whom it must have pleased him to see or to meet. Besides the twenty-five heads of Colleges, - the most distinguished of whom were Dr. John Prideaux, Rector of Exeter College, anti-Laudian in his views, and afterwards Bishop of Worcester; Accepted Frewen, D. D., President of Magdalen, and afterwards Bishop of Lichfield and Archbishop of York; and Dr. Brian Duppa, Dean of Christ Church, afterwards tutor to Charles II. as prince, and bishop of two sees, there were many eminent scholars in Oxford of whom Milton had heard. Some of these may have been of Trinity College - the college of his friend Gill and also of Diodati. In all probability, however, the most agreeable and useful acquaintance that Milton at this time formed at Oxford was with John Rous, M. A., fellow of Oriel College, and chief librarian of the Bodleian. That Milton knew Rous familiarly afterwards is certainly known. Besides the incorporation at Oxford, there was another incident of the year 1635 of some collateral interest in the biography of Milton. On the 17th of November in that year, old Mr. Gill died in his house in St. Paul's Churchyard in the seventy-first year of his age, having survived but by a month or two the publication of his folio volume called “Sacred Philosophie of Holy Scriptures, or Commentary on the Creed." He was buried in Mercers' Chapel; and his son was appointed by the Mercers' Company to succeed him as Head Master of St. Paul's School. This promotion was a considerable rise in the world for Gill; and, in the following year (1636), he was admitted D. D. at Oxford.3 Throughout the year 1636 there had been much alarm in England on account of a return of the plague. As early as April 1636, 1 There has been a disposition to antedate that Milton may have, in his boy hood and Milton's acquaintance with the vicinity of youth, visited Forest Hill and the Shotover Oxford, and to exaggerate the amount of his district, whence his father had come, is exearly connection with it. As far back as tremely probable; and that at a later period 1750 they used to show a house in Forest Hill (beyond the limits of this volume, however) as“ Milton's house;" and in 1769 Sir William Forest Hill did contribute for better or worse Jones made Forest Hill the object of a day's to the current of his ideas, is absolutely cerramble from Oxford, expressly that he might tain. But that he resided at or near Forest have the pleasure of visiting " a place where Hill for any length of time prior to his early Milton spent some part of his life, and where manhood, or that this was the place where in all probability he composed several of he composed any of his important youthful his earliest productions." Unfortunately Sir poems, rests, as yet, on no authority. HorWilliam conveyed the impressions obtained ton near Colnbrook is the authentic place of in the visit in a letter to Lady Spencer (see Milton's habitual residence for nearly six Todd's Life of Milton, edit. 1809, pp. 20—23), years after his leaving Cambridge. Forest which has continued to perturb Milton's Hill will come in time enough. biography ever since. He describes the scene- 2 The work is registered in the books of the ry round, and shows how all the images of Stationers' Company, under date May 29, rural nature found in the Allegro and Pense 1635. roso were indubitably yielded by it! Now, 3 Wood, Athenæ, III. 42. there was a royal proclamation renewing former sanitary regulations over the kingdom; and during the rest of the year there were additional proclamations, adjourning the law-courts, prohibiting fairs in London and elsewhere, appointing general fasts, and the like. The plague did not spread to the extent that had been anticipated. We hear of it as being in London from the month of July 1636 onwards, as showing signs of abating before the winter was over, but as breaking out afresh early in the spring of 1637. "In the beginning of March," writes Garrard, "there died 100 of the plague; then nothing but talking of removing from London; besides much in the country, near the King's houses, at Hampton, Chelsea, Brentford, everywhere westward, more or less." The portions of the country here indicated seem to have been those in which the plague lingered most pertinaciously during the rest of its visit; and Cambridge and other towns, which had suf fered so much on the preceding visit of 1630, escaped with a few cases. It was not, however, till August 1637, or