the trade of bookselling ; who, under 1644-45.] MILTON AGAIN ACCUSED BY THE STATIONERS. 291 " pretence of the poor in their Company not to be defrauded, " and the just retaining of each man his several copy — which " God forbid should be gainsaid — brought divers glozing " colours to the House, which were indeed but colours, and " serving to no end except it be to exercise a superiority over " their neighbours." Milton makes a farther and worse in- sinuation. "Another end," he says, "is thought was aimed " at by some of them in procuring by petition this order — " that, having power in their hands, malignant books might " easier scape abroad [i.e. get about the country], as the event " shows." Here was a hit for some of the good people about Paternoster Eow. SECOND PEOSECUTION OF MILTON BY THE STATIONBES' COM- PANY : CONDUCT OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS IN THE CASE. It might have been safer for MUton to let the Stationers alone. For, within five weeks after the publication of the Areopagitica, I find him again in trouble, and all by the doing of the Stationers' Company, in revenge for his past offences and this new insult. The story, as I have dug it out of the Lords' Journals, with some help from old pamphlets, is as follows : — Monday the 9th of December, 1644, there being twenty-one Peers present, and Lord Grey of Wark in the chair, " a scan- " dalous printed libel against the Peerage of this realm was " brought into the House and read ; and this House ordered, " that the Master and Wardens of the Company of Stationers " shall attend this House at four of the clock this afternoon, " to know of them whether they do know of the print and " can discover the author of it." That same afternoon, accor- dingly, there being now but fifteen peers present, the three gentlemen who had been sent for — Messrs. Mead, Parker, and Whittaker — appeared, and with this result : " The Master and " Wardens of the Company of Stationers desired some longer " time, and they will do their best endeavours to find out the " printer that printed the scandalous libel brought into this " House this day ; and this House gave two or three days V 2 292 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. " longer." On Friday the 13th of December they have not yet found either the author or the printer-; but they have caught a poor fellow, George Jeffrey, apprentice to a hosier in Cornhill, who had been dispersing copies of the libel in London. Examined by the Earls of Salisbury and Kent, aided by the Judges, this G-eorge Jeffrey confesses all about it. On Monday morning last (the very day on which the Lords first discussed the subject) he had found two-and- twenty copies of the thing between the stall-boards of his master's stall, put there by he knew not whom. He had taken them into the shop, read one of them, and been so greatly amused by it that he had told his neighbours of the prize. Some of the more unruly of the neighbours had snatched at copies and carried them off, so that he had only two left. When he found that there was a hue and cry on the matter, and that he had got himself into trouble, he had done what he could. He had sent his own two remaining copies to the Lord Mayor, and had recovered six of the other copies and sent them to the Mayor too, naming the persons from whom he got them back. One was an exciseman, one an oilman ; and one or two were apprentices like himself ; but there was also one Thomas Heath, who was actually the Lord Mayor's kinsman. This was positively all he knew of the matter ; and he could not tell where the papers came from, uor where any more were to be found. Apparently the Peers believed him, for he was discharged on his own promise to attend again if he should be called for. The libel, however, seems to have been unusually flagrant. The Peers sent a copy of George Jeffrey's examination to the Lord Mayor, with instructions that he should both give an account of what he had already done in the business and also prosecute it farther. It is not till Dec. 26 that we hear more. On that day, two-and-twenty Peers being present, and nothing having been farther reported either by the Lord Mayor or the Stationers, it was ordered " that the Lord Mayor of London " and the Printers be sent to, to give an account of the scan- " dalous paper printed and dispersed, what they have done in " discovering the Author, Printer, and Publisher." The Mayor 1644-45.] MILTON AGAIN ACCUSED BY THE STATIONERS. ^93 and the Stationers still not responding, the order was repeated more peremptorily on Saturday, Dec. 28, one-and-twenty Peers being present. The gentleman-usher of the House went there and then for the two Wardens of the Stationers' Company, Avho forthwith appeared and gave this account : " They have used their best endeavours to find out the printer " and author of the scandalous libel, but they cannot yet make " any discovery thereof, the letter [type] being so common a " letter ; and further complained of the freqymnt 'printing of " scandalous Books hy divers, as Hezeldali Woodward and Jo. " Milton." Here was an extremely clever trick of Messrs. Parker and Whittaker ! They were themselves in trouble for not being good detectives : what if they diverted the atten- tion of the Peers, while they were in this angry mood, upon other objects ? It is as if they said to the Peers, " It is a very hard matter sometimes to find out the authors and printers of scandalous tracts ; but really the abuse has attaiaed to frightful dimensions, and perhaps the leniency of your Lord- ships in cases where the authors of scandalous tracts are well enough known encourages others. Last August, for example, we took the liberty of calling the attention of the House of Commons to a Tract on Divorce by Mr. John Milton, which the Assembly unanimously condemns as containing horrid doctrine, and which Mr. Palmer denounced on that ground in the hearing of your Lordships. It was our duty to do so, because the Tractate, in any case, was unlicensed and un- registered, and therefore a violation of the Printing Ordinance. The Commons referred the subject to their Committee for Printing, but nothing appears to have been done. And now, as your Lordships have sent for us on this other matter, in which we are sorry not to have succeeded as we could have wished, allow us to mention that the same Mr. Milton has since then — in fact, only last month — put forth another pamphlet, called Areopagitica, with his name to it certainly and addressed to your Lordships and the other House, but with no printer's name, and unlicensed and unregistered, like most of its predecessors. The pamphlet contains some very injurious personal reflections on us ; but we should not think 294 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. of mentioning it merely on that ground. It is very bold and strange altogether, very disrespectful to the Assembly, and is an attack on the whole Ordinance for Printing which it wil- fully breaks. Besides Mr. Milton there are others as bad : for instance, Mr. Hezekiah Woodward." Who Mr. Hezekiah Woodward was the reader already, in some degree, knows. He was that old friend of Samuel Hartlib's to whom Hartlib, in Aug. 1644, had addressed a letter requesting his opinion of Edwards's Antapologia, and who had furnished that opinion, which was published, with Hartlib's letter, in the following month (anth, pp. 230-1). He must have been fond of using his pen ; for I iind him to have been the author of at least seven other pamphlets, published before our present date, viz. The King's Chronicle (1643); Three Kingdoms made One (1643); The Cause, Use, and Cure of Fear (1643) ; A Good Soldier maintaining his Militia (1644) ; The Sentence from Reason and Scripture against Archbishops and Bishops, with their Curates (1644) ; As you were (1644) ; Inquiries into the Causes of our Miseries (1644). The last-named but one of these pamphlets gives at least one additional particular about Woodward. Its full title is " As you were : or a Reducing {if possibly any) seduc't ones to facing-about, turning head-front against God, by the Recrimi- nation {so intended) upon Mr. J. G. {Pastor of the Church in Colemap Street) in point of fighting against God. By an un- loorthy auditor of the said (Juditious pious Divine) Master John Goodwin." This may have been the very pamphlet, or one of the pamphlets, of Woodward which the Stationers had in view when they complained of him ; for it was published Nov. 13, 1644, or exactly eleven days before the Areopagitica„ and it appeared anonymously and without a licence. Out of the confused wording of the title we gather that Woodward was a hearer and admirer of John Goodwin, and that the tract was intended as in some sort a vindication of that Sectary against attacks that had been made upon him in connexion more especially with a pamphlet of his entitled Theomachia. All this, though slight, is not uninteresting. It presents to us Woodward as a London citizen of what mayba 16i4-45.] MILTON AGAIN ACCUSED BY THE STATIONERS. 295 called the Hartlib-Goodwin connexion, and possibly therefore known to Milton personally. He lived in Alderm anbury, and Avas addicted to writing pamphlets. From what I have read of them I judge him to have been a mild, hazy-headed per- son, with a liking for indefiniteness and elbow-room rather than Presbyterian strictness, and therefore ranking among the Sectaries, but of such small mark individually that, but for his incidental association with Milton in the business under notice, we should not now have had any particular interest in inquiring about him. For some reason or other, however, the Stationers thought him worth their hostility. Had they any trade dislike to Hartlib ? It is somewhat curious that the two persons they selected to be complained against were two of Hartlib's friends.^ To resume our story from the Lords' Journals : — The device of the two Wardens for diverting the attention of the Peers was for the moment successful. The Peers on the same day (Sat. Dec. 28), as soon as the Wardens had with- drawuj passed this order : " Hereupon it is ordered, that it be "referred to Mr. Justice Beeves and Mr. Justice Bacon to " examine the said Woodward and Milton, and such others as " the Master and AVardens of the Stationers' Company shall " give information of, concerning the printing and publishing " their Books and Pamphlets, and to examine also what they " know concerning the Libel [the Libel against the Peers of " which George Jeffrey had dispersed copies], who was the " author, printer, and contriver of it ; and the Gentleman- " Usher shall attach the parties, and bring them before the " Judges ; and the Stationers are to be present at their ex- " aminations, and give evidence against them." This was clearly a tighter action against Milton than the former one by the Commons. What came of it ? Wood- 1 For particulars here about Wodd- whicli last is not given in the Museum ward, in addition to those already giren- Catalogue among Woodward's publica- {antS, pp. 230-1), my authositfes are (1) tions, but came in my way in my re- The British Museum Library Catalogue : searches for Hartlib; (3) MS. notes of Woodward, Sezekiah j (2) The two pub- Thomason in Museum copies of these lications named as consulted by myself, two publications : yiz., in the first the viz., Woodward's As Vou Wa-e., and his words " suposed to be Ezeoh. Wood- joint-tract with Hartlib, A Short Letter, ward's" and the date " Novemb.l3) Lch- &c., Kith a large hut modest answer, (he, don ;" in the second the date "Sept.l4." 296 LIFE OP MILTON AND mSTOEY OF HIS TIME. ward's business came up on the next Tuesday, Dec. 31, when " Mr. Justice Bacon informed this House of some papers " which Ezechiell Woodward [it was " Hezekiah " before] " confessed he made : Hereupon it is ordered, that Mr. " Serjeant Whitfield shall peruse them over, and report them " to this House ; and, because the said Woodward is now in " custody of the Gentleman-Usher, it is ordered, He shall be " released, giving his own bond to appear before this House "when he shall be summoned." Woodward's offence, it would therefore seem, was considered venial. He had nothing to do with the Libel that was the special subject of inquiry ; and, though he had confessed to the authorship of some anonymous papers recently published, there seemed to be nothing formidable in them. He might go back to his house in Aldermanbury on his own recognisances.'^ But what of Milton ? Not a word about him, in the Journals of the same day. He was not in the custody of the Gentleman- Usher then at all events ; and so far he had been more fortunate than Woodward. Possibly, he had had a call from the Usher in his house in Aldersgate Street on the Saturday or Monday, had accompanied him to the chambers of Mr. Justice Eeeve or Mr. Justice Bacon, had confronted the Master and Wardens of the Stationers' Company there, and had there given such a satisfactory and straightforward account of his questioned pamphlets that there was no need for detaining him, or troubling him farther. Some report may have been made to the Peers by the Justices ; but if so, it was of such a kind, and the Peers themselves had such information about Milton, that they thought it best to let the matter drop without the least farther mention of it. If even two or three of them had read the Areopagitica (and probably even more had), that alone would have honourably acquitted him. It appears, however, from a subsequent allusion by Milton himself, as if the Doctrine and Discipline 1 ' ' Soft A nmers unto Hard Censwes, there is evidence, totally silent till 1656. London, 16i5," is the title of a tract of In that year he published four new reli- Woodward's subsequent to the incident gious or politico-religious pamphlets ; of the text, and possibly referring to which is the last I know of him at it ; af ler which I find him, so far as present. 1644-45.] MILTON'S CASE DISMISSED BY THE LORDS. 297 of Divorce v?as still the real stumbling-block. On that sub- ject too the Peers may have been a little liberal by this time. Was not the great Mr. Selden understood to hold opinions on Marriage and Divorce very much the same as those Mr. Milton had published ? So the Peers may have reasoned for themselves ; and it is not at all improbable that Selden, Vane, and others of the Lower House may have given them a hint what to do. And so the Booksellers were baulked again. Baillie and Gillespie, who did not leave London for their Scottish holiday till Jan. 6, 1644-5, may have been a little disappointed, and the Presbyterians generally.^ THE DIVORCE CONTROVERSY CONTINUED : HERBERT PALMER'S SERMON PUBLISHED : OTHER ATTACKS ON MILTON. And now we are in the winter of 1644-5, when Parliament and all London, and all England, were astir with the two great businesses of the New-Modelling of the Parliamentary Army and the Self-Denying Ordinance. It was with public talk about these matters, and about such contemporary matters as the execution of Laud, the death of Century ^ Authorities for this curious story back of this second prosecution of are the entries in the Lords' Journals of Milton, though the authorities of the dates named — Vol. VII. pp. 91, 92, the Stationers' Company were the 97, 115, 116, and 118. The one-and- nominal accusers,"is not only proba- twenty Peers who were present on ble in itself, but is distinctly implied Saturday, Dec. 28, when the order for by Anthony Wood's reference to the Milton's examination was issued were — affair (Fasti. I. 483). ^' Upon the pub- Lord Grey of Wark, as Speaker ; the " lication of the said three books of Lord General the Earl of Essex ; the " marriage and divorce," says Wood, Lord High Admiral the Earl of War- with a slight error as to the number of wick ; Earla Rutland, Kent, Pembroke, the books on that subject then pub- Salisbury, Bohngbroke, Manchester, lished, "the Assembly of Divines then Nottingham, Northumberland, Den- " sitting at Westminster took special bigh, and Stamford; Viscount Saye "notice. of them; and thereupon, and Sele ; and Lords North, Mon- " though the author had obliged them tague, Howard of Escrick, Berkeley, " by his pen in his defence of Smec- Bruce, Willoughby of Parham, and " tyrfinwus, and other their contro- Wharton. The same Peers, with the " versies had with the Bishops, they, omission of the Earl of Northumber- " impatient of having the clergy's land and Lord Wharton, and the ad- " jurisdiction (as they reckoned it) in- dition of the Earl of Suffolk {i.e. twenty " vaded, did, 'instead of answering or Peers in all), were present on Deo. 31, " disproving what those books had as- when a report was made on Wood- " serted, cause him to be summon^ ward's case, but none on Milton's. — " before the House of Lords : but Selden's Ux(yr Ebraica was published " that House, whether approving the in 1646, and was then much welcomed " doctrine, or not favouring the ac- by Milton. — That the Divines of the " cusers, did soon dismiss him." Westminster Assembly were at the 298 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. White, and the abortive Treaty of Uxbridge, that any imme- diate influence from Milton's Areopagitica must have mingled. In the midst of it all he had other labours on hand. They were still on the woful subject of Divorce. Not only had the subject fastened on Milton with all the force of a propagandist passion, urging him to repeated expo- sitions of it ; there were, moreover, fresh external occasions calling on him not to desist. Of four such external occasions, amid others now unknown to us, we may here take note : — (1) Herbert Palmer's sermon, with the attack on Milton still remaining in it, had now been published. " Some bodily indispositions" had prevented Palmer from at once complying with the request of the two Houses that he would print the sermon ; but at length, in September or October 1644, it had appeared.^ (2) About the same time (more precisely, on the 16th of September, 1644) there appeared one of Prynne's interminable publications, entitled " Twelve considerable serious Questions touching Church government : sadly propounded {out of a Real Desire of Unitie and Tranquillity in Church and State) to all sober-minded Christians, cordially affecting a speedy settled Reformation and Brotherly Christian Union in all our Churches and Dominions, now miserably wasted with Cimll Unnaturall Wars, and deplorably lacerated with Eecled- astical Dissensions." ^ Though with so long a title, the thug consists but of eight largish quarto pages, witli a bristle of marginal references. "Having neither leisure nor oppor- " tunity," says Prynne, " to debate the late unhappy differ- " ences sprung up amongst us touching Church-government " (disputed at large by Master Herle, Doctor Steward, Master " Eutherford, Master Edwards, Master Durey, Master Good- " win. Master Nye, Master Sympson, and others), .... I " have (at the importunity of some Eeverelid friends) " digested my subitane apprehensions of these distracting " controversies into the ensuing considerable Questions." I Palmer's Dedication of the Sermon. bour, 1644." The exact date of pub- 3 " By William Pryrine, of Lincoln's llcation I ascertain from Thomason's Inn, Bsqmer: London, Printed for note, "Sept. 16," in a copy in tte Michael Sparks, Senr., and are to be British Museum sold at the Blew Bible W Green At- 1644-45.] MOEE ATTACKS ON MILTON. 299 Accordingly, the Tract consists of 12 Queries propounded for consideration, each numbered and beginning -with the word "Whether." We are concerned mainly with Query 11. It runs as follows: — "Whether that Independent Govern- " ment which some contend for . . . be not of its own nature " a very seminary of schisms and dangerous divisions in the " Church and State ? a floodgate to let in an inundation of " all manner of heresies, errors, sects, religions, destructive " opinions, libertinism and lawlessness, among us, without " any sufficient means of preventing or suppressing them when " introduced ? Whether the final result of it (as Master " Williams, in his late dangerous licentious work, A Bloudy " Tenent, determines) will not really resolve itself into this " detestable conclusion, that every man, whether he be Jew, " Turk, Pagan, Papist, Arminian, Anabaptist, &c., ought t» " be left to his own free liberty of conscience, without any " coercion or restraint, to embrace or publicly to profess what " Eeligion, Opinion, Church government, he pleaseth and con- " ceiveth to be truest, though never so erroneous, false, sedi- " tious, detestable in itself ? And whether such a government " as this ought to be embraced, much less established among " us (the sad effects whereof we have already experimentally " felt by the late dangerous increase of many Anabaptistical, " Antinomian, Heretical, Atheistical opinions, as of The SotiTs " Mortality/, Divorce at Pleasure, &c., lately broached, preached, " printed in this famous city ; whidh I hope our Grand " Council will speedily and carefully suppress), &c." Here, and by no less a man than Prynne, Milton's Divorce Doctrine is piiblicly referred to as one of the enormities of the time, and coupled, as of coequal infamy, with the contemporary doctrine of the Mortality of the Soul vented in an anonymous, tract. (3) Farther, in the month of November, or while the- Areopagitica was in the press, there had appeared the first distinct Keply to Milton's original Divorce Treatise. It was a pamphlet, in 44 pages of small quarto, with this title : — • " An Answer to a Booh, Intituled, The Doctrine and Discipline " of Divmre, or A Flea for Ladies and Gentlewomen, and all " other Married Women, against Divorce. Wherein Both Sexes. 300 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. " are, mvdicated from all honadge \sic\ of Canon Law, and " ofih&r mistakes whatsoever : And the Unsound Principles of " the Author are examined and fully confuted iy A uthority of " Holy Scripture, the Laws of this Land, and Sound Reason. " London, Printed by 0. M. for William Lee at the Turlc's-Head " in Fleet Street, next to the Miter Taverne. 1644." ^ Milton had now his wish : one of his adversaries had written a hook, and could he wrestled with. Nay more, though the writer had not given his name, the licenser, Mr. Joseph Caryl, had, in his prefixed " Imprimatur," applauded the sentiments of the tract, and spoken slightingly of Milton. Mr. Caryl, there- fore, on his own account, might deserve a word. (4) Finally, in January 1644-5, Dr. Daniel Featley, from his prison in " the Lord Peter's house in Aldersgate Street," close to Milton's own dwelling, had sent forth his "Dippers Dipt, or the Anahaptists Duelc'd and Flung' d over Head and Fares" ^ dedicating it puhlicly to the Parliament and privately to his " Eeverend and much-esteemed friend, Mr. John Downam," — the very person, by the bye, who had good-naturedly licensed Milton's Bucer pamphlet. Now, Featley, in this book, had been at Milton among others. Denouncing the Anabaptists on all sorts of grounds in his Epistle Dedicatory to the Parliament, he charges them especially with originating odious heresies beyond their own. "For they print," he says, "not only " Anabaptism, from whence they take their name, but many " other most damnable doctrines, tending to carnal liberty, " Familism, and a medley and hodge-podge of all Eeligions. " Witness the Book, printed 1644, called Hie Bloudy Tenent, " which the author atfirmeth he wrote in milk ; and, if he did " so, he hath put some ratsbane in it" — as, namely, 'that it " is the will and command of God that, since the coming of " his son the Lord Jesus, a permission of the most Paganish, 1 Entered at Stationers' Hall, Oct. 31, Williams did not say he had written 1644 (my notes from the Registers) ; his book in milk, but that the Baptist Licensed Nov. 14 (the pamphlet itself); Tract of 1620 which he reprints in out in London, Nov. 19 (Thomason's his book was said to have been written note in copy in British Museum. Press in milt in prison on pieces of paper sent 12. G. e. 12 . to the writer as stoppers to his milk- Mark j^g-j^ )■ bottle — ^his friends outside deciphermg 2 See anii, p. 138. the writing by heating the papers. 3 Foatley blunders here. Roger 1644-45.] MILTON'S TETRACHORDON AND COLASTERION. 301 " Jewish, Turkish, or Anti-Christian consciences and worships, " be granted to all men in all nations and countries,' . . . " Witness a Tractate on Divorce, in ■which the bonds of " marriage are let loose to inordinate lust and putting away " wives for many other causes besides that which oiir Saviour " only approveth, viz. in case of Adultery. Witness a Pamphlet " newly come forth, entitled Man's Mortality, in which the " soul is cast into an Endymion sleep from the hour of " death to the day of Judgment. Witness," &c. One other dreadful pamphlet is mentioned ; but it is worthy of note that the persons with whom Milton now, as before, is most pertinaciously associated are Roger Williams and the author of Man's Mortality. These external occasions and provocations co-operating with his unabated interest in the Divorce doctrine on personal and general grounds, Milton was busy, through the winter of 1644-5, on two new Divorce Treatises. They both appeared on the same day — March 4, 1644-5. The one was his Tetkachoedon ; the other was his Colasteeion. Neither was licensed, and neither was registered.^ Some account of these two Treatises miist conclude our present section of Milton's Biography. TETEACHOEDON. We shall take the Teteachoedon first. It is a bulky treatise, consisting, in the original edition, of 104 small quarto pages; of which 6, not numbered, are occupied with a Dedication to Parliament, and the remaining 98 are num- bered and form the body of the work. The following is the complete title: — TETRACHOBDON : Expositions upon The foure chief places in Scripture, which treat of Marriage, or nullities in Marriage. 1 The date of publication is asoer- but in both Thomason, the Collector, tained from copies of both among the has put his pen through the 5, and has King's Pamphlets in the British Mu- annexed in manuscript the date "March seum — both with the Press Mark 4, 1644." Books published near the 12 G. e. 11 . , 26th of March were generally dated in jgg . In both the printed year the year then to begin. of publication on the title-page is 1645 ; S02 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. On Gen. i. 27-28, compaT'd and explain'd by Gen. ii. 18, 23, 24. Deub. xxiv. 1-2. Matth. V. 31-32, with Matth. xix., from the 3 v. to the 11th. 1 Cor vii., from the 10th to the 16th. "Wherin the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, as was lately publish'd, is confirm'd by explanation of Scripture, by testimony of ancient Fathers, of civill lawes in. the Primitive Churcb, of famousest Eeformed Divines, and lastly, by an intended Act of the Parlament and Church of England in the last yeare of Edward the Sixth. By the former Author J. M. — ^Kaioiai Kaiva irpoiripepuy ao^d TcSi/ S' du hoKOvvTMv EiSei'at rt TroiKiXoy, lS.pet(T(T(i)v voixtaOeie ev ttoXej Xvirpog 280—349. Burnet gives the events anxiously in their behalf. 344: LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. The Hamiltous being out of the way, Montrose obtained a better hearing for his plan. In the main, it was that the King should openly commission him as his Majesty's Lieu- tenant in Scotland, and furnish him with some small force with which to cut his way back into the heart of the country, and there rouse the elements, whether Lowland or Highland, that were ready for revolt against the Argyle supremacy. In connexion with this, however, there was the scheme of an Irish contingent. Was not the Earl of Antrim then with his Majesty at Oxford — that very Eandal MacdonneU, Earl of Antrim, whom it had been proposed, as far ba*ck as 1638, to send secretly into Argyleshire with a force of Irishry, to aid the King in his first strife with the Covenanters (Vol. II. p. 23) ? Six years had elapsed since then ; but there was still extant iu Antrim, as the head of the great Scoto- Irish clan of the Macdonnells and Macdonalds, that power for mischief in Scotland which consisted in the hereditary feud between this clan and all the family of the Campbells. Let Antrim go back to Ireland, raise a force of his Macdonnells and Macdonalds and whatever else, and make a landing with these on the West Scottish coast; and then, if the time could be so hit that Montrose should be already in Scotland as his Majesty's commissioned Lieu- tenant, might there not be such a junction of the two movements that the Argyle government would be thrown into the agonies of self-defence, and the recall of Leven's army from England would be a matter of immediate neces- sity? So much at least might be surely anticipated; but Montrose promised still larger results. Listening to his arguments, iterated and reiterated at Oxford through January 1643-4, the King and Queen hardly knew what to think. Montrose's own countrymen round about the King were consulted. What thought Traquair, Carnwath, Annandale, and Eoxburgh 1 They would have nothing to do with Mont- rose's plan, and talked of him as a wotlld-be Hotspur. Only a few of the younger Scottish lords at Oxford, including Viscount Aboyne (the Marquis of Huntley's second son) and Lord Ogilvy (the Earl of Airlie's son and heir), adhered 1644-45.] EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND. 345 to him. Among the King's English counsellors, of course, there were few that could judge of his enterprise. One of these, however, whom a kindred daring of spirit drew to Montrose, helped him all he could. This was the young Lord Digby. Chiefly by his means, the King's hesitations were at length overcome. Late in January, Antrim, created a Marquis for the occasion, did go over to Ireland, vowing that, by the 1st of April 1644, he would land so many thousands of men in Scotland with himself at their head ; and on the 1st of February 1643-4, or when Leven's Scottish army had been ten days in England, a commission was made out appointing Montrose Lieutenant-general of all his Majesty's forces in Scotland. It had been proposed to name him Viceroy and Commander-in-chief; but he had himself suggested that this nominal dignity should be conferred rather on the King's nephew. Prince Maurice. For his own work in Scotland the subordinate commission, with some small force of volunteer Scots and English troopers to assist him in displaying it, would in the meantime be quite enough.^ Leaving Oxford, with a slender retinue of Scots, among whom were Aboyne and Ogilvy, Montrose went to York, and thence to Durham, where he attached himself to the Marquis of Newcastle, then engaged in resisting the advance of Leven's army. From that nobleman he implored, in the King's name, some troops for his convoy into Scotland. Newcastle, himself iU-supplied, could spare him but 200 horse, with two brass field-pieces. There was an accession from the Cumberland and Northumberland militia, so that the band with which Montrose entered Scotland (April 13, 1644) was about 1,000 strong. Hardly, however, had he entered Scotland when most of the English mutinied and went back. With what force he had left he pushed on to Dumfries, surprised that town into surrender, and displayed his standard in it with a flourish of trumpets. But nothing more could be done. Of Antrim's Irish contingent, which was to have been in the West Highlands by the 1st of 1 Wishai-t, 47—52 ; Baillie, II. 73, 74, and 164; Clarendon, 533—537 ; Rushworth, V. 927 ; and Napier, 385—388, 346 LIFK OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. April, there were no tidings ; and Scotland all to the north of Dumfries was full of Covenanters now alarmed and alert. To try to dash through these at all hazards, so as to lodge himself in the Highlands, was his thought for a moment; but he had to give up the attempt as impossible. From Dumfries, therefore, he backed again, most reluctantly, into the North of England, pursued by the execration of aU Presbyterian Scotland, and by a sentence of excommunication pronounced against him in the High Church of Edinburgh.^ " Montrose's foolish bravado is turned to nothing," BaiUie was able to write early in May 1644. This was the general impression. True, in recognition of his bravery, a patent for his elevation to the Marquisate had been made out at Oxford. It was fitting that, if ever he did come to represent the King in Scotland, it should be a Marquis of Montrose that should contend with the Marquis of Argyle. But would there ever be such a contest ? Few can have entertained the belief besides Montrose himself For some weeks after his retreat into England we hear of him as mingling actively in the war in Northumberland and Durham, taking and pillaging Mor- peth, and the like ; then we hear of him hurrying southwards to join Prince Eupert in his effort to raise the siege of York, but only to meet the Prince beaten and fugitive from the field of Marston Moor (July 2). " Give me a thousand of your horse; only give me a thousand of your horse for another raid into Scotland," was the burthen of his talk with Eupert. The Prince promised, and then retracted. Though a younger man than Montrose, he had more faith in what he could himself do with a thousand horse in England than in what any Scot could do with them in Scotland. And so, though Lord Digby, Endymion Porter, and some others still spoke manfully for Montrose with the King, he is found back in Carlisle, late in July, with only his little band of Scottish adherents. Then ensued the strangest freak of all. With this very band he set out again distinctly southwards, as if aU thought of entering Scotland were over, and nothing remained but to rejoin the King at Oxford, 1 Wishart, S2-55 ; Napier, 385—397; Rushworth, V. 927-9. 1644-46.] EPISODE OE MONTfiOSE IN SCOTLAND. 34-7 The baod, however, had been but two days ou their march when they found that their leader had given them the slip, and left the duty of taking them to Oxford to his second, Lord Ogilvy. He himself had returned to Carlisle. It was barely known that he had done so when he mysteriously dis- appeared (Aug. 18). No one, except Lord Aboyne, whom he had left in Carlisle v^ith certain secret instructions, could tell what had become of him ; but it was afterwards remembered, like the beginning of a novel, that on such an autumn day three persons had been seen riding from Carlisle towards the Scottish border, two gentlemen in front, one of whom had a elub foot,, and the third behind, as their groom, mounted on a sorry nag, and leading a spare horse. The two gentle- men were a Colonel Sibbald and a lame Major Eollo, intimate friends of Montrose, and the supposed groom was Montrose himself.^ There was a distinct cause for Montrose's entry into Scot- land ifl this furtive manner. The Scottish Parliament (a regulat Parliament, and not an informal Convention of Estates" like ■ that of the previous year) had met on the 4th of JuUe) with Argyle, Loudoun, and twenty other Peers, more tb'an forty lesser Barons, and about the same number of Cominissioners from Burghs, present at the opening. On the 12th of July, when they were approaching the end of their biisiness, there had been this occurrence : " Five several "letters read iii the House from divers persons of credit, " showiiig of the arrival of fifteen ships, with 3,000 rebels in "them; from Ireland, in the West Isles, with the Earl of " Antrim's brother, and the sons of Coll Kittoch, and desiring " the States with all expedition to send the Marquis of Argyle " there by land, with some ships likewise by sea, and powder " and aidimunition." On subsequent days there were correc- tions of this intelligence, bringing it nearer to the exact fact. That fact was that Antrim's invasion of Scotland, arranged by him with the King and Montrose at Oxford six months before, had at last come to pass, not indeed in the shape of that full Irish army with Antrim himself in command which J Wishsrt, 56—64; Napier, 396—413; Eusliworth, V. 928. 348 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. had been promised, but in the shape of a miscellany of about 2,000 Irish and Scoto-Irish who had landed at Ardnamurchan in the north of Argyleshire under the command of a redoubt- able vassal of Antrim's, called (and here, for Miltonic reasons, the name must be given in full) Alastair Mac ChoUa-Chiotach, Mhic-GhioUesbuig, Mhic-Alastair, Mhic- Eoin Chathanaich, i.e. Alexander, son of Coll the Left-Handed, son of Gillespie, son of Alexander, son of John Cathanach. This long-named Celt was already pretty well known in Scotland by one or other of the abbreviations of his name, such as Mac-Coll Mac-Gillespic, or Alaster Mac-Colkittoch, or Alexander Macdonald the younger of Colonsay. His father, Alexander Macdonald the elder, was a chief of the Scottish Island of Colonsay, off the Argyleshire coast, but nearly related by blood to the Earl of Antrim, professing himself therefore of the same race, kin, and religion as the Irish Mac- donneUs, and sharing their ancient grudge against the whole race of the Campbells. He had the personal peculiarity of being ambidexter, or able to wield his claymore with his left hand as well as with his right ; and hence his Gaelic name of Coll Kittoch, or Coll the Left-Handed. The peculiarity having been transmitted to his son Alaster, it was not nncommon to distinguish the two as old Colkittoch and young Colkittoch. The old gentleman had for some time been in durance in Edinburgh ; but his sons had remained at large, and Alaster had been recently figuring in Antrim's train in Ulster, and acting for Antrim among the Irish rebels, with great repute for his bravery, and his huge stature and strength. Not in- clined at the last moment for the command of the Scottish expedition himself, Antrim had done his best by sending this gigantic kinsman as his substitute. It was certainly but- a small force, and most raggedly equipped, that he led ; but, thrown as it was into the territories of King Campbell, and with a hundred miles of Highland glens before it, aU rife and explosive with hatred to the name of Campbell, it might work havoc enough. So the Parliament in Edinburgh thought. On the 16th of July, or four days after the first rumour of the invasion, the Marquis of Argyle received a 1644-45.] EPISODE OF MONTEOSE IN SCOTLAND. 349 full commission of military command against the invaders, and left Edinburgh for the region of danger.^ This was what had caused Montrose's inexplicable restless- ness about Carlisle through the latter part of July, and at length, on the 18th of August, his desperate plunge into Scotland in disguise, and with only two companions. By what route the three adventurers rode one does not know ; but on the 22nd of August they turned up at the house of TuUibelton in Perthshire, near Dunkeld. It was the seat of Patrick Graham of Inchbrakie, a kinsman of Montrose. Eeceived here by Inchbrakie himself, and by his eldest son, Patrick Graham the younger, locally known as " Black Pate," Montrose lay close for a few days, anxiously collecting news. As respected Scottish EoyaUsm, the reports were gloomy. The Argyle power everywhere was vigilant and strong; no great house, Lowland or Highland, was in a mood to be roused. Only among the neighbouring Highlanders of Athole, or North Perthshire, known to Montrose from his childhood and knowing him well, could he hope to raise the semblance of a force. All this was discouraging, and made Montrose more eager for intelligence as to the whereabouts of Col- kittoch and his Irish. He had not long to wait. Since their landing at Ardnamurchan (July 8) they had been making the most of their time in a wild way, roving hither and thither, ravaging and destroying, taking this or that stronghold, send- ing out the fiery cross and messages of defiance to Covenant- ing Committees. They had come inland at length as far as Badenoch, the wildest part of Inverness- shire, immediately north of Athole and the Grampians ; and there were reasons now why they should be inquiring as anxiously after Mont- rose as he was inquiring after them. For their condition was becoming desperate. The great clan of the Seaforth Mac- kenzies, north of Argyleshire, from whom they had expected assistance, had failed to give any ; other clans refused to be 1 Balfour's Annals, III. 215 et seg. ; his family had received at the hands of Napier, 41 6-7 and 504 ; Wishart, 67 ; Argyle in Walker's Hist, of ludepen- Baiffie, II. 217 ; Hushworth, V. 928. denoy (1660), Appendix to Part I, There is a curious, bvit confused, story pp. 3 — 6, of the wrongs which old Colkittooh and 350 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. led by a mere Macdonald of Colonsay ; the fleet of vessels in which they had landed had been seized and burnt by Argyle ; that nobleman was following them ; and orders were out for a general arming for the Covenant north of the Grampians. Accordingly, Colkittoeh, imagining that Mont- rose was still in CarKsle, had written to him there. The rude postal habits of those parts being such that the letters came into the hands of Black Pate, Montrose received them sooner than the writer could have hoped. His reply, dated from Carlisle by way of precaution, was an order to Mac- donald to descend at once into Athole and make his rendez- vous, if possible, at Castle Blair.i A walk of twenty mUes over the hills brought Montrose and Black Pate to the rendezvous. They found there a mixed crowd, comprising, on the one hand, ijhe Irish, with a few Badenoch Highlanders, whom Colkittoeh had brought with him, and on the other, the native Athole Highlanders, looking askance at the intruders, and, though TfiUing enough to rise for King Charles, having no respect for an outlandish Macdonald from Colonsay. The appearance of Montrose put an end to the discord. He had put on the Highland dress, and looked " a very pretty man," fair^haired, with a slightly aquiline nose, grey eyes, a brow of unusual breadth, and an air of courage and command ; but the Irish, noting his rather small stature, could hardly believe that he was the great Marquis. The wild joy of the Athole^men and the 1 Napier, 413 — 419;'W'isliart,64— 68 ; have readhed Monti'ose about July 13 Ruahworth, V. 928-^9. I have had the or li, when he was yet in the North of satisfaction of rectifying a portion of England, and must have been, in fact, the tale of Montrose s romantic adven- the cause of his resolution to make his ture into Scotland as it is told by his way into the Highlands. It is possible, biographers. Wishart distinctly makes of course, that, aftar Montrose came to him first hear of the landing of Col- TuUibelton, he may have been uncertain kittooh and his Irish after he had for a time of Colkittooh's exact where- come into Scotland and was hiding abouts; and there is a seemingly about TuUibelton ; and Mr. Napier's authentic anecdote to the effect that narrative conveys the same impression- Montrose himself related that he first But the idea is absurd. As the landing learnt that Colkittoeh had broken into of Colkittoeh and his Irish at Ardna- Athole by meeting in the wood of murchan on the 8th of July was known Methven a man running with a fiery in Edinburgh, and discussed in the cross to carry the dreadful news to Parliament there, on the 12th of the Perth. A misconstruction 6f this aneo- same month, it must have been well dote, vrith inattention to dates, has led known about TuUibelton at that time to the larger, and intrinsically absurd, too, or six weeks before Montrose hypothesis. appeared there ; and the news must 1644-48. EflSODE OF MONTROSE IX SCOTLAND. 351 Badenpch-men on recognising him removed their doubts ; and, amid shouts from both sides, Montrose assumed his place as Lieutenant-general for his Majesty, adopting the tall Macdonald as his Major-general. The standard was raised with all ceremony on a spot near Castle Blair, now marked by a cairn ; and, when all was ready, the troops were reviewed. They consisted of about 1,200 Irish, with a following of women and children, and 1,100 Scottish Highlanders (Stuarts, Robertsons, Gordons, &c.). Artillery there was none; three old hacks, one of them for the lame Major EoUo, were the cavalry ; money there was none ; arms and ammunition were, for the most part, to seek; even clothing was miserably deficient. So began Montrose's little epic of 1644-5. He was then thirty-two years of age.^ It was the track of Mars turned into a meteor. Marches and battles, battles and marches : this phrase is the summary of the story. Flash the phrase through the Highlands, flash it through the Lowlands, for a whole 3'ear, and you have an epitome of this epic of Montrose and his triumph. Our account of the details shall be as rapid as possible. Breaking forth southwards from Athole, to avoid Argyle's advance from the west, Montrose crossed the Tay, and made for Perth. Having been joined by his kinsman, Lord Kilpont, eldest son of the Earl of Menteith, Sir John Drummond, son of the Earl of Perth, and David Drummond of Maderty, he gave battle, at Tippermuir, near Perth, on Sunday, Sept. 1, 1644, to a Covenanting force of some 6,000 men, gathered from the shires of Perth and Fife, and under the command of Lord Elcho, the Earl of TuUibardine, Lord Drummond and Sir John Scot. The rout of the Covenanters, horse and foot, was complete. They were chased six miles from the field, and about 2,000 were slain. Perth then lying open for the victors, Montrose entered that town, and he remained there three days, issuing proclamations, exacting fines and supplies, and joined by two of his sons, the elder of whom. Lord Graham, a boy of fourteen, accompanied him from that time. But movement was Montrose's policy. Ee- > Rushfforth,V. 928-9; Napier, 41P— 422. 352 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. crossing the Tay, and passing north-eastwards, he came iu sight of Dundee ; but, finding that town too well defended, he pushed on, still north-east, joined on the way by the Earl of Airlie, and his two younger sons, Sir Thomas and Sir David OgUvy, and came down upon Aberdeen. That city, too familiar with him in the days of his Covenanting zeal, was now to experience the tender mercies of his Eoyalism. Defeating (Sept. 12) a Covenanting force of Forbeses, Frasers, and others, who opposed him at the Bridge of Dee under Lord Burleigh and Lord Lewis Gordon (third son of the Marquis of Huntley, and for the time on this side), he let his Irish and Highlanders loose for four days on the doomed Aberdonians. Then, as Argyle was approaching with a considerable army, and no reinforcement was forthcoming from Aberdeenshire and Banffshire, he withdrew west, into the country of the upper Spey. Thence again, on finding himself hopelessly confronted by a muster of Covenanters from the northern shires of Moray, Eoss, Sutherland, and Caithness, he plunged, for safety, into the wilder Highlands of Badenoch, and so back into Athole (Oct. 4). Not, however, to remain there ! Again he burst out on Angus and Aberdeenshire, which Argyle had meanwhile been traversing on behalf of the Covenant. For a week or two, having meanwhile despatched his Major- general, Macdonald, into the West Highlands to fetch what re- cruits he could from the clans there, he made it his strategy, with the small force he had left, to worry and fatigue Argyle and his fellow- commander the Earl of Lothian, avoiding close quarters with their bigger force, and their cannon and horse. Once at Fyvie Castle, which he had taken October 14, they did surprise him ; but, with his 1,500 foot and 50 horse, he made a gallant stand, so that they, with their 2,500 foot and 1,500 horse, had no advantage. As much of this time as he could give was spent by him in the Marquis of Huntley's own domain of Strathbogie, still in hopes of rousing the Gordons. At length, winter coming on, and the distracted Gordons refusing to be roused, and Argyle's policy of private dealings with Montrose's supporters individually having begun to tell, so that even Colonel Sibbald had deserted him, and few people 1644-46.] EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND. 353 of consequence remained to face the winter witli him except the faithful Ogilvies, Montrose, after a council of war held in Strathbogie, retired from that district (Nov. 6), again by Speyside, into savage Badenoch. But here, ere he could take any rest, important news reached him. Argyle had certainlyisent his horse into winter-quarters ; but he had gone with all his foot to Dunkeld, whence the more easily to ply his craft of seduction among Montrose's trustiest adherents, the men of Athole. No sooner had Montrose heard this than, clambering the Grampian barrier between Badenoch and Athole, he brought his followers, by one tremendous night- march of twenty-four miles, over rocks and snow, down into the region in peril. He was yet sixteen miles off, when Argyle, bidding his men shift for themselves, fled from Dun- keld, and took refuge with the Covenanting garrison of Perth, on his way to Edinburgh.^ Argyle's soldiering, it had been ascertained, was not the best part of him. He knew this himself, and, on his return to Edinburgh in the end of November, insisted on resigning his military commission. It was difficult to find another commander-in-chief ; but at length it was agreed that the fit man was William Baillie, the Lieutenant-general, under Leven, of the auxiliary Scottish army in England. He had recently been in Edinburgh on private business, and was on his way back to England when he was recalled by express. Not without some misgivings, arising from his fear that Argyl? would still have the supreme military direction, he accepted the commission.^ Then Argyle went off to his own castle of Inverary, there to spend the rest of the winter. It was time that Argyle should be at Inverary. Montrose, left in assured possession of his favourite Athole, had been rejoined by his Major-general, Mac-Colkittoch, bringing rein- forcements from the Highland clans. There was the chief of Clanranald with 500 of his men ; there were Macdonalds 1 Wishart, 71 — 105 ; Napier, 426- - where there is an interesting letter of 469; Bushworth, V. 929— 931. General BaiUie to his namesake and » Baillie, II. 262 : also at 416 et teq., kinsman. VOL. IIL A A 354 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. from Glengarry, Glencoe, and Lochaber; there were Stuarts of Appin, Farquharsons of Braemar, Camerons from Lochiel, Macleans, Macphersons, Macgregors. What was winter, snow more or less upon the mountains, ice more or less upon the lakes, to those hardy Highlanders? Winter was their idlest time ; they were ready for any enterprise : only what was it to be ? On this point Montrose held a council of war. ■ " Let us winter in the country of King Campbell," was what the Macdonalds and other clans muttered among themselves ; and Montrose, who would have preferred a descent into the Lowlands, listened and pondered, " But how shall we get there, gentlemen ? It is a far cry to Lochawe, as you know ; how shall we find the passes, and where shall we find food as we go ? " Then up spoke Angus MacCailen Duibh, a warrior from dark Glencoe. " I know," he said, " every farm in the land of MacCallummore ; and, if tight houses, fat cattle, and clean water will suffice, you need never want." And so it was resolved, and done. From Athole, south-west, over hUls and through glens, the Highland host moves, finding its way somehow — first through the braes of the hostile Menzieses, burning and ravaging ; then to Loch Tay (Dec. 11); and so througb the lands of the Breadalbane Campbells, and the Glenorchy Campbells, still burning and ravaging, till they break into the fastnesses of the Campbell in chief, range over Lome, and assault Inverary. Argyle, amazed by the thunder of their coming, had escaped in a fishing-boat and made his way to his other seat of Eoseneath on the Clyde ; but Inverary and all Argyleshire round it lay at Montrose's mercy. And, from the middle of December 1644 to about the 18th of the January following, his motley Highland and Irish host ranged through the doomed domain in three brigades, dancing diabolic reels in their glee, and wreaking the most horrible vengeance. ITo one knows what they did. One sees Inverary in flames, the smoke of burning huts and villages for miles and miles, butcheries of the native men wherever they are found, drivings-in of cattle, and scattered pilgrimages of wailing women and children, with relics of the men amongst them, fugitive and starving in side glens 1645.] EPISODE OF MONTHOSE IN SCOTLAND. 365 and corries, -where even now the tourist shudders at the wildness.^ The Scottish Parliament had reassembled for another Session on the 7th of January, without Argyle in it, but in constant communication with him ; and about the same time General Baillie and a Committee of the Estates had gone to consult with Argyle at Eoseneath. About the middle of the month they became aware that Montrose was on the move northward, out of Arglyeshire by Lome and Lochaber in the direction of the great Albyn chain of lakes, now the track of the Caledonian Canal. They knew, moreover, that directly ahead of him in this direction there was a strong Covenanting power, under the Earl of Seaforth, and consisting of the garrison of Inverness and recruits from Moray, Eoss, Suther- land and Caithness. Evidently it was Montrose's intention to meet this power and dispose of it, so as to have the country north of the Grampians wholly his own. In these circum- stances the arrangements of Baillie and Argyle seemed to be the best possible. Baillie, instead of going on to Argyleshire, as he had intended, went to Perth, to hold that central part of Scotland with a sufiBcient force ; and Argyle, with 1,100 seasoned infantry, lent him by Baillie, and with what gathering of his own broken men he could raise in addition, went after Montrose, to follow him along the chain of lakes. Of this army Argyle was to be nominally commander ; but he had wisely brought over from Ireland his kinsman Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck, a brave and experienced soldier, to command under him. The expectation was that between Seaforth, coming in strength from the north end of the trough of lakes, and Argyle, advancing cautiously from the south end, Montrose would be caught and crushed, or that, if he did break eastward out of the trough between them, he would fall into the meshes of Baillie from his centre at Perth.2 Then it was that Montrose showed the world what is 1 Eushworth, V. 930,931 ; Baillie, II. Wishart, 109,110 ; Napier, 475—477 ; 262 ; Wishart, 106 — 108 ; Napier, 470 — and General Baillie's letter to his cousin 473; Robert Baillie, in Baillie's Letters, II. s Balfour's Annals, III. 246 et teg. ; 417 1. A A 2 356 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. believed to have iDeen his most daring feat of generalship. On the 29th and 30th of January he was at Kilchuilem on Loch !N"ess, near what is now Fort Augustus- Thence it was his purpose to advance north to meet Seaforth, when he received news that Argyle was thirty miles behind him in Lochaber, at the old castle of Inverlochy, at the foot of Ben Nevis, near what is now Fort William. He saw at once the device. Argyle did not mean to . fight him directly, but to keep dogging him at a distance and then to come up when he should be engaged with Seaforth ! Instantly, therefore, he resolved not to go on against Seaforth, but to turn back, and fall upon Argyle first by himself Setting a guard on the beaten road along the lakes, to prevent communication with Argyle, he ventured a march, where no march had ever been before, or could have been supposed possible, up the rugged bed of the Tarf, and so, by the spurs of big Carryarick and the secrets of the infant Spey, now in bog and wet, now knee-deep in snow, over the mountains of Lochaber. It was on Friday the 31st of January that he began the march, and early in the evening of Saturday the 1st of February they were down at the foot of Ben Nevis and close on Inverlochy. It was a frosty moonlight night; sldrmishing went on all through the night ; and Argyle, with the gentlemen of the Committee of Estates who were with him, went on board his barge on Loch Eil. Thence, at a little distance from the shore, he beheld the battle of the next day, Sunday, Feb. 2. It was the greatest disaster that had ever befallen the House of Argyle. There were slain in all about 1,500 of Argyle's men, including brave Auchinbreck and many other important Campbells, while on Montrose's side the loss was but of a few killed, and only Sir Thomas Ogilvy, among his important followers, wounded mortally. And so, with a heavy heart, Argyle sailed away in his barge, wondering why God had not made htm a warrior as well as a statesman ; and Montrose sat down to write a letter to the King. " Give me leave," he said, " after I have reduced this country to your Majesty's " obedience and conquered from Dan to Beersheba, to say to " your Majesty then, as David's general did to his master, 1645.] EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND. 357 " ' Come thou thyself, lest this country be called by my " name.'"^ The Battle of Inverlochy was much heard of throughout England, where Montrose and his exploits had been for some time the theme of public talk. The King was greatly elated; and it was supposed that the new hopes from Scotland excited in his mind by the success of Montrose had some effect in inducing him to break off the Treaty of XJxbridge then in progress. The Treaty was cer- tainly broken off just at this time (Feb. 24, 1644-5). On Wednesday the 12th of February, ten days after Inver- lochy, the Marquis of Argyle was in Edinburgh, and pre- sented himself in the Parliament, "having his left arm tied up in a scarf." The day before, the Parliament had unanimously found " James, Earl of Montrose " (his title of Marquis not recognised) and nineteen of his chief ad- herents, including the Earl of Airlie, Viscount Aboyne, Alexander Macdonald MacColkittoch, and Patrick Graham younger of Inchbrakie, " guUty of high treason," and had forfaulted " their lives, honours, titles, lands and goods ;" also ordering the Lyon King of Arms, Sir James Balfour, to " delete the arms of the traitors out of his registers and books of honour.'' The General Assembly of the Kirk was then also in session, rather out of its usual season (Jan. 22^— Feb. 13), on account of important ecclesiastical business arising out of the proceedings of the Westminster Assembly ; and Baillie and Gillespie had come from London to be pre- sent. Of course, the rebellion of Montrose was much dis- cussed by that reverend body ; and, in a document penned by Mr. Gillespie, and put forth by the Assembly (Feb. 12), there was this passage : — " In the meantime, the hellish 1 Rushworth, V. 931-2 ; Wishart, 110 that Welwood's copy was a " vitiated " ■ — 114 ; Napier, 477 — 484. Mr. Napier one. No other copy having been found winds up his account of the Battle of among the Montrose Papers, Mr. Napier Inverlochy by quoting entire (484 — 488) has had to reprint Welwood's; which Montrose's supposed letter to the King he does with great ceremony, thinking on the occasion. The letter, he says, it a splendid Montrose document. Ii was first " obscurely printed by Dr. certainly is a striking document ; but Welwood in the Appendix to his I cannot help suspecting the genuine- Memoirs, 1699 ; " but he adds an ness of it as it now stands. There are extract from the Aiialecta of the Soot- anachronisms and other slips in it, tish antiquary Wodrow, to the effect suggesting posthumous alteration and that Wodrow had b^en told, by a concoction, person who had seen the original letter, 358 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. " crew, under the conduct of the excommunicate and for- " faulted Earl of Montrose, and of Alaster Macdonald, a "Papist and an outlaw, doth exercise such barbarous, un- " natural, horrid, and unheard-of cruelty as is beyond ex- " pression." But, though Parliament might condemn and proscribe Montrose, and the General Assembly might de- nounce him, the real business of bringing him to account rested now with General Baillie. To assist Baillie, however, there was coming from England another military Scot, to act as Major-general of horse. He was no other than the renegade Urry, or Hurry, who had deserted from the English Parha- ment to the King, and been the occasion of Hampden's death in June 1643 (Vol. II. 470-1). Though the King had made him a knight, he had again changed sides.^ After Inverlochy, Montrose had resumed his northward march along the chain of lakes to meet Seaforth. That nobleman, however, had been cured of any desire to encounter him. Feb. 19, Elgin surrendered to Montrose; and here, or at Gordon Castle, not far off, he remained some little time, issuing Eoyalist proclamations, and receiving new adherents, among whom were Lord Gordon and liis younger brother Lord Lewis Gordon, nay Seaforth himself! Lord Gordon remained faithful ; Lord Lewis Gordon was more slippery ; Seaforth had yielded on compulsion, and was to break away as soon as he could. At Gordon Castle Montrose's eldest son and heir, who had been with him through so many hardships, died after a short illness. Hardly had the poor boy been buried in Bellie church near, when his father, now reinforced by the Gordons, so that he could count 2,000 foot and 200 horse, was on his " fiery progress " south through Aberdeen- shire, " as if to challenge Generals Baillie and Urry." March 9, he was at Aberdeen; March 21, he was at Stonehaven and Dunnottar in Kincardineshire, burning the burgh and its shipping, and the barns of Earl Marischal's tenants under the Earl's own eyes. Baillie and Urry kept zig-zagging in watch of him ; but, though he. skirmished with Urry's horse and 1 Sir James Balfour's Annals, III. 270—273 ; Baillie's Letters, IL 258-263 ; Acts of General Assembly of the Ghuroh of Scotland (edition of 1843), p. 126. 1645.J EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND. 359 tried again and again to tempt on battle, they waited their own time. Once they nearly had him. He had pushed on farther south through Forfarshire, and then west into Perth- shire, meaning to cross the Tay at Dunkeld on his way to the Forth and the Lowlands. The desertion of Lord Lewis Gordon at this point with most of the Gordon horse obliged him to desist from this southward march ; but, having been informed that Baillie and Urry had crossed the Tay in advance of him to guard the Forth country, he conceived that he would have time for the capture of Dundee, and that the sack of so Covenanting a town would be a consolation to him for his forced return northwards. Starting from Dunkeld at ihidnight, April 3, he was at Dundee next morning, took the town by storm, and set fire to it in several places. But lo ! while his Highlanders and Irish were ranging through the town, stUl burning and plundering, and most of them madly drunk with the liquors they had found, Baillie and Urry, who had not crossed the Tay after all, were not a mile off. How Montrose got his drunken Highlanders and Irish together out of the burning town is an inexplicable mystery ; but he did accomplish it somehow, and whirled them, by one of his tremendous marches, of three days and two nights, himself in the rear and the enemy's horse close in pursuit all the while, past Arbroath, and so, by dexterous choice of roads and passes, in among the protecting Grampians. " Truly," says his biographer Wishart, " I have often heard those who were " esteemed the most experienced officers, not in Britain only, " but in France and Germany, prefer this march of Montrose " to his most celebrated victories.'-' > Except Inverlochy, his most celebrated victories were yet to come. There were to be three of them. The first was the Battle of Auldearn in Nairnshire (May 9, 1645), in which Montrose's tactics and MacCoU's mad bravery beat to pieces the regular soldier-craft of Urry, assisted by the Earls of Seaforth, Sutherland, and Findlater.^ The second was the Battle of Alford in Aberdeenshire (July 2, 1645), where 1 Wishart, 115—127 ; Eushworth, VI. « Rushworth, VI. 229 ; Wishart, 128 2J8 ; Napier 490—497. —138 ; Napier, 500-606. 360 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOBY OF HIS TIME. Montrose defeated Baillie himself. MacColkittoch was not present in this battle, the commanders in which, under Mont- rose, were Lord Gordon, Nathaniel Gordon, Lord Aboyne, Sir William EoUo, Glengany, and Drummond of Balloch, while Baillie was assisted in chief by the Earl of Balcarres. Montrose's loss was trifling in comparison with Baillie's, but it included the death of Lord Gordon.' To the Covenanting Government the defeat of Alford was most serious. The Parliament, which had adjourned at Edinburgh on the 8th of March, was convoked afresh for two short sessions, at Stirling (July 8— July 11), and at Perth (July 24— Aug 5); and the chief business of these sessions was the considera- tion of ways for retrieving BaiUie's defeat and prosecuting the war.^ Baillie, chagrined at the loss of his militarj' reputation, wanted to resign, throwing the blame of his disaster partly on Urry for his selfish carelessness, and partly on the great Covenanting noblemen, who had disposed of troops hither and thither, exchanged prisoners, and granted passes, without regard to his interests or orders. The Parliament, having exonerated and thanked him, persuaded him at first to retain his commission, appointing a new Committee of Estates, with Argyle at their head, to accompany and advise him (July 10). Not even so was Baillie comfortable; and on the 4th of August he definitively gave in his resignation. It was then accepted, with new exoneration and thanks, but with a request that, to allow time for the arrival of his intended successor (Major-general Monro) from Ireland, he would continue in the command a little longer, Goodnaturedly he did so, but unfortunately for himself. He was in the eleventh day of his anomalous position of command and no-command, when he received from Montrose another thrashing, more fatal than the last, in the Battle of Kilsyth in Stirlingshire (Aug. 15, 1645). On both sides there had been great exertion in recruiting, so that the numbers in this battle were, accord- ing to the estimate of Montrose's biographers, 6,000 foot and 1,000 horse under Baillie against 4,400 foot and 500 horse > Wiahart, 138—152 j Napier, 526- 530. ' Balfour's Annals, III. 292 -307. 1646.] EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND. 361 under Montrose. Baillie would not have allowed this esti- mate, for he complains that the recruiting for him had been bad. Anyhow, his defeat was crushing. In various posts of command under Montrose were the aged Earl of Airlie, Viscount Aboyne, Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Maclean of Duart, the chief of Clanranald, and MacColkittoch with his Irish. Acting under Baillie, or, as he would have us infer, above him and in spite of him, were Argyle, the Earls of Crawfurd and Tullibardine, Lords Elcho, Burleigh, and Balcarres, Major-general Holborn, and others. Before the battle, Montrose, in freak or for some deeper reason, made all his army, both foot and horse, strip themselves, above the waist, to their shirts (which, with the majority, may have implied something ghastlier) ; and in this style they fought. The battle was not long, the Macleans and Clanranald Highlanders being conspicuous in beginning it, and the old Earl of Airlie and his Ogilvies in deciding it. But, after the battle, there was a pursuit of the foe for fourteen miles, and the slaughter was such as to give rise to the tradition of thousands slain on Baillie's side against six men on Montrose's. Many prisoners were taken, but the chief nobles escaped by the swiftness of their horses. Argyle was one of these. Carried by his horse to Queens- ferry, he got on board a ship in the Firth of Eorth (the third time, it was noted, of his saving himself in this fashion), sailed down the Firth into the open sea, and did not come ashore till he was at Newcastle. ^ The Battle of Kilsyth placed aU Scotland at Montrose's feet. He entered Clydesdale, took the city of Glasgow under his protection, set up his head-quarters at Bothwell, and thence issued his commands far and wide. Edinburgh sent in its sub- mission on summons ; other towns sent in their submissions ; ^ Wishart, 162—171; Napier, 542-541. Inverlochy (Jan. 1644-5) to the Battle But see Greneral Baillie's touching and of Kilsyth (Aug. 15, 1646) ; and the instructive vindication of himself in pervading complaint is that he had three documents, printed in his cousin never been allowed to be real com- Baillie's Letters and Correspondence mander-in-chief, but had been thwarted (II. 417 — 424t). Baillie goes over the and overridden by Argyle, Committees whole of his unfortunate commander- of Estates, and conceited individual ship against Montrose, from his meet- nobles, ing with Argyle at Roseneath after 362 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. nobles and lairds that had hitherto stood aloof gathered ob- sequiously round the victor ; and friends and supporters, who had been arrested and imprisoned on charges of complicity with him during his enterprise, found themselves released. Dearest among these to Montrose were his relatives of the Merchiston and Keir connexion — the veteran Lord Napier, Montrose's brother-in-law and his Mentor from his youth; Sir George Stirling of Keir, and his wife. Lord Napier's daughter ; and several other nieces of Montrose, young ladies of the Napier house. In fact, so many persons of note from all quarters gathered round Montrose at Bothwell that his Leaguer there became a kind of Court. The great day at this Court was the 3rd of September, eighteen days after the victory of KilsytL On that day there was a grand review of the victorious army ; a new commission from the £ing, brought from Hereford by Sir Eobert Spotswood, was pro- duced and read, appointing Montrose Lord Lieutenant and Captain-general of Scotland with those Viceregal powers which had till then been nominally reserved for Prince Maurice ; and, after a glowing speech, in which Montrose praised his whole army, but especially his Major-general, Alaster Macdonald MacColkittoch, he made it his first act of Viceroyalty to confer on that warrior the honour of knight- hood. On the following day proclamations were issued for the meeting of a Parliament at Glasgow on the 20th of October. Montrose then broke up his Leaguer, to obey cer- tain instructions which had come from the King. These were that he should plant himself in the Border shires, co-operating there with the Earls of Traquair, Hume, and Eoxburgh, and other Eoyalists of those parts, so as to be ready to receive his Majesty himself emerging from England, or at least such an auxiliary force of English as Lord Digby should be able to despatch. For Montrose's triumph in Scotland had been reported all through England and had altered the state and prospects of the war there. Kilsyth (Aug. 15) had come as a considerable compensation even for Naseby (June 14) and the subsequent successes of the New Model. The King's thoughts had turned to the North, and it had become his idea, and 1645.] EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND. 363 Digby's, that, if the successes of the New Model still con- tinued, it would be best for his Majesty to transfer his own presence out of England for the time, joining himself to Montrose in Scotland.^ In obedience to his Majesty's instructions Montrose did advance to the Border. For about a week he prowled about, on the outlook for the expected aid from England, negotiating at the same time with some of the Border lords, and in quest of others with whom to negotiate. On the 10th of September he was encamped at Kelso ; thence he went to Jedburgh ; and thence to Selkirk.^ While he is at this last place, let us pause a little to ask an important question. What was Montrose's meaning? What real political in- tention lay under the meteor-like track of his marches and battles ? What did he want to make of Scotland ? This is not a needless question. For, as we know, Montrose was not, after all, a mere military madman. He was an idealist in his way, a political theorist (Vol. II. 296 — 298). Fortunately, to assist our guesses, there is extant a manifesto drawn up under Montrose's dictation at that very moment of his triumph at which we have now arrived. The document is in the hand- writing of Lord Napier, his brother-in-law and closest adviser, and consists of some very small sheets of paper, in Napier's minutest autograph, as if it had been drawn up where writing materials were scarce. It was certainly written after Kilsyth, and in all probability at one of Montrose's halts on the Border. In short, it was that vindication of himself and declaration of his policy which Montrose meant to publish in anticipation of the meeting of a Scottish Parliament at Glasgow which he had summoned for the 20th of October. The document is vague, and much of it is evidently a special pleading addressed to those who remembered that Montrose had formerly been an enthusiastic Covenanter, Still there are interesting points in it. His defence is that it was not he that had swerved from the original Scottish Cove- nant of 1638. He had thoroughly approved of that Cove- 1 BaiUie, II. 313—314 ; Rushworth, VI. 231 ; Wishart, 190 ; Napier, 562—669. 2 Napier, 670-575. 364 LIFE OS" MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. nant, and had gone on with Argyle and the rest of the Covenanters, perhaps " giving way to more than was warrant- ahle," till their deviation from the true purposes of the Cove- nant had passed all legal bounds. He had seen this to be the case at the time of the Treaty of Ripon at the conclusion of the Second Bishops' War ; and at that point he had left them, or rather they had finally parted from him (Oct. 1640). He had since then gone on in perfect consistency with his former self ; and they had gone on, in their pretended Par- liaments and pretended General Assemblies, from bad to worse. The State was in the grasp of a few usurpers at the centre and their committees throvigh the shires ; finings and imprisonings of the loyal were universal ; and all true liberty for the subject was gone. The Church too had passed into confusion, "the Brownistical faction" overruling it, joined " in league with the Brownists and Independents in England, to the prejudice of Keligion."^ So much for a review of his past acts ; but what were his present gi'ounds ? Here one listens with curiosity. One of his " grounds " he lays down definitely enough, and indeed with extraordinary and repeated emphasis. Let his countrymen be assured that he retained his hatred of Episcopacy and would never sanction its re- storation in Scotland ! He would not, indeed, be for uproot- ing Episcopacy in England, inasmuch as the King and his loyal subjects of that country did not desire it ; nor was he pledged to that by any right construction of the Scottish Covenant of 1638. That Covenant referred to Scotland only, and it was that Covenant, and not the later League and Cove- nant of 1643, that he had signed. But he had not forgotten that the very cause of that original Scottish Covenant was the woe wrought by Prelacy in Scotland. " It cannot be " denied," says the document, " neither ever shall be by us, 1 Several times in the course of the and Napier were probably a little be- dooument this accusation of Brownism hind-hand in their knowledge of Eng- or Independency comes in — an absurdly- lish Ecclesiastical History, and merely selected accusation at the very time clutched " Brownism " as a convenient when the most patent fact about the phrase of reproach, much sanctioned by Presbyterian Kirk of Scotland was its the King in his English proclamations deadly antagonism to Independency against Parliament, and all forms of Brownism. Montrose 1645.] EPISODE OF MONTKOSE IN SCOTLAND. 365 " that this our nation was reduced to almost irreparable evil " by the perverse practices of the sometime pretended Pre- " lates ; who, having abused lawful authority, did not only " usiu^p to be lords over God's inheritance, but also intruded "themselves in the prime places of civil government, and, " by their Court of High Commission, did so abandon them- " selves, to the prejudice of the Gospel, that the very quint- " essence of Popery was publicly preached by Arminians, " and the life of the Gospel stolen away by enforcing on the " Kirk a dead Service-book, the brood of the bowels of the " Whore of Babel." For the defence, therefore, of genuine old Scottish Presbyterianism, he protests " in God's sight " he would be "the first should draw a sword." But a spurious Presbyterianism had been invented, and " the out- casting of the locust " had been the " iabringing of the cater- pillar." As he abjured Episcopacy, so he thought the system that had been set up instead " no less hurtful ; " wherefore, he concludes, " resolving to eschew the extremities, and keep the " middle way of our Eeformed Eeligion, we, by God's grace and " assistance, shall endeavour to maintain it with the hazard of " our lives and fortunes, and it shall be no less dear to us than "our own souls." Allowing for the fact that Montrose, or Napier for him, must have considered it politic to conciliate the anti-Prelatic sentiment, we cannot but construe these pas- sages into a positive statement that Montrose really was, and believed himself to be, a moderate Presbyterian. His pro- gramme for Scotland, in fact, was Moderate Presbyterianism together with a restoration of the King's prerogative. In this, of course, was implied the annihilation of every relic of the Argyle-Hamilton machinery of government and the substitu- tion of another machinery under the permanent Viceroyalty of the Marquis of Montrose. ^ Ah ! how Fortune turns her wheel ! This manifesto of 1 The document described and ex- because it must have jarred on his own tracted frota in the text is printed predilections about his hero. Many of entire by Mr. Napier, who seems first to Montrose's admirers still accept him in have deciphered it (Appendix to Vol. I. ignorance as a champion and hero of of his Life of Montrose, pp. xliv.-liii.), high Episcopacy ; and for these Mr. and whose historical honesty in pub- Napier's document must be unwelcome lishing it is the more to be commended news. 366 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. Montrose was to remain in Lord Napier's pocket, not to be deciphered till our own time, and tlie Parliament for which it was a preparation was never actually to meet. In England there had been amazement and grief over the news of Montrose's triumph. The Parliament had appointed Sept. 5 to be a day of public fast and prayer in all the churches on account of the calamity that had befallen Scot- land ; and on that day the good BaUlie, walking in London to and from church, was in the deepest despondency. Never, "since William Wallace's days," he wrote, had Scotland been in such a plight ; and " What means the Lord, so far against the expectation of the most clear-sighted, to humble us so low ? " But he adds a piece of news. " On Tuesday was eight days " (i.e. Aug. 27), in consequence of letters from Scotland, David Leslie, the Major-general of Leven's Scottish army in England, had gone in haste from Nottingham to- wards Carlisle and Scotland, taking with him 4,000 horse. This was the wisest thing that could have been done. David Leslie was the very best soldier the Scots had, better by far than Lieutenant-general BaUlie, whom Montrose had just extinguished, and better even than Monro, whom the Scot- tish Estates had resolved to bring from Ireland as BaUlie's successor.! Actually, on the 6th of September, Leslie passed the Tweed, with his 4,000 Scottish horse from Leven's army, and some 600 foot he had added from the Scottish garrison of Newcastle. He and Montrose were, therefore, in the Border counties together, watching each other's movements, but Leslie watching Montrose's movements more keenly than Montrose watched Leslie's. Montrose does not seem to have known Leslie's full strength, and he was himself in the worst possible condition for an Immediate encounter with it. It was the custom of the Highlanders in those days, when they had served for a certain time in war, to flock back to their hills for a fresh taste of home-life; and, unfortunately for Montrose, his Highlanders had chosen to think the review at Bothwell a proper period at which to take leave. They had 1 Baillie, II. 313—315. 1645.] EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND. .367 been encouraged in this, it is believed, by Colkittoch, who, having had the honorary captaincy-general of the clans be- stowed upon him by Montrose in addition to knighthood, had projected for himself, and for his old father and brothers, the private satisfaction of a war all to themselves in the country of the Campbells. Montrose had submitted with what grace he could ; and the Highlanders, with some of the Irish among them, had marched off with promises of speedy return. But, at the same critical moment. Viscount Aboyne, hitherto the most faithful of the Gordons, had "taken a caprice," and gone off with his horse. He had been lured away, it was suspected, by his uncle Argyle, who had come back from his sea-voyage to Newcastle, and was busy in Berwickshire. Then Montrose's negotiations with the Border lords had come to nearly nothing, David Leslie's presence and Argyle's counter-negotiations having had considerable influence. Tinally, of the King himself or the expected forces from England there was no appearance. It was, there- fore, but with a shabby little army of Irish and Lowland foot and a few horse that Montrose, with his group of most resolute friends — Lord Napier, the Marquis of Douglas, the Earls of Airlie, Crawfurd, and Hartfell, Lords Ogilvy, Erskine, and Fleming, Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Sir John Dalziel, Drummond of Balloch, Sir Eobeit Spotswoood, Sir William EoUo, Sir Philip Nisbet, the young mastet of Napier, and others — ^found himself encamped, on the 12th of September, at Philiphaugh near Selkirk. His intention was not to remain in the Border country any longer, but to return north and get back among his Grampian strongholds. But somehow his vigilance, when it was most needed, had deserted him. The morning of Saturday, Sept. 13> had risen dull, raw, and dark, with a thick grey fog covering the ground ; and Montrose, ill-served by his scouts, was at early breakfast, when Leslie sprang upon him out of the fog, and in one brief hour finished his year of splendour. Montrose himsalf, the two Napiers, the Marquis of Douglas, the Earls of Airlie and Crawfurd, with others, cut their way out and escaped; but many were made prisoners^ and the places 368 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. where the wretched Irish were shot down and buried in heaps, and the tracks of the luckier fugitives for miles from Phniphaugh, are now among the doleful memories of the Braes of Yarrow.^ Montrose and his feUow-fugitives found their way back to their favourite Athole, and were not even yet absolutely in despair. The venerable Napier, indeed, had come to his journey's end. Worn out by fatigue, he died in Athole, and was buried there. Montrose's wife died about the same time in the eastern Lowlands, and Montrose, at some risk, was present at her funeral. To these bereavements there was added the indignant grief caused by the vengeances taken by the restored Argyle Government upon those of his chief adherents who had fallen into their hands. Sir William Kollo (the same Major EoUo who had crossed the Border with Montrose in his disguise), Sir Philip Nisbet, young Ogilvy of Innerquharity, and others, were beheaded at Glasgow; and Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Captain Andrew Guthrie, President Sir Eobert Spotswood, and William Murray, the young brother of the Earl of TuUibardine, were afterwards executed at St. Andrews — Lord Ogilvy, who had been condemned with these last, having contrived to escape. The desire of retaliation for these deaths co-operating with his determination to make his Captaincy-general in Scotland of some avail still for the King's cause, Montrose lurked on perseveringly in his Highland retirement, trying to organize another rising, and for this purpose appealing to MacColkit- toch and every other likely Highland chief, but above all to the Marquis of Huntley and his fickle Gordons. In vaiu ! To all intents and purposes Montrose's Captaincy-general in Scotland was over, and the Argyle supremacy was re- established. All that could be said was that he was still at iRushworth, VI. 231-2 ;Wishart, 189 flints. There were traces, I am told, — ^207 ; Napier, 567—580. I have seen, from which it could he distinctly in- in the possession of theJEev. Dr. DaTid ferred that the bottles had contained Aitken, Edinbvirgh, a square-shaped some kind of Hock or Bhenish wine ; bottle of thick and pretty dear glass, and the belief of the neighbourhood which was one of several of the same was that they had been part of Mont- sort accidentally dug up some few rose's tent-stock, on the morning when years ago at Philiphaugh, in a place he was surprised by Leslie. . where there were also many buried gun- 1645-46.] FAG-END OF THE WAR, 369 large in tlie Highlands, and that, while he was thus at large, the Argyle Government could not reckon itself safe. And so for the present we leave him, humming to himself, as one may fancy, a stanza of one of his own lyrics : — " The misty mounts, the smoking lake, The rock's resounding echo, The whistling winds, the woods that shake. Shall all with me sing Heigho 1 The tossing seas, the tumbling boats. Tears dripping from each oar, Shall tune with me their turtle notes ; ' I'll never love thee more ! '" ^ FAG-END OF THE WAE IN ENGLAND : FLIGHT OF THE KING TO THE SOOTS. Montrose's defeat at Philiphaugh (Sept. 13, 1645) having relieved the English Parliament from the awkwardness of the Eoyalist uprising in Scotland while the' New Model was crushing Eoyalism in England, and the storming of Bristol hy the New Model (Sept. 10) having just been added as a most important incident in the process of the crushing, the war in England had reached its fag-end. The "West and the Southern Counties were still the imme- diate theatre of action for the New Model. Cromwell, fresh from his share with Fairfax in the recent successes in Somer- setshire, Gloucestershire, and Wilts, was detached into Hants ; and here, by his valour and skill, were accomplished the surrender of Winchester (Oct. 8), and the storming of Basing House, the magnificent mansion of the Marquis of Win- chester, widower of that Marchioness on whom Milton had written his epitaph in 1631, but now again married (Oct. 14). Thus, by the middle of October, Eoyalism had been com- pletely destroyed in Hants, as well as in Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset, and what relics of it remained in the south-west were cooped up in the extreme shires of Devon and Cornwall, 1 Rushworth, VL 232 ; Wishart, 208—258 ; Napier, 581—630, with Montrose's Poems in Appendix to Vol. I. VOL. III. B B 370 LIFE OF MILTON AST) HISTORY OF HIS TIME. whither thePrince of Wales had retired with Lord Hoptoq. Here they lingered through the winter^ Meanwhile the King had been steadily losing ground in the Midlands and throughout the rest of England. Not even after Philiphaugh had he given up all hopes of a junction with Montrose in Scotland ; and a northward movement, from Hereford through "Wales, which he had begun before the news of that battle reached him, was still continued. He had got as far as "Welbeck in Nottinghamshire (Oct. 13) when he was induced to turn back, only sending 1,500 horse under Lord Digby and Sir Marmaduke Langdale to make their way into Scotland if possible. Though defeated by the Parliamentarians in Yorkshire, Digby and Langdale did get as far as the Scottish border ; but, finding farther progress hopeless, they left their men to shift for themselves, and escaped to the Isle of Man, whence Bigby went to Dublin. The King himself had gone first to Newark, on the eastern border of Nottinghamshire, which was one of the places yet garrisoned for him; but, after a fortnight's stay there, he returned once more to his head-quarters at Oxford (Nov. 5). Here he remained through the winter, holding his court as well as he could, issuing proclamations, and observing the gradual closing in upon him of the Parliamentarian forces. The position of the Scottish auxiliary army in particular had then become of considerable importance to him. We have seen (antb, p. 339) how, in September, that army had raised the siege of Hereford, and had sulkily gone northward as far as Yorkshire, as if with the intention of leaving England altogether. There was some excuse for them in the state of Scotland at the time, where all the resources of the Argyle Government had failed in the contest with Montrose; but not the less were the English Parliamentarians out of humour with them. Angry messages had been interchanged between the English Parliament and the Scottish military and political leaders ; and a demand had been put forth by the Parliament that the Scots should hand over into English keeping CarUsle apd other northern towns where they had garrisons. At ^ Chyonplogioal Table ip Sprigge. 164&-46.] FAG-END OF THE WAE. 371 length, Montrose having been suppressed by David Leslie's horse, and great exertions having been made by the Scottish Chancellor Loudoun to restore a good feeling between the two nations, Leven's army did come back out of Yorkshire, to undertake a duty which the English Parliament had been pressing upon it, as a siibstitute for its late employment at Hereford. This was the siege of Newark. About the 26th of N"ovember, 1645, or three weeks after the King had left Newark to return to Oxford, the Scottish army sat down before Newark and began the siege. The direct distance between Oxford and Newark is about a hundred miles. Through the winter, though the New Model had not quite completed its work of victory in the South-west, the chief business of the King at Oxford consisted in looking forward to the now inevitable issue, and thinking with which party of his enemies it would be best to make his terms of final submission. Negotiations were actually opened between him and the Parliament, with offers on his part to come to London for a personal Treaty; and there was much discussion in Parliament over these offers. The King, how- ever, being stubborn for his own terms, the negotiations came to nothing; and by the end of January 1645-6 it was the general rumour that he meant to baulk the Parliament, and take refuge with the Scottish army at Newark. Till April 1646, nevertheless, he remained irresolute, hoping against hope for some good news from the South-west. No good news came from that quarter. Operations having been resumed there by the New Model, there came, among other continued successes of the Parliament, the raising of the siege of Plymouth (Jan. 16, 1645-6), the storming of Dart- mouth (Jan. 19), and the storming of Torrington (Feb. 16), The action then came to be chiefly in Cornwall, where (March 14) Lord Hopton surrendered to Fairfax, giving up the cause as hopeless, and following the Prince of Wales, who had taken refuge meanwhile in the Scilly Isles. On the 15th of April, 1646, the picturesque St. Michael's Mount yielded, and the Duke of Hamilton, the King's prisoner there, found himself again at liberty. The surrender of Exeter BB 2 372 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. (April 13) and of Barnstaple (April 20) having then cleared Devonshire, the war in the whole South-west was over, save that the King's flag still waved over far Pendennis Castle at Falmouth.^ The New Model having thus perfected its work in the South-west and being free for action in the Midlands, and Cromwell being back in London, and a body of Eoyalist troops under Lord Astley (the last body openly in the field) having been defeated in an attempt to reach Oxford from the west, and Woodstock having just set even the Oxfordshire garrisons the example of surrendering, procrastination on the King's part was no longer possible. His last trust had been in certain desperate schemes for retrieving his cause by help to be brought from beyond England. He had been in- triguing in Ireland with a view to a secret agreement with the Irish Rebels and the landing at Chester or in Wales of an army of 10,000 Irish Eoman Catholics to repeat in Eng- land the feat of MacColkittoch and his Irish in Scotland; he had been trying to negotiate with France for the landing of 6,000 foreign troops at Lynn ; as late as March 12 he had fallen back on a former notion of his, and proposed to invoke the aid of the Pope by promising a free toleration of the Eoman Catholic Eeligion in England on condition that his Holiness and the English Eoman Catholics would "visibly and heartily engage themselves for the re- establishment " of his Crown and of the Church of England. All these schemes were now in the dust. He was in a city in the heart of England, without chance of Irish or foreign aid, and hemmed round by his English, subjects, victorious at length over all his efforts, and coming closer and closer for that final siege which should place himself in their grasp. What was he to do ? A refuge with the Scottish army at Newark had been for some time the plan most in his thoughts, and actually since January there had been negotiations on his part, through the French Ambassador Montreuil, both with the Scottish Com- missioners in London and with the chiefs of the Scottish army, with a view to this result. Latterly, however, Montreuil had 1 Chronological Table in Sprigge. 16*6.] king's flight TO THE SCOTS. 373 reported that the Scots refused to receive him except on con- ditions very different from those he desired. The most obvioas alternative, though the boldest one, was that he should make his way to London somehow, and throw himself upou the generosity of Parliament and on the chances of terms in his favour that might arise from the dissensions between the Presbyterians and the Independents. But, should he resolve on an escape out of England altogether, even that was not yet hopeless. Eoads, indeed, were guarded ; but by precautions and careful travelling some seaport might be reached, whence there might be a passage to Scotland, to Ireland, to France, or to Denmark.^ It was apparently with all these plans competing in Charles's mind, that, on Monday the 27th of April, his Majesty, with his faithful groom of the bedchamber Mr. John Ashburnham and a clergyman named Dr. Hudson for his sole companions, slipped out of Oxford, disguised as a servant and carrying a cloak-bag on his horse. He rode to Henley ; then to Brentford ; and then as near to London aS Harrow-on-the-HilL He was half-inclined to ride on the few more miles that would have brought him to the doors of the Parliament in Westminster. At Harrow, however, as if his mind had changed, he turned away ffoln London; and rode northwards to St. Alban's ; thence again by cross- roads into Leicestershire; and so eastwards to Downham iU Norfolk. Here he remained from April 30 to May 4 ; and it is on record that he had his hair trimmed for him here by a country barber, who found much fault with its uneven- ness, and told him that the man who had last cut it had done it very badly. It was now known in London that his Majesty was at large ; it was thought he might even be in hiding in the city ; and a Parliamentary proclamation was issued forbidding the harbouring of him under pain of death. On the 5th of May, however, he ended aU uncertainty by 1 Twenty-two Letters from Charles Bruce for the Camden Societj (1856) sit Oxford to Queen Henrietta Maria in under the title of " Charles I. in 1646." France, the first dated Jan. 4, 1645-6 See also Mr. Bruoe's " Introduction " and the last April 22, 1646, forming to the Letters. They contain' curious Bp. 1—37 of a series of the King's facts and indications of Charles's Letters edited by the late Mr. John character.- 374 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. presenting himself at the Scottish Leaguer at Newark. He had made up his mind at last that he would remain in Eng- land and that he would be safer with the Scots there than with the English Parliament. It was a most perilous honour for the Scots. The English Parliament were sure to demand possession of the King. Indeed the Commons did vote for demanding him and confining him to Warwick Castle ; and, though the vote was thrown out in the Lords, eight Peers protested a,gainst its rejection (May 8). In these circum- stances the resolution of the Scots was to keep his Majesty until the course of events should be clearer. Newark, how- ever, being too accessible, in case the Parliament should try to seize him, Leven persuaded the King to give orders to the Eoyalist governor of that town to surrender it to the Parlia- ment ; and, the siege being thus over, the Scottish army, with its precious charge, withdrew northward to the safer position of Newcastle (May 13).i On the 10th of June the King issued orders from New- castle to all the commanders yet holding cities, towns, or fortresses, in his name, anywhere in England, to surrender their trusts. Accordingly, on the 24th of June, the city of Oxford, which the King had left two months before, was surrendered to Fairfax, with all pomp and ceremony, by Sir Thomas Glenham. The surrender of Worcester followed, July 22 ; that of Wallingford Castle in Berks, July 27 ; that of Pendennis Castle in Cornwall, Aug. 17; and that of Eaglan Castle in Monmouthshire, Aug. 19. Thus the face of England was cleared of the last vestiges of the war. The defender of Eaglan Castle, and almost the last man in Eng- land to sustain the King's iiag, was the aged Marquis of Worcester.^ FALLEN AND EISEN STAES. In August 1646, therefore, the long Civil War was at an end. The King being then at Newcastle with the Scots, 1 Iter Carolinvm in Gutoh's CoUeo- 601-2 ; Baillie, II. 374-5. taneaCurioaa(1781), Vol. ILpp. 445— s Rushworth, VI. 276—297: and 448 ; Kuahworth, VI. 267—271 ; Clar. Sprigge's Table of Battles and Sieges. Aug. 1646.] FALLEN AND EISEN STARS. 375 where were the other chief Eoyalists ? I. The Royal Famihj. The Queen had been abroad again for more than two years. In July 1644, having just then given birth at Exeter to her youngest child, the Princess Henrietta Maria, she had escaped from that city as Essex was approaching it with his army, and had taken ship for France, leaving the ohUd at Exeter. Eichelieu, -rt^ho had kept her out of France in her former exile, being now dead, and Cardinal Mazarin and the Queen Eegent holding power in the minority of Louis XIV., she had been well received at the French Court, and had been residing for the two past years in or near Paris, busily active in foreign intrigue on her husband's behalf, and sending over imperious letters of advice to him. It was she that was to be his agent with the Pope, and it was she that had procured the sending over of the French ambassador Montreuil to arrange between the Scots and Chafles. Hie destination of the Prince of Wales had for same time been uncertain. From ScOly he had gone to Jersey, accompanied or followed thither by Lords Hopton, Capel, Digbyj and Colepepper, Sir Edward Hyde, and others (April 1646). Digby had a pro- ject of removing him thence into Ireland, and Denmark was also talked of for a refuge ; but the Queen being especially anxious to have him with het in Paris, her remonstrances prevailed. The King gave orders from Newcastle that her wishes should be obeyed, and to Paris the Prince went (July). The young Duke of York, being in Oxford at the time of the surrender,' came into the hands of the Parliament; who committed the charge of him, and of his infant brother the Duke of Gloucester, with the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, to the Earl of Northumberland in London. The baby Prin^ cess Henrietta, left at Exeter, had also come into the hands of the Parliament on the surrender of that city (April 1646), but had been cleverly conveyed into France by the Countess of Morton. The King's fighting nephews, Eupert and Ma^ufice, who had been in Oxford when it surrendered, were allowed to embark at Dover for France, after an interview with their elder brother, the Prince Elector Palatine, who had been for some time in England as an honoured guest of 376 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. the Parliament, and an occasional visitor in the Westminster Assembly. II. Chief Royalist Peers and Gounsellors. Some of these, including the Duke of Eichmond, the Marquis of Hertford, the Marquis of Worcester, and the Earl of South- ampton, remained in England, submitting moodily to the new order of things, and studying opportunities of still being useful to their sovereign. Others, and perhaps the majority, either disgusted with England, or being under the ban of Par- liament for delinquency of too deep a dye, dispersed them- selves abroad, to live in that condition of continental exile which had already for some time been the lot of the Marquis of Newcastle and other fugitives of the earlier stage of the war. Some, such as Digby and Colepepper, accompanied the Prince of Wales to Paris ; others, among whom was Hyde, remained some time in Jersey. The Queen's conduct and temper, indeed, so much repelled the best of the Eoyahst refugees that, when they did go to France (as most of them were obliged to do at last), they avoided her, or circled round her at a respectful distance. While these were the descending or vanishing stars of the English firmament, who were the stars that had risen in their places ? As the question: interests us now, so it inter- ested people then; and, to assist the public judgment, printers aad booksellers put forth lists of those who, either from the decisiveness and consistency of their Parliamentarianism foom the first, or from its sufficiency on a total review, were entitled, at the end of the war, to be denominated The Great Champions of England} There were two classes of these Champions, thortgh not a few individuals belonged to both classes : — I. The Political Champions, or Champion Peers and Commoners. The Cham- pion Peers were reckoned as exactly twenty-nine; and, if the reader desires to know who these twenty-nine were, let I One such fly-sheet, published July ings of names, entries of persons as 30, 1646, by " Francis Leach at the still alive who were dead some time. Falcon in Shoe Lane," has been already &c. In those days of scanty means of referred to (see Vol. II. p. 430, Nate, publicity, it was far more difficult to and : p. 433, Note). The Lists there compile an accurate conspectus of con- given, though very useful to us now, temporaries for any purpose than it contain a great many errors — ^misspell- would be now. Aug. 1646.] FALLEN AND lUSEN STAES. 