prelacy in the Church, and the maintainer of royal prerogative in the state. High Church principles were in the ascendant; and the Puritan or Presbyterian party existed as an aggrieved minority within the Church, secretly acquiring strength, and already throwing off, now and then, to relieve itself of its most peccant spirits, a little brood of dissenters or sectaries. The “Brownists” or Independents, the Anabaptists, and the Familists, all began to be distinguished from the general body of the Puritans about 1616, in which year Henry Jacob set up the first Independent congregation in England. Many of those who, if they had been at home, would have swelled these sects, were exiles in Holland. Moreover, in addition to the general Puritan body within the Church, and the incipient sects of Independents and the like who were starting out of the body, there was also throughout England a sprinkling of doctrinal heretics. They were chiefly either of the Arminian sort, or of that new sect of Arians, of which Conrad Vorstius, the successor of Arminius in the theological chair at Leyden, was regarded as the chief. They were under the ban of High Churchmen, Puritans, and orthodox sectaries alike; and there was nothing in which king James was more zealous than in defending the faith against the “wretches” in his own dominions, and calling upon his allies the Dutch to do God and him the favor of clearing their country of them. The opinions of Vorstius in particular roused all James's theology. He made his ambassador in Holland inform the States how shocked he was to find them allowing such a monster” to be professor in one of their universities, and how infinitely he should be displeased if they gave him any farther promotion. Even the Catholics - though, ever since the Gunpowder Plot, they had been well looked after in England - were less objects of aversion to his majesty than these rare heretics developed out of ultra-Protestantism. The doctrine of allegiance to a potentate living far away in Central Italy was less troublesome politically than the doctrine, slowly breaking out among the Puritans, of the right of every man to think for himself on the exact spot of earth which he chanced to occupy.

In addition to all this, we have to fancy James getting on but ill with his parliaments; trying hard to insinuate his notions of prerogative, and always finding resistance at a certain point; obtaining what money he could from the Commons, and, where that was deficient, raising more by the sale of peerages, the creation of baronets at so much a-head, and other such devices; and finally lavishing away the money thus obtained in those jocosities of his private court-life which, with all his reputation as a kind of shambling Solomon with a Scottish accent, lost him, almost from the first, the real respect of a people who knew what respect was, and had ere now had sovereigns to whom they did not refuse it. Let the following stand as a sample of the kind of events that were taking place during the poet's childhood, and that would necessarily be talked over in English households like that of the elder Milton.

1611 (the Poet aged 3). The present authorized version of the Bible published, superseding the version called the Bishop's Bible.

1612, Nov. 6 (the Poet aged 4). Prince Henry died in his nineteenth year, to the great grief of the nation, leaving the succession to his brother, Prince Charles, who was not so much liked. Not long after, James's daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, was married amid universal rejoicings to the ElectorPalatine Frederick, the most Protestant of the German Princes.

1613–14, March 13 (the Poet aged over 5). Bartholomew Legate, an Essexman, aged about forty, “person comely, complexion black, of a bold spirit, confident carriage, fluent tongue, excellently skilled in the Scriptures,” was burned to death at Smithfield for Arianism. He had been in prison two years, during which the clergy and the King himself had reasoned with him in vain. Once the King, meaning to surprise him into an admission involving the Divinity of Christ, asked him whether he did not every day pray to Christ. Legate's answer was, “that indeed he had prayed to Christ in the days of his ignorance, but not for these last seven years;” which so shocked James that he “ spurned at him with his foot.” At the stake he still refused to recant, and so was burnt to ashes amid a vast conflux of people — “the first,” says Fuller, " that for a long time suffered death in that manner, and oh, that he might be the last to deserve it!” The very next month another Arian, named Whiteman, was burned at Burton-on-Trent.

1615 (the Poet aged 7). The trial of the favorite Carr, Earl of Somerset, his wife and their agents, for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower. The issue, as regarded the favorite, was his disgrace from court. George Villiers takes his place, and becomes the ruling minister of James, first as Viscount Villiers (1616), and next as Earl of Buckingham (1617), which title was afterwards raised to that of Marquis, and finally to that of Duke.

1616, April 23 (the Poet aged over 7). Shakspeare died at Stratford-onAvon.

1617, (the Poet aged over 8). The King visits Scotland, where, after much difficulty with the Scottish Parliament and General Assembly, he succeeds in settling the modified Episcopacy he had been long trying to introduce.

1618, Oct. 29 (the Poet aged nearly 10). Sir Walter Raleigh beheaded “more to please the Spanish Court,” people said, “ than for any other reason.”

1618, Nov. 13. The Synod of Dort in Holland met to settle matters in the Dutch Church, particularly the controversy between the Calvinists and the Arminians. There was much interest in its proceedings in England, and five English Divines sat in it as deputies. The Calvinists were greatly in the majority, and Arminianism was condemned.

1618–19, March 2. The death of Queen Anne leaves James a widower.

