THE LIFE OF JOHN MILTON. CHAPTER I. ANCESTRY AND KINDRED. JOHN MILTON was born in his father's house, in Bread-street, in the City of London, on Friday, the 9th of December, 1608, at halfpast six in the morning.1 The year of his birth was the sixth of the reign of the Scottish king, James I, in England. Milton's father, who was also named John, was by profession a "scrivener." He was settled, in the exercise of that profession, in Bread-street, at least as early as 1603. In a manuscript volume in the British Museum, containing miscellaneous notes relating to the affairs of one John Sanderson, a Turkey merchant of that day, there is a copy of a bond, dated the 4th of March, 1602-3, whereby two persons, styled "Thomas Heigheham of Bethnal-green in the county of Middlesex Esquire, and Richard Sparrow, citizen and goldsmith of London," engage to pay to Sanderson a sum of money on the 5th of May following, the payment to be made "at the new shop of John Milton, scrivener, in Bread-street, London." The name "Jo. Milton, Scriver" is appended as that of the witness in whose 1 Aubrey and Wood. In Aubrey's MS. the circumstance is entered in a manner which vouches for its authenticity. Aubrey had first left the date blank thus:-"He was born A Daithe day of-about- o'clock in the;" adding a little farther on in the MS. these words: "Q. Mr. Chr Milton to see the date of his bro. birth." Then, farther on still, at the top of a new sheet of smaller size than the rest, there are written in a clear hand, which is certainly not Aubrey's, these words: "John Milton was born the 9th of December, 1608, die Veneris, half an hour after six in the morning." It is to be concluded that Aubrey had, in the interval, seen Christopher Milton, and procured from him the date he wanted. Possibly, indeed, Christopher wrote down the words himself. They seem as if they had been taken from the family Bible. Wood in his Fasti makes the time of Milton's birth "between six and seven o'clock in the morning; " but in a MS. of his which I have seen, containing brief notes for biographies of eminent persons (Ashm. 8519), he adheres to the more exact statement "half an hour after six." The note about Milton in this MS. contains nothing but the dates and places of his birth and death. 2 Lansdowne MS. 241, f. 58; first cited, I believe, by Mr. Hunter, in his Milton Gleanings, p. 10. presence the bond was sealed and delivered. In the same volume there is a copy of another document of nearly the same date, recording another transaction between Sanderson and one of the persons above named. It is a bill of sale, dated April 2, 1603, whereby, for the sum of £50, received from Sanderson, Richard Sparrow makes over to him a certain ornament of gold "set with a great ruby," retaining the right to redeem it by paying to Sanderson £52 10s. on the 3d of October following, i. e. the principal with five per cent. of interest for the six months' loan. In this case the payment is to be made at Sparrow's own shop in Cheapside; but the witness who attests the transaction is "Peter Jones, servant to John Milton, scrivener."1 Servant here means clerk or apprentice. The words "new shop" in the first of the above documents imply that the scrivener had then but recently removed to the particular house in Bread-street, where, some years afterwards, his son was born. The removal took place at an interesting time. On the day on which the scrivener attested the first document, Elizabeth was within twenty days of her death; on the day on which his servant Peter Jones attested the second, the body of Elizabeth was lying in state, and James, already proclaimed in her stead, was preparing to leave Edinburgh to take possession of his new kingdom. The entry into the "new shop" in Bread-street would be associated in the scrivener's memory with the close of Elizabeth's reign and the coming in of her successor. In those days, houses in cities were not numbered as now; and persons in business, to whom it was of consequence to have a distinct address, effected the purpose by exhibiting over their doors some sign or emblem. This fashion, now left chiefly to publicans, was once common to all trades and professions. Booksellers and printers, as well as grocers and mercers, carried on their business at the Cross-keys, the Dial, the Three Pigeons, the Ship and Black Swan, and the like, in such and such streets; and every