377 him repeat here the list already given of those who were Parliamentarian Peers at the outset (Vol. II. pp. 430-1), only- deleting from that list the heroic Lord Brooke and the Earls of Bolingbroke and Middlesex as dead, and the Earls of Bed- ford, Clare, and Holland, as having proved themselves fickle and untrustworthy, and adding a new Earl of Middlesex (son and successor of the former), an Earl of Kent, an Earl of Nottingham, and a Lord Montague of Boughton (successors of the deceased Eoyalists or Non-effectives who had borne these titles), and Lord Herbert of Cherbury, once a Eoyalist, but now passing as a Parliamentairian. The Champion Com- moners were, of course, a much larger multitude. At the beginning of the war, as we saw (Vol. II. pp. 431-4), about three-fifths of the Commons House as then constituted, or 300 of the members in all, might be regarded as declared or possible Parliamentarians. Of these, however, death or desertion to the other side in the course of four years had carried off a good few, so that, with every exertion to swell the list of the original Commoners who at the end of the war might be reckoned among the faithful, not more than about 250 could be enumerated in this category. On the other hand, it has to be remembered that, since August 1645, when the New Model was in its full career of victory, the House of Commons had been increased in numerical strength by the process called Eecruiting, i.e. by the issue of writs for the election of new members in the places of those who had died, and of the much larger host who had been disabled as Eoyalists. Of this process of Eecruiting, and its effects on the national policy, we shall have to take farther account ; mean- while it is enough to say that, between Aug. 1645, When the first new writs were issued, and Aug. 1646^ when the war endedy as many as 179 Eecruiters had been elected, and were intermingled in the roll of the House with the surviving original members.'^ Now, most of these Eecruiters, from the very conditions of their election, were Parliamentarians, and some had even attained eminence in that character since their I This is my calculation from the and August ], 1646. See also God- Index of new Writs in the Commons win's Commonviealth, II. 34—39. Journals between August 21, 1645, 378 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. election. About 140 of them, I find, were reckoned among the "Champions;" and, if these are added to the 250 original members also reckoned as such, the total number of the Champion Commoners will be about 390.^ It must not be supposed that they had all earned this distinction by their habitual presence in the House. Only on one extraordinary occasion since the beginning of the war had as many as 280 been in the House together; very seldom had the attend- ance exceeded 200 ; and, practically, the steady attendance throughout the war had been about 100. Employment in the Parliamentary service, in various capacities and various parts of the country, may account for the absence of many ; but, on the whole, I fancy that, if England allowed as many as 390 original members and Recruiters together to pass as Champion Commoners at the end of the war, it was by winking hard at the defects of some scores of them. II. Military Champions. Here, from the nature of the case, there was less doubt. In the first place, although the Army had been remodelled in Feb. 1644-5, and the Self-Denying Ordinance had excluded not a few of the officers of the Hrst Parliamentary Army from commands in the New Model, yet the services of these officers, with Essex, Manchester, and Sir William Waller, at their head, were gratefully remembered. Undoubtedly, however, the favourite military heroes of the hour were the chief officers of the victorious New Model, at the head of whom were Fairfax, Cromwell, Ski^pon, Thomas Hammond, and Ireton. Eor the names of the Colonels and Majors under these, the readef is teferred to our view of the New Model at the time of its formation {ant^ pp. 326-7). Young Colonel Pickering, there mentioned, had died in Dec. 1645, much lamented; Young Major Bethell, there mentioned, had been killed at the storming of Bristol, Sept. 1645, also much lamented ; but, with allowance for the shiftings and promotions caused by these deaths, and by the ' In Leach's fly-sheet the exact num- I find he has put a Recruiter among th^ ber of Champion Commoners given is original members. Also I am sure, from 4 397. Among these he distinguishes the minute examination of his list through- Eficruiters from the original members by out, that he admitted into it, from printing the names of the Recruiters in policy or hurry, a considerable number italics. In at least eleven oases, however, whose claims were dubious. Aug. 1646.] FALLEN AND EISEN STARS. 379 retirement of several other field-officers, or their transference to garrison-commands, the New Model, after its sixteen months of hard service, remained officered much as at first. While, with this allowance, our former list of the Colonels and Majors of the New Model proper yet stands good, there have to be added, however, the names of a few of the most distinguished military co-operants with the New Model : i.e. of those surviving ofiicers of the old Army, or persons of later appearance, who, though not on our roU of the New Model proper, had yet assisted its operations as outstanding generals of districts or commanders of garrisons. Such were Sir William Brereton, M.P. for Cheshire, and Sir Thomas Middle- ton, M.P. for Denbighshire, in favour of whom, as well as of Cromwell, the Self-Denying Ordinance had been relaxed, so as to allow their continued generalship in Cheshire and Wales respectively (ante, p. 334, Note) ; such was General Poyntz, who had been appointed to succeed Lord Ferdinando Fairfax in the chief command of Yorkshire and the North ; such were Major-general Massey, who had held independent command in the West (aniS, p. 337), and Major-general Browne, who had held similar command in the Midlands; and such also were Colonel Michael Jones (Cheshire), Colonel Mitton (Wales), Colonel John Hutchinson (Gover- nor of Nottingham), Colonel Edmund Ludlow (Governor of Wardour Castle, Wilts), and Colonel Eobert Blake (the future Admiral Blake, already famous for his Parliamentarian activity in his native Somersetshire, his active governorship of Taunton, and his two desperate defences of that town against sieges by Lord Goring). Several of these distin- guished cooperants with the New Model, as well as several of the chief ofiicers of the New Model itself, had already been honoured by being elected as Eecruiters for the House of Commons.1 • My authorities for this list of the picked out the chief cooperants with the military stars in August 1646, besides New Model, but cannot vouch that I those already cited for the New Model hare done so. When one has done one's at its formation {anti, p. 327, Jfote) and best, one still stumbles on a Colonel an imperfect list in Leach's fly-sheet t/ds or a Lieut-colonel that, evidently (ants, p. 376, Jfote) are stray passages in of some note, perplexing one's lists and the Lords Journals, in Whitelocke, and allocations, in more recent Histories. I think I have 380 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOUy OF HIS TIME. If one were to write out duly the names of all the English- men that have been described or pointed to in the last para- graph as the risen stars of the new Parliamentary world of 1646, whether for political reasons or for military reasons, there would be nearly five hundred of them. Now, as History refuses to recollect so many names in one chapter, as the eye almost refuses to see so many stars at once in one sky, it becomes interesting to know which were the super-eminent few, the stars of the highest magnitude. Fortunately, to save the trouble of such an inquiry for ourselves, we have a contemporary specification by no less an authority than the Parliament itself In December 1645, when Parliament was looking forward, with assured certainty, to the extinction of the few last remains of Eoyalism, and was preparing Proposi- tions to be submitted to the beaten King, it was anxiously considered, among other things, who were the persons whose deserts had been so paramount that supreme rewards should be conferred upon them, and the King should be asked to do his part by admitting some of them, and promoting others, among the English aristocracy. This was the result : — The Eael op Essex : — King to be asked to make him a Duke. The Commons had already voted him a pensioi of £10,000 a year. The EArl of Northumberland : — To be made a Duke, and provision for him to be considered. The Earl op Warwick (Parliamentary Lord High Admiral) : — To be made a Duke, with provision ; but the dukedom to descend to his grandchild, passing over his eldest son, Lord Eich, Who had taken the wrong side. The Eael op Pembroke and Montgomery : — To be made a Duke, and all his debts to the public to be cancelled. The Eael op Manchester : — To be made a Marquis, and pro- Vision to be considered for him. The EjiBL op Salisbury :^To be made a Marquis. Viscount Saye and Sble : — To be made an Earl- LoBD EoBEETS : — To be made an Earl. Lord Wharton : — To be made an Earl. Lord Willoughby op Pahham : — To be made an Earl. Denzil Holles : — To be made a Viscount. General Sib Thomas Fairpax : — To be made an English Baron, and an Estate of £5,000 a year in lands to be settled on him and his heirs for ever : his father Lord Ferdinando Fairfax at the same time to be made an English Baron. Aug. 1646.] FALLEN AND RISEN STARS. 381 Lieutenant-general Cromwell: — To be made an English Baron, and an Estate of £2,500 a year to be settled on him and his heirs for ever. Sib William Waller : — To be made an English Baron, with a like Estate of £2,500 a year. Sib Henry Vane, Sen. : — To be made an English Baron. As the peerage would descend to his son, Sib Henry Vane the Younger, the honour included him. Sir Arthur Haselrig : — £2,000 a year to him and his heirs for ever. Sir Philip Stapleton : — ^£2,000 a year to him and his heirs for ever. Sib William Brereton : — £1,500 a year to him and his heirs for ever. Majob-gbnebal Philip Skippon: — £1,000 a year to him and his heirs for ever.^ Had Pym and Hampden been alive, v^hat would have been the honours voted for them ? They had been dead for two years, and the sole honour for Pym had been a vote of £10,000 to pay his debts. It mattered the less because these Dukedoms, Earldoms, Viscountcies, and Baronages were all to remain in nubibus. They were contemplated on the suppo- sition of a direct Peace with the King ; and such a peace had not been brought to pass, and had been removed farther off in prospect by the King's escape at the last moment to the Scottish Army. It remained to be seen whether Parliament could arrange any treaty whatever with him in his new circumstances, and, if so, whether' it would be worth while to make the proposed new creations of peers and promotions in the peerage a feature of the treaty, or whether it would not be enough for the Commons to make good the honours that were in their own power — viz. the voted estates and pensions. For Essex, who was at the head of the list, the suspense (if he cared about the matter at all) was to be very brief. He died at his house in the Strand, Septem- ber 14, 1646, without his dukedom, and having received little of his pension. Parliament decreed him a splendid funeral. ^ Commons Journals, Dec, 1, 1645. CHAPTEE 11. work in parliament and the westminster assembly during the sixteen months op the new model — the two continued church controversies independency and sectarianism in the new model : toleration controversy continued : Cromwell's part in it : lilburne and other pamphleteers : sion college and the corporation op london ; success op the presbyterians in parliament — presbyterian frame op church-government completed : details op the arrange- ment — the recruiting op the commons : eminent recruiters eppeots op the recruiting : alliance op independency and erastianism : check given to the presbyterians : west- minster assembly rebuked and curbed negotiations bound the king at newcastle threatened rupture between the SCOTS AND THE ENGLISH : ABGYLe'S VISIT TO LONDON : THE NINETEEN PROPOSITIONS — PARLIAMENT AND THE ASSEMBLY RE- CONCILED : PRESBYTERIANIZING OP LONDON AND LANCASHIRE : DEATH OP ALEXANDER HENDERSON, DuEiNG the sixteen montlis of those New Model operations in the field which had brought the war so decisively to an end (Api-il 1645 — August 1646), there had been a consider- able progress in Parliament, in the Westminster Assembly, and in the public mind of England, on the seemingly in- terminable Church-business and its collaterals. THE TWO CONTINUED CHURCH CONTROVERSIES. That the Church of England should be Presbyterian had been formally decided in January 1644-5 (anti, pp. 172— 175). Not even then, however, could the Presbyterians 1645-46.] THE CONTINUED CHURCH CONTROVEESIES. 383 consider their -work over. There were two reasons why they could not. (1) Although [the essentials of Presbytery had been adopted, the details remained to be settled. What were to be the powers of the parochial consistories and the other church courts respectively ? What discretion, for example, was to be left to each minister and his congregational board of elders in the matter of spiritual censure, and especially in the exclusion of offenders from the communion ? Was there to be any discretion ; or was the State to regulate what offences should be punished by excommunication ? Again, were the various Church-courts, once established, to act independently of the Civil courts and the State ; or was there to be an appeal of ecclesiastical questions at any point from Presbytery, or Synod, or the entire National Assembly, to the Civil courts and Parliament ? (2) Another great question which remained undetermined was that of Toleration. Should the new Presby- terian State Church of England be established with or without a liberty of dissent from it ? A vast mass of the English people, represented by the Army-Independents and some leading Sectaries, demanded an absolute, or at least a very large, free- dom of religious belief and practice ; the Independent Divines of the Assembly claimed a certain amount of such freedom ; nay. Parliament itself, by its Accommodation Order of Sep- tember 1644, had recognised the necessity of some toleration, and appointed an inquiry on the subject. In the universal belief of the Presbyterians, on the other hand, Toleration was a monster to be attacked and slain. Toleration was a demon, a chimera, the Great Diana of the Independents, the Daughter of the Devil, the Mother and Protectress of blasphemies and heresies, the hideous Procuress of souls for Hell ! Such were the questions for continued controversy between the Presbyterians and their opponents in England in the beginning of 1645, when the New Model took the field. What progress had been made in these questions, and what changes had occurred in the attitudes of the two parties mainly concerned, during the victorious sixteen months of the New Model? 384 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. INDEPENDENCY AND SECTAKIANTSM IN THE NEW MODEL: TOLERATION CONTROVERSY CONTINUED : CROMWELL'S PART IN IT: LILBUKNB AND OTHER PAMPHLETEERS: SION COL- LEGE AND THE CORPORATION OF LONDON : SUCCESS OF THE PRESBYTERIANS IN PARLIAMENT. The New Model itself, as we know, had been a great chagrin to the Presbyterians. Fairfax, indeed, was understood to be Presbyterian enough personally; but the Army was full of Independents and Sectaries, it was largely of&cered by Independents, and its very soul was the Arch-Independent Cromwell. For a while, accordingly, it was the secret hope of the Presbyterians that this Army might fail. But, when evidently it was not'to fail, when Naseby was won (June 14, 1645), and when all the while the Scottish Presbyterian army in England was doing so ill in comparison, a sense of departing superiority sank on the spirits of the Presby- terians. " Honest men served you faithfully in this action," were Cromwell's words to Speaker Lenthall in his letter from Naseby field : " Sir, they are trusty ; I beseech you, in the " name of God, not to discourage them. I wish this action may " beget thankfulness and humility in all that are concerned in " it. He that ventures his Hfe for the liberty of his country, " I wish he may trust God for the liberty of his conscience, " and you for the liberty he fights for." ^ This immediate use by Cromwell of the victory of Naseby as an argument for Toleration did not escape the notice of the Presbyterians. " My Lord Fairfax," writes Baillie, June 17, " sent up, the last " week, ane horrible Anti-Triastrian [Anti-Trinitarian] : the " whole Assembly went in a body to the Houses to complain "of his blasphemies. It was the will of Cromwell, in his " letter of his victory, to desire the House not to discourage " those who had ventured their life for them, and to come out "expressly with their much-desired Liberty of Conscience. " You wUl see the letter in print, by order, as I think, of the " Houses." ^ The horrible Anti-Trinitarian here mentioned 1 Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 176, a Baillie, II. 280. 1615-48.] CEOMWELL AND TOLEEATION. 385 was Paul Best (see anti, p. 157). He was accused of " divers prodigious blasphemies against the deity of our Saviour and the Holy Ghost." Parliament, informed thereof by the Assembly, had been appalled, and had committed the culprit to close confinement in the Gatehouse to await his trial (June 10). The next day (June 11) the impression had been deepened by a complaint in the Commons against another culprit on similar grounds, and the House had instructed Mr. Millington, member for Nottingham, to prepare an ordinance on the subject of blasphemy generally.^ All this only a day or two before Naseby ; and now from the field of Naseby, in Cromwell's hand, a pleading of that victory on behalf of Toleration I Would Cromwell tolerate a Paul Best 1 What Cromwell and the Army-Independents would have said about Paul Best must be left to conjecture. What they were saying about the state of things in general we learn from the Presbyterian Eichard Baxter. Being at Coventry at the time of the battle of Naseby, Baxter, then a pious preacher of twenty-nine years of age, with a lean cadaverous body, and the gauntest hook-nosed face ever seen in a portrait, paid a visit of curiosity to the field immediately after the battle, and went thence to the quarters of the victorious army at Leicester, to seek out some of his acquaintances. "When "I came to the army, among Cromwell's soldiers," he says, " I found a new face of things which I never dreamt of : " I heard the plotting heads very hot upon that which inti- " mated their intention to subvert both Church and State. " Independency and Anabaptistry were most prevalent ; " Antinomianism and Arminiauism were equally distributed ; " and Thomas Moor's followers (a weaver of Wisbeach and " Lynn, of excellent parts) had made some shifts to join these " two extremes together. Abundance of the common troopers, " and many of the officers, I found to be honest, sober, ortho- " dox men, and others tractable, ready to hear the Truth, and " of upright intentions ; but a few proud, self-conceited, hot- " headed sectaries had got into the highest places, and were " Cromwell's chief favourites, and by their heat and activity 1 Commons Journals of dates given. Paul Best's case lasted two years. VOL. III. C 386 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. " bore down the rest, or carried them along with them, and " were the soul of the Army. , . . They said, What were the " Lords of England hut William the Conqueror's colonels, or " the Barons but his majors, or the Knights but his captains ? " They plainly showed me that they thought God's provi- "dence would cast the trust of Eeligion and the Kingdom " upon them as conquerors." They were full of railings and jests, Baxter adds, against the Scots or Sots, the Presbyterians or Priest-hiters, and the Assembly of Divines or Dry-vines ; and all their praises were of the Separatists, Anabaptists, and Antinomians. Grieved at what he found, and thinking he might be of some use by way of antidote, Baxter at once gave up his charge at Coventry, to become chaplain to CoL Whalley's regiment. He had the more hope of being useful because he had some previous acquaintance with Cromwell. But his reception was far from satisfactory. "As soon as " I came to the army," he says, " Oliver Cromwell coldly " bid me welcome, and never spoke one word to me more "while I was there, nor once aU that time vouchsafed me " an opportunity to come to the headquarters, where the " councils and meetings of the of&cers were." Baxter never forgave that coolness of Cromwell to him. Hugh Peters, who was constantly with Cromwell as his chaplain, and would make camp-jokes at Baxter's expense, was never for- given either.^ Not only in the New Model Army was there this ferment of Anti-Presbyterianism, Anti-Scotticism, Independency, and Tolerationism, passing on into a drift of universally demo- cratic opinion. Through English society, and especially in London, there was much of the same. Since the publication of Edwards's Antapologia in July 1644 the war of pamphlets on the questions of Independency and Toleration had been increasingly virulent. The pam- phleteers were numberless ; but the chief of them, on the side of Presbyterianism and Anti-Toleration, were perhaps Prynne, Bastwick, and John Vicars, and, on the side of Inde- pendency and Toleration, Henry Burton, John Goodwin, and > Baxter's Autobiography (Reliquice Baxteriana:), 1696 ; pp. SO, 51. 1645-46.] LILBUKNE AND OTHEE PAMPHLETEERS. 387 Hanserd KnoUys. If Bibliography were to apply itself to the investigation of the popular English Literature of the latter half of the year 1644 and the first half of the year 1645, it would come upon these, and other controversialists whose names have been long forgotten, writhing together like a twisted knot of serpents, not to be uncoiled except by a distinct enumeration of several scores or hundreds of the most quaintly-entitled pamphlets, in the exact order of their publication, and with an account of the nature of each. London contained so many of these pamphleteers that the most deadly antagonists in print could not avoid each other in the streets, and Burton, for example, meeting Dr. Bastwick, would ask him with irritating politeness when his new book was coming out. Many of the pamphlets, however, and these the most daring and intemperate in expression, were anony- mous. Such was The Arraignment of Persecution, purporting to be "printed by Martin Claw-Clergy for Bartholomew Bang-Priest," and to be on sale at " his shop in Toleration Street, right opposite to Persecution Court." In this and other popular squibs, to which neither authors nor printers dared to put their names, the toleration which Goodwin and Burton argued for gravely and logically was demanded with passionate vehemence, and with the most unsparing abuse of the Presbyterians, the Scots, and the "Westminster As- sembly.^ One Tolerationist, here deserving a notice by himself, was John Lilburne. An avowed Independent even before the meeting of the Long Parliament, and forward as a Parliamentary captain from the very beginning of the war (Vol. II. 175, 458, and 588-9), Lilburne had been one of those who regarded the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 as incompatible with Liberty of Conscience, and whom no per- suasions could induce to sign that document. He had risen, nevertheless, by Cromwell's arrangement, to be Lieutenant- colonel in Manchester's own dragoon regiment, and he had served bravely at Marston Moor. Between him and Cromwell 1 Wood's Ath. III. 860 (Prynne) and III. 68, 69 (Bastwick, Burton, and 308-9 (Vioaxs) ; Jackson's Life of John others). Notes of my own from the Goodwin, 61 — 79 ;Hanbury's Memorials, Stationers' Registers. II. 385 etseq. (Prynne and Burton), and CC 2 388 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. there was the most friendly understanding. Lilburne looked upon Cromwell as "the most absolute single-hearted great man in England ; " and CromweU owned a kindly feeling for Lilburne. Bxit there was a pig-headedness in Lilbume's honesty which even Cromwell could not control. " If only John Lilburne were left in the world, then John would quarrel with Lilburne and Lilburne with John " was Henry Marten's witty, and yet perfectly true, description of him. - Having been a witness for Cromwell in Cromwell's impeach- ment of Manchester, he thought Cromwell culpably weak in allowing the impeachment to drop and not bringing Man- chester to the scaffold ; and he had himself brought a charge against a superior officer, named King. Then he had become utterly disgusted with the general conduct of affairs and the subservience of Parliament to the Presbyterians. He would leave the army ; he would " dig for turnips and carrots before he would fight to set up a power to make himself a slave." His two brothers, Eobert and Henry, continued to hold com- mands in the New Model ; but not all Cromwell's arguments could induce Lilburne himself to come into it. On the 30th of April, 1645, he had resigned his commission, presenting at the same time a petition to the Commons for his arrears of pay, amounting to £880 2s. He had resolved to be thence- forward a political agitator, a link between the Independency of the Army and what Independency there was already in London itself. Accordingly, from the beginning of 1645, Lilburne, still not more than twenty-seven years of age, is to be reckoned as one of the most prominent Anti-Presbyterians in London, an especial favourite of aU the sectaries, and even of the populace generally, on account of his bound- lessly libertarian sentiments and his absolute fearlessness of consequences. There was talk of trying to get him into Parliament on a convenient opportunity. Meanwhile he took to pamphleteering, selecting as his first object of attack his old master, Prynne. In the first half of 1645 Lilburne and Prynne were seen wrestling with each other, Lilburne for toleration and Independency, and Prynne for coercion and Presbyterianism, with a ferocity hardly paralleled in any 1645-46.] LILBUENE AND OTHER PAMPHLETEEES. 389 contemporary duel, and made more piquant to the public by the recollection of the former intimacy of the duellists.^ The denunciation of Paul Best (June 10, 1645) was a Presbyterian masterstroke. Even moderate people stood aghast at the idea of tolerating opinions like his; and that the wretched owner of them could plead his liberty of con- science (which Best did in prison) was more likely than anything else to put people out of patience with Conscience and its Liberty. But, about the same time that Paul Best was put in prison to be tried for his life for Blasphemy, there were persecutions and punishments of others, whose offence was far less theological heterodoxy than mere Independency or Anti-Presbyterianism. "Blessed be God," writes Baillie, July 8, 1645, " all the London ministers are with us : Burton and Goodwin, the only two that were Independent, are by the Parliament removed from their places." In other words, John Goodwin had just been ejected from his vicarage of St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, and Henry Burton for the second time from his living in Priday Street, nominally for irregular practices in their ministry, but really because they were in the way of Prynne and the Presbyterians. Mr. Goodwin, who had. a large following in the City, had little difSculty in setting up an Independent meeting-house of his own in Coleman Street ; but poor old Mr. Burton seems to have been in sad straits for some time.^ Burton and Goodwin having been called to account, the next blow was at John Lilburne. With characteristic bluntness Lilburne had been for some months pressing the business of his own petition for arrears of pay upon the House of Commons, going to the House personally, waiting on the Speaker, cir- culating printed copies of his petition among the members, and always with outspoken comments on affairs, and attacks on this person and on that; On one occasion he and Prynne had met by chance, and there had been a violent altercation 1 Godwin's Hist, ot the Common- Fresh Discovery. wealth, II. 1—24, and 418-19; Wood's ^ Baillie, II. 299; Jackson's Life of Ath. III. 353-4, and 860; Edwards's Goodwin, 79 et seq.\ Hanbnry's Me- GangramA, Part I. 46, 47, Part II. 38, morials, III. 78, note. — Burton, I be- and Part III. 153 d seq. ; Commons lieve, migrated to Stepney. Journals, Jan. 17, 1644-5; Prynne's 390 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. between them. Twice, in consequence, Lilburne had been in custody for examination as to his concern in certain Anti- Presbyterian pamphlets, but on each occasion he had been discharged. He had then gone down to the Army, and procured a letter from Cromwell, recommending his case to the House. "He hath done both you and the kingdom good service," wrote Cromwell, " and you will not find him unthankful." Eeturning to London, Lilburne had caused this letter to be printed and had circulated copies of it. No effect followed, and Lilburne stUl haunted Westminster Hall, waylaying members as they went into the House, tUl they abhorred the sight of him. On the 19th of July he was in the Hall, and was overheard by his enemies Colonel King and Dr. Bastwick taking part in a conversation in which dreadful things were said of the Speaker, his brother, and other public men. The information was immediately re- duced to writing by King and Bastwick, and sent ia to the Speaker, with this result : " Besolved, That Lieutenant- colonel Lilburne be taken into custody, and so kept till the House take further order." Questioned in custody by a committee of the House, Lilbtirne refused to answer, stood on his rights as a fteeborn citizen, &c. - He also caused to be printed A Letter to a Friend, stating his case in his own way ; this Letter, as increasing his offence, was reported to the House, Aug. 9 ; and, on the 11th of August, having been again contumacious in private examination and committed to Newgate, he was ordered to remain there for trial at Quarter Sessions. He remained in Newgate tiU Oct. 14, when he was discharged, by order cif the House, without trial.i Such prosecutions of individuals formed an avowed part of the method of the Presbyterians for suppressing the Toleration heresy. Cromwell, away with the Army, could only continue to hint his remonstrances to Parliament in letters; but this he did. The greatest success of the New Model after Naseby was the storming of Bristol, Sept. 10, 1 Godwin's Hist, of the Commonwealth, II. 15—21; Commons Journals of dates given ; Wood's Ath. III. 860. 1645-46.] INDEPENDENCY IN THE ASSEMBLY. 391 1645; and in the long letter which Cromwell wrote to the Speaker, giving an account of this success (Sept. 14), he recurred to his Toleration argument. " Presbyterians, " Independents, all," he wrote, " have here the same spirit "of faith and prayer, the same presence and answer; " they agree here, have no names of difference : pity it " is it should be otherwise anywhere ! All that believe " have the real unity, which is most glorious, because in " the Body and to the Head. For being united in forms, " commonly called Uniformity, every Christian will, for peace " sake, study and do as far as conscience will permit. And " for brethren, in things of the mind, we look for no com- " pulsion but that of light and reason." By order of Parlia- ment this Letter was read in all the churches of London on Sunday, Sept. 21, and also circidated in print. It does not seem, however, to have sunk very deep.^ Cromwell's hints from the field in favour of Liberty of Conscience may be regarded as little "Accommodation Orders " in his own name, reminding Parliament and the "Westminster Assembly of that formal " Accommodation Order " which he had moved in the House a year before, and which had then been passed (anf^; pp. 168-9). What had become of this Accommodation Order ? The story may be given in brief: — The Grand Accommodation Committee had immediately ap- pelated a small Sub-Committee, cdilsisting of Dr. Temple and Messrs. Marshall, Herle, and Vines, for the Pfesbyterians, and Messrs. Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye for the Inde- pendents. The business of this Sub-Committee, called " The Sub-Committee of Agreements," was to reduce into the narrowest compass the differences between the Indfepieiidents and the rest of the Assembly. The Sub-Committee did their best, and reported to the Grand Committee ; but for various reasons the Grand Committee postponed the subject. Mean- while these proceedings had obtained for the Independents 1 Carlyle'a Cromwell, I. 188.— As Spiniual Antichrist : 1648, p. 250 et late as 1648 I find ttaa passage of seq.) in proof of Cromwell's dangerous- Cromwell's letter quoted and largely ness, and his sympathy with Familism, commented on by the Scottish Pres- Antinomianism, and other errors, byterian Rutherford {A Survey of the 392 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. a re-hearing in the Assembly itself. The five original In- dependents in the Assembly, Messrs. Goodwin, Nye, Bridge, Burroughs, and Simpson, with Mr. WUliam Carter and Mr. William Greenhill now added to their number, presented in writing (Nov. 14, 1644) their Eeasons of Dissent from the propositions of Presbytery most disagreeable to them :^ and the Assembly produced (Dec. 17) an elaborate Answer. Copies of both documents were furnished to Parliament; but, without reference to the objections of the Independents, the essential parts of the Frame of Presbyterial Government had been ratified by Parliament in January 1644-5.' Affairs then took a new turn in the Assembly. The Independents having often been taunted with being merely critical and never bringing fully to light their own views, one of them was led in a moment of heat to declare that they were quite willing to prepare their own complete Model of Congregation- alism, to be contrasted with that of Presbytery. The As- sembly eagerly caught at the imprudent ofier, and the Seven Independents were appointed to be a committee for bring- ing in a Frame of Congregational Church Government, with reasons for the same. This was in March 1645 ; and from that time the Seven, supposed to be busy in Committee upon the work assigned them, had a dispensation from attendance at the general meetings. Spring passed, summer passed, * The increase of the number of own account nominated John Goodwin avowed Independents in the Assembly of Coleman Street to be of the Assem- at this point from Five to Seven is bly, and with him "Dr. Homes of worth noting. From the very first. Wood Street, and Mr. Horton, Divinity however, there must have been a few Lecturer at Oresham College" (Lords in sympathy to some variable extent Journals of date). The Commons, whose with the leading Five. Thus Baillie, as concurrence was necessary, seem quietly early as Deo. 7, 1643 (Letters, II. 110), to have withheld it, and thus the speaks of " the Independent men, Assembly missed having John Goodwin whereof there are some te» or efeueji in in it as well as Thomas. "Homes" the Synod, many of them very able (Nathaniel Holmes : Wood's Ath. III. men," and mentions Carter, Caryl, 1,168) was also an Independent, and Phillips, and Sterry, as of the number. probably "Horton" leant that way (See our List of the Assembly, Vol. II. (Thomas Horton : Wood's Fasti, II. 516—524.) There had been efforts on 172). the part of the Independents in Parlia- ^ ti^ Beasons of Dissent by the ment to bring more representatives Seven Independents and the Assem- of Independency into the Assembly. bly's Answer were not published tiU Actually, on the 2nd of Nov. 1643, the 1648. They then appeared by order of venr day on which the Lords agreed Parliament ; and they were republished with the Commons in the nomination of in 1652 under the title of The Orcmd John Durie to succeed the deceased Debate concerning Presbytery and Inde- Culibute Downing, the Lords on their -pendency. 1645-46.] INDEPENDENCY IN THE ASSEMBLY. 393 September arrived; and still the Independents had not brought in their Model. The Assembly became impatient, and insisted on expedition. At length, on the 13th of October, the Seven presented to the Assembly — what ? Not the Model on which they were supposed to have been engaged for seven months, but a brief Paper of Eeasons for not bringing in a Model at all ! " Upon these considerations," they said in concluding the Paper, " we think that this Assembly hath no " cause to require a Eeport from us ; nor will that Eeport " be of any use : seeing that Eeports are for debates, and " debates are for results to be sent up to the Honourable " Houses ; who have already voted another Form of Govern- " ment than that which we shall present." — It was the astutest policy that the Independents could possibly have adopted ; and the Presbyterians, feeling themselves outwitted, were furious. The machinery of the Accommodation Order had again to be put in motion by Parliament (Nov. 14). There were conferences of the Divines with members of the two Houses. What was the upshot? "The Independents in " their last meeting of our Grand Committee of Accommoda- ." tion," writes BaUlie, Nov. 25, " have expressed their desires " for toleration, not only to themselves, but to other sects." That was the upshot ! Army Independency and Assembly Independency had coalesced, and their one flag now was In- definite Toleration.' The Presbyterians behaved accordingly. There was an end to their endeavours to reason over the few Independents in the Assembly, or arrange a secret compromise with them; and there was a renewed onset on the Toleration principle by the whole Presbyterian force. As if on a signal given, there was a fresh burst of Anti-Toleration pamphlets from the press. Prynne published one ; Baillie sent forth his Dissuasive {ante, p. 142) ; and Edwards was printing his immortal Gan- grcena {anth, p. 141). But appeals to the public mind through the press were not enough. The real anxiety was about 1 Hetherington's Hist, of the West- and III. 1—32 ; Baillie, II. 270—326 ; minster Assembly (1843), pp. 220—236 ; Commons Journals, Nov. 14, 1645. Banbury's Memorials, II. 648— 6S9, 394 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. the action of Parliament. The expectation of the Preshy- terians, grounded on recent experience, was that Parliament, even if left to itself, would see its duty clearly, and repudiate Toleration once and for ever. Still it would only he prudent to bring to bear on Parliament all available external pressure. Through December 1645 and January 1645-6, accordingly, the Presbyterians were ceaseless in contriving and promoting demonstrations in their favour. And with signal success : — Only a certain selected number of the parish-clergy of London and the suburbs, it is to be remembered, were members of the Assembly : the mass of them remained out- side that body. But this mass, being Presbyterian almost to a man, had organized itself in such a way as both to act upon the Assembly and to obey it. Since 1623 there had been in the city, in the street called London "Wall, a building called Ston College, with a library and other conveniences, expressly for the use of the London clergy, and answer- ing for them most of the purposes of a modern club- house. Here, as was natural, the London clergy had of late been in the habit of meeting to talk over the Church-question, so that at length a weekly conclave had been arranged, and Sion CoUege had become a kind of discussion-forum, apart from the Assembly, and yet in connexion with it. At Sion College the London Presbyterians could concoct what was to be brought forward in the Assembly, and a hint from the Assembly to Sion CoUege in any moment of Presbyterian difficulty could summon all the London clergy to the rescue. At the moment at which we have arrived siich a hint was given ; and on the 18th of December, 1645, there was drawn up at Sion College a Letter to the Assembly by all the ininisters of the City of London expressly against Toleration. " These are some of the many considerations," they say in the close of the Letter, " which make a deep impression upon " our spirits against that Great Diana of Independents and " all the Sectaries, so much cried up by them in these dis- " tracted times, namely, A Toleration — A Toleration. And, "however rione should have been more rejoiced than our- " selves in the establishment of a brotherly, peaceable, and 1645-46.] SIGN COLLEGE AND THE LONDONEKS. 395 " Christian accommodation, yet, this being utterly rejected by " them, we cannot dissemble how, upon the fore-mentioned " grounds, we detest and abhor the much-endeavoured Tolera- " tion. Our bowels, our bowels, are stirred within us, &c." The Letter was presented to the Assembly Jan. 1, 1645-6, and the Assembly took care that it should be published that same day.^ The Corporation of London was as staunchly Presbyterian as the clergy, and they too Avere stirred up. " "We have gotten it, thanks to God, to this point," writes BaUlie, Jan. 15, "that the Mayor, Aldermen, Common " Council, and most of the considerable men, are grieved for " the increase of sects and heresies and want of government. " They have yesterday had a public Fast for it, and solemnly " renewed their Covenant by oath and subscription, and this " day have given in a strong Petition for settling Church- " government, and suppressing all sect?, without any tolera- " tion." The Petition was to the Commons ; and it was particularly represented to that House, by Alderman Gibbs, as the spokesman for the Petitioners, that " new and strange doctrines and blasphemies " were being vented in the City by women-preachers.^ Environed by such a sea of Presbyterian excitement, what could the Parliament do ? They did what was expected. They shook ofiF Toleration as if it had been a snake. Not only did they assure the Aldermen and Common Council that there would be diie vigilance against the sects and heretics ; but on the 29th of January, or within a fortnight after they had received the City Petition, they took occasion to prove that their assurance was sincere. The two Baptist preachers Cox and Eichardson, it seems, had been standing at the door of the House of Conimons, distributing to members printed copies of the Confession of Paith of the Seven Baptist Con- gregations in London (see ante, p. 148). It was as if they had said, "Be pleased to look for yourselves, gentlemen, at the real tenets of those poor Anabaptists who are described 1 Cunningham's London, Art. Sion 2 Baillie, II. 337 ; Hantary, III. 99, College; Hanbury's Memorials, III. 100; Commons Journals, January 15, 97 — 99 ; Stationers' Registers, Jan. 1, 1645-6. 1645-6. 396 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. as sucli monsters." But the Commons were in a Presbyterian panic ; Cox and Eichardson were taken into custody ; and orders were issued for seizing and suppressing all copies of the Baptist Confession that could he found. This alone would prove that as late as the end of January, 1645-6, the Presbyterians, in their character of Anti-Tolerationists, were still masters of the field.^ PKESBYTEEIAN FRAME OF CHUKCH-GOVEUNMENT COMPLETED: DETAILS OF THE AEEANGEMENT. Hardly less successful had the Presbyterians been in their more proper task of perfecting their Frame of Church-govem- ment. Here, indeed, they had encountered little or no opposition from the Independents. The essentials of the Presbyterian scheme having been voted by Parliament, the Independents had quietly accepted, that fact; and, though they tended, as was natural, more and more to doubts whether there ought to be any National Church at all, they had left Parliament and the Presbyterians of the Assembly to construct the detailed machine of the future English Presbytery very much as they pleased.^ It was the Erastians rather than the Independents that were here the clogs upon the thorough-going Presbyterians, Selden especially was their torment. He was quite willing, yes ! that the Church of England should be thenceforward Presbyterian ; but then what about the rights of the individual subject and the rela- tions of the Church to the State ? The State or central Power in every community must be, in last resort, the guardian of aU the rights and liberties of the individual 1 .Commons Journals, Jan. 29, 1645-6. "to settle any Church-government 2 Absolute Voluntaryism, as we "over tlje Kingdom hastily or not." know, was already represented in Roger Burton was already in the same mood Williams. The Seekers, his followers, of hypothetical Voluntaryism {ant4, p. were bound to the same conclusion ; and l09), and I think it was spreading now accordingly, I find a little tract of six among the Independents. Certainly, pages, in 1645, by John Saltmarsh, the however, the perception of the neoes- Seeker and Antinomian {anU, p. 151-3), sary identity of the principle of entitled "A New Quere, at this time Independency with absolute Voluntary- " seasonabljf to be considered, &o., viz. ism, or the doctrine of No State "Whether it be fit, according to the Church, was not yet universal among "principles of true Religion and State, them. 1645-46.] PEBSBYTEEIAN ENACTMENTS. 397 subjects ; there had been but one Sanhedrim in the Jewish Commonwealth, supreme in causes ecclesiastical as well as in causes civil ; but the Presbyterian Divines of the Assembly, with the Scots for their advisers, wanted the Church in England to be a separate Sanhedrim, supreme in ecclesiastical causes, and irresponsible to the State ! Plying his learning in this fashion, and assisted by Whitlocke, St. John, and the other lawyers in the Assembly and in Parliament, Selden had, throughout 1645, kept up an Erastian obstruction to the Presbyterians. Now, as Prynne out of doors, with all his Presbyterianism, was also lawyer-like, a.nd therefore staunchly Erastian, and as the Independents in Parliament made common cause with the Erastians wherever they could, the obstruction had been very formidable. " The Erastian party in the Parliament is stronger than the Independent, and is like to work us much woe," wrote Baillie in May 1645 ; " Mr. Prynne and the Erastian lawyers are now our remora" he wrote in September; and he kept repeating the complaint throughout the year.^ Nevertheless great progress had been made in devising and settling the details of the Presbyterian system. What it was will be best exhibited in a dated series of paragraphs, digesting the proceedings of the Assembly and the Parlia- ment : — May 1645 : Presbyterian Arrangements for all England prospec- tively, and for London to begin with : — That every English Congre- gation or Parish have its lay-elders along with its minister, just after the Scottish fashion ; That the meetings of the Presbyterians be once a month ; That the ecclesiastical provinces of England be about sixty in number (about co-numerous with the shires, and, in most cases, identical with them), and that the Synods of these provinces be held twice a-year, and consist of delegates from the Presbyteries; That the National Assembly be held once a year, and consist of delegates from the sixty Synods, at the rate of three ministers and two ruling elders from each, so as to form a House of about 300 members. 'That London, reckoned by a radius of ten miles from its centre, be one of the Synodical Provinces, and that the number of Classes or Presbyteries in the Synod of London be fonTtee,n.— Baillie, IL 271, 272. Aug. 23 : Ordinance of Parliament, calling in all copies of the 1 Baillie, II. 277, 315, and also in intermediate and following pages. 398 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. old Liturgy, enforcing the use of the new Westminster Directory of "Worship, and forbidding any use of the Liturgy, even in private houses, under penalties. — Commons Journals. July — Sept. 1645 : Directions for the Election of Ruling Elders in Congregations, and for the Division of the English Counties into Preshytaries. July 23, the Commons resolved that Ruling Elders in congregations should be chosen by the ministers and all members duly qualified by having taken the Covenant and being of full age, save that servants without families were not to have votes : no man to be a ruling elder in more than one congregation, and that in the place of his usual residence. July 25, they appointed a committee of forty-seven of their own body to find out the fittest persons to be a committee for superintending the elections of Elders for the Congregations and Presbyteries of London, and atT the same time to prepare a letter to be sent down into the counties by the Speaker, giving instructions for the formation of County-Committees to consider the best division of the counties respectively into Presby- teries. The letter was ready Sept. 17, when it was ordered to be sent down into the counties, with a copy of the Votes and Ordi- nances on the subject of the election of Elders that had then passed and been concurred in by the Lords. — Commxins Journals. Sept. — Dec. 1645: Special Presbyterian Arrangements for Lon- don. It having been resolved by the Commons (Sept. 23) that there should be a choice of Elders forthwith in London, the afore- said Committee of forty-seven reported to the House (Sept. 26) the names of the persons judged most suitable to be Triers of the ability and integrity of the Elders that should be elected, and of the validity of their election according to the Parliamentary regular tions. In each of the twelve London Classes or Presbyteries (there were only twelve as yet) there were to be nine of these Triers — three ministers and six lay citizens ; and they were to decide all questions by a majority of votes. Thus there were to he 108 Triers in all in London. Their names are all registered. The machinery being thus ready, the Lord Mayor was requested, Oct. 8, to intimate to all the London ministers the desire of Parliament that Congregations should at once proceed to the election of their Elders. — Dec. 5, it was ordered that the whole world of the lawyers — i.e. the Chapel of the Bolls, the two Serjeants' Inns, and the four Inns of Court — should be constituted into a Presbytery by itself, but divided into two Classes. Triers were also appointed for the Elders in this peculiar Presbytery, one of them being William Prynne. — Com- mons Journals of dates cited. Nov. 8, 1645 : Jfew Ordinance for the Ordination of Ministers. In this long ■ Ordinance the original identity of Bishop and Pres- byter is asserted, and consequently the right of Presbyters, without any so-called Bishop among them, to ordain ; nevertheless the ordi- nations by the late Bishops are recognised as valid. Directions are then given to Presbyters for the examination of candidates for 1645-46.] PEESBYTEEIAN ENACTMENTS. 399 the ministry in future, and for the formalities to be observed in their ordination. Every candidate must be twenty-four years of age at least, and must be tried not only in respect of piety, character, preaching ability, and knowledge of divinity, but also in respect of skill in the tongues and in Logic and Philosophy; and congregations were to have full opportunity of stating exceptions against ministers offered them. From a clause in the Ordinance it appears that certified ordination in Scotland was to be accepted in England. — Lords Journals. Powers of the Congregational Bldershvps in suspending from Church-membership, and excluding from the Communion. This was perhaps the most important subject of all, for it involved the mode of the action of the new Presbyterian system at the heart of social life and its interferences with the liberties of the individual. Par- liament was naturally slow and jealous on this subject, so that the discussion of it, part by part, extended over the whole year 1645. The briefest sketch of results must suffice here : — The Assembly having sent in to Parliament a Paper concerning the exclusion of ignorant and scandalous persons from the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the Parliament had desired a more particular definition by the Assembly of what they included in the terms ignorant and scandalous. The Assembly having then sent in an explanation, in which, under the head of the ignorance that should exclude from the Lord's Table, they mentioned " the not having a competent understanding concerning the Trinity," the Commons (March 27, 1645) had desired to know what the Assembly considered to be a competent understanding concerning the Trinity. The Assembly having farther declared, under the same head of ignorance, that no persons ought to be admitted to the Lord's Table who had not a "competent understanding" of the Deity, of the state of Man by Creation and by his Fall, of Eedemption by Jesus Christ and the means to apply Christ and his benefits, of the necessity of Faith, Repentance and a Godly life, of the Nature and Use of Sacraments, and of the Condition of Man after this Life, the Commons had stiU demurred about the "competent understanding," and had begged the Assembly to be more precise and business-like (April 1). At length, some resolutions having been come ^to about the " com- petent understanding," and there being less difficulty in deciding who should come under the category of the scandalous, the Com- mons had before them a pretty extensive index of the kinds of persons, whether ignorant or scandalous, whom the Congregational Elderships were to be empowered to suspend or debar from the Com- munion. The index was not complete, I think, till January 1645-6; by which time, after numerous discussions, it included, in addition to the grossly ignorant in the elementary articles of Christianity, and to murderers, notorious drunkards, swearers, et hoc genus omne, a considerable list of such varieties of offenders as these — makers of images of the Trinity, worshippers of saints. 400 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. persons sending or accepting challenges, persons playing at games selling wares or unnecessarily travelling on Sunday, persons con- sulting witches, persons assaulting magistrates or their own parents, persons legally convicted of perjury or bribery, persons consenting to the marriage of their children with Papists, and, finally, the maintainers of errors that subvert the prime Articles of Eeligion. To provide, moreover, for cases not positively enumerated, there were to be commissioners in every ecclesiastical province, authorized to decide on such cases, when represented to them by ministers and the elderships. All this, with much more of the same kind, was partly agreed upon, partly still under Parliamentary consideration, in the beginning of 1646. — Commons Jouriiah, with references there to the Lords Journals. THE EBCEUITING OP THE COMMONS: EMINENT EECRUITEES. January 1645-6, I think, was tte month in which Preshy- terianism was in fullest tide. After that month, and through the spring and early summer of 1646, there was a visible ebb. The cause may have been partly that continued triumph everywhere of the New Model Army which had brought the . War obviously to its fag-end, and now, perhaps, suggested to Parliament and the Londoners the uncomfortable idea that the marching mass of Independency, relieved from its military labours, would soon be re-approaching the capital, and at leisure to review the proceedings of its masters. There was, however, a more obvious cause. This was the increase of the Independent Vote in the House of Commons by the gradual coming in of the Recruitees. By the outbreak of the Civil "War in August 1642, and the consequent desertion of the House of Commons by two-thirds of its members, most of whom were then or afterwards formally disabled, the House, as we know, bad been reduced to a mere stump of what it ought to have been constitutionally. There had been complaints about this outside, and regrets within the House itself; but it was felt that a time of Civil War could not be a time for Parliamentary elections. How could there be such elections while the King's forces were in possession of large regions of England, and these the very regions where most seats were vacant 1 For three years, therefore, the House had allowed the vacant seats in it to 1645-46.] EKCRUITING OF THE COMMONS. 401 remain vacant, and had persisted in the public business in the state to which it had been reduced, i.e., with a nominal strength at the utmost of about 280, and a constant working attendance of only 100 or thereabouts. Not till after Naseby, and the recovery of more and more of English ground for Parliament by the successes of the New Model, was it deemed prudent to begin the issue of new writs ; and even then the process was careful and gradual. The first new writs issued were in Aug. 1645, and were for Southwark, St. Edmundsbury, and Hythe ; in September ther& followed 95 additional new writs for boroughs or counties; in October there were 27 more ; and so on by smaller batches in succeeding months, until, by the end of the year, 146 new- members in aU had been elected. This did not complete the process ; for 89 new members more remained to be elected in the course of 1646, bringing the total number of the Eecruiters up to about 235. Now, among these Eecruiters, all of them Parliamentarians in the main sense, there were both Presbyterians and Independents. As Presbyterians,- more or less, may be reckoned, among those elected before January 1645-6, Major-general PacHAED Beownb (Wy- combe), Major-general Edwaed Massey (Wootton Eassett), Waiter Long, Esq. (Ludgershall, Wilts), and Clement Walkee, Esq. (Wells) : this last a very peculiar-tempered person from Somersetshire, a friend of Prynne's, and de- scribed by himself as an " elderly gentleman, of low stature, in a grey suit, with a little stick in his hand." Decidedly more numerous among the Eecruiters, however, were men who might be called Independents, or were at least Tolera- tionists. Among such, all elected before January 1645-6, or not later than that month, may be named Colonel Eobeet Blaee (Taunton), Sir John Danvees, brother of the late Earl of Danby (Malmesbury), the Hon. John Fiennes, third son of Viscount Saye and Sele (Morpeth), Geoege Elebtwood, Esq. (Bucks), Colonel Chaeles Fleetwood (Marlborough), Sir James Haeeington (Eutland), the Hon. James Hbrbekt, second son of the Earl of Pembroke (Wilts), Colonel John Hutchinson (Notts), Commissary- VOL. IIL D D 402 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. general Henry Ibeton (Appleby), Henry Lawrence, Esq., a gentleman of property and some taste for learning and speculation ("Westmoreland), Sir Michael Livesey (Queen- borough), Colonel Edmund Ludlow (Wilts), Simon Mayne, Esq. (Aylesbury), young Colonel Edward Montague (Hants), Colonel Eichabd Norton (Hants), Colonel Charles Eich (Sandwich), Colonel Edward Eossiter (Great Grimsby), Thomas Scott (Aylesbury), young Colonel Algernon Sidney (Cardiff), Colonel William Sydenham (Melcombe Eegis), and Peter Temple, Esq. (Leicester). Of this list, nearly half, it may be noted, were or had been ofiicers in the New Model. The fact was very significant. It was still more significant that among these New Model officers elected among the first Eecruiters there was a knot of men who were already recognised as in a special sense Cromwellians. Almost all the New Model officers were devoted to Crom- well; but Ireton was his alter ego, and young Fleetwood, young Montague, young Sidney, and young Sydenham, belonged to a group known in the Army as Cromwell's passionate admirers and disciples.^ Not called Eecruiters, but practically such for the Inde- pendents, were two original members who, after having been out of the House for a long while, were now restored to their places. These were Nathaniel Piennes, alias " Young Subtlety," and the witty and freethinking Henry Marten.. 1 The statistics of the Recruiting in 131 Recruiters as of Parliamentary this paragraph are from my own note before the end of July, 1646 ; but counting of New Writs from Aug. its list of Recruiters up to that date 1645 onwards in the Commons Journals, is neither complete nor accurate.— The checked by Godwin's previous counting description of Clement Walker is from or calculation (Hist, of Commonwealth, his own Sist. of Independency (edit. II. 38, 39), and by the noting of new 1660), Part I. p. 53.— The county in writs in the list of members of the which there had to be most Recruiting, Long Parliament given in the Pari. i.e. in which there were most vacant Hist. (II. 599—629). Among the indi- seats, was Somersetshire. Nearly all vidual Recruiters named I have tried the seats were vacant there. A large not to include any whose election was proportion of the seats was vacant in Jater than Jar. 1645-6, and have trusted, Notts, Yorkshire, Sussex, Westmore- in that particular, to the notices of land, and Wales.— The Kecruitingwent new writs in the Commons Journals on not only through 1646, but also in and the Pari. Hist. ; but one cannot stray cases through subsequent years ; be perfectly sure that in each case an and Faiufax, Skippon, Harrison, election immediately followed the new Inqoldsbt, among military men, and writ. My often-cited fly-sheet autho- Prynne himself among civilians, came rity, Leach's Great Champions of Eng- at length into the House. land, has been of use. It distinguishes 1645-46.] REOKUITINfi OF THE COMMONS. 403 Fiennes, having been tried by court-martial and sentenced to death in December 1643, for his surrender of Bristol {anth, p. 6), had been forgiven and allowed to go abroad ; but opinion of his conduct in that affair had meanwhile become more favourable, and before the end of 1645 he returned and resumed his seat. Marten (Vol. II. p. 166) had been expelled from the House by vote, Aug. 16, 1643, for words too daringly disrespectful of Eoyalty — in fact, for premature Eepublicanism ; but, the House having become less fasti- dious in that matter, and his presence being greatly missed, the vote was rescinded January 6, 1645-6, and the record of it expunged from the Journals.' Although as many as 146 Kecruiters had been elected before the end of the year, they appear to have taken their places but slowly. Kot till January 26, 1645-6, does one perceive any considerable effect on the numbers of the House. On that day there was a House of at least 183, the largest there had been for many a day — ^larger by 13 than the House that had made Fairfax commander-in-chief twelve months before. And thenceforward the numbers keep well up. On two occasions early in February there were Houses of 203 and 202 respectively ; and before the summer of 1646 there were members enough at hand to form on great field- days Houses of from 250 to 270. By that time some of the military men among the Eecruiters were able to be present.^ EFFECTS OF THE RECRUITING : ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENCY AND ERASTIANISM : CHECK GIVEN TO THE PRESBYTERIANS : WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY REBUKED. As soon as the Eecruiting had begun to teU upon the numbers of the House, an effect on the policy of the House is also perceptible. Thus on Feb. 3, the very day when the Commons mustered a House of 203, a division took place involving Toleration in a subtle form. The question was 1 Godwin's Commonwealth, II. 77, - My notes of Divisions, from the 78 ; Wood's Ath. III. 878 and 1238 ; Commons Journals, and Commons Journals of dates given. D D 2 404 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. whether in a Declaration setting forth the true intentions of the House in Church-matters this clause should be inserted : " A fitting care shall be taken of tender consciences, so far as may stand w?th the Word of God and the Peace of the Kingdom." This, though mild enough, displeased the Pres- byterians, and it was proposed from their side that the words " Church and " should be inserted before the word " King- dom." On a division the Yms (for adding the words and so making the pledge of a toleration weaker) were 105, and had for their tellers the Presbyterian party-chiefs, Denzil Holies and Sir Philip Stapleton ; but 98 Noes rallied round Sir Arthur Haselrig and Sir Henry Mildmay, the tellers for the Opposition.^ A wavering of the balance towards Indepen- dency and Toleration was indicated by this vote ; but it was not till the following month that the balance was decisively turned, and then not directly on the Toleration question, but on that great related question of the "Power of the Keys" which the Presbyterians of the Assembly wanted to see settled in their favour before they could consider the Pres- byterian establishment perfect. If the phrase "Power of the Keys" should seem a mystic one to English readers now, it will perhaps be cleared up by the following story of what happened in March 1645-6. On the 5th of that month the Commons passed and sent up to the Lords one aU- comprehensive Ordinance, recapitu- lating in twenty-three Propositions the substance of their various Presbyterian enactments up to that date.^ What these were we have just seen {ant^, pp. 397 — 400). They amounted, as one might now think, to a sufficiently strict Presbyterianizing of aU England, with London first by way of example. The Presbyterian Divines were not ill satisfied on the whole ; but they had not succeeded to the full extent of their wishes, and there were various matters in the Ee- capitulating Ordinance that they hoped yet to see amended. In particular, notwithstanding aU their efforts for months I Commons Journals of date. done and what was intended in tbe « See the Ordinance in the Commons matter of the Presbyterian Establish- Joumals of the date. It is a clear and ment. excellent summary of what had been 1645-46] "THE POWER OF THE KEYS.'" 405 past to indoctrinate the Parliament with the right Preshy- teriau theory of the independent spiritual jurisdiction of the Church, the natural Erastianism of the lay mind had been so strong in the Commons that the 14th Proposition of the Eecapitulating Ordinance stood as follows ; — " XIV. That, in every Province, persons shall be chosen by the Houses of Parliament that shall be Commissioners to judge of scandalous offences (not enumerated in any Ordinance of Parlia- ment) to them presented : And that the Eldership of that Congre- gation where the said offence was committed shall, upon examination and proof of such scandalous offence (in like manner as is to be done in the offences enumerated), certify the same to the Commissioners, together with the proof taken before them : And before the said certificate the party accused shall have liberty to make such defence as he shall think fit before the said Eldership, and also before the Commissioners before any certificate shall be made to the Parlia- ment : And, if the said Commissioners, after examination of all parties, shall determine the offence, so presented and proved, to be scandalous, and the same shall certify to the Congregation, the Eldership thereof may suspend such person from the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, in like manner as in cases enumerated in any Ordinance of Parliament." Here was wormwood for the Presbyterians ; and over this 14th Article, and one or two subsequent articles, settling farther details of the superiority of the proposed Parlia- mentary Commissioners over the Church Courts, and also reserving the appeal of ecclesiastical questions to Parlia- ment, they prepared to fight a most strenuous battle. The Assembly, the City Corporation, the City ministers in their Sion College conclave, and the Scottish Commissioners, all flew to arms. Their first hope was with the Lords; and them they nearly conquered. On the 13th of March there was a long debate in that House on the whole Ordinance, and especially its 14th Article; and, out of twenty-one Peers present, nine were so opposed to that Article that, before the vote was taken, they begged leave to be allowed to register their protest if the vote went against them. These Peers were the Earls of Essex, Manchester, Warwick, Bolingbroke, and Suffolk, and Lords Willoughby, Eoberts, Dacres, and Bruce. There were, however, twelve Peers in favour of the Erastian Article : viz. the Earls of Northum- 406 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. berland, Kent, Pembroke, Salisbury, Denbigh, Nottingham, Stamford, and Middlesex, and Lords North, Howard of Escrick, Wharton, and Grey of Wark. Four of the minority, viz. Essex, Manchester, Bolingbroke, and Bruce, did then protest, on the ground that they considered the institution of Parliamentary Commissioners apart from the Church Courts iaconsistent with the Solemn League and Covenant. The entire Ordinance, with insignificant amendments, thus passed the Lords ; and, the Commons having accepted the amend- ments, it became law on the 14th of March.^ Was it, then, such a mongrel Presbytery as this, an Erastian Presbytery, a Presbytery controlled and policed by Parliamentary Commissioners, that was to be set up in England ? Not if the Presbyterian clergy of England, with all Scotland to aid them, could prevent it ! " We, for our " part [the Scottish Commissioners]," writes Baillie, March 17, " mind to give in a remonstrance against it ; the As- " sembly will do the like ; the City ministers will give the "third; but that which, by God's help, may prove most " effectual is the zeal of the City itself. Before the Ordinance " came out, they petitioned against some materials of it. " This both the Houses voted to be a breach of their privi- " lege, to offer a petition against anything that is in debate " before them, till once it be concluded and come abroad. " This vote the City takes very evil ; it's likely to go high " betwixt them. Our prayers and endeavours are for wisdom " and courage to the City." ^ Within a fortnight, however (March 31), Baillie writes, in a postscript to the same letter, in a much more downcast mood. " The leaders of the " people," he says, " seem to be inclined to have no shadow " of a King, to have liberty for all Eeligions, to have but " a lame Erastian Presbytery, to be so injurious to us [the " Scots] as to chase us home with the sword. . . . Our " great hope on earth, the City of London, has played nipshot " [i.e. miss-fire or burnt priming] : they are speaking of " dissolving the Assembly." » To understand this wail ' Commons Journals, Feb. 27, and March 3, 5, and 14, 1645-6 ; and Lords Journals, March 13 and 14. « Baillie, II. 361. a Ibid. II. 362. 1645-46.] "NIPSHOT" OF THE CITY. 407 of Baillie's we have again to turn to the Journals of the Commons. Having passed the all-conclusive Ordinance for Presbytery, the two Houses had resolved to stand on their dignity, and resent the attempted dictation of the City, the Sion College conclave, the Assembly, and the Scottish Commissioners. They had already, as Baillie informs us, made a beginning, while the Ordinance was yet in progress, by voting a petition of the City against some parts of it to be a breach of privi- lege. At this, as late as March 17, the City was in proper dudgeon, and vowed that Parliament should hear from it again on the subject. Before a fortnight had elapsed, how- ever, there was a wonderful change. News had come to London of Hopton's final surrender to the New Model in Cornwall, of the defeat of Astley in Gloucestershire with the last shred of the King's field-force, and in fact of the absolute ending of the war, except for- the few Eoyalist towns and garrisons that had yet to make terms. In the, midst of the universal joy, why dwell on a difference between the City and Parliament as to the details of the Presbyterian mecha- nism ? Accordingly, on Friday, March 27, divers Aldermen and others were at the door of the House of Commons, not to remonstrate farther this little difference, but to beg that the House would "so far honour" the City as to dine with the Corporation at Grocers' Hall on the following Thursday, being Thanksgiving Day, after the two usual sermons ! Th§ House was most gracious, and accepted the invitation ; and this restoration of good feeling between Parliament and the City was probably the " nipshot " or miss-fire which Baillie lamented on the 31st. The City being out of the business for the time, it was easier for the Parliament to deal with the other parties. To the Scottish Commissioners hints were conveyed, as politely as possible, that Parliament would prefer having less of their valuable assistance in the govern- ing of England. "With the Westminster Assembly and the London Divines there was less ceremony. The Assembly had drawn up a Petition or Eemonstrance against the Articles of the conclusive Ordinance of March 14, providing for an 408 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. agency of Parliamentary Commissioners to aid and supervise the Church judicatories. " The provision of Commissioners," they said, "to judge of scandals not enumerated appears " to our consciences to be contrary to that way of government " which Christ hath appointed in his Church, in that it " giveth a power to judge of the fitness of persons to come " to the Sacrament unto such as our Lord Jesus Christ hath " not given that power unto ; " and they added that the provision was contrary to the Solemn League and Covenant, and besought ParKament to cancel it and put due power into the hands of the Elderships. This Petition, signed by the Prolocutor, one of the Assessors, and the two Scribes of the Assembly, was presented to the two Houses, most imposingly, March 23. When Baillie wrote his lamentation he did not know the precise result, but he guessed what it was to be. It was worse than Baillie could have guessed. After much inquiry and consultation about the Assembly's Petition, the Commons, on the 11th of April 1646, came to two sharp votes. The first was on the question " Whether the House shall first debate the point concerning the Breach of Privilege in this Petition ; " and it was carried in the affirmative by 106 Teas, told by Evelyn of Wilts and Haselrig, against 85 Noes, told by Holies and Stapleton. The question was then put " Whether this Petition, thus presented by the Assembly of the Divines, is a Breach of Privilege of Parliament;" and on this question, the tellers on both sides being, the same, 88 voted Yea and 76 No : i.e. it was carried by a majority of 12 that the Assembly, in their Petition, had been guilty of a grave political offence, for which they might be punished indi- vidually, by fine or imprisonment or both. No such punish- ment, of course, was intended. It was enough to shake the rod over the Assembly. A Committee, including Haselrig, Henry Marten, the younger Vane, and Selden, was appointed to prepare a Narrative on the whole subject, with a statement of the particulars ; and this Narrative, ready April 21, was discussed clause by clause, and adopted. It is a strikmg document, quiet and tight in style, but most pungent in matter. ' It begins with an assertion of the supremacy April 1646.] WESTMINSTEE ASSEMBLY REBUKED. 409 of Parliament in all matters whatsoever; it recites the specific purposes for which the Assembly had been called by Parliament, and the limitations imposed upon it by the Ordinance to which it owed its being ; and it proceeds to this rebuke : " The Assembly are not authorized, as an Assem- " bly, by any Ordinance or Order of Parliament, to interpret " the Covenant, especially in relation to any law made or to " be made ; nor, since the Law passed both Houses concern- " ing the Commissioners, have [the Assembly] been required " by both or either of the Houses of Parliament, or had any " authority before from Parliament, to deliver their opinions "to the Houses on matters already judged and determined " by them. Neither have they the power to debate or vote " whether what is passed as a Law by both Houses be agree- " ing or disagreeing to the Word of God, unless they be " thereunto required." On the day on which the Narrative containing this passage of rebuke was adopted (April 21) a Committee was appointed to communicate it, with the apper- taining Vote of the Commons, "in a fair manner," to the Assembly. Actually, on the 27th of April the communi- cation was made most ceremoniously, and from that day the Assembly knew itself to be under curb.^ Not only under curb, but thrown to the ground, and baited with sarcasms and interrogatories ! Thus, on the 17th of AprU, six days after the Vote of Breach of Privilege, but four days before the Vote and the accompanying Narrative had been communicated officially to the Assembly, there was finally agreed upon by the Commons that Declaration as to 1 For the facts of this and the pre- it was Breach of Privilege to assume ceding paragraph the authorities are to know what was going on in Parlia- Commons and Lords Journals, March ment or petition against any naeasure 23, 1645-6, and Commons Journals of while it was pending ; at other times, as April 1, 3, 8, 11, 16, 18, 21, and 24, now, it was Breach of Privilege to 1646. The Lords Jouma,l3 give the question by petition a measure already Assembly's Petition ; the Narrative of determined. In the present case, the Commons is in their Journals for however, the Commons seem to have April 21. — It is sfrange, in modem founded on the fact that the Assembly, times, to note the frequency with "as an Assembly," had transgressed its which the Parliament, and even the powers. Individually, they seem to popular party in it, resorted to the say, the Divines might have petitioned, fiction of Breach of Privilege in order but not as an Assembly, the creature to quash opposition to their proceed- of the Parliament whose acts they ings. Sometimes, as in the Vote about censured, the City Petition recently mentioned, 410 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. their true intentions on the Church question which had been in preparation since February 3, and in this Declaration there was a double-knotted lash at the prostrate Assembly. Par- liament, it was explained, had adopted most of the Assembly's recommendations as to the Frame of Church-government to be set up, with no exception of moment but that of the Commissioners; in which exception Parliament had only performed its bounden duty, seeing it could not "consent to the granting of an arbitrary and unlimited power and jurisdiction to near 10,000 judicatories to be erected in this kingdom." Farther it was announced that Parliament reserved the CLuestion of the amount of toleration to be granted under the new Presbyterial rule to "tender con- sciences that differ not in fundamentals of Eeligion." But there was more to come. Selden and the Erastians, and Haselrig, Vane, Marten, with the Independents and Free Opinionists, had been nettled by those parts of the As- sembly's Petition which assumed that the whole frame of the Presl)yterian Government scheme by the Assembly was jure divino. They Tesolved to put the Assembly through an examination about this jus divinum. On the 22nd of April, therefore, there was presented to the House, by the same Committee that had prepared the Narrative of the Breach of Privilege, a series of nine questions which it would be well to send to the Assembly. "Whether the " Parochial and Congregational Elderships appointed by "Ordinance of Parliament, or any other Congregational or " Presbyterial Elderships, sirejure divino, and by the will and " appointment of Jesus Christ ; and whether any particular " Church-government be jure divino, and what that govern- " ment is ? "—such is the first of the nine queries ; and the other eight are no less incisive. They were duly communi- cated to the Assembly ; it was requested that the Answers should be precise, with the Scripture proofs for each, in the express words of the texts ; every Divine present at a debate on any of the Queries was to subscribe his name to the par- ticular resolution he might vote for; and the dissentients from any vote were to send to Parliament their own positive May 1646.] NEGOTIATIONS AT NEWCASTLE. 411 opinions on the point of that vote, with the Scriptare proofs. Selden's hand is distinctly visible in this ingenious insult to the Assembly.^ It was a more stinging punishment than adjournment or dissolution would have been, though that also had been thought of, and Viscount Saye and Sele had recommended it in the Lords. In the midst of these firm dealings of the Parliament with the Assembly, Cromwell was back in London. He was in the House on the 23rd of April 1646, and received its thanks, through the Speaker, for his great services. He probably brought a train of his young Cromwellians with him (Ireton, Fleetwood, Montague, &c.) to swell the number of Eecruiters that had already taken their seats. In the course of May, at all events, there were Houses of 269, 241, 261, 259, and 248, and the Eecruiters had so increased the strength of the Inde- pendents and Erastians that a relapse into the policy of ultra- Presbyterianism and No Toleration appeared impossible.^ NEGOTIATIONS ROUND THE KING AT NEWCASTLE : THEEATENED EUPTUEB BETWEEN THE SCOTS AND THE ENGLISH : AEGYLE'S VISIT TO LONDON. Suddenly, by the King's flight to the Scottish Army at Newark (May 5), and by the retreat of that army, with the King in their possession, to the safer position of Newcastle (May 13), the whole condition of things was changed. The question between Independency and Presbyterianism, and the included question of Toleration or No Toleration, were thrown, with all other questions, into the crucible of the' negotiations, between the English and the Scots, round the King at Newcastle. It was known that the strife between the Independents^ and the Presbyterians had long been a solace to Charles, and a fact of great importance in his calculations. Should he fail to rout both parties and reimpose both Kingship and Episcopacy on England by force of arms, did there not remain 1 Commons Journals, April 17 and April 22, 1646 ; Baillie, II. 344. ' Baillie, II. 369, and Coifimons Journals for several days in May 1646, 412 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. lot him, at the very worst, the option of allying himself with that one of the parties with which he could make the best bargain? Now that he had been driven to the detested .alternative, he had, it appeared, though not without hesita- tion, and indeed partly by accident, given the Presbyterians the first chance. He had done so, it was true, in a cir- cuitous way, but perhaps in the only way open to him. To Oiave surrendered himself to the English Presbyterians was hardly possible ; for, had he gone to London with that view, how could the Presbyterians of the Parliament and the City Jiave protected him, or kept him to themselves, when the English Army that would then instantly have closed round London was an Army of Independents ? By placing him- self in the hands of the Scottish Army, had he not cleverly -avoided this difficulty, receiving temporary protection, and yet intimating that it was with the Presbyterians that he preferred to treat ? So, in fact, the King's flight to the Scots was construed by the English Presbyterians. They were €ven glad that it had fallen to the Scots to represent for -the moment English Presbyterianism as well as Scottish, advising Charles in his new circumstances, and ascertaining his intentions. And the Scots, on their part, it appeared, had accepted the duty. Hardly was the King at Newcastle when there were round him not only General Leven, Major-general Leslie, and the Earls of Lothian, Balcarres, and Dunfermline, all of whom had chanced to be at Newark on his reception there, but also other Scots of mark, expressly sent from Edinburgh -and from London. The Earl of Lanark was among the first of these. Argyle himself, who had been excessively busy in Scotland and in Ireland since the defeat of Montrose, thought his presence now essential in England, and hastened to be with his Majesty. The Chancellor Loudoun made no delay, but was off from London to Newcastle on the 16th of May. Above all, however, it was thought desirable that Alexander Henderson should be near his Majesty at such a crisis. Accordingly, some days before Loudoun's departure, Hender- son had taken leave of his brother-diviues, Baillie, Eutherford, May 1646.] NEGOTIATIONS AT NEWCASTLK. 413 and Gillespie, with Lauderdale and Johnstone of Warriston, in their London quarters at Worcester House, and, though in such a state of ill-health as to be hardly fit to travel, had gone bravely and modestly northwards to the scene of duty. How much was expected of him may be inferred from a jotting in one of Baillie's letters just after he had gone. " Our great perplexity is for the King's disposition," wirote Baillie on the 15th of May: "how far he will be persuaded " to yield we do not know : I hope Mr. Henderson is with, " him this night at Newcastle." ^ The immediate object of the Scots round Charles was to- induce him to take the Covenant. That done, they had little doubt that they would be able to bring him and the English Parliament amicably together. Charles, however, at once showed by his conduct that the current interpretation of the meaning of his flight to the Scots had been too hasty. It was not because he wanted to bargain with the Presbyterians as against the Independents that he had come to the Scots ; it was because he had the more subtle idea that he might be able to bargain with the Scots as such against the English as such. He hoped to wrap himself up in the nationality of the Scots ; he hoped to appeal to them as peculiarly their sovereign, born forty-six years before in their own Dunferm- line, once or twice their visitor since, always remembering them with affection, and now back among them in his dis- tress.^ Of course, in such a character, concessions to their Presbyterianism would have to be made ; but these con- cessions had all, in fact, been made already, and involved no new humiliation. It was about Episcopacy in England, his English coronation oath, his English sovereignty, that he was mainly anxious ; and what if, from his refuge among the Scots, and even with the Scots as his instruments, he could recommence, in some way or other, his struggle with the 1 Baillie, 11. 370 et seq. Charles I. was bom. The dell, with 2 On the verge of a wooded dell or the adjacent Abbey, is sacred with glen close to the burgh of Dunferm- legends and stony memorials of the line in Fife, there still stands one Scottish royal race, from the days of fine' length of ruined and ivy-clad Malcolm Canmore and his Queen Mar- wall, the remains of the palace in garet. which, on the I9th of November 1600, 414 LIFE OP MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. Eaglisli ? Charles did labour under this delusion. When he had come among the Scots, it was actually with some ahsurd notion that Montrose, who still lurked in the Highlands, might he forgiven all the past and brought back, as one of ids Majesty's most honoured servants, though recently erratic, into the society of Argyle, Loudoun, Lanark, and the rest of the faithful.^ A day or two among the Scots had un- deceived him. They repudiated at once any supposed arrangement with him arising out of the negotiations of Montreuil; they repudiated expressly the notion that they could by possibility have been so false to the English Parlia- ment as to have pledged themselves to a separate treaty. Charles, they maintained, had come among them voluntarily and without any prior compact. Most willingly, however, would they do their best for him in the circumstances. If he would declare his renunciation of Episcopacy and acceptance of Presbyterianism for England, and especially if he would do this in the best mode of all, by personally taking the Covenant, then they did not doubt but a way would be opened for a final treaty with England in which they coidd assist. Perforce Charles had now to disguise the real motive of his coming among the Scots, and let the interpretation at first put upon it continue current. Not, of course, that he would take the Covenant, or in any way commit himself even now to Presbytery. But, while he stood firm against the proposal that he should himself take the Covenant (which would have been to abjure Episcopacy personally), and while he refrained from committing himself to an accept- ance of Presbytery for his English realm, he does not appear to have objected to the impression that on this second matter 1 See in Eiishworth (VI. 266-7) quis of Montrose and such of our well- a Letter of the King's to the Marquis affected subjects as shall rise for us, of Ormond in Ireland, dated from to procure, if it may be, an honourable Oxford, April 13, 1646, and explain- and speedy peace.^' At the same time ing his reasons for his then meditated (April 18) Charles had written to Mont- flight to the Soots. "We are resolved rose himself to the same effect. 'I'he to use our best endeavours, with their infatuation that could believe in the assistance," says Charles, speaking of possibility of such a combination was the Scottish Army, " and with the con- monstrous, junction of the forces under the Mar- May 1646.]. LONDON PETITION FOE PEACE. 415 he might yield to time and reason. And so, while writing in cipher to Queen Henrietta Maria, complaining of the "juggling" of the Scots, because they would not break with the English Parliament in his behalf, and while urging the Queen in the same letters to press upon Cardinal Mazarin, and through him on the Pope, the scheme of a restitution of Episcopacy in England by Eoman Catholic force, on con- dition of " free liberty of conscience " for the Catholics in England and " convenient places for their devotions," he was patiently polite to the Presbyterians around him, and em- ployed part of his leisure in penning, from the midst of them, -letters of a temporizing kind to the two Houses of Parlia- ment, and the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of London. The letter to the City (May 19) was short and general, but cordial. That to the Parliament (May 18) was a proposal of terms. A speedy settlement of the Eeligious Question by the wisdom of Parliament with the advice of the Assembly (no word of Episcopacy or Presbytery, but some compromise with Presbytery implied) ; the Militia to be as proposed in the Treaty of Uxbridge — i.e. to be for seven years in the hands of Parliament, and after that a fresh agreement to be made ; Ireland to be managed as far as possible as Parliament might wish : such were his Majesty's present propositions.^ He would be glad, however, to receive those of Parliament. There was a Presbyterian ecstasy in London on the receipt of these letters. The Corporation, which had, to Baillie's grief, so inopportunely played " nipshot '' in the end of March, and left the Assembly and Sion College to bear the brunt, now hastened to make amends. Headed by Alderman Foot, a famous City orator, they presented. May 26, a Eemon- strance to both Houses of Parliament, couched in terms of the most unflinching Presbyterianism, Anti-Toleration, and confidence in the Scots. " When we remember," they said, " that it hath been long since declared to be far from any " purpose or desire to let loose the golden reins of discipline 1 Letters of Charles numbered XXV. Bruoe's Charles I. in 1646 ; Pari. Hist. XXVI. and XXVIL (pp. 39-43) in Mr. III. 471 et seq. 416 LIFE Of MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. " and government in the Church, or to leave private persons " or particular congregations to take up what form of divine " service they please ; when we look upon what both Houses " have resolved against Brownism and Anahaptism, properly " so called ; when we meditate upon our Protestation and " Covenant ; and, lastly, when we peruse the Directory and " other Ordinances for Presbyterial government ; and yet " find private and separate congregations daily erected in " divers parts of the city and elsewhere, and commonly " frequented, and Anahaptism, Brownism, and almost all " manner of schisms, heresies, and blasphemies, boldly vented " and maintained by siich as, to the point of Church-go vem- " ment, profess themselves to be Independents : we cannot " but be astonished." After more complaints, they end with petitions for Presbyterian Uniformity, the suppression of Independent congregations, the punishment of Anabaptists and other sectaries, strict union with the Scots, &c., all to be combined with immediate " Propositions to his Majesty for settling a safe and well-grounded Peace." There was but one meaning in this. The City was the mouthpiece ; but in reality it was the united ultra-Presbyterianism of the City, the Assembly, Sion College, and some of the Presbyterian leaders in Parlianient, trying to turn the King's presence with the Scots into an occasion for any practicable kind of peace whatsoever that would involve the overthrow of Inde- pendency, the Sects, and Toleration. The House of Lords bowed before the blast, and returned a gracious answer. The Commons, after two divisions, of 148 to 113, and 151 to 108, in favour of returning some kind of answer, returned one which was curt and general. The divisions indicate the gravity of the crisis. The Independents, thinned perhaps in numbers by the action of the Newcastle peace-chances upon weaker spirits, but with Cromwell, Haselrig, and Vane as their leaders, formed now what was avowedly the Anti- Scottish party, profoundly suspicious of the doings at New- castle, and taking precautions against a treaty that should be merely Presbyterian. The Presbyterians, on the other hand, with Holies, Stapleton, and Clotworthy as their chiefs. ■Jvine 1646.] NEGOTIATIOKS AT NEWCASTLE. 417 were as avowedly the Pro-Scottish party, anxious for a peace ■on such terms as the King might be brought to by the help ■of the Scots.^ Through June the struggle of the parties was continued in this new form. At Newcastle the Scottish Commissioners, with Henderson among them, were still plying the King with their arguments for his acceptance of the Covenant and Presbytery. To these, in their presence, he opposed only the most stately politeness and desire for delay ; but in his letters to -the Queen he characterized them as "rude pressures on his conscience." The phrase is perfectly just in so far as there was pressure upon him to accept Presbytery and the Assembly's Directory of Worship for himself and his family, and it might win our modern sympathies even beyond that range but for the evidences of incurable Stuartism which accompanied it. He amuses the Queen in the same letters with an analysis he had made of the Scots from his New- castle experience of their various humours. He had analysed them into the four factions of the " Montroses " or thorough Koyalists, the " Neutrals," the " Hamdltons," and the " Camp- bells " or thorough Presbyterians of the Argyle following. He estimates the relative strengths of the factions, and has no doubt that the real management of Scotland lies between the Hamiltons, leading most of the nobility, and the Camp- bells, commanding the votes of the gentry, the ministers, and the burghs; he refers individual Scots about him to the classes to which he thinks, from their private talk, they belong respectively ; he tells how they are aU " courting " him, and how he is behaving himself " as evenly to all as he can ; " and his " opinion upon this whole business " is that they will all have to join him in the end, or, which would be quite as satisfactory to himself and the Queen, go to perdition together. What could be done with such a man? Quite unaware of what he was writing about them, the Scots were toiling their best in his service. There were letters from Edinburgh (where the General Assembly of the Kirk had met 1 Pari. Hist. III. 474—480; Lords Journals of same date; 'Whitlooke's Journals, May 26, 1646 ; Commons Memorials (ed. 1853), II. 27. VOL. IIL E E 418 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. June 3) to Newcastle and London ; there were letters from Newcastle to Edinburgh and London ; there were letters from London back to Newcastle and Edinburgh. And still, in the English Parliament, the Pro-Scottish party laboured for the result they desired, and the Anti-Scottish or Independent party maintained their jealous watch. Pamphlets and papers came forth, violently abusive of the Scottish nation ; and more than once there were discussions in the Commons in which Haselrig and the more reckless Independents pushed for conclusions that woidd have been offensive to the Scots to the point of open quarrel. It did not seem impossible that there might be a new and most horrible form of the Civil War, in which the English Army and the Inde- pendents should be fighting the Scottish Army and the Presbyterians.'^ What mainly averted such a calamity was the prudent behaviour of the much-abused Scots. Anxious as they naturally were to save their Scottish Charles from too severe a reckoning from his English subjects, and very desirous, as was also natural, that the issue of the present dealings with him should be one favourable to Presbytery and Eeligious Conformity, they do not seem to have per- mitted these feelings to disturb their sense of obligation to the English Parliament, and of a general British responsi- bility. That this was the case arose, I believe, from the fact that Argyle had come to England to take the direction, and that he imparted a deep touch or two of his own to their purely Presbyterian policy. It is interesting, at all events, to have a glimpse of the great Marquis at this point, not as a fugitive from Montrose, not in the military character which suited him so ill, but in his more proper character as a British politician. He had been at Newcastle for some time, " very civil and cunning," as the King wrote to the Queen ; but on the 15th of June he went to London. He was received there with the greatest respect by the English Parliament. A I King's Letters, xxix.-xxxiv. in Pari. Hist. III. 482— 488 ; and Commons Bruce s Charles I. in 1646 ; Baillie, II. Journals of various days in May and 374-6; Acts of the General Assembly June, when there were divisions, of the Church of Scotland for 1646 ; Juno 1646.] AKGYLE. IN LONDON. 419 Committee of 20 of the Lords and 40 of the Commons, composed indifferently of Presbyterians and Independents, was appointed to meet him in the Painted Chamber to hear the communication which, it was understood, he desired to make. Accordingly, to this Committee, on the 25th of June, the Marquis addressed a speech, which was immediately printed for general perusal. Here are portions of the first half of it, with one or two passages Italicised which seem peculiarly pregnant, or peculiarly characteristic of Argyle himself : — *' Mt Lords and Gentlemen, — Though I have had the honour to he named by the Xingdom of Scotland in all the Commissions which had relation to this Kingdom since the beginning of the war, yet I had never the happiness to be with your lordships till now ; wherein I reverence God's providence, that He hath brought me hither at such an opportunity, when I may boldly say it is in the power of the two Kingdoms, yea I may say in your lordships' power, to make us both happy, if you make good use of this occa- sion, by settling of Eeligion and the Peace and Union of these Kingdoms As the dangers [in the way of the first enter- prise, ' Reformation ' or the 'settling of Eeligion'] are great, we must look the better to our duties ; and the best way to perform these is to keep us by the Eules which are to be found in our ^National Covenant, — principally the Word of God, and, in its own place, the Example of the best Eeformed Churches; and in our way we must beware of some rocks, which are temptations both upon the right and left hand, so that we must hold the middle path. Upon the one part we should take heed not to settle lawless liberty in Eeligion, whereby, instead of uniformity, we should set up a thousand heresies and schisms; which is directly contrary and destructive to our Covenant. Upcm the other part, we are to look that we persecute not piety and peaceable men who cannot, through scruple of consmence, come up in all things to the common Rule ; hut that they may have such a forlearance as may be according to the Word of God, may consist with the Covenant, and not he destructive to the jkule itself, nor to the peace of the Church and Kingdom. As to the other point, the Peace and Union of these Kingdoms [here the mutual good services of the two Kingdoms since 1640 are recited] : let us hold fast that union which is so happily esta- blished betwixt us ; and let nothing make us again two who are so many ways one ; all of one language, in one island, all under one King, one in Eeligion, yea one in Covenant ; so that, in effect, we differ in nothing but in name (as brethren do) : which I wish were also removed, thai we might be altogether one, if the two Kingdoms shall think Jit I will forbear at this time to speak of the E E 2 430 Lip OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. many jealousies I hear are suggested ; for, as I do not love them, so I delight not to mention them : only one I cannot forbear to speak of, — as if the Kingdom of Scotland were too much affected ■with the King's interest. I wiLl not deny but the Kingdom of Scotland, by reason of the reigns of many kings, his progenitors, over them, hath a natural affection to his Majesty, whereby they wish he may be rather reformed than ruined : yet experience may tell thai their personal regard to him hath never made them forget that common rule, ' The Safety of tlie People is the Supreme Law.' " Altogether Argyle's speecli in the Painted Chamber, June 25, 1646, produced a great impression in London ; and, as he remained in town till the 15th of July, he was able to deepen it, see all sorts of people, and make observations. He may not have met Cromwell at this time, who was away all June looking after the siege and surrender of Oxford, and the marriage, in that neighbourhood, of his eldest daughter Bridget to General Ireton; but he must have renewed acquaintance with Vane. He renewed acquaintance, at all events, with an older friend — no other than the Duke of Hamilton, recently released from his captivity in Cornwall, and now again jbusy with affairs. He also took his place iu the Westminster Assembly for a few days by leave of the Parliamept.^ Part of Argyle's purpose in coming to London had been to co-operate with the resident Scottish Commissioners there in moderating as much as possible, or at least delaying, the ultimatum which the English Parliament were preparing to send to the King. For, though the Parliament had taken small notice hitherto of the King's letters from Newcastle, they had been anxiously constructing such an ultimatuvi, in the form of a series of Propositions exhibiting in one view all the terms which they required Charles to accept at once and completely if he would retain the sovereignty of England. AVithout being much influenced, apparently, by the appeals of Scottish Commissioners for moderation and clemency to the King in the purely English portions of this document, and 1 King's Letter xxxu. iu Brace's Speech is reprinted from the original C'Aaries/.tn.l646;Baillie,n.374— 378; edition, published by authofl'ty. »» ^;ords Journals, June 23 and July 7, London, by Laurence Chapman, June and Commons Journals, June 25 : and 27 1646 Pari. HistJIL 488-491, where Argyle's ^ July 1646.] THE NINETEEN PROPOSITIONS. 