sixteen months after the first outbreak, that the infection abated so far that proclamations on the subject ceased.1 The parish registers of Horton prove that, during the last five or six months of the sixteen, the plague had settled with peculiar tenacity on Colnbrook and its neighborhood. The annual average of deaths in Horton parish, as appears from the register of burials, was about ten or twelve in ordinary times; but this was liable to rise greatly when conditions were unhealthy. Here, for example, are the statistics of burials for the twelve years preceding and including 1636, each year to be reckoned as beginning on the 25th of March: Here, it will be observed, the mortality of the parish rises to triple its ordinary average in the plague year 1626; in the next plague year, 1630, the parish seems to escape altogether; and, on the third occasion, the year 1636 (including as far as what we should now call March 24, 1637) passes without any noticeable increase of mortality. Evidently, however, the plague, on the first occasion, 1 See Proclamations of the years 1636 and 1637, in Rushworth; also Cooper's Annals of Cambridge, under these years; and Garrard's Letters of the same years in the Strafford reached Colnbrook late; for though, as regards the kingdom at large, the plague year is divided over 1625 and 1626, the increased mortality in Horton parish falls entirely within the accounts of 1626. And precisely so it happened on this third occasion. Although the registered mortality of the parish for 1636 is not above the average, the local conditions for an increase must have been then preparing themselves; and, partly from direct cases of plague, partly from the general influence of an unhealthy season, the registered mortality of 1637 is unusually great. The burials for that year are thirty-one, or only three fewer than in the great plague year 1626. Here is the list, copied from the Register-the most interesting of all the entries for us being that which stands third: 1. The wife of Thomas Porter, buried March 26th. 2. Susan, ye Daughter of Morris & Martha Fisher, buried April 1st. 3. Sara, uxor Johnis Milton, generosi [Sara, wife of John Milton, gentleman], Aprilis 6: obiit 3° [Buried the 6th of April: died the 3rd]. 4. An infant sonne of John & Susan Hawkins, buryed Aprill ye 9th. 5. Johnes inf. Johnis et Susannæ Hawkins filius [John infant son of John and Susan Hawkins] Aprilis 24°. 6. Catherine, wife of John Ballynour, buryed April ye 28: of ye Plague : Colebrook (1). 7. Richard Vicar, gent. & inkeep., buryed May ye 15, out of ye Talbot, of ye Plague (2). 8. Fraunces, daughter of Richard Vicar, gent., buried May 15th, of ye Plague (3). 9. John, sonne of Thomas Paine, tapster, May ye 15, out of ye Talbot, of ye Plague (4). 10. John, some of John Cooke, gentleman, buried June 13th, out of ye Talbot, of ye Plague (5). 11. John Withers, sadler, buryed June ye 26; d. of ye Plague; of Colebrook (6). 12. Mary, ye daughter of Henry Heydon, glover, buryed June ye 26; also of Colebrook. Alice, wife of Gilbert Brandon, vint'. of London, June ye 28, out of ye Talbot, of ye Plague (7). 14. Susanna, wife of Robt. Taylor, coblar, July ye 27, of ye Plague: of Colebrook (8). Alice, ye wife of John Withers, lately deceased, July ye 9th, of ye Plague; of Colebrook (9). 16. Jonathan, sonne of Robert Taylor, coblar, July ye 7th, of ye Plague; of Colebrook (10). Stephen, sonne of Robert Taylor, coblar, July ye 10th, of ye Plague; of Colebrook (11). John, ye sonne of Robert Taylor, coblar, July ye 11th, of ye Plague; of Colebrook (12). Henry Heydon, glover, buryed July ye 26; died of consumption; of Colebrooke. 20. Thomas Headmayer, buryed July ye 30; surfeitt by drinking; of Colebrooke. Bridgida, uxor Thomæ Harris, Aug. 20th; died of a staid (?) pestilentiall (13). 22. William Snowdon, servant to John Haines, husbandman; Aug. ye 29; ex peste obiit [died of plague] (14). William Stanton, carpenter, Sept ye 29th. Martha, wife of Maurice Fisher, Septemb. ye 8th. Alice, wife of Thomas Feild, November ye 13th 26. Peter, sonne of Peter Jenings; an infant; Decemb. ye 23. John, sonne of John and Margarett Browne, Jan. ye 4th; of Colebrooke. Elizabeth, daughter of Judge Grayhew (?), buryed Jan. ye 28th; d. of a consumption; of Colebrooke. 