street in the populous part of such a city as London, presented a succession of these signs, fixed or swung over the doors. The scrivener Milton had a sign as well as his neighbors. It was an eagle with outstretched wings; and hence his house was known as the Spread Eagle in Bread-street.2 Most probably, the device of the Spread Eagle was adopted by the scrivener himself with reference to the armorial bearings of his family. Wood expressly tells us that "the arms that John Milton [the poet] did use and seal his letters with were, Argent, a spread 1 This document, which has escaped Mr. Hunter's notice, is at f. 363 of the MS. 1 eagle with two heads gules, legg'd and beak'd sable;" and there is still to be seen one important document on which an impression of the seal, exactly as it is here described, accompanies the poet's written signature to wit, the original agreement with the bookseller, Symons, for the publication of "Paradise Lost." There is also extant a small silver seal, which once belonged to the poet, exhibiting the same double-headed spread eagle of the shield, but with the addition of the surmounting crest-a lion's claw, above a helmet, etc., grasping an eagle's head and neck. There is scarcely room to doubt that these arms came to the poet from his father as the recognized arms of the family. The association of the heraldic double-headed spread eagle and of the accompanying crest with the name Milton is traced back through our heraldic authorities as far as Sir William Segar, who was Garter King-at-Arms from 1603 to 1633, after having passed through the previous offices of Portcullis Somerset Herald, and Norroy King, in the reign of Elizabeth. In a 1 This document, which belonged to Rogers the poet, is now in the British Museum. There is a fac-simile of it in vol. I. of Mr. Mitford's edition of Milton's Works (Pickering, 1851). 2 This interesting relic is, I believe, in the possession of Edgar Disney, Esq., of the Hyde, Ingatestone, Essex, son of the late John Disney, Esq. F. S. A., by whom it was shown at a meeting of the Archæological Institute, in March, 1849. (Archæological Journal, vol. vi. pp. 199, 200.) It was one of the articles in a collection of antiquities, paintings, etc., which came to the late Mr. Disney with the estate of the Hyde on the death of his father, the Rev Dr. Disney, in 1816. Dr. Disney inherited the collection in 1804, from his friend Mr. Thomas Brand Hollis, of the Hyde; who inherited it in 1774 from Mr. Thomas Hollis, whose name he took. Mr. Thomas Hollis, well known as a lover of art and an enthusiast in all that appertained to Milton, bought the seal in 1761 for three guineas, from Mr. John Payne, bookseller, who informed him that it had come into his possession on the death of Thomas Foster, of Holloway, who had married Elizabeth Clarke, the poet's grand-daughter by his youngest daughter Deborah and her husband Abraham Clarke of Spitalfields. Deborah had married Clarke before 1675, and she died Aug. 24, 1727. Connected with those dates, Mr. J. F. Marsh, of Warrington, the editor of the Milton Papers for the Chetham Society, has called attention to a circumstance not yet explained in the history of Mr. Disney's seal. The pedigree of the seal is perfectly satisfactory as far back as 1761, when Mr. Hollis bought it; but Mr. Marsh suspects some incorrectness in the prior account of it given by Mr. Payne. His reason manuscript volume in the British Museum, containing the grants and confirmations of arms made by Segar, there is this entry: "Mylton: "Argent, a double-headed eagle, displayed gules, beaked and membered azure. To... Mylton, alias Mytton of Com. Oxon. of ye abovesaid arms and crest: viz. out of a wreath, a lion's gamb couped and erect azure, grasping an eagle's head, erased gules."1 The entry, it will be seen, is not dated; the name of the person to whom the grant or confirmation was made is left blank; nor is it stated whether it was a grant or only a confirmation. As we read the entry, however, it purports that some one from Oxfordshire, claiming the arms of Milton in that county, applied to the College of Arms to have his title recognized. The all but perfect identity both of the arms and the crest with those above described as used by the poet makes it not unlikely that the applicant was the poet's father. It may be worth while to note that Segar himself had begun life as a