1620 (the Poet aged 12). Great murmuring on account of the King's subserviency to the Catholic Power of Spain, as shown in his lukewarmness in the cause of his son-in-law, the Elector Frederick. The Bohemians, after having been in revolt against their King, the German Emperor Matthias, on account of his attempt to subvert Protestantism among them, had seized the opportunity afforded by his death (March 1619) to renounce their allegiance to his successor in the Empire, Ferdinand II., and to provide themselves with a true Protestant sovereign. Their choice had fallen on the Elector Palatine. Frederick accepted the throne; and thus there began a war - as it proved, the great Thirty Years' War— in which the Emperor, the Pope, and the King of Spain were leagued against the Bohemians, Frederick, and the Protestant Union. All Europe looked on. In Britain, it seemed shocking that James should permit the Pope, the Emperor, and the Spaniard to carry all before them against his own son-in-law and daughter and the Protestant Religion to boot. The British Protestant Lion longed to leap into the quarrel; and James was compelled at last to send some money and men. But it was too late. In November 1620, the Protestants were shattered in one decisive battle; and Frederick and his Queen, losing both Bohemia and the Palatinate, became refugees in Holland. The unpopularity of James and his favorite Buckingham was greatly increased by this affair, the more because it was known that their truckling arose from a design to secure the Spanish Infanta, with her dowry of two millions, for the young Prince Charles.

In addition to these greater matters of national politics, which must have interested the poet's father as a man and an Englishman during the period of his son's childhood, there were other matters which interested him as the head of a family and a scrivener. In the latter half of the year 1616, for example, there was some commotion among the scriveners of London, ending in a reorganization of their body. Like the other city companies, the Scriveners had always been liable to taxes and other charges, and had duly paid the same by assessment among themselves. Of late, however, an assessment towards a “general plantation” of Coleraine and Londonderry in Ireland — i. e. toward the settlement of English and Scotch Protestants in those parts — had provoked opposition. Some refused to pay on the ground that the Company, not being regularly incorporated by charter, could not be legally taxed for such a purpose. The Company, therefore, fell into arrears, which the master, wardens, and other chief men paid out of their own private purses. In these circumstances, the remedy was to procure a charter of incorporation, vesting full legal powers in the officebearers to assess, hold meetings, compel the payment of “quarterage," etc. A petition for such a charter, drawn up in the names of William Todd, the Master, and Francis Kemp and Robert Griffiths the Wardens of the Company, was presented to the King; and the charter was granted. By this charter (1616) the Scriveners or Writers of the Court-Letter of the City of London, being, as the preamble declares, an ancient and highly honorable society and fraternity, and then more numerous than ever and engaged in affairs of great moment and trust, are constituted into a regular corporation, and power is vested in William Todd, Master, Francis Kemp, and Robert Griffiths, Wardens, and twenty-four liverymen named, to perform all acts necessary and to transmit the same right to their successors. In pursuance of the powers thus granted, the Scriveners prepared a revised set of regulations for the government of their craft, which (January 1618–19) received the sanction of Lord Chancellor Bacon and the Chief Justices.

It is worthy of notice that, though the poet's father was one of the most prosperous men in his profession, his name does not occur in the list of twenty-seven scriveners who are named in the Charter of 1616 as the first office-bearers of the Company in its new shape. It is possible that he stood aloof from the movement for incorporation. That he must have complied, however, with the new regulations, is evident from the fact that he continued in the practice of his craft. He was in active business as late as May 1623, on the 26th day of which month “ Thomas Bower and John Hutton, servants to John Milton, Scrivener," set their names as witnesses to an indenture, connected with the conveyance of a messuage and some lands near Boston in Lincolnshire, from an Edward Copinger, of Nottinghamshire, gentleman, to two persons named Randolph, both “gentlemen,” and both of London. The original is in the State Paper Office - a very neat, carefully penned, and carefully drawn parchment, highly creditable to the "shop" whence it issued. The scrivener had then been at least twenty-two years in business.

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CHAPTER III.

EARLY EDUCATION: ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL.

1620-1625.

ALTHOUGH nothing has been yet said respecting that part of Milton's early education which consisted in his gradual training in the knowledge of books, the reader will have taken it for granted that this was not neglected—that the child was duly taught his letters; that as he grew up, he was farther and more formally instructed; and that he was provided with books to his desire, and with other means of turning his accomplishments to account.

To all this let it now be added, that Milton was from the very first the pride of his parents, and the object of their most sedulous care. There is evidence that, in quite a different sense from the ordinary one of compliment, he was a child of "unusual promise," and that his father's fondness for him was more than the common feeling of rather late paternity. "Anno Domini 1619," says Aubrey, "he was ten years old, as by his picture; and he was then a poet." That is to say, according to the information given by Christopher Milton, his brother John was, even in his eleventh year, a prodigy in the household, and a writer of verses. What more natural than that such a boy should have every advantage of education, in order that he might one day be an ornament of the Church? "The Church to whose service, by the intentions of my parents and friends, I was destined of a child," is one of his own sayings in later life; and there can be little doubt that the intention existed as early as the time under notice.

1

The circumstance mentioned by Aubrey, that the scrivener had his son's portrait when he was but ten years old, is worth noting. The facts are these: About the year 1618 Cornelius Jansen, a young Dutch painter, came over from his native city of Amsterdam, with the hope of finding employment in England. He took up his residence in Blackfriars, London; and, being really an able artist,very clear and natural in his coloring," say the connoisseurs," and

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