Philips's Account. “His father, John Milton, an honest, worthy, and substantial citizen of London, by profession a scrivener; to which profession he voluntarily betook himself by the advice and assistance of an intimate friend of his, eminent in that calling, upon his being cast out by his father, a bigoted Roman Catholic, for embracing, when young, the Protestant faith, and abjuring the Popish tenets. For he is said to have been descended of an ancient family of the Miltons of Milton, near Abingdon in Oxfordshire; where they had been a long time seated, as appears by the monuments still to be seen in Milton Church, — till one of the family, having taken the wrong side in the contests between the houses of York and Lancaster, was sequestered of all his estate but what he held by his wife.”

Out of these accounts, several matters arise for further investigation, respecting Milton's pedigree on the father's side.

As to the alleged Miltons of Milton in Oxfordshire, the remote progenitors of the poet, research has been fruitless. as we have said, two places in Oxfordshire named Milton — the village of Great Milton in the Hundred of Thame, some eight miles south-east from Oxford, and giving its name to the two contiguous parishes of Great Milton and Little Milton, both in that Hundred; and a small hamlet, called Milton, about twenty-three miles farther north in the same county, near Banbury, and attached as a curacy to the vicarage of Adderbury. The former is clearly the “ Milton near Halton and Thame in Oxfordshire” referred to by Wood; Thame, which gives its name to the Hundred, being about five miles distant, and Halton or Holton about three. The reference of Philips is also to the same village of Great Milton; for, though he says “Milton near Abingdon,” and there is a Milton near Abingdon, that Milton, like Abingdon itself, is in the county of Berks. That Philips, however, intended the Oxfordshire Milton is clear by his adding the words “in Oxfordshire,” words which, as they stand, are a blunder arising from his writing from hearsay. His reference to the monuments of the Miltons in Milton Church must also have been from hearsay. Dr. Newton searched in vain, prior to 1749, for any traces of such monuments in the church of Milton near Abingdon in Berkshire ;' nor has repeated search in all the extant records of the other and far more likely Great Milton in Oxfordshire recovered any traces of the Miltons supposed to have radiated thence. As the registers of Great Milton, however, go back only to 1550, and as Philips assigns the period of the Wars of the Roses (1455 — 1485) as that of a traditional change for the worse in the fortunes of the family, it might be that in earlier times still Miltons held lands in this locality. Even this Mr. Hunter is disposed to question, on the ground that there is no trace of such a family in more ancient documents, where, had they existed, they would almost necessarily have been mentioned. In short, the conclusion is that there never was a race of persons

in Oxfordshire answering exactly to the imposing idea called up by the phrase “ Miltons of Milton," and that Philips's tradition of the ruin of the family by the Wars of the Roses is but the repetition of a legend common to many families. Next to having come in with the Conqueror, the most approved certificate of respectability in the history of an English family is its having been ruined in the Wars of the Roses.

Letting go the legendary Miltons of Milton, we do find persons named Milton living, immediately before the Wars of the Roses, in Oxfordshire and the adjoining counties, who may have originally radiated from Great Milton, and who, with such property as they had, did have to go through the chances of the York and Lancaster wars. In the twelfth year of the reign of Henry VI. (1433) a census was taken by appointed commissioners of all persons in the different counties of England that were considered of the rank of gentry. “The outward object was to enable the king's party to administer an oath to the gentry for the better keeping of the peace and observing the laws, though the principal reason was to detect and suppress such as favored the title of York then beginning to show itself."1 The returns then made are still extant, for all save ten counties. In some counties the Commissioners included in their lists persons of much meaner condition than in others, and so made their lists disproportionately large. The return for Oxfordshire is perhaps the largest and most indiscriminate of any. “ The Commissioners in this county," says Fuller, “appear over-diligent in discharging their trust; for, whereas those in other shires flitted only the cream of their gentry, it is suspicious that here they made use of much thin milk.” Whether belonging to the cream or to the thin milk, one of the four hundred persons thereby returned for Oxfordshire, is a Roger Milton, who was almost certainly the same person as a Roger Milton, reported by Mr. Hunter as having been four years later (1437), collector of the fifteenths and tenths for the county of Oxford. With the exception of a John Milton of Egham in Surrey, this Oxfordshire Milton is the only person of the surname Milton returned in the census of 1433 of the whole gentry of England. But Cheshire and Somersetshire, where Miltons were to be expected, are among the counties for which there are no returns; and Mr. Hunter finds a John de Milton in 1428 (possibly the same as the John Milton of Egham) holding the manor of Burnham in Bucks by the service of half a knight's fee. At least, there were two Miltons in all England living immediately before the Wars of the Roses in such circumstances that they could be included among the minor gentry; and both of these were in the circle of country which may be called the Milton neighborhood — to wit, Oxfordshire and the adjacent counties, between Oxfordshire and London.

After the Wars of the Roses, Miltons in this neighborhood became more numerous. There was a William Milton, an inhabitant of the city of Oxford in 1523; there was a William Milton and also a Richard Milton in Berks in 1559; and these, as well as the more distant Miltons of Cheshire and Somersetshire, had their representatives in London, where, in the reign of Philip and Mary, a William Milton was collector of the customs, and where, during the reign of Elizabeth, the name Milton was not very uncommon. It is within this reign that we have to seek for traces of that particular Milton who was the poet's grandfather, and who is said to have lived at Holton.