421 having the perfect concurrence of these Commissioners in the other portions, Parliament did at length complete it, and, on the 14th of July, send it to Charles. The document is remem- bered by the famous name of " The Nineteen Propositions," and was altogether most comprehensive and stringent. All the late Eoyal Acts and Ordinances were to be annulled ; the King was to take the Covenant and consent to an Act enjoining it afresh on all the subjects of the three kingdoms ; he was to consent to the abolition of Episcopacy, root and branch, in England, Wales, and Ireland ; he was to approve of the proceedings of the Westminster Assembly, and of the establishment of Presbytery as Parliament had ordained or might yet ordain ; he was to surrender to Parliament the entire control of the Militia for 20 years, sea-forces as weU as land-forces ; he was to let Parliament have its own way in Irelajjid ; and he was to submit to various other requirements, including the outlawing and disqualification of about 120 persons of both nations named as Delinquents — the Marquis of Newcastle, the Earls of Derby and Bristol, Lords Cotting- ton, Digby, Hopton, Colepepper and Jermyn, with Hyde, Secretary Nicholas, and Bishops Wren and Bramhall, in the English list, and the Marquises of Huntly and Montrose, the Earls of Traquair, Nithsdale, Crawford, Carnwath, Forth, and Airlie, Bishop Maxwell, and MacDonald MacColkittoch, in the Scottish list. As bearers of these fell Propositions to the King the Lords appointed the Earls of Pembroke and Suffolk, and the Commons appointed four of their number. These six persons were at Newcastle on Thursday the 23rd of July ; and the next day they had their first interview with the King, Argyle and Loudoun being also present. The rough Pembroke took the lead and produced the Propositions. Before letting them be read, Charles, who had had a copy in his possession privately for some time, asked Pembroke and the rest whether they had powers to treat with him on the Propositions or in aiiy way discuss them. On their answer- ing that they had no such powers, and had only to request his Majesty's Ay or A^o to the Propositions as they stood, " Then, but for the honour of the business," said the King 422 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. testily, "an honest trumpeter miglit have done as much." Eecovering himself, he listened to the Propositions duly read out, and then said he was sure they could not expect an immediate answer in so large a business. They told him that their instructions were not to remain in Newcastle more than ten days, and so the interview ended. Charles, in fact, in anticipation of their coming, had heen planning how to act. "All my endeavours," he had written to the Queen, " must be the delaying of my answer till there be consider- " able parties visibly formed ; to which end I think my pro- " posing to go to London, if I may be there with safety, will " be the best put-off, if (which I believe to be better) I cannot " find a way to come to thee." And so, day after day, though it was the effort of all who had access to him, and especially of Argyle and Loudoun, to persuade him to accept the inevitable, he remained stubborn. Wlien the Com- missioners at length told him they must return to London, all the answer they could obtain from him was a letter, dated Aug. 1, and addressed to the Speaker of the House of Peers pro tempore, in which he said a positive and immediate answer was impossible, but offered to come to London or its neighbourhood to treat personally, if his freedom and safety were guaranteed, and also to send for the Prince of Wales from Prance. With this answer the Commoners left New- castle on Sunday, Aug. 2, and they reported their success to the two Houses on Wednesday, Aug. 12. And here, so far as the King is concerned, we shall for the present stop.^ PARLIAMENT AND THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY RECONCILED: PRESBYTEEIANIZING OF LONDON AND LANCASHIRE. Not the less, while the two Houses had thus heen watch- ing the King at Newcastle and corresponding with him, had they been acting as the real Government of England without him. 1 Kipg's Letters, xxxiv.— xl. (June Bushworth, VI. 309—321 ; and Pari. 24— July 3) in Bruoe's Charles I. in Hist. III. 499—516. Both Rushworth 1646; Baillie, II. 379 ; Lords Journals, and the Pari. Hist, give the text of the July 11, and Commons Jourhals, July 6 ; nineteen Propositions. 1646.] LONDON AND LANCASHIRE PRESBYTEEIANIZED. 423 The King's flight to the Scots having, as we have seen, turned the balance once more in favour of Presbyterianism, the combined Erastians and Independents had not been able to keep Parliament steady to that mood of sharp mastership over the Assembly and the London Divines in which we left it in the months of March and April {ant^, pp. 407 — 411), It had been necessary to make a compromise in that question of " The Power of the Keys " on which the Parliament and the Assembly had been so angrily at variance. The com- promise was complete in June. On the 3rd of that month the two Houses agreed on an Ordinance modifying, in a somewhat complicated fashion, their previous device of Par- liamentary Commissioners to assist and control the Congre- gational Elderships. Instead of the contemplated sets of Commissioners in each ecclesiastical Province, there was now to be one vast general Commission for aU England, consisting of about 180 Lords and Commoners named (Cromwell, Vane, and everybody else of any note among them) ; which Com- missioners, or any nine of them, should be a Court for judging of non-specified offences, after and in conjunction with the Congregational Elderships, with right of reference in certain cases to Justices of the Peace, and with the reserve of a final appeal from excommunicated persons to Parliament itself It does not very well appear why this arrangement, as Erastian in principle as that which it superseded, should have pleased the London Presbyterians better. Perhaps it was made palatable by an accompanying increase of the list of scandalous offences for which the Elderships were to be entitled to suspend or excommunicate without interference by the Commissioners. At all events, when Parliament again required the London ministers and congregations by a new Ordinance (June 9) to proceed in the work which had been interrupted, and elect Elders in all the parishes of the province of London, there was no reluctance. At a meeting at Sion College, June 19, the London ministers, the Assembly Presbyterians in their counsels, agreed to proceed. They contented themselves with a paper of Considerations and Cautions, explaining that the Parliamentary Eule for Presby- 424 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. terianism was not yet in all points satisfactory to their consciences.^ Nothing now hindered the establishment of Presbytery in London; and, actually, through the months of July and August 1646, while the King was making his solitary per- sonal stand for Episcopacy at Newcastle, the Presbyterian machinery was coming into operation in tlie capital. "Matters here," writes Baillie, July 14, "look better upon " it, blessed be God, than sometimes they have. On Simday, " in all congregations of the city, the Elders are to be chosen. " So the next week church-sessions in every paroch ; and " twelve Presbyteries within the City, and a Provincial Synod, " are to be set up, and quickly, without any impediment that " we apprehend. The like is to be done over all the land." On the 13th of Augiist Baillie was able to report that the Elders had been elected in almost all the parishes, and approved by the Triers ; and he adds, " We expect classical meetings speedily." These " classical meetings," or meetings of the twelve London Presbyteries and the two Presbyteries of the Inns of Court, were somewhat later affairs, and the crowning exultation of the first meeting of the Provincial Synod of London did not come for some months ; but from August 1646 the city of London was ecclesiastically a Scotland condensed. Though there was, and continued to be, a general Presbyterian stir throughout England, only in Lancashire was the example of London followed in effective practice. The division of that shire into classes or Presby- teries was already under consideration, with the names of the persons fit to be lay-elders in each Presbytery. There were to be nine Presbyteries. Manchester parish, Oldham parish, and four other parishes, were to form the first; Rochdale parish came into the second ; Preston parish into the seventh; Liverpool did not figure by name as a dis- tinct Lancashire parish at all, but it had one minister, Mr. John Fogg, and he was put into the fifth Preslytery. The names of all the Lancashire ministers thus classified, and 1 Commons Journals, June 3 and 9, 1646; Baillio, IL 377 ; Neal's Puntans (ed.. 1795), III. 206. Aug. 1646.] NEW WOEK FOB THE ASSEMBLY. 425 of the Lancashire gentlemen, yeomen, and tradesmen, to the number of some hundreds, thought fit to be lay-elders in the different Presbyterial districts, may be read yet in the Commons Journals.^ The compromise in-the matter of " The Power of the Keys " having been accepted, with such practical consequences, the Assembly might consider the long and laborious business of The Frame of Church Government out of its handsj and laid on the shelf of finished work beside the Hew Directory of Worship concluded and passed eighteen months before. It was free, therefore, to turn to the other great pieces of business for which it had been originally called : viz. The Confession of Faith and The Catechisms. Notwithstanding interruptions, good progress had already been made in both. Incidentally, too, the Assembly had concluded a work which might be regarded as an appendage to their Directory. They had discussed, revised, and finally approved Mr. Eous's Metrical Version of the Psalms, referred to them by Parlia- ment for criticism as long ago as Nov. 1643. Their revised copy of the Version for the purposes of public worship had been in the hands of the Commons since N"ov. 1645 ; the Commons had ratified the same, with a few amendments, April 15, 1646; and it only wanted the concurrence of the Lords to add this "Eevised Eous's Psalter" (which Ecus meanwhile had printed) to the credit of the Assembly, as a third piece of their finished work. The Lords were too busy, or had hesitations in favour of a rival Version by a Mr. Willia.m Barton, so that their concurrence was withheld ; but that was not the fault of the Assembly. Eous's Psalter, therefore, as well as the Directory and the Frame of Govern- ment being done with, what was to hinder them longer from ' Baillie, II. 378 and 388 ; Neal, III. system was set up more rigidly in Lan- 307 — 310 (List of classes or Presbyteries cashire than in London itself, chiefly in of London). The division of Lanca- consequence of the activity and energy shire into Presbyteries is given in the of Richard Heyricke, or Herrick, M.A., Commons Journals, Sept. 15, 1646. See warden of the Collegiate Church, Man- also HaUeVs "Lancashire: its Puritan- Chester. He was one of the Divines of ism and Nonconformity" (1869), Vol. I. the Westminster Assembly (see Vol. II. pp. 432 et seq., where there are many p. 510) ; but he had returned to Lanca- details concerning the first introduction shire, preferring Presbyterian leader- of the Presbyterial system into Lanca- ship in that county to second rank in shire. According to Dr. Halley, the London. 426 LIFK OF MILTON" AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. the Confession and Catechisms ? Only one impediment — those dreadful jus divinum interrogatories which the Parlia- ment, by Selden's mischief, had hung round their necks! Here also a little management sufficed. " I have put some " of my good friends, leading men in the House of Commons," says Baillie, July 14, " to move the Assembly to lay aside " our Questions for a time, and labour that which is most " necessar and all are crying for, the perfecting of the Con- " fession of Paith and Catechise." The order thus meri- toriously procured by Baillie passed the Commons July 22. The Assembly, in terms of this order, were to lay aside other business, and apply themselves to the Confession of Faith and Catechisms. And so at this point the Assembly had come to an end of one period of its history and entered on a second. As if to mark this epoch in its duration, the Pro- locutor, Dr. Twisse, had just died. He died July 19, 1646, and there is a record of the fact in the Commons Journals for that same July 22 on which the Assembly was ordered to change the nature of its labours. Mr. Herle was appointed his successor.^ DEATH OP ALEXANDER HENDERSON. There was a death about this time more important than that of Dr. Twisse : — The health of Henderson had for soma time been causing anxiety to his friends in London; and, when he left them, early in May, on his difficult mission to Newcastle, they had followed him in their thoughts with some foreboding. Actually, from the middle of May to the end of July, these two strangely-contrasted persons — ^the wise, modest, and massive Henderson, the chief of the Scottish Presbyterian clergy, and the sombre, narrow, and punctilious Charles I., the beaten sovereign of three Kingdoms — were much together at Newcastle, engaged in an encounter of wits and courtesies. Charles had seen a good deal of Henderson 1 Baillie, II. 378-9 ; Commons Jour- the Psalms in Appendix to Baillie, nals, July 22, 1646 ; and Mr. Da^id Vol. III. pp. 587—640. Laing's Notices of Metrical Versions of Aug. 1646.] DEATH OF HENDEKSON. 427 before (at Berwick in 1639, in Edinburgh during the royal visit to Scotland in 1641, and more recently during the Uxbridge Treaty of Feb. 1644-5), and had always singled him out as not only the most able, but also the most likeable, man of his perverse tribe. He had therefore received him graciously on his coming to Newcastle ; and, though there arrived subsequently from Scotland three other Presby- terian ministers, Mr. Eobert Blair, Mr. Eobert Douglas, and Mr. Andrew Cant, aU commissioned by the General Assembly to work upon his Majesty's conscience, it was still with Henderson that he preferred to converse. The main subject of their conversations was, of course, the qiiestion between Presbytery and Episcopacy. Could the King lawfully do what was required of him ? Could he lawfully now, on any mere plea of State-necessity, give up that Church of England in the principles of which he had been educated, which he had sworn at his coronation to maintain, and which he still believed in his conscience to be the true and divinely- appointed form of a Church ? If Mr. Henderson could prove to his Majesty even now that Episcopacy was not of divine appointment, then the plea of State-necessity might avail, and his Majesty might see his way more clearly ! It was on this point that the repeated conversations of the King and Henderson at Newcastle did undoubtedly turn. Nay, there was more than mere conversation : there was an elaborate discussion in writing. The King, it is said, would fain have had a little council of Anglican Divines called to assist him ; but, as that could not be, he was willing to adopt Henderson's suggestion of a paper debate between themselves. Accordingly, there is yet extant, in the Reliquice Sacrce CarolinoB or Printed Works of Charles I., what purports to be the actual series of Letters exchanged between the King and Hender- son. The King opens the correspondence on the 29th of May ; Henderson answers June 3 ; the King's second letter is dated June 6 ; Henderson's reply does not come till June 17 ; the King's third letter is dated June 22 ; Hender- son replies July 2 ; and two short letters of the King, being the fourth and fifth on his side, are both dated July 16. 428 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. There the correspondence ends, Henderson having, it is believed, thought it iit that his Majesty s'bould have the last word. In the King's letters, as they are printed, one observes a stately politeness to Henderson throughout, with very considerable reasoning power, and sometimes a really smart phrase; in Henderson's what strikes one is the studied respectfulness and delicacy of the manner, combined with grave decision in the matter. The controversy, whether in speech or in writing, was unreal on the King's part, and for the purpose of procrastination only ; and Hen- derson, while painfully engaging in it, had known this but too well. His heart was already heavy with approaching death. He had been ill when he came to Newcastle; and in July, when he is said to have let the King have the last word in the written correspondence, he was hardly able to go about. His friends in London, hearing this, were greatly concerned. "It is part of my prayer to God," Baillie writes to him affectionately on the 4th of August, " to restore you to health, and continue your service a time : we never had so much need of you as now." In the same letter, referring to the King's obstinacy, and to the grief on that account which he believes to be preying on Henderson, he implores him to take courage, shake off " melancholious thoughts," and " digest what cannot be gotten amended." But Baillie knew what was coming. " Mr. Henderson is dying, most of heart- break, at Newcastle," he wrote, three days later, to Spang in Holland. No ! it was not to be at Newcastle. " Give me back one hour of Scotland : let me see it ere I die." Some such wish was in Henderson's mind, and they managed to convey him by sea to Edinburgh. He arrived there on the 11th of August, and was taken either to his own house, in which he had not been for three years, or to some other that was more convenient. He rallied a little, so as to be able to dine Avith one friend and talk cheerfully, but never again left his room. There his brother-ministers of the city, and such others as were privileged, gathered round him, and took his hands ; and the rest of the city lay around, making inquiries ; and prayers went up for him in all the churches. On the Aug. 1646.] DEATH OF HENDERSON. 429 19 th of August, eight days after his return, he died, aged sixty-three years, and there began a mourning in the Scottish Israel over the loss of their greatest man. They buried him in the old churchyard of Greyfriars, where his grave and tombstone are yet to be seen,^ 1 Baillie, II. 381—387 ; Burnet's Me- moirs of the Hamiltons(ed.l862), 356-7 ; Wodrow's Correspondence (Wodrow Soeiety), III. 33, SJ ; Life of Mr. Robert Blair, by Eow (Wodrow Society), 185 — 188 ; and *' Reliqma Sact'ce Carolina : or, Tlie works of that great Monarch and glorious Martyr King Charles the I." (Hague edition of 1651), where the Letters are given in full. There is a fair abstract of them in Neal's Puniaiis (ed. 1795), III. 311—324. The death of Henderson at so critical a moment, and so closely after his conferences with the King at Newcastle, made a deep impression at the time, and be- came an incident of even mythical value to the Boyalists. Hardly was the breath out of his body when there began to run about a lying rumour to the effect that he had died of remorse, acknowledging that the King had con- vinced him, and confessing his repent- ance of all he had said or done against that wisest and best of monarchs. Baillie, in London, was indignant. " The false reports which went here of " Mr. Henderson," he wrote to Spang in Holland, Oct. 2, 1646, or less than six weeks after Henderson's death, "are, I see, come also to your hand. "Believe me (for I have it under his " own hand a Uttle before his death) "that he was utterly displeased with "the King's ways, and ever the longer " the more ; and whoever say otherwise, " I know they speak false. That man "died as he lived, in great modesty, " pietyj and faith." But the lie could not be extinguished ; it circulated among the Boyalists ; and within two years it was turned into cash or credit by some scoundrel Soot in England, who forged and published a document entitled Tke Declaration of Mr. Alex- ander Henderson, principaU Minister of the Word of Ood at Edinburgh, and, chief Cmimdmoner from, the KirTc of Scotland to the Parliament and Synod of England, made upon his death-bed. This forgery was immediately denoun- ced by the General Assembly of the Scottish Church in a aolfemn Declaration set forth by them Aug. 7, 1648, stating particulars of Henderson's last days, and vindicating his memory. Never- theless the fiction was too convenient to be given up : it lasted ; was em- balmed by Clarendon in his History (605) ; and still leaves its odour in wretched compilations.-- The genunie- ness of the series of Letters on Episco- pacy between the King and Henderson, first printed in 1649, immediately after Charles's death, and included since then in all editions of Charles's works, does not seem to have been questioned by contemporaries on either side, or Ly subsequent Presbyterian critics. In the year 1826, however, the eminent and acute Godwin, in an elaborate note in his History of the Commonwealth (IT. 179 — 185), did challenge the genuine- ness of the correspondence. He was inclined to the opinion that there had been no interchange of written Papers between the King and Henderson at all, but only "discourses and con- ferences," and that the whole thing was a Royalist forgery of 1649, contem- porary with the Eikon Basiliiee, and for the same purpose. In venturing on so bold an opinion, Godwin, besides un- dervaluing other evidence to the con- trary, seems to have dismissed too easily Burnet's information, in his lAves of the Hamiltons in 1673, as to the manner in which the Letters wei'e written and kept. No less eminent a man than Sir Robert Moray, one of the founders of the Royal Society, and its first President, and of whom Burnet elsewhere says, "He was the wisest and worthiest man of his age, and was as another father to me," had told Burnet, "a few days before his much- lamented death" (June 1673), that he had been the amanuensis employed in the correspondence. Being with the King at Newcastle in 1646, then only as Mr. Robert Moray, it had fallen to him, as a person much in his Majesty's confidence, to receive each letter of the King's as it was written in his own royal hand, and make the copy of it which was to be given to Henderson, and also, Henderson's hand being none of the most legible, to transcribe Henderson's replies for the King's easier perusal ; and with his Majesty's permission he had "kept Mr. Hender- " son's papers and the copies of the 430 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. The last of Baillie's letters to Henderson, dated Aug. 13, 1646, contains a curious passage. " Ormond's Pacification " with the Irish," writes Baillie, " is very unseasonable ; the " ,placing of Hopes (a professed Atheist, as they speak) about " the Prince as his teacher is ill taken." The Hopes here mentioned is no other than Thomas Hobbes, then just appointed tutor to the Prince of Wales in Paris. As the letter must have reached Edinburgh after Henderson was dead, he was not troubled with this additional piece of bad news before he left the world. Doubtless, however, he had heard of Hobbes, and formed some imagination of that dread- ful person and his opinions. Hobbes indeed was now in his fifty-eighth year, or not much younger than the dying Henderson himself. But he was of slower constitution, and had begun his real work late in life, as if with a presentiment that he had plenty of time before him, and did not need to be in a hurry. He was to outlive Henderson thirty-three years. "King's." After all, however, Godwin's suggested tells, in my mind, more sceptical inquiry leaves a shrewd some- against the King's letters as we now what behind it. For, granted that a have them than against Henderson's, written correspondence did take place, The King's letters, we may be sure, "the question remains," as Godwin would be pretty carefully edited in asserts, "whether the papers now to be 1649; and what may have been the " found in King Charles's works are the amount and kind of editing thought "very. papers that were so exchanged allowable? "at Newcastle." The suspicion here CHAPTEE III. EFFECTS OP Milton's areopagitica — his intention of another MAERIAGB : HIS WIFE'S RETURN AND RECONCILIATION WITH HIM REMOVAL FROM ALDERSGATE STREET TO BARBICAN — FIRST EDITION OP MILTON's COLLECTED POEMS : HUMPHREY MOSBLEY THE BOOKSELLER — TWO DIVORCE SONNETS AND SONNET TO HENRY LAWES CONTINUED PRESBYTERIAN ATTACKS ON MILTON : HIS ANTI-PRESBYTERIAN SONNET OF REPLY — SURRENDER OF OXFORD : CONDITION OF THE POWELL FAMILY THE POWELLS IN LONDON : MORE FAMILY PERPLEXITIES : BIRTH OF MILTON's FIRST CHILD. The effect of Milton's Areopagitica, immediately after its pub- lication in November 1644, and throughout the year 1645, seems to have been very considerable. Parliament, indeed, took no formal notice of the eloquent pleading for a repeal of their Licensing Ordinance of June 1643. As a body, they were- not ripe for the discussion of the question of a Free Press, and the Ordinance remained in force, at least as an instrument which might be applied in cases of flagrant trans- gression. But public opinion was affected, and the general agitation for Toleration took more and more the precise and practical form into which Milton's treatise had directed it : viz. an impatience of the censorship, and a demand for the liberty of free philosophising and free printing. " Such was the effect " of our author's Areopagitica" says Toland, in his sketch of Milton's life, " that the following year Mabol, a licenser, offered " reasons against licensing, and, at his own request, was dis- " charged that office." ^ Toland is in a slight mistake here, at least in his dating. The person whom he means — Gilbert 1 Toland's Memoir of Miltou prefixed to the Amsterdam (1698) edition of Milton's Prose Works, p. 23. 432 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. Mabbott, not ' Mabol ' — was Eushwortli's deputy in the office of Clerk to the House of Commons, doing duty for him while he was away with the New Model as Secretary to Fairfax ; and not only did this Mabbott occasionally license pamphlets and newspapers, as it would have been Eushworth's part to do, through the year 1645, but he was expressly recom- mended to be licenser of " weekly pamphlets " or newspapers, Sept. 30, 1647, and he continued to act in this capacity till May 22, 1649, at which time it was, and not in 1645,'that he was released from the business at his own request.^ The effect of MUton's argument on Mabbott in particular, there- fore, was not so immediate as Toland represents. There can be no doubt, however, that as Milton, in his Areopagitica, had tried to make the official licensers of books, and espe- cially those of them who were ministers, ashamed of their office, so his reasons and sarcasms, conjoined with the irk- someness of the office itself, did produce an immediate effect among those gentlemen, and modify their official conduct. Several of them, among whom appears to have been Mr. John Downham, who had licensed Milton's own Bucer Tract (anti, p. 255, note), became more lax in their censorship than the Presbyterians thought right ; and there was at least one of them, Mr. John Bachiler, who became so very lax, from personal proclivity to Independency, that he was denoupced by the Presbyterians as " the licenser-general not only of " Books of Independent Doctrine, but of Books for a general " Toleration of all Sects, and against Paedo-Baptism." ^ The 1 My notes &om the Stationers' licensers, the Bishops and their Chap- Ke^sters of 16i5 and subsequent years; lains, for fourscore years." He was in Lords Journals, Sept. 30, 1647 ; and the habit, Edwards adds, of not only Commons Journals, May 22, 1649. licensing sectarian books, but also re- There is some evidence, however, that, commending them ; and among the before this last date, Mabbott had Toleration pamphlets he had licensed found the duty irksome (see Commons was the reprint of Leonard Busher's Journals, Aug. 81, 1648). tract of 1614 called Eeligiout Peaas 2 Gangrana : Part I. (ed. 1646), pp. (see anti, p. 102). "I am afraid," says 88, 39. In Part III. Edwards devotes Edwards, "that, if the Devil himself three pages (102 — 106) to a oastigation should make a book and give it the title of Mr. Baohiler for his offences as a A Plea for Liberty of Conscience, wUh licenser. Bachiler, he says, "hath certain Secuions against Periecution for been a man-midwife to bring forth more Religion, and bring it to Mr. Baohiler, monstersbegottenby the Devilandbom he would license it, and not only with a of the Sectaries within the last three bare imprimatw, but set before it the years than ever were brought into the commendations of ' a useful treatise' of light in England by all the former ' a sweet and excellent book.' " 1645,] EFFECTS OF THE AREOJPASITIGA. 433 Areopagitica, in fact, found out, even among the official licensers of books, men who sympathised with its views ; and it established prominently, as one of the practical questions between the Independents and the Presbyterians, the ques- tion of the liberty of Unlicensed Printing. It was Milton that had taught the Independents, and the Anti-Presby- terians generally, to bring to the front, for present purposes, this form of the Toleration tenet. For example, one finds that John Lilburne had been a reader of the Areopagitica, and had imbibed its lesson, and even its phraseology. " If " you had not been men that had been afraid of your " cause," is one of Lilburne's addresses to the Presbyterians and the Westminster Assembly Divines, " you would have " been willing to have fought with us upon even ground and " equal terms — namely, that the Press might be as open for " us as for you, and as it was at the beginning of this Par- " liament ; which I conceive the Parliament did of purpose, "that so the free-born English subjects might enjoy their " Liberty and Privilege, which the Bishops had learnt of " the Spanish Inquisition to rob them of, by locking it up " under the key of an Imprimatur." ^ There is proof, in the writings of other Independents and Sectaries, that Milton's jocular specimens of the imprimaturs in old books had taken hold of the popular fancy. It became a common form of jest, indeed, in putting forth an unlicensed pamphlet, to prefix to it a mock licence. Thus, at the beginning of the anonymous Arraignment of Persecution, the author of which was a Heniy Eobinson {anth, p, 387), there is a mock order by the Westminster Assembly, with the names of the two Scribes appended, to the effect that the author, "Young Martin Mar-Priest," be thanked for his excellent treatise, and authorized to publish it, and that no one except. " Martin Claw-Olergy," appointed by the author to print the same, presume to do so.^ Prynne quotes this as an example of the contempt into which the Ordinance for Licensing had fallen with the Sectaries, and of their supreme effrontery, Eobin- i Lilburne, as quoted by Prynne in his Freih Discmery of Blating Stars, p. 8. 2 Quoted by Prynne in his Fresli, Discovert/-, p. 8. VOL.111. PB 434 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. son, he says, was one of the chief publishers of scandalous lihels, having brought printers from Amsterdam, and set up a private printing press for the purpose.^ On the whole, then, Milton's position among his country- men from the beginning of 1645 onwards may be defined most accurately by conceiving him to have been, in the special field of letters, or pamphleteering, very much what CromweU was in the broader and harder field of Army action, and what the younger Vane was, in Cromwell's absence, in the House of Commons. WhUe Cromwell was away in the Army, or occasionally when he appeared in the House and his presence was felt there in some new Inde- pendent motion, or some arrest of a Presbyterian motion, there was no man, outside of Parliament, who observed him more sympathetically than MUton, or would have been more ready to second him with tongue or with pen. Both were ranked among the' Independents, as Vane also was ; but this was less because they were partisans of any particular form of Church- government, than because they were agreed that, whatever form of Church-government should be established, there must be the largest possible liberty under it for nonconforming consciences. If this was Independency, it was a kind of large lay Independency ; and of Independency in this sense Milton was, undoubtedly, the literary chief Only, when he was thought of by the Independents as one of their cham- pions, it was always with a recollection that his championship of the common cause was qualified by a peculiar private crotchet. He figured in the list of the chiefs of Inde- pendency, if I may so express it, with an asterisk prefixed -to his name. That asterisk was his .Divorce Doctrine. He was an Independent with the added peculiarity of being the head of the Sect of Miltonists or Divorcers. 1 I may take this opportunity of self afterwards an official censor of the announcing a rather curious fact, of Press. He was one of the licensers of which I have ample and incontestable newspapers through 1651 and a portion jproof, though the proper place for of 1652, doing tLe very work from stating it iii detail is yet to come. It ' which Maibbott had begged to be ex- is. that Milton, the denouncer of the cused. The fact, however, is susoep- Licensihg System, and the satirist o-f tible of an easy explanation,- which ^ill the official licensers of 1644, was him- sare Milton's consistency. 1645.] INTENTION OF ANOTHER MARRIAGE. 435 INTENTION OF ANOTHER MARRIAGE : HIS WIFE S RETURN AND RECONCILIATION "WITH HIM. In 1645 Milton still gloried in the asterisk. All the copies of the second and augmented edition of The Doctrine and Discvpline of Divorce having been sold, there was a reprint of it in this year, forming suhstantially the third edition of the original treatise. None of his writings hitherto had been in such popular demand ; and as, besides the three editions of the original Divorce treatise, there were also in circulation his Bucer Tract, his Tetrachordon, and his Colasterion, he had identified himself with the Divorce subject by a total mass of writing larger than he had yet devoted to any other. WhUe his five Anti-Episcopal pamphlets, of 1641-42, make together 326 pages of his prose works in Pickering's edition, the four Divorce treatises, of 1643-45, make 378 pages of the same ; so that, in mere quantity, Milton was 52 pages more a Divorcer than an Anti-Prelatist. He had now, however, as he had announced in his dedication of the Tetrachordon to Parliament, done all that he meant to do on the subject through the medium of mere pamphleteering. But he had hinted to Parliament, while making that an- nouncement, that a man with his opinions might do more than write pamphlets in their behalf. " If the Law make not a timely provision," he had said, " let the Law, as reason is, bear the censure of the consequences." There was a covert threat here that Milton, if the Law would not allow him to inarry again, might marry again in defiance of the Law. Early in 1645, at aU events, Milton did think of marrying again. His wife had been away from him for the better part of two years ; and she was now nothing more in his memory than a girl who had been in his house in Aldersgate Street as his bride for a few weeks, whom he had found out in that short experience to be stupid and uncompanionable, who had then left him on some pretence, and gone back to her father's house, and whose only communications with him since had F p 2 436 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. been a message or two of contempt and insult. Law or no law, it was all over between him and that girl ! All the cir- cumstances -were known : his unfortunate position was the talk of neighbours ; often, as we have imagined, kindly souls of women, young and older, must have had their colloquies and whispers about his pitiable bachelorhood caused by the shameful desertion of his wife. Kindly talk was all very well : but was there any unmarried lady willing to take the place of the deserter, if asked to do so ? This was really the question in Aldersgate Street, and in all the round of Milton's acquaintances. Candidates were not likely to be numerous, even among those freer Christian opinionists among whom Milton principally moved ; and there was, moreover, a com- plication in the general difficulty. Milton, having blundered in his choice once, and having principled himself now with very high notions of feminine fitness, was very likely to be careful in a second choice. Was there accessible any lady in whom the two indispensable conditions of fitness and willingness could be found united ? This was the problem for Milton, and it is on record that he tried to solve it. One remembers his sonnet " To a Virtuous Young Lady," written about the same time as that to the Lady Margaret Ley, and wonders whether the "virgin wise and pure" there com- memorated for her excellencies of mind and character was thought of by him as the possible successor of Mary Powell. Can her name have been Miss Davis ? That, at all events, was the name of the lady who was thought of as Mary Powell's probable successor. It is from Phillips that we have the particulars of the story : — " Not very long after the setting forth of these treatises," says Phillips, referring to the Divorce Treatises, "having " application made to him by several gentlemen of his "acquaintance for the education of their sons, as under- " standing haply the progress he had infixed by his first " Tindertakings of that nature, he laid out for a larger house, " and soon found it out. But, in the interim, before he re- " moved, there fell out a passage which, though it altered not " the whole course he was going to steer, yet it put a stop, or 1645.] EEOONCILIATION WITH HIS WIFE. 437 " rather an end, to a grand affair, which was more than pro- " bably thought to be then in agitation : it was indeed a "design of marrying one of Ur. Davis's daughters, a very "handsome and witty gentlewoman, but averse, as it is said, " to this motion. However, the intelligence hereof, and the "then declining state of the King's cause, and consequently "of the circumstances of Justice Powell's family, caused " them to set all engines on work to restore the late man-ied "woman to the station wherein they a little before had " planted her. At last this device was pitched upon : — There " dwelt in the Lane of St. Martin's-le-Grand, which was hard "by, a relation of our author's, one Blackborough, whom it " was known he often visited ; and upon this occasion the " visits were the more naiTowly observed, and possibly there " might be a combination between both parties, the friends "on both sides concentring in the same action, though on " different behalfs. One time above the rest, he making his " usual visit, the wife was ready in another room, and on a " sudden he was surprised to see one whom he thought to "have never seen more, making submission and begging "pardon on her knees before him. He might probably at " first make some show of aversion and rejection ; but partly "his own generous nature, more inclinable to reconciliation " than to perseverance in anger and revenge, and partly the " strong intercession of friends on both sides, soon brought " him to an act of oblivion, and a firm league of peace for "the future ; and it was at length concluded that she should " remain at a friend's house, till such, time as he was settled " in his new house at Barbican, and all things for her re- "ception in order. The place agreed on for her present "abode was the Widow "Webber's house in St. Clement's " Churchyard, whose second daughter had been married to " the other brother [Christopher Milton] many years before." PhiUips tells the story very clearly, and a little annotation is all that is wanted : — The lady whom Milton thought of, and had perhaps been thinking of for some time, as a possible substitute for Mary Powell, was " one of Dr. Davis's daughters." Who this Dr. Davis was, Phillips, writing at a 438 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OP HIS TIME. time when the mere name was probably enough for Lon- doners, does not inform us ; nor have I been able, with any certainty, to identify him.^ Dr. Davis, at all events, dead or living, had daughters, one of them " a very handsome and witty gentlewoman," between whom and Milton there was some attempt to arrange a marriage. She herself, however, was naturally " averse to this motion ;" and, indeed, one can hardly understand what kind of proposition could have been made to her or her friends. That something was in agitation, nevertheless, and that it was talked of more particularly in the spring and early summer of 1645, Phillips had a positive recollection, more by token because at that very time, he also remembered, his uncle had offers of more pupils than he could accommodate in the house in Aldersgate Street. He had consequently been looking about for a larger house, and had found one suitable close at hand, in the street called Barbican. Was Miss Davis to be persuaded to be mistress of this new house? Would the "several gentlemen" of Milton's acquaintance who meant to board or half-board their sons with him, or would the spouses of those gentlemen, have been satisfied with that arrangement ? The experiment was not to be tried. The house in Barbican had been taken, but Milton had not yet removed into it, when, to Miss Davis's relief, another arrangement was brought about. Eumours of what was going on, and of the new house in Barbican, had been borne to Oxford, and the Foresthill mansion of the Powells. In any case the news of the Miss 1 There had been a Thomas Davies, was a Nicholas Davis, or Davys, M.D., M.D., bom about 1564, and educated who had taken that degree at Leyden at Christ's College, Cambridge, where in 1638, had been incoiporated in the he had graduated in medicine in 1591, same degree at Osford in 1642, and and who was afterwards a medical may have been afterwards in practice practitioner in London, and Licentiate in London (Munk's Roll of the Royal and Censor of the Boyal College of College of Physicians of London, and Physicians there. As he had died in Wood's Fasti, II. 9). The date of his 1615, the youngest of any surviving graduation at Leyden, however, seems daughters of his in 1645 musthave been rather late for the hypothesis that he past her thirtieth year. But, on the was Phillips^s Dr. Davis. After all, whole, Phillips's words suggest that the there may have been some other con- Dr. Davis he means was alive in 1645 or spiouous . Dr. Davis among Milton's had recently been alive ; so that this is acquaintances, and he need not have not likely to have been the one. There been a medical doctor. 1645.] EECONCILIATION "WITH HIS "WIFE. 439 Davis project, the " grand affair," as Phillips calls it, could not but have caused some excitement there. But the news came at a time when the family-fortimes were no longer what they had been when Mary Powell had left her Par- liamentarian husband and taken refuge again under the maternal wing, amid her EoyaUst relatives and acquaint- ances, close to the King's head-quarters. Crippled already, like other EoyaUst families, by necessary contributions to the King's cause, the Powells had begun to be aware, and more poignantly than others because of their more straitened means, that their sacrifices were likely to be all in vain — that Parliament was to be master, and to have the power of pains and penalties over those whom it called Delinquents. Espe- cially after the shattering blow to the King at Naseby (June 14, 1645), doubt on the subject was nearly at an end. What was then more natural than that distressed Eoyalist .families should be looking forward anxiously to the amount of new distress which the final triumph of Parliament would inflict upon them ? And so in the ForesthiU mansion there had been grave consultations between Mr. and Mrs. Powell and between Mrs. Powell and her daughter, ending in a resolution, in which Mrs. Powell was perhaps the last to acquiesce — for the daughter afterwards pleaded that her mother all along had been " the chief promoter of her fro- wardness " ^ — that it would be best for the daughter to return to liondon and try to make it up with Mr. Milton. At least one member of the family would thus have a roof over her head in the hard time coming ; and might not Milton, with his Parliamentarian connexions, be able to befriend the family generally when the time did come ? Soon after Naseby, accordingly, we are to imagine the poor young ' wife taking the journey to London, accompanied by her mother or some other relative, on her humiliating and dubious errand. How were they to manage when they were in London ? It was not a simple matter of going straight to the house in ■Aldersgate Street and obtaining admission. Ingenuity was ■■ Wood, Fasti, 1.-482. ■ 440 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. necessary, aud preparation of a mode for approaching Milton. But that, too, had been thought of. Communications were opened, or had already heen opened, with those of Milton's friends who, it was supposed, would be willing to co-operate in the intended reconciliation, if not in the wife's interest, at least in his. And which of all Milton's friends was not .willing ? In such cases, it is in the man himself that the storm rages ; he alone passionately feels : the friends that stand by, even most sympathisingly, are cool and collected, regarding the principal only as a difficult patient, who must be soothed and humoured till he can be brought to reason. To Milton's friends his Divorce notion may have seemed a just enough speculation, or one at least about which they would not quarrel with him ; the real question with them was as to the continued practical implication of his own hfe and prospects with such a speculation, infamous as it seemed to respectable society and to the leaders of religious opinion. Let him hold it, if he would, and even write for it still ; but was he, at the age of thirty-seven, to wrap up his whole future life in it, and proceed as if he and it must be dashed to pieces together? Was not this reconciliatiou between him and his wife, of which there seemed now to be a chance, the best thing that could happen for him as well as for her ? If once it were brought about, would not things adjust them- selves so that the public would hear no more of the pei-ilous stuff of the Divorce Doctrine, or hear of it only in dying echoes? So reasoned Milton's friends then, just as people would reason now in a similar case ; and the friendly plot was arranged, Milton, it appears, was in the habit of dropping in, almost daily, in his walk City-wards from Aldersgate Street, on a kinsman of his, named Blackborough, whose house was in St. Martin's-le-Grand Lane — ie. in that bend of Aldersgate Street which was within the Gate, and where now the General Post- Office of London stands. Here, some day in July or August 1645, he was surprised into an interview with his girl-wife. The good Blackborough had consented to aid and abet, and had lent his house for the purpose ; and, other friends being at hand to second him, he 1645.] RECOKCILIATION WITH HIS WIFE. 441 had opened, let us say, the door of the room in which Mary Powell was waiting, had ushered Milton in, and had left them together. Then, as Phillips imagines, had come Milton's two moods in succession, — the first his instinctive mood of anger and rejection, and the second that mood of his slow relenting which was witnessed and helped through by the in-bustling friends : — Mood First. Samson. My wife, my traitress ! let her not come near me ! Chorus. Yet on she moves ; now stands and eyes thee fixt, About to have spoke ; but now, with head declined, Like a fair flower surcharged with dew, she weeps, And words addressed seem into tears dissolved, Wetting the borders of her silken veil : But now again she makes address to speak. Dalila. With doubtful feet and wavering resolution I came, still dreading thy displeasure, Samson, Which to have merited, without excuse, I cannot but acknowledge : yet, if tears May expiate (though the fact more evil drew In the perverse event than I foresaw), My penance hath not slackened, though my pardon No way assured. But conjugal affection, Prevailing over fear and timorous doubt. Hath led me on desirous to behold Once more thy face, and know of thy estate ; If aught in my ability may serve To lighten what thou suffer'st, and appease Thy mind with what amends is in my power. Though late, yet in some part to recompense My rash, but more unfortunate, misdeed. Samson. Out, out ! hysena ! Samson Agonistes, 725 — 747. Mood Second. She ended weeping, and her lowly plight, Immoveable till peace obtained from fault Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought Commiseration : soon his heart relented Towards her, his life so late and sole delight, Now at his feet submissive in distress, Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking, His counsel whom she had displeased, his aid; As one disarmed, his anger all he lost, And thus with peaceful words upraised her -soon. Paradise Lost, X. 937—946. 442 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. Was this Milton's idealized history loBg afterwards of his own two moods in Blackborough's house in St. Martin's-le- Grand Lane some time in July or August 1645 ? So far as it was autobiography at all, I should not say that it was much idealized, except in so far as Dalilain the land of the Philis- tines,, and Eve in Paradise, had to be represented poetically as beautiful, eloquent, and fascinating,- while of poor Mary Powell's claims to beauty we know little, and our information as to hfer eloquence and fascination consists in our irremovable impression that it was of her that Milton had been thinking in that passage in his first Divorce Tract in which he described the hard fate of a man bound fast by marriage to " an image of earth and phlegm." From the side of Milton there was, I think, no idealizing : hardly else than as his own Samson, or his own Adam, in his poems, did Milton feel or speak on any important occasion of his own real experience. If, then, the second mood now prevailed, and he yielded, it was only, I believe, because despair for himself and pity for another overcame him jointly, and what was alone possible was accepted as disastrously fated. So much by way of necessary anticipation, and that there may not be a mistake, even for a moment, as to the real nature of the reconciha- tion that had been effected. Meanwhile, the friends of both wife and husband were delighted with their success ; and, tiU the new house in the Barbican should be ready, young Mrs. Milton went to lodge in the house of the Widow Web- ber, Christopher Milton's mother-in-law, near St. Clement's Church in the Strand. EEMOVAL FEOM ALDEfiSGATE STREET TO BARBICAN. September 1645, when the New Model Army had stormed Bristol and was otherwise carrying aU before it in the English South-west, when Montrose in Scotland had been extinguished by David Leslie at PhUiphaugh, and when the Presbyterian system had been so far arranged for England that the first order of Parliament for the election of Elders 16i5.J , REMOVAL TO BAEBICAN. 443 in all the London parishes had gone out, and Triers of the competency of these Elders had been appointed in all the London Presbyteries : then it was, as near as one can calculate, that the interesting house in Aldersgate Street was left by Milton, and he, his wife, his father, the two boys Phillips, and the other pupils, entered together into the new house in Barbican. It was no great remove. The street called Barbican de- rived its name, according to Stow, from the fact that at one time there had stood there " a lurgh-h&nning, or watch- tower of the city, called in some language a barbican;" and modern etymologists perfect Stow's observation by tracing the name, through the mediseval Latin bariacana, to the Persian Idla Jchaneh, meaning " upper chamber," whence our less corrupt form balcony, actually identical with barbican} There had, in short, been a barbican, or outer defence of the city, at this spot, a little beyond the particular gate called Aldersgate, just as there were such things beyond others of the city-gates ; but the name had lingered only here as applied to the street or site where a barbican had been. The street, retaining its warlike name, still exists — a short street going off from Aldersgate Street at right angles on one side, and within a walk of not more than two or three minutes from the site of Milton's Aldersgate Street house. The house in Barbican was larger, and so much farther off from the city-gate ; but that was all. There was no real change of neighbourhood or of street-associations. A dingy street now, dingier even than the main thoroughfare of Aldersgate Street, Barbican was then a fair enough bit of suburban London towards the north ; and it boasted, as we already know, of at least one aristocratic mansion in which Milton had some interest — the town-house of the Earl of Bridgewater, ex-President of Wales, and the peer of Gomus. The name " Bridgewater Gardens " still designates, without a shred of garden left there, but only grimy printing-offices and the like instead, the portion of the street which the mansion 1 stow, as quoted in Cunningham's Londmi, Art. " Barbican ; " and Wedgwood's Diet, of English Etymology, Axt. "Balcony." 444 LIFE OF MILTON AND IIISTORY OF HIS TIME. occupied. Nay more, till within a few years ago, Milton's own house in Barbican, with some modern change of frontage, and some fiUing-up of interstices right and left, was extant and known. Somehow, while the more important house in Aldersgate Street had perished from the memory of the neighbourhood (probably because the fabric itself had perished), the tradition of Milton still clung around this house in Barbican. I have passed it many a time, stopping to look at it, when it was occupied, if I remember rightly, by a silk-dyer, or other such tradesman, exhibiting on his sign the peculiar name of " Heaven," and using the lower part of it for his shop. Though jammed in with other houses and undistinguished, in the line of bustling street, it had the appearance of having once been a commodious enough house in the old fashion ; and I have been informed that some of the old windows, consisting of thick bits of dim glass lozenged in lead, still remained in it at the back, and that the occupants knew one of the rooms in it as " the Schoolroom" where Milton had used to teach his pupils. But alas ! one of the city railways took it into its head that it required to run through this precise bit of Barbican, and the house, with others near it, was doomed to demolition. When I was last in Barbican part of the shell of the house was still standing, roofless, disfloored, diswindowed, and pickaxed into utter raggedness, as so much rubbish yet waiting to be removed from the new railway gap. The inscription yet remained on the front-door — "This was Milton's House," or to that effect — which had been very properly put there by the contractor or his workmen to lure people to a last look at the interior before the demolition was complete.^ 1 My information about the interior it was too late ; and my last homage of the h ousB is from a friend who visited to it had to be a lingering saunter near it just when it was doomed. Though and In the railway gap behind, when I had passed it often when it was yet there was only the remnant of it de- complete, I had unfortunately, not ex- scribed in the text, pecting its doom, deferred going in till 1«15-] MILTON COLLKCTS HIS I'OKMS. 445 I'lEST EDITION OF MILTON'S COLLECTED POEMS : HUMPHEEY MOSELEY THE BOOKSELLER. Among Milton's first employments in his new and larger house in Barbican, while his -wife was resuming her duties and the schoolroom was getting gradually into use, we are able to distinguish one of particular interest. It was nothing else than the revision for the press of the proof- sheets of the first collected edition of his Miscellaneous Poems. By his dealings with the Press hitherto, it is to be remembered, Milton had made himself known to most people chiefly as a prose pamphleteer. Except his lines On Shakespeare, written in 1630, and prefixed anonymously to the Second Folio Shakespeare in 1632; his Comus, written and acted in 1634, and sent to the press, also without the author's name, by his friend Henry Lawes in 1637; and his Lycidas, written in 1637, and printed in 1638, in the Cambridge University volume of Verses on Edward King's death, but only with the initials " J. M." : — except these, and perhaps another scrap or two of Latin or English verse that had been printed in a semi-private manner, all Milton's poems, written at intervals over a period of more than twenty years, had remained in his own keeping in manu- script, and had been communicated to friends only in that form. In consequence of what had been thus printed, or privately circulated, a certain reputation for Milton as a poet had, indeed, been established ; but the voice of this reputation was hardly heard amid the much louder uproar caused by his eleven prose-pamphlets between 1641 and 1645. Now, to a man who believed Poesy to be his true calling, who had consented reluctantly to put aside " his garland and singing robes " in order that he might engage in the work of politics, and who had announced while doing so that in that work it was but the strength of his left hand he could lend and not the nobler cunning of his right, this state of public opinion 446 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. about himself must have begun to be a little disagreeable. It was the most natural thing in the world that, as soon as there should be a lull in the political tumult, the least leisure of the public for a return to purer and blander literature, Milton should make some sign of resuming his garland, so as to remind those about him of his original vocation. Bu{7 precisely in the year 1645, when Naseby had assured the victory of Parliament, there did come, for the first time since the war had begun, or indeed since the Long Parliament had met, such a lull of the polemical tumult. The sta- tistics of the English book-tra,de, as they are presented in the Registers of the Stationers' Company, verify and illustrate this statement. Even in the year 1640, when there was political agitation enough in England, but the Long Parliament had not yet met, there was still so much leisure for the purer forms of htera- ture in English society that London ptiblishers were bring- ing out such things as Masques and other remains of Ben Jonson, the Works of Thomas Carew, various Plays by Shirley, Glapthorne, Habington, Heywood, Killigrew, and Brome, an edition of Herrick's Poems, and Thomas May's Supplement to Lucan. As soon, however, as we pass beyond 1640, and th#">real work of the Long Parliament is begun, Such books' almost entirely cease to appear. The matter then provided'^for the reading of the English public consisted of a huge jumble of Pamphlets on the Church-question, Sermons, semi-controversial Treatises of Theology, Political Speeches, fragments of Ecclesiastical History, Prose Invec- tives and Satires, and latterly, when the Civil War was in progress, an abundance of Diurnals, Intelligencers, Mercuries, and other news-sheets. Between 1640 and 1645 one does indeed discern twinkling in this jumble some gems or would-be gems of the purer ray serene. The "Epigrams Divine and Moral " of Sir Thomas Urquhart, the translator of ■Eabelais, were published in April 1641 ; Howell's "Instruc- tions for Foreign Travel " came out in September in the same year ; Baker's " Chronicle of the Kings of England " in the foilo-wing December; in April 1642 there was a London 16i6.] BOOK-TKABE FROM 1610 TO 3645. 447 edition of Thomas Eandolph's Poems, which had appeared originally at Oxford in 1638 ; and the publication of Den- ham's " Cooper's Hill " and his " Tragedy called The Sophy " is a rather notable event of August 1 642, the very month in which the King raised his standard. In the same month one London publisher, Francis Smethwick, registered for his copies a number of books of the poetical kind which had been the property of his late father, including " Mr. Dray- ton's Poems," "Eiiphues's Golden Legacy," Meres's "Witt's Commonwealth," and also " Hamblett, a Play," " The Taming of the Shrew," " Eomeo and Juliet," and " Love's Labour's Lost." This transaction, however, hardly implied that these books were in demand, but only that Smethwick wanted to secure his interest in them on succeeding to his father's business. Afterwards, while the war was actually raging, it is not till December 1644 that one comes upon anything of the finer sort worth mentioning. On the 14th of that month there was registered for publication the first edition of "Poems, &c., written by Mr. Edmund Waller, of Beckonsfield, Esq., lately a member of the Honourable House of Commons," hwi then, as we know, a disgraced plotter, who, having, by great favour, been permitted to carry his dear-bought hfe^ and his remaining wealth, into exile in Trance, left this parting gift to his countrymen, that they might think of him meanwhile as kindly as .they could. Except that I have not taken notice of a publication or two of the voluminous Scotchman Alexander Eosse, Chaplain to his Majesty,^ the foregoing enumeration fairly represents, I believe, the amount of book-production of the purer or non-controversial kind that went on in London in the four loud-roaring years between 164|}.',and 1645. : , 1 This AJe^Kder Bosse, or "Dr. Iain in Ordinary to King Charles. By- Alexander Bc^s," made famous, in/' a succession ofpublicatigns of all kinds, Budiiras, was one of the singular chair in Latin and in English, he acquired racters of the time, and a memoiri of the reputation of being ". a divine, a him, with a complete list of his writings, poet, and an historian." He made a would be a not utoigBtruCtS?e curiosity. good deal of money, and, at his death He was a native- m AUSfdeen, born in 1654, left bequests, for educational about 159ff,, buthad-iffiigrated to Eng- purposes, to Aberdeen, Southampton, land, where, he became Master qf the -Oxford, and .Cambridge. Free School at Southampton, and Chap- ,'•,■■;>". : :. 448 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. In 1645, however, and especially after Naseby, there are symptoms of a slightly revived leisure for other kinds of reading than were supplied by Diurnals, Sermons, Pamphlets, and books of Polemical Theology, and of a willingness among the London booksellers to cater for this leisure. In that year, interspersed amid the still continuing tide of Pamphlets, Diurnals, Sermons, and other ephemerides, were such novel appearances in the London book- world as these — two Treatises, one physical, the other metaphysical, by Sir Kenelm Digby, then abroad; an edition of Buxtorf's Hebrew Grammar; an Essay by Lord Herbert of Cherbury; some metrical religions remains of Francis Quarles, then j ust dead ; some attempts to introduce the mystic Jacob Bohme, by specimens of his works ; a translation of .^sop's Fables and those of Phsedrus ; the issue of the second and third parts of the Epistolce Eoe- liance or James Howell's Letters, with a re-issue of his " Dodona's Grove ; " and a re-issue of Eandolph's comedy of " The Jealous Lovers." Clearly, as the Civil War was draw- ing to a close, the Muses of pure History, pure Specular tion or Philosophy, Scholarship for its own sake, and even lighter Phantasy, did hover over England again, timidly seeking some spots where they might rest themselves in the all-prevailing controversy between Independency and Presbyterianism. Almost always, in such cases, a social tendency is repre- sented in the activity of some particular person. Nor is it otherwise here. So far as Poetry and so-called Light Litera- ture are concerned, one has no difficulty in pointing to the particular London publisher who in 1 645, and from that year onwards, stood out from all his fellows by his alertness in the trade. This was Humphrey Moseley, who had his shop at the sign of the Prince's Arms in St. Paul's Churchyard. Some- thing in his parsonal tastes, I am inclined to think, must have determined him to the line of business which he selected ; so marked is his avoidance of all dealings in sermons, ephemeral treatises on theology, and pamphlets either way on the pre- sent crisis, and his preference for poetry and books of general culture. He had been in the trade, in partnership with a 1645.] HUMPHKEY MOSELEY THE BOOKSELLER. 449 Nicholas Fussel, in St. Paul's Churchyard, as early as 1634/ and shortly after that is heard of as in business for himself. I have a note of him as registering for his copyright, on March 16, 1639-40, Howell's " Dodona's Grove ; " and thence- forward, in worse times, he stuck to Howell. He not only published Howell's " Instructions for Foreign Travel " in September 1641, and again the second and third parts of Howell's "Letters" in 1645, with a re-issue of "Dodona's Grove ; " but he acquired, in the same year, the copyright of the first part of the " Letters," which had been originally brought out by another publisher. More significant still is the fact that it was Moseley that was the publisher of "Waller's Poems in December 1644.'' After that date his tendency to trade-dealings in Poetry and the like is so mani- fest in the Stationers' records that I find appended to my MS. notes, from these records, for the London Bibliography of the year 1646, this memorandum : — " Poetry and Pure Literature looking up again this year, and chiefly through the medium of Moseley's shop." By that time Moseley had dis- tinguished himself as the publisher of original editions of books, not only by Howell and Waller, but also by Milton, Davenant, Crashaw, and Shirley, and moreover as the ready purchaser of whatever copyrights were in the market of poems and plays by Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Ludwick Carlell, Shirley, Davenant, Killigrew, and other celebrities dead or living. To this group of Moseley's authors Cowley and Cartwright were soon added ; and it was not long before he snapped out of the hands of duller men Denham's Poems, Carew's Poems, various things of Sir Kenelm Digby, and every obtainable copyright in any of the plays of Shake- speare, Massinger, Ford, Eowley, Middleton, Tourneur, or any other of the Elizabethan and Jacoban dramatists. For at 1 Wood's Ath. II. 503. and Published according to Order, » " Poems, &c., written by Mr. Ed. London : Printed by T. W. for Hum- Waller of Beckonsfield, Esquire ; lately phrey Mosley, at the Princes' Arm es a member of the Honourable House of in Paul's Churchyard : 1645 : " pp. 96, Commons. All the Lyriok Poems in this small 8to. My authority for the Booke were set by Mr. Henry Lawea, date of the publication of the volume Gent, of the King's Chappell, and one of — December 1644 — is the Stationers' his Majestie's Private Musiok. Printed Registers. VOL. III. G 450 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. least the ten years from 1644 onwards there was, I should say, no publisher in London comparable to Moseley for tact and enterprise in the finer literature. Moseley was only on the way to make all this reputation for himself, and indeed Waller's volume of Poems, published in Dec. 1644, was yet the principal advertisement of his shop, when he and Milton came together. Pleased with the success of the Waller, it appears, Moseley thought of a collection of Mr. Milton's Poems as a likely second experiment of the same kind, and applied to Milton for the copy. The appli- cation was not disagreeable to Milton ; and, accordingly, some time after the middle of 1645, or just while he was preparing to remove from Aldersgate Street to Barbican, and there came upon him the great surprise of his wife's re-appearance, Moseley and he were busy in arrangements for the new volume. Milton's acknowledged London publishers hitherto had been these three — " Thomas Underbill, of the Bible in Wood Street " {Of Beformation, 1641, Of Frelatical Episcopacy, 1641, and Animadversions on Remonstrant's Defence, 1641), " John Eothwell, at the sign of the Sun in Paul's Church- yard " (Reason of Church Oovernment, 1641, and Apology for Smectymnuus, 1642), and "Matthew Symmons" (the Rimr Tract, 1644) ; and this last-mentioned Symmons, who does not give the locality of his shop, had been probably the printer also of those pamphlets of Milton which bore no publisher's name (Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, 1643, 1644, and 1645, Of Education, 1644, Areopagitica, 1644, and Tetrachordon and Colasterion, 1645). Now, however, these were forsaken for the moment, and for bringing out the Volume of Poems the con- junction was Milton and Humphrey Moseley. The revisal of the proof-sheets may have been begun in Aldersgate Street, but it must mainly, as I have said, have been among Milton's first employments at the new house in Barbican. Here, at all events, is Moseley's entry of the new volume in the Stationers' Eegisters : "Oct. 6 [1645], Mr. Moseley ent.for his copie, under the hand of Sir Nath. Brent and loth the Wardens, a hooke called Poems in English and Latyn hy Mr. John Milton." Usually the entry of a book in the Stationers' 1645-6.] FIKST EDITION OP THE POEMS. 451 Eegisters was about simultaneous with its publication. In this case, however, there was a. delay of nearly three months between the registration and the actual appearance. The precise day of the publication of the new volume was Jan. 2, 1645-6.1 Either, therefore, Moseley had registered the volume before the printing had proceeded far, or after the sheets were printed there was some little cause of delay. The following is the title-page of this interesting and now very rare volume : — " Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, compos'd at several times. Printed by his true Copies. The Songs were set in Musick by Mr. Henry Lawes, Gentleman of the King's Chappel, and one of His Majestie's Private Musick. ' Bacoare frontem Cirgite, ne vati nooeat mala lingua future' ViEGiL, Eclog. vii. Printed and publish' d according to Order. London, Printed by Euth Eaworth, for Humphrey Moseley ; and are to be sold at the signe of the Princes Arms in Paul's Churchyard. 1645." The volume is a very tiny octavo, divided into two parts in the paging. First come the English Poems, occupying 120 pages, and arranged thus : — On the Mwning of Christ's Nativity, compos'd 1629 ; A Paraphrase on, Psalm GXIV. ; Psalm G XXXVI. ; The Passion,; On Time; Upon the Circumcision; At a Solemn Music; An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester; Song on May Morning; On Shahespear, 1630 ; On the University Carrier who, &c. ; Another on the Same ; L' Allegro ; II Penseroso ; Sonnets, English and Italian — ten in number (I. " Nightingale ; " II. " Donna leggiadra ; " III. " Qual in coUe," with the attached " Canzone ; " IV. " Diodati, e te'l; " V. " Per certo 1 bei;" VI. " Giovane piano ; " VII. " How soon hath Time ; " VIII. "Captain or Colonel;" IX. "Lady that in the prime;" ,X. "Daughter to that good Earl"); — Arcades; Lycidas; 1 This is ascertained by a MS. note Press-mark B. 1126. " Jan. 2 " is in- 5rd "Lon' G G 2 of the collector Thomason's, or ^ his serted before the word " London " in direction, on a copy among the Bang's the title-page. Pamphlets in the British Museum ; 452 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. Comus} As if to call attention to Comus as the longest and chief of the poems, it has a separate title-page, thus, " A Mask of the same Author, presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, lefore the Uarl of Bridgewater, then President of Wales, Anno Bom. 1645;" but, though there is this break of a new titlp-page, the paging runs on without interruption, Zycidas ending p. 65, and Comus taking up the rest to p. 120. Here, however, there is a complete break, as if it were intended that the English Poems, there ending, might be bound by themselves. The Latin Poems follow as a separate collection, paged separately from p. 1 to p. 88, and with this new title-page prefixed to them : "Joannis Miltoni Londinensis Poemata : quorum pleraque intra annum cetatis vigesimum conscripsit : nuncprimum edita. Londini, Typis JR. P., Prostant ad Insignia Principis, in Cosme- terio D. Pauli, apud Humphredum Moseley, 1645." There is, however, a double arrangement of the Latin Poems, or a dis- tribution of them into two classes. First come those which constitute the so-called Elegiaeum Liber; viz., the "Elegies" proper, numbered from I. to VII., as they now stand in all editions of MUton, together with the eight little scraps in the same elegiac verse (iive of them on the subject of the Gunpowder Plot, and three on the Italian singer Leonora) which some modern editors have preferred to detach from the Elegies, and put under the separate heading of " Epigrams." This is contrary to Milton's intention; for the phrase "Elegia- rum Finis " follows those scraps in the volume, showing that he meant them to go with the Elegies, and that, in fact, he thought it permissible to call anything an Elegy that was ' To this enumeration of the English of the known early English Poems are pieces in the volume of 1645 I may omitted in the volume : viz. the piece append three bibliographical notes — (1 ) On t!ie Death of a Fair Infant dying of a Of the 28 pieces the original drafts of Cough^i.e. the poem on the death of 10 still exist in the volume of Milton his niece, the infant girl Phillips, written MSS. in Trinity College, Cambridge— in 1626 ; and the College piece of 1628 viz. ; On Time, Upon, the Circumcision, entitled At a Vacation Exercise. These A t a Solemn Music, Sonnets 7, 8, 9, and pieces first appeared in the Second Edi- 10, Arcades, Lyddas, and Comus. All tion of the Poems in 1673. (3) It may these drafts are in Miltou's own hand, also be noted that the latest wiitten except that of Sonnet 8, only the head- pieces which appear in the volume of ing of which is in his hand. Of the 1645 are Sonnets 9 and 10— the one to other 18 pieces, the most important the anonymous young lady, the other ot ViltatAixre L' Allegro anA. 11 Pense>-oso, to the Lady Margaret Ley. We have the original MSS. have not come down assigned them to the year 1644, but to US. (2) It will be seen that two they may have been as late as 1645. 1645-6.] FIRST EDITION OF THE POEMS. 453 written in the ordinary elegiac verse of alternate Hexameter and Pentameter. Accordingly, all his Latin poems in that kind of verse having been included in the Elegiarum Liber, all his other Latin poems, not in that kind of verse, but either in Hexameter pure or in rarer metres, together with two frag- ments of Greek verse, are regarded as " Sylvse," and constitute the distinct Sylvaeum Libek which ends the volume. 'First among the "Sylvae" come the six Latin poems of the Cam- bridge period — In obitum Procancellarii Medici, In Quintum Novembris, In obitum Prcesulis Miensis, Naturam non pati Senium, De Ided Platonicd quemadmodum Aristoteles intellexit, and Ad Patrem ; then, by way of typographic interruption, come the two scraps of Greek verse — viz. Psalm LXIV. and the scrap entitled Fhilosophus ad Begem Quendam, &c. ; after which are the two Latin pieces, Ad Balsillwm and Mansus, written in Italy, and the JEpitaphium Bamonis, written immediately after the return to England. This last stands a little apart from the body of the " Sylvae," as if Milton attached a peculiar sacredness to it. Such is a general description of the Eirst or 1645 Edition of Milton's Miscellaneous Poems. The volume, however, pre- sents some points of additional interest : Has the reader noticed the motto on the title-page from Virgil's seventh Eclogue ? It is peculiarly significant of the mood in which the volume was published. Milton, who had called himself Thyrsis in the Epitaphium Bamonis, here adopts in the happiest manner the words of the young poet-shepherd Thyrsis in Virgil's pastoral. Thyrsis there, contending with Corydon for the prize in poetry, begs from his brother shepherds, if not the ivy of perfectly approved excellence, at least " Some green thing round the brow, Lest ill tongues hurt the poet yet to be." Could anything more gracefully express Milton's intention in the volume ? This collection of his Poems, written between his sixteenth year and his thirty-eighth, was a smaller collection by much, he seems to own, than he had 454 LIFE OP MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. once hoped to have ready by that point in his manhood; but it might at least correct the impression of him common among those who knew him only as a prose pamphleteer. Something green round his brow for the present, were it only the sweet field-spikenard, would attest that he had given his youth to Poesy, and would re-announce, amid the clamour of evil tongues which his polemical writings had raised, that he meant to return to Poesy before all was done, and to die, when he did die, a great Poet of England. This feeling, which is the motive of the publication, ap- pears curiously in all the details of its arrangement. The order in which the poems are printed, within each division or class, is, as nearly as possible, the order in which they were written ; the deviations being only suoh as proper editorial art required. To almost every juvenile piece, too, whether in English or in Latin, there is prefixed some indication of the exact date of its composition ; and the title-page of the Latin Poems distinctly solicits attention to the fact that most of them were composed before the author was twenty. Even more remarkable than this care in the dating is the intro- duction into the volume of all the eulogiums which Milton had already received from private friends on account of the Poems, or of any portion of them. To the Comus there is prefixed Henry Lawes's eulogistic Dedication of it, in the edition of 1637, to Viscount Bracldey, and also Sir Henry Wotton's cordial letter to Milton, with its praise of the poem in that edition, when Milton was on the start for his con- tinental tour in the spring of 1638. To the Latin Poems as a whole there is even a more formal vestibule of encomiums First of all, there is a little preface by Milton in Latin apologizing to the reader for troubling him with them. '■' Though these following testimonies concerning the Author,'' he says, " were understood by himself to be pronounced not " so much (Aovi him as ovei' him, by way of subject or " occasion — it being the general habit of men of brilliant "genius, if they are at the same time one's friends, to " fashion their praises too eagerly rather by the standard " of their own excellencies than by truth — yet he was uu- 1646-6.] FIKST EDITION OF THE POEMS. 455 " willing that the singular goodwill of such persons towards " him should remain unknown, and the rather because others " advised him strongly to the step he is now taking. While " therefore he puts from him with all his strength the im- " putation of desiring overpraise, and would rather not have " attributed to him more than is due, he cannot deny but he " considers the opinion of him meantime by wise and cele- " brated men a very high honour." Accordingly there here follow the encomiums of his various Italian friends, known to us long ago, and which had been carefully preserved by him till now among his papers — the Latin distich by the famous Marquis Manso of Naples ; the outrageously com- plimentary Latin verses of the two Eomans, SalzUli and Selvaggi ; and the more interesting Italian ode of compli- ment and Latin Dedication by the two Florentines, Francini and Carlo Dati. (See Vol. I. pp. 732-4, 753-4, and 768.) One has to remember that the insertion of such commenda- tory verses in new volumes of poetry was a fashion of the day. But, besides, there was really the anxiety for " something green round the brow." In short, it is as if Milton said to his countrymen — " Here is plenty of greenery, and to spare, with florid stuff intermixed, of which I am rather ashamed : pick out as much or as little of it as you like ; only, at this date in my life, to prevent mistake, let me have some kind of garland." The publisher, Humphrey Moseley, for one, was most willing to oblige Milton. Prefixed to the volume, on the blank space before the poems themselves begin, is this most interesting preface in Moseley's own name : — "the stationer to the ebadee. " It is not any private respeot of gain, gentle Eeader — for the slightest Pamphlet is nowadays more vendible than the works of learnedest men — but it is the love I have to our own language, that hath made me diligent to collect and set forth such pieces, both in prose and verse, as may renew the wonted honour and esteem of our English tonguej and it's the worth of these both English and Latin Poems, not the flourish of any prefixed eneomions, that can invite thee to buy them — though these are not without the highest commendations and applause of the learnedest Aoademicks, both 456 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. domestick and foreign, and amongst those of our own country the unparalleled attestation of that renowned Provost of Eton, Sir Henry Wootton. I know not thy palate, how it relishes such dainties, nor how harmonious thy soul is : perhaps more trivial Airs may please thee better. But, howsoever thy opinion is spent upon these, that encouragement I have already received from the most ingenious men, in their clear and courteous entertainment of Mr. "Waller's late choice pieces, hath once more made me adventure into the world, presenting it with these ever-green and not to he blasted laurels. The Author's more peculiar excellency in these studies was too well known to conceal his papers or to keep me from attempting to solicit them from him. Let the event guide itself which way it will, I shall deserve of the age by bringing into the light as true a birth as the Muses have brought forth since our famous Spenser wrote ; whose poems in these English ones are as rarely imitated as sweetly excelled. Eeader, if thou art eagle- oyed to censure their worth, I am not fearful to expose them to thy exactest perusal. "Thine to command. Humph. Moselet." This is most creditable to Moseley, and confirms the im- pression of him which is to be derived from all the known facts of his publishing life. One notices, with real respect, his introductory statement about himself, that, in an age when only pamphlets were thought vendible, he was resolved, from his own liking for good literature; to keep to a finer line of business; one observes with interest the admission that it was Moseley who had solicited the copy from Milton, and not Milton who had offered the copy ; and one is struck with the justness of taste shown in the hint that, however choice Mr. Waller's late Pieces might be, here was a poet of " more peculiar excellency." Above all, nothing could be critically truer than the assertion that since Spenser's death there had been no English poetry of Spenser's kind equal to that contained in this volume. Another feature of the volume, for which Moseley, without doubt, is also responsible, is a prefixed portrait of the Author. Thei-e was then living in London a certain "William Marshall, an engraver and sketcher of designs for books. He had been some fourteen or fifteen years in this employment ; and among the many heads he had done, separately, or as frontis- pieces to books, were those of Pdchard Brathwayte the Poet, Dr. Donne, Archbishop Abbot, Laud, and Dr. Daniel Teatley. 1645-6.] FIRST EDITION OF THE POEMS. 457 Very probably Moseley had already bad dealings with Marshall, as he had certainly had with the more celebrated engraver Hollar, who had done a frontispiece for him for Howell's " Instructions for Foreign Travel." At all events, Hollar being now out of the way and in trouble (he and Inigo Jones were in the Marquis of Winchester's house at Basing when it was taken by Cromwell), it was Marshall that came in for most such pieces of engraving work as Moseley and other London publishers required. The connexion between him and Mose- ley became, indeed, a permanent one, so that Marshall is perhaps best remembered now by Horace AValpole's descrip- tion of him as " the graver of heads for Moseley's books of poetry." If the first head he did for Moseley was this for the edition of Milton's Poems in 1645, it was an unlucky beginning of the connexion. It turned out, at all events, to be an unfortunate piece of work for Marshall's own memory with posterity : — Moseley, we are to suppose, insisted on a portrait of Milton as a proper ornament to be prefixed to such a volume, chose Marshall to do it, and sent him to Milton. Now Milton, as we know, had some recollection of Marshall, and not a very respectful one. It was Marshall that had done not only Dr. Featley's portrait, but also the caricature of the different sorts of Anabaptists and Sectaries, including a river- sqgne with bathers of both sexes, which had been inserted in the Doctor's treatise entitled The Dippers Dipt. Milton, as we have seen {anti, p. 311), while adminis- tering punishment to Dr. Featley in his Tetrachordon on account of a passage in this treatise, had not allowed the vulgarity of the engraving in Featley's book to escape. "For which I do not commend his marshalling" had been Milton's punning notice of it in a parenthesis of the punish- ment. When, therefore, Mr. Marshall came to Milton from Moseley, Milton must have remembered him as the cari- caturist for Dr. P^eatley's book. Nevertheless, he seems to have given him every facility for the portrait wanted. Marsliall's habit, in such cases, was to take a sketch from the life when he could get it, but to assist himself with whatever was at hand in the shape of a picture or former 458 LIFE OF MILTON AND IIISTOEY OF HIS TIME. engraving. Milton, therefore, may have given him a sitting or two, but perhaps avoided unnecessary trouble by referring to that portrait of himself at the age of 21, now celebrated as " the Onslow Portrait," which then hung in some room in the house in Barbican. As the forthcoming volume con- sisted largely of Milton's juvenile Poems, an engraving from that portrait, touched up a little, would be the very thing. And so Marshall set to work. His dilatoriness over the plate may have been the cause of the unusual delay in the publi- cation of the volume after it had been registered. In due time, however, the result was presented to Moseley and to Milton. And what a result ! How they must have both stared ! The general design of the plate was, indeed, pretty enough — an oval containing the portrait, with a background partly of curtain and low wall or -window-siU, partly of an Arcadian scene of trees and meadow beyond, in which a shepherd is piping under one of the trees, and a shepherd and shepherdess are dancing ; and then, outside the oval, in the four corners, the Muses Melpomene, Erato, Urania, and Clio, with their names. All this was passable ; it was the portrait within the oval that gave the shock. The face is that of a grim, gaunt, stolid gentleman of middle age, looking like anybody or nobody, with long hair parted in the middle and falling down on both sideg to the lace collar round the neck; one shoulder is cloaked, and the other shown tight in the buttoned tunic or coat; and the arms meet clumsily across the breast, the left arm uppermost. Eound the oval was the legend, " Joannis Miltoni Angli Effigies, anno cetatis vigess: pri. W. M. Sculp."— i.e. "Por- trait of John Milton, Englishman, in the 21st year of his age : W. M. Sculp." The legend said twenty-one years of age ; the portrait looked somewhere about fifty. What was to be done ? What ought to have been done was to cancel the plate and print the book without it. Perhaps not to vex Moseley, Milton did not insist on this, but allowed the engraving, just as it was, to be prefixed to the volume. But he took his revenge in one of the most malicious practical jokes ever perpetrated. " Mr. Marshall," he must have said 1645-6.] FIEST EDITION OF THE POEMS, 459 to the unforfcuQate engraver, " here are a few lines of Greek which I. should like to have carefully engraved on the plate under the portrait," at the same time handing him the following : — 'AjuafltT yEypai\oi, r^Xarc (jiavXov Zvafiip,r)jjia ^MypdcfiQv. Away went Mr. Marshall, and duly, and with some pains, engraved these letters on the plate, utterly ignorant of their meaning. Accordingly, when the volume appeared (Jan. 2, 1645-6), purchasers of it did indeed find Marshall's portrait of Milton in it, but those among them who knew Greek could read, underneath it, inscribed by Marshall's own graving tool, this damning criticism of his handiwork : — " That an unskilful hand had carved this print You'd say at once, seeing the living face ; But, finding here no jot of me, my friends, Laugh at the botching artist's mis-attempt." ^ 1 This was very savage in Milton ; " too great care with which you up- but really, as it turned out, it was a " braid me." The passage quite con- prudent precaution. For, till 1670, firms the view taken in the text of Marshall's botch prefixed to the Poems the way in which the portrait came to was the only published portrait of be published. In justice to Marshall, Milton — ^the only guide to any idea it is right to say that he had done of his personal appearance for those, much better things, and did better whether friends or foes, whether in things afterwards for Moseley, than this Britain or abroad, who were not ao- head of Milton. "Marshall," saya quainted with himself. Especially Bliss (Wood's Ath. III. 518, Note), among enemies on the Continent, as we " though in general a coarse and h.asty shall find, both Marshall's portrait and performer, is not to be despised, since Milton's sarcastic disavowal of it were his heads, though often very rough eagerly scanned and interpreted for sketches, bear evident marks of authen- the worst. As late as 1655, Milton, in ticity and resemblance to the originals, his Pro se Defensio contra Alexandmm The best head he ever engraved, in my Mwum, had to refer to both portrait opinion, is one of Dr. Donne when and disavowal as follows : — "Nowlam young." I can confirm this by saying " a Narcissus with you, because I that his head of Featley really gives '' would not be the Cyclops you paint one an idea of that obstinate andoonse- *' rae from your sight of the most un- quential old divine. I only wish he had i< like portrait of me prefixed to my done Milton half as well. About Mar- ,t Poems. Really, if, in consequence shall's engraving of Milton see Mr. J. ,, of the persuasion and importunity F. Marsh's tract on the JSngraved and ,, of my publisher, I allowed myself Pretended Portraits of Milton (Liver- to be clumsily engraved by an un- pool, 1860). Mr. Marsh thinks, with skilful engraver, because there was me, that Marshall based his engraving " not another in the city in that time partly on the Onslow picture, and that " of war, this argued rather my entire that picture suggested the date, cstat. " indifference in the affair than the 21, so absurdly given to the engraving. 460 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. TWO DIVOKCE SONNETS, AND SONNET TO HENRV LAWES. Moseley's precious little volume, ■with the engraver Marshall thus grimly immortalized in it, brings Milton to the begin- ning of 1646, or twelve months beyond his Tetrachordon and Colasterion. His wife having been for some months back with him, for better or worse, in the house at Barbican, he had dropped the Divorce argument, or at least its pubHc prosecution. That he did so with a certain reluctance, and in no spirit of recantation, appears from two of his Sonnets, which must have been written about the time of the publicar tion of his volume of Poems (Oct. 1645 — Jan. 1645-6), but which are not included in that volume, either because they were too late to come in their places after the Ten Sonnets contained in it, or because Milton thought it better not then to print them. " On the Detraction which followed upon my writing certain Treatises " is the title given by Milton himself in MS. to the two Sonnets together ; but they may have been written separately. I. I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs, By the known rules of ancient liberty, When straight a barbarous noise environs me Of Owls and Cuckoos, Asses, Apes, and Dogs; As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs Bailed at Latona's twin-born progeny, Which after held the sun and moon in fee. But this is got by casting pearl to hogs. That bawl for freedoin in their senseless mood, And still revolt when Truth would set them free. Licence they mean when they cry Liberty ; For who loves that must first be wise and good : But from that mark how far they rove we see, For all this waste of wealth and loss of blood. II. A book was writ of late called Tetrachordon, And woven close, both matter, form, and style : 1645-6.] TWO DIVORCE SONNETS; 461 The subject new. It walked the town a while Numbering good intellects ; now seldom pored on. Cries the stall-reader " Bless us ! what a word on A title-page is this ! " and some in file Stand spelling false while one might walk to Mile- End Green. Why is it harder, Sirs, than Oordon, Colkitto, or Macdonnell, or Gcdasp ? Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek, That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp. Thy age, like ours, O soul of Sir John Cheke, Hated not learning worse than toad or asp, "When thou taughl'st Cambridge and King Edward Greek. The second of these Sonnets is printed first in all the editions of Milton, but there is proof that it was written second.^ And, while the two together form what may be called Milton's poetical farewell to the Divorce subject, the mood in the second, it may be noted, is more humorous than in the first. In the first Milton, still angry, clenches his fist in the face of his generation, as a generation of mere hogs and dogs, unable to appreciate any real form of the liberty for which they are howling and grunting ; in the second the spleen is less, and he is content with a rigmarole of rhyme about the queer effects among the illiterate of the Greek title of his last Divorce Pamphlet. And here what is chiefly interesting in the rigmarole is the evidence that Milton had been re- cently attending to the news from Scotland. The " Colkitto, or Macdonnell, or Galasp " of the Sonnet is no other than our friend Alexander MacDonnell, alias MacColkitto, alias Mac- GiUespie, Montrose's gigantic Major-general ; and the " Gor- don " is either Lord Aboyne, the eldest son of the Marquis of Huntly, who adhered to Montrose till Philiphaugh, or it is a general name for the many Gordons who were with him (see anth, pp. 348, 358, 367). The odd Scottish and Gaelic names had amused Milton's delicate ear; Gordon rhymed aptly to Tetrachordon ; and hence the notion of the Sonnet.^ 1 It stands first in the Second or 1673 have, tried to identify Galasp at all Edition of Milton's Poems ; but in the have supposed him to be the Mr. George Cambridge MSS. it comes second in Gillespie who was one of the Scottish Milton's own hand. Divines in the Westminster Assembly. ' Those annotators on Milton who There may be a side-reference to him, 462 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. A third Sonnet, written about the same time, shows even more distinctly the calming effect on Milton's mind produced by his changed mode of life in the house in Barbican, after his wife's return and the publication of his little Volume of Poems. It is the well-known Sonnet to his friend Henry Lawes, the musician. So far as the two artists, William and Henry Lawes, con- cerned themselves in the politics of the time, they were, of course, Eoyalists. Officially attached to his Majesty's household and service, what else could they be 1 The elder of the two, indeed, William Lawes, had gone into the Eoyalist army, taken captain's rank there, and been slain quite recently at the siege of Chester (October 1645), much regretted by the King, who is said to have put on private mourning for him. Henry, the younger, and much the more celebrated as a composer, had remained in London, exercising his art as much as might be at such a time, and kept by it in acquaintance with many who, diifering in other things, were at one in their love of music. Everybody liked and admired the gentle Harry Lawes, and he was welcome everywhere. But there was still no family with which he was on more intimate terms than with his old patrons of the accomplished Bridgewater group, and there can have been no house where his visits were more frequent than at their house in Barbican. True, the family was greatly reduced from what it had been in the old days of the Arcades and Comus, when Lawes was teacher of music to its budding girls and boys, and the master and stage-director of their tasteful masques and private con- certs. The Countess had been ten years dead; Lord Brackley, the heir of the house, and the elder of the boy-brothers in Comus, had wedded, in July 1642, when only nineteen years of age, the Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter of the power- fvd Eoyalist Earl, afterwards Marquis and Duke, of New- castle ; and one or two of his sisters, unmarried in the Comus year, had since found husbands. With the widower Earl, for Milton must have heard much of heard of everywhere as Montrose's him ; but the primary reference is not comrade in arms, and who was Colhitto, to the Presbyterian minister, but to MacDonnell, and Oalasp, all in one. he huge Colonsay Highlander, recently 1645-6.] SONNET TO HENRY LAWES. 463 however, inhabiting now his town-house in Barbican, and visiting but seldom his country mansion at Ashridge, Herts, there still remained his youngest daughter, the Lady Alice of Oomus, verging on her twenty-fifth year, and Mr. Thomas Egerton, the younger of the boy-brothers in Comus, now a youth of about twenty. Probably elder and married members of the family gave the Earl their occasional com- pany; for he was now about sixty-five years of age, in an infirm state of health, sorely impoverished, and in the unfortunate condition of a Peer who would have been with the King if he could, and whom the King had expected to be with him, but who was obliged to plead his infirm health and his poverty for a kind of semi-submission to Parliament. He had reluctantly taken the Covenant (anU, pp. 39, 40), and there are entries in the Lords Journals proving that his excuses for non-attendance in the House were barely allowed to pass. Music and books were among the invalid Earl's chief recrea- tions ; and some of his happiest moments in his old age may have been in listening to the Lady Alice, or another of his daughters, singiug one of Lawes's songs, with Lawes, now the privileged artist-friend rather than the professional tutor, standing by or accompanying. What if it were the Lady Alice, and the song were that well-remembered one of Comus which she had sung, when a young girl, eleven years before, in the Hall of Ludlow Castle, before the assembled guests of her father's Welsh Presidency, her proud mother then among the listeners, — " Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph that liv'st unseen Within thy airy shell " i If so, the sound of her voice might have almost reached Milton in his house close by in the same street. At all events, here, in the street called Barbican, by a strange chance, were assembled, within a few yards of each other, at the very time when Oomus was first published by Milton himself, and acknowledged among his other poems, at least five of the persons chiefly concerned in the masque on its first production — the Earl in whose honour it had been 464 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. composed ; the Lady Alice, and Mr. Thomas Egerton, two of the chief actors ; the musician Lawes, who had directed all, composed the music, and sustained the parts of Thyrsis and the Attendant Spirit in the performance ; and the poet who had written the words. When Lawes was in Barbican of an evening, it was but a step for him from the Earl's house to Milton's. And then would there not be more music, mingled with talk perhaps about the Bridgewater family, while Mrs. Milton sat by and listened 1 And would not the old Scrivener come down from his room to see Mr. Lawes, and bring out his choicest old music-books, and almost set aside his son in managing the visit for musical delight 1 So one fancies, and therefore keeps to the interrogative form as the safest ; but the fancy here is really the most exact possible apprehension of the facts as they are on record. Lawes's friendship with Milton had been uninterrupted since 1634; but it so chances that the third point in Milton's life at which his intimacy with Lawes emerges into positive record is precisely the winter of 1645-6, when Milton was the Earl of Bridgewater's neighbour in Barbican, and his Volume of Poems was going through the press. Not only was there reprinted in this volume Lawes's ^Dedication of the Comus in 1637, " To the Eight Honourable John, Lord Brackley, son and heir-appareht to the Earl of JBridgewater ; " but in the very title-page of the volume, as arranged by Moseley, Lawes's name is associated with Milton's. " The Songs were set in musick by Mr. Eenry Lawes, &c.',' says the title-page ; and this may mean that not only the songs in Arcades and Comus, but other lyrical pieces in the volume, had been set to music by Lawes. If so, a good deal more of Lawes's music to Milton's words may have been in existence about 1645 than his settings of the five songs in Comus, which are all that have come down to us in his own hand. Songs of Milton set by Lawes may have been in cir- culation in MS. copies, and may have been as well known in musical families as the numerous songs by Carew, Henick, "Waller and others, which had been set by the same composer ; and it may be to this that Moseley alludes by the prominent 1645-6.] SONNET TO HENRY LAWES. 465 mention of Lawes in the title-page of the collected Poems. And, if Lawes had done so much for Milton's verse, it was fitting that MUton should make some return in kind. He had indeed introduced skilful compliments to Lawes person- ally in his Comvs; but something more express might be now appropriate. Accordingly, on the 9th of February, 1645-6, or five weeks after the publication of the Poems, Milton wrote the following : — " TO MT FRIEND MB. HENRY LAWES. " Harry, whose tuneful and weU-measured song First taught our English music how to span Words with just note and accent, not to scan With Midas ears, committing short and long. Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng, With praise enough for Envy to look wan : To after-age thou shalt he writ the man That with smooth air could humour best our tongue. Thou honour'st Verse, and Verse must lend her wing To honour thee, the priest of Phcebus' qxdre. That tuu'st their happiest liues in hymn or story. Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing. Met in the milder shades of Purgatory." The original draft of this Sonnet, entitled as above, and ' with the date "Feb. 9, 1645," attached, and a corrected tran- script underneath, both in Milton's own hand, are in the Cambridge volume of Milton MSS. The Sonnet was prefixed by Lawes, with the same title, in 1648 to a publication of some of his own and his deceased brother's compositions, entitled Choice Psalmes put into Musick for Three Voices ; but in the Second or 1673 Edition of Milton's Poems it reappeared with the title which it has retained in all subsequent editions : viz. " To Mr. Henry Lawes on his Airs." For biographical purposes it is well to remember the first title and the dating. The Sonnet is, in fact, a memorial of a time when Milton and Lawes must have been much together.