30. Margarett, ye wife of William Michell, buryed February ye 4th; of Colebrooke. brooke. Margarett, ye wife of John Browne, buryed March ye 13; of Cole (Signed) EDWARD GOODALL, Rector. JOHN HAWKINS Churchwardens.1 and THOMAS BOWDEN, Among the deaths not attributed to the plague, but possibly owing to the unhealthiness which preceded it, was that of Milton's mother. She had been ill perhaps for some time; there have been rumors of the advances of the plague from London by Brentford, etc.; the weaker people are beginning to feel they know not what symptoms that all is not well with them; and, on the 3d of April, 1637, this one memorable life ends, and the poor that linger at the gate know that they have lost a friend. For three days there is death in the still house; and the helpless widower sits or moves about, bowed down with his loss, but striving to say, as his sons and his daughter attend him watchingly, "Let the will of the Lord be done!" Pitying him, the elder son meditates the same thought 1 The signatures of the rector and churchwardens appended to the register of this year (which is only occasionally done in previous years), signify that the year was one of unusual note, in respect of mortality in the parish. The numbers prefixed to the names by Goodal, in reckoning up the deaths, as well as the numbers, in different series, affixed by him afterwards to the plague cases, are of similar significance. Altogether, it appears that, of the thirty-one deaths of the year, fourteen were notoriously deaths from plague 2" We have had here in England," writes Tarrard from London, April 28, 1637," a very dry spring, cold easterly winds, but for the most part very fair weather; though seldom rain, yet wetting mists every morning. The plague rises and falls according to the change of the moon." in his own manner, and with variations which he cannot speak. Three days so pass; on the third, there is the last look at the face so long seen but now to be seen no more; and forth from the house, and out at the gate, walk the little company of mourners, on their short way to the church opposite: Past the old yews at the entrance to the churchyard, where groups are gathered to see, moves the sad procession. They enter the little church, up the narrow middle aisle of which the coffin is slowly carried; and there, round the deep-dug grave they stand, while the last service is being read. The coffin is lowered; there is the sound of the falling earth; there is the one unutterable look into the grave; and the dead and the living are parted forever! Where Milton then stood, and where the aged widower stood and the others with him, the visitor to Horton Church may now stand also, and read on a plain blue stone laid flat on the floor of the chancel, this simple record: "Heare lyeth the Body of Sarah Milton, the wife of John Milton, who died the 3rd of April, 1637.” 1 Within three weeks after the death of Milton's mother, the plague was in and around the village; and, from the end of April to the end of August, there were to be seen passing at intervals into the churchyard those funerals of plague-victims — some from the village itself, but most from the adjacent part of Colnbrook of which the Register informs us. As the plague was in other places round about, however, and also still in London, there may have been nothing to be gained, in point of security, by leaving Horton for any other place near. Nearly three years had elapsed since the performance of the masque at Ludlow Castle; and during these the rumor of its excellence had spread so widely, that Lawes had found the manuscript a troublesome possession. He had been applied to for copies of it, or for copies of the songs in it, so often, that he resolved to have it printed. Accordingly, having obtained the author's consent, and having obtained also such emendations of the original copy as the author saw fit to make, he did, in his own name, publish the masque in a small quarto pamphlet of thirty-five pages. The most inter 1 The fact of burial in the church, and the 2 " A Masque presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, manner in which the entry of the burial is on Michaelmasse Nighı, before the right honourable made by Goodal in the parish books (in Latin, the Earle of Bridgewater, Viscount Brackly, Lord and with the date of death as well as that of President of Wales, and one of his Majesties most burial noted), prove that the family was of honourable privie Counsell; London : Printed for some consideration in Horton. Humphrey Robinson at the Signe of the Three |