Holton or Halton is a small parish of about two hundred and fifty souls, with a village of the same name, about five miles east from Oxford, between which and it lies the tract of wooded land which formed the royal forest of Shotover (Chateau vert). It is in the Hundred of Bullington, and the nearest parishes and villages to it in that Hundred in a northwest direction are Forest Hill, Stanton St. John's, Beckley, and Elsfield. Forest Hill is about a mile and a half from Holton; Stanton St. John's is about half a mile from Forest Hill; Beckley and Elsfield are each about two miles from Stanton St. John's; and all are within a radius of six miles from Oxford, and all on the borders of Shotover Forest. The next IIundred to Bullington is Thame, in which, at no great distance from any of the above places, is Great Milton. A family radiating from Great Milton northwards would scatter itself first through the above-named villages and parishes of Bullington Hundred.

The registers of Holton parish begin in 1633, and there is no notice in them of any Milton having lived there since then. In no other known record, apart from Aubrey and Wood, is there any reference to a Milton as having ever lived there. But Mr. Hunter has discovered several Miltons living, in Elizabeth's reign, in the villages of Bullington Hundred immediately around Holton; and he has also discovered one or two contemporary Miltons in Berks, who might conceivably be of the same kin. Here is a list of these, arranged, with explanations, from Mr. Hunter's notes :?

1. A Thomas Milton who, in 1571, was a “sworn Regarder and Preservator of all the Queen's Majesty's woods, within Battell's Bailiwick, parcel of the Park of Windsor," in Berks ; and who, in 1576, had a grant of a tenement called La Rolfe, with two gardens, in New Windsor.

2. A Nicholas Milton, “gentleman,” who was living at Appleton in Berks, a few miles to the south-west of Oxford, from 1589 to 1613, and who was a person of some condition, possessing lands not only at Appleton but in other places.

3. A Rowland Milton, “husbandman,” at Beckley in Oxfordshire, (not four miles from Holton), who, in 1591, was fined for having cut down a cart-load of wood in “the Queen's wood called Lodge Coppice,” without leave; and who, five years before, had bought some ash-trees from the Regarders of Stowe-wood, which is close to Beckley. He was alive in 1599.

4. A Robert Milton of Elsfield (also about four miles from Holton), who about the same time received, along with others, a sum of forty shillings from the officers of Shotover Forest, “ for hedging Beckley Coppice and for gates and iron-work.”

5. A Richard Milton of Stanton St. John's (about two miles from Holton), respecting whom there are the following particulars : In the 19th of Elizabeth (1577) he was assessed to the subsidy of that year, as one of the inhabitants of Stanton, “ being charged not on lands, but on goods only, as if he had no lands; and the goods being assessed on an annual value of three pounds." As both lands and goods were assessed for the subsidies of that reign at sums immensely below their real value, the condition of a man charged at three pounds a year on goods was higher than might at first appear. At all events, as is proved by the Subsidy-Rolls, this Richard Milton of Stanton St. Johns was the only person of the name of Milton assessed on this occasion in all Oxfordshire. For many years afterwards, nothing is heard of him; but in 1601, a Richard Milton of Stanton St. John's, then designated “yeoman,” but to all appearance the same person, is found figuring in another set of Rolls — the so-called Recusant Rolls, now preserved among the records of the Exchequer, “in which are entered, year by year, accounts of the fines levied on those persons who had not acquiesced in the Reformation, for non-attendance at their parish-churches." “ Each county,” says Mr. Hunter, “is treated apart; and in the Rolls for Oxfordshire of the 43rd of Elizabeth (1601) we find the name of Richard Milton of Stanton St. John's, yeoman.” He is fined £60 for three months of nonattendance at his parish-church, reckoning from the 6th of December 1600this being in accordance with a law against Recusancy of the 23rd of Elizabeth, which fixed the penalty for non-attendance on the established worship at £20 a month. The fine failed of the intended effect; for a second fine of £60 is imposed upon the same person for other three months of non-attendance, reckoning from the 13th of July, 1601, the culprit "neither having made submission nor promised to be conformable, pursuant to the Act.” As this Richard Milton is the only person of the name of Milton in all Oxfordshire that appears in the Subsidy Rolls of 1577, so he is the only person of the name in all Oxfordshire that appears in these Recusant Rolls. Other persons in the same neighborhood were fined as obstinate Catholics; but, so far as the record has yet shown, no other Milton.

Not one of these Miltons, it will be observed, corresponds in all points to the description of the poet's grandfather — the Milton of Holton, who was under-ranger of Shotover Forest, and whose name was probably John. The Thomas Milton who stands first in the list, was indeed a “Regarder or Preservator” of one of the royal forests; but it was of the Forest of Windsor in Berks. The Beckley Milton and the Elsfield Milton were on the edge of Shotover; but the one, instead of being a “regarder” of the forest, was pretty much the reverse, and, though the other helped to preserve the forest, it was not as one of the official “regarders,” but as an artificer employed by them. Finally, respecting the Richard Milton of Stanton St. John's, who was still closer to the forest, there is no record of his having any official connection with it.

Nevertheless, Mr. Hunter is disposed to believe that this last Milton - Richard Milton, of Stanton St. John's, yeoman poet's grandfather. The coincidences in respect of time, locality, general position in life, and, above all, of religious principle, are strong; and the discrepancies are not irreconcilable. We do not positively know that Milton's grandfather's name was John; it may have been Richard. We are told that Milton's grandfather lived at Holton, but we are told so in such a manner as to leave it possible that Aubrey or Wood wrote Holton by inference. “Next town to Fosthill within half a mile (Holton]” is the description in the Aubrey pedigree, with the word “like” before “Holton ” erased, as if Aubrey had only the position of the village indicated to him by his

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