^ 1 The detaila about the state of the Comys (Todd's Milton, ed. 1852, IV Brideewater family in the text are 38—44), partly from entries in the partly from Todd's Note prefixed to Loi-ds Jowrnals already referred to in VOL. in. H s: 466 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. CONTINUED PEESBYTEllIAN ATTACKS ON MILTON: HIS ANTI- PRESBYTEEL^LN SONNET OF KEPLY. Altogether it was ■beginning to be a more placid time with Milton. With his book out, his wife restored to him, the Divorce argument dropped, and his pupils to teach, he might look about him quietly on the state of public affairs, and expect what should be the next call on him. There did not seem to be any immediate call. In the month when his volume of Poems appeared Presbyterianism was at its fullest tide in Parliament ; but in the succeeding months, what with the increase of Eecruiters in the Commons, what with the tramp of Independency in the field growing louder and nearer as the New Model ended its work, he could see the pohtical power of the Presbyterians gradually waning, until, in April 1646, when Cromwell reappeared in London, Anti-Toleration was abashed and the Westminster Assembly itself under control. The spectacle must have been quite to Milton's mind ; but, as he had already expressed himself sufficiently on the main question between the Independents and the Presbyterians, and as nobody doubted on which side he was to be ranked, he was disposed to take his ease on this sulgect •too, and to leave the issue to the Parliament and the Army, He was too marked a man, however, to be quite let alone. The Presbyterian writers, true to their policy of publicly naming all prominent heretics and sectaries, and painting their opinions in the most glaring colours, with a view to disgust people with the idea of a Toleration, could not part with Milton and his Divorce Doctrine. After he and his wife were in the Barbican house together, he was still pursued by the hue and ciy. Here are two specimens : — this volume. Todd has also (ibid. 45— his copy under the hands of Mr. Down- 64) an elaborate, though ill-digested, ham and Mr. Bellamy, warden, a book note on Lawes, with particulars of his called 'Compositions of Three Parts,' continued connexion, to 1653 and by Henry and William Lawes, servants beyond, with various members of the to his Majesty." I suppose this was Bndgewater family. In the Stationers' the book published in 1648 with the Begisters.there is this entry : — " Nov. title " Choice Psalmes." &o. 16, 1647, Rich. Woodnoth entered for 1645-6.] BAILLIE AND EDWARDS ON MILTON. 467 Mr. Baillie on Milton. — " Mr. Milton pennits any man to put ^'away his wife upon his mere pleasure without any fault, and with- " out the cognisance of any judge," writes Baillie in the Table of Contents to the First Part of his Bissuasive, published in November 1645; and in the text of the work (p. 116) the statement is amplified as follows : — " Concerning Divorces, some of them [the " Independents] go far beyond any of the Brownists ; not to speak " of Mr. Milton, who in a large treatise hath pleaded for a full *' liberty for any man to put away his wife, whenever he pleaseth, " without any fault in her at all, but for any dislike or dyssympathy " of humour. For I do not certainly know whether this man pro- " fesseth Independency, albeit all the heretics here whereof ever " I heard avow themselves Independents. Whatever therefore may " be said of Mr. Milton, yet Mr. Gorting and his company were "men of renown among the New English Independents before " Mistress Hutchinson's disgrace ; and all of them do maintain " that it is lawful for every woman to desert her husband when he " is not willing to follow her in her church-way." In other words, BailUe is not sure that it is fair to charge Milton's extreme opinion upon Independency as such, inasmuch as it may be the crotchet of a solitary heretic ; but he is inclined to think that Milton is an Independent, and he knows at least that Mr. Gorting and other Independents have broached a milder form of the same heresy. In his Notes (pp. 144, 145) he quotes sentences to the amount of a page from Milton's Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce to prove that he does not misrepresent him. — The " Gorting" here mentioned by Baillie is the "Samuel Gorton" who had been such a sore trouble to the New Englanders, and even to Eogef Williams at Providence, by his anarchical opinions and conduct (Vol. II. 601). He had re- turned or been ejected from America, and was making himself noto- rious in London. " This I am assured of from various hands," wrote Edwards {Gangr. Part II. p. 144), " that Gorton is here in London, " and hath been for the space of some months ; and I am told also " that he vents his opinions, and exercises in some of the meetings " of the sectaries, as that he hath exercised lately at Lamb's Church, " and is very great at one Sister Stagg's, exercising there too some- " times." This will explain Baillie's allusion to Gorton in connexion with Milton's Divorce Doctrine. Strange that Gorton should be cited as holding a milder form of the heresy than Milton's ! Mr. Edwards on Milton. — Of course, Milton got into the Gan- groena. Everybody that deviated in anything, to the right or left, from the path of Presbyterian orthodoxy, got into that register of scandals; and we have already availed ourselves of information incidentally supplied in the Second and Third Parts of it as to the horror caused by Milton's Divorce Doctrine among the Presby- terians {ante, pp. 189 — 192). We have still to present, however, Edwards's direct notice of Milton in the First Part of his scandalous medley. It was published in January or February 1645-6; so H II 2 ^68 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. that, iit the very time when Milton's volume of Poems was out, and he was writing his Sonnet to Lawes, he found himseK pilloried again in the new hook which all London was reading greedily. A leading portion of the hook, as we know {anti, pp. 143-5), consisted of a catalogue of 176 " Errors, Heresies, and Blasphemies " that had heeh vented by divers Sectaries and were then distracting and icorrupting the soul of England. Well, the 154th Error, Heresy, and Blasphemy in this catalogue is this : — " That 'tis lawful for "a man to put away his wife upon indisposition, unfitness, or con* " trariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable ; -" and for disproportion and deadness of spirit, or something dis- " tasteful and averse in the immutable bent of nature ; and man, " in regard of the freedom and eminency of his creation, is a law " to himself in this matter, being head of. the other sex, which was " made for him ; neither need he hear any judge therein above /' himself." To this summary by Edwards of MUton's Doctrine, partly in Milton's own words, the reference is appended in the margin : " Vide Milton's Doctrine of Divorce." {Gangroena, Part I. p. 29.) And so for the moment Edwards dismisses Milton, very much as Baillie had done, to return to him again in the Second and Third Parts of his Gangroena, as Baillie was to do in the Second Fart of his Dissuasive. Milton was provoked. It was not in his nature to let any attack upon him, from whatever quarter, pass without notice; and attacks by persons of such popular celebrity as Baillie and Edwards could hardly be ignored. But, as he had given up the public prosecution of the Divorce argument, his punishment for Edwards and Baillie came in a different form from that which he had administered in the Tetrachordon and Colasterion to Herbert Palmer, Dr. Featley, Mr. Caryl, Mr. Prynne, and the anonymous attorney. It came in verse, thus — "on the rORCERS OP CONSCIENCE. " Because you have thrown off your Prelate lord. And with stiff vows renounced his Liturgy, To seize the widowed whore Plurality From them whose sin ye envied, not abhorred. Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword To force our consciences that Christ set free, And ride us with a Classic Hierarchy, Taught ye by mere A. S. and Hutherford ? Men whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent 1646.] MILTON'S ANTI-PEESBYTERIAN SONNET. 469 Would have been held ia high esteem with Paul, Must now be named and printed heretics By shallow Edwards and Scotch What d'ye call. But we do hope to find out aU. your tricks, Your plots and packing, worse than those of Trent, That so the Parliament May, with their wholesome and preventive shears, Clip your phylacteries, though baulk your ears, And succour our just fears, When they shall read this clearly in your charge- New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large." Milton, we are to suppose, having already written two Divorce Sonnets, did not care to write a third, but preferred to punish Edwards and Baillie in a general Anti-Presbyterian Sonnet, It turned out, however, not a Sonnet proper, but a Sonetto con coda, as the Italians call it, or " Sonnet with A tail " — the Anti-Presbyterian rhythm prolonging itself b6y6nd the fourteen lines that would have completed the normal Sonnet, and demanding the scorpion addition of six linest EQore. Into this peculiar " tailed Sonnet " Milton condenses metrically all the rage against Presbytery, the Westminster Assembly, and the Anti-Tolerationists, which had already broken forth at large in his later prose pamphlets. The piece is unusually full of historical allusions. It breathes throughout his acquired hatred of the Presbyterians for their opposition to Liberty of Conscience, and their . deter- mination that the "Classic Hierarchy," or system of Pres-- byterian classes which they were establishing in England, should be as compulsory on all as the Prelacy they had. thrown off; and there is a palpable side-hit at the recent acquisition by some of the leading Presbyterian Divines in the Assembly of University posts and the like iin addi-: tion to their previous livings, notwithstanding their outcries against Pluralities in the time of Episcopacy, iln' this side-hit not a few known Divines are slashed ; and among them, I fear, Milton's old tutor Thomas Young, now Master. of Jesus College," Canibridjge, aS well as Vicar of Stowmarkiet. But the open personal - references are foui". Tfae'."A. S," 470 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. selected as one prominent expounder of Presbytery is the Scotchman, Dr. Adam Steuart, who, under his initials "A. S.,"' had been one of the first to rush into print in behalf of strict Presbytery and Anti-Toleration against the Apologetical Narrative of the Independents of the Assembly, and -who had been replied to by John Goodwin, but had since gone into Holland {anU, p. 25). The " Eutherford" coupled with him is the celebrated Scottish divine, and Commissioner to the Assembly, Samuel Eutherford, who had set forth several expositions of strict Scottish Presbytery for the enlighten- ment of the English. "Shallow Edwards" is obvious enough:, he is Mr. Edwards of the Qangrcena, once far from a nobody in London, but who will now, through Milton's mention of him, be " Shallow Edwards " to the world's end. In Milton's draft of the Sonnet he was " hair-brained Edwards ; " but " hair-brained " was erased, and " shallow " substituted. The "Scotch What d'ye call" has cost the commentators more trouble. Most of them have identified him with George Gillespie, whom they also, though erroneously, suppose to be the " Galasp " of one of the Divorce Sonnets. There can be little doubt now, I think, that I have detected the real "What d'ye call " in Gillespie's fellow-Commissioner from Scotland, our good friend BaHlie, whose Dissuasive, with its reference to Milton as one of the heretics of the time, had just preceded Edwards's Oangrmna. I am sorry for this, but it cannot be helped. There was, I ought to add, in the original draft of the Sonnet, a fifth personal alhision, which Milton saw fit, on second thoughts, to omit. Line 17, which now stands " Olip your phylacteries, thmigh hauik your ears " {i.e. " though pass over your ears and leave them undipped "), was originally " Crop ye as dose as marginal P 's ears." As Milton had already, in his Colasterion, said enough about Prynne and the heavy margins of his many pamphlets, and as the circum- stances in which Prynne had lost his ears made the subject hardly a proper one for a public joke, it was but good taste in Milton to make the change. It is from internal evidence that I assign this famous Anti- Presbyterian outburst of Milton to some early month of the June 1646.} SUEEENDfiE OF OXfOED : THE POWELLS. 471 year 1646.^ It fits in exactly Xfith the state of public affairs and of Milton himself at that time ; all the motives to it, public and private, were in existence by the March of that year ; and it is difficult to suppose that the Composition Was of much later date. Or, if it was a little later, the lines fairly represent Milton's feeling at the time to which I assign them. In March, April, and May, 1646, Milton was one of those Englishmen who had done for eter with Presbyterianism, who rejoiced over the curb imposed at length upon the Westminster Assembly by the Independents and Erastians of the Parlia- ment, and who longed to see that conclave dismissed, and the Scots sent packing home. SUEEEN0EE OF OXFORD : CONMTION OF THE POWELL FAMILY. That the Scots should be sent packing home, but that they should leave the King behind them in English oustody, was the result for which all the Independents were anxious. Thro-ugh May and June 1646, it was for Milton, among the pes!ty to watch the progress! of the negotiations with the Scots at Newcastle round the person of the King, and at the same time to observe the suiTender of one after another of the few remaiiniiig Eoyalist garrisonsy including the great Eoyalist capital of Oxford. The siege of this city by Eairfax, begun May 1, a week aifter the King had left it, and continued fot seven or eight weeks with the help of Cromwell and Skippon, must have been a matter of considerable personal interest to Milton, amd of more initerest to his wife. She was now in a state of health requiring as miich freedom from anxiety as possible ; but, while the siege was going on, there was good reason for anxiety in the fact that her father and mother, with 1 The lines were first published in however, is not in Milton's own hand, the Second or 1673 Edition of Miltou'a but is a transcript by an amanuensis. Poems, and not there among the Sonnets, Hence we have not the means of deter- but a&a J)iece apart, with the title, smce mining the date so exactly as if Milton's alv7a,ys^yea to it, Oh the New forcers of own draft had been preserved. I am Conscience under the Long Parliament. pretty confident that the date cannot The draft of it among the Milton MSS. be later than 1646, and I fancy copies at Cambridge has the simpler title On may have been in private circulation in the Fwcers df Conscience. This draft, that year. 472 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. the rest of her family, or some of them, were in the hesieged city and undergoing its dangers. They had taken refuge there on the approach of the Parliamentarian troops into Oxford- shire, leaving their house at Forest-hill to take its chance. What might that chance be, and what worse chances might come of the siege itself ? It was a relief when the news came of the actual surrender of the city (June 24), on terms exceedingly liberal to the garrison, the citizens, and all the resident Koyalists. The terms, indeed, were thought far too liberal by the Presbyterians. " The scurvy base propositions which Cromwell has given to the Malignants at Oxford has offended many," writes Baillie, June 26 ;^ the reason for the offence being th.it it was but too clear that the Independents had been in haste to obtain Oxford on any terms whatever, in order that the army might be free to act, if necessary, against the Scots in the north. Anyhow the surrender had taken place. The Princes Eupert and Maurice had left the city with a retinue and promise of liberty to go abroad ; the garrison, to the number of 7,000 men, had marched out honourably, with arms and baggage ; security for the property of the citizens and the colleges had been guaranteed ; and all the miscellaneous crowd of Eoyalists of various ranks that had been cooped up so long in Oxford were at liberty to disperse themselves on certain stipulated conditions. To one of the Articles of the Treaty of Surrender I must ask special atten- tion, as it came to be of much domestic consequence to Milton in future years : — " XI. That all lords, gentlemen, clergymen, officers, soldiers, and all other persons in Oxford, or comprised in this capitulation, who have estates real or personal under or liable to sequestrations accordiog to the Ordinance of Parliament, and shall desire to com- pound for them (except persons by name excepted by Ordinance of Parliament from pardon), shall at any time within six months after the rendering of the garrison of Oxford be admitted to com- pound for their estates ; which composition shall not exceed two years' revenue for estates of inheritance, and for estates for lives, years, and other real and personal estates, shall not exceed the pro- portion aforesaid for inheritances, according to the value of them : ' Baillie, II. 376. June 1646.] CONDITION OP THE POWELL FAMILY, 473 And that all persons aforesaid whose dwelling-houses are sequestered (except before-excepted) may after the rendering of the garrison repair to them, and there abide, convenient time being allowed to such as are placed there under the sequestrations for their removal. And it is agreed that all the profits and revenues arising out of ■their estates after the day of entering their names as Compounders shall remain in the hands of the tenants or occupiers, to be answered to the Compounders when they have perfected their agreements for their compositions ; And that they shall have liberty, and th* G-en^eral's pass and ■ protection; for their peaceable repair to and abode at their several houses or friends, and to go •to London to attend their compositions, or elsewhere upon their necessary occasions, with freedom of their persons from oathft, engagements, and molestations during the space of six months, and after so long as they prosecute their compositions without wilful default or neglect on their part, except an engagement by l^romise not to bear arms against the Parliament, nor wilfully to do any act prejudicial to their [Parliament's] afiairs so long as they remain in their quarters. And it is further agreed that, from and after their compositions made, they shall' be forthwith restored t9 and enjoy their estates, and all other immunities, as other subjects, together with the rents and profits, from the time of entering their names, discharged from sequestrations, and from fifths and twen- tieth parts, and other payments and impositions, except such as shall be general and common to them with others." ^ Some hundreds of persons in Oxford at the time of its surrender must have had their movements for tlje next few months determined by this article. Among these was " Milton's father-in-law, Mr. Eichard Powell. The view we arrived at as to the condition of the Powell family before the Civil War was (Vol. II. p. 499) that they were then " an Oxfordshire family of good standing, keeping up appearances with the neighbour-gentry, and probably more than solvent if aU their property had been put agaiiist their debts, but still rather deeply in debt, and their property heavily mortgaged." During the war, we have now to record, on the faith of a statement afterwards made by Mr. Powell himself, the losses of the family in one way or another had amounted to at least 3,000Z. Eemembering this heavy item, I wiU try to present in figures the state of Mr. Powell's affairs while he was shut up in Oxford : — 1 Whitlooke (ed. 1853), II. 38 ; also iii Rushworth, Vi;. 282, 283. 474 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. I. PROPERTY. 1. Lease, till 1672, of the Forest-hill mansion and £ estate, woith ahout 270 a year. 2. Furniture, household-stuff, and corn in the Forest- hill mansion and appurtenances, valued at . 500 3. Wood and timber stacked about the Forest-HU premises, woTlh 400 4. Property in land and cottages at Wheatley, valued at 40 a year. 5. Debts owing to Mr. Powell 100 II. DEBTS AND OBLIGATIONS. 1. Due to Mr. John Milton, by recognisance since 1627, as unpaid part of an original debt of 5001. 300 2. Promised to the said Mr. Milton, when he mar- ried Mr. Powell's eldest daughter (1643), a marriage portion of 1,000 3. Due to Mr. Edward Ashwprth, or his representa- tives, in redemption of a mortgage on the "Wheatley property since 1631, a capital sum (besides arrears of interest) of 400 4. Due to Sir Eobert Pye, in redemption of a mort- gage on the Forest-hill mansion and property since 1640, a capital sum (besides arrears oi interest) of 1,400 5. Other debts, as estimated by Mr. Powell . . . 1,200' It is difficult to square this ragged account (which, how- ever, is the best one can produce) ;^ but the general effect is that Mr. Powell's affairs were in a woful condition. It- was almost mockery now to style him Mr. Powell of Forest-hill and "Wheatley; for, before he could call these Oxfordshire properties his own, with their joint revenue of $101. a year, he bad to clear off a debt of 1,400^. to Sir Eobert Pye, and 1 My authorities for it are — (1) My 1646, and given in the Appendix toHa- own previous accounts of the state of miltaa'sMiltonPapers. (a) Other papers Mr. Powell's affairs before the war, Vol. in the same Appendix, especially an II. ppi 492-9, based on authorities there attestation of Milton himself at p. 95. cited. (2) " A Particular of the Keal (4) The documents relative to Milton's and Personal Estate of Richard Powell Nuncupative Will printed by Todd and of Forest-hill," after the surrender of others. Oxford, attested by himself Kov. 31, June 1646.] CONDITION OF THE POWELL FAMILY. 475 another of 400^. to one Ash worthy each with heavy arrears of interest. Actually, in furniture, goods, corn, and timber in the house at Forest-hill and its premises, and in debts owing to him, he fancied himself worth 1,000/. ; but his debts, apart from those to Pye and Ashworth, and apart also from the 3001. legally owing to his son-in-law Milton (which, with the promised marriage-portion of 1,000Z., might stand over to a convenient time), amounted to 1,200/. Way, this is too favourable a view ; for, while the siege of Oxford had been going on, incidents had happened which much increased Mr. Powell's difficulties : — (1) The terms of the mortgage of the Forest-hill mansion and estate to Sir Eobert Pye had been that the mortgage was to be void if Mr. Powell should pay Sir Eobert a sum of 1,510/. by the 1st of July, 1641, This not having been done, Sir Eobert had had, ever since that date, a legal right to eject Mr. Powell from the mansion and lands and take possession of them for his debt. A friendly com- promise appears to have been arranged on the subject in May, 1642, by the payment to Sir Eobert of 110/., being the dif- ference between the original debt and the higher sum which was to void the mortgage. Nevertheless the right to take possession remained with Sir Eobert ; and that he had not exercised it may have been as much owing to the fact that Oxford was difficult of access to a Parliamentarian creditor during the war as to neighbourly forbearance. But, now that Parliament was at the gates of Oxford, and its troops quartered in and about Forest-hill, it was but common prudence in Sir Eobei't to use the only method left of saving himself from the loss of his 1,400/. with the unpaid interest. Some time in May, accordingly, or early in June, while the siege of Oxford was in progress, he caused his servant, or agent, Laurence Farre, to take formal possession of the Forest-hill premises. At the date of the surrender of Oxford, therefore, Mr. Powell was no longer owner of the Forest-hill manor and mansion ; they belonged to his neighbour. Sir Eobert Pye. There was, perhaps, a temporary convenience in this for Mr. Powell. If he had lost the property, his debt to Sir Eobert was cancelled by the loss in the meantime ; and, if at any future time he or 476 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. . his heirs should be in a position to re-acknowledge the debt with arrears, arrangements for the redemption of the property would be easier with the Pye family than with strangers. Besides, Sir Eobert had taken possession of the property just in time to anticipate its sequestration by Parliament as part of the estate of a Delinquent; and in this too there may have been some intention of neighbourly service, or saving of future trouble, to Mr. Powell. Still it was a hard thing for the Powells to know that their lease of their family residence and estate was gone, and they were no longer the Powells of Forest-hilL^ (2). But not only was the lease of the family house and lands gone. There had come a sequestration, and worse than a sequestration, upon the goods, household stuff, and timber on the Forest-hill premises, which formed now the best part of Mr. Powell's worldly all. The order for the sequestration was issued by the Committee of Parliar mentary Sequestrations for the County of Oxford just after Sir Eobert Pye had possessed himself of the premises ; and, on the 16th of June, while Mr. Powell and his family were in Oxford with the rest of the besieged, three of the seques- trators, John Webb, Eichard Vivers, and John King, with assistants and spectators, were rummaging the rooms and offices at Forest-hill, and taking an inventory and valuation of all the furniture, goods, and stock of every kind contained in them. The inventory still exists, and has been used in our description of the house when Milton went to fetch his bride from it (Vol. II. pp. 500, 501). Now, however, it comes in more sadly. A coppy of the Inventory, with the prices of the goods as they were appraysed the l&th of Jwwe 1646, is the title of the document ; and, as we read it, we see the sequestrators, with their pens behind their ears, going round the house, and 1 The vouchers for the statements in mark that in Mr. Powell's own "Parti- the text about the transfer of Forest- cular " of the state of his property in hill to Sir Robert Pye in May or June, 1646 the Forest-hill lease is not men- 164 3, are in various documents printed tioned, but only the goods and house- in Mr. Hamilton's Millon Papers. See hold stuff on the premises. On the especially p. 56 and Documents xxii., other hand, of course, the l,400i. and xll., xlii., and xlv. in the Appen- arrears of interest due to Sir Bobert dix. The ForestnhiU property, we shall Pye aj-e omitted from the list of debts, .find, did eventually come back to the as cancelled by the loss of the pro- Powell family ; Ij^t, it is worthy of re- perty. June 1646.] CONDITION OF THE POWELL FAMILY, 477 tlirougli the house, and in among the wood-yards, attended by gaping country-people, and jotting down particulars. A trunk of linen first attracts them, and they set down its contents, including " 1 pair of sheets, 3 napkins, 6 yards of broad tiffany," at 16s. Next is a heavier entry — to wit, " 240 pieces of tymber, 200 loades of firewood, 4 carts, 1 wain, 2 old coaches, 1 mare colt, 3 sows, 1 boar, 2 ewes, 3 parcels of boards," valued in the aggregate at 1561. 12s. And so on they go, pell-mell, putting down " hops in the wool- house " at 21, " a bull " at 11. 10s., " 14 quarters of mastline " at 14/., " 5 quarters of malt " at 51., " 6 bushels of wheat " at 11. 2s., two more parcels of wood at 1001. and 60/. respectively, a piece of growing corn at 42/., a piece of growing wheat at 6?. 13s. 4:d., and even two fields of meadow, which they leave unappraised for the good reason that they had been " eaten up by the souldiers." At this point also are mentioned, as also unappraised, some bit of land at Forest-hill, apparently not included in the lease that had gone to Sir Eobert Pye, and also Mr. Powell's property at Wheatley. Then, having concluded the outer survey, and brought the total, so far as appraised, up to 400/. or a little more, the sequestrators proceed to a separate and special inventory of the household goods. " In the hall " they find furniture which they value at 11. 4s. ; " in the great parlour " 71. ; "in the little parlour" 31. ; "in the study or boys' chamber" 21. 13s. ; and so on through the other rooms — " Mrs. Powell's chamber," as the best furnished of all, counting for 8/. 4s., while " Mr. Powell's study " goes for only 1/. 14s. Altogether the household stuff amounts in their estimate to a little over 70/. It was a monstrously good bargain to any one who would give that sum for it. Nor, in fact, had the seques- trators been taking all the trouble of the inventory without inducement. Going about with them all the while, and possibly haggling with them over the values, was an intending purchaser in the person of a certain Matthew Appletree .from London— one of those dealers who followed in the wake of the Parliamentary forces as they advanced into Eoyalist districts, with a view to pick up good bargains 478 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. for ready money in the confiscated property of Delinquents. To this Appletree the aforesaid sequestrators, Webb, Vivera, and King, did sell all the household stuff they had inventoried, together with the best part of the out-of-door-stock, including the carts, wain, and old coaches, the mare, the bull, and other animals, and all of the timber except 100?. worth in keeping of a Mr. Eldridge. The sum which Appletree was to give for the whole was 33 5Z., whereas the real value may have been about 800?. or 900?. ; and no sooner had he concluded his bargain than he began to cart some of the lighter things away. We can tell what went off in the first cart. They were : " 1 arras work chayre, 6 thrum chayres, 6 wrought stooles, 2 old greene carpetts, 1 tapestry carpett, 1 wrought carpett, 1 carpett greene with fringe, 3 window curtaines." ' All this took place on the 16th of June, 1646, eight days before the surrender of Oxford. On the preceding day, June 15, Cromwell had been at Halton, close to Forest- hill, seeing his daughter Bridget married to Ireton. , The reader now understands the state of Mr. Powell's affairs, when he was released from Oxford, as well as he did himself, if not better. It was all very well that the Articles of Capitulation had provided for the liberty of all persons among the besieged to return to their several places of abode and resume their estates and callings, subject only to com- position with Parliament within six months according to the fiied rates of fine for Delinquency. This may have been a privilege for many ; but it was poor comfort for the Powells. In the first place, they had now no home of their own to go to. Forest-hill was in possession of their old friend. Sir Eobert Pye, who was preparing to fit up the mansion afresh for himself or some of his family, its redemption by Mr. Powell being now out of the question. But what remained was worse. Though the house and manor of Forest-hill were gone, Mr. PoweU, by the terms of the Treaty, might still hope to compound for the wreck of his other property which lay under sequestra- tion — ^viz. the small Wheatley estate; the goods, furniture, 1 Document xxvi. in Appendix to ferenoes to other Documents in same Hamilton's Milton Papert, with re- Appendix. June 1646.] CONDITION OF THE POWELL FAMILY. 479 timber, &c., which he had left on the Forest-hill premises ; and also, it appears, some odd bits of land about Forest-hill not included in the mortgage to Sir Eobert Pye. With what grief and anger, then, must the family, on the surrender of Oxford, have learnt that even this poor remainder of their pro- perty was for the most part irrecoverahle — that not only had it been sequestrated by the County Commissioners, but most of it sold and some actually dispersed. There appears, indeed, to have been some very harsh, if not unfair and underhand, dealing on the part of the sequestrating Commissioners in this matter of the hurried sale of Mr. Powell's goods to Matthew Appletree. It became afterwards, as we shall find, the subject of legal complaint by the Powells, and of a long and tedious litigation on their behalf. Only two facts need at present he noted. . One is the significant fact that among the members of the County Committee who issued the order for the sequestration was a " Thomas Appletree," clearly a relative of the " Matthew Appletree " who purchased the goods, while a third Appletree, named Eichard, was also concerned somehow in the transaction.^ One suspects some collusion between the public sequestrators and the private purchaser. Then again, when the transaction came to he litigated, one observes a discrepancy between the two parties as to its alleged date. The preserved copy of the inventory and valuation, signed by the sequestrators, Webb, Vivers, and King, is distinctly dated "the 16 of June 1646," and as dis- tinctly declares that day to have been the date of the sale to Appletree.^ If this is correct, the sale had occurred while the Treaty for the surrender of Oxford was in progress, but exactly four days before it was completed and the Articles of Surrender signed (June 20). On the other hand, the Powells afterwards invariably represented the sale as a viola- tion of the Articles; they quoted June 17, and not June 16, as the date of the order for sequestration issued by "the Committee for the County of Oxford sitting at Woodstock ; " and they laid stress on the fact that the sequestrators Webb, ^ Hamilton's Milton Papers : Appendix, Documents xlv. and xlvii. ' Ibid. Document xxyi. 480 LIFE. OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. ViVers, and King tad sold the goods to Appletree " within few days after the granting of the said Articles." ^ How the discrepancy is to be accounted for one does not very well see ; but one again suspects over-eagerness to injure Powell by obliging Appletree. Can the sequestrators possibly have inventoried and sold the goods, as they themselves declared, on the 16th, though the sequestrating Order was not formally issued till the 17th ? If so, they were evidently in a hurry to push through the business before the Treaty for the Sur- render of Oxford was signed, so as to deprive Mr. Powell, if possible, of any advantage from it. Or, after all, can there have been any contrivance of ante-dating, to disguise the fact that the sale, though intended on the 16th, was really pushed through between Saturday the 20th of June, when the Articles were signed, and Wednesday the 24th, when the surrender took place? In either case it must have been a sore sight to Mr. Powell, when, on this latter day, or the day after, he was free to walk over to Forest-hiU, to find some of his goods already gone and Mr. Matthew Appletree super- intending the carting away of the rest — all except the timber, which remained upon the premises till its removal should be convenient.^ THE POWELLS IN LONDON: MOKE FAMILY PERPLEXITIES: BIETH OF MILTON'S FIRST CHILD. What was to be done ? Only one thing was possible. Mr. Powell must go to London to compound for what shreds of his sequestrated property survived the sale to Appletree, and at the same time to see whether he could have any redress at head-quarters against the Oxfordshire Committee of Seques- .trations. On other grounds, too, a removal to London was advisable or necessary. There, in Mr. Milton's house, the family would have a roof over their heads until some new 1 Hamilton's Milton Papers : Ap- Sequestrationin the County of Oxford," pendix. Documents xxviii. and xly. not given in Mr. Hamilton's MilUm 3 "This appears from an extract from Papers, but in Hunter's Milton Glean- "the Certificate of the Solicitor for inqs, pp. 31, 32. July 1646.] THE POWELLS IN LONDON. " 481- arrangement could be made and while Mr. Powell prosecuted the composition business. Accordingly, on the 27th of June, or three days after the surrender of Oxford, Mr. Powell obtained Fairfax's pass, as follows : — " Suffer the bearer " hereof, Mr. Eichard Powell, of Forest-hill in the county " Oxon., who was in the city and garrison of Oxford at the " surrender thereof, and is to have the fuU benefit of the " Articles agreed unto upon the surrender, quietly and " without let or interruption to pass your guards, with his " servants, horses, arms, goods, and aU other necessaries, and " to repair unto London or elsewhere upon his necessary " occasions : And in all places where he shall reside, or whereto " he shall remove, to be protected from any violence to his " person, goods, or estate, according to the said Articles, and " to have full liberty, at any time within six months, to go " to any convenient port and to transport himself, with his " servants, goods, and necessaries, beyond the seas : And in " all other things to enjoy the benefit of the said Articles. " Hereunto due obedience is to be given by all persons whom' " it may concern, as they will answer the contrary. Given " under my hand and seal the 27th day of June, 1646 — " (Signed) T. Fairfax." ^ Provided with this pass, Mr. Powell and Mrs. Powell, with some of their sons and daughters, arrived in London some time early in July, and took up their abode for the while at their son-in-law Milton's in the Bar- bican. That they were there, and a pretty large party of them too, we learn from Phillips. "In no very long time " aft«r her [the wife's] coming [back to Milton] she had a " great resort of her kindred with her in the house : viz. her " father and mother and several of her brothers and sisters, " which were in all pretty numerous." The surrender of Oxford and the loss of Forest-hill were the immediate causes of this crowding of the Barbican house with the Powell kindred, unless we are to suppose that some of them had preceded Mr. Powell thither. Poor Mr. Powell's "perplexities were never to have an end. He cannot have been more than a fortnight in London when 1 From the Composition Papers : Document i. in Hamilton's Appendix VOL. IIL I I 482 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIMM. he became aware not only that he had small chance of rer dress at head-quarters against the injury already done him hy the Oxfordshire sequestrators, hut that Parliamentarian public opinion in Oxfoirdshire was- pursuing him to London with fell intent of farther damage. July 15, 1646, we read in the Lords Journals, "A Petition of the inhabitants of " Banbury was read, complaining that the one half of the " town is buiiit down, and' part of the church and steeple- " pulled down ;. and, there being some timber and boardS' " at one Mr. Powell's house, a Malignant, near Oxford, they " 4esire they may have these materials assigned them for the " repair of their church and town. It is Ordered, that this- " House thinks fit to grant this Petition, and to desire the " concurrence of the House of Commons therein, and that an " Ordinance may be drawn up to that purpose." The Commons concurred readily; for, in the Commons Journals of the very next day, July 16, we read, " The humble Petition of " the inhabitants of Banbury was read ; and it is thereupon " Ordered : That the Timber and Boards cut down by one " Mr. Powell, a Malignant, out of Forest Wood near Oxford^ " and sequestered, being not above the value of 300Z., be " bestowed upon the inhabitants of the town of Banbury, to " be employed for the repair of the Church and Steeple, and " rebuilding of the Vicarage House and Common Gaol there ; " and that such of the said Timber and Boards as shall remain, " of the uses aforesaid shall be disposed, by the members of " both Houses which axe of the Committee for Oxfordshire, " to such of the weU-affected persons of the said town, for " the rebuilding of their houses, as to the said members, or " major part of them^ shall seem meet." Here was a con- fiscation by Parliament itself of every moveable thing be- longing to Mr. Powell that had been left at Forest-hill after the sale to Appletree. All the precious timber, including that bought by the harpy Appletree, but not yet removed by him, was voted to these cormorants of the town of Ban- bury! Mr. Powell's conditfon was to be that of Job at his worst. He had come to London to plead the benefit of the Articles of Surrender ; and behold, enemies in Oxford- July 1646.] MILTON'S FIRST CHILD. 483 shire and Parliament in London had ce-nspired to strip him totally bare ! One sees the poor gentleman in his son-in-law's house utterly- broken down with the accumulation of his misfortunes, hang- ing his head in a corner of the room where they all met, letting his wife and daughters come round him and talk to him, but refusing to be comforted^ What mattered it to him to be told of better times that might be coming, or "even of the new little creature of his own blood that was then daily ex- pected into the world ? To Mrs. Powell, howeyer, this expected event was of more consecLuence. She was a person of some temper and spirit ; and, even in her troubles, there was some spur upon her in her present motherly duty. And so, when, on the 29th of July, 1646, being "Wednesday, and the day of the monthly Past, Milton's first-born child saw the light, at about half-past six in the morning, and was reported to be a daughter, what could they do but agree to name the little thing Anne in honouT of her grandmother ?i It was the name also of Milton's sister, once Mrs.' Phillips, now Mrs. Agar; but there is little doubt that this can have been thought of only incidentally, and tha* the real compliment was to Mrs. Powell. The babe was, of course, shown to Mr. Powell in his sadness, and also to its other grandfather, then in the house, who could be cheerier over it, as having less reason for melancholy. " A brave girl," is Phillips's description of the new-born infant ; " though, whether by ill constitution, or want of eare, she grew up more and more decrepit." The poor girl, 1 Pedigree of the Milton Family by near Shoreditch Church. It was the Sir Charles Young, Garter King at Bible in which Milton had written the Arms, prefixed to Pickering's edition dates of his children's birtbs. It was, of Milton's Works, 1&51. But the however, his wife's book : ^' I am the original authority was an inscription in book of Mary Milton " was written on Milton's own hand, on a blank leaf of it in her hand. — The fact that the 29th his wife's Bible : — " An/ie, mi/ daughter, of July, 1646, on which Milton's iirst was born July t/ie 29t/i, t/ie day of the child was born, was Wednesday and a monthly Fast, bet-ween- six and seven, or day of public Fast, is verified' by a t^out haXf an hour after six in *Ae^ reference to the Commons Journals, morning, 1646." This, with subsequent The Commons had but a brief sitting entries on the same leaf, was copied by that day after hearing Fast-day ser- Birch, Jan. 6, 1749-50, when the Bible mens by Ml-. Caryl and Mr. Whittaker ; was shown him by Mrs. Foster, grand- and their chief business was to pass daughter to Milton (daughter to his thanks to these two preachers for tne youngest daughter Deborah), then keeping a chandler's shop in Cock Lane, I I 2 484 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. in fact, turned out a kind of cripple. This, however, was not foreseen, and for the present there was nothing but the mis- fortunes of the Powells to mar the joy in the Barbican house- hold over the appearance of this little pledge of the recon- ciliation of Milton and his wife about a year before. After the little girl was born, they did rouse Mr. Powell to take the necessary steps for the recovery of what could be recovered of his property, if that should prove to be anything whatsoever. The first of these steps consisted in appearing personally, or by petition, before a certain Committee at Goldsmiths' Hall, in Poster-lane, Cheapside, to whom had been entrusted by Parliament the whole business of arranging the compositions with Delinquents whose estates had been sequestrated. To this Committee, which must have had a very busy time of it at the end of the war, when would-be compounders were flocking in from] north, south, and west, Mr. Powell, among others, addressed his petition on the 6th of August, 1646, in these terms : " To the Honourable the " Committee sitting at Goldsmiths' Hall for Compositions, the " humble Petition of Eichard Powell, of Forest-hill, in the "County of Oxon., Esq., sheweth — That your Petitioner's " estate for the most part lying in the King's quarters, he " did adhere to his Majesty's party against the forces raised " by Parliament in this unnatural war ; for which his Delin- " quency his estate lieth under sequestration. He is comprised " within those Articles at the surrender of Oxford ; and humbly " prays to be admitted to his composition according to the " said Articles. And he shall pray, &c. — Eighakd Powell." ^ This was all he could do in the meantime. As soon as the Committee should have leisure to attend to his case, he could take the other necessary steps. Among these would be the preparation of the most perfect schedule of his estate, real and personal, which he could draw up, the verification of every item of the same, and (which would be the most difficult part of the business) his argument with the Committee that, by the Articles of Oxford, he ought to be reinstated both in the goods and furniture which had been sold, at an under 1 Hamilton's Milton Papers : Appendix, Document ii. Aug. 1646.] CHEISTOPHEE MILTON'S AFFAIRS. 485 value, by the Oxford sequestrators to Appletree, and in tli6 300Z. -wortli of his timber which had been hastily bestowed by Parliament on the people of Banbury. To these matters it would be time enough to attend when the Committee at Goldsmiths' Hall had returned their answer to his Petition. Not tni then either need he go through the formality of sub- scribing the Covenant in the presence of a parish -minister or other authorized person. That was, indeed, an indispensable formality for any Delinquent who would sue out his com-^ position, or otherwise signify his submission to Parliament. But it was a formality which a Delinquent in Mr. Powell's circumstances would wiUingly put off to the last moment. Milton's father-in-law was not the only one of his relatives who were engaged about this time in the disagreeable business of compounding for their Delinquency. His younger brother^ Christopher Milton, was in the same predicament. Our last glimpse of this gentleman was after the surrender of Eeading to the Parliamentarian Army under Essex, in April 16431 He was then, we found (Vol. II. pp. 488 — 490), a householder in Eeading, and decidedly a Eoyalist; and, after the siege^ when his father came from Eeading to London, to reside with his Parliamentarian brother, he himself remained at Eeading, a'Eioyalist stiU. In the interim he had even been rather active as a Eoyalist, having been " a Commissioner for the King, under the great seal of Oxford, for sequestering the Parliament's friends of three Counties." Latterly, in some such capacity, he had gone to Exeter ; and he had been residing in that city, if not in 1644, when Queen Henrietta Maria was there, at least some time before its siege by the New Model Army. On the surrender of Exeter (April 10, 1646), on Articles similar to those afterwards given to Oxford, he had come to London on very much the same errand as that on which Mr. Powell came three months later. More forward in one respect than Mr. Powell, he had at once begun his submission to Parliament by taking the Covenant. He did so before William Barton, minister of John Zachary, in Alders- gate Ward, on the 20th of April, or almost immediately on; his arrival in London. That preliminary over, he had been- 486 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. residing, most probably, in the house of his mother-in-law. Widow Webber, in St. Clement's Churchyard, Strand, where Milton had boarded his wife while the house in Barbican was getting ready. Not till August 7, the day after Mr. Powell had sent in his Petition for compounding to the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee, did Christopher Milton send in his petition to the same body. Then, still styling himself " Christopher Milton, of Beading, in the county of Berks, Esq., a Coun- cillor at Law," he acknowledged his Delinquency in having served as a Commissioner of Sequestrations for the King, but prayed that he might have the benefit of the Exeter Articles of Surrender, so as to be allowed to compound for his Uttle property now sequestered in turn. " I am seized in fee, to me " and to my heirs," he said in his acconipanying statement, "in possession of and in a certain messuage or tenement " situate, standing, and being within St. Martin's parish, Lud- "gate, called the sign of the Cross Keys, and was of the yearly "value, before these troubles, 4:01. Personal estate I have "none but what hath been seized and taken from me and " converted to the use of the State. This is a true particular " of aU my estate, real and personal, for which I only desire " to compound to free it out of sequestration, and do submit " unto and undertake to satisfy and pay such fine as by this " Committee for Compositions with Delinquents shall be im- "posed and set to pay ior the same in order to the freedom "and discbarge of my person and estate." Two years' value of an estate was about the ordinary fine for Delinquency ; but different grades of Delinquency were recognised, and the fines for very pronounced Delinquency were heavier.^ We have arrived, biographicaUy as well as historically, at Avigust 1646. In this month, while Mr. Powell and Chris- topher Milton had begun severally to sue out their com- positions for Delinquency, it is on a rather crowded domestic tableau round Milton in Barbican that the curtaiu drops. On one side of him was his own old father, on the other was 1 Particulars about Christopher Mil- and from Documents Ixii. and Ixiii, in ton and his Delinquency are from Appendix, Hamilton's Milton Papers, pp. 62-^64, Aug. 1646.1 THE BAKBICAN HOTJSKHOLD. 487 his father-in-law ; the mother-in-law, Mrs. Powell, was there, with her married daughter Mrs. Milton, and the little baby- Anne ; how many of Mrs. Milton's brothers and sisters were in the group can hardly be guessed ; the two boys Phillips, and one knows not how many other pupils, fill up the interstices between the larger people in front ; and one sees Christopher Milton, his wife Thomasiue, their children, and perhaps the Widow Webber, as visitors in the background. Of the whole company, I should say, the mother-in law, Mrs. Powell, was, for the time being, and whether to Milton's private satisfaction or not, the chief in command. BOOK IV. AUGUST 1646— JANUARY 1648-9. HISTORY : — The Last Two Years akd a Half op the Ebign OP Charles I. : — I. His continued Captivity with the Scots at New- castle, AND Failure op his Negotiations with the Peesbtterians ; II. His Captivity at Holmby House, and the Quarrel between the English Parliament and the English Army; III. His Captivity with the English Army, and their Proposals to him; IV. His Captivity in the Isle op 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 Ecus, Two more Sonnets, and Translation op Nine Psalms : Other Works IN Progress : Letters to and from Carlo Datl CHAPTEPv I. CHARLES IN HIS CAPTIVITY. Charles himself becomes now the central object. For now, one may say, he was left to think and act wholly for himself, and to work out by his own cogitations and conduct the rest of the long problem between him and his subjects. From this point, therefore, one follows him with a more sympathetic interest than can be accorded to any part of his previous career. When his captivity began (which may be said to have been when the Scots withdrew with him to Newcastle, May 1646) he was forty-five years and six months old. His hair was slightly grizzled ; but otherwise he was in the perfect strength and health of a man of spare and middle-sized frame, whose habits had been alwa,ys careful and temperate. Henrietta-Maria was nine years younger than her husband. For two years they had not seen each other, her co-operation during that time having been given from her residence at or near Paris. There her effort had been to induce the French Queen Eegent and Cardinal Mazarin to interfere actively for Charles, with or without the help of the Pope; and, when she had not succeeded in that, she had contented herself with sending to Charles from time to time her criticisms of his pro- cedure and her notions of the kind of arrangement he ought to try to make with his subjects in the last extremity. The influence she had acquired over him was so great that these missives were perfectly efficient substitutes for her black eyes and French-English tongue when she had been with him. Unfortunately, however, the co-agency with his absent Queen to which he thus felt himself obliged, and to which indeed he had solemnly pledged himself, had become the more perplex- 492 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. ing because, in the particular of greatest practical moment to both, he and she tended different ways. Of the two main concessions involved in any possible treaty with the ParHa- ment, that of the abandonment of Episcopacy and that of the surrender of the Militia, Charles was most tenaciously pre- determined against the first. It was a matter of conscience with him. Next to the death of Strafford, the thing in his past life which caused him the most continued private remorse was his assent, in Feb. 1641-2, to the BUI excluding Bishops from Parliament : whatever happened, he would sin no more in that direction. He would consent to any restric- tion of his kingly power in the Militia and other matters, rather than do more in repudiation of Episcopacy. Ifay, he had reasoned himself into a belief that the coiirse thus most to his conscience would be also the most expedient. Buoying himself' up with a hope that, though Parliament demanded both concessions, they might let him off with one, he was of opinion that kingly power in the Militia and other matter? might be more easily fetched back by a retained Episcopacy than a lost Episcopacy could be restored by any remnant of his power in the MUitia. With Queen Henrietta-Maria the reasoning was different. To her, a Eoman Catholic, back iiow among her co-religionists, what were all the disputes ol British Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Independents, but battles of kites and crows ? If her husband's kind of Pro- testant Church could have been retained, that of course would have .been well; but, as things were, she had no patience with those scruples of conscience for which he would sacrifice the most substantial interests of himseK and his family. His main object ought to be to retain as much of real kingly power as possible, to be enjoyed by himself and her, and transmitted to their descendants ; and might not this be attained by a &ank concession to the English of the Presby- terian settlement, only with a personal dispensation to the King if he desired it very much, a reservation of liberty for the Eoman Catholics of Ireland and England, and, of course, a toleration for the Queen herself in her private Eoman Catholic worship ? • ■ Aug. 1646J CHAELES AND HENRIETTA MAEIA. 493 Actually, with all the King's firmness within himself on the Episcopacy question, the Queen's influence had so far pre- vailed, as to bring him into a position where her views rather than his had chances in their favour. That he was now a captive at all, that he was still in Great Britain to maintain passively the struggle in which he had failed actively, was very much the Queen's doing. Again and again since the blow of Naseby, or at least since Montrose's ruin at PhUip- haugh, it had been in the King's mind to abandon the struggle for the time, and withdraw to Holland, Denmark, or some other part of the Continent. That he had not, whUe the sea was open to him, adopted this course, was owing in part to his own irresolution, but very considerably to his dread of the Queen's displeasure. She did not want him to be on the Continent with her, a dependent on her relatives of the French Court or on the Dutch Stadtholder ; she wanted him to remain in Britain and struggle on, somehow, anyhow. TSaj, she had devised a particular way for him, and almost compelled him to it. A flight to the Scots and a pact with them on the basis of some acceptance of their Presbyterianism even for England : this was the course which she had urged on him ever since his defeat by Parliament had become certain ; this was the course she had arranged for him by causing the French Court to send over Montreuil to negotiate for his reception among the Scots ; and, though things had not turned out quite as she expected, and the Scots had shown no disposition to save Charles from the tremendous IsTineteen Propositions of the English Parliament, stiU she did not regret that the course had been taken. It was for the King now to extricate himself from the Nineteen Propositions by his utmost ingenuity, and she did not doubt that this would be most easily done by adhering to the Scots, humour- ing them in all those parts of the Propositions that related to Presbytery, and evading or refusing the rest.^ Irritating as the Queen's conduct in the main had been to Hyde, Hopton, and others of the Eoyalist exiles, there were 1 For this and last paragraph see passim ; Clar. 591 — 600 (Hist.) and 961 Gha/rles I. in 1646, Introduction by (Life) ; Hallam's Const. Hist. (10th ed.), Mr. Bruce, and the King's own Letters II, 182 — 188, with notes. 494 LIFE aF MILTON AND HISTOEY OP HIS TIME. particulars of selfishness in it which positively disgusted them. Having persisted in her determination that the Prince of Wales should reside with herself, and nowhere else, she had carried that point, as she did every other, with Charles ; and since July the Prince, as well as his infant sister, the Princess Henrietta- Maria, had been under her charge. Eather than accompany the Prince to Paris, and undertake the responsibility of advising him in matters in which it would be necessary to detach him from his mother, Hyde, Hopton, and Lord Capel had remained in Jersey, happy for a time in their mutual society, and Hyde, as he tells us, passing the pleasantest hours of his life in the composi- tion of parts of his History. Others of the King's late coun- sellors, such as Cottington, the Earl of Bristol, and Secretary Mcholas, had domiciled themselves in Eouen, Caen, or else- where in France, away from Paris. But round the Queen, in Paris or at St. Germains, there Had ga1:hered not a few of the exiles, gratifying the King more, as it proved, by this compliance than the others did by their prudery. Among these were Lord Jermyn, Lord Digby, Lord Percy, Lord Wilmot, and even Lord Colepepper, though he had at first agreed with Hyde in opposing the removal of the Prince from Jersey. Conspicuous in the same group of refugees was the veteran Thomas Hobbes. Not that he had gone to Paris at that time, as the others had done, in the mere course of Eoyalist duty. He had been there for several years on his own account, that he might be out of the turmoil of affairs at home, and free to pursue his speculations in quiet, with the relaxation of walks about Notre Dame and the Sorbonne, and much of the agreeable company of M. Gassendi. But the Prince could not be without a tutor, and Hobbes was chosen to instruct him in mathematics and whatever could be brought under that head. If what Clarendon says is true, the philosopher must have had curious remarks to make on the relations between his royal pupil and his mother, and on that lady's own behaviour. Though the Prince was sixteen years of age, she governed him with a high hand. "He " never put his hat on before the Queen," says Clarendon ; Aug. 1646.] CHARLES AND HENRIETTA MARIA. 49 O' " nop was it desired that he should meddle in any business, " or be sensible of the unhappy condition the royal family " was in. The assignation which was made by the Court of " France for the better support of the Prince was annexed to- " the monthly allowance given to the Queen, and received by " her and distributed as she thought fit ; such clothes and " other things provided for his Highness as were necessary ; "♦her Majesty desiring to have it thought that the Prince " lived entirely upon her, and that it would not consist with " the dignity of the Prince of "Wales to be a pensioner to the " King of Prance. Hereby none of his Highness's servants " had any pretence to ask money, but they were contented with " what should be allowed them ; which was dispensed with a " very sparing hand ; nor was the Prince himself ever master " of ten pistoles to dispose as he liked. The Lord Jermyn " was the Queen's chief oiB&cer, and governed all her receipts ; " and he loved plenty so well that he would not be without " it, whatever others suffered who had been more acquainted " with it." In this last sentence there is an insinuation of more than meets the eye. Henry Jermyn, originally one of the members for Bury St. Edmunds in the Long Parliament, and created Baron Jermyn by Charles (Sept. 8, 1643) for his conspicuous Eoyalism, had long been the special favourite of the Queen and the chief of her household ; after Charles's death he became the Queen's second husband by a secret marriage ; and so cautious a writer as Hallam does not hesitate to countenance the belief that his relations to the Queen were those of a husband while Charles was yet alive.^ Such were Charles's circumstances, such was his real isolation, when his captivity began. It was to last all the rest of his life, or for more than two years and a half The 1 Clar. 594r— 602 and 640 ; Hallam, " thee, as soon as it shall please God Const. Hist. (10th ed.), II. 183 and 188, " to enalile me to reward honest men. with footnotes ; and Letters of the King " Likewise thank heartily, in my name, to the Queen, numbered xxvii., xxviii., " Colepepper, for his part in that husi- xxxii., XXXV., and xxxviii. in Brace's " ness ; but, above all, thou must make Cfoarles I. in 1646. In the last of these " my acknowledgments to the Queen letters, dated Newcastle, July 23, " of England (for none else can do it), Charles writes : — "Tell Jermyn, from " it being her love that main tarns my " me, that I will make him know the " life, her kindness that upholds my " eminent service he hath done me " courage ; which makes me eternally ',' concerning Pr. Charles his coming to " hers, Charles R." 496 LIFE OF MILTON ASH HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. form and place of Ms captivity were indeed to he varied. There were to be four stages of it in all, the first only being his detention among the Soots at Newcastle. At the point which we have reached in our narrative, viz. the conclusion of the Civil War, three months of this first stage of the long captivity (May — ^August 1646) had already elapsed. We have now, therefore, to follow the King, with an eye also for the course of events round him, through the remainder of this stage of his captivity, and through the three stages which succeeded it. FIEST 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 Independents : Will Murray in London — Interferences of the Queen from France:, Davenant's Mission to Newcastle — The Nineteen Propositions un- answered : A Personal Treaty offered — Difficulties between the Soots and the English Parliament — Their Adjustment : Departure of the Soots from England, and Cession of Charles to the English — Weatminster Assembly Business, and Progress of the Presbyterian Settlement. Three months of Scottish entreaty and argumentation had failed to move Charles. He would not take the Covenant ; he would not promise a pure and simple acceptance of Presbytery; and to the Nineteen Propositions of the English Parliament he had returned only the vaguest and most dilatory answer. The English Parliamentarians, as a body, were furious, and the milder of them, with the Scots, were in despair. " We "are here, by the King's madness, in a terrible plunge," BaiUie writes from London, Aug. 18; "the powerful faction " desires nothing so much as any colour to caU the King and " all his race away." In another letter on the same day he says, " We [the Scots in London] strive every day to keep " the House of Commons from falling on the King's answer. Aug. 1646.] " KING STILL AT NEWCASTLE : SCHEMES. 497 " We know not what hour they will close their doors and " declare the King fallen from his throne ; which if they once "do, we put no doubt but all England would concur, and, " if any should mutter against it, they would be quickly " suppressed." And again and again in subsequent letters, through August, September, and October, the honest Presby- terian writes in the same strain, breaking his heart with the thought of the King's continued obstinacy.^ It must not be supposed that Charles was merely idle or inert in his obstinacy. In the wretched phrase of those who regard politics as a kind of game, he was " playing his cards " as well as he covild. What was constantly present to his mind was the fact that his opponents were a composite body distracted by animosities among themselves. He saw the Presbyterians on the one wing and the Independents on the other wing of the English or main mass, and he saw this main mass variously disposed to the smaller and very sensitive ■ Scottish mass, to whose keeping he had meanwhile entrusted himself. Hence he had not even yet given up the hope, which he had been cherishing and expressing only a month before his flight to the Scots, that he " should be able so to draw the Presbyterians or the Independents to side with him for extirpating one the other, that he should really be King again." ^ He could not now, of course, pursue that policy in a direct manner or with the expectation of immediate success. But he could pursue it indirectly. He could extract from the Nineteen Propositions the two main sets of concessions which they demanded — the concession of Presbytery and what went along with that, and the concession of the Militia and what went along with that ; and, holding the two sets of concessions in different hands, he could alternate between that division of his opponents which preferred the one set and that which preferred the other, so as to find out with which he could make the best arrangement. By a good deal of yielding on the Episcopacy question, coupled with a promise to suppress Sects and Heresy, might he not bribe 1 Baillie, XL 389 et seq. March 26, 1646, quoted by Godwin: (II. Prom a letter to Lord Digby, dated 132-3) from Carte. VOL. in. K K 498 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. the Scots and Presbyterians to join him against the In- dependents ? By a good deal of yielding on the Militia question, coupled with a promise of Toleration for the Sects, might he not bribe the Independents to join him against the Presbyterians, and perhaps even save Episcopacy ? "Which course would be the best? Might not that be found out most easily by trying both ? In accordance so far with the advices from France, Charles had begun with the Presbyterian " card,'Vand had played it first among the Scots. We have seen the classification he had made of the Scots, from his observation of them at New- castle, into the four parties of the Montroses, the Neutrals, the Hamiltons, and the Campbells. The Montroses, or abso- lute Eoyalists, were now nowhere. After having lurked on in his Highland retreat, with the hope of stiU performing some feat of Hannibal in the service of his captive Majesty, Montrose had reluctantly obeyed the orders to capitulate and disband which had been sent to him as well as to all the Eoyalist commanders of garrisons in England, and, without having been permitted the consolation of going to Newcastle to kiss his Majesty's hand, had embarked, with a few of his adherents, at Stonehaven, Sept. 3, in a ship bound to Norway. The first of the four parties of Scots in the King's reckoning of them being thus extinct, and the second or Neutrals making now no separate appearance, the real division, if any, was into the Hamiltons and the Campbells. The division was not for the present very apparent, for Hamilton and his brother Lanark had not been ostensibly less urgent than Argyle and Loudoun that his Majesty would accept the Nineteen Propositions. But underneath this apparent accord his Majesty had dis- cerned the slumbering rivalry, and the possibility of turning it to account. He had regained the Hamiltons. When the Duke, indeed, came to Newcastle in July to kiss the hand of his royal kinsman from whom he had been estranged, and by whose orders he had been in prison for more than two years, the meeting had been rather awkward. Both had "blushed at once." But forgiveness had passed between them ; and, though the King in his letters to the Queen continued to speak of Sept. leie.l THE KING, HAMILTON, AND LANARK. 499 the "bragging" of the Hamiltons, and of his "little belief" in them, the two black-haired brothers did not know that, but were glad to hear themselves again addressed familiarly by the King as " Cousin James " and " Lanark." Through these Hamiltons might not a party among the Scots be formed that should be less stiff than Argyle, Loudoun, and the others were for concurrence with the English in all the Nineteen Propositions ? The experiment was worth frying, and in the course of September the King did try it in a very curious manner. The Duke of Hamilton, who had meanwhile paid a visit to Scotland, had then returned to Newcastle at the head of a new deputation from the Committee of the Scottish Estates, charged with the duty of reasoning with his Majesty. Besides the Duke, there were in the deputation the Earls of Crawford and Cassilis, Lords Lindsay and Balmerino, three lesser barons, and three bxtrgesses. They had had an interview with the King, and had pressed upon him the Covenant and the Nineteen Propositions by all sorts of new arguments, but without effect. The next day, however, they received a communication from his Majesty in writing. After expressing his regret that his conversation with them the day before had not been satisfac- tory, he explains more fully an arrangement which he had then proposed. Whatever might be his own opinion of the Covenant, he by no means desired from the Scots anything contrary to their Covenant. But was it not the main end of the Covenant that Presbyterial Government should be legally settled in England ? Well, he was willing to consent to this after a particular scheme. " Whereas I mentioned that the " Church-government should be left to my conscience and " those of my opinion, I shall be content to restrict it to some " few dioceses, as Oxford, Winchester, Bristol, Bath and " WeUs, and Exeter, leaving all the rest of England fully " under the Presbyterian Government, with the strictest " clauses you shall think upon against Papists and Indepen- " dents." In other words, Charles offered a scheme by which Presbytery and Episcopacy should share England between them on a strict principle of non-toleration of anything else, K K 2 600 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. Presbytery taking about four-fifths, and Episcopacy about one-fifth. He argues eagerly for this scheme, and points out its advantages. " It is true," he says, " I desire that my own " conscience and those that are of the same opinion with me " might be preserved ; which I confess doth not as yet totally " take away Episcopal Government : but then consider withal " that this [scheme] will take away all the superstitious sects " and heresies of the Papists and Independents ; to which " you are no less obliged by your Covenant than the taking ' away of Episcopacy." How far this scheme of the King was discussed or even published does not appear. It was one which the Scottish Commissioners collectively could not even profess to entertain ; and, however well disposed Hamilton may have been privately to abet it, he dared not give it any countenance openly.^ And so, with a heavy heart, Hamilton, in the end of Sep- tember, returned to Scotland, Foreseeing the King's ruin, he had resolved to withdraw altogether from the coil of affairs, and retire to some place on the Continent. In vain did his brother Lanark fight against this resolution ; and not till he had received several affectionate letters from the King did he consent to remain in Britain on some last chance of being useful. Actually, from this time onwards, Hamilton ' Authorities for this and the last paragraph are — Napier's Montrose, 631 ei seti. ; Burnet's Lives of the Hamil- tons (ed. 1852), 359—375 ; Rushworth, VI. 232, and 327—329 ; King's Letters 1. and Ixiii. in Bmce's Charles I, in 1646. The remarkable Paper of the King proposing a compromise between Episcopacy and Presbytery is given entire both by Eushworth and by Bur- net. It is not dated, but is one of several letters given by both these authorities as written by the King in September 1646. Burnet, who had a copy before him in Lanark's hand, notes the absence of the date. In a post- script to the letter, however, as given in Rushworth, the King says : — " I re- " quire you to give a particular and " full account hereof to the General " Assembly in Scotland ; " and in Bur- net's copy the words are "to the " General Assembly now silting in Scot- " land," This phrase would refer the P^er to some time between June 3 and June 18 when the Assembly WM last in session, its next meeting not being till August 4, 1647. In that case the Paper must have been delivered not to the deputation mentioned in the text, but to the prior deputation from Scot- land, of which Lanark was one {aidi, pp. 412—418). This is possible ; but it does not lessen the significance of the docu- ment in connexion with the King's deal- ings with the Hamiltons in September. The extant copy of the Paper seen by Burnet was in Lanarl^s hand ; it must therefore have been mainly through the Hamiltons that Charles wanted to feel the pulse of Scotland respecting his proposal ; and the proposal, if first made in June, must have been a topic between the King and the Hamiltons in subsequent months. Altogether, however, I suspect, the proposal did not go far beyond the King and the Hamiltons. I have found no distinct cognisance of it in Baillie or in the Acts of th? Assembly of 1646. Sept. 1646.] THE KING AND WILL MURRAY. 501 and Lanark, though not yet daring a decidedly separate policy from that of Argyle and his party in Scotland^ did work for the King as much as they could within limits. He continued to correspond with both, but chiefly with Lanark. Not the less, while the King was trying to bargain with the Presbyterians through the Hamiltons, was he intriguing in the opposite direction. His agent here was a certain Mr. William Murray, son of the parish-minister of Dysart in Scotland, and known familiarly as "Will Murray. He had been page or " whipping-boy " to Charles in his boyhood, had been in his service ever since, had been recently in France, but had returned early in 1646. His connexions with the King being so close, and his wiliness notorious, he had been arrested by Parliament and committed to the Tower as a spy ; and it had cost the Scottish Commissioners some trouble — Baillie for one, but especially Gillespie, who was related to Murray by marriage — to procure his release on bail. This having been accomplished in August, he had been allowed to go to his master in Newcastle, the Scottish Commissioners vouching that he would use all his influence to bring the King into the right path. He had been well instructed by Baillie as to aU the particulars of the duty so expected from him, not the least of which, in Baillie's judgment, was that he should get the King to dismiss Hobbes from the tutorship of the Prince at Paris. Once with the King, however, Murray had forgotten Baillie's lectures, and relapsed into his wily self. " Will Murray is let loose upon me from London," the K!ing writes to the Queen Sept. 7 ,• but on the i4th he writes that Murray has turned out very reasonable, and that, though he will not absolutely trust him, the rather because he is not a client of the Hamiltons, but "plainly inclines more to Argyle," yet he hopes to make good use of him. On the 21st we hear of " a private trieaty " he has made with Murray ; and the result was that, in October, Miirray, created Earl of Dysart in prospect, was back in London on a secret mission, the general aim of which was the conciliation of the Indepen- dents. On the condition that the King should surrender on the Militia question, give up the Militia even for his whole life. 502 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. would the Parliamentary leaders consent to the restoration of a Limited Episcopacy after three or live years ? It was a dan- gerous mission for Murray, " so displeasing that it served only to put his neck to a new hazard ;" and he was obliged to keep himself and his proposals as much withiii doors as he could.^ To the Queen at Paris her husband's continued hesitation on the Episcopacy question seemed positively fatuous. Her letters, as well as Jermyn's and Colepepper's, had not ceased to urge bold concession on that question, and a paction with the Scots for Presbytery. Now, accordingly, their counsels to this effect became more emphatic. The Queen thought the King perfectly right in refusing his personal signature to the Covenant, and advised him to remain steady to that refusal, and also to his resolution pot to let the Covenant be imposed upon others ; she was moreover sure that he ought not to abandon Ireland or the English Roman Catholics to the mercies of Parliament; but, with these exceptions, she would close with the Scots and Presbjrterians in the matter of Church-government, if by that means she could save the Militia and the real substance of kingly prerogative. ". We " must let them have their way in what relates to the " Bishops," she wrote to Charles, Oct. ^ ; " which thing I " know goes quite against your heart, and, I swear to you, " against mine too, if I saw any one way left of saving them " and not destroying you. But, if you are lost, they are with- " out resource ; whereas, if you should be able again to head " an army, we shall restore them. Keep the Militia, and " never give it up, and by that aU will come back — (Gon- " servez-vous la Militia, et n' ahandonnez jamais, et par cela " tout reviendra)." Colepepper, always rough-speaking, used more decided language. Nothing remained for the King, he wrote, but a union with the Scottish nation and the English Presbyterians against the Independents and Anti-monarchists ; and to secure such a union Episcopacy must go overboard. His Majesty's conscience ! Did his Majesty really believe that Episcopacy only was jure divino, and that there could ' Baijlie, II. 394—396, and Appendix tons, 378 ; and Haflam, II. 187-8, and tosame vol., 509, 510; Burnet's Hamil- Notes. Oct. 1646.] DAVENANT'S MISSION. 503 be no true Church without Bishops ? If so, Colepepper per- sonally did not agree with him, and doubted whether there were six Protestants in the world that did. " Come," he breaks out at last, " the question in short is whether you will " choose to be a King of Presbytery, or no King and yet " Presbytery or perfect Independency to be." ^ It was not only by letter that such counsels from Prance reached Charles. Bellievre, who had succeeded Montreuil as French ambassador in England, and had been much with the King at Newcastle, plying him with the same counsels, had reported to Mazarin that some person of credit among the English exiles should be sent over, expressly to reason with Charles on the all-important point. They seem to have had some difficulty at Paris in finding a proper person for the mission. To have sent Hobbes, even if he would have gone, would have been too absurd. Hobbes a successor of Alex- ander Henderson in the task of persuading the King to accept Presbytery ! The person sent, however, was the one next to Hobbes in literary repute among the Eoyalist exiles, the one most liked by Hobbes, and oftenest in his company. He was no other than the laureate and dramatist Will Davenant, known on the London boards by that name for a good many years before the war, but now Sir William Davenant, knighted by the King in Sept. 1643 for his Army- plotting and his gallant soldiering. He was over forty years of age, and had just turned, or was turning, a Eoman Catholic in Paris, or perhaps rather a Eoman CathoHc Hobbist. Clarendon, with a sneer at Davenant's profession of play- writer, makes merry over the choice of such an agent by the Queen, Jermyn, and Colepepper, and relates the result with some malice. Arrived at Newcastle late in September, or early in October, Davenant had delivered his letters to the King, and proceeded to argue according to his instructions. Charles had heard him for a while with some patience, but in a manner to show that he did not like the subject of his discourse. Determined, however, to do his work thoroughly, 1 Bajffie, II. 389 et seq. ; Rushworth original French in Appendix to Mr. VI. 327 etseq. ; Clarendon, 605 ; Hallam, Bruoe's Charles I. in 16i6. II. 185-6; and Queen's Letter in the 504 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. Davenant had gone on, becoming more fluent and confidential. It was the advice of all his Majesty's friends that he should yield on the question of Episcopacy ! " What friends ? " said the King. "My Lord Jermyn," replied Davenant. His Majesty was not aware that Lord Jermyn had given his attention to Church questions. " My Lord Colepepper," said' Davenant, trying to mend his answer. " Colepepper has no religion," said the King, bluntly ; and then he asked whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer (i.e. Clarendon himself, then Sir Edward Hyde) agreed with Colepepper and Jermyn. Davenant could not say he did, for Sir Edward was not in Paris with the Prince, as he ought to have been, but in Jersey : and he proceeded to convey from the Queen some insinuations to Hyde's discredit. The King, Clarendon is glad to tell, had defended him, and said he had perfect trust iu him, and was sure he would never desert the Church. Some- thing of the wit, or of the Eoman Catholic Hobbist and free- thinker, had then flashed out in the speech of the distressed envoy. He "offered some reasons of his own in which he mentioned the Church slightingly." On this the King had blazed into proper indignation, given poor Davenant "a sharper reprehension than he ever did to any other man," told him never to show his face again, and frowned him to the door. And so, says Clarendon, " the poor man, who had indeed very good affections," returned to Paris crestfallen.^ Perturbed by the Queen's difference from him on the matter he had most at heart, and saddened by the failure of his own schemings in opposite directions, Charles appears to have sunk for a time into a state of sullen passiveness, varied by thoughts of abdication or escape. By December, however, he had again roused himself. By that time, "Will Murray having returned to him with fresh suggestions from London, he had made up his mind to send to the English Parliament an Answer to their Nineteen Propositions in detail. He had 1 CUar. 606, and Wood's Ath. IIU and Davenant as Clarendon describes. 804, 805. The King's Letters mention Davenant had not arrived at Newcastle Davenant's presence at Newcastle and Sept. 26, but was there Oct. 3. He the purport of his argument, but without was back iu Paris in November. telling of any such scene between him Deo. 1646.] KING'S PROPOSED CONCESSIONS. 505 prepared sucli an Answer, and on the 4th of Decemher he sent a draft of it to the Earl of Lanark in Edinburgh. In this draft he goes over the Propositions one by one, signifying his agreement where it is complete, or the amount of his agreement where it is only partial. In such matters as the management of Ireland, laws against the Eoman Catholics, &c., he will yield to Parliament ; but he would like an act of general oblivion for Delinquents. In the matter of the Militia his offer is to resign all power for ten years. In the matter of the Church he offers his consent to Presbytery for three years, as had been settled by Parliament, with these provi- sions — (1) that there be " such forbearance to those who through scruple of conscience cannot in everything practise according to the said rules as may consist with the rule of the Word of God and the peace of the kingdom ; " (2) " that his Majesty and his household be not hindered from that form of God's service which they have formerly done ; " and (3) that he be allowed to add twenty persons of his own nomination to the Westminster Assembly, to aid that body and Parliament in considering what Church-government shall be finally adjusted after the three years' trial of Presbytery. Altogether, the concessions were the largest he had yet offered, and an elated consciousness of this appears in the letter which conveyed the Draft to Lanark for the considera- tion of him and his friends in Scotland. Only on one point is he dubious. The clause promising a toleration for scru- pulous consciences may not please the Scots ! He explains, however, that that clause had been inseited " purposely," to make the whole " relish the better " with the English Inde- pendents, and adds, " If my native subjects [the Scots] will so " countenance this Answer that I may be sure they will stick " to me in what concerns my temporal power, I will not only " expunge that clause, but likewise make what declarations I " shaU be desired against the Independents, and that really " without any reserve or equivocation." This was Charles all over ! Alas ! Lanark's reply was unfavourable. The Toleration clause, he wrote, was but one of the stumbling- blocks. As far as he could ascertain Scottish opinion, he 506 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. dared not " promise the least countenance " to the King's pro- posals about the Church, omitting as they did all mention of the Covenant, and contemplating an entire re-opening of the debate on Presbytery. Nor was it from Lanark only that the Draft met discouragement. From the Queen, to whom also a copy had been sent, the comments that came, though from a point of view different from Lanark's, were far more cutting. The surrender of the Militia for ten years amazed her. " By that you have also confirmed them the Parliament " for ten years ; which is as much as to say that we shall " never see an end to- our misfortunes. For while the Parlia- " ment lasts you are not King ; and, for me, I shall never " again set foot in England. And with this shift of your " granting the Militia you have cut your own throat {Et avec " le Mais que vous avez accord^ la Milice, vous mits este coupi " la gorge)." On the promised concession with respect to Ireland she remarks : " I am astonished that the Irish do not ^' give themselves to some foreign king ; you will force them " to it at last, seeing themselves made a sacrifice." The result was that, though the terms of Charles's draft Answer got about, and he was in a manner committed to them, the message which he did formally send to Parliament, on the 20th of December, was quite different from the Draft. It ex- plained that, though he had bent all his thoughts on the pre- paration of a written Answer to the Mneteen Propositions, " the more he endeavoured it he more plainly saw that any " answer he could make would be subject to misinformations " and misconstructions." He repeats, therefore, his earnest desire for a personal treaty in London.^ Meanwhile, quite independently of the King, his messages, or his wishes, matters had been creeping on to a definite issue. For four months now there had been a most intricate debate between the Scots and the English Parliament on the distinct and yet inseparable questions of the Disposal of the King's Person and the Settlement of Money Accounts. Though I Burnet's Hamiltons, 381—389 (for 1646, and Queen's Letters in Appendix the interesting correspondence between to the same ; Rush worth, VI. 393 ; and the King and Lanark) ; King's Letters, Pari. Hist. III. 637. liii.— Ixii. in Bruoe's Ckarles 7, in Dec. 1646.] ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH DISPUTES. 507 the reasoning on both sides on the -first question was from La-w- and Logic, it -was heated by international animosity. Lord Lou- doun -was the chief speaker for the Scottish Commissioners in the London conferences ; the great speech on the English side -was thought to he that of Mr. Thomas ChaUoner, a Eecruiter for Eichmond in Yorkshire ; but the speeches, published and unpublished, were innumerable, and a mere abstract of them fills forty pages in Eushworth. Not represented by so much printed matter now, but as prolix then, was the dispute on the question of Accounts. The claim of the Scots for army- arrears and indemnity was for a much vaster sum than the English would acknowledge. This item and that item were contested, and the Accounts of the two nations could not be brought to correspond. Not even when the Scots consented to a composition for a slump sum roughly calculated was there an approach to agreement. The Scots thought 500,000Z. little enough; the English thought the sum exorbitant. Equally on this question as on the other it was the Indepen- dents that were fiercest against the Scots and the most care- less of their feelings ; and again and again the Presbyterians had to deprecate the rudeness shown to their "Scottish brethren." And so on and on the double dispute had wound its slow length between the two sets of Commissioners, the English Parliament looking on and interfering, and the Scottish Parliament, after its meeting on the 3rd of November, contributing its opinions and votes from Edinburgh.^ To Charles in Newcastle all this had been inexpressibly interesting. A rupture between the English and the Scots, such as would occasion the retreat of the Scots into their own country, carrying him with them, was the very greatest of his chances ; and it was in the fond dream of such a chance that he had procrastinated his direct dealings with the English Parliament. But from this dream there was to be a rude awakening. It came in December, precisely at the time when he was corresponding with the Queen and Lanark over his proposed compromises on all the Nineteen Propositions. Already, indeed, there had been signs that the dispute between i Rushworth, "VI. 322-372. 508 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. the two nations was working itself to an end. By laying entirely aside the question of the Disposal of the King'a person, and prosecuting the question of Accounts by itself, difficulties had been removed and progress made. It had been agreed that the sum to be paid to the Scots should be 400,000^. in all, one-half to be paid before they left England, and the rest in subsequent instalments ; and actually on the 16th of December the first moiety of 200,000?. was off from London in chests and bags, packed in thirty-six carts, to be under the charge of Skippon in the North till it should be delivered to the Scots. Yes ! but would it ever be delivered to the Scots ? Not a word was in writing as to the surrender of the King by the Scots, but only about their surrender of the English towns and garrisons held by them ; and, so far as appeared, the money was to be theirs even if they kept the King. Here, however, lay the very skill of the policy that had been adopted. Instead of persisting in the theoretical question of the relative rights of the two nations in the matter of the custody of the King, and wrangling over that ques- tion in its unfortunate conjunction with a purely pecuniary question, it had been resolved to close the pecuniary question by putting down the money in sight of the Scots as undis- putedly theirs on other grounds, and allowing them to decide for themselves, under a sense of their duty to all the three kingdoms,, whether they would let Charles go to Scotland with them or wo\dd leave him in England. Precisely in this way was the issue reached. But oh ! with what trembling among the Scots, what wavering of the balance to the very last ! Dec. 16, the very day when the money left London, there was a debate in the Scottish Parliament or Convention of Estates in Edinburgh, the result of which was a vote that the Scottish Commissioners in London should be instructed to "press his Majesty's coming to London with honour, safety, and freedom," for a personal treaty, and that resolu- tions should go forth from the Scottish nation " to maintain monarchical government in his Majestj^'s person and pos- terity, and his just title to the crown 6f England." This vote, passing over altogether the question of the surrender of the Dec-Jan. 1646-7.] SCOTS SUERENDEE CHARLES. 509 King, and pledging the Scots to his interests generally, was a stroke in his favour hy the Hamilton party in the Conven- tion, carried by their momentary preponderance. But the flash was brief. There was in Edinburgh another organ of Scottish opinion, more powerful at that instant than even the Convention of Estates. This was the Commission of the General Assembly of the Kirk, or that Committee of the last General Assembly whose business it was to look after all affairs of importance to the Kirk till the next General Assembly should meet. The Commission then in power, by appointment of the Assembly of June 1646, consisted of eighty-nine ministers and about as many lay-elders; and among these latter were the Marquis of Argyle, the Earls of Crawford, Marischal, Glencairn, Cassilis, Dunfermline, Tullibardine, Buccleuch, Lothian, and Lanark, besides many other lords and lairds. It was in fact a kind of ecclesiastical Parliament by the side of the nominal Parliament, and with most of the Parliamentary leaders in it, but these so encom- passed by the clergy that the Hamilton influence was slight in it and the Argyle policy all-prevailing. Now, on the very day after that of the Hamilton resolutions in Parliament for the King (Dec. 17), and when Parliament was again in debate, the Commission spoke out. In " A Solemn and Seasonable Warning to all Estates and Degrees of Persons throughout the Land " they proclaimed their view of the national duty. Nothing could be more dangerous, they said, than that his Majesty should be allowed to come into Scotland, "he not having as yet subscribed the League andCovenant, nor satisfied the -lawful desires of his loyal subjects in both nations ; " and they therefore prayed that this might be prevented, and that, in justice to the English, to whom the Scots were bound by the Covenant, the King should not be withdrawn at that moment from English influence and surroundings. This opinion of the Commission at once turned the balance in the Convention. The resolutions of the previous day were re- scinded; and on that and the few following days it was agreed, Hamilton and Lanark protesting, that nothing less than the King's absolute consent to the Nineteen Propositions 510 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OP HIS TIME. would be satisfactory, and that, unless lie made his peace with the English, he could not be received in Scotland. When the letters with this news reached Charles at Newcastle, he was playing a game of chess. He read them, it is said, and went on playing. He had a plan of escape on hand about the time, and the very ship was at Tynemouth. But it could not be managed.^ January 1646-7 was an eventful month. On the 1st it was settled by the two Houses that Holdenby House, usually called Holmby House, in Northamptonshire, should be the King's residence during farther treaty with him ; and on the 6th the Commissioners were appointed who should receive him from the Scots, and conduct him to Holmby. The Com- missioners for the Lords were the Earls of Pembroke and Denbigh and Lord Montague ; those for the Commons were Sir William Armyn (for whom Sir James Harrington was substituted). Sir John Holland, Sir Walter Earle, Sir John Coke, Mr. John Crewe, and General Browne. On the 13th these Commissioners set out from London, with two As- sembly Divines, Mr. Stephen Marshall and Mr. Caryl, in their train, besides a physician and other appointed persons. On the 23rd they were at Newcastle. On the whole, the King seemed perfectly content. When the English Commis- sioners first waited on him and informed him that they were to convey him to Holmby, he " inquired how the ways were." On Saturday, Jan. 30, the Scots marched out of Newcastle, leaving the King with the English Commissioners, and Skippon marched in. Within a few days more, the 200,0002. having been punctually paid, and receipts taken in most formal fashion, as prescribed by a Treaty signed' at London Dec. 23, the Scots were out of England. The Scottish political Commissioners (Loudoun, Lauderdale, and Messrs. Erskine, Kennedy, and Barclay) had left London imme- diately after the conclusion of the Treaty.^ 1 Rushworth, VI. 389—393 ; Burnet's Pari. Hist. III. 633—636 ; Burnet's Harailtons, 389—393 ; Baillie, III. i, 6 ; Hamiltons, 393—397. Burnet has a Pari. Hist. III. 533—536. curious blunder here, and founds a 2 Commona Journals, Jan. 7 and 12, joke on it. Before the Scottish Oom- 1646-7 ; Rushworth, VI. 393—398 ; missioners left London, he says, there Deo. 1646.] CHURCH BUSINESS : BAILLIE. 511 "With the Scottisli lay Commissioners^ there returned to Scotland at this time a Scot who has been more familiar to us in these pages than any of them. For a long time, and especially since Henderson had gone, Baillie had been anxious to return home. Having now obtained the necessary per- mission, he had packed up his books, had taken a formal farewell of the Westminster Assembly, in which he had sat for more than three years, had received the warmest thanks of that body and the gift of a, sUver cup, and so, in the com- pany of Loudoun and Lauderdale, had made his journey north- wards, first to Newcastle, thence to Edinburgh, and thence to his family in Glasgow. On the whole, he had left the Londoners, and the English people generally, at a moment when the state of things among them was pleasing to his Presbyterian heart. For, both in the Parliament and in the Westminster Assembly, notwithstanding the engrossing in- terest of the negotiations with and concerning -the King, there had been, in the course of the last five months, a good deal of progress towards the completion of the Presbyterian settle- ment. Thus, in Parliament, there had been (Oct. 9) "An Ordinance for the abolishing of Archbishops and Bishops within the Kingdom of England and the Dominion of Wales, and for settling their lands and possessions upon Trustees for the use of the Commonwealth." It was an Ordinance the first portion of which may seem but the unnecessary execu- tion of a long-dead corpse ; but the second portion was of was a debate in the Commons as to the service for the English Parliament with form of the thanks to be tendered to the Parliament of Scotland. The vote them. It was proposed, he says, to was on the question whether thanks thank them for their civilities and good, should be returned to them /or all their ojjiceSf but the Independents carried it civilities and for this iJieir last kind offer, by 24 votes to strike out the words good The Independents (Haselrig and Evelyn, offices and thank them for their civilities tellers) wanted it to stand so ; the Pres- qnly. " And so all those noble oha- byterians (Stapleton and Sir Roger " raoters they were wont to give the North, tellers) wanted an addition to " Scottish Commissioners on every ocoa- be made, i.e., I suppose, wanted some " sion concluded now in this, that they particular use to be made of the offer " were well-bred gentlemen." On turn- of the Commissioners to convey a mes- ing to the Commons Journals for the sage to the Scottish Parliament. Actu- day in question (Dec. 24, 1646), one finds ally it was carried by 129 to 105 that what really occurred. It was reported the question should stand as proposed thatLoudoun, Lauderdale, and the other by the Independents; and, the Lords Scottish Cpmmissioners, were about to concurring neit day, the Commissioners take their leave, and that they desired were thanked in those terms, to know whether they could do any 512 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OP HIS TIME. practical importance, and prepared the way for another mea- sure (E"ov. 16), entitled " An Ordinance for appointing the sale of the Bishops' lands for the use of the Commonwealth." Then in the "Westminster Assembly there had been such in- dustry over the Confession of Faith that nineteen chapters of it had been presented to the Commons on Sept. 25, a duph- cate of the same to the Lords Oct. 1, and so with the residue, till on Dec. 7 and Dec. 12 the two Houses respectively had the text of the entire work before them. The Houses had not yet passed the work, or permitted it to be divulged, but had only ordered a certain number of copies to be printed for their own use ; nay they had, with what seemed an excess of punctiliousness, required the Assembly to send in their Scriptural proofs for all the Articles of the Confession ; but still, when BaUlie left London, that great business might be considered off the Assembly's hands. A good deal also had been done in the Catechisms by the Assembly ; and, if the Assembly's revised edition of Eous's Metrical Version of the Psalms had not received full Parliamentary enactment, that was because the Lords still stood out for Mr. Barton's com- peting Version. It was satisfactory to BaUlie that, on his return to Scotland, he could report to his countrymen that so much had been done for the Presbyterianizing of England. There were, indeed, drawbacks. Both in London and in Lan- cashire, where the machinery of Presbytery was already in operation, the procedure was a little languid ; and in other parts of England, " owing to the sottish negligence of the ministers and gentry of the shires more than the Parliament," they were wofully slow in setting up the Elderships and the Presbyteries. Even worse than this was the unchecked abundance of Sects and Heresies throughout England, and the prevalence of the poisonous tenet of Toleration. An Ordi- nance for the suppression of Blasphemies and Heresies, which had been occupying a Grand Committee of the Commons through September, October, November, and December, had not yet emerged into light. These were certainly serious causes of regret to Baillie, but his mood altogether was one of thankfulness and hope. " This is the incomparably best 1647.J THE KING AT HOLMBY HOUSE. 513 people I ever knew if they were in the hands of any governors of tolerable parts," had been his verdict on the English in a letter of Dec. 7, when he was preparing to take leave of them. An Ordinance against Heresies and Blasphemies would make them perfect, and till that came were there not substitutes ? Had not a number of the orthodox ministers of London put forth a famous treatise, called Jus Divinwm Regiminis EccU- siastici, arguing for the Divine Eight of Presbytery in a manner which left nothing to be desired ? The Second Part of Baillie's own Dissuasive from the Errors of the Time, pub- lished just as he was leaving London (Dec. 28, 1646), and intended as a parting-gift to the English, might also do some good ! And, though he himself was no longer to sit in the "Westminster Assembly, had he not left there his excellent doUeaguQS, Samuel Eutherford and George Gillespie ? ^ SECOND STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: AT HOLMBY HOUSE: FEB. 1646-7 — JUNE 1647. The King's Manner of Life at Holmty — New Omens in his favour from the Eelations of Parliament to its own Army — Proposals to disband the Army and reconstruct part of it for service in Ireland — Summary of Irish Affairs since 1641 — Army's Anger at the proposal to disband it — View of the State of the Army : Medley of Religious 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 Accommodation : 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 : Pro- ceedings for the Purgation of Oxford University. Holmby or Holdenby House in Northamptonshire had been built by Lord Chancellor Hatton in Elizabeth's time, but afterwards purchased by Queen Anne for her son Charles while he was but Duke of York. It was a stately mansion, 1 Baillie, II. 397—403, 406-7, 410— mons and Lords Journals of dates 416, and III. 1—5 ; Eushworth, VI. given ; Neal's Puritans, III. 350-51. 373—388 ; Pari. Hist. III. 518 ; Com- VOL. III. L ^ 514 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. with gardens, verj' much to the King's taste. It was not till the 16th of Tehruary that he arrived there, the journey from Newcastle having been broken by halts at various places, at each of which crowds had gathered respectfully to see him, and poor people had begged for Ms royal touch to cure them of the king's evU. Near Nottingham he had been met by General Fairfax, who had dismounted, kissed his hand, and then turned back, conveying him through that town, and conversing with him.