scrivener, and also that the arms of the scriveners as a corporation contained the spread eagle. "Azure, an eagle with wings expanded, holding in his mouth a penner and inkhorn and standing on a book, all or," is the heraldic description. The elder Milton, therefore, might have helped himself to the spread eagle as a sign for his shop, even had it not figured in his own arms. The eagle in that case would not have been doubleheaded, and would have been all the easier to paint or carve. The heraldic identification of the name Milton with the seemingly distinct name of Mitton is somewhat curious. "Mylton, alias Mytton of Com. Oxon." is the designation in Segar's entry; there are at this day families of Mittons in Shropshire and in Staffordshire using the double-headed spread eagle in their arms, with heraldic variations; and there were Mittons in London in 1633 using the same arms. Neither the poet nor his father, however, ever wrote or pronounced their name as Mitton. They rather tended the other way; for, on more than one occasion, the elder, at least, is addressed as Melton. Nor, as far back as we can go, do we find the names of Milton and Mitton interchangeable. Milton, as we now write it, was a distinct English surname early in have been two seals the crestless one with which the poet sealed that agreement, and which came to the widow, and has since been lost; and a crested one, which went to Deborah, the poet's daughter, and so to the Fosters and Mr. Hollis? 1 Aspidora Segariana: Add. MS. Brit. Mus. 12,225, f. 162. The reference to this MS. I owe to Mr. Hunter: Milton Gleanings, p. 8. 2 Seymour's Survey of London (1735), Book IV. p. 386. the fourteenth century. A William de Milton was one of a list of persons to whom, in 1338, letters of protection were granted prior to their going abroad in the retinue of Queen Philippa, the wife of Edward III;1 and other Miltons of somewhat later date are to be heard of in different parts of England, quite independent of the contemporary Mittons. It is possible, however, that Milton Mitton, and Middleton, may originally have been analogous topographical surnames, signifying that the bearers of them had come from the "mill-town," "mid-town," or "middle-town," of their districts. It is corroborative of this view, as regards the name Milton, that, as there are about twenty places of this name in different parts of England - two Miltons in Kent, two in Hants, one in Cambridgeshire, one in Northamptonshire, one in Cheshire, one in Somersetshire, one in Berkshire, two in Oxfordshire, etc.- so families bearing the same name, and yet not tracing any connection with each other, appear to have been living simultaneously in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in different English counties. There were Miltons in London; there were Miltons in Cheshire; there were Miltons in Somersetshire; and there were Miltons in Oxfordshire, extending themselves into the adjacent counties of Berks and Bucks. It was from these last the Oxfordshire Miltons-that the poet derived his pedigree. Indeed, beyond this fact, recognized in Segar's heraldic notice, little is to be known of the poet's genealogy. All that he has himself said on the subject is that he came of an honest or honorable stock (“genere honesto");2 and what of more detailed information we have is from Aubrey, Wood, and Philips. We quote the three accounts: Aubrey's Account. "Mr. John Milton was of an Oxfordshire family: his grandfather (a Rom. Cath.) of Holton in Oxfordshire, near Shotover. His father was brought up in ye Univ of Oxon at Christ Church; and his gr-father disinherited him because he kept not to the Catholique Religion [q. he found a Bible in English in his chamber]; so thereupon he came to London and became a scrivener [brought up by a friend of his was not an apprentice] and got a plentiful estate by it." : In addition to this, which occurs at the beginning of Aubrey's MS., there is appended, on the back of the last sheet, a formal pedigree of the poet drawn up by Aubrey so as to make the whole substance of his information on that head finally plain to the eye. For reasons which will appear, we give the first part of this pedigree in fac-simile from the MS., erasures and corrections included. The erasures and corrections are to be noted. According to Aubrey's first 1 Rymer's Fœdera, II. 2, p. 25. 2 Defensio Secunda: Works, VI. 286. |