^ During the four months of the King's stay at Holmby his mode of life was very regular and pleasant. The house and its appurtenances, being large, easily accommodated not only the King and aU his permitted servants, but also the Parliamentary Commissioners and their retinue, besides Messrs. Marshall and Caryl, Colonel Graves as military com- mandant, and the under-of&cers and soldiers of the guard. The allowance of Parliament for the King's own expenses was 50^. a day, so that " all the tables were as well furnished as they used to be when his Majesty was in a peaceful and flourishing, state." At meal-times the Commissioners always waited upon his Majesty, and the two chaplains were gene- rally also present. It was almost his only complaint that Parliament persisted in keeping these two reverend gentlemen about him, and would not let him have chaplains of his own . persuasion. But, though he declined the religious services of Messrs. Marshall and Caryl, and said grace at table himseK rather than ask them to do so, he was civil to them person- ally, and allowed such of his servants as chose to attend their sermons. On Sundays Charles kept himself quite re- 1 Eushworth, VI. 398; Whitlooke regard, so that, on tlie dismissal of some (ed. 1853), II. 115 ; Sir Thomas Her- of the King's attendants at Holmby, he bert's Memoii-s oftlie last Two Years of the was selected to be one of the grooms of Reign of King Cliarlesl. (1813), 13—15. the bedchamber. He remained faith- Herbert was a kinsman and protlgS of fuUy with the Kling to his death, the Pembroke family, who had travelled cherished his memory afterwards, was much in the Bast, published an account made a baronet by Charles II. after the of his travels, and had acquired quiet Restoration, and died in 1681. Two or and fflsthetio tastes. He had been in three years before his death he wrote, various posts of Parliamentary employ- at a friend's request, the above-men- ment, procured for him by Philip, Earl tioned Memoirs, containing interesting of Pembroke ; but, having accompanied reminiscences and anecdotes of Charles that Earl when he went to Newcastle as in his captivity. They were reprinted one of the Commissioners to take charge in 1702 and again in 1813 (see a memou: f the King, he had attracted the Kin^s of Herbert in Wood's Ath. IV. 15—42). 1647.] THE KING AT HOLMBY HOUSE. 515 tired to his private devotions and meditations, and on other days two or three hours were always spent in reading and "study. Among his favourite English books were Bishop An- drewes's Sermons, Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, Herbert's Poems, Fairfax's Tasso, Harrington's Ariosto, Spenser's Faery Queene, and, above all, Shakespeare's Plays, his copy of the Second Folio Edition of which is still in extant, with the words " Bum, spiro spero : C. B." written on it by his own hand. But he read also in Greek and Latin, and fluently in French, Italian, and Spanish. At dinner and supper he ate of but a few dishes, and drank sparingly of beer, or wine and water mixed by himself. He disliked tobacco extremely, and was offended by any whiff of it near his presence. His chief, relaxations were playing at chess after meals, and walking much in the garden ; but, not unfrequently, as he was fond of bowls and there was no good bowling-green at Holmby, he would ride to Lord Spencer's house at Althorp, about three miles off, or even to Lord Vaux's at Harrowden, nine miles off, at both of which places there were excellent bowling- greens and beautiful grounds. In these rides, of course, he was well attended and watched, but still not so strictly but that a packet could sometimes be conveyed to him by a seeming country-bumpkin on a bridge, or a letter in cipher entrusted to a sure hand. Always through the night at Holmby a light was kept burning in the King's chamber, in the form of a wax-cake and wick inside a large silver basin on a low table by the bed, on which also were placed the King's two watches and the silver bell with which he called his grooms. This custom had begun at Oxford and had become invariable.^ 1 Eushworth, VI. 452-4 ; Pari. Hist, dono Serenissimi Regis Car. servo s«o III. 651 an* 557-9 ; Clar. 608 ; but Immiliss. T. Berbert " (Lowndes by chiefly Herbert's Memoirs, 15 — ^25,61 — Bohn, 2,257). Herbert mentions that 65, 124 — 126, and 131. It is remarkable Dvm apiro spero was a favourite motto that Herbert, who mentions the other with Charles, inscribed by him on many favourite English books of Charles books. But that Shakespeare was a named in the text, does not mention prime favourite of Charles we have Shakespeare ; for Charles's copy of the Milton's authority in the well-known Second Polio, now in the Eoyal Library phrase in the EiKoi/oK\airT>is — "onewhom at Windsor, was given to Herbert him- we well know was the closet companion self by Charles before his death, and of these his soUtudes, William Shake- bears, in addition to the inscription ill speare." Charles's hand, this in Herbert's, "Ex L L 2 516 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. Of course there were continued negotiations iDetweerp Charles and the Parliament. Anything done in this way, however, during the four] months of the stay at Holmby, hardly deserves notice. For at that time there was a huge new clouding of the air in England, pregnant with no one knew what changes, and making the postponement of conclusions between the King and the Parliament quite natural on both sides. All the world has heard of the extraordinary quarrel between the Long Parliament and its own victorious Army. The war being over, and the troublesome Scots out of England at last, what remained but to disband the Parlia- mentarian Army, and enter on a period of peace, retrenched expense, and renewed industry ? This was what all the orthodox politicians, and especially all the Presbyterians, were saying. In the very act of saying.it, however, they faltered and explained. By disbanding they did not mean complete disbanding ; some force must still be kept up in England for garrison duty, as a police against fresh EoyaHst attempts; they meant the disbanding of all beyond the moderate force needed for such use ; nay, they did not even then mean actual disbanding of all the surplus ; they contem- plated the immediate re-enlistment and re-organization of a goodly portion of the surplus for service in another employ- ment. What that was, who needed to' be told ? Did there not remain for England a tremendous and long-postponed duty beyond her own bounds ? Now at length, now at length,, was there not leisure to attend to the case of unhappy Ireland ? Unhappy Ireland ! Her history at any time is hard to write ; but no human intellect could make a clear story of those five particular years of triple distractedness which inter- vene between the murderous Insurrection of 1641-2 (Vol. IT. pp, 308 — 314) and the beginning of 1647. One can but note a few points. Through the first year or more of the Insurrection there seemed to be but two parties in Ireland. There was the vast party of the Insurgents, or Confederates, including the whole "Roman Catholic population of the island, both the old Irish 1647.] EETROSPECT OF IRISH AFFAIRS. 517 natives, who had mainly begun the Eebellion, and the Catho- lics of English descent who had joined in it. Gradually the mere spasmodic atrocity of the first Eebels had been changed into something like an organized warfare, commanded in chief by Generals Preston and Owen Eoe O'Neile, whUe the •political conduct of the Eebellion and the government of ■Confederate Ireland had been provided for by the assembling at Killcenny of a Parliament of Eoman Catholic lords, pre- lates, and deputies from towns and counties, and by the ^.ppointment by that body of county-councils, provincial ■councils, and a supreme executive council. The other party in Ireland was the small Protestant party, consisting of the mixed English and Scottish population of certain districts of the east and north coasts, with the surviving Protestants from other parts amongst them, and with Dublin and other strong- holds still in their possession. At their head ought to have been the Earl of Leicester, Strafford's successor in the Irish Lord-Lieutenancy. But, as Leicester had been detained in England by the King, the management had devolved on the Lords Justices and Councillors resident in Dublin, and on their military assessor, James Butler, 12th Earl of Ormond, who had been Lieutenant-General of the Irish forces under Straf^^ ford. In fact it was this able Ormond that had to fight the Eebellion. Though supplies and forces, with some good officers, were sent over from England, and a special army of Scots under General Monro had been lent to the English Parliament for service in Ulster, it was still Ormond that had to direct in chief. His success had been very considerable. In the course of 1643, however, after the Civil War had begun in England, Ireland and the Eebellion there had become related in a strangely complex manner to the struggle between the Ejng and the Parliament. Whatever share the King may have had, through the Queen, in first exciting the Eoman Catholics, he had come to regard the Irish distraction as a magazine of chances in his favour. If he could get into his own hands the command of the Protestant forces em- ployed in putting down the Eebellion, he would have an army in Ireland ready for his service generally, and the policy 518 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. would then he to come to an arrangement with the Eoman Catholic Insurgents, so as to free that army, and perhaps the Insurgents too, for his service in England. Now, though the Lords Justices and most of the CouncLllors in Dublin were Parliamentarian in their sympathies, Ormond was a Eoyalist, of a family old in Ireland, far from fanatical in his own Pro- testantism, and with many relatives and friends among the Eoman Catholics. Willing enough, therefore, to fight on against the Confederates, he was yet as willing, on instructions from Oxford, to make an arrangement with them in the King's interests. Actually, on the 15th of September, 1643, he did make a year's truce with the Eehels, which permitted the despatch of some portions of his own force, mixed with Irish Eoman Catholics, to the King's assistance in England. Vehe- ment had been the outcry of the English Parliamentarians over this breach of the King's compact with them to leave the conduct of the Irish war wholly to the Parliament ; and from that moment there were two Protestant powers or trusteeships for the management of the Irish EebeUion. Ormond, made a Marquis, and raised to the Lord-Lieutenancy in Leicester's place (Jan. 1643-4), was trustee for the King, and continued to rule in Dublin, bound by his truce. In other parts of Ireland, however, the war was maintained in the interests of Parliament and by instructions from London — in Munster by Lord Inchiquin; in Connaught by Sir Charles Coote ; and in Ulster by Monro and his Scots, in con- junction with English officers and advisers. So the imbrogho had gone on, a mere chaos of mutual sieges and skirmishes in bogs, and Ireland in fact, through the stress of the Civil War at home, all but abandoned to herself in the meantime. The Confederates were stronger after the end of Ormond's year of truce than they had been before; and in 1645 they were up again against Ormond, as well as against Inchiquin, Coote, and Monro. They had already received' help from France and Spain, and in Oct. 1645 there arrived among them no less than a Papal nuncio, Archbishop Einuccini, with a retmue of other Italians, to take possession of the tumult in the name of his Holiness, and regulate it sacerdotaUy. In this 16*7.] EETROSPECT OF IKISH AJFAIES. 519 complexity Ormond had still kept his footing. He had kept it even in the midst of a sudden shock given to his Vice- royalty by Charles himself Without Ormond's knowledge, Charles had heen trafficking for months with the Confederate Irish Catholics through another plenipotentiary. In Jan. 1 645-6 it came out, by acci- dent, that the Eoman Catholic Earl of Glamorgan, to whose presence in Ireland for some months no particular significance had been attached, had been treating, in Charles's name, for a Peace with the Confederates on the basis not merely of a repeal of all penal laws against their Eeligion, but even of its establishment in Ireland. All Britain and Ireland were aghast at the discovery, and even Ormond reeled. Eecover- ing himself, however, he did what he could to save Charles from the results of his own double-dealing. Glamorgan was imprisoned for a time, with tremendous threats ; all publicity was given to Charles's letters authorizing proceedings 'against him as "one who either out of falseness, presumption, or " foUy, hath so hazarded the blemishing of his Majesty's " reputation with his good subjects, and so impertinently " framed these Articles out of his own head ; " and mean- while Charles's letters of consolation to Glamorgan, with his thanks, and promises of " revenge and reparation," remained private. One consequence of the Glamorgan exposure, happening as it did when the King had been all but completely beaten in England, was a resolution of Parliament that Irish affairs should be managed thenceforward not by the mere Committee for these affairs meeting at Derby House, Westminster, and communicating with Inchiquin, Coote, and others in Ireland, but by " a single person of honour," in fact a Parliamentary Lord- Lieutenant. Por this high post there was chosen Philip Sidney, Viscount Lisle, M.P. for Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight. This was partly a tribute to Lord Lisle's own zeal and to service he had already rendered in Ireland, partly a compliment to his father, the Earl of Leicester, whom Charles had displaced from the Lord-Lieutenancy to make way for Ormond. Accordingly, from AprQ 1646, while Ormond re- 520 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. mained in power for Charles at Dublin, it was in tlie name of Lord lisle, as " Lord Lieutenant-General," that all commis- sions for Tarliament respecting Ireland were issued. Lord Lisle, however, had not gone over to Ireland, but had been waiting till he could take troops with him. It remained, therefore, for Ormond to do what he finally could in Ireland for the fallen King. He had been in negotiation with the Confederates for a Peace on more respectable terms than Glamorgan's, and yet valuable for the King; and though, after Charles's flight td the Scots, letters had come from Jfewcastle (June 11) countermanding previous instructions, Ormond had persevered. On the 28th of July, 1646, Ormonis Articles of Peace with the Irish Bezels were signed at Dubhn and published for general information. They promised the reped of all acts against the Eoman Catholic Eeligion in Ireland, and admission of Eoman Catholics to a proportion of all places of public trust ; and the recompense was to be an army of 10,000 Irish for his Majesty's assistance in England. The indignation among the Parliamentarians in Ireland, and throughout England and Scotland, was immense, and Ormond was the best-abused man living. Fortunately for him, he was extricated from the consequences of his own Treaty. The Papal Nuncio disowned it as insulting to the Church after Glamorgan's ; the Eoman Catholic clergy gathered round the Nuncio ; there were riots wherever it was proclaimed; excommunications were thundered against its adherents; the Confederate Commissioners who had made the Treaty were imprisoned; the Nuncio himself became generalissimo, and, with Owen Eoe O'Neile's army on one side of him and General Preston's on the other, declared war afresh against Ormond, and marched in his robes upon Dublin. Eor Ormond then there remained one plain duty. To save English rule and the existence of Protestantism in Ireland, he must hand over Dublin and the entire manage- ment of the war to the English Parliament. Having procured, the King's full consent, he began a treaty with Parliament to this effect in Nov. 1646. As he was staunch in his desire to make the best bargain for the King he could, he was in no 1«47.] EETEOSPECT 0¥ IKISH AFFAIRS. 52X hurry ; so that in February 1646-7, when the King was taken to Holmby, Ormond was still in Dublin, going on with the Treaty. In reality, however, by that time Ireland was as good as transferred to the Parliament. They had acted on the knowledge. Dec. 23, 1646, "Eesolved that this House doth " declare that they will prosecute and carry on an offensive war " in Ireland for the regaining of that kingdom to the obedience " of the kingdom of England ; " Jan. 4, 1646-7, " Eesolved " that an Ordinance be forthwith prepared and brought in for " establishing and settling the same Form of Church-govern- " ment in the kingdom of Ireland as is or shall be established " in the kingdom of England : " such were two momentous votes of the Commons when the King was about to leave Newcastle. Nay, on the 28th of January, when the Scots were handing over the King to the English, Lord Lisle had left London for Ireland to assume his Lord-Lieutenancy. A new sword of State had been made for him ; his Irish Council, of nine members at 500^. a year each, had been nominated ; and, at his special request. Major Thomas Harrison of the New Model had accompanied him.^ What could Lord Lisle do without troops ? Now was the time for England to perform fully for " the gasping and bleeding Island " that duty of which, with aU the excuse of her own pressing needs, she had been long too negligent. Now was the time to revenge the massacre of 1641, and re- subject Ireland to English rule and the one only right faith and worship. And were not the means at hand ? An army of 25,000 or 30,000 Englishmen was now standing idle : why not disband and cashier part of them, and recast the rest into a new army for the service of Ireland ? The question was obvious and natural to aU ; but it was put most loudly by the Presbyterians, because of a peculiar interest in it. They had never liked the Army of the New Model ; aU its victories 1 Authorities for the summaiy of Irish Journals of dates given, -with other a&irs from 1641 to 1647 given in the entries from Deo. 1646 to Feb. 1646-7 ; text are — Eushworth, VI. 238 — 249 ; and Carte's Ormond. Carte's large book C3ar. 641, and at various other points ; is of some value from the abundance of Whitlocke under Jan. 25 and 28 and information that was at his disposal, but March 9, 1646-7 ; Godwin, I. 245 et is intrinsically silly. seq., and II. lOZ et seq.; Commons 622 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. had not reconciled them to it, or made them cease to regret the Army of the Old Model. That had been a respectable army, with the Earl of Essex at its head; this was an army of Independents, Sectaries, Tolerationists. Might not the dis- banding of this army be so managed as to be at once a deli- verance of England from a great danger and the salvation of Ireland ? What was necessary in the process was to get rid of Cromwell, his followers among the ofi&cers, and the most peccant pai-ts of the soldiery, so as to leave a siifBcient mass to be re-formed, with additions, into an army of the Old Model type, the command of which might be given to Fairfax if he would take it, or perhaps to honest Skippon, or, best of all, to Sir William WaUer. This had been the understanding between the Enghsh Presbyterians and their Scottish friends since the close of the war.^ There was, however, another party likely to have a voice in the business. This was the Army itself. Never under the sun had there been such an army before. It was not large according to our modern ideas of armies : only some 25,000 or 30,000 men, four-fifths of them foot- eoldiers and the rest horse-troopers and dragoons. But imagine these all hardy men, thoroughly drilled and disciplined, and conscious that it was they who had done the work, they who had fought the battles, they who had saved England. Imagine farther that this Army had somehow come to be constituted, through its entire mass, on Cromwell's extraordinary principle, announced by him to Hampden at the beginning of the war, that the power of an army depends ultimately on the " spirit," or intrinsic moral mood, of the individuals composing it. Imagine that the atoms of this army were all "men of a spirit," men who had not fought as hirelings, but as earnest partakers in a great cause. Imagine them, if you like, as an army of fanatics. This phrase, however, might mislead, unless qualified. The common conception of an army of fanatics is that of an army mad for one set of tenets. Now the Parliamentary 1 In a letter of Baillie's, October 2, 1646, he expects " the Sectarian Army diflhanded and that party humbled." 1647.] STATE OP THE AKMT. 523 Army was really, as the Presbyterians called it, an Army of Sectaries. It was a miscellany of all the forms of Puritan belief known in England, with forms of belief included that were not Puritan. The much largest proportion, after Presby- terians, of whom there were many, and ordinary Indepen- dents, of whom there were more, were Sectaries of the fei-vid and devout sorts, such as Baptists, Old Brownists, and Anti- nomians, with mystical Millenaries and Seekers, all passion- ately Scriptural, saturated with the language and history of the Old Testament, and zealously Anti-Eomanist and Anti- prelatic ; and these, on the whole, were the men after Cromwell's heart. Such, among others, was Harrison — whom Baxter, who had seen much of him, classes at this time among the Anabaptists and Antinomians, telling us " he would not " dispute at all [with Baxter], but he would in good discourse " very fluently pour out himself in the extolling of Free " Grace, which was savoury to those that had right principles, " though he had some misunderstandings of Pree Grace him- " self : " a man, adds Baxter, " of excellent natural parts for " affection and oratory, but not well seen in the principles of " his Eeligion ; of a sanguine complexion'; naturally of such a " vivacity, hilarity, and alacrity, as another man hath when " he hath drunken a cup too much ; " and whom Baxter had once heard, in a battle, when the enemy began to flee, " with a loud voice break forth into the praises of God, with fluent expressions, as if he had been in a rapture." But there were also ia the army Sectaries of a cooler or easier order — Armi- nians, Anti-Sabbatarians, Anti-Scripturists, FamUists, and Sceptics. Hardly a form of odd opinion mentioned in our conspectus of English Sects in a former chapter but had representatives in the Army ; nay, new speculative oddities had broken out in some regiments ; and it may be doubted whether even in the English mind of our own time there is any form of speculation so peculiar as not to have had its prototype or lineal progenitor in that mass of steel-clad theorists contemporary with the Westminster Assembly. Nor did each man keep his theory to himself. There were constant prayer-meetings in companies and regiments, and £24 LIFE OP MILTON AND HISTOliY OF HIS TIME. meetings for theological debate ; troopers or foot-soldiers off duty^would expound or harangue to their fellows in camp, or even from the pulpits of parish-churches when such were convenient ; whenever the Army halted there was a hum of holding-forth. There were army-chaplains, it is true, and some of them, such as Peters, Dell, and Saltmarsh, great favourites ; but, on the whole, the regular cloth was in dis- repute : those who belonged to it were spoken of as the Levites or priests by profession ; the need for such a profession was voted obsolete ; and any man was held to be as good for the preaching ofiice as any other, if he had the preaching gift. And with the respect for ordination had vanished the respect for most of the regular Church-forras and symbols. Not only did preaching officers and troopers, when they chanced to enter parish-churches, often eject the regular ministers from the pulpits, and hold forth themselves instead — in which kind of practice Colonel Hewson and Major Axtell are reported to have been conspicuous; but the contempt for established decencies of worship had vented itself, at least in occasional instances, in very profane humours. Soldiers had scandalized country-congregations by sitting with their hats on during prayer and singing ; and Hewson's men were said once to have kept possession of a parish-church for eight days, having a fire in the chancel, and smoking tobacco ad lihitvm. Such were, doubtless, mere excesses here and there, which would have been rebuked by the more serious men who formed the bulk of the Army ; but it is quite certain that even among these that extreme kind of Independency had become common which repudiated a National Church of any kind whatsoever, nay denied that there was any Church on earth at all, any system of spiritual ordinances visibly from God, anything but a great invisible brotherhood of Samts, walking in this life's darkness, passionately using meanwhile this symbol and that to feature forth the unimaginable, glad above aU in the great glow of the present Bible, but expect- ing also, each soul for itself, rays and shafts from the Light beyond. Of this kind of indifferency to all competing forms of external worship, and even of doctrine, combined with 1647.] STATE OF THE AEMY. " 525 either a mystical and dreamy piety, or a wildly-fervid enthu- siasm, Dell and Saltmarsh, among the army- chaplains, seem to have been the most noted exponents ; but it was really a modification of that which is already known to us as the Seekerism of Eoger Williams. At all events, that absolute doctrine of Toleration which Eoger Williams had propounded, and which was logically inseparable in his mind from Inde- pendency at its purest, had found its largest discipleship in the Parliamentary Army. Toleration to some extent was the universal Army tenet; even the Presbyterians of the Army, with some exceptions, had learnt to be Tolerationists in some degree. But a very full principle of Toleration had possessed most, and the most absolute possible principle was avowed by many. " If I should worship the Sun or Moon, " like the Persians, or that pewter-pot on the table, nobody " has anything to do with it," one sectary had been heard to say ; and some even had " justified the Irish Eebellion," on the ground that the Irish " did it for the liberty of their con- sciences and for their country." If this last extreme applica- tion of the Toleration doctrine did actually come from the mouth of a sectary serving in the Army (which is not quite clear from the report), it must be regarded, I suspect, as one of those eccentricities of mess-table debate which, when Baxter talked of them to Colonel Purefoy, vouching that he had heard such things himself, that officer indignantly refused to credit, saying, " If ISTqll Cromwell should hear any soldier speak but such a word, he would cleave his crown." Pre- cisely the Toleration doctrine, however, was that in which Cromwell himself was most thorough-going and most dis- tinctly the representative of the whole Army. Even Baxter, after his two years of army-chaplaincy, spent in observing the medley of sects around him and combating their errors, could not refer Cromwell with positive certainty to any one of the Sects. He seemed most for the Anabaptists, Antino- mians, and Seekers, but " did not openly profess what opinion he was of himself" But on Toleration of Eeligious Differences he was explicit and decided. All that were most to his mind in the Army " he tied together by the point of Liberty of 526 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKT OF HIS TIME. Conscience, whicli was the common interest in whieh they did unite." 1 There were three reasons why this extraordinary Army should ohject to being disbanded : — (1) They had large and long-deferred claims upon the Parliament for arrears of pay, compensation for losses, provision for the wounded and dis- abled and for widows and orphans, indemnity also for illegal or questionable acts done in the time of war. Was the Army to let itself be disbanded without due security on these points ? (2) There was the unsettled question of Eeligious Toleration. The whole drift of things in the Parliament and in the West- minster Assembly seemed to be to a uniform and compulsor)' Presbyterianism ; and was that a prospect to which the Army, or nine-tenths of it, could look forward placidly 1 The Army did not want to undo the Presbyterian settlement as already decreed, but they were unwilling to disband before a Tolera- tion imder that settlement had been arranged. (3) Over and above these two reasons, and in powerful conjunction with them, was another. The Army, although an Army, had not ceased to regard itself as a portion of the English people ; nay, it had come to regard itself as a select portion of that people, whose opportunities of thinking and reasoning on poli- tical affairs had been peculiarly good. It had come to be, in its own belief, an organ of political opinion, representing wishes and feelings of large parts of the population which were not represented in Parliament, and representing these in the 1 Thia deecription of the Parliamen- innocent enough, or only very rough tary Army is a digest of the best know- jokes, as when a soldier told a godly ledge I have been able to form from old woman that, if she did not believe various readings in contemporary books in universal redemption, she would be and study of Army documents; but par- damned. Perhaps his most horrible tioulars of it are from Baxter's Auto- story is that of some soldiers taking a biography (1696), Part I. 52—57, and horse into a village church in Hunts Edwards's Gangrsana, Parts II. and and baptizing him in all due form at III. passim. The good, though narrow the font, giving him the name of Eim and hypochondriac, Baxter may be because he was hairy. The story, with thoroughly relied on for whatever he a certificate of its truth by seven of the vouches as a fact known to himself ; villagers, will be found in Gangrana, otherwise, cmi grano. Edwards has to Part III. 17, 18. But, if the atrocity be put into the witness-box and cross- ever did occur, its date, according to examined unmercifully, not as a wilful Edwards himself, was June 2, 1644, ^i.«. liar, but as an incredibly spiteful in the time of the Old Model Army, to collector of gossip for the Presby- which the very objection of Cromwell terians. After all, many of the so-called and others was that it did not consist ribaldries and profanities reported by sufficiently of "men of a spirit." him of the Army Sectaries tiim out 1647.] A.BMY DEMOCRACY: THK LEVBLLEES. 527 form of conclusions for the future more radical and more definite than any that Parliament alone was ever likely to work out. In short, those democratic ideas the prevalence of which in the Army had so surprised Baxter when he first joined it had now hecome paramount. It was not only that the Army had formed views more severe than those of the Presbyterians as to the proper terms of the settlement to be made with the King ; it was that the Army thought the pre- sent the time for discussing the whole subject of the consti- tution of the country. The House of Lords, for example ! Whether there should be a Peerage at all, legislating in a separate House by mere hereditary right, might be a very fair question, and was one on which the Army had pretty decided opinions. But that the House of Lords then sitting — not the assembled Peerage of England at all, but a mere fifth-part of that Peerage, in the shape of some twenty-eight persons meet- ing from day to day, sometimes as few as half-a-dozen of them at a time, and not only partaking with the other House in the legislation, but often obstructing that House, thwarting it, throwing out- its measures, — that this should continue who would maintain ? No ! the House of Lords mu§t go, and the sole House in England must be the other House, the " House of Eepresenters," But here too there was room for improve- ment. The House of Commons then sitting was numerically substantial enough, now that it had been Recruited ; and no one could look back on the great things which the House had done without gratitude and admiration. But were 'i|jhere not signs of exhaustion, debUity, and wrong-headedness, even in that House, arising partly from its long independence of the People, partly from the imperfect system of suffrage Junder which it had been elected. Only in an imperfect sens§ could the existing House be called a " House of Eepresenters j " and, as soon as should be convenient, it must be dissol'^ i ' June 1647.]' TUB KING WITH THE ARMY. /i47 THIED STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: THE KING WITH THE ABMY, JUNE — NOV. 1647. , Effects of Joyce's Abduction of the King— Movements of the Aimy : their Denunciation of Eleven of the Presbyterian Leaders : Parliamentary Alarms and Concessions— Presbyterian Phrenzy of the London Populace : Parliament mobbed, and Presbyterian Votes carried by Mob-law : Flight of the two Speakers and their Adherents ; Restoration of the Eleven- March of the Army upon London : Military Occupation of the City : The Mob quelled, Parliament reinstated, and the Eleven expeUed— Generous Treatment of the King by the Army : His Conferences with Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton — The Army's HeaAs of Proposals, and Comparison of the same with the Nineteen Propositions of the Parliament — King at Hampton Court, still demurring privately over the Heads of Proposals, but playing them off publicly against the Nineteen Propositions : Army at Putney — Cromwell's Motion for a Recast of the Nineteen Propositiorts and Ee-application to the King on that Basis : Consequences of the Com- promise-Intrigues at Hampton Court : Influence of the Scottish Com- missioners there : King immoveable — Impatience of the Army at Putney : Cromwell under Suspicion : New Activity of the Agitatorships : Growtli of Levelling Doctrines among the Soldiers : Agreement of the People — Cromwell breaks utterly with the King: Meetings of the Army Officers at Putney : Proposed Concordat between the Army and Parliament — The King's Escape to the Isle of Wight. The effects of Joyce's abduction of the King from Holmby may be summed up by saying that for the next five months the Army and the Independents were in the ascendant, and the Presbyterians depressed. There were to be vibrations of the balance, however, even during this period. What the Presbyterians dreaded was an immediate marcli of the Army upon London, to occupy the city and coerce Parliament. With no wish to resort to such a policy so long as it could be avoided, the Army-leaders, for a time, kept moving their head-q[uarters from spot to spot in the counties north and west of London, now approaching the city and again receding, and paying but slight respect to the injunc- tions of the Parliament not to bring the Army within a distance of forty miles. On the 10th of June there was a Eendezvous 21,000 strong at Triplow Heath, near Eoyston ; thence, on the 12th, they came to St. Alban's, only twenty miles from London, spreading such alarm in the City by N N 2 548 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. this movement that guards were posted, shops shut, &c. ; and they remained at St. Alban's till the 24th, when they withdrew to Berkhampstead. Through this fortnight nego- tiations had heen going on between the Army-leaders and Parliamentary Commissioners who had been sent down ex- pressly; letters had also passed between the Army-leaders and the City ; and certain general " Representations " and " Remonstrances " had been sent forth by the Army, penned by Ireton and Lambert, but signed by Eushworth in the name of Fairfax and the whole Council of War. In these it was distinctly repeated that the Army had no desire to overturn or oppose Presbyterian Church-government as it had been established, and only claimed Liberty of Con- science under that government ; but there were also clear expressions of the opinion that a dissolution of the existing Parliament and the election of a new one on a more popular system ought to be in contemplation. Nay, till the time should come for a dissolution, one thing was declared essential. In order that the existing Parliament might be brought somewhat into accord with public necessities and interests, and so made endurable, it must be purged of its peccant elements. Not only must Eoyalist Delinquents who still lurked in it be ejected, but also those conspicuous Pres- byterian enemies of the Army who had occasioned aU the recent troubles ! That there might be no mistake, eleven such members of the House of Commons were named — . to wit, Holies, Stapleton, Sir "William Lewis, Sir John Clot- worthy, Sir William Waller, John Glynn, Esq., Anthony Nichols, Esq. (original members), and Sir John Maynard, Major-general Massey, Colonel Walter Long, and Colonel Edward Harley (Recruiters). This Army denunciation of eleven chiefs of the Commons, dated from St. Alban's June 14, had greatly perplexed the House ; but in the course of their debates on it they recovered spirit, and in a vote of June 25 they stood out for Parliamentary privilege. As there had been votes of the two Houses about bringing the King to Richmond for a treaty, and other more secret signs of Presbyterian activity, the Army then again applied the July 1647.] PRESBYTERIAN RAGE IN LONDON. 549 screw. They advanced to Uxbridge, some of the regiments showing themselves even closer to the City (June 26). This had the intended effect. The eleven consented to withdraw from their places ia the Commons, for a time at least (June 26) ; votes favourable to the Army were passed by both Houses (June 26 — 29) j and, though these were mingled with others not quite so satisfactory, the Army had no pretext for a severer pressure. They withdrew, therefore, to Wycombe in Bucks. Here, at a Council of "War (July 1), a Commission of ten officers (Cromwell, Ireton, Fleetwood, Lambert, Eainsborough, Sir Hardress Waller, Eich, Eobert Hammond, Desborough, and Harrison) was appointed to treat farther with new Commissioners of the Parliament (the Earl of Nottingham, Lord Wharton, Vane, Skippon, &c.). Then surely aU seemed in a fair way.^ While Parliament, however, was thus yielding to the Army, the dense Presbyterianism of the City and the dis- trict round was more reckless and indignant. Whatever Parliament might do, the great city of London would be true to its colours ! Accordingly, in addition to various Petitions already presented to the two Houses from the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, all of an anti-Army character, a new one in the same sense, but purporting to be simply "for payment of the soldiery and a speedy settlement of the Nation," was presented July 2. A public and responsible body like the Common Council could express itself only in such general terms; but the Presbyterian "young men and apprentices of the City," the number of whom was legion, and whose ranks and combina- tions could easily be put in motion by the higher powers, were able to speak out boldly. On the 14th of July a Petition, said to be signed by 10,000 such, was presented to both Houses, praying for strict observance of the Covenant, the defence of his Majesty's person and just power and great- ness, the disbandment of the Army, the thorough settlement of Presbyterian Government, the suppression of Conventicles, 1 Pari. Hist. III. 594—662 ; Eushworth, VI. 645—597 ; Godwin, II. 323—354 ; Carlyle's CromweU, I. 226—232. 550 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. and defiance to the crotchet of Toleration. This audacious document having been received even with politeness by the Lords, and only with cautious reserve by the Commons, the City was stirred through all its Presbyterian depths, made no doubt it could control Parliament, and grew more and more violent to that end. Crowds came daily to Palace Yard and Westminster Hall, signifying their anger at the seclusion of the Preshyterian Eleven, and at all the other concessions made to the Army and the Independents. What roused the City most, however, was the acquiescence of Parlia- ment in a demand of the Army that the Militia of London should be restored to the state in which it had been before the 27th of April last. On that day the Common Council, in whose trust the business was, had placed the direction of the MUitia in a Committee whoUy Presbyterian, excluding Alderman Pennington and other known Independents; and what was desired by the Army was that Parliament, resuming the power, should bring back the Independents into the Committee. An Ordinance to that effect had no sooner passed the two Houses, — carried in the Commons by a majority of 77 to 46 (July 22), and accepted by the Lords without a division (July 23), — than the City broke out in sheer rebellion. By this time there had been formed in the City and its purlieus a vast popular association, called " A Solemn Engagement of the Citizens, Officers, and Soldiers of the Trained Bands and Auxiliaries, Young Men and Apprentices of the Cities of London and "Westminster, Sea- Commanders, Seamen, and Watermen, &c. &c.," all pledged by oath to an upholding of the Covenant and the furthering of a Personal Treaty between King and Parliament, without interference from the Army. A copy of this Engagement, said by Presbyterian authorities to have been signed by nearly 100,000 hands, with an accompanying Petition in the same sense, which had been addressed by the Engagers to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, was brought before both Houses on the 24th of July. They declared it insolent and dangerous, and adjudged all who should persevere in it guilty of high treason. That day July 1647.] WEEK OF MOB-DICTATION. 651 was Saturday, and the next day's Sabbath stood between the Houses and the wrath they were provoking. But on Monday the 26th they were called to a mighty reckoning. A Petition came in upon them from the Lor J Mayor, Alder- men, and Common Council, praying for a revocation of the Militia Ordinance of the 23rd, and enclosing Petitions to the same effect which the Common Council had received from " divers well-affected Citizens " and from the " Young Men. Citizens and others, Apprentices." That was not all. Another Petition came in, from "the Citizens, Young Men, and Apprentices " themselves, complaining of the " pretended Declaration" of the 24th against their Engagement, and of the seclusion of the Eleven. Even that was not all. While the Petitions were under consideration, the Young Men, Citizens, and Apprentices, with Seamen, Watermen, Trained-Bands, and others, their fellow-Engagers, were round the Houses in thousands in Palace Yard, and swarming in the lobbies, and throwing stones in upon the Lords through the windows, and kicking at the doors of the Commons, and bursting in with their hats on, all to enforce their demands. The riot lasted eight hours. Speaker Lenthall, trying to quit the House, was forced back, and was glad to end the uproar by putting such questions to the vote as the intruders dictated. The unpopular Ordinance of the 23rd and the Declaration of the 24th having thus been revoked under mob-compulsion, the Houses were allowed to adjourn. They met next day, Tuesday the 27th, but only to adjourn farther to Friday the SOth.i When the Houses did re-assemble on that day, their appearance was most woe-begone. Neither Manchester, the Speaker of the Lords, was to be found, nor Lenthall, the Speaker of the Commons; there were but eight Lords in the one House ; and the benches in the other were unusually thin. Nevertheless they proceeded in all due form. Each House elected a new Speaker — the Peers Lord Willoughby of Parham for the day, and the Commons Henry Pelham, 1 Pari. Hist. III. 664—723; Lords and Commons Journals; Whitlooke, II. 182—185. 552 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. Esq., M.P. for Grantham, in permanence ; each took notice of its absentees, and commanded their immediate re-attend- ance — the Commons also restoring the Eleven, hy special enumeration, to their places ; and each went on for six or seven days, transacting business or trying to transact it. A good deal of the business related to military preparations to make good the position the City had taken. Sir "WiUiam "Waller and General Massey, two of the Eleven, were added to a Committee for consultation with the City Committee of the Militia; this City Committee was empowered to choose a commander-in-chief and other commanders of the London forces; and, when the Committee named Massey for the command-in-chief, and Waller for the command of the Horse, the Houses gave their cordial assent. In short, the two Houses, as they met during this extraordinary week from July 30 to Aug. 5, consisted mainly of a forlorn residue of the most fanatical Presbyterians in each, regarding the riots of the 26th as a popular interposition for right principles, and anxiously considering whether, with such a zealous London round them, and with Massey, Waller, Poyntz, and perhaps Browne, for their generals, they might not be able to face and rout the Army of Fairfax. There may, however, have been some who remained with the re- siduary Houses on lazier or more subtle principles. The restored Eleven, with Sir Eobert Pye, Sir Eobert Harley, and a few other typical Presbyterians, certainly led the business of the Commons in this extraordinary week ; but among those that remained in that House how are we to account for Selden?^ The City-tumults, intended as such a brave stroke for Presbytery, had been, in fact, a suicidal blunder. Manchester and Lenthall, the missing Speakers, though themselves Presbyterians, had withdrawn in disgust from the dictation of a London mob of mixed Presbyterian young men and Eoyalist intriguers, and had been joined by about fourteen Peers, some of them also eminently Presbyterian, and a hundred Commoners, mostly Independents. Deliberating 1 Lords and Commons Journals, July 30 — Aug. 5, 1647. Aug. 1647.] Fairfax's march on London. 553 "what was to be done, these seceders had resolved to place themselves under the protection of Fairfax, make common cause with him and the Army, and act as a kind of Parlia- mentary Council to him until they could resume their places in a Parliament free from mob-law. Meanwhile Fairfax, acting for himself, was on the march towards London. On the day of the tumrdts in London his head- quarters had been as far off as Bedford ; but, starting thence on the 30th of July, he had reached Colnbrook on Sunday Aug. 1. S'ext day he came on to Hounslow; and here it was that, at an imposing Eeview of his Army, horse, foot, and artillery, over 20,000 strong, the seceding Peers and Commoners came in, and were received by the soldiers with acclamations, and cries of " Lords and Commons, and a Free Parliament ! " Only ten miles now intervened between the Army and the Common Council of the City of London con- sulting with their Militia commanders at Guildhall, and somewhat less than that distance between the Army and the presumptuous fragment of the two Houses at Westminster. Both these bodies, but especially the citizens, had begun to come to their senses. The tramp, tramp, of Fairfax's approaching Army had cooled their courage. At Guildhall, indeed, as Whitlocke tells us, whenever a scout brought in the good news that the Army had halted, the people would still cry " One and all; " but the cry would be changed into " Treat, Treat," a moment afterwards, when they heard that the march had been resumed. At Hounslow, therefore, Fairfax received the most submissive messages and deputations, with entreaties to spare the City. His reply, in effect, was that the City need fear no unnecessary harshness from the Army, but that the late " prodigious violence " had brought things into such a crisis that the Army must and would set them right. Nothing more was to be said : the rest was action. On the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 4, a brigade of the Army under Eainsborough, which had been despatched across the Thames to approach London on the south side, was in peaceable possession of the borough of Southwark, and had two cannon planted against the fort on London Bridge till 554 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. the citizens thought good to yield it up. That day and the next other defences on the Thames, eastwards and westwards, were seized or surrendered. On Friday the 6th, Fairfax with his main Army, all with laurel-leaves in their hats, and con- ducting the Lords and Commoners in their coaches, marched in from Hammersmith by Kensington to Hyde Parle, where the Lord Mayor and Aldermen joined them, and so to Charing Cross, where the Common Council made their obeisances, and thence to Palace Yard, Westminster. There the two Speakers were ceremoniously reinstated, the Houses properly recon- stituted, and Fairfax and the Army thanked. Finally, on Saturday the 7th, the grand affair was wound up by another deliberate march of the Army through the main streets of the City itself, all the more impressive to the beholders from the perfect order kept, and the abstinence from every act, word, or gesture, that could give offence. The Tower was made over to Fairfax on the 9th ; and his head-quarters for some time continued to be in London or its immediate neighbourhood.! By the Army's march through the City events were brought back so far into the channel of regular Parliamentary debate, but with Independency naturally more powerful than ever. All acts done by the two Houses duriijg the week's Literregnum of riot were voted null ; and there were measures of retaliation against those who had been most prominent in that Interregnum. Six of the culpable Eleven — viz. Holies, Stapleton, Sir William WaUer, Clotworthy, Lewis, and Long — having fled abroad together, had been chased at sea and overtaken, but let escape ; and Stapleton had died at Calais immediately after his landing. Massey had gone to Holland, with Poyntz ; but Glynn and Maynard, remaining behind, were expelled the House, impeached, and sent to the Tower (Sept. 7). Seven out of the nine Peers who had formed the Lords' House through the wrong-headed week were similarly impeached and committed — viz. the Earls of Suffolk, Lincoln, and Middlesex, and Lords Willoughby, Hunsdon, Berkeley, and Maynard. The Lord Mayor and I P.irl. Hist. III. 723—755 ; ■Whitlooke, II. 187—193 ; Godwin, II. 371—387. Aug. 1647.] THE HOUSES REINSTATED. 555 four Aldermen were disabled, impeached, and imprisoned (Sept. 24) ; several officers of the City Trained Bands were called to account ; and one result of inquiries respecting culprits of a lower grade was an order by the Commons (Sept. 28 and Oct. 1) for the arrest and indictment for high treason of twelve persons, most of them young men and apprentices, ascertained to iave been ringleaders in the dreadful outrage on the two Houses on the 26th of July. As there was a " John Milton, junior " among these young rioters, one would like to have known whether they were found and how they fared. In truth, however, nothing very terrible was intended by such indictments and arrests. As the Army's treatment of the conquered City had been studiously magnanimous, so what was chieily desired by the leaders now in power was that, by the removal from public sight of persons like the Seven in the one House, the Eleven in the other, and their City abettors, there might be a Parlia- ment and Corporation reasonably in sympathy with the Army. As respected the Parliament, this object had been attained. From the reinstatement of the two Houses by Fairfax, Aug. 6, on through the rest of that month and the months of September and October, what we see at West- minster is a small Upper House of from half-a-dozen to a dozen Peers, most of them moderately Presbyterian, but several of them avowed Independents, co-operating with a Commons' House from which the Presbyterians had with- drawn in large numbers, so that the average voting-attendance ranged from 90 to 190, and the divisions were mainly on new questions arising among the Independents themselves.'' It was on these two Houses that the duty devolved of 1 Lords and Commons Journals of Grey of Wark, Howard of Escrick, and dates given, and generally from Aug. Delawarr, with occasionally Lords Mon- ti to the beginning of November. — The tague. North, and Herbert of Cherbury. Peers who formed the Lords' House In the Commons I find one division through this period were the Earl of (Sept. 25) when only 41 voted, and Manchester (Speaker), the Earls of Nor- another (Nov. 3) when the number rose thumberland, Pembroke (whose eiTor to 264. At a call of the House, Oct. 9, in remaining in the House through the note was taken of about 240 absentees ; week of intimidation had been con- and of these 59, whose excuses were not doned), Kent, Salisbury, Mulgrave, considered sufficient, were fined Wl. Nottingham, and Denbigh, Viscount each. A good few of these were Inde- Saye and Sele, and Lords Wharton, pendents. 556 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIMB. hammering out, if possible, a new Constitution for England that should satisfy the Army and yet be accepted by the King. It had been a halcyon time with his Majesty since he had come into the keeping of the Army. He was stOl a captive, but his captivity was little more than nominal. Subject to the condition that he should accompany the Army's move- ments, and not range beyond their grasp, he had been allowed to vary his residence at his pleasure. From his own house or hunting-lodge at Newmarket, whither he had gone from Chil- dersley (June 7), he had made visits in his coach or on horse- back to various noblemen's houses near ; thence he had gone to his smaller hunting-seat at Eoyston ; thence (June 26) to the Earl of Salisbury's mansion at Hatfield ; thence (July 1) to Windsor ; thence (July 3) to Lord Craven's at Caversham, near Eeading; thence (July 15) to Maidenhead; thence (July 20) to the Earl of Bedford's at Woburn ; thence to Latimers in Bucks, a mansion of the Earl of Devonshire ; and so by other stages, always moving as the Army moved, tiU, on the 14th of August, he was at Oatlands, and on the 24th at his palace of Hampton Court. At all these places the freest concourse to him had been permitted, not only of Parlia- mentarian noblemen and gentlemen, and Cambridge scholars desiring to pay their respects, but even of noted Eoyahsts and old Councillors, such as the Duke of Eichmond. His three young children — the Duke of York, the Princess EUza- beth, and the Duke of Gloucester — had been brought to see him, in charge of their guardian the Earl of Northumber- land, and had spent a day or two with him at Caversham, to the unbounded delight of the country-people thereabouts. But, what was the most agreeable change of all for Charles, he had been permitted, since his first coming to the Army, to have his own Episcopal chaplains, Dr. Hammond, Dr. Sheldon, and others, in constant attendance upon him. These civilities and courtesies had been partly yielded to him by the personal generosity of the Army chiefs, Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton, acting on their own responsibility, partly procured for him by their mediation with the Parliament. There had been grum- blings in the Houses, indeed, at the too great indulgence Aug. 1647.] army's HEADS OF PROPOSALS. 557 shown to liis Majesty in his choice of chaplains and oth^r company.^ What one dwells on as most interesting in the changed circumstances of his Majesty is that, amid all the concQurse of people round him, it was Fairfax, Cromwell, Ireton. and the other Army chiefs, that could now come closest tp him for purposes of real conference. They were now, indeed, fre- quently with him, conversing with him, studying him face to fece, considering within themselves whether it would be pos- sible after all to come to an arrangement with that man. In their interviews with him they were most studious of external respect, though Cromwell and Ireton, it seems, never offered to follow Fairfax in the extreme ceremony of kissii>g the royal hand. The King, on his side, showed them every attention, and would be " sometimes very pleasant; in his discourse with them." "What was to come of it all ? ? The meetings of the Army-chiefs with Charles were not purposeless. Since he had been in their keeping they had been carefully drawing up, and putting into exact expression, certain Heads of Proposals, to be submitted both to him and to Parliament as a basis for Peace, better in its own nature, and certainly more to the mind of the Army, than those Nineteen Propositions of July 1646 which had hitherto been the vexed subject of debate. What these Heads of Proposals were, or came to be in their complete shape, we know from a final redaction of them put forth on the 1st of August when the Army was at Colnbrook on its march upon refractory London. The document is signed by Eushworth, "by the appointment of his Excellency Sir Tho. Fairfax and the Council of War," but the penning is Ireton' s, and probably much of the matter too. It is a document of consummate political skill and most lawyerlilie precision. It consists of sixteen Heads, some of them numerically subdivided, each Head propounding the Army's desires on one of the great questions in dispute between the nation and the King. Bien- nial Parliaments in a strictly guaranteed series for the future, » Herbert's Memoirs (ed. 1813), pp. 37—49 ; Godwin, II. 349—361. 2 Herbert, 36, 37 ; Clar. 614. 558 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. each to sit for not less than 120 days and not more than 240, and the Commons House in each to have increased powers and to he elected by constituencies so reformed as to secure a fair and equable representation of population and property all over England : this is the substance of the first Head. Entire control by Parliament of the Militia for ten years, with a voice in subsequent arrangements, and farther, for security on this matter, the exclusion from places of public trust for the next iive years of persons who had borne arms against the Parliament, unless in so far as Parliament might see fit to make individual exceptions : such is the pro- vision under the second Head. Of the remaining Articles, one or two refer to Ireland, and others to law-reforms in England. Articles XI. — XIII. treat of the Eeligious Question, and are remarkably liberal. They say nothing about Episco- pacy or Presbytery as such, but stipulate for the abolition of " all coercive power, authority and jurisdiction of Bishops and all other ecclesiastical ofiicers whatsoever extending to any civil penalties upon any," and also for the repeal of all Acts enforcing the Book of Common Prayer, or attendance at church, or prohibiting meetings for worship apart from the regular Church ; and they expressly stipulate for non-enforce- ment of the Covenant on any. In other words, the Army, as a whole, neither advised an Established Church, nor objected to one, nor would indicate a preference for Presbytery or Epi- scopacy in the rule of such a Church, but stood out, in any case and all cases, for Liberty of Eeligioiis Dissent. How far they went on this negative principle may be judged frOm the fact that they do not haggle on even the Eoman Catholic exception, but hint that, so far as it might be necessary to discover Papists and Jesuits and prevent them from disturb- ing the State, other means than enforced church-attendance might be devised for that end. Article XIV. proposes the restoration of the King, Queen, and their issue, to full " safety, honour, and freedom," when the preceding Articles shall have been settled, and with no limitation of the regal power except as therein provided. The remaining two Articles appear therefore supernumerary. One refers to Com- Aug. 1647.] army's HEADH OF PROPOSALS, 559 positions by Delinquents, and urges a generous relaxation of the rates on such, so as not to ruin people for past faults. So also the last Article recommends a general Act of Oblivion of past offences, and a restoration of all Eoyalists to their full civil rights and privileges, after composition, or, in cases of good desert, without composition, with only the exception provided in the second Article. These Heads of Proposals of the Army strike one as not only inspired by a far wiser and deeper political philosophy than the Nineteen Propositions of the Parliament, but really also as magnanimously considerate of the King in comparison. They are so generous that we can account for them only by supposing that the Army-chiefs were really prepared for a fresh trial of government by King, Lords, and Commons, with the security against renewed despotism furnished by the Article about the Militia, combined with the Article for a succession of Biennial Parliaments. Two things are to be observed, however. One is that the Heads of Proposals were tendered for the English kingdom alone, " leaving the terms of Peace for the kingdom of Scotland to stand as in the late [Nineteen] Propositions of both. kingdoms, until that kingdom shall agree to any alteration." But farther, even as respected England, there was no promise by the Army that the King could avoid the establishment of Presbytery. Things had gone so far in that direction, and the majority seemed so de- termined in it, that the Army neither could nor did desire to resist a Presbyterian establishment, were it persevered in by Parliament. Only they were resolved that the creed, discip^ line, or worship of that establishment, or of any other, should not be compulsory either on the King or on any of his subjects.^ 1 See the JSsacfe of Proposal complete could then laugh at him and the Pro- in Pari. Hist. III. 738 — ^745, and Rush- posala too. Godwin remarks in parti- worth, VII. 731 — 736 (the paging in this cular that, as Ireton, who penned the vol. beginning p. 731). Sufficient atten- Proposals, was " the most inflexible Be- tion has not been paid by historians, publican that ever existed," his self- exoept perhaps Godwin (II. 373 — 378), repression in drawing up such a docu- to this great document. Even Godwin ment, accepting restored Royalty, and resorts to the extraordinary hypothesis casting away the chance of a Ee- that the Proposals were not in good public, must have been colossal. In faith, but only a Machiavellian device Royalist historians of the seventeenth of Cromwell and Ireton for detaching century this kind of reasoning was Charles from the Presbyterians and natural, bat one is surprised to find it bringing him over to the Army, who aJfecting a mind so able and candid as 560 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. The Army Proposals, or the main substance of them, had been the subject of conversations between Charles and the Army-ehiefs, and even of a formal conference between him and them, on or about July 24, when he was at Wobum. He had fumed and stormed at the Proposals, telling the deputa- tion he would have Episcopacy established by law, the Army coiild not do without him, its chiefs would be ruined if they had not his support, and so on. The secret of this behaviour seems to have been that Charles was at that moment building great hopes on the recent demonstrations of the City of London in favour of a Personal Treaty with him in the Pres- byterian interest, and was even aware of the attempted revo- lution then about to break forth in the form of the London tumults. It says much for the forbearance of the Army- leaders that they did not withdraw the Proposals after this first rejection of them by the King. On the contrary, they were resolved that the King should still have the option of agreeing with them ; they modified them in some points to suit him ; and they were willing that the whole world should know what they were. Hence the formal redaction of them into the Paper of Aug. 1, at Colnbrook. Copies of the Paper were then and there delivered to the Parliamentary Commis- sioners with the Army ; and it was with that Paper carried before it that the Army continued its march into London. Ac- cordingly, on the first day of the meeting of the reconstituted Houses (Aug. 6), the Army's Heads of Proposals were officially tabled in both (in the Commons by Sir Henry Vane), in order that the Houses might, if they saw fit, adopt them in future dealings with the King, instead of the Nineteen Propositicns} Godwin's. There is no reason to doubt As for Ireton's suppression of his Re- th&t, when the Heads of Proposals were publioanism, Ireton's Republicanism, settled, they expressed the real and like other people's, probably grew. deUberate conclusions of the Army i Major Huntingdon's Paper accusing chiefs as to those terms the honest Cromwell, Pari. Hist. III. 970; Sir John acceptance of which by Charles would Berkley a Memoirs of Negotiatioiis(WSS), satisfy them. Nay, the publication of reprinted in Harleian Miscellany, IX. them was a service to Charles, by in' 466— 488 ; Godwin (quoting Bamfleld), struoting the nation generally in a II. 378—380; Pari. Hist. III. 737; better mode of dealing with him than Commons Journals, Aug. 6. There ia the Nineteen Propositions. See Denzil evidence that, between -the submission HoUes's amazed opinion of them, as " a of the Proposals to the King at Wobum new platform of government, an Utopia on or about July 24 and their complete of their own " (Memoirs, p. 176 ei seq.). redaction for publication Aug. 1, addi- Sept.— Oct. 1647.] HAJIPTON COURT NEGOTIATIONS. 561 September and October were the months of the complicated negotiation thus arising.. The King was then at Hampton Court, whither he had removed Aug. 24, and where he was sur- rounded by such state and luxury that it seemed as if the old days of Eoyalty had returned. Not only had he his chaplains about him, and favourite household servants brought together again from different parts of England ; not only could he ride over when he liked to see his children at the Earl of Iforth- umberland's seat of Sion House ; but, as if an amnesty had already been passed, Eoyalists of the most marked antecedents, some of them from their places of exile abroad, were per- mitted to gather round him, permanently or for a day or two at a time, so as to form a Court of no mean appearance. ' Such were (in addition to the Duke of Eichmond) the Marquis of Hertford, the Earls of Southampton and Dorset, Lord Capel from Jersey, Sir John Berkley and Mr. Legge and Mr. Ash- burnham from France, and, not least, the Marquis of Ormond, now at last, by his surrender of Dublin to Parliament, free from his long duty in Ireland. Save that Colonel Whalley and his regiment of horse kept guard at Hampton Court, " captivity " was hardly now a word to be applied to Charles's condition. Whalley's horse, it is true, were but the outpost at Hampton Court of the greater force near at hand. On the 27th of August, or three days after the King had removed to Hampton Court, the Army's head-quarters had been shifted to Putney, and they continued to be at Putney all the while the King was at Hampton Court. From Hampton Court to Westminster is twelve nules, and Putney lies exactly half way between ; and the complex problem then trying to work itself out may be represented to the memory by the names and relative positions of these three places. At Westminster was the regular Parliament, moving for that policy which could command the majority in a body of mixed Presbyterians and Independents of various shades, with Army ofdcers among them; at Putney midway was the Army, containing its tions had been made to accommodate providing for lenity to compounders and the King. Such additions may have a general Act of Oblivion, been the two supernumerary Articles VOL. III. " 562 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. military Parliament, of which the generals and colonels were the Upper House, while the under-oiEcers, with the regimental agitators, were the Commons ; and at Hampton Court, in constant communication with hoth powers, and entertaining proposals from both, was Charles with his revived little Court. Scotland in the distance must not be forgotten. Her emis- saries and representatives were on the scene too, running from Parliament to Hampton Court and from Hampton Court to Parliament, as busy as needles, but rather avoiding Putney.^ A very considerable element, indeed, in the now complex condition of affairs was the interference from Scotland. As the Presbyterian Eising in London had occasioned great joy in Scotland, so the collapse of that attempt had been a sore disappointment. Baillie's comments, written from Edinburgh, where he chanced to be at the time, are very instructive. The impression in Edinburgh was that there had been great cowardice among the London Presbyterians, and stupid mis- management of a splendid opportunity. Had the Parliament put on a bolder front, had the City stood to their " brave En- gagement," had Massey and Waller shown " any kind of mas- culous activity," and above all had not Mr. Stephen Marshall and seventeen of the London ministers with him separated themselves at the critical moment from the body of their bre- thren, and put forth a childish Petition disavowing all sym- pathy with the tumults, what a different ending there might have been ! As it was, " a .compjiny of silly rascals " (Fairfax's Army to wit) had "made themselves masters of the King and Parliament and City, and by them of aU England." So wrote Baillie privately, and the public organs of Scottish opinion had spoken out to the same effect. There had been Letters and Eemonstrances from the Scottish Committee of Estates to the reconstituted English Parliament, severely criticising the general state ,of affairs in England, and complaining espe- cially of the monstrous insolence of the Army in possessing themselves of the- King, and the expulsion at their instance of the eleven Presbyterian leaders from the Commons. Were not these acts, though done in England, outrages on Scotland 1 Bushworth, VII. 789 ei js^. ; Herbert, 47—51. 1647.] INTERFEUENCE FROM SCOTLAND. 563 as well, and against the obligations of the Covenant ? The England with which Scotland had consented to league herself hy the Covenant was a very different England from that which seemed now to be coming into fashion — an England in which constituted authority seemed to be at an end, and an Army ruled all ! And what an Army ! An Army of Sectaries, driving on for a principle of Liberty of Conscience which would lead to a "Babylonish confusion," and impregnated also (as could be proved by extracts from their favourite pamphlets) with ideas actually anti-monarchical and revolutionary ! So, in successive letters, from Aug. 13 onwards, the Scottish Govern- ment remonstrated from Edinburgh, intermingling political criticisms with special complaints, which they had a better right to make, of insults done by officers and soldiers of Fair- fax's Army to the Scottish envoys in England, and especially to the Earl of Lauderdale. Nor was the Scottish Kirk more backward. The regular annual Assembly of the Kirk had met at Edinburgh Aug. 4 ; and in a long document put forth by that body Aug. 20, in the form of " A Declaration and Brotherly Exhortation to their Brethren of England," the anarchy of England on the religious question is largely be- wailed. " Nevertheless," they say, after recounting the steps of the happy progress made by England to conformity with Scotland in one and the same Presbyterian Church-rule, " we " are also very sensible of the great and imminent dangers into " which this common cause of EeKgion is now brought by the " growing and spreading of most dangerous errors in England, " to the obstructing and hindering of the begun Eeformation : " as namely (besides many others) Socinianism, Arminianism, " Anabaptism, Antinomianism, Brownism, Erastianism, Inde- " pendency, and that which is called, by abuse of the word, " Liberty of Conscience, being indeed liberty of error, scandal, " schism, heresy, dishonouring God, opposing the tru^^,. " hindering reformation, and seducing others ; whereunfco-we " add those Nullifidians, or men of no religion, commonly " called Seekers." ^ 1 Baillie, III. 9—22 ; Acts of Scottish VII. 768—771 ; and correspondence of General Assembly of 1647 ; Rushworth, Scottish Commissioners in Lords Jour- 2 564 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. Great as was the influence of the Army on the Parliament it had reinstated, the extreme Tolepationism of the Army Pro- posals would have made their chance hopeless with that body even if left to itself. But with such blasts coming from Scotland, and repeated close at hand by the key-bugles of Lauderdale and the other Scottish Commissioners in London, the Parliament did not dare even to consider the Proposals. To have done so would have been at once to sever the two nations, enrage the Scots, and drive them to no one could tell what revenge. To fall back on the Nineteen Propositions was, therefore, the only possible policy. Accordingly, on the 7th of September, the Nineteen Propositions, with but one or two slight alterations, were again ceremoniously tendered to Charles on the part of the English Parliament and the Scottish Commissioners conjointly. They desired his answer within six days at the utmost. "Six or sixteen, it was equal to him," he said to the Earl of Pembroke, who presented them ; and in fact his Majesty's Answer, dated Hampton Court, was returned Sept. 9. It was that he retained all his former objec- tions to those now familiar Propositions, and that, having seen certain " Proposals of the Army," to which " he conceived his two Houses not to be strangers," he was of opinion that they would be " a fitter foundation for a lasting Peace." In other words, though Charles had rejected the Army Proposals when first offered to him, he now played them against the Nineteen Propositions, ironically asking the Parliament not to persevere in terms of negotiation that might be regarded as obsolete, but to agree to a Treaty with him on the much better terms which had been suggested by their own Army, but which apparently they wanted to keep out of sight. This for Eng- land ; and, for what concerned Scotland, he would willingly have a separate Treaty with the Scottish Commissioners, if they chose, on those parts of the Nineteen Propositions which were of interest to the Scottish nation ! ' nals of Aug. and Sept. 1647. For the merely mediated in a neutral style to escapade of Stephen Marshall and his avoid bloodshed (Commons Journals, friends, referred to by Baillie, see Neal, Aug. 2). III. 375-6. While these few of the i Eushworth, VII. 796, 802-3, and city ministers disavowed the tumults, 810-11 ; and Lords Journals, Sept. 8 the Westminster Divines as a body and Sept. 14. Sept.— Oct. 1647.] CEOMWELL'S MIDDLE COUESK 565 Parliament was in a dilenlma. "Was Charles to be taken at his word ? Were the Nineteen Propositions to be flung overboard) and the Army Proposals publicly brought forward instead ? The Presbyterian dread of Toleration, if not Pres- byterianism itself, was still too strong in the Parliament, and the prospect of a rupture with the Scots was still too awful with many, to admit of such a course. What was actually done, after twelve days of hesitation and consultation, appears from three entries in the Commons Journals of Sept. 21, Sept. 22, and Sept. 23, respectively. Sept. 21: "Hesdved, " That the King, in this Answer of the 9th Sept., given at " Hampton Court, hath denied to give his consent to the " Propositions : " such is the first entry. The second, on the following day, runs thus : " The question being put. That the " House be forthwith resolved into a Grand Committee, to " take into consideration the whole matter concerning the " King, according to the former order, the House was divided. " The Yeas went forth : (Lieut.-General Cromwell, Sir John " Evelyn of Wilts, tellers for the Yea) with the Yea 84 ; " (Sir Peter Wentworth, Colonel Eainsborough, tellers for " the No) with the No 34 ; so that the question passed with " the affirmative." On the following day, accordingly, we find "The question was propounded. That the House will " once again make application to the King for those things " which the Houses shall judge necessary for the welfare and " safety of the kingdom ; and, the question being put. Whether " this question shall be now put, the House was divided : " (Sir Arthur Haselrig, Sir John Evelyn of Wilts, tellers for " the Yea) with the Yea 70 ; (Sir Peter Wentworth, Colonel " Marten, tellers for the No) with the No 23 : so that the " question passed with the affirmative." As far as one can construe what lies under these entries, the state of the case was this:— By the King's new rejection of the Nineteen Propo- sitions (the Army-chiefs aware of the rejection beforehand and much approving!), the Presbyterians were checkmated. Unless 1 Berkley's Memoirs, Harl. Misc. IX. this [the King's] Answer the day before 478. "We [Berkley, Ashburnham,&c.] it was sent, with _ which they seemed gave our friends in the Army a sight of infinitely satisfied." 566 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. they would vote the King dethroned, they had no move left. The power of moving then lay with the Independents. Now the more strenuously Republican of these, including Colonel Eainshorough and Henry Marten, were for not using the power, either because they desired to break with Charles entirely, or because they wanted to shut up him and Parliament together to the Army Proposals absolutely. Cromwell, however, though faithful to the Army Proposals as the plan ideally best, was not prepared to take the responsibility of bringing on the crash at once. Might there not be a temporizing method ? Might not the two Houses be asked to cease think- ing of the Nineteen Propositions as a perfected series to which they were bound in all its parts and items-, and to go over the whole business afresh, selecting the most essential questions of the Nineteen Propositions and expressing present conclusions on these in new Propositions to be offered to the King ? Haselrig, Evelyn of Wilts, and others of the Indepen- dent leaders, agreeing with this view, and a good few of the Presbyterians perhaps accepting it gladly in their dilemma, Cromwell divided the Commons upon it, and obtained his decisive majority of Sept. 22, confirmed by the as decisive majority of the next day.^ The Lords having concurred, Sept. 30, in this motion for a new application to the King, and the Scottish Commissioners having been dxily informed, the two Houses went on busily, framing the new Propositions, and, where any differences arose, adjusting them at conferences with each other. By the 28th of October a good many important propositions had been agreed to ; but, on the whole, one does not see that the terms for Charles were to be much easier by this route than they had been by the other. In one matter, however, the Commons had proposed a change. On the 13th of October, a committee having reported on that one of the intended Pro- positions which concerned Church-government, and the reso- lution before the House being that the King be asked to give his consent to the Acts for settling the Presbyterian Govern- ment, Cromwell had forced the House to three divisions. 1 Commons Joui'nals of days named. Oct. 1647.1 CHURCH INCIDKNTS. 567 First he tried to limit the term of such settlement to three years, and lost in a small House by a minority of 35 to 38 ; then he insisted that some limit of time should be mentioned, and won by 44 to 30 ; then he proposed that seven years should be the term, and lost by 33 to 41. Finally it was agreed that the Presbyterian Settlement to which the King's consent should be asked should be till the end of the Parliament next after that then sitting. But on the same day and the following the question of Toleration also came up, and with these results : Toleration to be granted of sepa- rate worship for Nonconformists of tender consciences, but not for Eoman Catholics, nor any toleration of the use of the Book of Common Prayer, nor of preaching contrary to the main principles of the Christian Religion, nor yet of absence on the Lord's day from worship and hearing of the word of God some- where. This was all the amount of Toleration that Cromwell and the Independents even in October 1647, with an Army at Putney all aflame for Toleration, could extract from the re- luctant Commons at Westminster. The Lords appear to have hesitated about even so much as this ; for it was not till the 2nd of November that the two Houses came to an under- standing on the subject, and even on the 9th of that month the Lords wanted some additional security in the form of a " Proposition for suppressing innovations in Religion." ^ Here, to bring the history of the English Church-question to a period for the present, we may notice one or two con- temporary incidents. On Saturday, Oct. 2, the Commons had resumed their examination of the Westminster Assembly's Confession of Faith, at the point where they had left off that work in the preceding May, viz. at Chap. IV. "Of Creation," {antl, p. 545). They passed that chapter and also the first para- graph of Chap, v., " Of Providence," that day, and resolved to continue the business next Wednesday and punctually every following Wednesday till it should be despatched. But Wed- nesday after Wednesday came ; other business was too press- ing ; and so the matter hung. This was the more inconvenient 1 Lorda and Commons Journals of dates named ; and Bushworth, VII. 843-4 and 853-4. 568 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. because on the 22nd of October the Assembly presented to the two Houses their Larger Catechism completed. It was ordered that 600 copies should be printed for consideration, and that matter too lay over. In the midst of such delays in Parliament it was something on the credit side that the Second Peovinoial Peesbytekian Synod of London duly met in Sion College on the 8th of November, with Dr. Seaman for Moderator. It was, indeed, time now for English Presby terianism to be walking alone. Gillespie, one of the two Scottish Divines left last in the Westminster Assembly, had returned to Scotland in the preceding August; and on the 9th of November it was announced in the Lords that Mr. Rutherford too was going. In bidding farewell to his brethren of the Assembly he took care to have it duly recorded in their books that the Scottish Commis- sioners, all or some, had been present to that point and had constantly taken part in the proceedings. The Assembly was still to linger on, he meant to say, but its best days were over.'' There was no greater mystery aU this while than the conduct of Cromwell and Ireton. Since the King had come to Hampton Court he had been in continual intercourse with them, either in direct conferences, or by messages through Mr. Ashburnham and others. The intercourse had been kept up even after Cromwell's motion of Sept. 22 for re-approach- ing the King on the whole question in a Parliamentary way, and while CromweU was constantly attending the House and taking part in the proceedings consequent on his motion.^ What did it all mean?, We have little difficulty now in seeing what it meant. Cromwell, even while urging on the re-application to the King in a Parliamentary way, had not given up hope that the King might be constrained into an extra-Parliamentary pact on some basis like that of the Army Proposals. Might not Charles be wise now in the extremity I Lords and Commons Journala of for me to be." So wi'ote Cromwell to the dates given ; and Neal, III. 354 and Fairfax Oct. 13, the very day of his 368-9. three divisions of the House on the ^ "Sir, I pray excuse my not-attend- durationof Presbytery, and of the com- ance upon you. I feared to miss the promise there on Toleration (Carlyle's House a day, whore it's very necessary Cromwell, I. 239). Oct. 1647.] Cromwell's peculiae position. S69 to which he saw himseK reduced, and accept the prospect, which the Army scheme held out, of a restoration of his Eoyalty, under inevitable constitutional restrictions, but those less galling iu many respects, and especially in the religious respect, thaii the restrictions demanded by Parlia- ment? Such, we can see now, were the reasonings of Cromwell and Ireton, and to such an end were their labours directed. But the world at the time was suspicious and saw much more. "What the English Presbyterians and the Scots saw was Cromwell wheedling his Majesty into the possession of himself and his Sectaries, so as to be able to overthrow Parliament and Presbytery immediately, and then reserve his Majesty for more leisurely ruin. What the Eoyalists round the King saw was more. A blue riband, the Earldom of Essex, the Captaincy-general of aU the forces, the permanent premiership in England under the restored Eoyalty, and the Lieutenancy of Ireland for his son-in-law Ireton— how could the Brewer resist such temptations ? Mean rumours of this kind ran about, or were mischievously circulated, till they affected the Army itself and roused suspicions of Cromwell's integrity even among his own Ironsides. It was not only that Colonel Eainsborough, who had opposed CromweE's motion for re-opening negotiations with Charles, had since then stood out against his policy of conciliation, and had been joined by other officers, such as Colonel Ewer. Despite this opposition in the Council of the chief officers at Putney, Cromwell and Ireton still ruled in that body. But among the inferior officers and the Agitatorships a spirit had arisen outgoing the control of the chiefs, critical of their proceedings, and impatient for a swifter and rougher settlement of the whole political ques- tion than seemed agreeable to Cromwell.^ At Putney the Army, having little to do, hsid resolved itself into a great daily debating-society, holding meetings of its own Agitatorships and receiving deputations from the ' Berkley's Memoirs (Harl. Misc.) of Accusations against Cromwell and 477, 478 ; Holies, 184 ; Baxter, Book Ireton in Aug. 1648 (Pari. Hist. III. I. p. 60 ; Clar. 620 ; Godwin, II. 400 et 966—974). Duly interpreted, itis very ,*ej. See also Major Huntingdon's Paper instructive. 570 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. similar but civilian AgitatorShipa that had sprung up in London. Hence a rapid increase among the common soldiers of the political school of The Levellers. Of this school John Lilburne, still in his prison in the Tower, but with the freedom of pen and ink there, was now conspicuously one of the chiefs. " That the House of Commons should think of " that great Murderer of England (meaning the King), for by " the impartial Law of Gfod there is no exemption of Kings, " Princes, Dukes, Earls, more than cobblers, tinkers, or " chimney-sweepers ; " " That the Lords are but painted " puppets and DagonSj no natural issue of Laws, but the " mushrooms of prerogative, the wens of just government, "putting the body of the People to pain," — such were opinions and phrases collected from Lilburne's and other pamphlets by the Scottish Government as early as Aug. 13, and then publicly presented in the name of Scotland for the rebuke of the English Parliament and the horror of the whole British world. In such phrases we have the essence of the doctrine of the LevellerSj as distinct from the more tenta- tive Democracy of many contemporary minds. The Army Proposals of Aug. 1 were not for a total subversion of the English Constitution of King, Lords, and Commons, but only for a great limitation of the Eoyal Power, a reduction also of the power of the House of Lords, a corresponding increase of the power of the Commons or Representative House, and a broader basing of that House in a popular suffrage. But, now that the King had rejected the Proposals, the Levelling Doctrine burst up from its secret beds, and rushed more visibly through the whole Army. There began to be com- ments among the Agitators on the dilatoriness of Cromwell, and especially on his coquettings with the King. " I have honoured you, and my good thoughts of you are not yet wholly gone, though I confess they are much weakened," Lilburne had written to CromweU Aug. 13, kindly offering him a chance of redeeming his character, but otherwise threatening to pull him down from all his " present conceived greatness " before he was three months older. Cromwell not having mended his ways, Lilburne had been endeavouring to Oct. 1647.] ARMY MUTINOUS : THE LEVEIJLEES. 571 fulfil his threat ; and by the end of October there was a wide-spread mutiny through the regiments at Putney. The Army, having its own printers, had by that time made its .,^esigns known in two documents. One, entitled The Case of ike Army, was signed by the agents of five regiments, Crom- well's and Ireton's own included (Oct. 18) ; the other, entitled An Agreement of the People (Nov. 1), emanated from the same regiments and eleven others. Both documents pledged the regiments not to disband until the Army had secured its rights ; and among these rights were the speedy dissolu- tion of the existing Parliament, and the reconstitution of the Government of England in a single Eepresentative House, elected by a reformed system of suffrage, and meeting biennially. This House was to be supreme in all matters, except five specified fundamentals which were to be regarded as settled oI> initio beyond disturbance or even reconsidera- tion by any corporate authority whatever. One of them was absolute freedom to all " in the matter of Eeligion and the ways of God's worship " ; but this was not to prevent the ' State from setting up any " public way of instructing the Nation, so it be not compulsive." In fact, here was the accurate essence of the Army Proposals over again, only distilled to a higher strength and more fiercely flavoured.^ Cromwell's preserved Letters of this period are few, but one of them contains a reference to the misconstructions to which he was then subject. " Though, it may be, for the "present," he says, "a, cloud may lie over our actions to "those who are not acquainted with the grounds of them, "yet we doubt not but God will clear our integrity, and "innocency from any other ends we aim at but His glory "and the Public Good."^ At length, however, he had to let it be seen that he had broken off from Charles utterly. 1 Eushworth, VII. 769, 770, 845-6, their ultrademooratio tendencies. The and 859, 860 ; Godwin, II. 423—428, and Levelling Principle itself would be a 436 — 450. One of tSxe numerous in- useful force in his hands, and he could credible and contradictory hypotheses well consent to being abused by the about Cromwell is that it was he who, Agitators while they were really work- while in treaty with the King for a ing for his ends ! ! restoration of his Royalty, was all the ^ Letter to Colonel Jones, Governor while, by his secret grip of the Ai-my- of Dublin, dated Sept. 14, 1647 : Car- Agitatorships, hounding them on in lyle's Cromwell, I. 237-8. 572 LIFE OF MILTON AND HI3T0EY OF HIS TIMM, Who does not know the picturesque popular myth at this point of Cromwell's biography ? Cromwell and Ireton, says the myth, sat one night in the Blue Boar Tavern, Holborn, disguised as common troopers and calling for cans of beer, till the sentinel they had placed outside came in and told them the man with the saddle had arrived ; whereupon, going out, they collared the man, got possession of the saddle he carried, and, ripping up the skirt of it, found the King's letter to the Queen in which he quite agreed with her opinion of the two Armyvillains he was then obliged to cajole, and assured her they should have their deserts at last.^ It needed no such interception of a letter in the yard of a tavern to convince Cromwell at last that Charles could not be trusted even in a negotiation for his own benefit. All the while that he had been treating with Cromwell and Ireton, in the sense of the Army Proposals, with a Keligious Toleration included, he had been treating with the Scots, both by messages through the Earl of Lauderdale and by letters in his own hand to the Earl of Lanark in Edinburgh, in a sense directly the opposite: i.e. on the terms of a paction with the Scots for compulsory Presbytery and sup- pression of the Sects in England, in return for the armed assistance of the Scottish nation towards a restoration of his kingship in all other respects. Late in October, Lanark and Loudoun had come from Scotland to . help Lauderdale in finishing this negotiation ; and the three Lords together, in conferences at Hampton Court, had assured Charles that, " if he would give satisfaction in the point of EeHgion, he was master of Scotland on what terms as to other things he would demand." He had not quite given them all the satisfaction they wanted ; but the three Lords still remained loyally about him, with plans for his escape to Berwick. Nothing of all this appeared, of course, in the public com- munications of the Scottish Commissioners with the English Parliament. The purport, however, had been entrusted to 1 The story professes to havs come Broghill, aftei-wards Earl of Orrery ; from Cromwell's own lips in oonversa- but its mythical character is obvious, tion in 15i9 with Roger Boyle, Lord Oct.— Nov. 1647.] PUTNEY DEBATES AND PEOPOSALS. 573 Ormond, Capel, and others of the Eoyalists who were chief in the King's counsels ; and Croin-well had his means of guessing.^ The mutinous disposition of so many Eegiments, and its manifestation in such tracts as The, Case, of the Army and the Agreement of the People, had greatly alarmed Parliament. The investigation of the matter had been substantially left, however, in the hands of Fairfax and the Council of War at Putney. That Council, with Fairfax and Cromwell pre- sent in it, had appointed a special Committee of Inquiry, consisting of twenty officers with Ireton at their head ; and in a series of meetings of this Committee and of the collective Council itself, extending from Oct. 22 to Nov. 8, things were brought to a kind of adjustment. There was to be a general Eendezvous of the Army for ending of disorder ; and mean- while certain new Proposals were sketched out, to be pre- sented to Parliament as a summary of what might now be considered the opinions of the chief representatives of the Army, reviewing their former Proposals of Aug. 1 in the light of all that had sipce occurred. So far as the Proposals were sketched out, one observes in them a curious combina- tion of compromises. There is decidedly greater severity in them to the King than in the original Army Proposals. On. the other hand, there is nothing about the abolition of Kingship or of 'the House of Lords, no concession on these points to the ultra-democratic tendency of the Levellers, The question of King or N'o King had been raised, it is said, in the Council meetings by the Agitators, but had been quashed by the chief officers. Again, rather strangely, the question of Liberty of Conscience and the terms of the establishment of Presbytery is entirely waived, unless we regard the provision that Delinquents should be obliged to , take the Covenant before being admitted to compound as a sign that on this question too there was a recession from former liberality. On the whole, the new Army Proposals ' For the interesting and instructive Loudounioined Lauderdale atHampton correspondence of Charles with Lanark Couft, see Burnet's Hamiltons, 401 — from June 1647 onwards, with details 412. See also Clar. 622-3 ; Rushworth, of the negotiations after Lanark and VII. 860 ; and Lords Journals, Nov. 6. 574 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. look like a jumble of incongruities, and rather disappoint one after the clear political comprehensiveness of the original Proposals which Ireton had drafted, or even the rude simpli- fication of the same put forth by the democratic Agitators. The reason probably was that the Army-chiefs desired at the moment to patch up a concordat, suppressing all unnecessary appearance of difference between the Parliament and the Army, and bringing both as amica,bly as possible into the one direct track of the new set of Parliamentary Propositions to the King.^ On the 10th of November, all the Propositions being ready, a very emphatic Preamble to them -was agreed upon by the two Houses. It was intended that they should be presented to the King formally at Hampton Court within the next few days. Before that could be done, however, his Majesty had vanished. The vicinity of Putney, with exasperated Levellers and Agitators all about, had become really unsafe for Charles ; and, after some meditation and hesitation, he had himself arranged a plan of escape. It was put in execution on Thursday the 11th of November. On the evening of that day his Majesty, accompanied by Mr. Ashburnham, Mr. William Legge, and Sir John Berkley, contrived to slip out of Hampton Court Palace, by the back garden, unobserved. It was supper-time before he was missed by Whalley and the guard ; the night was excessively dark and stormy ; and, though it was ascertained that he and his companions had mounted horses near the Palace, the route they had taken could not be guessed. For the next two or three days, therefore, London was all anxiety. Meanwhile the fugitives, guided by the King himself through the New Forest, had reached the south coast, near Southampton, and in sight of the Isle of Wight. The King's reasons for taking this direction appear to have been the vaguest ; nor is it cer- tainly known that the Isle of Wight had been in his mind when he left Hampton Court. No ship, however, having been provided for a more distant voyage, and the King being in any case irresolute about yet leaving England altogether, 1 Biishworth, VII. 849—866 ; Godwin, II. 460—454. Nov. 1647.] THB KING'S ESCAPE TO ISLE OF WIGHT. 575 the island did now, if not before, occur to him as suitable for his purpose. One inducement may have been that the Governor, young Colonel Eobert Hammond, was a person whom the King had reason to believe as well disposed to him as any Parliamentarian officer, Hammond, indeed, was the nephew of the King's favourite chaplain. Dr. Henry Hammond ; and, though he was one of Cromwell's admiring disciples, and had married a daughter of Hampdeij, his uncle's reasonings, or other influences, had begun of late to weaken his ardour. It had been with undisguised pleasure that, but a week or two before, he had left his post in the Army and gone to this quiet and distant governorship, where he might live in retirement and without active duty. What, then, was his horror when, on the morning of Saturday, Nov. 13, as he was riding along the road pear his residence of Carisbrooke Castle, in the centre of the island. Sir John Berkley and Mr. Ashburnham presented themselves, and told him that the King had fled in their company from Hampton Court and desired to be his guest ! " He grew so pale," says Berkley, "and fell into such a trembling, that I did really " believe he would have fallen from his horse ; which " trembling continued with him at least an hour after, in "which he broke out into passionate and distracted ex- " pressions, sometimes saying ' gentlemen, you have "imdone me.'" He collected himself at length, however, and accepted the duty which fate had sent him. Crossing over, with Berkley and Ashburnham, to the Earl of South- ampton's house of Titchfield on the mainland, where Charles had meanwhile been waiting with Legge, he paid his homage gravely enough; and, after some conversation, in which he promised to do all for his Majesty that might be consistent with his obedience to Parliament, he returned to the island, with the King in his charge, and Berkley, Ashburnham, and Legge in attendance. His letter, narrating what had hap- pened, and asking instructions, was read in the two Houses of Parliament on Monday, Nov. 15.^ 1 Berkley's Memoir, Harl. Miscell. 874 ; Clar. 624-7 ; Pari. Hist. III. 785— IX. 479—483; Rnshworth, VXI. 871— 791. As usual, in the later Royalist 576 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. 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 Method of the Four Bills — Indignation of the Sects ; their Complaints of Breach of the Covenant — Army Rendezvous at Ware i Suppression of a Mutiny of Levellers by Cromwell, and Establishment of the Concordat with Parliament — Parliamentary Commissioners in the Isle of Wight: Scottish Commissioners also there : the King's Rejection of the Four Bills —Firmness of Parliament : their Resolutions of No Farther Addresses to the King : Severance of the Scottish Alliance^2%« Engagement, or Secret Treaty between ' Charles and the Scots in the Isle of Wight— Stricter guard of the King in Garisbrooke Castle : His Habits in his Imprisonment —First Rumours of The Scottish Engagement : Royalist Programme of a Second Civil War— Beginnings of The Seoonb Civil Wak : 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 Scottish Army : Arrival of the Prince of Wales oif 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 in 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 Wak — Parliamentary Treaty with the King at Newport : Unsatis- factory Results — Protests against the Treaty by the Independents- Disgust of the Army with the Treaty : Revocation of tlieir Concordat with Parliament, and Resolution to seize the Political Mastery : Forma- tion of a Republican Party — Petitions for Justice on the King : The Grand Army Bemomtrance — Cromwell in Scotland ; Restoration of the Argyle Government there : Cromwell at Pontefract : His Letter to Hammond — The King removed from the Isle of Wight to Hurst Castle .—The Army again in possession of London. CarislDrooke Castle, now mostly q, ruin, but in Charles's time the chief fortified place in the Isle of Wight, stands almost in the centre of the island, close to the village of Garis- brooke, and near the town of Newport, which, although really aooouuts, it is Cromwell that had con- he had warned the King, through trived the whole affair of the King's Whalley, of the designs of the Agita- eseape, both matter and form. Ham- tors, so as to frighten him into flight ; mend's appointment to the Governor- then, through Ashburaham or other- ship of the island (Sept. 9) was Crom- wise, he had suggested the Isle of well's doing, in anticipation of what Wight as the very place for the King might be needed ; then he had stirred to go to, and so had caught him in the up the Agitators at Putney to threaten prepared trap I ! the King's life at Hampton Court ; then Nov. 1647.] THE KING IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT. .577 an inland town, communicates with the sea by a navigable river. Here, with the verdant island all round him, and fine views both of land and sea, Charles was to live for a whole year. Though it was November when he came into the island, a lady, as he passed through Newport on his way to Carisbrooke, could present him with a damask-rose just picked from her garden ; and he was to see all the circle of seasons in that mild South-English climate, till November came round again .^ In a letter which Charles had left at Hampton Courts to be communicated to the two Houses, he had avowed that, though security from threatened violence was the -immediate reason for his disappearance for a time into a place of retire- ment, yet another reason was his desire to extricate himself from a negotiation in which he felt that the "chief in- terests" concerned were not all represented. In the same spirit of eclecticism, with a word for each of the " chief interests," and a special show of solicitude for the Army, is a Letter sent by the King to the two Houses only four days after he had been in the Isle of Wight (Nov. 17). It gives his Majesty's view of what would be the right kind of negotiation, and conveys his definite offers. He cannot con- sent to the abolition of Episcopacy, but he will assent to tlie experiment of Presbytery for three years, if accompanied by a Toleration, but not for Papists, Atheists, and Blas- phemers ; he will surrender the Militia for his own life, on condition that it shall afterwards revert to the Crown ; he will undertake for the Arrears of the Army ; and on other matters he will be ready to do his utmost in a conclusive Personal Treaty in London.^ The two Houses retained their own ideas of the negotia- tion necessary; and, while giving orders for the despatch of a sufficient guard to the Isle of Wight, to be under Hammond's command, and also for the King's household comforts at Carisbrooke, the servants to be sent to him, &c., 1 Herbert, 55, 56. and King Charles's Works (1651); U7— 2 Kushworth, VII. 871-2 and 880— 125. 833 ; Pari. Hist.III. 786-7 and 799—802 ; VOL. HI. '^ I' 578 LIFE, OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. they were re-adjusting their battery of negotiation for the changed circumstances of its object. At first the notion was to pursue the King to the Isle of Wight with the whole series of Propositions which tbe Houses had so carefully drawn out for presentation to him at Hampton Court. Here, however, they encountered the most obstinate opposition from the Scottish Commissioners. The mood of these gentlemen (Loudoun, Lanark, Lauderdale, Sir Charles Erskine, Hngh Kennedy, and Eobert Barclay), suiBciently irritable before the King's flight from Hampton Court, was now that of the Thistle in full bloom. The King, they, declared, had done right in fleeing from the hard usage of the 'English. Could his Majesty be expected to endure longer the insults, terrors, indignities, to which he had been of late subjected, ending actually in danger to his life from the ruffians of an ill-managed Army ? Moreover, was not Charles also the sovereign of Scotland ! Could the Scottish nation be expected to bear the contempt shown it in these " tossings " to and fro of their King, aggravated by the studied neglect of all the previous Eemonstrances of the Scottish Commissioners and Estates on this very subject? No ! let those Propositions which the English Parliament had been preparing be thrown aside, and let the King be in- vited to come to London, in safety and honour, for a Personal Treaty with Parliament, in which all might be "voluntary and free " ! Partly to please the angry Scottish Commissioners, partly to shake them off if they would not be pleased, the two Houses did make an alteration in their procedure. Instead of the entire prepared series of Propositions, or rather as antecedent to them, it was resolved to send to the King " Four Bills," embodying the Propositions " absolutely necessary for present security." BiU 1 was for the power of Parliament over the Militia for twenty years, or longer if necessary ; BQl 2 was for confirmation of all acts of the Parliament in the late war ; Bill 3 was for the cancelling of all Peerages conferred by the King since the beginning of the war, and the creation of new Peers only with con- sent of the two Houses ; and Bill 4 was for giving the two Nov.— Dae. 1647.] THE FOUK BILLS. 579 Houses the right of adjournment at their own pleasure. — This change of procedure was first proposed in the Lords Nov. 25 (fifteen Peers present) ; there were divisions on it iu the Commons Nov. 26 and 27, in the last of which it was carried by 115 to 106 (an unusually full House) to concur generally with the Peers in the matter; and then, after debates and conferences on details, the Bills, as above in- dicated, passed the Commons finally Dec. 11, and the Lords finally Dec. 14. It was also then arranged that the Earl of Denbigh and Lord Montague, for the Lords, and Mr. John Bulkeley, Mr. John Lisle, Mr. John Kemp, and Mr. Robert Goodwin, for the Commons, should be the Commis- sioners for carrying the Four Bills, and the Propositions too, so far as not superseded by the Bills, to the King in the Isle of Wight. They were to require his Majesty's consent to the Four Bills within ten days at the utmost ; but the remaining Propositions were to be delivered to his Majesty only as containing matters on which the Houses would send another Commission to treat with him after he had assented to the Four Bills.i If the two Houses had resorted at first to this changed method of procedure with any idea of pleasing the Scots, they had found reason to abandon that idea. The very day the Four Bills were finally passed (Dec. 14), the Scottish Com- missioners, knowing well enough privately what they were, applied formally to the Committee of the Two Kingdoms for a copy of them. This being reported to the Commons, a dis- cussion ensued, and Mr. Seldeu (particularly active about this time, and at any rate always eager for a brush with the Scots) was appointed chairman of a Committee to prepare an Answer. The Answer, adopted by the Commons Dec. 16, was taken up by Mr. Selden to the Lords the same day, and by them adopted also. It was to the effect that, as it was against the custom of the English kingdom to communicate Bills ready 1 Pari. Hist. II. 799— 804 and 823— Cliarles thanked Lanark, saying, "Seri- 823 ; Lords and Commons Journals of ouslj', it is as fnll to my^sense as if days named ; also (for a special Letter I had penned it myself." (Burnet a of the Scottish Commissioners) Lords Hamiltons, 416. Journals, Nov. 18. For this Letter V V 2 580 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. for the King's assent to "any other whomsoever" until his Majesty's reply had been received, the Four BUls could not be communicated to the Scottish Commissioners, but that, as for the rest, it was intended to send these BiUs to the King on Monday next, together with those Propositions of which the Scottish Commissioners were already cognisant, and that, if the Scottish Commissioners desired to add any Propositions concerning Scotland, they had better make haste. As if to increase the irony of this Answer, there was frankly included in it a copy of the Instructions to the English envoys as to their procedure both with the Bills concealed from the Scots and the Propositions known to them. Matter and manner both, the Answer drove the Scottish Commis- sioners mad. There may be yet read in the Lords Journals of Dec. 18 the Eeply, in nineteen printed folio columns, which they thundered in upon the two Houses. We do not see such documents now-a-days, and even then it was a marvel The whole soul of Scotland, past and present, seemed to launch tself upon the Londoners in this tremendous lecture, issued from Worcester House " by command of the Commissioners for the Parliament of Scotland," and signed by John Chiesley, their clerk. After a hint of the indebtedness of England to the Scots for some years past, there was a recapitulation of all the recent acts of contumely sustained by Scotland at the hands of the English, followed by a summary of the reasons for preferring the Scottish plan of a free Personal Treaty with the King to the English plan of prosecuting him with peremptory and ready-made Propositions. But, as the English Parliament liad communicated to the Scottish Com- missioners their new set of Propositions (though not the Four Bills), there was a criticism of these Propositions, from the Scottish point of view, collectively and seriatim. The largest criticism was on the Eeligious question. Kearly one half of the entire document was occupied with this subject. Was not the Eeligious question the main one, the unum, neces- sarium, deserving the first place in any national negotiation? Yet was it not made secondary in the Propositions, brought in anywhere in the middle of them, as if to show that the Dec. 1647.] WKATH OF THE SCOTTISH ENVOYS. 581 two Houses did not really care much about it, and would not be so stiff in it as in matters of civil import ? Tenacious in one's own concerns, and " liberal in the matters of God " ! Again, not a word in the Propositions, or hardly a word, respecting the Solemn League and Covenant itself, a vow that had been sworn to with uplifted hands by nearly the whole generation of living Englishmen! Oh! what an omission was that ! "Was the Covenant to be voted out of date, and buried in the ashes of oblivion ? But, apart from the Covenant, how did the Propositions treat the cause of Presbyterial government in England and of conformity of Church-rule in the two kingdoms ? Most miserably ! No pressing of Presbytery to full purity and completeness, but rather a cynical acquiescence in the imperfect Presbytery that had already been set up, and a glee in not being com- mitted even to that beyond three years ! Finally, even this Presbytery was turned into a present mockery by an accom- panying concession to the cry for Liberty of Conscience ! The Commissioners had never desired that "pious and peaceable men should be troubled because in everything they cannot conform themselves to Presbyterial govern- ment;" but they did "from their very souls abhor such a general and vast Toleration " as one of the Propositions seemed to provide. Unless they were mistaken, it was a Toleration to "all the sectaries of the time," whether they were "Anabaptists, Antinomians, Arminians, Familists, Erastians, Brownists, Separatists, Libertines, or Indepen- dents ; " yea it extended to " those NuUifidians the Seekers to the new sect of Shakers, and divers others ; " and, though it professed not to include " Antitrinitarians, Arians, and Antiscripturists," where was the security that these might not at least print and publish their blasphemies and errors ? " Our minds are astonished, and our bowels are moved, &c. ! " — There is a story of an irascible and fluent man who, after a torrent of abusive words addressed to a cool-tempered friend with whom he had a difference, was brought to a stop by the calm request of his friend that he would be so good as to repeat his observations. Something of the 582 LIFE OF MILTON AND IIISTOKY OF HIS TIME. kind happened now. The reply of the two Houses to the portentous Paper of the Scottish Commissioners was that its length prevented immediate attention to it; but that they were sensible of the "aapersions" it cast upon them, and begged that such might be " forborne for the future." This drew from the Commissioners a shorter letter (Dec. 20), in which they disavowed any intention of disrespect, and assigned the gravity of the crisis as a reason why their expressions had been " more pathetique than ordinarily." Nevertheless from that moment the connexion between the English Parliament and the Scottish Commissioners was totally severed.^ "What had become of the third party concerned, the Ecg- lish Army ? The general Rendezvous resolved on by the Council of "War at Putney, in consequence of the Concordat between the Army and Parliament {anth, p. 573), had been cleverly changed into a tripartite Eendezvous, or distribution of the regiments into three brigades, to be reviewed on different days and at different places. The first of these E3views was held near Ware in Herts, Nov. 15, the very day on which the King's arrival in the Isle of Wight was known. At the head of each of seven regiments then pre- sent according to order there was read a Eemonstrance by Fairfax, pointing out the evils of relaxed discipline, con- demning the recent excesses of the Agitators and their attempts to make the men disaffected to their officers, declaring the resolution of himself and the chief officers to maintain all the Army's just rights, but protesting that he could not continue to head an Army which was mutinous, and requiring therefore that the officers and men of each regiment should subscribe an engagement of future obedience. As nothing was said in the document about either King or House of Lords, but mention only made of a guarantee of future Parliaments and a Reformed Representative House, no offence was given to the Democratic instincts of the regi- ments, and they at once acquiesced in what was but a fit soldierly compact. There were, however, two regiments on the field that had come without orders — Colonel Harrison's 1 Lords and Commons Journals of Doc. 1,5—21, Deo. 1647.] AEMY MUTINY SUPPKESSED. 583 horse-regiment and Colonel Eobert Lilburne's foot-regiment. They had come in a wild state of excitement, with copies of the Agreement of the People stuck in their hats. John Lilburne, recently released from the Tower, had come down to Ware to see the result. It was decisive, but not in the way John had expected. Harrison's regiment, on being reasoned with by Fairfax and the other officers, at length good-humouredly gave way, tore the mutinous emblem from their hats, and broke into cheers. Lilburne's, which had driven away most of its officers, remained sulky and voci- ferous, till Cromwell, riding up to them, ordered them also to remove that thing from their hats, and, on their refusing, had fourteen of them dragged from the ranks, three of these tried on the spot and condemned to death, and one of the three shot. After this turn given to the first Eeview, the others passed off pleasantly enough, and all that was farther needed was the minor punishment of one or two of the mutineers among the common soldiers, with temporary re- straint or rebuke for Colonel Rainsborough, Colonel Ewer, Major Scott, Major Cobbet, and Lieutenant Bray, the officers who had been most implicated in the revolt. — So, at the expense of but one life, had a dangerous Mutiny been quelled, and the ultra-Democrats of the Army taught the lesson of the Concordat. That lesson was that, in the opinion of Cromwell and Ireton as well as of Fairfax, it was best for England that the Army should still serve the con- stituted authority of Parliament, and not raise any political banner of its own. No sooner had this lesson been taught, however, than Cromwell and Ireton had hastened to obliterate all traces of the occasion there had been for teaching it. Their intention had not been to struggle with the Democratic spirit itself, but only with its mutinous manifestation ; and they knew, in fact, that the political tenets of the poor fellow whom it had been necessary to shoot remained, and would remain, not the less the tenets of two-thirds of the Army. Accordingly, through ITovember and December the great aim of Cromwell and Ireton, in the new Army head-quarters at Windsor, had been to soothe ruffled spirits and restore 584 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. harmony. Eainsborough, Ewer, ScOtt, and the other ultra- Democratic officers had been restored to their places, with even studied respect; and strong recommendatious had gone to Parliament that Eainsborough, who, before the Mutiny, had been named for the post of Vice-Admiral of the Fleet (in recollection of his original profession), should be confirmed in that high appointment. At Windsor there had been Army-dinners and great prayer-meetings of officers and men, in which Cromwell and Ireton took a conspicuous part, winning all back by their zeal and graciousness into a happy frame of concord, which the Parliamentary Com- missioners with the Army described as " a sweet and com- fortable agreement, the whole matter of the kingdom being left with Parliament." And so, while the two Houses were arranging to send their Four Bills and the Propositions to the Isle of "Wight, the Army only looked on approvingly.^ On Priday, Dec. 24, the Earl of Denbigh and the other Commissioners of the two Houses arrived in the Isle of Wight and delivered the Four Bills and the Propositions to his Majesty. Next day (Christmas Day) Loudoun, Lanark, Lauderdale, and the other Scottish Commissioners, arrived, and delivered to his Majesty, in the name of the Kingdom of Scotland, a Protest against the English BiUs . and Pro- positions. Por the day or two following, these Scottish Commissioners were more with his Majesty than the Eng- lish Commissioners ; but on the 28th the English Commis- sioners received from him in writing his Answer to the two Houses. It was utterly unfavourable, declining to assent to the Bills or anything else except after a complete and de- liberate Treaty, and assigning the Protest of the Scottish Commissioners as a sufficient reason for this had there been no other. With this Answer the English Commissioners returned to London, and it was read in both Houses on the 31st. The effects were extraordinary. On the 3rd of January, 1647-8, it was resolved in the Commons, by a majority of 141 to 92, that no farther applications or 1 Pari Hist. III. 791—799 and 805-822 ; Godwin, II. 462-8 : Carlyle's Crom- well, I. 25 i; Rushwortli, V 11. a51. ' Jan. 1647-8.] END OF THE SCOTTISH ALLIANCE. 585 addresses should be made to the King by that House, that no addresses or applications to him by any person whatso- ever should be made without leave of the Houses under the penalties of High Treason, that no messages from the King should be received, and that no one should presume to bring or carry such. On the 15th the Lords agreed in these Ee- solutions, only Manchester and Warwick dissenting out of sixteen Peers present. Negotiation was thus declared to be at an end; and the Army, delighted with the news, burst into applauses of Parliament, and vowed to live or die with it in the common cause. One consequence of what had occurred was the dissolution of the peculiar body which, under the name of " The Com- mittee of the two Kingdoms," had hitherto exercised so much power, and been in fact a common executive for the Parlia- ments of England and Scotland (aw^^,'p. 41). As Scotland had broken off from England, this body had become an absurdity; and so, on the same days on which the two Houses adopted the No-Address Eesolution, they resolved " That the powers formerly granted by both Houses to the " Committee of both Kingdoms, relating to the kingdoms " of England and Ireland, be now granted and vested in the " members. of both Houses only that are of that Cominittee." In other words. Lords Loudoun and Lauderdale and the other Scottish Commissioners were no longer wanted in England, and might go home. These gentlemen, being them- selves of the same opinion, sent a letter to the Lords, Jan. 17, intimating that they were about to take their leave. With great civility the Lords sent Manchester and Warwick " to wish them a good journey," assure them that any arrears of business between England and Scotland would be attended to, and express a desire for " the continuance of the brotherly union and good correspondency between the two nations." Actually, a few days afterwards, the Commissioners left London; and on the 29th the Houses appointed six Com- missioners of their own to follow them to Edinburgh, and allay, if possible, any iU feeling that might be caused there by their representation of recent occurrences. 586 LIFE OF MILTON AND IlISTOEY OP HIS TIME. Had the two Houses known all, their politeness would have been less ! It had not been only to give in a protest in the name of Scotland against the English Bills and Proposi- tions that Lanark, Loudoun, and Lauderdale had made their Christmas journey to Carisbrooke in the wake of the English Commissioners. The King had been in correspondence with them for some time before on the subject begun with them at Hampton Court ; and, when they came to Carisbrooke, they had brought with them not only the Protest against the English Bills, but also a secret document of a more momentous nature, prepared for the King's signature. ' Actually on the 26th of December, or two days before the English Commissioners were dismissed with the unfavourable Answer to the EngHsh Parliament, this document had been signed in Carisbrooke Castle by the King on the one part, and by Loudoun, Lauder- dale, and Lanark on 'the other. Not daring to bring it out of the island with them, the Commissioners, Clarendon says, had it wrapt up in lead and buried in a garden whence they coTild recover it afterwards. And little wonder ! It was A Seceet Treaty between Chaeles and the Scottish Com- MIS8I0NEES, in which his Majesty bound himself, on the word of a King, to confirm the Covenant for such as had taken it or might take it (without forcing it on the unwilling), also to confirm Presbyterian Church-government and the Westmin- ster Directory of Worship in England for three years (with a reservation of the Liturgy, &c., for himself and his house- hold), and moreover to see to the suppression of the Inde- pendents and all other sects and heresies ; whUe the Scots, in return, were to send an Army into England for the purpose of restoring him, on these conditions, to his full Eoyalty in that kingdom ! Thus at last Charles had made a conclusive Treaty with one section of his adversaries; and, as Queen Henrietta Maria had always advised, it was with the Scots, aU but absolutely on their own terms of the abolition of Episcopacy and the establishment of strict Presbyteiy iu England I!^ 1 Lords and Commons Journals; Hamiltons (for correspondence between Pari. Hist. III. 827— 837 ; Burnet's the King and Lanark) 412- 4D3; Steven- Jan, 1647-8.] THE KING IN STKICTER .SECLUSION. 587 Until the decisive rupture with Parliament on the Four Bills, Charles had been permitted to range about the Isle of Wight very much at his pleasure, and the concourse of visitors to him had been as free as at Hampton Court. From the moment of the rupture, however, all was changed. Aware that an escape abroad was now meditated by Charles, and warned by some stir about Carisbrooke itself for the King's rescue, Colonel Hammond had at once taken precautions, but implored Parliament at the same time either to remove the King to some other place or else to discharge himself from an office the burden of which he found insupportable. With this last request Parliament did not comply, and Hammond had to continue in his painful trust, obeying the instnictions sent him. His Majesty was not to be allowed any longer to ride about the island, or to receive unauthorized visitors ; he was to be restrained to Carisbrooke Castle and the line round it ; Ashburnham, Legge, and other suspicious persons in his service, including his chaplains Hammond and Sheldon, were to be dismissed ; and his remaining household were to be under very strict regulation. These instructions having been carried into effect, Charles's life in the Isle of Wight from January 1647-8 onwards was one of straiter captivity and seclusion than he had experienced even at Holmby. He had the liberty only of the Castle and its precincts; which, however, were sufficiently large and convenient for the exercise of walking, with "good air and a delightful prospect both to the -sea and land." For his solace and recreation in his favourite game, the barbican of the Castle, a spacious parading ground beyond the walls but within the line, was converted by Hammond into " a bowling- green scarce to be equalled," at one side of which there was built " a pretty summer-house for retirement." This at vacant son's Hist, of the Church of Sootlandi themaelves argued that the Treaty ed. 1840, p. 586 (for Loudoun's account would turn out mere waste paper, of the substance of the Treaty); Clareu- After the Scottish Army should be in don, 634— 63'r. Clarendon's account England, and the Eoyalists in England of the Treaty is fuU; and, though he roused, "there would be nobody to condemns it as " monstrous," he gives exact all those particulars, bat every- the apology that had reconciled the body would submit to what his Majesty King to it in his despair. It was that should think fit to be done ! " Lanark, Loudoun, and Lauderdale had 588 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. hours became the King's chief resort both forenoon and afternoon, there being " no gallery, nor rooms of state nor garden," within the Castle walls. Occasionally, notwith- standing the strict guard, some poor stray creature troubled with scrofula, who had come to the Isle of Wight for the Eoyal touch, would contrive to beguile the sentries and obtain admission to the barbican. As at Holmby, however, the King had his set times in-doors for his devotions and for reading and writing ; and his favourite books, catalogued and placed in the charge of Mr. Herbert, were again in request. Though he still declined the services of any Presbyterian clergyman, he rather liked the society of young Mr. Troughton, the governor's chaplain, and had arguments with him daily on theological points. Once, when a half-crazed minister, nicknamed Doomsday Sedgwick, came all the way from London to present him with a book he had written, suitable for his comfort and entitled " Leaves from the Tree of Life for the healing of the Nations," he ordered him to be ad- mitted, received the book, glanced at some pages of it, and then returned it to the author with the observation that surely he must need some sleep after having written a book like that. And so day by day the routine flowed on, and always at night the wax-lamp was kept burning in the silver basin close to his Majesty's bed.^ The Treaty with the Scots could not remain long secret. No sooner had the Scottish Commissioners who had framed it returned to Edinburgh than they were obliged to let the substance of it become known. This was done in the Com- mittee of Estates on the 15th of February, when Loudoun and Lauderdale formally reported the result of their visit to the Isle of Wight. Then ensued a most perplexed agita- tion in Scotland on the whole subject. The Engagement, as the Secret Treaty was called, was universally discussed, and with great diversity of opinion. In the Committee of Estates, the Hamiltons, who had been the real authors of the 1 Lords Journals, Dec. 31, 16i7, and Doomsday Sedgwick was not Obadiah of subsequent dates ; Herbert's Memoirs Sedgwick of the Assembly, but William of the Last Years of Charles, 57—67 Sedgwick of Ely. and 95-98 ; Wood's Ath. III. 894-6. Feb.— April 1648.] THli SGOTTXSK EA^GAGE.VJIXT. 589 Engagement, carried all their own way. Nay in the Parlia- ment, or full Convention of the Estates, which met on the 2nd of March, the majority went passionately with the Hamiltons. Four-fifths of the nohles went with them ; more than half the lairds ; and nearly half the burgesses, including most of the representatives of the larger Scottish towns. These were the Hamiltonians or Engagees. Not the less in Par- liament itself was there a strong opposition party, headed by Argyle, Eglinton, Lothian, Cassilis, and some half-dozen other nobles, aided by Johnstone of Warriston ; and, as this party rested on the nearly unanimous support of the Scottish clergy, it had a powerful organ of expression, apart from Parliament, in the Commission of the ICirk. It was argued, on their side, that the Commissioners to the Isle of Wight had exceeded their powers, that the conditions made with Charles were too slippery, that he had in reality evaded the Covenant, and that, though Scotland might have a just cause for war against the English Sectaries, no good could come of a war, nominally against them, in which Presbyterians would be allied with Malignants, Prelatists, and perhaps even Papists. Declarations embodying these views were published by the Commission ; the pulpits rang with denun- ciations of the Engagement; petitions against it from Pro- vincial Synods and Presbyteries of the Kirk were poured in upon Parliament ; had the entire population been polled, the Protesters or Anti-Engagers would have been found in the majority. Even Loudoun detached himself from the Hamiltons, and publicly, in the High Church of Edinburgh, submitted to ecclesiastical rebuke, professing repentance of his handiwork. Nevertheless the Hamiltons persevered ; two- thirds of the Parliament adhered to them ; and by the end of April 1648 it was understood, not in England only, but also on the Continent, that an Army of 40,000 Scots was to be raised somehow, in spite of Argyle and the Scottish clergy, for an invasion of England in the King's behalf. The Army was to be commanded in chief by the Duke of Hamilton him- self, with the Earl of Callander for his Lieutenant-general.i 1 Baillie, III. 24—46 ; Stevenson, 582—595 ; Burnet's Hamiltons, 424—43.5, 590 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. Thus out of the Scottish Engagemeut with the King in the Isle of Wight there grew what is called the Second Civil War. It was a much briefer affair than the first. That had spread over four years ; but the real substance of this was to be crushed into as many months (May — Aug. 1648). The military story of these months shall concern us here orily in so far as it is interwoven with the poHtical narrative. The Engagement with the Scots had been communicated to Queen Henrietta Maria at St. Germains, and gradually, with more or less precision, to all those dispersed Eoyalists, at home or abroad, who might be expected to take leading paits in co-operation with the promised Scottish invasion. The programme, so far as it could be settled, was something after this fashion : — (1) Eisings were to be promoted in all parts of England and Wales, to coalesce at last, if possible, into a great general rising in which London should be in- volved. All the conditions seemed favourable for such an attempt. Not only in every county were there eager and revengeful remains of the old Episcopal Eoyalism, but the tendency even of the Presbyterians throughout England had been of late decidedly Eoyalist. The Presbyterians had never been anti-monarchical in theory ; and large numbers of tliem had begun of late to pity the King, and to question whether the excessively hard terms imposed upon him by Parliament were altogether necessary. Even if he were to be restored to larger powers in some things than might be quite desirable, would not that be better than continuing in the present state of uproar and confusion, with a Demo- cratic Army fastened vampire-like on the land, preying on its resources, and poisoning its principles ? For people in this state of mind the promised invasion of the Scots in Charles's behalf was the very pretext needed. Much of the Presbyterianism of England, including the City of London, might be whirled, along with the readier Old Eoyal- ism, into a rising for the King. To promote and manage risings in particular districts, however, there must be leaders authorized from St. Germains. Such leaders were found April 1648.] PKOyRAMME OF NEW CIVIL WAR. 591 among eminent Eoyalists either already in England or able to transfer themselves thither without delay. In the North, where immediate co-operation with the Scots would be jaecessary, Sir Marmaduke Langdale and Sir Philip Mus- grave were to be the chief agents; and for the West, the Midlands, and the South, there were the Earl of Norwich (formerly Lord Goring), the Earl of Peterborough, Lord Byron, Lord Capel, and others. The young Duke of Buck- ingham, and his brother Lord Francis Villiers, who had not been concerned in the first Civil War, being then but boys and on their travels abroad, had recently returned to their great estates in England, and were anxious to figure as became the name they bore. Strangely enough, in the midst of all these, as the commissioned generalissimo of the King's forces in England when they should be in the field, was to be the Earl of Holland. His veerings in the first war had not been to his credit ; but his long seclusion had done him good ; he had always been in favour with the Queen ; and his Parliamentary and Presbyterian connexions were an advantage. (2) There was to be a gathering of all the Eoyalist exiles to accompany or follow the Prince of Wales in a landing on the British shores. As early as Feb. 8, when only the vaguest rumour of the Scottish En- gagement can have been in circulation on the Continent, the report from the Hague had been that it would be "no wonder to see 10,000 merry souls, theii lying there, and cursing the Parliament in every cup they drank, venturing over to make one cast more for the King." Certain it is that in the following months there was a stir in all the nests of English refugees in France and Holland, and in the Channel Islands. Not only Prince Eupert, Percy, Wilmot, Jermyn, Colepepper, Ormond, and others round the Queen and the Prince in Paris, but the Earl of Bristol, Lord Cot- tington, Secretary Nicholas, and others, in Eouen or Caen, and Hopton and Hyde in Jersey, were all in motion. Money was the great want ; they were all so wretchedly poor ; but that difficulty might be overcome so far as to make an expe- dition to England at least possible. Mazarin might lend 592 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. help ; or, if lie did not, the Prince of Orange, the husband of Charles's eldest daughter, and now Stadtholder of Holland might be expected to do all he could for his father-in-law consistently with the limited powers of his Stadtholdership. A Dutch port might be more convenient than a French one for the embarkation of the refugees collectively or in detach- ments. Most would be bound for England ; but the true sphere of some, as for example Ormond, would be in Ireland. For the Prince of Wales himself what was specially destined by the Queen was a voyage to Scotland. It was by being among the Scots personally till their Army could be got ready, and either remaining in Scotland afterwards or accompanying the Army into England, that his Royal Highness would be of most use. On this point the Queen was emphatic.^ Such being the programme, what was the performance? It did not quite come up to the programme, but it was sufficiently formidable. The first rising was in Wales. There a certain drunken Colonel Poyer, governor of Pembroke Castle, with a Colonel Powell and a Colonel Laughern, also in Parliamentary em- ployment, revolted as early as the end of February. Osten- sibly it was in resentment of an order of Parliament for disbanding supernumeraries ; but, before the end of April, the affair became a EoyaUst outbreak of all Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, and Cardiganshire, spreading through the rest of South Wales. To suppress this rising Cromwell was to go from London, May 1, with two regiments of horse and three of foot ; which, with the forces already in the region, would make an army of about 8,000 men. Before he went, risings of less importance had been heard of in Cornwall and Dorsetshire, and there had been one tremendous tumult in London itself, to the cry of " For God and King Charles ! " (Sunday, April 9.) It had been suppressed only by street- charges of the regiments quartered at Whitehall and Charing 'Clarendon, Book XI., where the formation, than any Vfhere else. Dates pre-arrangement of the new Civil War are deficient; but the sketching is from head-quarters, and the parts masterly. See also Rushworth tor Feb. assigned to different persons, are set March, and April, 1C48. forth more lucidly, and with better in- May— Aug. 1648.] THE SECOND CIVIL WAE. 693 Gross. Significant incidents of the same month were the revolt to the Irish Eebels of Lord Inchiquin, hitherto one of the most zealous Parliamentarians in Ireland, and the escape from London of the young Duke of York. By the con- trivance of a Colonel Bamfield the Duke was whisked away from St. James's Palace (April 21), and conveyed, in girl's clothes, to Holland. He was not quite fifteen years of age ; hut his father had instructed him to escape when he could, and the fact that he had been designated for the command of the Navy was likely to be useful All this before Cromwell had gone into Wales ; but hardly had he gone when there came the news that Berwick had been seized for the King by Sir Marmaduke Langdale (April 30), and Carlisle by Sir Philip Musgrave and Sir Thomas Glenham (May 6). Langdale and Musgrave had been staying in Edinburgh, and the seizure of these two towns was by arrangement with the Duke of Hamilton and in preparation for his invasion. Langdale, indeed, announced himself as commissioned General for the Kiag in the five northern counties, and the business of watching against his advance lay with Lambert, the Parlianjeutarian General in those parts, assisted by Sir Arthur Haselrig, now Governor of Newcastle. . Meanwhile the preservation of the peace in and near London was in the hands of Fairfax, Ireton, and Skippon. — Fairfax now no longer mere Sir Thomas, but Lord Fairfax of the Scottish Peerage, as successor to his father Lord Ferdinando, who had died March 13. These three were soon as hard at work in their south-eastern region as Cromwell in Wales and Lambert in the north. For the county of Surrey having followed the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk in sending in a petition for the disbanding of the Army and the restoration of the King "to the splendour of his ancestors" (May 16), a new riot in London "For God and King Charles " was the consequence, and in a short time there was more or less of Royalist commotion north and south of London, through Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Herts, Essex, Surrey, and Kent. The insurrection in Kent was of VOL. III. Q Q 594 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. independent origin, and was the most extensive and fierce. It had been begun by the Kentish people themselves, roused by Eoger L'Estrange and a young Mr. Hales ; but the Earl of Norwich had come into Kent to take the lead. Canter- bury, Dover, Sandwich, and the castles of Deal and Wahner, had been won for the King; there were communications between the insurgents and the Londoners ; and in the end of May some 10,000 or 12,000 men of Kent, with runaway citizens and apprentices from London in their ranks, were marching towards the City with drums and banners. To meet these Fairfax and Ireton, with seven regiments, went out to Blackheath, May 29 ; and, the insurgents then drawing back, the two were at Gravesend May 31, and at Maidstone June 1. A few days of their hard blows, struck right in the heart of Kent, sufficed for that county; and the Earl of Norwich, with the Kentish fugitives, crossed the Thames into £ssex. Insurgents from other parts, including Lord Capel, Lord Loughborough, and Sir Charles Lucas, having at the same time gathered into that county, there was a junction of forces, with the intention of a roundabout march upon London, by Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridge. The swift approach of Fairfax out of conquered Kent (June 11) com- pelled them to change their plan. They threw themselves into Colchester (June 12), adding some 4,000 or 5,000 armed men to the population of that doomed town. Doomed! for Fairfax, having failed to take it on the first assault, resolved to reduce it by starvation, and so, the insurgents on their side resolving to hold out to the last, inasmuch as the detention of Fairfax in Essex till the Scots should be in England was the best hope, both for themselves and for the general cause, the Siege op Colchester (June 12 — Aug. 28) turned out one of the most horrible events of the war. An important episode of the Kentish Insurrection was the Revolt of the Fleet. The main station of the Fleet being in the Downs, just off the Kentish coast, Eoyalist emissaries had been busy among the sailors, and with such effect that, when Vice-Admiral Eainsborough, who had been ashore defending Deal Castle against the insurgents, tried to go on May -Aug. 1648.] THE SECOND CIVIL WAR. 595 board his own ship, he was laid hold of and sent back. This was about the 27th of May; and, though the Parliament immediately re-appointed the Presbyterian Earl of Warwick to his old post of Lord High Admiral, and sent him down to pacify the Fleet (May 29), the effort failed. The cry of the sailors was, " We will go to our own Admiral," meaning the young Duke of York in Holland. Actually, some ten war- ships, having ejected all their Parliamentarian officers, did put to sea, and, after cruising about the coasts of Kent, Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, till the insurrection in those parts was quashed, did cross to Helvoetsluys in Holland, early in June, in search of the young Duke. It was a splendid accident for the world of Eoyalist exiles on the Continent, for it supplied them with the wooden bridge they needed for transit into the mother-country. Accordingly, though the royal boy-admiral came at once from the Hague to Helvoetsluys, went on board the Fleet, and was for a week or two the pet of the sailors, the higher powers at Paris hastened to turn the accident to the largest account. Mazarin refusing all help, some money was raised otherwise, so as to enable the Prince of Wales, with Prince Eupert, Hopton, Colepepper and others, to embark at Calais for Helvoetsluys. He arrived there early in July, was received with acclamations by the Fleet, and immediately relieved his younger brother in the command. The Prince and Princess of Orange coming from the Hague to welcome him, there was a joyful family-meeting, with much consultation, but a good deal of difference, among all concerned, as to the ways and means. About the time of the Eevolt of the Fleet, Parliament had received other bad news. Pontefract had been seized for the Eang, June 2, and other important places in Yorkshire were taken or attempted soon after. Through the rest of June there were risings or threats of rising in the Midlands, so that in the beginning of July things looked very ill. There had been successes, it was true, against the insurgents in Wales, and Cromwell was hopefully besieging Pembroke; Lambert was doing well with his small forces against Lang- Q « 2 596 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. dale in the north ; Colchester was beginning to be distressed in the grip of Fairfax ; but still, with the whole of England in Eoyalist or semi-Eoyalist palpitation, and the City of London actually heaving with suppressed revolt, what could be expected when Hamilton and his army of Scottish Presbyterians did cross the border ? There had been delays in the levy of this army, owing to the continued resistance of the Argyle party, the clergy, and the western shires; and it had only been by the most tyrannic exercise of power that it had been got together. At last, however, it had been got together ; and now England was full of the rumour of its coming. Lo ! at the rumour the Earl of Holland, the designated generalissimo of the English army of co-operation, could not choose but start from his lethargy! With the young Duke of Buckingham, young Lord Francis VUUers, the Earl of Peterborough, and the Dutch Colonel Dalbier, in his company, and a following of 500 horse, he started up at Kingston-on-Thames on the 6th of July ; addressed a formal Declaration of his motives to Parliament and the City of London, as well as a letter of encouragement to the besieged at Colchester ; and called on all Surrey, Sussex and Middlesex, to join him. That bravado, however, lasted but two days. On the 8th of July, a Parliamentary force under Sir Michael Livesey attacked Holland's horse and routed them utterly. Lord Francis Villiers and Dalbier were slain ; the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Peterborough escaped to London, and thence abroad; but Holland himself, pursued into Hunts, was taken prisoner. On the very day of the defeat of Holland in Surrey (Saturday, July 8) the Scots did come into England. They came from Annan on the Solway Firth, marching to Carlisle. They were not the expected 40,000, but the advanced portion of an army which, when it had all come in, may have numbered about 20,000. The Duke himself led the van with his Lifeguards in great state, preceded by trumpeters " aU in scarlet cloaks fuH of silver lace;" Generals Thomas Middleton and William Baillie Qanie next with horse and foot ; and the Earl of Callander May— Aufe. 1648.] THE SECOND CIVIL WAR. 597 brought up the rear. Joined by Sir Marmaduke Langdale and his English, they marched on, or rather sauntered on, to Penrith (July 15), and thence to Kendal (Aug. 1 ?), the wary Lambert retreating before them, but watching their every motion, skirmishing when he could, and wait- ing anxiously for the arrival of Cromwell, who, having at length taken Pembroke and so far settled Wales (July 11), was hurrying to the new scene of action in the north. Off Kendal, a body of about 3,000 Scots, brought over from Ireland by Major-general Sir George Monro, attached itself to Hamilton, with an understanding that "Hamilton's orders to it were to be directly from himself to Monro. There was then a debate whether it would be best to advance straight south into Lancashire, or to strike east into York- shire. It was decided for Lancashire. On into Lancashire, therefore, they moved, the poor people in the track behind them grieving dreadfully over their ravages, but dignified papers of the Scottish Parliament preceding them to explain the invasion. Scotland had made an Engagement to rescue the King, free England from the tyranny of an Army of Sectaries, establish Presbytery, and put down " that impious Toleration settled by the two Houses contrary to the Covenant ! " While the Scots were thus advancing into the north-west of England, the Prince of Wales had brought his Fleet from Holland, and (the Queen's idea that he should go to Scotland having been postponed) was hovering about the south-east coast. By fresh accessions the fleet had been increased to nineteen sail ; it had been provisioned by the PrirLc& of Orange ; and there were 2,000 soldiers on board. On the 25th of July the Prince was off Yarmouth, where a landing of the soldiers was attempted with a view to relieve Col- chester. That failing, he removed to the mouth of the Thames, to obstruct the commerce of the Londoners, and make prizes of their ships. Precisely at the time when the Westmoreland and Lancashire people were grieving over the ravages of the invading Scots, the Londoners were in conster- nation over the capture by the Prince of an Indiaman and 598 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. several other richly-laden vessels. For the ransom of these by their owners the Prince demanded large sums of money, intimating at the same time (Aug. 8) that the block of the Thames would be kept up until the Londoners declared for the King, or ParliameJit agreed to a cessation of arms on certain loyal conditions.-^ Through these four or five months of Eoyalist risings, coalescing at last in a Civil War as extensive as the first had been, and much more entangled (April — Aug. 1648), what had been the conduct of Parliament ? It had been very odd indeed. • Nothing could have been bolder than the attitude of the two Houses, and especially of the Commons, for a month or so after their famous No- Address Eesolutions of Jan. 1 — 15. Thus, on the 11th of February, the Commons adopted, by a majority of 80 to 50, a Declaration, which had been prepared in Committee, and chiefly by Nathaniel Fiennes and Henry Marten, setting forth their Reasons for breaking off communi- cation with the King. They published the document with- out consulting the other House. It was the severest criticism of the King personally that had yet been put forth by either House of Parliament, severe even to atrocity. His whole reign was reviewed remorselessly from its beginning, and characterized as " a continued track of breach of trust to the three kingdoms," and there was even the horrible insinua- tion that he had connived with the Duke of Buckingham in poisoning his own father. After this tremendous document — so tremendous that two Answers to it were published, one from the King himself, and the other written anonymously by Hyde in Jersey — who could have expected that the Commons would again make friendly overtures to his Majesty? Yet such was the fact. The tergiversation, how- ever, was gradual. Through the rest of February, the whole of March and most of April, the Commons were stiU in their 1 In the summary given in the text large in Clarendon, Book XI. There of the incidents of the Civil War from have been references, for dates and March to August 1648, I have tried to facts, to the Parliamentary History reduce into chronological connexion and Journals, Burnet's Hamiltons, God- the information given disconnectedly in win's Commonwealth, and Carlyle's Eushworth, VII. 1010—1220, and at Cromwell. May— Aug, 1648.] THE SECOND CIVIL WAR. 599 austere fit, utterly ignoring the King, and prosecuting punc- tiliously such pieces of business as the Eeply to the recent Declarations and Protests of the Scots, and the Eevision of the Westminster Assembly's Confession of Faith and Larger Catechism} The attendance during these months ranged from about 70 to 190, and the Independents, or friends of the Army, seemed still to command the majority. On the 24th of April, however, on a call of the House, occasioned by the prospect of the Scottish invasion and the signs of Eoyalist movement in England, no fewer than 306 members appeared in their places. Many of these seem to have been Presbyterian members, long absent, but now whistled back by their leaders for a fresh effort in behalf of Eoyalty in connexion with Presbytery. At all events, from this call of the House on April 24 the tide is turned, and we find vote after vote showing renewed Presbyterian ascendency with an inclination to the King. Thus, on the 28th of April, it was carried by 165 votes to 99, that the House should declare that it would not alter the fundamental government of the kingdom, by King, Lords, and Commons ; also, by 108 to 105, that " the matter of the Propositions sent to the King at Hampton Court by consent of both kingdoms" should be the ground of a new debate for the settlement of the kingdom ; also, by 146 to 101, that the ISTo- Address Eesolutions of January should not hinder any member from propounding in the debate anything that might tend to an improvement of the said Propositions. Here certainly was a » The Reyision of the Confession of 18, 1647-8). It related to Chap. XXIV. Faith'bjt'be two Houses was completed of the Confession, entitled Of Marriage June 20, 1648, when, with the exception and Divorce. The question was whether of certain portions about Churoh-govem- the House should agree to the last ment held in reserve, it was passed and clause of the 4th paragraph of that ordered to be printed : not, however, Chapter — "The man may not marry with the title "Confession of Faith," any of his wife's kindred nearer in blood but as "Articles of Christian Religion than he may of his own, nor the woman approved and passed by both Houses of her husband's kindred nearer in of Parhament aJter advice had with the blood than of her own." For the Yea Assembly of Divines by authority of there voted 40 (Sir Robert Pye and Sir Parliament sitting at Westminster." Anthony Irby, tellers); fortheiV^o 71 The Revision, though detailed, was (Sir William Armyn and Mr. Knightley, much a matter of form, paragraph after tellers) ; in other words, the House by paragraph passing without discussion. a majority of 31 doubted the ecclesi- On at least one point, however, there astical doctrine of forbidden degrees of was a division in the Commons (Feb. affinity in marriage. 600 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. change of policy ; and, if there could be any doubt that it was effected by a sudden influx of Presbyterians, that doubt would be removed by a stupendous event which followed, appertaining wholly to the Eeligious question. On the 1st of May (the very day on which CromweU was ordered off to South Wales by Fairfax and the Council of War) there was brought up in the Commons an. " Ordinance for the Swppression of Masphemies and Heresies" which the Presby- terians had been long urging and labouring at in committees, but which the Independents and Tolerationists had hitherto managed to keep back. Without a division it passed the House that day ; next day it passed the Lords ; and, accord- ingly, under date May 2, 1648, this is what stands in the. Lords Journals as thenceforward to be the Law of England : — "For the preventing of the growth and spreading of Heresy and Blasphemy : Be it ordained . . . That all such persons as shall, from and after the date of this present Ordinance, willingly, by preaching, teaching, printing, or writing, maintain and publish that there is no God, or that God is not present in all places, doth not know and foreknow all things, or that He is not Almighty, that He is not perfectly Holy, or that He is not Eternal, or that the Father is not God, the Son is not God, or that the Holy Ghost is not God, or that They Three are not One Eternal God ; or that shall in like manner maintain and publish that Christ is not God equal with the Father, or shall deny the Manhood of Christ, or that the Godhead and Manhood of Christ are several natures, or that the Humanity of Christ is pure and unspotted of all sin ; or that shall maintain and publish, as aforesaid, that Christ did not die, nor rise from the dead, nor is ascended into Heaven bodily, or that shall deny His death is meritorious in the behalf of Believers ; or that shall maintain and publish, as aforesaid, that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God ; or that the Holy Scripture, videlicet [here comes in the entire list of the Canonical Books of the Old and New Testaments], is not the Word of God ; or that the bodies of men shall not rise again after they are dead ; or that there is no Day of Judgment after death : — ^All such maintaining and publishing of such Error or Errors, with obstinacy therein, shall, by virtue hereof, be adjudged Felony: And all such persons [here is explained the process by -which they are to be accused and brought to trial] . . and in case the indict- ment be found and the party upon his trial shall not abjure the said Error, and defence and maintenance of the same, he shall StrFFBB THE PAINS OF DeATH, AS IN CASE OB FbLONY, WITHOTTT Benkfit oi- Ci.ebgy ..." " Be it further ordained, by the authority aforesaid, That all and May— Aug. 1648.] THE SECOND CIVIL WAR. 601 every person or persons that shall publish or maintain, as aforesaid, any of the several Errors hereafter ensuing, videlicet [here a long enumeration of minor forms of Eeligious Error, such as "that man by nature hath free -will to turn to God," that God may be worshipped by pictures and images, that there is a Purgatory, " that man is bound to believe no more than by his reason he can comprehend," " that the baptizing of infants is unlawful," that the observation of the Lord's Day is not obligatory, or " that the Church-government by Presbytery is Anti-Christian or unlawful"], shall be [ordered to renounce their Error or Errors in public con- gregation, and, in case of refusal,] committed to Pbison . . ." Imagine that going forth, just as the Second Civil War had begun, as the will and ordinance of Parliament ! One wonders that the Concordat between Parliament and the Army, arranged by Cromwell and the other Army-chiefs in the preceding November, was not snapped on the instant. One wonders that the Army did not wheel in mass round West- minster, haul the legislating idiots from their seats, and then undertake in their own name both the war and the general business of the nation. The behaviour of the Army, however, was more patient and wise. Parliament could be reckoned with afterwards; meanwhile let it pass what measures it liked, so long as it did not absolutely throw up its trust and abandon all to the King ! Till Parliament should do that, the fighting which the Army had to do at any rate might as well be' done in the name of the Parliament ! Eeally there seemed a chance that even the last extremity of faint-heartedness would be reached, and that Parliament would throw up its national trust. Here, for example, were some of its proceedings in June and July, of which Cromwell must have heard, with rather strange feelings, in the midst of his hard work in Wales, Lambert in his watch against the Scots in the north, and Fairfax and Ireton in their siege of Colchester. June 3, 7, and 8, the two Houses, of their own accord, or on earnest Petitions from the City, agreed to drop all the impeachments and other proceedings voted in the pre- ceding year at the instance of the Army against members of their own body, and against City officials implicated in the Presbyterian tumults in London, and in particular to invite the Seven peccant Peers and the survivors of the Eleven 602 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. peccant Commoners to return to their places. June 30 and July 3 the proposal to re-open a Treaty with the King was, after much intermediate debating, brought to a bearing by a formal agreement of the two Houses to rescind their No- Address Eesolutions of January, and by a vote of the Com- mons that the Propositions to be submitted to the King for his assent before farther treaty should be these three — Pres- bytery for three years, the Militia with Parliament for ten years, and the Eecall by the King of all Proclamations and Declarations against the Parliament. Even this, so much more favourable to the King than former offers, the Lords thought too harsh ; and they refused (July 5) to make the Treaty conditional on the King's prior assent to the three Propositions. Nor was this the only proof that the bravery of the Lords had evaporated even more completely than that of the Commons. On July 14, when it was known that Hamilton's Army of Scots was actually in England, the Commons did vote that the invaders were public enemies, and that all Englishmen who should abet them should be accounted traitors ; but the Lords (July 18) refused to concur in that vote. Were the soldiers of Parliament, then, to be fighting against invaders whom one of the Houses did not regard as public enemies ? — In short, the fact had come to he that, in the beginning of August, the forces of Fairfax, Lam- bert, and Cromwell, were conducting a war in the name of Parliament which Parliament and the City of London were taking every means to stop. A Petition of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City, presented to the Lords Aug. 8 (the last of scores of Petitions in the same sense that had for a month or two been poured in), expressed the general Presbyterian feeling. " The government of the " Church still unsettled ; blasphemy, heresy, schism, and " profaneness increased ; the relief of bleeding Ireland " obstructed ; the war, to their great astonishment, renewed ; " the people of England thereby miserably impoverished and " oppressed ; the blood of our fellow-subjects spilt like water " upon the ground ; our Brethren of Scotland now entered " into this kingdom in a hostile manner ; his Highness the May— Aug. 1648.] THE SECOND CIVIL WAE. 603 " Prince of Wales commanding at sea a considerable part of " the Navy, and other ships under his power, having already " made stay of many English ships with merchandise and " provisions to a very great value : " — these were the com- plaints ; and the Petitioners humbly conceived there was no visible remedy but the " speedy freeing of his Majesty " from restraint, and " a Personal Treaty " with him for " restoring him to his just rights." The City was to have its will. The Commons (July 28) had abandoned, by a majority of 71 to 64, their intention to require assent to the three Propositions in preparation for a Treaty, and had agreed to a general and open Treaty, such as the Lords desired ; communications on the subject had been made to the King ; and, though his Majesty would have preferred to treat in London, he con- sented (Aug. 10) that the place should be Newport in the Isle of Wight. Note also two contemporary incidents of deep significance. On the 2nd of August Major Eobert Huntingdon, Cromwell's former Major, presented to the Lords, in the form of a Paper of " Sundry Eeasons inducing him to lay down his Commission," what was really a series of charges of High Treason against Cromwell ; the Paper was that day duly entered in the Lords Journals for future occa- sion ; and it was with the utmost difficulty, and much contri- vance of the Speaker, that the same Paper was kept out of the Commons. Such was the first incident ; the other is thus given by Eushworth under date Aug. 14 : " Colonel Denzil Holies came this day to the House a,nd sat." This means that the chief of the Eleven, the Arch-Presbyterian of the House, the man who hated Cromwell worse than poison, had come back at this juncture to re-assume the Presbyterian leadership. After that Major Huntingdon's charges against Cromwell were not likely to be kept long out of the Com- mons by any contrivance of the Speaker.^ If ever a General fought for his country with the rope round his neck, that General was Cromwell, as he now fought 1 The facts in this account of the nals, and Eushworth. The dates given conduct of Parliament from Feb. to will indicate the exact places in these Aug. 1648 are from the Parliamentary authorities. History, the Lords and Commons Jour- 604 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. for England. No one knew this better than himselt^ wlien, with his hardy troops hurried north from their severe service in Wales, he joined Lambert among the Yorkshire hUIs (Aug. 10 or thereabouts), to deal with the army of Hamilton and Langdale. Let him fail in this enterprise, let hijn succeed but doubtfully in it, and, in the relapse into Eoyalism which would then be universal, the first uproar of execration would be against him, and London woidd either never see him again or see him dragged to death. Pail ! — succeed but doubt- fully ! When the wicked plot against the just and gnash upon him with their teeth, doth not the Lord laugh at them and see that their day is coming ? It was in this faith that Cromwell, descending westward from the Yorkshire hills after his junction with Lambert, hurled himself, with his little army of not more than 9,000 in all, right athwart the track of Hamilton and his 24,000 of mixed Scots and English advancing through Lancashire. The result was The Three Days' Battle of Peeston (Aug. 17^19), in which the Scots and their English allies were totally ruined. About 3,000 were slain ; 10,000 were taken prisoners ; of the host of fugitives only a portion succeeded in attaching themselves to Monro, who had been lying considerably to the rear of the main battle and now picked up its fragments for a retreat northwards; the rest were dispersed miserably hither and thither, so that for weeks afterwards poor Scots were found begging about English farmhouses, either pretending to be dumb lest their speech should betray them, or trying vainly to pass for Yorkshiremen. Hamilton, with a fraction of the fugitives, made his way into Staffordshire, but had to surrender himself a prisoner Aug. 25. The coUapse of the King's cause, begun in Lancashire Aug. 17 — 19, was to be absolute within the next fortnight. On the 28th of August the Prince of Wales withdrew from his useless hovering about the south-east coast and sailed back with his fleet to Holland ; whence most of the ships were re- covered iu due time, the ofi&cers remaining in exile, but the crews only too glad to return to their allegiance to Parlia- ment. On the same day the town of Colchester, after a siege Sept. 1648.] TREATY OF NEWPORT. 605 of more than six weeks, during which the most hideous ex- tremities of famine had been endured by the poor townsmen, surrendered at mercy to Fairfax. Above 3,000 soldiers, with their officers, thus became prisoners. Two of the chief officers, Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, selected for special reasons, were shot immediately after the surrender by order of the Council of War ; the others, including the Earl of Norwich and Lord Capel, were reserved for the disposal of Parliament.^ Thus, in the end of August 1648, the Second Civil War, with the exception of a few relics, was trampled out. Events then resolved themselves into two distinct courses, running parallel for a time, but one of which proved itself so much the more powerful that at last it disdained the pretence of parallelism with the other and overliooded the whole level. In' the first place, there was the progress of that Treaty of Newport to which the two Houses had pledged themselves while the war was going on. Delays had occurred in arranging particulars with the King, and it was not till Sept. 1 that the Conamissioners of the two Houses were appointed, They were, for the Lords, the Earls of Northumberland, Pem- broke, Salisbury, and Middlesex, and Viscount Saye and Sele, and, for the Commons, Viscount Wenman (of the Irish Peer- age), Denzil Holies, Glynn, Vane the younger, William Pierre- point, Sir Harbottle Grimstone, Sir John Potts, John Crewe, Samuel Browne, and John Bulkley. Their instructions were to proceed to the Isle of Wight, and there, all together or any eight of them (of whom two must be lords), to treat with the King for forty days on the Propositions formerly presented to him at Hampton Court, taking these Propositions in a fixed order and doing their best to get his Majesty to agree to them, but receiving any counter-proposals he might make, and transmitting these to the two Houses. All demands on the King and all answers or proposals from him were to be in 1 Rushworth, VII. 1225—1248 ; Pari. mons Journals ; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. Hist. III. 992— 1Q02 ; Lords and Com- 279—299. 606 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY 01' HIS TIME. writing; but the debates might be oral between the Com- missioners and his Majesty. Not to partake in these debates, but to be present at them by permission, and to form a kind of Council with whom the King might retire to consult on difficult points, were to be a largish body of Eoyalist lords, divines, lawyers, and others, to whom, at his special request, leave had been given to repair to the island and to be in attendance on him throughout the Treaty. Among these were the Duke of Eichmond, the Marquis of Hertford, the Earls' of Lindsey and Southampton, Bishops Juxon, Duppa, and Dr. Saunderson, Sir Orlando Bridgman, Sir Thomas Gardiner, and Mr. Geoffrey Palmer. Finally, the E4ng was to be on his parole not to attempt an escapp during the Treaty, nor for twenty days afterwards. More than one attempt of the kind had been' made during the four months of the Civil War. The wonder is that, whUe the Prince of "Wales was off the English coast with his fleet, a rescue of the King had not somehow been effected.^ Not tni Friday Sept. 15 did the Parliamentaiy Commis- sioners arrive in the Isle of Wight. They were accompanied by Messrs. Marshall, Nye, Vines, Seaman, and Caryl, from the Assembly of Divines. The Treaty began on Monday the 18th, in a house in the town of Newport selected as the most suitable for the purpose. At the head of a table, under a canopy of state, sat the King ; the Iprds, divines, and lawyers, permitted to be preseilt as listeners ■ in his behalf, stood grouped behind his chair ; the Parliamentary Commissioners sat at the sides of the table, with a space between them and his Majesty. It was hoped at first by the Commissioners that the Treaty would be a short one. That the King would accept the Propositions one by one, without criticism or demur, as fast as they could be tabled, was the desire, above all, of Holies, Glynn, and the other Presbyterian Commissioners. To their surprise, even to their horror, Charles had never been more captious or guarded in his highest kingliness than he was now found in the depths of his doubled ruin. Over the Proposition first presented — that for annulling all declara- 1 Pari. Hist. III. 1001-4 ; Commons Journals, Sept. 1. Oct. 1648.] TEEATY OV NEWPOET. 607 tions and acts against Parliament — lie was so dilatory that not till Sept. 25 was it completely passed, and then only with the proviso that his assent to it should have no force until the whole Treaty should be concluded. On the Church question, also brought forward the first day, he was more hopelessly unimpressible. The Proposition on this question being complex, he framed his first Answer so as to include only some of the points and evade the others. He consented to the establishment of Presbytery for three years, but not to the perpetual alienation of the Bishops' lands ; and as to the abolition of Episcopacy and the obligation of the Covenant he said not a word. Then, these points being pressed, he argued and re-argued, day after day, conceding only that Episcopacy should be limited, and the like, till the Commis- sioners, despairing of any full agreement oh -that Proposition, left it, and passed to others (Oct. 9). On some of these others, including that on the Militia, he chose to acquiesce at once ; but a second block occurred on the Proposition relating to Delinquents (Oct. 13 — 17). All this while, the King was the sole speaker on his side, retiring now and then to consult with his advisers, and of course framing his written Papers with their advice, but always resuming the oral debate him- self, and showing an ability both in actual reasoning and in the conduct of the business generally which surprised some of the Commissioners. The necessity of continual reference to the two Houses increased the delay. There had been various debates in both on the progress of the Treaty as re- ported by the Commissioners,' and on the 12th of October the Commons had voted the King's answer on the Church ques- tion unsatisfactory. The King, in consequence, revised his Answer on this question, and offered, among other things, to consent to the abolition of Archbishops and all other grades of the hierarchy, if the single office of Bishops were preserved. This revised Answer the Commons voted unsatisfactory, Oct. 26, the Lords agreeing substantially next day; and on the 30th of October the Commons passed a similar vote respect- ing the Answer on Delinquents. At this point, therefore, the Treaty may be considered to have come to a stop. At the 608 LIFE OP MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. same time there came to a stop a written controversy on the Church question, which had been going on collaterally between his Majesty and the Divines of the Assembly attending the Commissioners. The controversy was a repeti- tion of that between the King and Henderson at Newcastle. It had begun Oct. 2, and it was wound up by his Majesty in a long last Paper Nov. 1. It was mainly on the Episcopacy question that the Treaty was wrecked ; or rather it was on this question that the King had chosen that there should be the appearance of wreck. For, in truth, the Treaty on his side, like his former Trea- ties, had been all along a pretence. Though his doom was staring him in the face, he could not see it, but had again been mustering up wild hopes of some great turn of the wheel in his favour if he could but procrastinate enough. Had not the Marquis of Ormond, for example, effected a landing in Wexford, with a view to a junction with the Irish Eoman Catholic Confederates ? Might not something come out of that ? Qr might there not be some help yet from the Prince of Wales in Holland, or from the Queen's and Jermyn's plottings at Paris, or from the Scots after all? To take advantage of any or all of these contingencies, a temporary refuge on the Continent might be necessary ; and so, when the time of his parole should be over, a means of escape must be devised ! Such having been Charles's mood when he began the Treaty, one does not wonder at finding that he had been behaving with his usual duplicity while it was in pro- gress. " To deal freely with you," he had secretly written to one correspondent on the day when he had accepted the Pro- position on the Militia question, " the great concession I " made this day was merely in order to my escape, of which " if I had not hope, I would not have done it." Again to the Marquis of Ormond in Ireland, " Though you will hear that " this Treaty is near, or at least most likely to be, concluded, " yet believe it not ; but pursue the way you are in with all " possible vigour : deliver also that my command to all your " friends, but not in public way." With such a man, now as ever, a Treaty was absurd. Nov. 1648.] TREATY OF NEWPORT. 609 Parliament did not break off the Treaty, even when its failure had become apparent, but allowed it to straggle on. The term of forty days first fixed had been prolonged to Nov. 4, and on that day most of the Commissioners left Newport on their return to London. Six of them, however, remained behind, on the chance that his Majesty might yet see his way to more complete concessions on the Church question. On this mere chance the Treaty was prolonged to Nov. 18, and again to Nov. 25 ; and, as his Majesty had begged Parliament that he might have the assistance of such new advice on the Church question as could be given by Usher, ex-Bishops Brownrigg, Prideaux, and Warner, and Drs. Feme and Morley, leave had been granted to these divines to proceed to New- port. Nothing to the purpose came of their advice ; for in tlie King's final letters from Newport to the two Houses, dated Nov. 18 and Nov. 21, he is as firm as ever on the neces- sity and Apostolical origin of the order of Bishops, quotes 1 Timothy v. 22 and Titus i. 5 in that behalf, and protests that he can go no farther than his previous offer of a reduc- tion of Episcopacy to its barest Apostolical simplicity. On Friday the 24th of November these letters were voted un- satisfactory by both Houses, but it was resolved (not without a division in the Commons) to allow the King two days more. The Treaty was to be considered at an end on the night of Monday the 27th, and on the next day, with or without satisfaction, the Commissioners still on duty were to take their leave. By the King's parole he would be bound not to attempt an escape from the island tiU twenty days after that. Colonel Hammond, observing signs that the King meant to assume that the terms of his original parole had ceased to be binding, had prudently insisted on its public renewal.^ Meanwhile, in utter disgust at this protracted pla}' of negotiation between Parliament and the King in the Isle of Wight, there had been forming itself that other agency 1 For the account of the Treaty of worth and the Lords and Commons Newport my authorities have been— Journals ; Works of King Charles I. Pari Hist. III. 1013—1133, with re- (1651), pp. 191-286 of third pagmg ; feronoes at the chief dates to Rush- Godwin, II. 608—618. VOL. IIL ^ ^ 610 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. •which was to interpose irresistibly, and hiUTy aU to a real catastrophe. The reader knows the nature of the paction between the Parliament and the Army-chiefs which we have taken the liberty of calling by the name of The Concordat {ant^., pp. 573-4, 583-4). It was the agreement of the Army-chiefs, in Nov. 1647, to suppress for the time the democratic mani- festations of the Army and its pretensions to political dicta- tion, leaving the conduct of affairs wholly to Parliament. This Concordat, as we saw, though it saved the country from the peril of an immediate democratic revolution, was theoretically a clumsy one. The political views of the Army were singularly clear and direct. A strictly constitutional government of King, Lords, and Commons, with a large increase of the power of the Commons, guaranteed Bien- nial Parliaments, and a thoroughly Eeformed System of Eepresentation — such had been the ideal of the Army-chiefs in their Heads of Proposals of August 1647 ; the LeveUevs had gone a good deal farther in their Agreement of the People ■ in Nov. 1647, and had proposed the abolition of hereditary privileges, and the concentration of supreme power in a single Eepresentative House; but in both documents alike Liberty of Conscience and Worship was laid down as axiomatic, with a demand that it should be so recognised in the future law of England, for the benefit of Episcopalian and Papist no less than of Presbyterian, Independent, and Sectary. How could an Army burning with these notions bind itself to be the silent servant of a Parliament whose behaviour hitherto, on the religious question generally, and on the political question very often, had been so muddled and fatuous? Better surely for the Army to raise its own political flag and coerce Parliament into the right way! That this had not been done had been owing partly to the unwillingness of CromweU, Ireton, and the other chiefs to take the responsibility all at once of heading a movement in which the Levelling Principle would be let loose, but partly also because hopes had been conceived that the balance in Parliament had been turned in favour of the Independents. Nov. 1648. J ARMY ASSUMES THE MASTEKY. 611 For several months, accordingly, the Army had not repented of the Concordat. Especially in January 1 647-8, when the two Houses broke off their abortive Treaty with the King on the Four Bills, and passed their E'o- Address Eesolutions, their boldness won renewed confidence from the Army. But, in the succeeding months, when the rumour of the Scottish Engagement with the King began to rouse Eoyalists and Presbyterians alike for a new war, and the absent Presby- terians of the Commons came back to their places to turn the votes, and these votes tended to a renewed Treaty with the King on the basis of a strict Presbytery, the disband- ment of the Army, and the suppression of Sects, — then what could the Army do but spurn the Concordat? like their own previous dealings with the King himself in the hope of winning him over, had not this Concordat been, after all, but a piece of carnal and crooked policy ? To hold certain beliefs in the heart, and yet to consent to be the dumb instrument of those whose views were wholly different, or only half the same, could not be right in a reasoning body of free men, merely because they were called an Army ! What had become of Cromwell's principles, avowed so frequently that the whole Army had them by heart — the principle " That every single man is judge of just and right as to the good or ill of a kingdom,'' and the principle " That the in- terest of honest men is the interest of the kingdom " ? Nay, had not the Levellers had more of the real root of the matter in them than it had been convenient to allow, and had not the poor fellow who had been shot as a mutineer at the Eendezvous at Ware been in some sense a martyr ? Now, at all events, would it not be necessary that at least something of the spirit of the Levellers, some of those proposals of theirs which had been lately suppressed as harsh and premature, should be revived with new credit, and adopted into the general creed of the Army? That such self-reproaches for past mistakes, and such ques- tionings as to the course of future duty, had become universal in the Army before the outbreak of the Second Civil War, is proved by very abundant evidence, but nowhere more K E 2 612 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. strikingly than in the record of the famous Prayer-meeting of the Officers, with Cromwell among them, held at "Windsor Castle in March or April 1648. Adjutant-general Allen, the writer of this record, had a vivid recollection of this meeting eleven years afterwards, and could then look back upon it as an undoubted turning-point in the history of the Army and of the nation. * At that time, he says, the Army was " in a low, weak, divided, perplexed condition in all re- spects," and there were even some who, in the prospect of the Scottish invasion and a new war at such vast odds, argued that the Army ought to resist no longer, but break up, and change the policy of collective action into one of individual passive endurance. Others, however, still thought that more remained to be done in the way of active duty, and it was at their instance that the meeting was called. It lasted three days, and with most remarkable results. The first day was spent in prayer for light as to the causes of God's renewed anger and their own perplexities. On the second day Crom- well proposed, as the best method of inquiry among them- selves, that they should all simultaneously engage in, silent retrospection, both upon their own past "ways particularly as private Christians," and also upon their "public actions as an Army." If they should each and all be led, in such retrospection, to fasten on some one precise point of time as that at which the Lord had withdrawn His former counte- nance and things had begun to go wrong, might there not be a lesson in that unanimity ? And lo ! on the third day it was so. They had all, in their silent review of the past, fastened on one and the same point, as that at which their departure from the straight path of truth and simplicity had begun. It was a point beyond their Concordat with the Parliament, and lay among those prior negotiations of the Army-chiefs with the King personally out of which the Concordat had seemed a natural escape. It lay, says Alien, in "those cursed carnal conferences our conceited "wisdom, our fears, and want of faith, had prompted us, " the year before, to entertain with the King and his Party." And with this unanimous agreenient on the question where Nov. 1648.] AEMY ASSUMES THE MASTERY. 613 the steps of error had begun there came a unanimous consent as to the right course of future duty. " We were led and "helped," says Allen, "to a clear agreenient amongst our- " selves, not any dissenting. That it was the duty of our day, " with the forces we had, to go out and fight against those "potent enemies which that year in all places appeared " against us ... ; and we were also enabled then, after " serious seeking His face, to come to a very clear and joint " resolution, on many grounds at large there debated amongst " us. That it was our duty, if ever the Lord brought us back " again in peace, to caU Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to " an account for that blood he had shed and mischief he had "done -to his utmost against the Lord's Cause and People in " these poor Nations." ^ This momentous resolution of the Army Officers, formed at Windsor most probably in April 1648, or just before Crorn- well went oif to suppress the Eoyalist rising in Wales, had lain dormant, but not wholly secret, in the bosom of the Army through all the four months of the renewed Civil War (May — ^Aug.). Not till the war was over, however, was the resolution formally announced. Even then it was done gradually. The first hints came from those Independents in the Commons who were in the confidence of the Army- chiefs. In the debates preceding the Treaty of Newport some of these Independents had spoken with significant boldness, Mr. Thomas Scott for one declaring that " a peace with so perfidious and implacable a prince" was an impos- sibility ; and, in fact, the Treaty was carried by the Pres- byterians against the implied protest of the Independents. Then, just as the Treaty was beginning, there was presented to the House (Sept 11) an extraordinary document purport- ing to be " The humble Petition of Thousands of well-affected Persons inhabiting the City of London, Westminster, the Borough of South wark, Hamlets, and places adjacent." This Petition, said to have been penned by Henry Marten, was not merely a denunciation of the Treat}' ; it was a detailed 1 See Allen's striking narrative (written in 1659) quoted at length in Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 26-3-266. 614 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. democratic challenge. It proclaimed the House of Commons to be "the Supreme Authority of England," and declared that it was for this principle, and nothing short of this, that England had fought and struggled for six years ; and, after a severe lecture to the House for its pusillanimity in never yet having risen to the full height of this principle, it enu- merated twenty-seven things which were expected from it when it should do so. Among these were the repudiation of any sham of a power either in the King or in the Lords to resist the will of the Commons, the passing of a Bill for Annual Parliaments, the execution of justice on criminals of whatever rank, the "exemption of matters of Keligion and God's worship from the compulsive or restrictive power of any authority upon earth," and the consequent repeal of the recent ahsurd Ordinance "appointing punishments concerning opinions on things supernatural, styling some Blasphemies, others Heresies." Such a Petition, signed by about 40,000 persons, in or near London, hitherto pre-eminently the Presby- terian city, was a signal for similar Petitions from other parts. On the 30th of September there came a Petition in the same sense from " many thousands " of the well-affected in Oxford- shire, and on the 10th of October there were Petitions from Newcastle, York, and Hull, and from Somerset.^ These civilian Petitions having prepared the way, the Army itself spoke out at last. Since Sept. 16 the head- quarters of the Army had been at St. Alban's ; and it was thence that on the 18th of October letters from Fairfax announced to the House of Commons that Petitions from the Officers and Soldiers of different regiments had been pre- sented to him, or were in preparation, some of which were of a political nature. One, in particular, from General Ireton's regiment, called for "impartial and speedy justice" upon public criminals, and demanded "that the same fault may have the same punishment in the person of King or Lord as in the poorest Commoner.'' Such petitions to Fairfax appear to have dropped in upon him from regiment after regiment at St. Alban's during the next fortnight. One 1 Pari. Hist. III. 1005-11 ; Whitlooke, II. 413, 419. Nov. 1648.] ARMY ASSUMES THE MASTERY. 615 Petitiou, however, heard of in London Oct. 30, was from Colonel Ingoldsby's regiment, then in garrison at Oxford. It also demanded " immediate care that justice should be done upon the principal invaders of our liberties, namely the King and his party ; " it demanded, moreover, that " sufficient caution and strait bonds should be given to future Kings for the preventing the enslaving of the people ; " and it went on to say that, as the Petitioners were almost past hope of these things from Parliament, and regarded the Treaty then in progress as a delusion, they could only pray his Excellency to "re-establish a General CouncD. of the Army" to consider of some effectual remedies. This, in fact, was the practical conclusion on which the whole Army was bent, and to which all the regimental Petitions pointed. If Fairfax had yet any hesitations about complying, they must have been ended by what occurred in Parliament immediately afterwards. Not only were the two Houses still looking for some last chance from the Treaty of Newport, and extending the time of the Treaty again and again in the vain chase of this last chance ; but in another matter, which lay wholly in their own power, their " half-he artedness " became apparent. At the very time when the Independents of London and other places, and the several regiments of Fairfax's Army, were calling for exemplary justice on the chief Delinquents in the late war, what were the punishments with which the Presbyterian majority in the Parliament proposed to let off those of the Delinquents who were then in custody? For the Duke of Hamilton (Earl of Cambridge in the English Peerage, and so liable to the pains of English treason) a fine of 100,000^., with imprisonment till it should be paid ; and for the Earls of Holland and Norwich, Lord Capel, Lord Loughborough, and four others, simple banishment! Eesolutions to this effect passed the Commons Nov. 10, and were sent up for the approval of the Lords. The Army, though prepared for almost anything from the " half-heartedness " of the Parlia- ment, heard of this last exhibition of it with positive "amazement." What else, it was asked, now remained than that the Army itself as a whole should step forward, call its 616 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. masters to a reckoning, and either compel them to be- the instruments of a better policy, or take affairs into its own hands ? Fairfax, with all his prudence, could not decline the responsibility ; and accordingly a General Council of the Officers of the Army was held at St. Alban's under his presidency. It had sat about a week when (Nov. 16) a Geand Aemy EeMonsteance, to be presented to the House of Commons, was unanimously adopted.^ This Grand Army Eemonstrance of Nov. 1648 is another of those documents from the pen of Ireton which deserve to be rescued from the contemporary lumber with which they are associated, and to be carefuUy studied on account of their supreme interest in English History. The document is of most elaborate composition, and of a length about equal to fifty pages of this volume ; for, in fact, though formally addressed to the House of Commons, it was intended as a kind of Pamphlet to the English nation, setting forth the Army's views in a reasoned shape, and the programme of action on which they had resolved: — There is first an exposition of the rule Solus Fopuli lex suprema, a rule admitted to be capable of abuse and misapplication, but declared nevertheless to have a real meaning. Then there is a review of the relations between the Parliament and the Army from the time of what we have called the Concordat. Fain, it is added, would the Army have seen that Concordat perpetual ; most reluctant were they to break it. But what had happened ? Had not Parliament itself lapsed from those honest No-Address Eesolutions of ten months ago which expressed the true sense of the Concordat ? Had they not, within a few months after passing those Eesolutions, utterly forgotten them, and run after that wretched rag of delusive hope called "A Personal Treaty with the King"? Nay, though events had again proved that the fears that had partly swayed them in this direction were groundless — though the Lord had again laid bare His arm, and that small Army which they had ceased to trust and had well-nigh 1 Rushworth, VII. 1297-8, 1311-12, and 1330 : Commons Journals, Nov. 10, 1648 ; Whitlooke, 11 436. Nov. 1648.] GRAND ARMY REMONSTKANCE. 617 deserted and cast off, had been enabled to shiver all the banded strength of a second English Insurrection, aided by an invasion from Scotland — even after this rebuke from God, were they not still pursuing the same phantom of an Accom- modation ? Here the Eemonstrants argue the whole subject most earnestly. Having laid down the principle that in every State the care of all matters of public concern must be in a Supreme Eepresentative Council or Parliament, freely elected by the whole people, they maintain that any Kingship or other such office instituted in any State must be regarded as a creation of such Supreme Council for special ends and within special limits, and that any one holding such office who shall have been proved to have perseveringly abused his trust, or sought to convert it into a personal possession, may justly be called to account. They appeal to the entire re- collection of Charles's reign whether he had not been such a false King, a cause of woe and war from first to last, a functionary guilty of the highest treason. But, if the past could be considered alone, and there were reasonable chance for the present and the future, they would not be relentless. " If there were good evidence of a proportionable remorse in " him, and that his coming in again were with a new or " changed heart," then, they say, " his person might be " capable of pity, mercy, and pardon, and an accommodation " with him, with a fuU and free yielding on his part to all " the aforesaid points of public and religious interest in con- " test, might, in charitable construction, be just, and possibly " safe and beneficial." But no such ground for charity, leniency, or tenderness had been afforded by Charles. Even now, while actually treating with the Parliament after his complete second ruin, was he not the same man as ever, dissembling, prevaricating, secretly expecting something from Ormond and the Irish Eebels ? If such a man were restored to power, under whatever bonds, promises, guarantees, the consequences were but too obvious. All the credit, all the huzzas, of the new situation would be his ; he would figure for a while as the Father of his People, the Eestorer of Peace, Ease, and Freedom ; the services of the Parliament 618 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. would be forgotten, or would be remembered only as im- plicated in the confusion that had ceased ; and in a short time there would be parties, factions, divisions, and the beginnings of a new 'spider-web of Court-government and Absolutism. "Have you not found him at this play all " along 1 And do not aU men acknowledge him most ex- " quisite at it ? " So the Eemonstrance proceeds, page after page, in long, complex, wave-like sentences, every sentence vital, and the whole impressing one with the grave serious- ness of spirit, and also the political thoughtfulness, with which it was drawn up. — Towards the end come the specific demands which the Army made on the Commons, and which they were resolved to enforce. These are divided into two sets : — I. Immediate Demands. These are five. First of all, it is demanded " That the capital and grand author of our " troubles, the Person of the King, by whose commissions, " commands, or procurement, and in whose behalf and for " whose interest only, of will and power, all our wars and " troubles have been, with all the miseries attending them, " may be specially brought to justice for the treason, blood, " and mischief he is therein guilty of" Next it is demanded that a limited time be set wherein the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York may return to England and render them- selves : with the proviso that, if they do not so return, they are to be declared incapable for -ever of any government or trust in the kingdom, and are to be treated without mercy as enemies and traitors if ever afterwards they are found in England ; and also that, if they do return within the limited time, their cases are to be severally considered, and their past delinquencies (the Prince's being greatest, and " in appearance next unto his father's ") either remitted or remembered for penalty as may be found fit ; but that in any case all the estates and revenue of the Crown be sequestered for a good number of years, and applied to public uses, with reserve of a reasonable provision for the Eoyal Family and for old Crown-servants. Then it is demanded that a competent number of the King's chief instruments in the two Civil Wars may be brought, with him, to capital punishment. Nov. 1648.] GRAND AKMY REMONSTRANCE. 619 With this satisfaction to justice the Eemonstrants would be content ; and they recommend that there should be moderate and clement treatment of other Delinquents willing to submit, but with perpetual banishment and the confiscation of estates for those of them who should remain obdurate. Finally, the special claims of the Arm3' are brought forward, and it is demanded that there shall be full payment of their damages and arrearages. — II. Prospective Demands. These point to the future Political Constitution of England. Under this head the Army demand (1 ) a termination of the existing Parliament within a reasonable time ; (2) a guaranteed suc- cession of subsequent Parliaments, annual or biennial, to be elected on such a system of suffrage and of redistribution of constituencies as should make them really representative of the whole people ; (3) the temporary disfranchisement and disqualification of the King's adherents; and (4) a strict provision that Parliament, as the representative body of the people, should henceforth be supreme in all things, except such as would requestiori the policy of the Civil War itself, and such as might trench on the foundations of common Eight, Liberty, and Safety. In this last provision it is de- finitely stipulated as a necessary item that, should Kingship be kept up in England, it should be as an elective oflSce merely, every successive holder of which should be chosen expressly by Parliament, and should have no veto or negative voice on laws passed by the Parliament.^ This vast document, signed officially by John Eushworth, " by the appointment of his Excellency the Lord General and his General Council of OflScers," was brought to the Com- mons, with a brief note from Fairfax himself, on Monday, Kov. 20. It was presented in all form by a deputation of officers, consisting of Colonel Ewer, Lieutenant-colonels Kelsay, Axtell, and Cooke, and three Captains. The House was thunderstruck, and for some hours there was a high and fierce debate. Some of the Independents among the members spoke manfully in favour of the Eemonstrance ; others were 1 See the entire Remonstrance (well worth reading) in Pari. Hist. III. 1077 —1127. 620 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. for temporizing ; but the more resolute Presbyterians, amonw whom Prynne was conspicuous, resented the Eemonstrance as an insolence " subversive of the law of the land and the fundamental constitutions of the kingdom," and protested that " it became not the House of Commons, who are a part of the Supreme Council of the Nation, to be prescribed to, or regulated and baffled by, a CouncU of Sectaries in Arms." Nothing of all this appears in the Journals of the House, but only this entry : " Ordered, That the debate upon the Eemon- " strance of the General and his General Council of Officers " be resumed on Monday next." That " Monday next " was the 27th of November, the very day on which the Houses had agreed that the negotiations with the King at Newport should finally cease.^ Cromwell, it is to be remembered, was not at this time in the immediate scene of action. After his victory over Hamilton at Preston (Aug. 17 — 19), he had remained in the north, to recover Berwick and Carlisle from the Scots, dispose of the remnant of the Scottish invading forces under Monro, and take such other measures against the Scottish Govern- ment as that no more should be feared from that quarter. His task had been easy. The " Engagement " with the King, and the consequent invasion of England by a Scottish army in the King's interest, had been, as we know (ant^, p. 589), the acts only of the Scottish party then in power, the party of Hamilton and Lanark; and they had been vehemently opposed and disowned by the party of Argyle and Loudoun, backed by the popular sentiment and by nearly the entire body of the Scottish clergy. When, there- fore, the news of the disaster at Preston reached Scotland, the "Anti-Engagers" rose everywhere against the Govern- ment of the existing Committee of Estates, assailed it with reproaches and execrations, and prepared to call it to account. Lanark, who had been left as the chief of the Government 1 Commons Journals, Nov. 20, 1648 ; a contemporary account of the debate Whitlooke, same date ; Pari. Hist. III. in the Mercwrins Pragmaticue). 1127-8 (where extracts are given from Sept.— Nov. 1648.] CKOMWELL IN THE NORTH. 621 after the capture of his brother, endeavoured for a while to hold his ground. He recalled Monro and the relics of the Scottish army from England, and took the field with their joint forces. Meanwhile, the zealous Covenanting peasantry of the western shires, nicknamed Whigs or WMga- mores, having obeyed the summons of Argyle, Loudoun, and the Earls of Eglinton and Cassilis, and marched eastward to assist their brethren round Edinburgh, the forces of the Anti-Engagers had swelled into an army of more than 6,000 men, the command of which was assumed by old Leslie, Earl of Leven, with David Leslie under him. For some time the two armies, or portions of them, moved about in East Lothian, and between Edinburgh and Stirling ; there were some skirmishes ; and a conflict seemed imminent. In reality, however, most of the noblemen of the Committee of Estates had no heart for the enterprise into which Lanark was leading them. They saw it to be desperate, not only from the strength of the Whigamore rising in Scotland itself, but also because Cromwell was at hand in the north of England, in communication with Argyle and the other Whigamore chiefs, and ready to cross the borders for their help, if necessary. Accordingly, after some negotia- tion, a Treaty was arranged (Sept. 26). By the terms of this Treaty, Monro was to return to Ireland with his special por- tion of the troops ; but otherwise both armies, were to be disbanded, Lanark and all who had been concerned with him in the Engagement retiring from all places of trust, and the government of Scotland to be confirmed in the hands of Argyle and the Whigamores, who had already constituted themselves the new Committee of Estates de, facto. Although this arfangement had been effected without Cromwell's direct interference, he was actually in Scotland when it was made, having crossed the Tweed on the 21st of September with an army of horse and foot. The next day he had been met by Argyle, Lord Elcho, and others, as a Deputation from the new Committee of Estates, bearing letters signed.in the name of the Committee by their Chan- cellor Loudoun. The new Government of Scotland most 622 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. handsomely surrendered to Cromwell the towns of Carlisle and Berwick, with apologies for tjie conduct of their pre- decessors in having seized them ; and Cromwell, delaying some days about Berwick to see all duly performed there, was able to write letters thence to Fairfax and Speaker Lenthall (Oct. 2), praising Argyle and Elcho, and announcing that there was a very good understanding between "the Honest Party of Scotland " and himself. It was involved in this understanding, however, that Cromwell should visit Edinburgh, and add the weight of his personal presence to the re-establishment of the Argyle Government on the ruins of that of the Hamiltons. On "Wednesday, Oct. 4, therefore, he did enter Edinburgh, with his officers and guard, and with Sir Arthur Haselrig in their company. They were escorted into the city with aU ceremony by the authorities, and lodged by them in Moray House in the Canongate, the finest mansion at hand for their reception. For four days the people of Edinburgh, waiting in crowds outside Moray House, had the opportunity of studying the features of the great English Independent as he came out or went in, passing the English sentries on guard at the gate. For the Whigamore nobles and those select citizens, including the magistrates and city clergy, who had the privilege of calling on him, the oppor- tunities were, of course, still closer ; and on the fourth day (Saturday, Oct. 7) there was a sumptuous banquet in the Castle to him and his officers, at which the old Earl of Leven presided, and the Marquis of Argyle and other lords of the Committee of Estates were present. So ended Cromwell's memorable first visit to Edinburgh ; and, his real object having been accomplished (which was to pledge the new Government of Scotland, and especially Argyle, to alliance in future with the advanced EngUsh party), he began his return journey southwards on the same day, only leaving Lambert, with two regiments of horse and two troops of dragoons, to be at the service of the Argyle Government so long as they might be wanted. A week later (Oct. 14) he was at Carlisle, seeing after the surrender of that town ; and in the beginning of Fovember he was at Sept.— Nov. 1648.] CROMWELL IN THE NOETII. 623 Pontefract in Yorkshire. Here he was to be delayed a while. The Oastle of Pontefract, a very strong place, commanded by one Morris, still held out for the King, and was the refuge of much of the fugitive Cavalierism of the surrounding district, now in a mood of actual desperation. Sallies from the Castle for robbery and revenge had been frequent ; and, just as Cromwell was expected in the neighbourhood, a party of the desperadoes, riding out in disguise, had gone as far as Don- caster, obtained admission to the lodging of Colonel Eains- borough there, under pretence of bringing him letters from Cromwell, and left him stabbed dead (Sunday, Oct. 29). The business of pacifying Yorkshire, which otherwise might have been left to Eainsborough, thus devolved upon Cromwell. He siimmoned Pontefract Castle to surrender Nov. 9 ; and, the surrender having been refused, he remained at Pontefract all the rest of that month, superintending the siege.-^ Thus, through the three months in which the English Army and Independents were waxing more and more indignant at the Treaty with the King at Newport, and determining to break it down, and to bring the King to trial for his life with or without the concurrency of Parliament, Cromwell, as we said, was away from the immediate scene of action. There is not the least doubt, however, that he was aware generally of the proceedings of his friends in the south, and that one of their encouragements was the knowledge that Crom- well was with them. There are, however, actual proofs. Thus, about the middle of September, or just after the pre- sentation to the Commons of the great London Petition asking the Commons to declare themselves the supreme authority of England, one finds Henry Marten, the framer of that Petition, on a journey to the north, for the purpose 1 Burnet's Hamiltons (edit. 1852), 465 ties ; and the nickname was derived, — 482 ; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 299 — it is supposed, either from the sound 333 ; Eushworth, VII. 1314-15. The Whigh (meaning Gee-tip) used by the first open occurrence of the word Whiff peasantry of those parts in driving their in British History was, I believe, in the horses, or simply from the word W!i,et/ circumstances described in the text at (in Anglo-Saxon hwag), by comparison p. 621. The original Whigs were fiie of the solemn Presbyterians to the sour zealous Covenanting peasants, or true- watery part of milk separated from the blue Presbyterians, of Ayrshire, Lanark- curd in making cheese, shire, and other western Scottish coun- 624 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. of consulting with Cromwell, then on his way to Scotland, Their consultation cannot have been for nothing. At all events, after Cromwell returned into England and engaged in the siege of Pontefract Castle, his letters attest his interest in the proceedings of Ireton and the other Army officers at St. Alban's. In one letter, dated " near Pontefract," Nov. 20, he expresses his own anger and that of his officers at the recent lenient votes of the Commons in the case of the Duke of Hamilton and the other eminent Delinquents. On the same day he writes in the same sense to Fairfax, and forwards Petitions from the regiments under his command in aid of those which Fairfax had already received from the southern regiments. When these letters were written Cromwell had not heard of the adoption at St. Alban's of the Grand Army Eemonstrance drawn up by his son-in-law, or at least did not know that on that very day it had been presented to the Commons. Before the 25th of November, however, he had received this news too, and had a fuU foresight of what it portended. For that is the date of one of the most remark- able letters he ever wrote, his letter from " Knottingley near Pontefract" to Colonel Eobert Hammond, Governor of the Isle of Wight. This young Colonel, upon whom the sore trial had fallen of having the King for his prisoner, was, as we have said, one of Cromwell's especial favourites, and the long letter which Cromwell now addressed to him was in reply to one just received from Hammond, imparting to Cromwell his doubts respecting the recent proceedings of the Army, and his own agony of mind in the difficult and complicated duties of his office in the Isle of Wight. Cromwell's letter, so occasioned, begins " Dear Eobin," and is conceived through- out in terms of the most anxious affection, struggling with a half-expressed purpose. He reasons earnestly with Ham- mond on his doubts and scruples, sympathizing with them so far, but at the same time combating them, and suggesting such queries as these — "first, Whether Salus Populi be a " sound position ? secondly, Whether in the way in hand " [i.e. the Parliamentary rule as then experienced], really and " before the Lord, before whom Conscience has to stand, this Nov. 1648.] THE KING EEMOVED TO HUEST CASTLE. 625 "be provided for ? thirdly. Whether this Army be not a "lawful Power, called by God to oppose and fight against " the King upon some stated grounds, and, being in power " to such ends, may not oppose one Name of Authority, for " these ends, as well as another Name ? " \i.e. may not oppose Parliament itself as well as the King.] He refers to the Grand Army Eemonstrance, of the publication of which he has just heard. " "We could perhaps have wished the stay "of it till after the Treaty," he says, for himself and the ofi&cers of his northern part of the Army ; " yet, seeing it ' " is come out, we trust to rejoice in the will of the Lord, "waiting His further pleasure." Again returning to the main topic, Hammond's scruples, he pleads almost yearn- ingly jwith him : "Dear Eobin, beware of men; look up to the Lord." Had Hammond really reasoned himself, with other good men, into that excess of the passive-obedience principle which maintained that as much good might come to England by an accommodation with the King as by breaking with him utterly? "Good by this Man," Cromwell exclaims, "against whom the Lord has witnessed, and whom thou knowest ! " Then, after a few more sentences : " This " trouble I have been at," he concludes, " because my soul " loves thee, and I would not have thee swerve, or lose any " glorious opportunity the Lord puts into thy hand."i Cromwell's letter to Hammond was too late for its purpose. At Fairfax's head-quarters at St. Alban's it had been resolved that, until there should be a satisfactory answer from the Commons to the Army's Eemonstrance, the Army must secure the main object of that Eemonstrance by taking the King's person into its own custody. For the. management of this business it was most important that the ofQcer in command in the Isle of Wight should be one of unflinching Army principles. Hence, as the amiable Hammond's scruples were well known, and had indeed been communicated by him to Fairfax as well as to CromweU, it had been resolved, partly in 1 Eushworth, VII. 1265 ; Lords Journals, Nov. 21 (Hammond's Letter) ; Carlyle's CromweU, I. 333—346. VOL. IIL S S 626 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISXOKY OF HIS TIME. pity to him, partly in the interest of the business itself, to withdraw him from the Isle of Wight at that critical moment. Accordingly, on the 21st of November, Fairfax had penned a letter to Hammond from St. Alban's, requiring his presence with all possible speed at head-quarters, and ordering him to leave the island meanwhile in charge of Colonel Ewer, the bearer of the letter. This letter did not reach Hammond tUl Nov. 25 (the very day when Cromwell was writing to him from Yorkshire) ; and it was not then delivered to him by Colonel Ewer in person, but by a messenger. The next day, Sunday, Nov. 26, Hammond wrote from Carisbrooke Castle to the two Houses of Parliament, informing them of what had happened, enclosing a copy of Fairfax's letter, and signifying his intention of obeying it. This communication was brought to London with all haste by Major Henry CromweU, Ohver's second son, then serving under Hammond, and was the subject of discussion in both Houses on the 27th. Fairfax's inter- vention between Parliament and one of its servants was con- demned as unwarrantable ; a letter to that effect, but in mild terms, was written to Fairfax ; and Major Cromwell was sent back with a despatch from both Houses to Hammond, in- structing him to- remain at his post. Before tliis despatch reached Hammond, however, there had been a meeting be- tween him and Ewer, and some intricate negotiations, the result of which was that he and Ewer left the island together, Nov. 28, bound for the Army's head-quarters (then removed to Windsor) — Hammond entrusting the charge of the island in his absence, with strict care of the King's person, to Major Eolph and Captain Hawes, his subordinates at Newport, in conjunction with Captain Bowerman, the commandant at Carisbrookft' Castle. Ewer having thus succeeded in with- drawing Hammond from his post, and having doubtless made other necessary arrangements while he hovered about the island, the execution of what remained was left to other hands, and principally to Lieutenant-colonel Cobbet and a Captain Merryman.^ ' LordsJom-naIs,Nov.27and30;ParI. 1338 e( «j. Inmost modern accounts Hist. III. 1133 efwt;.; Rudiworth, VII, Ewevsimply comes to the lale of Wight, Nov. 1648.] THE KINO REMOVED TO HUEST CASTLE. 627 Not till the evening of Thursday, Nov. 30, does any sus- picion of what was intended seem to have been aroused in the mind of the King. He was then still in his lodgings in Newport. The Treaty had come to an end three days before ; the Parliamentary Commissioners for the Treaty had returned to London ; most of the Eoyalist Lords and other Counsellors who had been assisting the King in the Treaty had also gone; only the Duke of Eichmond, the Earls of Lindsey and South- ampton, and some few others, remained. The stir through the island attending the close of the Treaty and the departure of so many persons had probably covered the coming and going of Ewer, his interview with Hammond, and certain arrivals and shiftings of troops which he had managed. But on the Thursday evening, about eight o'clock, the Duke of Eichmond, the Earl of Lindsey, and a certain Colonel Cook, who was with them, were summoned from their lodgings in the town to the King's. A warning had that moment been conveyed to his Majesty that there were 'agents of the Army at hand to carry him off. Immediately Colonel Cook went to Major Eolph's room, and interrogated him on the subject. The answers were cautious and unsatisfactory. The fact was, though Major Eolph dared not then divulge it, that he and his fellow-deputies. Captain Hawes and Captain Eowerman, knew themselves to be superseded by Lieutenant-colonel Cobbet and Captain Merryman, who had arrived that day with a fresh warrant from Fairfax and the Army Council, empowering them to finish what Ewer had begun. Only inferring from Eolph's uneasiness that something was wrong, Colonel Cook returned to the King and the two Lords. There was farther consultation, and a second call on Eolph ; after which Cook volunteered to go to Carisbrooke Castle for farther information. It was an excessively dark night, with high wind and plashing rain ; and the King consented to the Colonel's going only after observing that he was young and might take no harm from it. The Colonel, accordingly, groped displaces Hammond, and removes the action, and perhaps the principal in it ; King. Not so by any means. It was but, except in his interview with Ham- a complicated transaction of seven or mond, he keeps in the background, eight days ; Ewer was in the trans- S S 2 628 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. his way through the dark and rain oyer the mile and a half of road or cross-road intervening between Newport and the Castle. His object was to see the commandant, Captain Bowerman. After some considerable time, spent under the shelter of the gateway, he was admitted and did see Captain Bowerman, but only to find him sitting sulkily with about a dozen strange officers, who were evidently his masters for the moment, and prevented his being in the least com- municative. Nothing was left for the Colonel but to grope his way back to Newport. It was near midnight when, with his clothes drenched with wet, he reached the Kiug's lodgings; and there, what a change ! Guards all round the house ; guards at every window ; sentiuels ui the passages, and up to the very door of the King's chamber, armed with matchlocks and with their matches burning ! Major Eolph, glad to be out of the business, had gone to bed. They managed to rouse him, and to get the sentinels, with their smoke, removed to a more tolerable distance from the King's chamber-door. Then, for an hour or more, there was an anxious colloquy in the King's chamber, the Duke of Eichmond and the Earl of Lindsey urging some desperate attempt to escape, but the King dubious and full of objections. Nothing could be done ; and, about one o'clock, the Earl and the Colonel retired, leaving the King to rest, with the Duke in attendance upon him. There were then several hours of hush within, disturbed by sounds of moving and tramping without; but between five and six in the morning there came a loud Icnocking at the door of the King's dressing-room. When it had been opened, after some delay, a number of officers entered, headed by Colonel Cobbet. Making their way into the Bang's chamber, they informed him that they had instructions to remove him. On his asking whither, they answered, " To the Castle;" and, on his farther asking whether they meant Carisbrooke Castle, they answered, after some hesitation, that their orders were to remove him out of the island altogether, and that the place was to be Hurst Castle on the adjacent Hampshire mainland. Kemarking that they could not have named a worse place, the King rose, was allowed to summon Nov. 1648.] THE KING REMOVED TO HURST CASTLE. 629 the Earl of Lindsey and all the rest of his household, and had breakfast. At eight o'clock coaches and horses were ready, and the King, having chosen about a dozen of his most confi- dential servants to accompany him, and taken a farewell of the rest of the sorrowing company, placed himself in charge of Colonel Cobbet and the troop of horse waiting to be his escort. Having seated himself in his coach, he invited Mr. Harrington, Mr. Herbert, and Mr. Mildmay to places beside him. Colonel Cobbet, as the commander of the party, was about to enter the coach also, when his Majesty put up his foot by way of barrier ; whereupon Cobbet, somewhat abashed, contented himself with his horse. The cavalcade then set out, gazed after by all Newport, the Duke of Eichmond allowed to accompany it for two miles. A journey of some eight miles farther brought them to the western end of the island, a little beyond Yarmouth ; whence a vessel conveyed them, over the little strip of intervening sea, to Hurst Castle that same afternoon (Dec, 1). The so-called Castle was a strong, solitary, stone blockhouse, which had been buUt, in the time of Henry VIII., at the extremity of a long narrow spit of sand and shingle projecting from the Hampshire coast towards the Isle of Wight. It was a rather dismal place ; and the King's heart sank as he entered it, and was confronted by a grim fellow with a bushy black beard, who announced himself as the captain in command. The possibility of pri- vate assassination flashed on the King's mind at the sight of such a jailor. But, Colonel Cobbet having superseded the rough phenomenon, the King was reassured, and things were arranged as comfortably as the conditions would permit.^ Meanwhile Fairfax and the Army, by whose orders, all punctually written and dated, this abduction of the King had been effected, were on the move to take advantage of it. On Monday the 27th of November, the Commons, instead of taking up the consideration of the Grand Army Kemonstrance 1 Rushworth, VII. 1344^8 (narrative tert's Memoirs of Charles I. 112—124. of Colonel Cook) ; 76. 1351 and Pari. The day of the King's abduction from Hist. III. 1147-8 (Letter to Parliament Newport has been variously dated by from Major Eolph and Captains Hawes historians. It was really Friday, Dec. and Bowerman) ; and Sir Thomas Her- 1. 630 LIFE OF MILT03Sr AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. as they had proposed, had again adjourned the subject. On Wednesday the 29th, accordingly, there was a fresh manifesto from Fairfax and his Council of Officers at Windsor. After complaining of the delays over the Eemonstrance and of the continued infatuation of the Commons over the farce of the Newport Treaty, they proceeded, " For the present, as the case " stands, we apprehend ourselves obliged, in duty to God, " this kingdom, and good men therein, to improve 'our utmost " abilities, in all honest ways, for the avoiding those great " evils we have remonstrated, and for prosecution of the " good things we have propounded ; " and they concluded with this announcement, "For all these ends we are now " drawing up with the Army to London, there to follow Pro- " vidence as God shall clear our way." This document, signed by Eushworth, reached the Commons on the 30th. They affected to ignore it, and still refused, by a majority of 125 to 58, to proceed to the consideration of the Army's Ee- monstrance. Next day, Friday Dec. 1, the tune was some- what changed. The advanced guards of the Army were then actually at Hyde Park Corner, and the City and the two Houses were in terror. Saturday, Dec. 2, consummated the business. Despite an order bidding him back, Fairfax was then in Whitehall, his head-quarters close to the two Houses, and his regiments of horse and foot distributed round about. London and Westminster were, in fact, once more in the Army's possession. Nevertheless both Houses met that day in due form, and there was a violent debate in the Commons over the Treaty as affected by the new turn of affairs. The debate broke off late in the afternoon, when it was adjourned tiU Monday by a majority of 132 to 102. The news of the abduction of the King to Hurst Castle had not yet reached London, and Cromwell was still believed to be at Pontefract.' 1 Commons and Lords Journals of Nov. 27 to Deo. 2, 1648 : Pari. Hist. III. 11S4 —1146 ; Rushworth, VII. 1349-50. CHAPTER II. TROUBLES IN THE BAIIBICAN HOUSEHOLD : CHEISTOPHER MILTON's COMPOSITION SUIT : MR. POWELL's COMPOSITION SUIT : DEATH OF MR. POWELL: HIS WILL: DEATH OP MILTON 's FATHER SONNET XIV. AND ODE TO JOHN RODS — ITALIAN REMINISCENCES : LOST LETTERS FROM CARLO DATI OP FLORENCE ! MILTOn's REPLY TO THE LAST OF THEM PEDAQOGT IN THE BARBICAN : LIST OF MILTON'S known PUPILS ; LADY EANELAGH EDUCATIONAL RE- FORM STILL A QUESTION : HARTLIB AGAIN : THE INVISIBLE COL- LEGE : YOUNG ROBERT BOYLE AND WILLIAM PETTY REMOVAL FROM BARBICAN TO HIGH HOLBORN — MEDITATIONS AND OCCUPA- TIONS IN THE HOUSE IN HIGH HOLBORN : MILTON's SYMPATHIES WITH THE ARMY CHIEFS AND JHE EXPECTANT REPUBLICANS STILL UNDER THE BAN OP THE PRESBYTERIANS : TESTIMONY OF THE LONDON MINISTERS AGAINST HERESIES AND BLASPHEMIES : MILTON IN THE BLACK LIST— ANOTHER LETTEtt FROM CARLO DATI : TRANSLATION OP NINE PSALMS PROM THE HEBREW— MILTON THROUGH THE SECOND CIVIL WAR : HIS PERSONAL INTEREST IN IT, AND DELIGH?r IN THE ARMY'S TRIUMPH : HIS SONNET TO FAIRFAX — BIRTH OF MILTON'S SECOND CHILD : ANOTHER LETTER FROM CARLO DATI. The two years and four months of English History tra- versed in the last chapter were of momentous interest to Milton at the time, were preparing an official career of eleven years for him at the very centre of affairs, and were to fm- nish him with matter for comment, and indeed with risk and responsibility, to the end of his days. While they were actually passing, however, his life was rather private in its tenor, and we have to seek him not so much in public manifestations as in his household and among his books. 632 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OP HIS TIME. TKOUBLBS IN THE BAEBICAN HOUSEHOLD : CHEISTOPHEE MIL- TON'S COMPOSITION SUIT : ME. POWBLL's COMPOSITION SUIT : DEATH OF ME. POWELL : HIS WILL : DEATH OF MILTON'S FATHEE. We left the household in Barbican a rather overcrowded one, consisting not merely of Milton, his wife, their newly- born little girl, his father, and his two nephews, but also of his Eoyalist father-in-law Mr. Powell, with Mrs. Powell, and several of their children, driven to London by the wreck of the famUy fortunes at Oxford. Por some months, we now find, the state of poor Mr. Powell's affairs continued to be a matter of anxiety to all concerned. On the 6th of August, 1646, or as soon as possible after Mr. PoweU's arrival in London, he had applied, as we saw, to the Committee at Goldsmiths' Hall for liberty to compound for that portion of his sequestered Oxfordshire estates which was yet recoverable. Milton's younger brother, Christopher, we saw, was at the same time engaged in a simUar trouble- some business. He too was .suing out pardon for his delin- quency on condition of the customary fine on his property ; and, according to his own representation to the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee, the sole property he had consisted of a single house in the city of London, worth 4:01. a year. The Goldsmiths' HaU Committee being then overburdened with similar applications of Delinquents from aU parts of England, the cases of Mr. PoweU and Christopher Milton had waited their turn. The case of Christopher Milton came on first. His delin- quency had been very grave. He had actually served as one of the King's Commissioners for sequestrating the estates of Parliamentarians in three English counties. There seems, therefore, to have been a disposition at head-quarters to be severe with him. On the 24th of September the Committee at Goldsmiths' Hall did fix his fine for his London property at 80^. {i.e. a tenth of its whole value calculated at twenty years' piirchase), receiving the first moiety of 40^. down, and Aug.— Deo. 1646.] TROUBLES IN BAEBICAN. 633 accepting "William Keech, of Pleet Street, Londou, gold- beater,'' as Christoplier's co-surety for the payment of the second moiety within three months. But they do not seem to have been satisfied that the young barrister had given a correct account of his whole estate ; and it was intimated to him that, while the 80^. would restore to him his London property, the House of Commons would look farther into his case, and he might have more to pay on other grounds. In fact, his case was protracted not only through the rest of 1646, but for five years longer, the Goldsmiths' Hall Com- mittee never letting him completely off all that while, but instituting inquiries repeatedly in Berks and Suffolk, with a view to ascertain whether he had not concealed properties in those counties in addition to the small London property for which he had compounded.^ Mr. Powell's case, for different reasons, was more complex. On the 21st of Nov. 1646, or somewhat more than three months after he had petitioned the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee for leave to compound, he sent in the necessary " Particular of Eeal and Personal Estate " by which his composition was to be rated. He had been living all the while in his son-in-law's house in Barbican ; and the delay may have arisen from those circumstances of perplexity, already known to the reader {anU, pp. 473 — 483), which rendered it difficult for him to estimate what the amount of his remaining property might really be. In the "Particular" now sent in, though he still designates himself "Eichard Powell of Forest-hill," the Forest-hill man- sion and lands are totally omitted, as no longer his property in any practical sense, but transferred by legal surrender to his creditor Sir Eobert Pye. AU that he can put on paper as his 1 It is rather difficult to follow Chris- ending, Sept. 24, in the imposition of a topher Milton's case through the Com- fine of &QI. for his London property, position Keoords and other notices re- -with a hint that there might be farther specting it ; but here is the substance demand (Hamilton, 62 and 129-30, and of the first of thsm:— Aug. 7, 1646, Todd, 1. 162-3) ; Vndattd, hut seemingly Delinquent's Application to Compound, after Dec. 1646, Note of Christopher ■withstatementof his property, referred Milton as a defaulter for the latter to Sub-Committee (Hamilton's Milton moiety of his fine (Hamilton, 62). The Papers, 128, 129) ; Av^. and Sept. 1646, case runs on through subsequent years Various proposals of the Committee as to 1652 ; nay, as late as Feb. 1657-8 to the amount of his fine— at 801. or there is a trace of it (Hamilton, 130, "a tenth," at 200^. or "a third"— Document Ixvi.). 634 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OP HIS TIME. own is now (1) his small Wheatley property of 40Z. a year; (2) his " personal estate in corn and household stuff," left at Forest-hill before the siege of Oxford, and estimated at 500?. if it could be properly recovered and sold ; (3) his much more doubtful stock of " timber and wood," also left at Forest-hill, and worth 400^. on a similar supposition ; and (4) debts owing to him to the amount of 1001. Against these calculated assets, of about 1,800Z. altogether, he pleads, however, a burden of 400Z., with arrears of interest, due to Mr. Ash worth by mortgage of the Wheatley property, and also 1,200Z. of debts to various people, and a special debt of 300Z. " owing upon a statute " to his son-in-law Mr. John Milton. As a reason for leniency, the fact is moreover stated that he had lost 3,0001. by the Civil War. Actually, if his account is correct, he was insolvent ; or, if his debt to his son-in-law were regarded as cancelled, he had but about 200Z. left in the world. In criticising his account, however, the Committee would be sharp-sighted. They would remember that it was his interest, on the one hand, to rate his debts and losses at the highest figure, and, on the other hand, to represent at the lowest figure all his remaining property, except those items of " corn and household stuff," and " timber and wood," which he held to have been illegally disposed of by Parliamentary officials, and for the recovery of which he might bring forward a claim against Parliament. How the Committee, or the sub-Committee to whom the case was referred Nov. 26, did proceed in their calculations can only be conjectured; but the result was that they charged Mr. Powell on his whole returned property, without any allowance whatever for his debts. This appears from three documents in the State Paper OfBce, all of date Dec. 1646. On the 4th of that month Mr. Powell went through the two formalities required by law of every Delinquent before composition. He subscribed the National Covenant in the presence of " William Barton, minister of John Zachary" (the same clergyman who had administered the Covenant to Christopher Milton seven months before) ; and he took the so-called "Negative Oath" in presence of another witness. On the same day, before a Jan. 1646-7.] ME. POWELL'S DEATH. 635 third witness, he took another and more special oath, to the effect that the debts mentioned in his return to the Gold- smiths' Hall Committee were genuine debts, "truly and really owing by him," and that the estimate of his losses by the Civil War there set down was also just. Nevertheless, in the paper drawn up on the 8th of December by two of the Goldsmiths' Hall officials, containing an abstract of Mr. Powell's case, in which his own statements are accepted, and notice is taken of a request he had made for an allowance of 4001. off the value of the Wheatley property on account of the mortgage to that amount with which it was burdened, the fine is fixed by these ominous words at the close : " Pine at 2 yeeres value, 180^." The officials had been strict as Shylock. Taking the Wheatley property at Mr. Powell's own valuation of 40Z. a year, without allowing his claim of a half off for the Ashworth mortgage, they had added 50^. a year as the worth of the remaining 1,000?. made up by the three other capital items in his return, and thus appraised him as worth 901 a year in all. At the customary rate of two years' value, his fine therefore was to be ISO?. The debts of the Delin- quent might amount to more than his estimated property, as he said they did ; but that was a matter between himself and the world at large, and not between him and the Commis- sioners for Compositions.^ Either the decision of the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee broke Mr. PoweU down unexpectedly, or he had been ailing before it came. It is possible, indeed, that he had been con- fined to Milton's house during the negotiation, signing the Covenant and other necessary documents there, and unable to walk even the little distance between Barbican and Gold- smiths' Hall. Certain it is that he died there on or about the 1st of January, 1646-7, leaving the following wHl, executed but a day or two before : — 1 The documents the substance of which the Lords favoured against which is here given will be found in Eous's {antS, pp. 425 and 512). He the Appendix to Hamilton's Milton may have been an acquaintance of Papers ftjp. 76— 78).— The Rev. William Milton's; at all events, as minister of Barton seems to be the pei-son of that a church in Aldersgate Ward, he was name ah-eady known to us as author eonvoniently near to Barbican, of that Metrical Version of the Psalms 636 LIFK OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. " In the name of God, Amen ! — I, Eichard Powell, of Forresthill, alias Forsthill, in the countie of Oxon, Esquire, being sick and weak. of bodie, but of perfect minde and memorie, I praise God therefore this thirtieth dale of December in the years of our Lord God one thousand six hundred fortie and six, doe make and declare this my ■will and testament in manner and forme following : — First and principallie, I comend my soule to the hands of Almighty God luy Maker, trusting by the meritts, death, and passion of his sonn Jesus Christ, my Eedeemer, to haye life everlastings and my bodie I comitt to the earth from whence it came, to be decentlie interred according to the discretion of my Executor hereafter named. — And, for my worldlie estate which God hath blessed me withall, I will and dispose as foUoweth : — Imprimis, I give and bequeathe unto Kichard Powell, my eldest son, my house at Forresthill, alias Forsthm, in the countie of Oxford, with all the household stuffe and goods there now remaining, and compounded for by me since at Goldsmiths' HaU, together with the woods and timber there remaining; and all the landes to my said house of Forresthill belonging and heretofore therewith used, together with the fines and profitts of the said landes and tenements, to the said Eichard Powell and his heires and assignes for ever : to this intent and purpose, and it is the true meaiing of this my last will, that my landes and goods shalbe first employed for the satisfieing of my debts and funerall expenses, and afterwards for the raiseing of portions for his brothers and sisters soe far as the estate will reach, allowing as much out of the estate abovementioned unto my said sonn Eichard Powell as shall equal the whole to be devided amongst his brothers and sisters, that is to sale the one halfe of the estate to himselfe and the other halfe to be devided amongst his brothers and sisters that are not alredie provided for ; in which devision my will is that his sisters have a third parte more than Ms brothers. — My will and desire is that my said sonn Eichard doe, out of my said landes and personal! estate herein mentioned, satisfy his mother, my dearely-beloved wife Ann Powell, that bond I have entered into for the makeing her a joynture, which my estate is not in a condition now to dischardge. — And, lastlie, I doe by this my last will and testament make and ordaine my sonn Eichard Powell my sole executor of this my last will, and I doe hereby revoke all former wills by me made whatsoever. And my will farther is that, in case my sonn Eichard Powell shall not accept the executorshipp, then I doe hereby constitute and appointe, and doe earnestly desire, my dearely beloved wife Ann PoweU to be my sole executrix, and to take upon her the mannageing of my estate abovementioned to the uses and purposes herein expressed. And, in case she doe refuse the same, then I desire my loveing friend Master John Ellston of Forresthill to take the executorshipp uppon him and to performs this my will as is herebefore expressed ; to whom I give twentie shillings, to buy him a ring. And my earnest desire is that my wife and my sonn have no difference con- Jan. 1646-7.] MK. POWELL'S WILL. 637 ceming this my tcill and estate. — Item, I give and 'beqneatlie to my sonn Eichard Powell all my houses and landes at Whately in the countie of Oxford, and all other my estate reall and personall in the kingdom of England and dominion of Wales, to the use, intent, and purpose above herein expressed : And my desire is that my daughter Milton be had a reguard to in the satisfieing of her portion, and adding thereto in case my estate will beare it. And, for this estate last bequeathed, in case my sonn take not upon him the executor- shipp, then my will is my beloved wife shall be sole executrix, unto whom I give the landes and goods last abovementioned, to the uses and purposes herein mentioned. In case she refuses, then I appoint Master John EUstone my executor, to the uses and purposes above- mentioned. — In witness hereof I have hereto put my hand and seale the daie and yeare first above-written. — For the further strengthening of this my last wUl, I doe constitute and appoint my loveing friends, Sir John Curson and Sir Eobert Pye the elder, Knights, to be overseers of this my last will, desireing them to be aiding and assisting to my executor to see my last will performed, according to my true meaning herein expressed, for the good and benefitt of my wife and children ; and I give them, as a token of my love, twentie shillings apiece, to buy them each a ring, for their paines taken to advise and further my executor to performe this my will. " EioHARD Powell. "Subscribed, sealed, and acknowledged to be his last will, in the presence of "Jambs Lloyd, John Milton, Henry Delahay."1 While this is clearly the will of a dying man whose property is in such a state of wreck and confusion that he knows not whether any provision whatever will arise out of it for his wife and family, there are certain suggestions in it of a contrary tenor. It is evident, for example, that Mr. Powell had not given up aU hope that his main property, the mansion and lands of Porest-hill, might ultimately be recovered. Though these are entirely omitted in the Par- ticular of his Estate given in a month before to the Gold- smiths' Hall Committee for Compositions, they figure in his will so expressly that one sees the testator did not consider them quite lost. This, followed by the kindly mention of Sir Eobert Pye in the end of the wiU, and the appointment 1 Found by me at Doctors' Commons. her late husband, died near the first —The date assigned for Mr. Powell's day of January, in the year of our Lord death depends on his widow's statement 1646, at the house of Mr. John Milton on oath, four years afterwards (Feb. 27, situate in Barbican, London." (Todd, 1660-1), that "said Richard Powell, I. 67.) 638- LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. of that knight as one of the overseers to assist the executor in carrying out the will, confirms a guess which we have already hazarded {anth, pp. 475-6) : viz, that the entry of Sir Eobert Pye into possession of the Forest-hill estate during the siege of Oxford was not the harsh exercise of his legal right to do so, nor even only the natural act of a prudent creditor seeing no other way of recovering a large sum lent to a neighbour, but in part also a friendly precaution in the interests of that neighbour himself and his family. That Forest-hill, if it were to be alienated from the Powells, should pass into the possession of Sir Eobert Pye, an old friend of the family, might be for their advantage in the end. Though nominally proprietor, he would regard himself as interim possessor for the Powells ; and, should they ever be able to reclaim their property, and to pay the 1,400^. and arrears of interest for which it had been pledged, they would find Sir Eobert or his family more accommodating than strangers would have been. Something of this kind must have been in Mr. Powell's mind when he made his will. He clung to the Forest-hill property ; it was worth much more really than the sum for which it had been alienated; he looked forward to some arrangement in that matter between his heir and Sir Eobert Pye, in which Sir Eobert himself would advise and assist. Then, as the smaller Wheatley property was also really worth more than the 40Z. a year at which it was rated, and as, besides other chances only vaguely hinted, the family had immediate claims for 500Z. on account of goods left at Forest-hill, 400Z. on account of timber, and 100^. in miscellaneous debts, why, on the whole, with patience and good management, should there not be enough to dis- charge all obligations, and still leave something over for the heir, the widow, and the other eight or nine children, in the proportions indicated ? Alas ! if this were the possibility, it had to be arrived at, the testator foresaw, through a dense medium of present difficulties. The very items of most importance in the meantime, if his widow and children were to be saved from actual straits, were the items of greatest uncertainty. The household goods, the timber, and the debts Jan. 1646-7.] ME. POWELL'S WILL. 639 due, were estimated together at 1,000?. of cash; but it was cash which had to be rescued from the four winds. Nay, most of it had to be rescued from worse than the four winds — from the Parliamentary Government itself, and from its agents in Oxfordshire. The household stuff and goods at Forest-hill ! Had they not been sold in June last by the Oxfordshire sequestrators to Matthew Appletree of London, carted off by that dealer, and dispersed no one knew whither ? The timber at Forest-hill ! Had not that also vanished, most of it voted- in July last by the two Houses of Parliament themselves to the people of Banbury for repairs of their church and other buildings ? To be sure, the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee, by accepting these portions of Mr. Powell's property at his own valuation and including them in their calculation of his fine for Delinquency, had virtually pledged Government that they should be restored. But then the fine had not been paid. Notwithstanding the statement in Mr. Powell's will that h^ had compounded for his property, the case was not really so. The Committee had fixed his com- position at 180?., and so had admitted him to compoimd ; but, as he had not yet paid the usual first moiety, the transaction was really incomplete at his death. Who was to pursue the matter to completeness, undertaking on the one hand to pay the composition to Government, and on the other obliging Government to reproduce the value of the goods and timber that had been made away with by itself or by its Oxfordshire agents ? All this too was in the testator's mind, and hence his difficulty in fixing on an executor. His eldest son and heir, Eichard, then a youth of five-and-twenty, was to have the first option of this office ; if he shrank from it, then the widow was to be the sole executrix ; but, if she also shrank from it, a certain " Master John Ellston of Forest-hiU," in whom Mr. Powell had confidence, was entreated to take it up. This Ellston, it is implied, understood the business, and, as acting for the family, might expect the advice of Sir Eobert Pye and Sir John Curzon.i 1 The "Ellston" of the will may be viouslyquoted document (a»te~,p..478) as the "Eldridge" mentioned in a pre- having lOOi, worth of Mr. Powell's tim- 640 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. The eldest son did shrink from the hard post of executor under the wlII ; but the widow did not. This appears from the prohate of the will, dated March 26, 1647, when she appeared as executrix before Sir Nathaniel Brent of the Prerogative Court, took the oath, and had the administration committed to her.^ It was, as we shall find, a legacy of trouble and vexation to her, and collaterally to Milton as her son-in-law, for many years ; and, as we shall also find, she fought in it perseveringly and bravely. The trouble and vexation, however, so far as records revive it, do not begin within our limits in this volume. For the present it is enough to add that, some time after Mr. Powell's death and burial, his widow and children removed from Milton's house in the Barbican, and quartered themselves elsewhere. They can hardly have gone back to Oxfordshire. N'ot only was Porest-hill no home for them now, but the smaller tenement and grounds at Wheatley in the same county seem to have been equally unavailable. There is documentary proof, at least, that immediately after Mr. Powell's death, in the same month of January 1646-7, his relative Sir Edward Powell, Bart., took formal possession of that property in consequence of his legal title to it from non-payment of the sum of 300?. which he had advanced to Mr. Powell, on that security, five years before (see Vol. II. p. 497).^ This transaction, by a relative, may, like the similar transaction by Sir Eobert Pye, have had some meaning in favour of the Powells ; but, on the whole, though Mrs. Powell may have managed to dispose of some of her children, especially the elder boys, by appeal to relatives, the probability is that she remained in London and kept most of them with her. There is evidence that she had to live on in most straitened circumstances. Kelatives probably did something for her ; and Milton, as we shall find, performed his part. ber on his premises. If so, Mr. Hamil- Richard Powell, at the age of forty-ono, toii(92) has misoopied "Bldridge" for reclaimed the executorship, and was "Bllston" or "EllBtone" inthat doou- admitted to it, the former Probate ment. being set aside. This fact does not ^ Probate attached to the will in concern ns at present. Doctors' Commons. There is a second ' Document, dated Aug. 28, 1650, Probate in the maTgin, dated May 10, among the Composition Papers given 1662, showing that then the eldest son, by Hamilton (86, 87). March 1647.] DEATH OF MILTON'S FATHER. 641 Little more than two months after the hnrial of Mr. Powell, and possibly before the removal of his widow and children from the house in Barbican, there was another funeral from that house. It was that of Milton's own father. Father-in- law and father had gone almost together, and the house was in double mourning. Who can part with this father of one of the greatest of Englishmen without a last look of admiration and regret? Nearly fifty years ago, in the last years of Elizabeth's reign, we saw him, an " ingeniose man " from Oxfordshire, detached from his Eoman Catholic kindred there, and setting up in London in the business of scrivenership, with music for his private taste, and a name of some distinction already among the musicians and composers of the time. Then came the happy days of his married life in Bread Street, all through James's reign, his business prospering and music still his delight, but his three surviving children growing up about him, and his heart full of generous resolves for their educa- tion, and especially of pride in that one of them on whose high promise teachers and neighbours were always dilating. Then to Cambridge University went this elder son, followed in time by the younger, the father consenting to miss their presence, and instructing them to spare no use of his worldly substance for their help in the paths they might choose. It had been somewhat of a disappointment to him when, after seven years, the elder had returned from the University with his original destination for the Church utterly forsworn, and with such avowed loathings of the whole condition of things in Church and State as seemed to bar the prospect of any other definite profession. There had been the recompense, indeed, of that son's graceful and perfected youth, of the haughty nobleness of soul that blazed through his loathings, and of his acquired reputation for scholarship and poetry. And so, in the country retreat at Horton, as age was begin- ning to come upon the good father, and he was releasing him- self from the cares of business, how pleasant it had been for him, and for the placid and invalid mother, to have their elder son wholly to themselves, their one daughter continuing mean- VOL. III. T T 642 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. wliile in London after her first husband's decease, and their younger son also mainly residing there for his law-studies. What though the son so domiciled with them was growing up to manhood, still without a profession, still absorbed in books and poetry, doing exactly as he liked, and in fact more the ruler of them than they were of him? Who could interfere with such a son, and why had God given them abundance but that such a son might have the leisure he desired? All in aU, one cannot doubt that those years of retirement at Horton had been the most peaceful on which the old man could look back. But those years had come to an end. The sad spring of 1637 had come ; the invalid wife had died ; and he had been left in widowhood. Little in the ten years of his life since then but a succession of shiftings and troubles ! For a while still at Horton, sauntering about the church and in daily communion with the grave it contained, his younger son and that son's newly-wedded wife coming to keep him company while the elder was on his travels. Then, after the elder son's return, the outbreak of the political tumults, and the sad convulsion of everything. In this convulsion his two sons had taken opposite sides, the elder even treasuring up wrath against himself by his vehement writings for the Parliamentarians. How should an old man judge in such a case ? The Horton household now broken up, he had gone for a time with Christopher and his wife to Eeading, but only to be tossed back to London and the safer protection of John. We have seen him under that protection in Aldersgate Street, all through the time of Milton's marriage- misfortune and the Divorce pamphlets. There was some comfort, on the old man's account, in the picture given of him by his grandson Phillips, then in the same house, as living through all that distraction " wholly retired to his rest and devotion, without the least trouble imaginable." All the same one fancies him having his own thoughts in his solitary upper room, contrasting the now with the then, and feeling that he had become feeble and superfluous. A cheerful change for him may have been the larger house in Bar- bican, with his son's forgiven wife in her proper place in it, March 1647.] DEATH OF MILTON'S FATHER. 643 and more numerous pupils going in and out, and at last the birth of the infant-girl that made his grandfatherhood com- plete in aU its three branches. He had been about eighteen months in this house. The Civil War had come to an end, and the King had been surrendered by the Scots at Newcastle and shifted to the second stage of his captivity at Holmby House, and Christopher Milton had returned ruefully to London from Exeter to sue out pardon for his' delinquency, and the impoverished Powells also had come to the house from Oxford. Old Mr. Powell and old Mr. Milton had been a good deal together, and at length, when Mr. Powell was dying, old Mr. Milton may have assisted, scrivener-like, in the framing of his will. Only two months afterwards his own turn came. No will of his has been found, and pro- bably he had made a will unnecessary by previous arrange- ments. His Bible and music-books left in his room may have been the mementoes of his last occupations. He was buried, March 15, 1646-7, in the chancel of the Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, not far from Barbican ; and the entry " John Milton, Gentlemaii, 15 " among the " Burialls in March 1646 " may be still looked at with interest in the Eegisters of that parish.^ Nothing came from Milton's pen on the occasion ; but one remembers his Latin poem " Ad Patrem" written fifteen years before, and the lines with which that poem closes may stand fitly here as the epitaph for the dead : — " At tibi, care Pater, postquam non tequa merenti Posse referre datur, nee dona rependere factis, Sit memorSsse satis, repetitaque munera grato Percensere animo, fidseque reponere menti. Et vos, nostri, juvenilia carminH, lusus, Si mode perpetuos sperare audebitis annos, Et domini superesse rogo, lucemque tueri, Nee spisso rapient oblivia nigra sub Oreo, Forsitan has laudes, decantatumque parentis Nomen, ad exemplum, sere servabitis aevo." ^ 1 To the courtesy of the Eev. P. P. at the word '•' menti," and that the last Gilbert, M.A., Vicar of the parish, I six lines, beginning " JSi vos," were a;i owe a oertifiied copy of the burial-entry. addition when Milton ■ pubhshed his 2 It seems to me not improbable that Poemsin 1615, his father then residing the poem, as originally written , ended with him. T T 2 644 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. SONNET XIV. AND ODE TO JOHN ECUS. Since the removal from the Aldersgate Street house to that in Barbican, Milton, as we know, had ceased from prose pam- phleteering; and all that he had done ^f a literary kind, besides publishing his volume of collected Poems, had been his two Divorce Sonnets, his Sonnet to Henry Lawes, and his Sonnet with the scorpion tail, entitled On the Forcers of Con- science. To these have now to be added, as written since Aug. 1646, two other scraps — viz. : the Sonnet marked XIV. in most of our modern editions of his Poems, and the Latin Ode to John Rous which generally appears at or near the end of the Latin portion of these editions. Sonnet XIV., though printed without a heading by Milton himself in the Second or 1673 edition of his Poems, and often so printed still, exists fortunately in two drafts iu his own hand (one of them erased) among the Milton MSS. at Cam- bridge, and bears there this heading, also in his own hand : " On the Meligious memory of Mrs. Catherine Thomson, my Christian friend, deceased 16 Becemh. 1646." We have no other information about this Mrs. Catherine Thomson than is conveyed by these words and the Sonnet itself ; and the fact that we know of her existence only by chance suggests to us how many friends and acquaintances of Milton there may have been in London whose very names have perished. One may suppose her to have been a neighbour of Milton's, and rather elderly. That he had no ordinary respect for her appears from the fact that he felt moved to write something in her memory. If written exactly at the time of her death, it was while his house was fuU of the Powells, and Mr. Powell was grieving over the state of his affairs and perhaps known to be dying. There is a suggestion, however, in the wording, that it may have been written later. " When Faith and Love, which parted from thee never, Had ripened thy just soul to dwell with God, Meekly thou didst resign this earthy load Of death, called life, which us from Life doth sever. 16i7.] LATIN ODK TO ROUS. 645 Thy works, and alms, and all thy good endeavour, Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod ; 13ut, as Faith pointed with her golden rod, Followed thee up to joy and bliss for ever. Love led them on ; and Faith, who knew them best Thy handmaids, clad them o'er with purple beams And azure wings, that up they flew so drest. And speak the truth of thee on glorious themes Before the Judge, who thenceforth bid thee rest And drink thy fill of pure immortal streams." Certainly written in Barbican between the death of Mr. Powell and that of Milton's father, but in a very different strain from the foregoing, is the Latin Ode to Eous, the Oxford Librarian. The circumstances were these : — Milton, we have had proof already, cared enough both about his opinions and about his literary reputation to adopt the common practice of sending presentation-copies of his books to persons likely to be interested in them. He had sent out, we have seen, such presentation-copies of Lawes's 1637 edition of his " Comus," and of some of his pamphlets individually. We find, however, that in 1645 or 1646, when he had published no fewer than eleven pamphlets in all, and when moreover his English and Latin Poems had been issued by Moseley, he must have taken some pains to secure that copies of the entire set of his writings, as then extant, should be in the hands of eminent book-collectors and scholars. Thus, in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, there is a small quarto volume containing ten of the pamphlets bound together in this order — " Of Reformation," " Of Prelatical Episcopacy," " The Eeason of Church-government," " Animad- versions upon the Eemonstrant's Defence," "An Apology against a modest Confutation," " The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," " The Judgment of Martin Bucer," " Colasterion,'* " Tetrachordon," " Areopagitica ; " and the volume exhibits (in a slightly mutilated form, owing to clipping in the re- binding) this inscription in Milton's autograph : " Ad doctissi- mvmi virwm, Patricium Junium, Joannes Miltonius hoec ma^ unnm in fasciculwm conjerM, mittit.paucis hujusmodi lectorihvs 646 LIFE OF MILTON AND IIISTOKY OF HIS TIME. contentus " {" To the most learned man, Patrick Young, John Milton sends these things of his, thrown together into one volume, content with few readers were they but of his sort "). The volume, therefore, though it has found its way to Dublin, originally belonged to the Scotchman Patrick Young, better known by his Latinized name of Patricius Junius, one of the most celebrated scholars of his time, especially in Greek, and for more than forty years (1605 ? — 1649) keeper of the King's Library in St. James's, London. Milton, it is clear, did not intend the gift for the Eoyal Library, unless Young chose to put it there. He meant it for Young himself, with whom he had probably some personal acquaintance, and who was of Presbyterian sympathies, and in fact then under the orders of Parliament.' About the time when Milton sent this collection of his pamphlets to Patrick Young, or perhaps a little later, he sent a similar gift to another librarian, expressly in his ofl&cial capacity. This was John Kous, M.A., chief Librarian of the Bodleian at Oxford from 1620 to 1652. MUton, there is reason to believe, had known Ecus since the year 1635 (see Vol. L p. 590) ; at all events an acquaititance had sprung up between them, as could hardly fail to be the case between a reader like Milton and the keeper of the great Oxford Library ; and, as Eous's political leanings, Oxonian though he was, were distinctly Parliamentarian, there was no reason for coolness on that ground. Accordingly, Ecus, it appears, had asked Milton for a complete copy of his writings for the Bodleian, and had even been pressing in the request. Milton at length had despatched the required donation in the form of a parcel containing two volumes — the Prose Pamphlets, bound together in one volume, and the Poems by themselves in the tinier volume as published by Moseley. On a blank leaf at the beginning of the larger volume he had written very care- fully with his own hand a long Latin inscription, " Bodissimo inro, prologue librorum cestimatori, Joanni Botisio," &c. ; which 1 There is a fao-simUe of the inaorip- volume, with a tracing of the inscrip- tion to Young in Sotheby's Miltou tion, to the Key. Andrew Campbell of Bamblings, p. 121 ; but I am indebted Dublin. There is a memoir of Young for a more particular aocouut of the in Wood's Fasti, I. S08-9. 1«*7-] LATIN ODE TO EOTJS. 647 may be given in translation as follows : " To the most learned " man, and excellent judge of books, John Eous, Librarian of " the University of Oxford, on his testifying that this would " be agreeable to him, John Milton gladly forwards these " small works of his, with a view to their reception into the " University's most ancient and celebrated Library, as into a " temple of perpetual memory, and so, as he hopes, into a " merited freedom from ill-will and calumny, if satisfaction •' enough has been given at once to Truth and to Good For- " tune. They are — ' Of Eeformation iu England,' 2 Books ; "•Of Prelatical Episcopacy,' 1 Book; 'Of the Eeason of " Church-government,' 2 Books ; ' Animadversions on the " Eemonstrant's Defence,' 1 Book ; ' Apology against the " same,' 1 Boot ; ' The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,' " 2 Eooks ; ' The Judgment of Bucer on Divorce,' 1 Book ; " ' Colasterion,' 1 Book ; ' Tetrachordon : An Exposition of " some chief places of Scripture concerning Divorce,' 4 Books ; " ' Areopagitica, or a Speech for the Freedom of the Press ; ' " ' An Epistle on Liberal Education ; ' and ' Poems, Latin and " English,' separately." Here, it will be seen, Milton sends to Eous the same pamphlets he had sent to Patrick Young, and in the same order, only adding the Letter on Education to Hartlib, and the Moseley volume of Poems. Now, all the pieces so enumerated, with the inscription, had duly reached Eous in the Bodleian, with one exception. In the carriage of the parcel to Oxford the tiny volume of Poetry had somehow dropped out or been abstracted ; so that Eous, counting over the pieces by the inventory, found himseK in possession only of the eleven prose-pamphlets. He had intimated this to Milton, and petitioned for. another copy of the Poems to make good the loss of the first. MUton complied ; but, as the loss of the first copy had amused him, he took the trouble of writing a mock-heroic Latin ode on the subject to Eous, and causing this ode, transcribed on a sheet of paper in a secretary hand of elaborate elegance, to be inserted by the binder in the new copy, between the English and the Latin portions of the contents. This is the Ode to Bous of which we have spoken as, with the exception of Sonnet XIV., the sole known pro- 64S LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. duction of Milton's muse during those eight months of his Barbican life which have brought us to our present point. "When he printed it in the second or 1673 edition of his Poems, he prefixed the exact date, "Jan. 23, 1646" (ie. 1646-7). It was written, therefore, in the interval between Mr. Powell's death and his father's — ^three weeks after the one, and six or seven weeks before the other. The manuscript copy sent to Eous stiU exists in the Bodleian in the volume into which it was inserted ; and in the same library they show also the volume of the eleven collected prose pamphlets, with the previous inscription to Eous in Milton's autograph.i The ode is headed "Ad Joannem JRousium, Oxoniensis Academice Bibliothecarium .- de Libra PoeTnatum amisso, quern ille sibi denuo mitti postulahat, ut cum aliis nostris in £iblio- thecd pvhlicd reponeret, Ode " (" To John Eous, Librarian of the University of Oxford : An Ode on a lost Book of Poems, of which he asked a fresh copy to be sent him, that he might replace it beside our other books in the Public Library "). What strikes one first in reading the Ode is the strange metrical structure.. Evidently in a whim, and to suit his mock-heroic purpose, Milton chose a peculiar form of mixed verse, distantly suggested by the choruses of the Greek dramatists, and more closely by some precedents in Latin poetry. There are three Strophes, each followed by an Antistrophe, and the whole is wound up by a closing Epodos. In an appended prose note Milton calls attention to this novelty, and explains moreover that he had taken con- siderable liberties with the verse throughout, pleasing his 1 Warton'a Note on the Ode to Bons the transcript may hare been by Bome (Todd's Milton, IV. 507-9) ; Milton's professional scribe. — According to War- Poems, ed. 1678, Latin portion, p. 90 ; ton's account, it is by accident that Sotheby's Milton EambKngs, pp. 113 — these two precious volumes have been 121, where there is a fac-simile of the preserved in the Bodleian. In 1720 a inscription in the Bodleian volume of number of books, whether as being the prose pamphlets, and also a fac- duplicates or as being thought useless, simile of a considerable portion of the were weeded out of the Library and Latin Ode to Rous from the MS. copy in thrown aside, and a Mr. Nathaniel the other Bodleian volume. The "in- Crynes, one of the Esquire Bedels and scription " is indubitably Milton's auto- a book-collector, was permitted to have graph; Mr. Sotheby thinks the "ode" the pick of these for himself on the also to be in his penmanship, though understanding that he was to leave the not in his usual hand, but in a " beauti- Library a valuable bequest. Fortu- ful secretary hand " which he assumed nately Mr. Crynes did not care for the for the special purpose. Judging from Milton volumes, and so they went back the fac-simile, I doubt this, and think to the shelves. 16i7.] LATIN ODE TO ROUS. 649 own ear, and regarding rather the convonience of modern reading than ancient prosodic rules. Altogether, in this respect, the poem was a bold experiment, for which Milton has been taken to task by purists among his commentators down to our own time. It is the matter, however, that interests us most here. The ode opens half-humorously with an address to the little book he was sending to Eous. It is described as a pretty little book enough, with two sets of contents and a double arrangement of paging to match, neatly but simply bound {fronde licet gemind, munditieque nitens non operosd), and containing the juvenile productions of a certain Poet of no superlative merit {hand nimii poetce), written partly in Britain and partly in Italy, partly in English and partly in Latin.i Then the Antistrophe asks what had become of the former copy of the same, on its way to the sources of the Thames and the great seat of learning there established. The ■ second Strophe and Antistrophe continue the strain, with a hope that now at length the wretched civil tumults may cease in England and Peace and Literature come back, but still with a return of the query what could possibly have become of the missing volume between London and Oxford, and into what clownish hands it might have fallen. In the third Strophe and Antistrophe there is a compliment to Eous as the faithful keeper of one of the most splendid libraries in the world, with acknowledgment of his kindness in seeking to have the missing volume replaced, so that it might have a chance of readers in such glorious compaiiy and in all- famous Oxford. The closing Epode may be given in the skilful, though rather lax, rendering of Cowper : — " Ye, then, my Works, no longer vain And worthless deemed by me, Whate'er this sterile genius has produced. Expect at last, the rage of envy spent, 1 Critics hare objected to Milton's volume, one to the English and one to phrase "fronde licet geminA," on the the Latin poems ; he meant also that ground that "fronte" would be the these two sets of poems were paged better Latin word for "title-page." separately throughout. His phrase But Milton did not mean only that "froride gemind," ("with double-leaf- thore were two title-pages in the ing ") was therefore perfectly exact. 650 LIFE 0¥ MXLTOJf AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. An unmolested happy home, Gift of kind Hermes and my watchful friend, Where never flippant tongue profane Shall entrance find. And whence the coarse unlettered multitude Shall habble far remote. Perhaps some future distant age, Less tinged with prejudice, and better taught, Shall furnish minds of power To judge more equally. Then, malice silenced in the tomb, Cooler heads and sounder hearts, Thanks to Eous, if aught of praise I merit, shall with candour weigh the claim." ITALIAN EEMraiSCENCES : LOST LETTERS FKOM CARLO DAT! OF FLORENCE : MILTON'S REPLY TO THE LAST OF THEM. Our next trace of Miltoii, lihroaj^ anything written hj himself in his Barbican abode, belongs to April 1647, the month after his father's death. We owe it also perhaps to the fact that the publication of his Poems by Moseley had given him an opportunity of distributing presentation-copies of some of his former writings. A feature in that volume, it may be remembered, was its richness in Italian reminiscences. Not only were there included among the English Poems the five Italian Sonnets and the Italian Canzone which Milton is believed to have written in Italy ; not only were the encomiums of his Italian friends, Manso of Naples, SalziUi and Selvaggi of Eome, and Francini and Dati of Florence, prefixed to the Latin Poems, with a note of explanation; not only among these Latin poems did he print the three pieces to the singer Leonora, the Scazontes to SalzUli, and the fine farewell to Manso ; but in the Spitaphium Bamonis, or pastoral on Charles Diodati's death, which ended the volume, and which had been written immediately after his return to England, there were refer- ences throughout to his Italian experiences, and passages of express mention of Dati, Francini, the Florentine group generally, and the venerable Manso. What more natural than to have sent popies of such a volume to the various Italian 1647.] ITALIAN REMINISCENCES : CAKLO DATI. 651 friends named in it, to remind tbem of the Englishman to whom they had been so kind. The venerable Manso, indeed, was by this time dead ; Salzilli seems to have been dead ; the great Galileo, whom Milton had at least once visited near Florence, had died in 1642 ; but most of the Florentine group were still alive. To these last, all of them poets them- selves more or less, Milton might have been expected to send copies of his volume. Ox, if he did not trouble them with the English part, which they could not read, he might have sent them at least the Latin part, which iad been separately paged, and provided with a separate title and impTint, pre- cisely in order that it might be so detached. For a reason which will appear MiLton did not even do this. He seems, however, to have procured from the printer some copies of the last eleven pages of the Latin part, which contained the EpitapMum Damonis by itself, and to have sent these to Florence. Either so, or by some prior transmission of this particular poem to. his Florentine friends, unaccompanied by any letter, copies of it had reached them. This we learn from the sequel. Of all Milton's Florentine friends none had remembered him more faithfully than young Carlo Dati (see Vol. I. pp. 724-5). Only nineteen years of age when Milton had visited Florence in 163S-9, but then a leading spirit in the literary Academies of the city, and especially enthusiastic in his attentions to strangers, he had outgone all the others, except Francini, in his admiration of the Englishman who had come among them, and in the extravagance of his parting adieu. The admiration was real ; and, after Milton had gone, young Dati had often thought of him, often talked of him among his companions of the Delia Crusca and of Gaddi's more private Academy of the Svogliati, often wondered what he was doing in his native land. Three times at intervals he had written to Milton; but aU the letters had miscarried. Conceive, then, Dati's pleasure, when, some time in 1646 (if that is the correct supposition), a copy of the Epitaphivm Damonis reached him from London, and he read the passage there in which Milton had made such affectionate mention of his 652 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. Floreutine friends of 1638-9, and of himself and Francini in particular. Immediately he wrote to Milton a fourth time ; and this letter, more fortunate than its predecessors, did arrive at its destination. Milton, on his part, though the letter must have reached him about the time of his father's death, had peculiar pleasure in receiving it and returning an answer. The answer was in Latin, and may be translated as follows : — " To Chaeles Dati, Nobleman of Florence. " With how great and what new pleasure I was filled, my Charles, on the unexpected arrival of your letter, since it is im- possible for me to describe it adequately, I wish you may in some degree understand from the very pain with which it was dashed, such pain as is almost the invariable accompaniment of any great delight yielded to men. For, on running over that first portion of your letter, in which elegance contends so finely with friend- ship, I should have called my feeling one of unmixed joy, and the rather because I see your labour to make friendship the winner. Immediately, however, when I came upon that passage where you write that you had sent me three letters before, which I now know to have been lost, then, in the first place, that sincere gladness of mine at the receipt of this one began to be infected and troubled with a sad regret, and presently a something heavier creeps in upon me, to which I am accustomed in very frequent grievings over my own lot : the sense, namely, that those whom the mere necessity of neighbourhood, or sorabthing else of a useless kiud, has closely conjoined with me, whether by accident or by the tie of law {sive casu, dve lege, conglutinavit), they are the persons, though in no other respect commendable, who sit daily in my com- pany, weary me, nay, by heaven, all but plague me to death when- ever they are jointly in the humour for it, whereas those whom habits, disposition, studies, had so handsomely made my friends, are now almost all denied me, either by death or by most unjust separation of place, and are so for the most part snatched from my sight that I have to live well-nigh in a perpetual solitude. As to what you say, that from the time of my departure from Florence you have been anxious about my health and always mindful of m", I truly congratulate myself that a feeling has been equal and mutual in both of us, the existence of which on my side only I was perhaps claiming to my credit. Very sad to me also, I will April 1647.] LETTER TO DATI. 653 not conceal from you, was that departure, and it planted stings in my heart which now rankle there deeper, as often as I think with myself of my reluctant parting, my separation as hy a wrench, from so many companions at once, such good friends as they were, and living so pleasantly with each other in one city, far off indeed, hut to me most dear. I call to witness that tomh of Damon, ever to he sacred and solemn to me, whose adornment with every tribute of grief was my weary task, till I betook myself at length to what comforts I could, and desired again to breathe a little — I call that sacred grave to witness that I have had no greater delight all this while than in recalling to my mind the most pleasant memory of all of you, and of yourself especially. This you must have read for yourself long ere now, if that poem reached you, as now first I hear from you it did. I had carefully caused it to be sent, in order that, however small a proof of talent, it might, even in those few lines introduced into it emblem-wise,^ be no obscure proof of my love towards you. My idea was that by this means I should lure either yourself or some of the others to write tO me ; for, if I wrote first, either I had to write to all, or I feared that, if I gave the preference to any one, I should incur the reproach of such others as came to know it, hoping as I do that very many are yet there alive who might certainly have a claim to this attention from me. Ifow, however, you first of all, both by this most fiiendly call of your letter, and by your thrice-repeated attention of writing before, have freed the reply for which I have been some whUe since in your debt from any expostulation from the others." There was, I confess, an additional cause for my silence in that most turbulent state of our Britain, subsequent to my return home, which obliged me to divert my mind shortly afterwards from the prosecution of my studies to the defence anyhow of life and fortune. What safe retirement for literary leisure could you suppose given one among so many battles of a civil war, slaughters, fl.ights, seizures of goods 1 Yet, even in the midst of these evils, since you desire to be informed about my studies, know that we have published not a few things in our native tongue ; which, were they not written in English, I would willingly send to you, my friends in Florence, to 1 See the lines themselves in the onght to note, with me, the poasiMliiy translation of the Mpitaphiv/m Damonii, (already hinted, and now implied in this Vol. II. p. 90. passage of the letter to Dati) that ^ Although I have supposed that the Milton had sent copies in some form at copies of the Mpitaphiiim Damonis sent an earher date — say immediately after by Milton to Italy were from the sheets the poem was written, and when his of the Moseley volume of 1645 as it was parting from his Italian friends was passing through the press, the reader quite recent. 654 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. whose opinions I attacli very much value. The part of the Poems which is in Latin I will send shortly, since you wish it ; and I would have done so spontaneously long ago, hut that, on account of the rather harsh sayings against the Pope of Borne in some of the pages, I had a suspicion they would not he quite agreeahle to your ears. Now I heg of you that the indulgence you were wont to give, I say not to your own Dante and Petrarch in the same case, hut with singular politeness to my own former freedom of speech, as you know, among you, the same you, Dati, will ohtain (for of yourself I am sure) from my other friends whenever I may be speaking of your reh'gion in our peculiar way. I am reading with pleasure your description of the funeral ceremony to King Louis, in which I recognise your style (Mercurium tuum) — not that one of street bazaars and mercantile concerns {compitalem ilium et mer- dmoniis addictum) which you say jestingly you have been lately practising, hut the right eloquent one which the Muses like, and which befits the president of a club of wits {facundum ilium, Mum acceptum, et Mercurialium virorum prceddem)} It remains that we agree on some method and plan by which henceforth our letters may go between us by a sure route. This does not seem very difficult, when so many of our merchants have frequent and large transactions with you, and their messengers run backwards and forwards every week, and their vessels sail from port to port not much seldomer. The charge of this I shall commit, rightly I hope, to Bookseller James (Jacobo Bihliopolce), or to his master, my very familiar acquaintance {vel ejus hero miki familiarissimo).^ Meanwhile fare- well, my Charles ; and give best salutations in my name to Coltel- lini, Francini, Frescobaldi, Malatesta, ChimenteUi the younger, anyone else you know that remembers me with some affection, and, in fine, to the whole Gaddian Academy. Again farewell ! " London : April 21, 1647." ^ 1 The production of Dati to which 2 j tave translated this as well as I Milton refers, and of which a copy had can, but it is obscure. Did Milton probably accompanied Dati's letter, was refer to some Florentine " Jaoopo," a an Italian tract or boot, entitled " Ese- bookseller (the publisher of Dati's quie della MaestSi Christianiss : di Eaegwie T), and playfolly entrust the Luigi XIII. il Giusto, Ee di Francia e arrangement of the future means of di NaTaixa, celebrate in Firenze dall correspondence to Dati himself, as altezza serenissima di Ferdinando Gran- master of the services of this person ? duoa di Toae., e disoritte da Carlo Dati : s Tiiig letter to Dati is the tenth of 1644." Louis XIII. of France had died Milton's EmstoUx Familiam, as pub- May 14, 1643, and the Grand Duke of lished by himself in 1674, and reprinted Tuscany had ordered a celebration in in the collected editions of his works, his honour at Florence. — The hint that By a curious chance, however, a MS. Dati was now engaged in mercantile copy of it exists in iHllon's own hand business is confirmed by subsequent — either a draft which Milton kept at evidence. the time, or perhaps the actual copy 1647.] PEDAGOGY IN BARBICAN. 655 There are passages in this letter which we can interpret now better than Dati can have done then. The sentences in which Milton speaks of his hard fate in being tied by acci- dent or law to the constant companionship of people with whom he had no sympathy, while those whom he really cared for were distant or dead, may have been read by Dati with only a vague general construction of their meaning, and perhaps would not have been written by Milton to any one capable of a more exact construction from knowledge of the circumstances. We can now discern in them, however, a reference by Milton to his domestic troubles, to the worry brought on him by the whole Powell connexion, and perhaps also to the recent loss of his father. Altogether the letter is a melancholy one. One sees Milton, as he wrote it in Barbican in the spring of 1647, the gloomy master of an uncomfortable household. PEDAGOGY IN THE BARBICAN: LIST OF MILTON'S KNOWN PUPILS : LADY BANELAGH. Yet precisely this spring of 1647, if we are to believe bis nephew Phillips, was Milton's busiest time with his pupils. "And now," says Phillips, after mentioning the death of Milton's father, and the departure at last of the Powell kindred from the house in Barbican, " the house looked again " like a house of the Muses only, though the accession of " scholars was not great. Possibly his proceeding thus far in sent to Dati. It is one of some valuable is headed merely " Carolo Dato, Pairicio Milton documents in the possession of Florentino," the MS. is headed "Carolo Mr. John Fitchett Marsh of Warring- Dato, Patricio Florenhtino, Joannes Mil- ton, who has described it in his Milton tonivs, Zoiidinensis, S.P.D." Again, Papers, printed for the Chetham at the close, instead of the printed Society in 1851, and given there a fac- dating "Lomiino, Aprilis 21, 1647," simile of the beginning and end of it. the MS. presents the dating " iond»m . ■ There is a copy of this fac-simile in Mr. Pascatis feria tertia, MDCXLVU," Botheby's Milton RamUings (p. 122). ("London: the third feast day of Mr. Marsh, who is inclined to think Easter, 1647.") On this Mr. Marsh, in that the MS. is the actual letter as it a note to me, remarks ingeniously, reached Dati, has favoured me with an " Dating from the feast-day, according exact list of some verbal variations in to the Roman Catholic usage, in writing it from the printed copy. They are to an Italian friend, indicates a toler- slight, but rather confirm the idea that ance and politeness worth noticing." the printed copy is from the draft Easter in 1647 fell on Sunday, April 18, which Milton kept and that the MS. so that the third day, or Easter-Tues- was the transcript actually dispatched day, was April 20. The printed copy to Italy. Thus, while the printed copy is dated a day later. 656 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. " the education of youth may have been the occasion of some " of his adversaries calling him Pedagogue and Schoolmaster; " whereas it is well known he never set up for a public school " to teach all the young fry of a parish, but only was willing " to impart his learning and knowledge to relations, and the " sons of some gentlemen that were his intimate friends, "besides that neither his converse, nor his writings, nor " his manner of teaching ever savoured in the least anjrthing " of pedantry ; and probably he might have some prospect of " putting in practice his academical institution, according to " the model laid down in his sheet Of Education'.' Taking this passage in connexion with prior passages already quoted from the same memoir, we are to conclude that, though Milton's practice in teaching had begun as far back as 1639-40, when he gave lessons to his two nephews in his lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard, and although the practice had been kept up all through the time of his residence in Aldersgate Street, when his nephews boarded with him and other pupils were gradually added (1640-45), yet it was in the Barbican house, and there more especially in 1647, that his employment in pedagogy was most engrossing. The house had been taken expressly that there might be accom- modation for additional pupils, aud such pupils had come in — not in any considerable number, nor yet miscellaneously from the neighbourhood, but rather by way of favour on Milton's part to select boys whose parents knew him well, and were anxious that they should have the benefit of his instructions. As to Milton's theories and methods of education we are already sufficiently informed. This may be the place, how- ever, for a list of those who can be ascertained to have had the honour of being his pupils. Perhaps that honour may have been shared by as many as twenty or thirty youths in all, afterwards distributed through English society in the seventeenth century, and some of them living even into the eighteenth; but I have been able to recover only the following ; ^ — 1 It is to be understood that Milton pedagogy, in individual cases at least, may have continued the practice of after the Barbican period of its fullest 1647.] LIST OF MILTpN'S KNOWN PUPILS. 657 Edwaed Phillips (the elder nephew) : — Not ten years old when he first received lessons from Milton in the St. Bride's Churchyard bdging, this elder nephew, after five years of board in Aldersgate Street, and about a year and a half in Barbican, had reached his seventeenth year. He had received the full benefit so far of his uncle's method of teaching ; and, if he were to go to the University, it was about time that he should be preparing^ About two years after our present date, or in March 1648-9, by whatever manage- ment of his uncle, or of his mother and step-father, Mrs. and Mr. Agar, he did enrol himself in Magdalen Hall, Oxford. The rest of his life will concern us hereafter.^ John Phillips (the younger nephew) : — This nameson of Milton's, first committed to his entire charge in the St. Bride's Churchyard lodging, had been as long under training as his elder brother, and had now reached his sixteenth year. He was te remain a more unmixed example of his uncle's training, for he never went to any University. He also will reappear in the sub- sequent course of his uncle's life.^ EicHARD Heath, oe Heth : — That a person of this name was among Milton's pupils, rests on the evidence of one of Milton's own. Spistolce Famdliares, dated Dec. 1652, and addressed "Bichardo Hetho." , As he was then a minister of the Gospel somewhere, it is to be inferred that he was one of the earliest pupils of the Aldersgate Street days. I have not been able to identify him farther. Packer : — " Mr. Packer, who was his scholar," is one of Aubrey's Jottings about MUfcon, written in 1680 or thereabouts. This is a very insufficient clue. A John Packer, who had taken the deigree of Doctor of Physic at Padua, was incorporated in the same degree at Oxford, Feb. 19, 1656-7.3 Cyeiaok Skinnee : — He was the third son of William Skinner, a Lincolnshire squire (son and heir of Sir Vincent Skinner, Knt., of Thornton College, co. Lincoln) who had married Bridget Coke, second daughter of the famous lawyer and judgCj Sir Edward Coke. As his father died in 1627, Cyriack must have been at least twenty years of age in 1647: he had, therefore, been one of the Aldersgate Street pupils. The fact that he was a grandson of the great Coke was one of his distinctions through life j but he was to become of some note in London society on his own- account. The con- nexion formed between him and Milton continued, as we shall find, unbroken and affectionate through future years. Indeed, there came to be associations, presumably through Cyriack, between foxce, and Jienoe that one or two of the a list; I present all Milton'a known pupils in my present list may not have pupils, of whatever date, in one cluster, been in the Barbican house, but may r Wood's Ath., IV. 760, and God- be strays afterwards undertaken by win's Lives of the Phillipses, p. 12. him, on special request, in those later 2 Wood's Ath., IV. 764, and Godwin, days and those other houses into Which ^ Aubrey's Notes on Milton's Life we have yet to follow him. As it is not (Godwin's reprint, p. 349); Wood's worth while, hoT^ever, to break up such Fasti, II. 196. VOL. III. U tJ 658 LIFE OF MILTON AND mSTOEY OF HIS TIME. Milton and other persons of the name of Skinner. A Daniel Skinner, and a Thomas Skinner, presumably relatives of Cjriack's, are heard of as merchants in Mark Lane, London, from 1651 on- wards. This Daniel Skinner, merchant, had a son, Daniel Skinner, junior, whose acquaintance with Milton in the end of his life led to curious and important results. Care must he taken, even now, not to confound this far future Daniel Skinner, junior (not born till about 1650), with our present Cyriack, his senior, and probable kinsman. 1 HuNBT Laueencb : — There is no positive attestation, as in the other cases, that this person, certainly intimate with Milton in sub- sequent years, began acquaintance with him as one of his pupils. The presumption is so strong, however, that I risk including him. He was the second son of Henry Laurence, of St. Ives, Hunts, member for Westmoreland in the Long Parliament, known in 1647 as a thoughtful man, and author of " A Treatise of our Communion and War wii.b Angels,"and afterwards a staunch Oliverian, President of Cromwell's Council (1654), and one of his Lords (1657). He , had an elder son, Edward, who was fourteen years of age in 1647, and died in 1657, when Henry became the heir. Therefore, if we are right in supposing Henry to have been Milton's pupil in the Barbican, he cannot have been older than twelve or thirteen at the time.^ SiE Thomas Gardinbe, op Essex : — ^That a person of this name was among Milton's pupils in the Barbican, either with the title already, or having it to come to him, seems to be implied in a statement of Wood, quoted in the next paragraph. EiCHARD Babet, 2nd Eael op Baeeimoeb : — " To this end that " he might put it in practice," says Wood, after describing Milton's system of education as explained in his Letter to Hartlib, " he " took a larger house, where the Earl of Barrimore sent by his " aunt the Lady Banelagh, Sir Thomas Gardiner of Essex, to be " there with others (besides his two nephews) under his tuition." ' The pointing and structure of the sentence make it obscure ; but I take the meaning to be that Wood had heard of two of Milton's pupils in the Barbican house specially worth naming oh account of their rank — the Earl of Barrimore and Sir Thomas Gardiner — and that he had also been informed that it was the Earl of Barrimore's aunt, the Lady Eanelagh, that had placed that young Irish noble- man under Milton's charge. The iuil significance of this was clear when Wood wrote, for Lady Eanelagh was then still alive, and known as one of the most remarkable women of her century ; but 1 Aubrey's Notes ; Wood's Ath., III. Skinner junior, and the mistake has 1119 ; Skinner Pedigree in Introd. to been kept up. Bishop Sumner's Translation of Milton's * Wood's Ath., IV. 63, 64 : note by Treatise on Christian Doctrine (1825) ; Bliss. Hamilton's Milton Papers, 29 et seq. and 3 Wood's Fasti (edit, by Bliss), I. 131-2. Wood (Fasti, I. 486) has con- 483. The sentence is exactly in the founded Cyriack Skinner in one par- same form in earlier editions, tioular with the much later Daniel ]6i7.] MILTON'S PUPILS : LADY EANKL.VGH. 659 readers now may need to be informed who Lady Eanelagh was. Her husband was Arthur Jones, 2nd Viscount Eanelagh in the Irish peerage ; but that was not her chief distinction. By birth she was a Boyle, one of the daughters of that Richard Boyle, an Englishman, of Kent, who, having gone over to Ireland in 1588, had risen there, by his prudence and integrity through three reigns, to be successively Sir Eichard Boyle, Lord Boyle of Youghall, Viscount Dungarvan, and Earl of Cork, with the office of Lord High Treasurer of Ireland, and with vast estates both in Ireland and England. This great Earl, dying in good old age in 1643, after some final service against the Irish Eebellion, left four sons and six daughters surviving out of a total family of fifteen. The eldest surviving son, Eichard,' till then Viscount Dungarvan, suc- ceeded to the Earldom of Cork, and was afterwards created Lord Clifford of Lanesborough (1644:) and Earl of Burlington (1664) in the English peerage ; the second, Eoger, created Baron Broghill in his father's lifetime, bore that title till the Eestoration, with a high character for wisdom and literary talent, which he maintained afterwards as Earl of Orrery ; the next, Francis, after giving proof of his Eoyalism both in England and in exile, received a place with his brothers in the Irish peerage aa Viscount Shannon ; and the fourth and youngest, bom Jan. 25, 1626-7, was called to the end of his days merely " The Hon. Mr. Eobert Boyle," bat became the most famous of them all as "the divine philosopher," and founder of English Chemistry. So also, among the daughters, though all were " ladies of great piety and virtue and an ornament to their sex," one was the paragon. This was Catharine, Viscountess Eanelagh, born March 22, 1614-15, or twelve years before her brother Eobert. Of her reputation for " vast reach both of know- ledge and apprehension," " universal affability," and liberality both of mind and of purse, there is the most glowing tradition, inter- spersed with facts and anecdotes ; and the singularly strong mutual affection that subsisted between her and her brother Eobert till the close of their lives runs like a silver thread through that philosopher's biography. At our present date she was yet a young woman, but her influence among the members of her family was already recognised. Since the Irish EebeUion the fixed residence of herself and her husband had been in (Pall Mall ?) London. Here her relatives from Ireland and elsewhere gathered round her; and here in 1644 her youngest brother, the future chemist, turning up brown and penniless, a foreign-looking lad of eighteen, after his six years of travel abroad, had been received with open arms. _Hn had remained in her house about five months, and then had retired to his estate of Stalbridge in Dorsetshire, where he continued mainly till 1650, corresponding with her from amid his speculative studies and his apparatus for chemical experiments.— —One other service if Anthony Wood's information is correct. Lady Eanelagh must have rendered about the same time to another meinber of her family. Most of her sisters had married into noble English or U U 2 660 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OP HIS TIME. Irish houses ; hut the eldest of them, Alice, Lady Barrimore, had heen left a widow with three young children by the death of her husband, David, first Earl of Barrimore. This death had occurred before that of her father the great Earl of Cork, and in that Earl's ■wUl, dated Nov. 24, 1642, he had shown his concern for this unex- pected widowhood of his eldest daughter by special bequests to her three children. Two of them, being daughters, were to receive 1,000/. apiece ; and for the behoof of the only son there was this provision : " For that I have ever cordially desired the restitution " and recovery of the Earl of Barrimore's noble and anciently " honourable house, that his posterity may raise the same to its :" former lustre and greatness again, and in regard that in my judg- " ment there is no way so likely arid probable (Grod blessing it) to "redeem and bring home the encumbered and disjointed estate of " the said Earl, and his house and posterity, as by giving a noble, " virtuous, and religious education to the said now young Earl, my '' grandchild, who, by good and honourable breeding, may (by (jod's " grace) either by the favour of the prince, or by his service to the " King and country, or a good marriage, redeem and bring home that " ancient and honourable house, which upon the marriage of my " daughter unto the late Earl I did with my own money freely " clear : I do hereby, for his lordship's better maintenance and " accommodation in the preniises, ' bequeath unto my said grand- " child, Eiehard, now Earl of Bairimorej' from the time of my " decease, for, during, and until he shall attain the full age of 22 " years, one yearly annuity of 200/." This was the boy who, a year or two afterwards, was sent to Milton's in the Barbican for tuition. His aunt Eanelagh had heard of Milton, or had come to know him personally ; and she thought he was the very man to give the boy the training which his wise grandfather had desired for him. There wiU be proof in time that Lady Eanekgh did know Milton well, saw him often, and entertained a high regard for him, which he reciprocated. Meanwhile we may anticipate so far as to say that she was not content with having obtained Milton's instructions for her nephew, the Earl of Barrimore, but secured them also for her only son, EiOHiRD Jones, afterwards third Viscount and first Earl of Eanelagh. This nobleman, who lived to as late as 1712 with considerable distinction of various kinds, and on the site of whose last house at Chelsea Eanelagh Gardens were estab- lished, is also to be reckoned, we shall find, iti the list of Milton's pnpils. It is just possible he may have beguu his lessons, with his cousin Barrimore, in the Barbican house ■,= but, as he was but seven years of age in 1647, this is hardly probable.'- 1 Bii-oVs Life of Kobevt Boyle, pre- Debrett's Peerage, for Kauelagh family; fixed to the 1744 edition of Boyle's WortMii^totf s Diary, by CrosSley, I. Works in five volumes folio (pp. 1—20); 164-7; Ounningham's HandbooK' of CoUins's Peerage :by Bry4ges, VII. 134 London, 873 and 418 ; Pbillips's.Memoir et seg. {jBoyle, Lord Boyle), and VI. of Milton ; and four letters '■ HoUli 184 ; Irish Compendium or Etidiments Adolescenti Riiihardo Jonesio " in Mil- of Honour (175ft), for Barrimore family ; ton's Bpistola Familim-a. 1647.] HARTLIB AND EDUCATION AGAIN. 661 EDUCATIONAL REFORM STILL A QUESTION : HARTLIB AGAIN : THE INVISIBLE COLLEGE: YOUNG ROBERT BOYLE AND WILLIAM PETTY. There may be something in Pliillips's guess that his uncle, about 1647, had some idea of putting in practice his system of Pedagogy on a larger scale than a mere private house permitted, by becoming the head of some such public Academy as that which he had described three years before in his Letter to Hartlib. The question of a Eeform of the apparatus for national Education had never quite vanished from the public mind even in the midst of the engrossing struggle between the Presbyterians and the Independents, and a fresh interest was imparted to the subject by the Ordinance of Parliament in May 1647 for a Visitation and Purgation of the University of Oxford {anti, pp. 545-6). Hartlib, for one, was again on the top of the wave. The claims of this indefatigable man to some reward for his long and various services had at length been brought before Parliament. On the 25th of June, 1646, on the report of a Committee, the House of Commons had voted him lOOZ. ; and in April 1647 the two Houses farther agreed in a resolution to pay him 300^. " in consideration of his good deserts and great services to the Parliament," with a recommendation that, on account of his special merits " from aU that are well-wishers to the advancement of learning," he should be provided with some post of emolument at Oxford.^ Nothing came of the last suggestion, and Hartlib lived on in London as before, stiU only ventilating his ideas of Educa- tional Eeform in a general way, amid the other novelties of all sorts which he patronized. Hartlib's hero-in-chief on the Educational subject, the great Comenius, though doubtless remembered, had prac- tically gone out of view. Labouring at Elbing on that piece of mere drudgery for which Oxenstiern and others had per- suaded him to lay aside his Pansophic dreams {anth, p. 228), 1 Commons Jouraals of June 25, 1646, and Marob 31, 1647; and Lords Journals of April 1, 1647. 662 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. he had indeed compiled, in four years, a large recast of his Latin Didactics under the title of Novissima Zinguarum Methodus, and had returned to Sweden in 1646 to present the mass of manuscript to his employer Ludovicus de Geer. The Swedish critics do not seem to have yet been satisfied with the performance, and Comenius had carried it away with him again for corrections and additions, not any longer in Elbing, but in his old Polish home.^ Ifo chance for HartUb, then, of co-operating again with Comenius in the foundation of a Pansophic College in London! HartHb's faculty of making new acquaintances, however, was as versatile as his passion for new lights ; and a certain " Invisible College" which had already some habitat in London, had become the substitute in his fancies for the unbuilt Pansophic Temple of the distant Slavonian sage. Since 1645 there had been held, sometimes in Wood Street, sometimes in Cheap- side, and sometimes in Gresham CoUege, those humble weekly meetings of a few " worthy persons inquisitive into Natural Philosophy," out of which there grew at length the great Eoyal Society of London. Theodore Haak, a naturalized German, had originated the club ; and among the first members were Dr. John WalUs (the clerk of the Westminster Assembly, but with other things in his head than what went on there), the afterwards famous Wilkins, and the physician Dr. Jonathan Goddard. If Hartlib, the fellow-countryman and friend of Haak, was not an original member, he knew of the meetings from the first; and the Invisible College of his imagination seems to have been that enlarged future association of all earnest spirits for the prosecution of real and fruitful knowledge of which this club might be the symbol and promise. The Invisible College, at all events, was the temporary form of his ever-varying, and yet in- destructible, zeal for progress. It figures much in his cor- respondence at this time with one new friend, who, though not more than twenty years of age, had that in him which made his friendship as precious to Hartlib as any he I Comenius's Prefaoe to the Second Part of his Opera DidaciUa, between 1627 and 1667. 1647.] HARTLIB, BOYLE, AND "THE COLLEGE." 663 had yet formed. This was young Eobert Boyle, recently returned to England from his foreign travels, and dividing his time between philosophical retirement at his house in Dorsetshire and occasional visits to London. In a letter to a Cambridge friend written in Feb. 1646-7, during one of those London visits, Boyle says : " I have been every day " these two months upon visiting my own ruined cottage in " the country ; but it is such a labyrinth, this London, that " all my diligence could never yet find my way out on't. . . . " The cornerstones of the Invisible, or, as they term them- " selves. Philosophical College, do now and then honour me " with their company, which makes me as sorry for those " pressing occasions that urge my departure as I am at other "times angry with that solicitous idleness that I am neces- " sitated to during my stay : men of so capacious and search- " ing spirits that school-philosophy is but the lowest region of " their knowledge, and yet, though ambitious to lead the way " to any generous design, of so humble and teachable a genius " as they disdain not to be directed by the meanest, so he can "but plead reason for his opinion, — persons that endeavour " to put narrowmindedness out of countenance, by the practice "of so extensive a charity that it reaches unto everything "called man, and nothing less than an universal goodwill " can content it. ... I will conclude their praises with the "recital of their chiefest fault, which is very incident to " almost all good things ; and that is that there is not enough " of them." The first extant letters of Boyle to Hartlib were written from his Dorsetshire retreat immediately after this visit to London, and are in reply to letters received there from Hartlib. A new system of Eeal characters or Universal Writing; Pneumatical Engines or Wind-guns ; Mr.Durie,his Church- conciliation Scheme, and a Discourse on the Teaching of Logic he had brought out ; the ingenious Utopian Spe- culations of a certain young Mr. Hall; the Copernican Astronomy (to which Mr. Boyle was "once very much inclined ") ; the French mathematicians, Mersenne and Gassendi ; Oughtred's Clavis Mathematica ; a Cure for the Stone suggested by Hartlib, or rather by Mrs. Hartlib: such 664 LIFE OF-MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME. are some of the topics of the correspondence, hut with the Invisible College, irradiating all. Thus, May 8, 1647, Boyle, writing to Mr. Hartlib, to congratulate him on the 30QZ. he had been voted by Parliament, says : " You interest yourseK " so much in the Invisible College, and that whole society is " so highly concerned in all the accidents of your life, that " you can send me no intelligence of your own affairs that "does not, at least relationally, assume the nature of " Utopian." In the same letter Boyle expresses his anxiety to have a copy of a pamphlet of Hartlib's which had just appeared. He names it rather vaguely; but I have ascer- tained it to be " A Brief e Discovo'se concerning' the Aoeomiplish- ment of our Beformation : tending to shew that by an Office of Fiiblioke Address in spirituall and tempomll matters the Qlory of God and the Happiness of this Nation may be greatly advanced." It consisted of a preface, addressed by Haitlib to Parliament, and 59 pages of text, explaining the said Office of Public Address to be a kind of universal Easter House "whereunto all men might freely come to give infor- mation of the commodities they have to be irtiparted to others." The pamphlet was out in May 1647.-' While Hartlib was writing on all things and sundry to young Boyle, the Education subject included, there was another new acquaintance of his, only three years older than Boyle, with whom be seems to have been discussing the Education subject more expressly. William Petty, after- wards so famous as "the universal genius. Sir William Petty," had returned from Erance at the age* of twenty- three. The considerable stock of knowledge which he had taken abroad with him when he left his native Hampshire, eight years before, a pushing boy of fifteen; had been in- creased by his studies at foreign Universities, his readings with Hobbes in Paris, his commercial deaUngs, and his inqilisitiveness into the processes of all trades and handi- crafts by whit3h men earn their livings. He came back a 1 Birch's Life of Boyle, pp. 20— 2aj,. in the British Museum, with MS. note Worthington's Diary by Orqssley. I. of date of publication. 313 ; and copy of Hartlib's 'patophlet 1647.] HARTLIB AND WILLIAM PETTY. 665 toll, slender youth, with a very large head, to be spoken of in London as an encyclopaedia of information, a wonderful mathematician and mechanician, teeming with, schemes of all sorts, and yet shrewd, practical, and husiness-like. He was an invaluable addition to the Invisible College, and^ a delightful discovery for Hartlib ; and he took to Haxtlib at once, as every one else did. What occupied him especially at the moment was a machine for double writing, i.e. for making two copies of any writing at once. He hoped to obtain a patent for this invention from Parliament; and such a patent, for seventeen yearsj he did obtain in March 1647-8. While the thing was in progress, however, Hartlib was his chief confidant. This appears from, a tract of his, of 26 pages, published Jan. 8, 1647-8, and entitled " The Advice of W. P. to Mr. Samuel Hartlib for the advancement of some particular parts of Learning." The invention for double writing is described in the tract, but it also sets forth Petty's ideas on Hartlib's favourite subject of a Eeformation of Schools. In fact, in any collection of seventeenth-century tracts on that subject, it ought to be bound up with Hartlib's own older- tracts in exposition of Comenius, and with the Letter on Education which Hartlib had elicited from Milton in 1644. Petty's notions, as may be supposed, differ con- siderably from Milton's. He is for a universal education in what he caUs Ergastula Litermria or Literary Workhouses, "where children may be taught as well to do something toward their living as to read and write;" and, though he does not undervalue reading and writing, or book-culture generally, he lays the stress rather on mathematical and physical science, manual dexterity*, and acquaintance with useful arts and inventions'. Besides reading and writing, he would have all children taught drawing and designing; he would rather discourage the learning of languages, both because people may have all the books they want in their mother-tongue, and because the use of real characters, or an ideographic systeni of writing, would lessen the necessity of knowing foreign tongues; but, so fax as languages might have to be learnt, their acquisition, as well as that of the 666 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. simple arts of reading and writing, might be much facilitated by improved methods. In short, in Petty's project of Educa- tion, with much of the same general spirit of iimovation, utilitarianism, contempt of tradition, as in Milton's, there is a characteristic difference of detail and even of principle. You are to be made expert in "graving, etching, carving, embossing, and moulding in sundry matters," in "griading of glasses dioptrical and catoptrical," in "navarchy and making models for building and rigging of ships," in " ana- tomy, making skeletons, and excarnating bowels;" but you miss all that Milton would have taught you of Latin and Greek, Poetry and Philosophy, Italian and Hebrew, moral magnanimity and spiritual elevation, the History of Nations, and the ways of God to men.^ REMOVAL FROM BARBICAN TO HIGH HOLBORN. It would have been no surprise if Milton, on the skirts of the Invisible CoUege as he was, and in sympathy with many of their aims, had exerted himself about this time in setting up a great Academy for young gentlemen, embodying some of the new utilitarian fancies even to the satisfaction of Petty, but fulfilling also his own higher ideal. He was peculiarly fond of Pedagogy ; and his notion of an institution combining the School with the University, and so tending to the abolition of Universities, seems to have been coming more and more into favour. Not only, however, did Milton abandon the experiment of which Phillips thinks there was then some prospect; but, precisely in 1647, he broke up his actual pedagogic establishment in Barbican, and went into a new house, where he either ceased to teach altogether, or had no pupils remaining but his two nephews. What may have been his reasons for the step we do not know ; but it is not unlikely that the change of his circumstances by his father's death 1 Wood's Ath., IV. 214 ; Worthing- Dom. 1648 ;" but a copy in the British ton's Diary by Crossley, I. 294-8 ; and Museum bears the MS. note "London, Petty's own Tract. On its title-page 8 January, 1647-8." are the words " London : Printed anno 1647.] EEMOVAL TO HIGH HOLBOEN. 667 had something to do with it. No will of the ex-scrivener having been found, it is not known what property he left ; but there is reason to believe that he left something con- siderable, and that, whatever it was, it came more completely to the two sons, and their sister Mrs. Agar, than while the old man lived.i At all events, the fact of Milton's change of residence within a few months after his father's death is certified by Phillips. " It was not long," says Phillips, " after " the march of Fairfax and Cromwell through the City of "London, with the whole Army, to quell the insurrections " Browne and Massey, now malcontents also, were endeavour- " iug to raise in the City against the Army's proceedings, ere " he left his great house ia Barbican, and betook himself to " a smaller in High Holborn, among those that open back- " ward into Lincoln's-Inn Fields." The date of that famous march of the Army through London, to tame the tumultuous Presbyterianism of the City, rescue Parliament from its domi- nation, and compel a policy more favourable to Independency and Toleration, was August 6 and 7, 1647 (see ante, pp. 553-4). Milton's removal from Barbican may be assigned, therefore, to September or October in the same year. Change we, then, from those eastern purlieus of Aldersgate Street and Barbican, where we have been observing Milton for seven years, to a scene farther west, more within the cognisance of Londoners generally, and nearer to those two Houses of Parliament which the Army had rescued for the time from Presbyterian leadership within and Presbyterian mob-law without. Holborn was not then the dense con- tinuity of houses it is now; there were more spaces in it of gardens and greenery, and the houses had not crept as far 1 We may remember here Phillips's carried on his bu.^ines3, and where hia and Aubrey's hints as to the scrivener's children had been born (or at least of prosperity iu business. Phillips's in- some house in that street) — became in formation is that he " gained a com- time part of the poet's estate. Aubrey potent estate, whereby he was enabled distinctly reckons the Spread Eagle to make a handsome provision both for house as the scrivener's property, be- the education and maintenance of his sides another house in the same street children;" and he adds such parti- called The Rose, " and other houses in culars as that his mother, Mrs. Phillips, other places." Christopher Milton, as " had a considerable dowry given her " we know, owned a house in London on her first marriage, and that the called the Cross Keys, worth 40i. a year, lease of the scrivener's house in Bread while his father was alive. Street— the Spread Eagle, where he had 668 LIFE OF MILTON AND SiSTOfit OF HIS TIME. as Oxford Street; but it was, as now, the familiar- wide thoroughfare of relief from the narrower and noisier Fleet Street and Strand, and the part of it which Milton had chosen was the most convenient. The 'actual house which he took may be still extant, wedged somewhere in the laby- rinthine block between Great Turnstile and Little Turnstile; but one could judge but poorly from present appearances how pleasant may have been its old outlook to the rear. The fiile open area of Lincoln's- Inn Fields was %hen only paiHily built round, and Was Used as a lounge and bowling- gteen by the lawyers and citizens. The houses in the neigh- bourhood were mostly new ones.^ MEDITATIONS AND OCCUPATIONS IN THE HOUSE IN HIGH HOLBOJIN : MILTON'S SYMPATHIES WITH THE AEMY CHIEFS AND THE EXPECTANT I^EPUBLICANS. When Milton remoVed to High Holborn, with his wife; their infant daughter, and' the two nephews, the King was in the third and least disagreeable stage of his captivity. His detention with the Scots at Newcastle, and his subsequent residence under Parliamentary custody at Holmby Hottse, were affairs of the' Barbican period ; and, by Joyce^s act of the previous June, his Majesty had been for some months in the keeping of' the Army, very generously treated, and permitted at last to reside, with much of restored state- ceremony, at his own palace of Hampton Court. Fairfax, Cromwell, Ireton, and the other Army-chiefs, from their hiead-quarters at Putney, were negotiating with him; and, the march of the Arniy through London having disabled the ultra-Presbyterians for the moment and transferred the ascendancy to the Independents, people were looking for- ward to a settlement on the basis of an established Presby- terian Church for the nation .at large, but with liberty of conscience and of worship for Dissenters. For Milton, among others, this was a pleasant prospect. His sympathies, nay his personal interests, were wholly with the Independents ; 1 Cunningham's London ; Hollorn and Lineotn's-Inn Fields. 1647-48.] THOUGHTS IN HIGH HOLBOEN. 669 all that the Army had done had his approbation ; and, what- ever he might have had to say now (with the strong new lights he bad obtained since 1641) as to the propriety of a Presby- tBrian Establishment on its own merits, he was probably prepared to accept such an Establishment, if with a sufficient guarantee of Toleration. Now, although he cannot have retained, more than other people, any strong confidence in Charles personally, any real hope of his voluntary and un- reserved assent to a system of kingly government limited by great constitutional checks, yet a Treaty with Charles by the Independents rather than the Presbyterians must have seemed to him the most feasible way of reaching the end in view. Hence, while the King was at Hampton Court, and the Army-chiefs, with Cromwell most prominent among them, were plying his royal mind with arguments to bring him round, there can have been no private person more interested in their endeavours, more willing to believe them in the right, than Milton. Hardly had he been settled in his new house in High Holborn, however, when there came the snap of all those negotiations by the King's flight from Hampton Court to the Isle of Wight (Nov. 11, 1647). Then, I conceive, Milton's mood changed, in exact unison with the change of mood at the same time among the Army-chiefs and other leading Independents. For a month or two, indeed, there may have been some interest, some faint pro- longation of hope, in attending to the proceedings of Par- liament in pursuit of the King, and their attempt to obtain his assent to the Eour Bills. But, from the moment when that attempt failed, and the two Houses passed their indig- nant resolutions that there should be no more communi- cations with the King (Jan. 1647-8), all hesitation must have ceased. From that moment Milton was a Eepublican at heart. From that moment be was one of those who, with "Vane, Marten, Cromwell, Ireton, and the Army officers gene- rally, had forsworn all future allegiance to the Man in the Isle of Wight, and looked forward, through whatever inter- mediate difficulties, to his deposition and punishment, and the conversion of England into some kind of free Common- 670 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. wealtk In such a matter, it could not, of course, be expected that a private citizen like Milton, who had no ambition to rank with Lilburne and other London Levellers of the coarser order, would anticipate Cromwell, Vane, and Ireton. He expressly says himself that, though he had been so pro- minent as a speculative politician, had made certain great questions of the time more peculiarly his own, had written largely on them and publicly identified his name with them, yet he had not hitherto taken any direct part in the imme- diate practical question of the future constitution of the State, but had left it to the appointed authorities.^ Not the less are we to imagine that the time of his residence in High Holborn, while the King was a prisoner in the Isle of Wight, was the time when those high and semi-poetic Eepublican sentiments which seem always to have been congenial to him, and which his classic readings may have nurtured, took a definite shape applicable to England. From the end of 1647, I should say, Milton has to be reckoned as a foremost spirit in the band of expectant English Eepublicans. "Whether the issue was to be a Eepublic or not was a question which Milton had to leave in the hands of the Army and Parliament. While they were slowly working it out, what could he do but occupy himself, as patiently as possible, with his books and studies ? There is evidence, accordingly, that three pieces of work, already begun or projected by him in Aldersgate Street or Barbican, were prosecuted with some increased diligence in his house in High Holborn. One of these was the collection of materials for a Thesaurios Linguce Zatince, or Latin Dictionary, which he hoped some time to complete. Another was the composition of a History of Eng- land, or History of Britain, from the earliest times to the Norman Conquest : — nay, though that was the form it ulti- mately took, the original project was nothing less than Hume anticipated, or a complete History of England, brought down in a continuous thread from the remotest origins of the nation to Milton's own time. The third was the long-meditated ' Def. Sec. pro Pop. Angl., published in 1654 1647-48,] OCCUPATIONS IN HIGH HOLBORN. 671 Body of Divinity, or Methodical Digest of Christian Doctrine. Here, surely, were three huge enough tasks of sheer hack- work hung round the neck of a poet! Milton's liking all his life for such labours of compilation, however, is as remarkable as his liking for pedagogy. Nor, though we may regard the tasks as hackwork now, were they so regarded by Milton. To amass gradually by readings in the Latin classics a collection of idioms and choice references, with a view to a Dictionary that should be an improvement even on that of Stephanus, was a side-labour to which a scholar, who was also a poet, might well dedicate a bit of each day or a week or two at intervals. To write a complete History of England, or even to compile, from Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bede, and the old chroniclers, a popular summary of the early legendary History of Britain, and of the History of the Saxon Kings and Church, was a blending of daily recreation with useful labour. Above all, the compilation of a System of Divinity was no mere dry drudgery for Milton, but a business of serious personal interest. From an early date he had re- solved on some such compendium for his own use ; he had ever since kept it in view and made notes for it; but his notions of the form it should take had undergone a change. " I entered," he says, " upon an assiduous course of study in " my youth, beginning with the books of the Old and New " Testament in their original languages, and going diligently " through a few of the shorter Systems of Divines, in imi- " tation of whom I was in the habit of classing under " certain heads whatever passages of Scripture occurred for " extraction, to be made use of hereafter as occasion might " require. At length I resorted with increased confidence " to some of the more copious Theological Treatises, and to " the examination of the arguments advanced by the con- " flicting parties respecting certain disputed points of faith." Apparently he was still in this stage of his design in the Aldersgate period ; for then, as we have seen {anth, pp. 254-5), one of his exercises with his pupils on Sundays was the dictation to them of a Tractate on Christian Divinity digested from such approved Protestant Divines as Amesius and 672 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. "Wollebius. But this method, he tells us, had ceased to satisfy him. Often he had fomnd the theologians, quibbling and sophistical, more anxious to " evade adverse reasonings " and establish foregone conclusions than to arrive at the truth. " According to my judgment, therefore," he adds, "neither " my creed nor my hope of salvation could be safely trusted " to such guides ; and yet it appeared highly requisite to " possess some methodical Tractate of Christian Doctrine, or " at least to attempt such a disquisition as might be useful " in establishing my faith or assisting my memory. I deemed " it therefore safest and most advisable to compile for myself, "by my own labour aud study, some original treatise which " should be always at hand; derived solely from the Word of " God itself, and executed with all possible fidelity, seeing " I could have no wish to practise any imposition on myself " in such a matter." In all probability the preparations for the work on this new plan began in the house in. High Holborn. For some years England had been in such a state of theological ferment that it was impossible not , to inquire how much of the traditional Orthodoxy had real warrant in the Bible and how much was mere matter of inveterate opinion; in one important particular Milton, to his own surprise, had found himself standing out publicly as the champion of what was thought a horrible heresy ; might it not be well to go over the whole ground, and fix one's whole Christian creed so as to be able to give an account of it, when called upon, in every other particular? The Westminster Assembly, like other Assemblies before it, had laboured out a Confession of Faith which it wished to impose on the entire community ; but, as " it was only to the individual faith of each man that God had opened up the way of eternal salvation," was it not the duty of every Englishman to examine that Confession before accepting it as his own, or even to compile his own private Confessiom first and let the comparison follow at leisure ? ^ 1 Phillips's Memoir at several points ; PUllips mentions expressly the History Milton's Def. Sec. ; and Preface to his oj EsMland, as ocoupjiipg, Milton in posthumous " Treatise on Christian High Holbom ; hut the most interest- Doctrine" (Sumner's Translation, 1825). ing allusion to it is Milton's oku in his IS*''] PRESBYTERIAN INQUISITORSIIIP. C73 STILL UNDER THE BAN OF THE PRESBYTERIANS: TESTIMONY OF THE LONDON MINISTERS AGAINST HERESIES AND BLAS- PHEMIES : MILTON IN THE BLACK LIST. Alas ! Milton, busy with these occupations in his room looking out upon Lincoln's-Inn Fields, could not shut out the continued hue and cry after him on account of his Divorce heresy. It was more than two years since his wife had returned to him ; he had then closed the controversy so far as it was a personal one ; he was now respectably in routine, as a married man with one child. But the world round about, more especially the cjerical part of it, had not forgiven him his Divorce Pamphlets. Were they not still in circulation, doing infinite harm ? Had not their infamous doctrine become one of the heresies of the age, counting other unblushing exponents, and not a few practical ad- herents ? Keep silence as he now might, move as he might from Aldersgate Street to Barbican and from Barbican to High Holborn, would not his dark reputation dog him, sit at his doorstep, and gaze in at his windows ? Actually it did. The series of attacks on Milton for his Divorce Doctrine, begun by Herbert Palmer and other mouthpieces of the Westminster Assembly in 1644, and continued in that and subsequent years by the Stationers' Company, Featley, Paget, Prynne, Edwards, BaiUie, and others, had not ceased at the close of 1647. One fresh attack, of some significance in itself, may be instanced as a sample of the rest. London, it is to be remembered, was now under Presby- terian Church-government. In every parish there was the Parochial or Congregational Court, consisting of the minister and lay-elders, charged with all the ecclesiastical concerns of the parish, and with the right of spiritual censure over the parishioners. The parishes were also grouped into Classes of ministers and lay-elders. At last there had come into operation even the crowning device of Provincial Synods for De,f. Sec., where the words are "Ad possem, perpetuo filo dedueendam, me historian! gentis, ab ultima origine oonTerti." repetitam, ad hseo usque tempera, si VOL. IIL X X 674 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOliY OF HIS TIME. all London, in whicli representative ministers and elders met to discuss metropolitan Church affairs generally and to revise the proceedings of Classes and Congregations. The first of these Provincial Synods, with Dr. Gouge for Prolocutor, had met in St. Paul's in May 1647, and had continued its sittings twice a week in Sion College till November 8, 1647, when its half-year of office expired, and it was succeeded by the Second Provincial Synod, under the Prolocutorship of Dr. Lazarus Seaman. Now, had London been perfect in its Presbytery according to the extreme rigour of the Scottish model, Milton could not possibly have escaped the clutch of one or other of these Church-judicatories. As a resident in Barbican, he had been, I think, in the parish of St. Botolph without Aldersgate ; and, when he removed to High Holborn, he came into the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn. Had the Scottish strictness prevailed in London, the minister of either of these parishes would have felt himself bound to bring Milton before the parochial consistory for his Divorce heresy ; * or, if the duty had been neglected, Classis IV., to which the parish of St. Botolph belonged, or Classis VIII., to which the 1 From Newcourt's Sepertorium and Great Fire of 1666 ; after which it was Wood's Ath. III. 812, I learn that the not rebuilt, and the parish of St. John Curate or Vicar of St. Botolph's, Alders- Zachary was united to that of St. Ann gate, "in the late rebellious times," in the same ward. Had Milton found was George Hall, a son of Bishop Hall, Mr. Barton of John Zachary's a more and himself promoted to the Bishopric convenient minister to have deahngs of Chester after the Restoration ; and with than other ministers of the Alders- the Eeotor of St. Andrew's, Holborn, gate Street and Barbican neighbour- before the civil troubles was Dr. John hood ; and did he attend Mr. Barton's Hacket, already well known to us (Vol. church when he attended any? If so, II. 225-8), and also afterwards a Bishop. and if we are right in identifying this Both of these, as strenuous Prelatiste, William Barton with the minister of must have been dispossessed from their the same name whose Metrical Version charges long before the time with which of the Psalms was preferred by the we are now concerned ; and I have not Lords to Rous's (see avU, p. 425), their been able to ascertain who were their metrical sympathies may have had Presbyterian successors at this exact something to do with the connexion. — date. — There may be some signifioanoe The fact that a son of Bishop Hall's in the fact that the parish minister was Curate or Vicar of St. Botolph's, before whom Milton's brother Chris- Aldersgate, at the time when the topher and his father-in-law Mr. Powell Bishop and another son of his were performed the necessary ceremony of attacking Milton for his part in the taking the Covenant, with a view to Smectymnuan controversy, and speak- their admission to compound for their ing of him as then living in a " suburb Delinquency, was William Barton, sink about London," and collecting minister of John Zachary (atUS, p. 485 gossip about him, was not known to me and p. 634), The parish of St. John when I was engaged on that part of Zachary was one of the parishes of the Biography (Vol. II. p. 390 et sej.) ; Aldersgate Ward, and the church stood but it may be worth remembering kt the north-west comer of Maiden even now. Lane, till it was burnt down in the 16*7.] PRESBYTERIAN INQUISITOESHIP. 675 parish of St. Andrew belonged, would have interfered ; or, finally, in the case of so notorious an offender, the Provincial Synod itself would not have been asleep. True, the censure that could have been inflicted would only have been spiritual ; but, by zealous management, especjfcUy if the culprit were obstinate, such spiritual censure niig^t have led to farther prosecution by the secular courts. Certainly, if Milton had been in Scotland, this would have happened. Certainly it would have happened in London if the English Presbyterians had succeeded in subjecting that city to the grip of their absolute or ideal Presbytery. But they had not succeeded, and it was their constant lamentation that they had not. Though the Presbyterian organization of London had been voted on trial, the Congregationalist principle still asserted itself in the existence of many independent congregations and meeting-houses ; though sometimes interfering with the less respectable of these, Parliament and the law-courts had taken no steps for their general suppression ; and, by belong- ing to one of them, a Londoner of peculiar opinions might have the comfort and respectability of being a church-goer like his neighbours, and yet avoid unpleasant inquisitorship. Then, again, through what the ultra-Presbyterians regarded as the Erastian backwardness of Parliament, those offences for which the parochial or other Church-judicatories might inflict even spiritual censures had been very strictly defined. Only for certain faults of ignorance or of scandalous life, enumerated and specified by Act of Parliament, could the Pres- byterian Church-judicatories debar from the communion ; in any case lying beyond that range they could not act without reference to the superior authority of a great Parliamentary Commission (ant^, pp. 399, 405, 423). Sore had been the complaints of the Presbyterians over this limitation of the powers of Church discipline, as well as over the negligence of Parliament in not having yet passed such an Act against Heresies and Blasphemies as might enable the State to use the sterner discipline of fines, imprisonment, scourging, and hanging, in aid of true Christianity. Even as things were, however, it may be wondered that some zealot did not try to X X 2 676 LIFE OF MILTON AKD HISTOBV OF HIS TIME. bring Milton's case within the powers actually assigned to the Church-courts, or to push it on the notice of the secular judges in virtue of such Acts as did exist against Heresy. There was very good reason, however, for not making the experiment. It had already been tried and had failed. Twice had MUtou's case been brought before Parliament, and Parlia- ment had distinctly declined to trouble him. Evidently, whatever the hotter Presbyterians desired, Milton was safe in the respect entertained for him personally by some of those who were at the head of affairs, or in an opinion prevailing in high quarters that the publication of a new- speculation on Divorce was not an offence for which a man otherwise eminent ought to be questioned at law. What cannot be done in one way, however, may sometimes be done in another. Not only was London the central stronghold of English Presbyterianism ; the power of Piesbyteriauism there centralized was a kind of Proteus. One of its fonns was the Westminster Assembly, a large nucleus of which consisted of ministers from London and the suburbs ; another, since May 1647, was the London Provincial Synod. But, in aid of these two bodies, and including many that belonged to both, there was a third, of vaguer character, in that Sion College conclave which the London clergy had instituted of their own accord for the concoction of notions that might take shape in the Assembly or the Synod (anth, p. 394). Now, in December 1647, this Sion College conclave, " since they could do no more," sent forth a Presbyterian manifesto of some magnitude. It was "A Testimony to the Truth of Jesus Christ, and to our Solemn League and Covenant; as also against the Errors, Heresies, and Blasphemies of these times, and the Toleration of them: wherein is inserted a Catalogue of the said Errors, &c. : subscribed by the Ministers of Christ within the Province of London, Dec. 14, 1647." This Testimony, which was immediately published,^ bore the signatures of 58 Loudon ministers in all, of whom 41 signed to the whole document, while 17, being members of 1 London : Printed by A. M. for Tlio. Underbill at tbo Bible in Wood Street : 1648. Deo. 1647.] SIGN COLLEGE ON HERETICS. 677 Assembly, abstained from signing to those parts that related particularly to the Confession of Faith and the Directory of Worship, not because they did not thoroughly approve of those parts, but because they thought themselves precluded, by constitutional etiquette, from publicly affirming portions of the Assembly's work which still waited full Parliamentary sanction. All the 58, however, subscribed to that main por- tion of the Testimony which consisted in an enumeration and condemnation of certain " abominable errors, damnable heresies, and horrid blasphemies." Among the seventeen members of Assembly so subscribing were Dr. Lazarus Seaman of Allhallows, Bread Street (Milton's native parish), then Prolocutor of the London Provincial Synod; Dr. Gouge of Blackfriars, ex-Prolocutor of the same ; Dr. Hoyle of Stepney, Dr. Tuckney, and Messrs. Gataker, Calamy, Ashe and Case ; and among the forty-one others were Samuel Clarke of Benetfink, Christopher Love of Anne's, Alders- gate, John Downam of Allhallows, Thames Street, Henry Eoborough, one of the scribes of the Assembly and minister of Leonard's, Eastcheap, and John Wallis, sub-clerk of the Assembly, now uniting as well as he could the duties of that office and the parish-cure of Gabriel's, Fenchurch Street, with his iriathematical proclivities and his association with the " physicists " of the Invisible College. And' what were the errors, heresies, and blasphemies, thus publicly certified against by these London divines and the rest ? They were classified with great punctuality under nineteen heads, each head being subdivided into specific varieties of error, and the chief heretics under each openly named. First came Anti- Scripturism, or " Errors against the divine authority of Holy Scriptures," associated with the names of John Goodwin and Laurence Clarkson; then, in four heads and their sub- divisions, came Anti-Trinitarianism, or " Errors against the nature and essence of God, against the Trinity, against the Deity of the Son of God, and against the Deity and divine worship of the Holy Ghost," the culprits named for chief condemnation in this department being Biddle and Paul Best; and so on the catalogue proceeds through various 678 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. forms of Arminianism, Antinomianism, Seekerism, Anti- Sabbatarianism, Antipsedobaptism, Anabaptism, Materialisin or Mortalism, ending in Tolerationism. Among the Arminians denounced as notorious are Paul Best again, Paul Hobson, but especially John Goodwin again, and the Episcopalian and Eoyalist Dr. Henry Hammond, whose Practical Catechism, pub- lished in 1644, is cited as full of Arminian error. Among the Antinomians are denounced Eandall, Simson, Eaton, Crisp, and Erbury ; among the Seekers, Saltmarsh and Jos. Salmon ; among the Anti- Sabbatarians, Saltmarsh again; among the Autipsedobaptists and Anabaptists, Saltmarsh again, Tombes, and Webb. In a special group, as opposing magistracy and lawful oaths, are mentioned Eoger Williams, Samuel Gorton, and Dr. Henry Hammond again ; the chief representative of the tremendous doctrine of Materialism or the Denial of the Immortality of the Soul is E. 0., the anonymous author of the tract on Man's Mortality ; and among the leading Tolera- tionists or representatives of the grand error of Liberty of Conscience, "patronizing and promoting all other errors, heresies, and blasphemies whatsoever," are named Eoger Wil- liams again and Paul Best again. — One head or department in this long black list we have reserved. It is the ITth in order, including "Errors touching Marriage and Divorce." Here the anonymous author of a pamphlet called JAttU Nonsuch, published in 1646, bears the brunt of the obloquy, on account of the opinion that, as " that marriage is most just which is made without any ambitious or covetous end," so, " if this liking and mutual correspondency happen betwixt the nearest of kindred, then it is also the most natural, the most lawful, and according to the primitive (Patriarchal) purity and practice." But Milton comes in company with this Little Nonsuch, as hardly less worthy of execration on account of his Divorce Doctrine. The main proposition of his Doc- trine and Discipline of Divorce is extracted textually from page 6 of the Second or 1644 Edition of that treatise, to show what a dreadful doctrine had been there maintained ; but, in case this should not seem enough, the Testifying Divines, in the marginal note where they give the reference, add the Deo. 1647.] SION COLLEGE AMD MILTON. 679 words, " Peruse the whole book." They do not name Milton fully, but only by his initials "J. M.," as on the title-page of his Treatise.^ Sold at the shop of that very Underbill in Wood Street who had been the publisher of three of Milton's own pam- phlets in the Smectymnuan Controversy in 1641 (antl, p. 450), this Testimony of the London ministers had an extensive circulation. It was adopted, in fact, as the authorized mani- festo of all the English Presbyterianism then most militant for that full right of ecclesiastical and civil control over heresy and its dissemination which Parliament hitherto had refused to recognise. In a short time, accordingly, it received the adhesion of 64 ministers in Gloucestershire, 84 in Lancashire, 83 in Devonshire, and 71 in Somersetshire, l^or was this subscription of the same printed document by 360 of the most active Presbyterian ministers throughout England a mere appeal to public opinion. It was intended as an aid to Presbyterianism in its anxious endeavour to obtain even yet aU it wanted from Parliament. One observes, for ex- ample, that, within a month after the manifesto of the London ministers had gone forth from Sion College, i.e. on the 12th . of January, 1647-8, a petition was presented to Parliament by the London Provincial Synod itself, praying for various extensions and amendments of the Presbyterian system in the City, among which was the better establishment of Church censures for notorious and scandalous offenders.^ At least two of the heretics denounced in the Sion College manifesto published replies. The Eoyalist Dr. Henry Ham- mond thought it worth while to defend his Practical Catechism in a tract called Views of some Exceptions, v. " Great grace may be In a slight gift : all from a friend is precious." I return you therefore my very best thanks; and pray Heaven to put it in my power to show my devoted appreciation of your merit. There are some pieces of news which I will not keep from you, be- cause I am sure, from your kindness, they will be agreeable to you. The most Serene Grand Duke my master has been pleased to appoint me to the Chair and Lectureship of Humanity in the Florentine Academy, vacant by the death of the very learned Signor Giovanni Doni of Florence. This is a most honourable office, and has always been held by gentlemen and scholars of this country, as by Poli- ziano, the two Vettori, and the two Adriani, luminaries in the world of letters. Last week, on the death of the Most Serene Prince Lorenzo of Tuscany, uncle of the reigning Grand Duke, I made the funeral oration ; when it is published, it shall be my care to send you a copy. I have on hand several works, such as, please God, may lead to a better opinion of me among my learned and kind friends. Signor Valerio Ghimentelli has been appointed by his Highness to be Professor of Greek Literature in Pisa, and there are great expectations from him. Signors Frescobaldi, Coltellini, Francini, Galilei, and many others unite in sending you affectionate Dec. 1648.] SECOND LETTER FROM DATI. 691 salutations ; and I, as under more obligation to you than any of the others, remain ever yours to command. [No signature, but addressed on the outside, AlC I limb. Signer e Proh Osso, II Signor Giovanni Miltoni, Londra.l ^ Florence, Dec. 4, 1648. "While this letter was on its way to Milton, and possibly before it could have reached him, there had enacted itself, close within his view in High Holborn, that final catastrophe of a great political drama the boom of which was not to stop within the British Islands, but was to be heard in Italy itself and all the foreign world. ' The Italian of this letter is printed in the Appendix to Mr. Mitford's Life of Milton prefixed to Pickering's edition of Milton's Works, and was communi- cated, I believe, by the late Mr. Watts of the British Museum from the original in that collection. It is doubtless the copy which Milton reoeiyed. — Of the Doni mentioned in the letter, as Dati's predecessor in the chair of Belles Lettres at Florence, we had a glimpse Vol. I. p. 746. He died, Mr. Watts says, in Dec. 1647, and left to Dati the charge of publishing his works. Fres- cobaldi, Coltellini, and Francini are already known (Vol. I. 725-9); the Galilei mentioned is not the great Galileo, who had died in 1642, but his natural son Vinoenzo Galilei, also a man of talent. As we take leave of Dati at this point, for some time at least, I may quote an interesting sen- tence, respecting one of his intentions in later life, from the notices of him in Salyini's J^'^asti Consolari deW Accadenda Fiorentina (1717) : " He had particu- " larly in view the publication of the " letters which he had received from " various literary men, such as John " Milton, Isaac Vossius, PaganinoGau- " denzio, Giovanni Rodio, Valeric " Ghimentelli, and Nicolas Heinsius: " from the last he had a very large " number." When he died, Jan. 11, 1675, a few months after Milton, he had not fulfilled this intention ; but it is likely, as we have seen {anU, p. 655), that there has survived from among his papers only the one letter of Milton to him which Milton himself published. Y Y CHAPTER III. THE TWO HOUSES IN THE GRASP OF THE ARMY : PINAL EFFORTS FOR THE KING : PRIDB's PURGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES — THE KING BROUGHT FROM HURST CASTLE TO WINDSOR : ORDINANCE FOR HIS TRIAL PASSED BY THE COMMONS ALONE : CONSTITUTION OP THE COURT THE TRIAL IN WESTMINSTER HALL: INCIDENTS OP THE SEVEN SUCCESSIVE DAYS : THE SENTENCE — LAST THREE DAYS OF CHARLES'S LIFE : HIS EXECUTION AND BURIAL. In taking the King out of the Isle of Wight, and lodging him for a time in the solitary keep of Hurst Castle on the Hampshire coast, the Army had proclaimed their intention of bringing him to public justice, and it was that they might compel this result that they had marched into London with Fairfax at their head. As they desired that the proceedings should be regular, they had resolved that the two Houses of Parliament, or at least one of them, should conduct the business. THE TWO HOUSES IN THE GRASP OF THE AEMY : THEIR FINAL EFFORTS FOR THE KING : PRIDB'S PURGE AND ITS CONSE- QUENCES. Here was their difficulty. On Dec. 2, 1648, when the Army took possession of London, there were nineteen Peers present in their places in the House of Lords : viz. the Earl of Manchester, as Speaker ; the Earls of Pembroke, Eutland, Salisbury, Suffolk, Lincoln, Mulgrave, Middlesex, Stamford, Northumberland, and Nottingham ; Viscount Saye and Sele ; and Lords Howard, Maynard, Dacres, Montague, North, Dec. 1648.] PEEES AND COMMONS. 693 Hunsdon, and Berkeley. From suc h_a_body the Army could not hope much. Threenr fnnr of them mlght"'lie~rieckoned on as thorongh-going Tbutlo^most a""cnsis had come which was too terrible. 2B^Tliad they foreseen it six years before, had they then foreseen that their own order and all the pleasantness of their aristocratic lives would go down in the contest to which they were lending themselves, would their choice between the two sides have been the same ? To have sat on through those six years, a mere residuary rag of the English Peerage, at variance with the King and the vast majority of their own order ; to have figured through the struggle as nominally the superior House, but really the mere ciphers of the Commons ; to have had to throw all their aristocratic dignity and all their permissible conservatism at last into the miserable form of partisanship with a despotic Presbyterianism and zeal for the suppression of Sects, Heresies, and Independency : — here was a retrospect for men of rank, men of ambition, men of pride in their pedigrees ! And now to have an Army of these Independents, Sectaries, and Heretics, holding them by the throat, and prepared to dictate to them the alternative of their own annihilation or their assent to a deed of horror ! Such being the position of the Lords, how was it with the Commons ? In that House about 260 members were still giving attendance, or were at hand to attend when wanted. On the 2nd of December there were 232 in the House. A staunch minority of these were Independents in league with the Army ; but the decided majority were men of the Presbyterian party, fuU of regrets at the failure of the Treaty of Newport, but ready to resume negotiations with the King on the basis of the terms offered him in that Treaty, or indeed now on any other basis on which there could be agreement. Detestation of the Army was, therefore, the ruling feeling in this House too ; but the detestation was mingled with dread. With regiments at their doors, with regiments posted here and there on the skirts of the City, all alert against any symptom of a rising of the Presbyterian Londoners, they could not hope now for any chance of 'seeing the Army overmastered for them by 694 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. the only means left^— popular tumult and a carnage in the streets. All that the Commons could do, therefore, was to be sullen, and offer a passive resistance.^ It was on Monday the 4th and Tuesday the 5th of Decem- ber that the attitude which the two Houses meant to take towards the Army was definitely ascertained. On the first of these days, the news of the King's removal to Hurst Castle having meanwhile arrived, there was a fierce debate in the Commons over that act of the Army, the Presbyterians pro- testing against its " insolency," and at length carrying, by a majority of 136 votes to 102, a Eesolution that it had been done " without the knowledge or consent " of the House. On the same day the House proceeded to a debate, continued all through the night, and till nine o'clock next morning, on the results of the Treaty of Newport. The Presbyterian speakers, such as Sir Eobert Harley, Sir Benjamin Eudyard, Harbottle Grimstone, Sir Simonds D'Ewes, and Clement Walker, con- tended that the King's concessions were satisfactory; the negative was maintained by a succession of speakers, among whom were the two Vanes. The Presbyterians, having ori- ginally put the question in this form, " "Whether the King's Answers to the Propositions of both Houses be satisfactory,'' did not risk a division on so wide an issue, but thought it more prudent to divide on the previous question, " Whether this question shall now be put." Having carried this in the negative by 144 to 93, they were enabled to shape the ques- tion in this likeMer form, " That the Answers of the King to the Propositions of both Houses are a ground for the H'ouse to proceed upon for the Settlement of the Peace of the King- dom;" and it was on the question in this form that the debate was protracted through the night of the 4th and into the 5th. The most extraordinary incident of the debate on the 5th was the appearance made by Prynne. He had been a member of the House only a month, having taken his seat for Newport in Cornwall on the 7th of November ; and he now 1 Lords and Commons Journals of vious month. There were thirteen Dec. 2, 1648 ; and Records of Divisions divisions in that month, showing an in Commons Journals through the pre- attendance ranging; from 80 to 261. Deo. 1648.] LAST EFFOKTS FOK THE KING. 695 came forward, the poor indomitaWe man, with a speech of vast length and most elaborate composition, in favour of that sovereign whose reign had been to him of all men ruinous and horrible. "With his face muffled to hide the scars of his old mutilations by the hangman's knife, he stood up, and, after a touching recitation of all that he had suffered, de- nounced the Army and its outrages on Parliamentary freedom, expounded his views of Presbyterianism and right constitu- tional government, and pleaded earnestly for a reconciliation with Charles. His speech, if it was actually delivered as it is printed, must have occupied four or five hours in the delivery ; but one must suppose he gave only part of it and reserved the rest for the press. He was heard, he says, with great attention, and had the satisfaction not only of pleasing his own party, but also of making converts. At one time or another during the debate there had been, he says, as many as 340 members present > but many of these had been wearied out by the long night-sitting. Accordingly in the final vote on Tuesday morning there were 129 for the affirmative in the Question, and only 83 for the negative : ,i.e. in a House of 212 there were three-fifths for a reconciliation with the King, and two-fifths for complying with the Army and bringing the King to justice. The concurrence of the Lords with the majority in the Commons was a matter of course. It was given the same day, nem,. con., Manchester being in the chair, and only fourteen other Peers present. By way of tempering the whole result as much as possible, a Committee was appointed by the Commons to wait on Fairfax and his officers that afternoon, with a view to " the keeping and preserving a good correspondence " between Parliament and the Army.^ 1 Commons and Lords Journals of have been so large in delivery as it is the days named ; Clement Walker's in print. Yet that it must have been Hist, of Indep. Part. II. pp. 28, 29 ; very large appears not only from and Pari. Hist. III. 1147 — 1239. Of Prynue's own account, but also from these 92 closely printed columns of the Walker's, who says : " This he held on Pari. Hist. 86 are taken up with a " the affirmative with so many strong reprint of Prynne's speech, as published " and solid reasons, arguments, and by himself in the end of Jan. 1648-9. " precedents both out of Divinity, Law, The editor remarks on the fact that, " History, and policy, and with so clear with the exception of Clement Walker, " a confutation of the opposite argu- none of the contemporary writers men- " ment, that no man took up the buck- tion Prynne's speech at all. This con- " lers against him." firms the supposition that it cannot 696 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. The Army had their own plan for bringing about a " good correspondence," and they put it in operation on the two fol- lowing days, Dec. 6 and 7. Not troubling themselves with the Lords — who met for mere furm uu t ia(ih"'or"these days (only s8ggeB-^p?eseuL uil' bha ll'fal 'and eigiit on the o ther') — they ap- plied their plan—fc o th e Oo m ' muiiij. ' it consisted in what was "called i:'iiiDTg~FDlGE7nie*style of which was as follows : — On the morning of the 6th, when the members were going into the House, they found all the entrances blocked by two or three regiments of soldiers, under the command of Colonels Pride, Hewson. and Sir Hardress Waller. Every member, as he came up, was scrutinized by these armed critics, and espe- cially by Colonel Pride, who had a list of names in his hand, and some people about him to point out members he did not know. If a member passed this scrutiny, they let him in ; if not, they begged him not to think of taking his place in the House, and, if he persisted, hauled him back, and locked him up in one of the empty law-courts conveniently near. Mr. Prynne, who made a conspicuous resistance, was locked up in this way ; Sir Eobert Harley, Sir WiUiam Waller, Sir Samuel Luke, Sir Eobert Pye, General Massey, Clement Walker, Sir Simonds D'Ewes, Sir Benjamin Eudyard, and others and others, including even Nathaniel Eiennes, who had shown momentary weakness, were similarly disposed of; till at length the members who had presented themselves were sifted into two divisions — a goodly band regularly within the House, and forty-one fuming outside as prisoners in the law-courts. Messages passed and repassed between the two divisions, and the House made some faint show of protest and of anxiety for the release of the arrested. Any decided motion to this effect, however, was prevented by a communi- cation to the House from Fairfax and his General Council of Officers. Colonel Axtell and some other officers, being ad- mitted, announced the message verbally, and it was subse- quently presented in writing by Colonel Whalley. Under the name of "Humble Proposals and Desires," this paper reminded the House of their former votes for expelling and disabling Denzil HoUes, General Massey, and the rest of Dec. 1648.] PKIDE'S PURGE. 697 the Presbyterian Eleven impeached hy the Army in 1647, and demanded that these members, irregularly and scan- dalously re-admitted to their places, should be again ex- cluded and held to trial. It farther demanded that about 90 members, alleged to have been more or less in complicity with the Scots in their late invasion of England, should be disabled ; it prayed for an immediate repeal of the Votes on which the Treaty of Newport had proceeded, and of the Vote of the previous day for reliance on that Treaty ; and it begged all truly patriotic members to form themselves visibly into a phalanx, apart from the others, that they might be counted and known. In fact, the message not only adopted Pride's rough measure of that day as authorized by the whole Army, but represented it as only a friendly interposition, doing for the House in part what the House must be anxious to do more fully for itself So the afternoon passed, the forty-one, still remaining in durance, visited by various persons who had Fairfax's or Pride's permission, and especially by Hugh Peters. He took a list of their names, discoursed with them, released Eudyard and Piennes, and promised the rest that they should be removed to fit quarters for the night in Wal- lingford House. As night came on, however, and Walling- ford House was not available, they were taken, under guard, to a common victualling-house near, jocularly called Hell ; and here, some of them walking about, and others stretched on benches and chairs, or on the floor, in two upper rooms, they spent the night " reading and singing psalms to God." Next day there were again requests from the House to Fair- fax for their release. It could not be granted ; but they were marched through the streets to better accommodation in two Inns in the Strand, called the Swan and the King's Head. Meanwhile Pride's watch at the doors of the House had been effectively continued. There were several new arrests on the 7th ; many members, not arrested, were forcibly turned back ; and many more, among whom was Denzil Holies, kept prudently out of the way. Altogether, the number of the arrested was 47, and that of the excluded 96. It was a purgation quite sufficient for the Army's purpose. This was 698 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OP HIS TIME. proved by a vote actually taken in the House on the 7th, after the purgation was complete. " The question being pro- pounded. That the House proceed with the Proposals of the Army," it was carried by 50 to 28 that the question should be put and the Proposals proceeded with. As most of the minority in this division withdrew in consequence, the House was reduced from that moment to just such a tight little Parliamentary body as the Army desired.^ Cromwell was again among them. He had returned to town on the evening of the 6th, and he was in his place in the Commons on the 7th, receiving the thanks of the House, through the Speaker, for his " very great and eminently faith- ful services " in Wales, Scotland, and the North of England. He had not been concerned in the design of Pride's Purge, and the business was half over before his arrival in town ; but he quite approved of what had been done, and said he would maintain it. The younger Vane, on the other hand, had been so staggered by the proceeding that he had with- drawn from the scene, to avoid further responsibility.^ For a fortnight after Pride's Purge, the two Houses, reduced now to such dimensions as might suit the Army's purpose, went on transacting various business. The attend- ance in the Lords had dwindled to five, four, and even to three, raised on one occasion to seven. In the Commons the attendance does not seem to have ever exceeded 50 or 60. It is in the proceedings of this House, of course, that one sees the steady direction of affairs towards the end prescribed by the Army. There were all kinds of items of employment during the fortnight, including orders about the Navy, orders in mercantile matters, discharges of some of the secluded and imprisoned members, votes condemning those who con- tinued contumacious and had ventured on protests in print, receptions of petitions and addresses of confidence from various public bodies, and attendance by such as chose on a special Fast-day Sermon preached by Hugh Peters. But ' Lords and Commons Journals of compilation of contemporary accounts), days named ;Ru3hw. VII. 1353 — 1356; ' Commons Journals, Dec. 7; Pari.' Pari. Hist. III. 1240-1249 (a careful Hist. III. 1246 ; and Godwin, III. 31. Dec. 16-48.] RESOLUTION FOE THE KING'S TEIAL. 699 through these miscellaneous proceedings one notes the main track in such votes as these : — Dec. 12, Vote for repealing all former votes and acts condoning the faults of Denzil Holies and the rest of the impeached Presbyterian leaders, and on the same- day a Vote declaring the re-opening of a Treaty with the King in the Isle of Wight to have heen dis- honourable and apparently destructive to the good of the kingdom ; Dec. 13, A farther Vote, in compliance with the Army's Proposals, disowning entirely the Treaty in the Isle of Wight, and repealing the Vote of the previous week for proceeding to a settlement on the grounds supplied by the King's Answers in that Treaty ; Dec. 23, Resolution, " That it " be referred to a Committee to consider how to proceed in a " way of justice against the King and other capital offenders, " and that the said Committee do present their opinions " thereupon to the House with all convenient speed." The Committee so appointed consisted of 38 members of the House, among whom were St. John, Whitlocke, Skippon, Lord Grey, Lord Lisle, Sir Henry Mildmay, Pennington, and Henry Marten.^ Cromwell was not of the Committee, and some of those put upon it were not likely to attend. Indeed, though the Eesolution passed without a division, the reluctance of some who were present had appeared in the course of the debate. They argued that there was no precedent in History for the judicial trial of a King, and that, if the Army were 'determined that Charles should be punished capitally, the business should be left to the Army itself as an exceptional and irregular power. THE KING BROUGHT FROM HURST CASTLE TO WINDSOR: ORDI- NANCE FOR HIS- TRIAL PASSED BY THE COMMONS ALONE : CONSTITUTION OF THE COURT. Some days before the Eesolution of Dec. 23 was adopted by the Commons, the Army had taken steps for bringing the 1 Lords and Commons Journals from Deo. 8 to Dec. 23 ; Pari. Hist. III. 1247— 1253 ; Whitlocke, Dec. 23. 700 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. King nearer to London, to abide the issue. He had been in Hurst Castle for about a fortnight, rather poorly lodged in the old apartments of the keep, and complaining of the fogs that rose from the salt-water marshes around, with their beds of ooze and sea-kelp. His amusement had been in the sight of the passing ships, in his daily walk along the narrow neck of shingle connecting the castle with the mainland, and in the companionship of his select attendants in the evenings, when the drawbridge was up, the guard set, the woodfires blazing indoors, and the candles lit. He had brought with him from Newport fourteen personal attendants in all,, in- cluding his two gentlemen of the bedchamber, Mr. James Harrington (afterwards known as the author of Oceana) and Mr. Thomas Herbert. Both these gentlemen, though their principles and connexions were originally Parliamentarian, had, in the course of their long attendance on the royal captive, contracted a respectful affection for him. Harring- ton, indeed, had been speaking out so openly in praise of his Majesty's conduct in the Newport Treaty, and of the talent he had shown in his debates with the Presbyterian divines, that those who were in charge had thought it unsafe to let him remain in the service. He had therefore been dismissed, and the duty of immediate waiting on the King had been left entirely to Mr. Herbert. It was at midnight on the 16th or 17th of December that this gentleman, asleep in the little room he occupied next to the King's chamber, was roused by hearing the drawbridge outside let down, and some horsemen enter the Castle. Next morning he found that the King had heard the noise too, and was curious to know the cause. Mr. Herbert went out to inquire, and came back with the information that Major Harrison had arrived in the night. Nothing more was said at the moment, and the King went to prayers ; but later in the day the King seemed very much discomposed, and told Herbert that Harrison was the very man against whom he had most frequently received private warnings. He had never, to his knowledge, seen the Major, but he had heard much of the wild enthusiasm of his character ; and, if assas- D.O. 1648.] TEIE KING BROUGHT TO WINDSOR. 701 sination were intended, and this man were to be the agent, what likelier place than the lonely sea-keep where they then were ? To relieve his Majesty's mind if possible, Mr. Herbert went out to make farther inquiries. He soon returned with the intelligence that the purpose of Harrison's visit was to arrange for his Majesty's removal to Windsor Castle. Nothing could be more agreeable to the King than the prospect of "leaving the worst to enjoy the best Castle in England;" and all fear vanished. After two nights. Major Harrison left the Castle myste- riously as he had come, and without having seen the King or spoken to any of his attendants. He had made the necessary arrangements, and the actual removal of the King was to be superintended by the same Colonel Gobbet who had managed his abduction from the Isle of Wight. This officer, arriving two days afterwards, formally announced his business ; and, his Majesty being very willing, there was no delay. Passing along the spit of land from Hurst Castle to Milford, they found a body of horse there waiting ; and, under this convoy, they rode inland through Hampshire, gradually leaving the sea behind. By a route through the New Forest and past Eomsey, they reached Winchester, where they made some stay, the Mayor, Aldermen, and Clergymen of the City, and many of the gentry round, coming in dutifully to pay their respects.. Thence to New Alresford, and so to Farnham in Surrey. It was on the road between these two towns that they passed another troop of horse drawn up in good order, which immediately closed up in the rear and went on with them. The King was particularly struck with the appearance of the commander of this troop, a man gallantly mounted, with a velvet montero on his head, a new buff- coat, and a crimson silk scarf round his waist, who, as the King passed at an easy pace, saluted him splendidly " alia soldado," and received a gracious bow in return. Inquiring of Mr. Herbert who he was, the King was greatly surprised to learn he was the dreadful Major Harrison. He looked a real soldier, the King said, and, if there might be trust in men's faces, was not the man to be an assassin. On arriving at Farnham, where 702 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. they spent the night in a private bouse, the King took care to pay considerable attention to Harrison. Standing by the fire before supper, in a large wainscoted room fuU of people, he singled out Harrison at the other end, beckoned him to come up, took him by the arm, and led him to a window-recess, where they conversed for half an hour. Apparently Har- rison's words were not so satisfactory, as his looks. He disowned indignantly any such design against the King as had been imputed to him, but added something to the effect that great and small alike must be subject to Law, and that Justice could pay no respect to persons. The King, who had never yet brought himself to imagine the possibility of his public trial in any form, saw no particular significance in Harrison's words, but thought them " affectedly spoken," and broke off the conversation. He was very cheerful at supper, greatly to the delight of his suite, xfext day, taking Bagshot on the way and dining at Lord Newburgh's house there, they arrived at Windsor, and were received by Colonel Whichcot, the of&cer in command. It was the very day, Saturday Dec. 23, on which the Commons had appointed their Committee for considering the means of bringing the King to justice, and the Committee were holdihg their first meeting in West- minster that afternoon. The news had probably not yet reached Windsor, or it remained unknown to the King. He took up his abode in his royal apartments in the Castle; and the next day, as he paused in his Sunday walk round the exterior, he looked with no especial anxiety Londonwards, but rejoiced once more in the view of the Thames flowing by Eton, and the far expanse of hill and valley, villages and fair houses, noble even in its wintry leaflessness and the dull gloom of the December air.^ Christmas-week having passed, and the Committee for justice on the King having had several meetings, the Com- mons, on the 1st of January 1648-9, passed a Eesolution and an Ordinance. The Eesolution was "That, by the fundamental laws of this kingdom, it is Treason in the 1 Herbert's Memoirs, 126—145 ; Rushwortb, VII. 1371 ; Pari. Hist. III. 125i. Deo. 1648-9.] OEDINANCE FOR THE KING'S TRIAL. 703 King of England for the time being to levy war against the Parliament and Kingdom of England;" the Ordinance was one beginning " Whereas it is notorious that Charles Stuart, the now King of England," and ending with the appointment of a High Court of Justice for the Trial of the King, to consist of about 150 persons named as Commissioners and Judges expressly for the purpose. Five Peers were named first on this Commission; then Chief Justices EoUe and St. John and Chief Baron Wylde ; then Fairfax, Cromwell, Ireton, and many more members of the Commons and Army Officers ; but a considerable proportion of those named were Lawyers, Aldermen, and Citizens, not members of the House. Any twenty of the Commissioners were to be a quorum. On the following day (Jam. 2), the Eesolution and Ordinance having been sent up to the Lords for their concurrence, there was a scene of agony in that House. As many as twelve Peers had mustered for the occasion, including four of the five whom the Commons had named first in the dreadful Com- mission. Unanimously and passionat ely all the Peers pr esent rejected both Eesolution and Ordinance, the Earl of Denbigh declaringjie^ " would be torn i n pieces rather th an have any share in so infamous a business," and the Earl of Pem broke, who came nearest to neutrality, saying he "loved not busi- nesses of life and death." _Having ]uu:Ied-thSB-"3Sfiance atThe -Commons, Jhe^ Lords we re powerless for m nrp,,-aj].d grjjmirnpfl for a vreek^... It was a week of rapid action and counter-defiance by the Commons, l^ot a few of. the feebler spirits, indeed, had taken leave of absence. Whitlocke, for one, had gone into the country. The Clerk of the House, Mr. Elsyng, had feigned ill-health and resigned. Nevertheless, with a tem- porary substitute to do Mr. Elsyng's duty, the House pushed on. Jan. 3, they sent two of their number to inspect the Journals of the Lords and ascertain formally the proceedings of that House on the preceding day. "\S^£n these were reported, some were for imprfif;|n'Tir; Ih-r-tr^^T^^''— ^v°rq as c^UeHnquents-with- the King; To the majority, Jiowever, such a eaurse appeared quite unnecessaxK.; j-t-was enough to 704 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. jde elare - that , a s ■ fe be-Iiefds- woul d' net-eeB&iWy^he-Qemmons would act without their concurx encp.. Ja.n. ,4. a.£tp.r a debate wii^ locked doors, this momentous Eesolution was passed : " That the Commons of England'nn'arliSnien'b-assembled do " declare, That the People are, under God, the original of all "just power; and do also declare. That the Commons of " England in Parliament assembled, being chosen by and " representing the People, have the supreme power in this " nation ; and do also declare. That whatsoever is enacted, or " declared for law, by the Commons in Parliament assembled " hath the force of a law, and all the People of this nation are " concluded thereby, although the consent and concurrence of " the King, or House of Peers, be not had thereunto." The I Ordinance for a H igh rinnrt nf .Tnst.iV.p fnr fh^ J{ina'a-T;T^ had^m^nwhile been re-introduced. wj .th t he omissi on of the five Peers, the three Jud ^ ges, and . aonifi. ntjiffl, vqlnp.fa.Tit persons named ..in.,...iiiS.^^^original Ordinance, and with the addition of two eminent lawyers not there named; so that Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton now stood at the top of a total list of 135 judicial Commissioners. Hurried through the proper three stages, this Bill became law by the authority of the Commons alone, Jan. 6. On t|^_9th g^J^nuar^when the Peers re-assembled after their adjournment, seven being present, they^'Matie a famt attempt to recover m fluence. They sketchedTaufc^an-bxdinaj ice to the effect that wha tsoever King of England should in future levy war against the Par- limrent-andrthB- Kingdoffl""^uM'b)e ^n^^^TS^h Treason, Etad-theyarpptnnfed a Committee to prepare such an Ordinance. A? the sametinigrignOTlI^t^"vifEuari:goTfrign^ their House by the^Common,^. they-mdpiavrjnmrlMtff i-°"°™ commu- "liications between thejt w£ Ho u^ ps in ,.tKea i&ual. manner, by sending a message about various matters of mere ordinary business that had been pending between the two. This led to a curious proof that even in the thoroughgoing body that now constituted the Commons there was still a difference between most thoroughgoing and moderately thoroughgoing. _ Ther e was first a division on the que s tion w| ^pfihpr ^^° TnoaaoTifrPT-g from the Lordg.,shouldiJe received at all ; and, while 31 voted Jan. 1648-9.] THE KING'S TRIAL. 705 for admitting them, a minority of 18, with Henry Marten and LudlbWfoir-th&ir- t%lhx$y~.x£ii,edr~Ma. JEheBy-affeer the mes- sengers -4i«d- been received and had delivered their message, it was debated whether they should be dismissed with the customary answer that the'Ho'u'ge''woti M-rep l j-iiL du e course bylaiBsseagers of their own. Out of 52 present, 19 voted ITo (Ireton one of the tellers), and 33 voted for keeping up the usual courtesy. But, though a majority were thus for treat- ing the Lords as still extant, practically the whole House was in the same ultra-democratic temper. That very day, for example, on the report of a Committee, orders were given for the engraving of a new Great Seal, with instructions that on one side there should be a map of England and Ireland, with the Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, also the English and Irish arms, and the words " The Great Seal of England : 1648," and on the reverse a representation of the House of Commons sitting, and the motto " In the First Year of Freedom by God's blessing restored : 1648." The deviser of these em- blems was the Eepublican Henry Marten.^ Not even yet did Charles realize the extent of his danger. Well-treated at Windsor, and allowed the liberty of walking on the terrace and in the grounds, he had kept up' his spirits wonderfully, and had been heard to say he " doubted not but within six months to see peace in England, and, in case of not restoring, to be righted from Ireland, Denmark, and other places." Even after information of the proceedings of the Commons and their rupture with the Lords had reached him, he scouted the idea of the public trial which was threatened. They dared not do such a thing ! At the utmost, he expected that the Commons might venture to depose him, confine him in the Tower or elsewhere, and call upon the Prince of Wales, or perhaps the Duke of York or the Duke of Gloucester, to assume the succession ! ^ Meanwhile the Court appointed to try the King had met to constitute itself. Formal proclamation of its authority 1 Lords and Commons Journals of Whitlooke under dates given. days named; Rushworth, VII. 1379 et » Herbert's Memoirs, 145—156; Whit- by. ; Pari. Hist. Ill, 1253-1258 ; looke, II. 488. VOL. III. Z Z 706 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. and of its business had been made in various public places in London ; and, in a series of meetings, held in the Painted Chamber in Westminster, preliminaries had been arranged. Not so many as half of the Commissioners appointed by the Ordinance seem to have attended at any of these meetings. Fairfax, who was present at the first (Jan. 8), recoiled then and there, and never went back.^ For ' President of the Court, with the title " Lord High President," there was chosen John Bradshaw, one of the lawyers added in the second form of the Ordinance, to make up for the omission there of the three Judges from the regular Law-Courts who had been appointed in the first Ordinance, but had been excused. He was over sixty years of age ; had been eminent for some time in his profession ; and had recently been one of a group of lawyers raised to the serjeantcy, with a view to their promotion to the Bench. As counsel for the prosecu- tion, four lawyers, not on the Commission, were appointed, one of them John Cook, and another the learned Dutchman Dr. Dorislaus. Although these aiTangements had been made before the 12th of January, another week elapsed before the Court was quite ready. The vaults under the Painted Chamber, which was to be the ordinary place of meeting of the Court, when not sitting in "Westminster Hall for the open trial, had to be searched and secured against any attempt of the Guy Fawkes kind ; a bullet-proof hat, it is said, had to be made for Bradshaw ; the Mace and Sword of State had to be brought from their usual repositories; &c. The two Houses of Parliament meanwhile met from day to day, four or five Peers still keeping up the pretence of their corporate existence, and about 50 Commoners transacting this or that business as it happened, without the least reference to the Peers. Prynne, from his con- finement in the King's Head Tavern in the Strand, had issued a defence of the King in the form of A Brief Memento 1 In -ffbto and QiKries for July 6, to show which of them really took part 1872, Mr. William J. Thorns gave a in the business thus assigned them, carefully prepai-ed list of the 135 persons and to what extent, and which of them named King's Judges by the Second abstained wholly or withdrew before Ordinance for the Trial, so printed as the close of the proceedings. Jan. 1648-9.] THE KING'S TRIAL. 707 to the Present Unparliamentary Juncto ; and a good deal of the time of the Commons was taken up with notices of this pamphlet and votes for the prosecution of its author.^ THE TKIAL IN WESTMINSTEE HALL: INCIDENTS OF THE SEVEN SUCCESSIVE DAYS : THE SENTENCE. On Friday, Jan. 19, Charles was brought from "Windsor in a coach, guarded by a body of horse under Harrison's com- mand, and conveyed through Brentford and Hammersmith to St. James's Palace. That same night he was removed to Whitehall ; and, on the afternoon of Saturday the 20th, he was taken thence to Cotton House, adjoining Westminster Hall. This great hall, used for Strafford's trial, had now been fitted up for the King's, and the High Court of Justice were already assembled in it, waiting their prisoner. Brad- shaw was in the chair, and sixty-six more of the Commis- sioners were present. Among them were Cromwell, Ireton, Henry Marten, Edmund Ludlow, General Hammond, Lord Grey of Groby, several Baronets and Knights, Colonels Ewer, Hewson, Eobert Lilburne, Okey, Pride, Hutchinson, Purefoy, Sir Hardress Waller, and Whalley, with Major Harrison, Alderman Pennington of London, and three barristers. The hall was crowded with spectators, both on the floor and in the galleries ; and order was kept by a guard of red-coats imder Colonel Axtell. As the Court was forming itself, there had been a rather startling interruption by a woman's voice from one of the galleries. It was that of Lady Fairfax, who had gone in indignant curiosity, and, on hearing her husband's name read in the Commission, called out loudly to this effect, '' He is not here, and will never, be ; you do him wrong to name him." This interruption was over, and the Court composed, when Charles was brought in by Colonel Hacker, and a select guard of officers armed with halberts. The Serjeant-at-Arms 1 Rushworth, VII. 1389—1394; Lords and Commons Journals; and Godwin's Hist, of the Commonwealth, II. 621 and 664—668. Z Z 2 708 LIFE OP MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. receiving him, and preceding him with the mace, he was con- ducted to the har, where a chair of crimson velvet had been set for him. Some of his own servants followed him and stood round him. He looked sternly at the Court and at the people in the galleries; then sat down, keeping on his hat ; then stood up, and turned round to look at the soldiers and the multitude; then sat down again, still with his hat on. He was now face to face with his judges. He looked at them carefully, and recognised about eight as personally known to him.^ The proceedings of the Trial will be best exhibited in the following condensed account of the particulars of each day:— Saturday, Jan. 20 : — The President, in a brief address to the King, informed him of the business on which the Court had met, and called on him to hear the Charge against him. Solicitor Cook, standing within the bar, on the King's right, then began to state the Charge, but was interrupted by the King, who held out a stick which he had in his hand, and laid it softly twice or thrice on the Solicitor's shoulder, bidding him stop. Bradshaw having interfered, the Solicitor continued his statement, and delivered in his Charge in writing, ■which Bradshaw called on the Clerk of the Court to read. Charles again interrupted, and continued to interrupt ; but, Brad- shaw telling him that he would be heard afterwards if he had any- thing to say, the document was at length read. It accused Charles Stuart, King of England, of having " traitorously and maliciously ' Riishworth, VII. 1394 — 1399, and moment, ought to be more accurate in Herbert, 150 — 161. It is strange to such particulars, and especially in dates, find some points of contradiction be- than Herbert's, written from recollec- tween these two trustworthy accounts. tion ; but Herbert can hardly have been Herbert, after apparently implying that wrong in the matter of the sedan chair, the King had been brought from Wind- Perhaps, while the King went in such sor to St. James's htfore the 19th, makes a chair, Herbert accompanying him, his removal from St. James's to White- most of the King's servant went by hall occur on that day. Rushworth water. — For the names of all the sixty- brings him to St. James's exactly on seven King's Judges present on the firet the 19th, and removes him to Whitehall day of the Trial see Mr. Thoms's list next morning. Again, Herbert makes in iVoto awd Qjteries, July 6, 1872. The the King conveyed from Whitehall to figure 20 there appended to a name Cotton House " in a sedan or close intimates presence that day. — Among chair," and describes the walk through those of the 135 appointed Judges who the posted guards, along King Street did not attend on that day or on any and Palace Yard, adding that only he subsequent one, and therefore must be himself was allowed to go vrith the supposed to have agreed with Fairfex King that way ; whereas Rushworth in disowning the entire business, we says that the King was brought to maynoteSkippon, Sir Arthur Haselrig, Cotton House' from Whitehall by water, Sir William Brereton, Desborongh, "guarded by musketeers in boats." Lambert, Ovei-ton, Lord Lisle, and A1-. fiushworth's accounts, written at the gemon Sidney. Jan. 1648-9.] THE KING'S TBIAL. 709 levied war against the present Parliament and the People therein represented;" and it supported the Charge by a recitation of specific acts of the Kiug done in the First Civil War from June 1642 to 1646, and again more generally of acts done in 1648 before and during the Second Civil War. Charles had smiled often as the Charge was read ; and, when the President at the close asked what answer he had to give, begged to know by what authority he had been brought thither. He had been in treaty with Parliament in the Isle of Wight ; he had been forcibly taken thence ; he saw no Lords present ; the crown of England was hereditary and not elective ; in whose name was this Court held 1 " In that of the Commons of England," Bradshaw replied; and there ensued a skirmish between him and the King on the question of authority, which Bradshaw ended by adjourning the Court till Monday at ten o'clock. Monday, Jan. 22: — After a consultation in the Painted Chamber, the Court met in Westminster Hall, seventy members present, and answering to their names. The skirmish between Bradshaw and the King was renewed : Bradshaw requiring the King's Answer to the Charge " either by confessing or denying," and the King refusing the Court's jurisdiction, not for his own sake alone, he said, but "for the freedom and liberty of the people of England," imperilled by the assumption of the Court's legality. "Sir, I must interrupt you," said Bradshaw; "which I would not do, but that what you do is not agreeable to the proceedings of any Court of Justice." No Court, he said, could permit its own authority to be questioned ; the King must not go out into such wide discourses; he must give a punctual and direct answer. No such answer would the King give ; he would have law and reason for his being in that place at all. " Sir, " you are not to dispute our authority," again interrupted Bradshaw; " you are told it again by the Court : Sir, it will be taken notice of " you that you stand in contempt of the Court, and your contempt " win be recorded accordingly." The King " did not know how a King might be a delinquent by any law he ever heard of;" but any Delinquent might put in a demurrer. And so on and on for a con- siderable time, the Clerk of the Court reading out the Eesolution of the Court that the King should give his answer, and the King still insisting on giving reasons why he would not. " Serjeant, take away the prisoner," said the Lord President at last; and the King, stUl talking, was removed to Cotton House. He left in writing, for subsequent publication, the reasons he wanted to state to the Court that day. The chief of them was that no earthly power could justly call a King to account. He quoted, as Scripture authority, Eccles viii 4 : " Where the word of a King is, there is power ; and who may say unto him. What dost thou 1 " But he appealed also to the Law and Custom of England. _ Tmsday, Jan. 23 -.—The Court again met in Westmmster Hall, 63 Commissioners present. SoHcitor Cook moved that, the Kuig having refused to plead either Guilty or Not Guilty, the rule for 7iO LIFE or MILTON AND HISTOKT OF HIS TIME. such cases of contumacy should be applied to hLm, his refusal taken pro confesso, and judgment pronounced. The Lord Pre- sident, calling the King's attention to this motion, offered him another opportunity of pleading, which he used only to return to the discourses of the two previous days. " Clerk, do your duty ! " said Bradshaw at last. " Duty, Sir ! " exclaimed the King ; and, the Clerk having again read out a paper requiring the King's positive answer to the Charge, and the King stUl refusing, " Clerk, record "the default," said Bradshaw, "and, gentlemen, you that took " charge of the prisoner, take him back again." That night, like the preceding, was spent in Cotton House. Wednesday, Jan. 24, and Thursday, Jan. 25': — No public meetingg of the Court in Westminster Hall on these days ; but more private sessions in the Painted Chamber for the purpose of receiving the depositions of witnesses, — the Court having determined that, though not obliged to that course, they would adopt it for their own satis- faction. Accordingly there were examined more than thirty wit- nesses from various parts of England — " W. C, of Patrington in Holderness, in the county of York, gentleman, aged 42 ;" " W. B., of WixhaU, in the county of Salop, gentleman ;" " H. H., of Strat- ford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire ;" " K. L., of Cotton in Notting- hamshire, tiler ;" " J. W., of Boss in Herefordshire, shoemaker ; " " S. L., of Nottingham, maltster, aged 30 years ;" " A. Y., citizen and barber-surgeon of London, aged 29;" "H. G., of Gray's Inn, in the county of Middlesex, gentleman j" &c. &c. They deposed to various acts of the King seen by themselves, from the setting up of his standard at Nottingham onwards. Papers in the King's own hand, or by his authority, were also produced and read. Finally, the Court, " taking into consideration the whole matter," resolved to proceed to sentence on the King as "a tyrant, traitor, and murderer," and as " a public enemy to the Commonwealth of England." Friday, Jan. 26 ; — A private sitting of the Court in the Painted Chamber, in which the Sentence was drafted, agreed to, and ordered to be engrossed. Saturday, Jan. 27 : — First another private meeting in the Painted Chamber to settle the procedure of the Court for the day, and give President Bradshaw instructions for his behaviour in any contingency that might arise, one of them being that he " should hear the King say what he would before the sentence, and not after." Then, about one o'clock, an adjournment to fuU state in Westminster Hall. The Lord President was now robed in scarlet, and there were 67 Commissioners present. The Court having been opened, Charles, whose presence had not been required on the three preceding days, was brought in. As he went to his place, the soldiers in the HaU called out "Justice," "Justice," and " Execution ! " till the Court commanded silence. The King, in his usual posture, with his hat on, immediately begaa to speak. The President told him he would have liberty to do so, but must hear Jan. 16i8-9.] THE KING SENTENCED. 711 tlie Court first. After some farther attempts to speak then, the King submitted ; and Bradshaw, reminding him of what had passed in the first three meetings of the Court, related the subsequent action of the Court, and their conclusion on the whole matter, and called upon him to say anything he pleased in bar of judgment, provided it were in his own defence, and not in renewed challenge of the Court's jurisdiction. With difficulty keeping off the forbidden topic, Chailes dwelt on the dangers of a hasty sentence, and urged a special request which he had reserved for the occasion. It was that, before sentence was read, he should be permitted to have a conference with the Lords and Commons in the Painted Chamber. Bradshaw, though he gave it as his opinion that the request only tended to delay, and was in fact a farther declining of the juris- diction of the Court, yet announced that the Court would withdraw to consider it. There was therefore a private consultation for half an hour in the Court of Wards, the King meanwhile being re- moved from the Great Hall. When the Court had returned thither, and the King had been brought back, Bradshaw intimated that the consultation had been pi-o formd only, that the request could not be granted, that the Court must proceed to sentence. There was another painful altercation, the King pressing his request for delay, and seeming to hint he had some important proposal to make to the Lords and Commons (abdication in favour of the Prince of Wales, it was afterwards guessed) ; and Bradshaw trying to stop him. At length, the King ceasing to interrupt, Bradshaw's words took continuous form for a minute or two in that kind of address which a Judge makes to a capital criminal before passing sentence. " Make an yes," he said in conclusion to the officers, " and commsind silence while the Sentence is read." The Clerk then read out the sentence as it had been engrossed on parchment, as follows : — " Whereas the Commons of England in Par- liament, &,c. [a statement of the purpose of the Court, an insertion of the Charge against Charles, and a record of his refusal to plead and the consequent proceedings of the Court], this Court doth adjudge that he the said diaries Stuart, as a Tyrant, Traitor, Murderer, and a Fublic Enemy, sliall he put to death hy the severing of his head from his body." The President then said, "The sentence now read and published is the act, sentence, judgment, and resolution of the whole Court;" whereupon all the Com- missioners stood up, to express their assent. " His Majesty then " said. Will you hear me a word. Sir ? President : Sir, you are not " to be heard after the sentence. King : No, Sir ? President : " No, Sir, by your favour. Sir. Guard, withdraw your prisoner. "King: I may speak after sentence, by your favour, Sir; I may " speak after sentence, ever. By your favour, hold [the guard, one " must suppose, now hustling round Charles]. The sentence, Sir— " I say. Sir, I do — I am not suifered to speak : Expect what justice " other people will have." As he passed out with the guard, there were again cries from the soldiers of " Justice," " Justice," and some 712 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOKY OF HIS TIME. brutes among thein puffed their tobacco-smoke in &ont of him, and threw their pipes in his way. He was taken to "Whitehall and thence to St. James's.' LAST THREE DAYS OF CHAKLES's LIFE : HIS EXECUTION AND BURIAL. The last two days and three nights of Charles's life were spent by him in the utmost possible privacy. From the first day of his trial, by an order of the Commons, procured by the intercession of Hugh Peters, he had been allowed to have Dr. Juxon, ex-Bishop of London, constantly in attendance upon him ; and there was a fresh order continuing this favour after the sentence. Except Juxon and the faithful gentle- man of the bedchamber, Thomas Herbert, the King did not desire company ; and it was a relief to him when, on the remonstrances of these two with Hacker, that officer desisted from his intention of placing two musketeers on guard in his chamber.2 On the evening of the 27th, the day of the sentence, the King's nephew, the Prince Elector, who had special permis- sion to see him, came for the purpose, accompanied by the Duke of Eichmond, the Marquis of Hertford, the Earls of ^ Abridged mainly from Rushworth's swerving steadiness throughout the pro- collection of accounts in 30 folio pages ceedings, never having missed a day in (VII. 1395-— 1425). The sixty-seaen of their attendance from the 20th to the the King's judges vfho were present in 27th inclusively. Among these are Westminster Hall on the 27th, when Bradshaw, Cromwell, Ireton, Marten, the sentence was pronounced, are to be General Hammond, Ludlow, Lord Grey regarded as the men most resolute in of Groby, Sir John Dauvers, Pride, the business, the committed Regicides. Purefoy, Hewson, Hutchinson, Robert Two of these (George Fleetwood and Lilbume, Okey, Sir Hardress Waller, Thomas Wayte) came in at the last Whalley, Harrison, Sir M. Livesey, and moment, not having attended any of Thomas Scott. Several of those, how- the previous meetings of the Court ever, who had missed one or even two from the beginning of the Trial on the of the days of the Trial had done so 20th. On the other hand, some nine or accidentaUy, or for some reason of busi- ten who had been present on one, two, ness, and not from flinching. Finally, or even all of the three previous public of the sixty-seven who were present at days of the Trial (the 20th, 22nd, and the sentence, and stood up when it was 23rd), had dropped off before the sen- pronounced to signify their ooncur- tence ; among whom I note Alderman rence, several were either actually re- Isaao Pennington. He had been pre- luctant at the time, or at aU events sent all the three previous days ; but afterwards wished people to believe could not reconcile himself to the con- that they were. elusion. Of the sixty-seven who did a Commons Journals of the 20th and reconcile themselves tojt, fifty-om, as the 27th, and Herbert, 182-3. 1 reckon, are conspicuous for their un- Jan. 164ii-9.] LAST DAYS OF CHARLES. 713 Southampton and Lindsey, and some other noblemen. They had to be content with a message of thanks through Herbert, and went sorrowfully away. The same evening there also arrived Mr. Henry Seymour, with a letter from the Prince of Wales, dated from the Hague a few days before. This mes- senger, having been admitted by Colonel Hacker, did see the King, and knelt passionately at his feet, while he read the letter, and returned some verbal answer. There then re- mained only Herbert and Juxon with the King ; but, as the night came on, Herbert was sent out on a message. He was to take a ring which the King gave him, an emerald between two diamonds, and deliver it to a lady living in Channel Eow, who would know what it meant. The night was very dark ; but Herbert, having got the pass- word from Colonel Tomlin- son, who was in command outside, made his way through the sentries to the house indicated. [ He saw the lady, and, on delivering the ring, received from her a sealed cabinet. It was a box of diamonds and other jewels, chiefly broken Georges and Garters, which had been deposited with the lady, who was the King's laandress and wife of Sir William Wheeler. Eeturning with it to St. James's, Herbert found Juxon just gone to his lodging near, and the King alone. Herbert slept that night in the King's chamber, as he had done since the beginning of the trial, a paUet-bed having been brought in for the purpose by the King's order, and placed near his own bed. As always, the wax-light in the silver basin was kept faintly burning.^ Of the next day, Sunday the 28th, there is nothing to record, save that in the morning the King opened the cabinet of jewels, and that the rest of the day was passed in hearing a sermon from Juxon on Eomans ii. 16, and in private readings and devotions. Clement Walker, indeed, foists into this day a myth he had heard about a certain " paper- book" tendered to the King by "some of the grandees of the Army and Parliament,'' offering him his " life and some 1 Herbert, 170—178 ; and Wood's in his published Memoirs, but with Ath. IV. 28 — 31. Wood's acoouat was additional particulars, of which some derived from Herbert himself, and sub- are peculiarly interesting, stantially is the same as Herbert's own 714: LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. shadow of regality " on conditions of such a portentous character, so "destructive to the fundamental Government, Eeligion, Laws, Liberties, and Properties of the People," that his Majesty firmly refused them. The air was full of such myths.^ On Monday, the 29th, the two royal children then in Eng- land, the Princess Elizabeth, thirteen years old, and the Duke of Gloucester, a boy of eight, came to St. James's to bid their father farewell. The Princess, as the elder, and the more sensible of her father's condition, was weeping excessively ; the younger boy, seeing his sister weep, took the like impres- sion, and sobbed in sympathy and fright. He sat with them for some time at a window, taking them on his knees and kissing them, and talking with them of their duty to their mother, and to their eldest brother the Prince of Wales, who should be rightful King of England in long future years, when they would hardly remember their dead father. He distributed to them most of the jewels from the recovered casket ; and at last, when the time allotted for the interview was over, and the door was opened from without, he rose hastily, again kissed them and blessed them, and then turned about to hide his own tears, while they departed crying miserably.^ And what of surrounding London, what of England, what of the three kingdoms, and the world beyond the seas ? A King condemned as a Traitor and a Murderer by a fraction of his subjects ; his children taking farewell of him; his time on earth now measured by hours, and the hours by the ticks of a clock ; the hum close at hand of carpenters at work in 1 Clement Walker's "Hist, of Inde- Accordingly it is at St. James's, as in pendency. Part II. 109, 110. the text, that Herbert represents s Herbert, 178 — 180. In one parti- Charles as passing the Saturday night onlar there is a discrepancy between and the Sunday and Monday. In Bush- Herbert's account of the two days im- worth, on the other hand, the King mediately succeeding Charles's sen- remains at Whitehall through Saturday tence and the account found in Bush- night and Sunday j and it is not till worth and others. Herbert says that Monday that -he is removed to St. on Saturday, after the sentence, Charles James's, where he sees his children, was taken from Westminster Hall back Herbert's surely is the better autho- to Whitehall, "whence after two hours' rity in this matter, space ho was removed to St. James's." Jan. 1648-0.] LAST DAYS 01? CHARLES. 715 , hideous, unnameable preparations ! Was there then to be no arrest, might there be no delay ? Would not the very stones of London rise and mutiny ; might not the land around, even if led but by popular fury, surge in to the rescue; from beyond the seas might there not come execration sufficient, and some foreign voice to stop ? Nearly eight weeks, it is to be remembered, had elapsed since the Army had assumed the absolute political mastery by Pride's Purge of the Commons ; and somewhat more than three weeks since the small stump of the Commons which they had fitted for their purpose had voted the Peers a farce, declared all power to reside in itself, and appointed the High Court of Justice for the Trial of the King. If there was to be interposition for Charles, from within Great Britain or from abroad, there had therefore been time for it before his Trial actually began, or at least before his Sentence. What had been the appearances ? Among foreign powers and poten- tates a mere curious amazement, a feeling that the strange Islanders had gone mad, too mad to be meddled with : in France perhaps, where Mazarin had his own notions, even a pleasure in the sense of being unable to interfer", and a willingness to see the English fury burn itself out in its own way. The French Ambassador in England had, indeed, conveyed a letter from Queen Henrietta Maria, addressed to the Speaker of the House of Commons; but the House had passed it by, and left it unanswered. Then, among the English Eoyalists abroad ! Among them, of course, a phrenzy unutterable, — passionate pacings of rooms and courtyards in the foreign towns that quartered them ; wild clamours of grief wherever a few of them were gathered together ; mingled sobbings, curses, prayers, gnash- ings of teeth, at the thought of what was passing in the home-island beyond their reach ! But -what within that island itself? What of England and London ? The popula- tion, as we know, consisted of three sections — the numerous Independents and Sectaries; the multitudinous Presbyterians; and the suppressed and all but silenced Prelatists, or adherents of the old Church of England. What had been the signs from 716 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. these three sections ? Well, while petitions had come in to the Commons from the " well-affected," i.e. the Independents and Sectaries, of various counties, praying for justice on Delin- quents of whatever rank, and therefore virtually adhering to the Army; while the Independents of the City of London itself had bestirred themselves in the same sense, and, in spite of the opposition of the Lord Mayor and most of the Alder- men, had carried at a Guildhall meeting an Address from the Common Council to the Commons, which the Commons received with great form and much expression of thanis ; while all this had been done in the Army's interest, there had been much fainter counter-demonstrations, from either the Prelatists or the Presbyterians, than might have been expected. The Prelatists, believing their Interference would do harm, had remained in dumb horror: only Dr. John Gauden and Dr. Henry Hammond had ventured on pro- testations in the King's behalf, addressed to Fairfax and the Army Council. The Presbyterians, having more liberty in the way of speech, had certainly not been silent. What indignation among them, what outcries, during the last seven weeks, over the suppression of aU legal authority, and the monstrous usurpation of power by the Army-Grandees and their heretical adherents ! Among the Presbyterian multi- tudes of London there had been no protester in this sense more brave than Prynne. Whatever could be done with pen and ink, or by vehement verbal messages, in addition to his published Brief Memento, from his durance in the King's Head Tavern, he had done, and continued to do. Clement Walker was hardly less active. From the Presbyterian Clergy of the City also, notwithstanding the exertions of Hugh Peters and others, in private conferences with them, to keep them from interfering, there did come voices of remonstrance. The Westminster Assembly, or what of the body then re- mained sitting, had signified their unanimous desire for the King's release ; and forty-seven ministers, meeting at Sion College, had drawn up and signed a document, addressed to Fairfax,' in which they protested most earnestly, in the name of Eeligion and general morality, and also of the Solemn Jan. 1648-9.] LAST DAYS OF CHAELKS. 717 League and Covenant, against the usurpation of power by the Army and the violence intended to the Kling's person. There had been manifestations to the same effect from Presbyterian ministers in various parts of the country, in which, it ap- pears, even some of the Independent ministers had joined. Finally, there was all Presbyterian Scotland. What of it ? The Scottish' Parliament had met in Edinburgh on the 4th of January, and had been greatly agitated by the news, received from the Earl of Lothian, Sir John Chiesley, and WiUiam Glendinning,_ then acting as Scottish Commis- sioners in London, " how that above 160 members of the House of Commons were extrudit the House by the blas- phemous Army," and how there was no doubt but the King's life was in peril. There had been an express to London in consequence, with instructions to the Commissioners to do their best, by every form of entreaty and remonstrance, to avert the dreaded catastrophe. Both before and during the Trial, accordingly, these Commissioners, aided by Mr. Blair and other Commissioners of the Scottish Kirk, had been going to and fro in London, reasoning, threatening, and im- ploring. Charles Stuart was King of Scotland ; the whole Scottish nation was loyal to Monarchy in him and in his race ; from all the pulpits in Scotland there were prayers for him, and forgiveness of his past errors in pity of his present state ; would the English nation dare, in defiance of all this, and in outrage of the League and Covenant, to put him to death?! All this before the King's trial had actually begun, or at least before his sentence. And what now that the sentence had been pronounced, and Charles in St. James's was making ready for his doom ? The Trial had been swift ; hardly more than the expectation of it can have reached foreign shores ; of the actual sentence many parts of England were yet igno- rant. Only at the centre, only in London itself, could there be interference at this last moment. To the last there were 1 Commons Journals, Jan. 15, 1648-9 ; dency, Part II. 61-87 ; Balfou^s An- Neal's Puritans, III. 490-6; Whitlocke, nals, III. 373 et sey.-, Life of Robert Jan 3 • Walker's History of Indepen- Blair (Wodrow Society), pp. 213—215. 718 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. some efforts. After the sentence the pleadings and protests of the Scottish Commissioners became nearly frantic in their vehemence, the Presbyterianism of London too numh for farther expression itself, hut speaking through the Scots. All to no effiacL Nor was greater attention paid to the intercession of the only foreign Power that then made an effort to save Charles. The States-General of HoUand had sent over a special embassy for the purpose ; but, though the Ambassadors were in London on the 29th and were received that day with most ceremonious respect by the Commons as well as by the Lords, they knew that they had come on a vain errand. "Why was all in vain? For one very simple and yet very sufficient reason. At the centre of England was a will that had made itself adamant, by express vow and delibera- tion beforehand, for the very hour which had now arrived and that, amid all entreaties and pleadings of men, women, classes, corporations, and nations, would go through with the business that had been begun. Eelentings there were near the centre, but not at the very centre. Fairfax had relented; Pennington had relented ; others who had taken part in the Trial had relented ; Vane, St. John, Skippon, Fiennes, leaders hitherto, had withdrawn from the work, and were looking on moodily ; there was an agony over what was coming among many that had helped to bring it to pass. Only some fifty or sixty governing Englishmen, with Oliver Chomwell in the midst of them, were prepared for every responsibility, and stood inexorably to their task. They were the will of England now, and they had the Army with them. What proportion of England besides went with them it might be difficult to estimate. One private Londoner, at all events, can be named, who approved thoroughly of their policy, and was ready to testify the same. While the sentenced King was at St. James's there were lying on Milton's writing-table in his house in High Holborn at least the beginnings of a pamphlet on which he had been engaged during the King's Trial, and in which, in vehement answer to the outcry of the Presbyterians generally, but with particular references also Jan. 1648-9.] THE DEATH-WAREANT. 719 to the printed protests of Prynne, the appeals of the Prelatists Hammond and Gauden, and the interferences of the Scots and the Dutch, he was to defend all the recent acts of the Army, Pride's Purge included, justify the existing govern- ment of the Army-cHefs and the fragment of Parliament that assisted them, inculcate Eepublican beliefs on his countrymen, and prove to them above all this proposition: " That it is lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for " any who have the power, to call to account a Tyrant, or vncked " King, and, after due conviction, to depose and put him to " death, if the ordinary Magistrate have neglected or denied to " do it." The pamphlet was not to come out in time to bear practically on the deed which it justified; but, while the King was yet alive, it was planned, sketched, and in part written.^ Actually on Monday, Jan. 29, while the Dutch Ambas- sadors were having their audiences with the two Houses, the Death- Warrant was out, as follows : — " At the High Court of Justice for the Trying and Judging of Charles Stuart, King of England, January XXIX'^, Anno Dom. 1648. " Whereas Charles Stuart, King of England, is and standeth con- victed, attainted, and condemned of High Treason and other high Crimes, and sentence upon Saturday last was pronounced upon him by this Court to be put to death by the severing of his head from his body ; of which sentence execution yet remaineth to be done : These are therefore to will and require you to see the said sentence executed in the open street before Whitehall upon the morrow, being the Thirtieth day of this instant month of January, between the hours of Ten in the morning and Five in the afternoon of the said day, with full efiect. And for so doing this shall be your sufficient warrant. And these are to require all Officers and 1 Commons Journals, Jan. 22 and wise. But see his account of the oom- 29 ; Lords Journals, Jan. 29 ; Eush- position of the pamphlet in his Def. worth, VII. 1426-7 ; Milton's Tenure Sec. He there says that the book did of Kings and Magistrates, and his Bef. not come out till after the King's death, Sec. — That Milton's Tenure of Kings and consequently had no direct influence and Magistrates, though not published in bringing about that fact ; but this till after the King's death, had been very statement, and the sentences which on hand before, if not completed, might precede it, confirm what is said in the be inferred from the pamphlet itself, text as to the time when the pamphlet the language and tense of some parts was schemed and begun. of which are scai-oely explicable other- 720 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME. Soldiers and otter the good people of this Nation to be assisting unto yoTi in this service. Given under oui hands and seals ; — WO' fi)0 IV' Jo. Bradshawe Tho. Grey O. Cromwell Edw. Whalley M. Livesey John Okey J. Danvers Jo. Bourohier H. Ireton W Ei. Deane '^^' Robert Tichborne . lA^OH. Edwardes ^ Daniel Blagrave fjo Owen Eowe -^ " William Perfoy //= Ad. Scrope ."■* James Temple ^^* A. Garland ■ V'^Tho. Mauleverer "-'''Edm. Ludlowe fije II' fvo Har. Waller John Blakiston J. Hutchinson Wim. Goffe Tho. Pride Pe. Temple T. Harrison J. Hewson Hen. Smyth Per. Pelham '-''■'Henry Marten Wi^Vint. Potter A/«Wm. Constable •^' Rich. Ingoldesby A/°Will. Cawley ~'~ J. Barkestead iVt' Isaa. Ewer M