Not only under curb, but thrown to the ground, and baited with sarcasms and interrogatories! Thus, on the 17th of April, 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 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. Parliament, 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 question of the amount of toleration to be granted under the new Presbyterial rule to "tender consciences that differ not in fundamentals of Religion." 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 Assembly's Petition which assumed that the whole frame of the Presbyterian Government scheme by the Assembly wasjure divino. They resolved to put the Assembly through an examination about thisjus 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, arejure divino, and by the will and appointment of Jesus Christ; and whether any particular Church- government bejure divino, and what that government is?"—such is the first of the nine queries; and the other eight are no less incisive. They were duly communicated 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 particular resolution he might vote for; and the dissentients from any vote were to send to Parliament their own positive opinions on the point of that vote, with the Scripture proofs. Selden's hand is distinctly visible in this ingenious insult to the Assembly. [Footnote: Commons Journals, April 17 and April 22, 1646; Baillie, II. 344.] 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 Recruiters 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 Recruiters had so increased the strength of the Independents and Erastians that a relapse into the policy of ultra-Presbyterianism and No Toleration appeared impossible. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 369, and Commons Journals for several days in May 1646.]
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 for 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 hesitation, and indeed partly by accident, given the Presbyterians the first chance. He had done so, it was true, in a circuitous way, but perhaps in the only way open to him. To have 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 have 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 himself 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 even 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, Henderson had taken leave of his brother-divines, Baillie, Rutherford, 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," wrote 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." [Footnote: Baillie, II. 370et seq.]
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 Dunfermline, once or twice their visitor since, always remembering them with affection, and now back among them in his distress. [Footnote: On the verge of a wooded dell or glen close to the burgh of Dunfermline, in Fife, there still stands one fine length of ruined and ivy-clad wall, the remains of the palace in which, on the 19th of November 1600, Charles I. was born. The dell, with the adjacent Abbey, is sacred with legends and stony memorials of the Scottish royal race, from the days of Malcom Canmore and his Queen Margaret.] Of course, in such a character, concessions totheirPresbyterianism would have to be made; but these concessions 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 English? Charles did labour under this delusion. When he had come among the Scots it was actually with some absurd notion that Montrose, who still lurked in the Highlands, might be forgiven all the past and brought back, as one of his Majesty's most honoured servants, though recently erratic, into the society of Argyle, Loudoun, Lanark, and the rest of the faithful. [Footnote: See in Rushworth (VI. 266-7) a Letter of the King's to the Marquis of Ormond in Ireland, dated from Oxford, April 13, 1646, and explaining his reasons for his then meditated flight to the Scots. "We are resolved to use our best endeavours, with their assistance," says Charles, speaking of the Scottish Army, "and with the conjunction of the forces under the Marquis of Montrose and such of our well-affected subjects as shall rise for us, to procure, if it may be, an honourable and speedy peace." At the same time (April 18) Charles had written to Montrose himself to the same effect. The infatuation that could believe in the possibility of such a combination was monstrous.]—A day or two among the Scots had undeceived 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 Parliament 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 could 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 acceptance of Presbytery for his English realm, he does not appear to have objected to the impression that on this second matter 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 Roman Catholic force, on condition 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 employed part of his leisure in penning, from the midst of them, letters of a temporizing kind to the two Houses of Parliament, 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 Religious 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. [Footnote: Letters of Charles numbered XXV. XXVI. and XXVII. (pp. 39-43) in Mr. Bruce'sCharles I. in1646; Parl. Hist. III. 471et seq.] 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 Remonstrance 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 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 Anabaptism, 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 Anabaptism, Brownism, and almost all manner of schisms, heresies, and blasphemies, boldly vented and maintained by such as, to the point of Church-government, 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 Parliament, 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 Independency, 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 Newcastle, and taking precautions against a treaty that should be merely Presbyterian. The Presbyterians, on the other hand, with Holles, Stapleton, and Clotworthy as their chiefs, 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. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 474-480; Lords Journals, May 26, 1646; Commons Journals of same date; Whitlocke's Memorials (ed. 1853), II. 27.]
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 Newcastle experience of their various humours. He had analysed them into the four factions of the "Montroses" or thorough Royalists, the "Neutrals," the "Hamiltons," and the "Campbells" 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 Campbells, 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 all "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 Jun. 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 would 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 Independents should be fighting the Scottish Army and the Presbyterians. [Footnote: King's Letters, xxix.-xxxiv. in Bruce'sCharles I. in1646; Baillie, II. 374-5; Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland for 1646. Parl. Hist. III. 482-488; and Commons Journals of various days in May and June, when there were divisions.]
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 Religious Conformity, they do not seem to have permitted these feelings to disturb their sense of obligation to the English Parliament, and of a general British responsibility. 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 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:—
"MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,—Though I have had the honour to be named by the Kingdom 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 occasion, by settling of Religion and the Peace and Union of these Kingdoms. .. .As the dangers [in the way of the first enterprise, 'Reformation' or the 'settling of Religion'] are great, we must look the better to our duties; and the best way to perform these is to keep us by the Rules which are to be found in our National Covenant,—principally the Word of God, and, in its own place, the Example of the best Reformed 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 Religion, whereby, instead of uniformity, we should set up a thousand heresies and schisms; which is directly contrary and destructive to our Covenant.Upon the other part, we are to look that we persecute not piety and peaceable men who cannot, through scruple of conscience, come up in all things to the common Rule; but that they may have such a forbearance as may be according to the Word of God, may consist with the Covenant, and not be destructive to the Rule 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 established 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 Religion, yea one in Covenant; so that, in effect, we differ in nothing but in name (as brethren do):which I wish were also removed, that we might be altogether one, if the two Kingdoms think fit…. I will forbear at this time to speak of the 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 that their personal regard to him hath never made them forget that common rule, 'The Safety of the People is the Supreme Law.'"
Altogether Argyle's speech 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 be 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 busy with affairs. He also took his place in the Westminster Assembly for a few days by leave of the parliament. [Footnote: King's Letter xxii. in Bruce'sCharles I, in1646; Baillie, II. 374-378; Lords Journals, June 23 and July 7, and Commons Journals, June 25; and Parl. Hist. III. 488-491, where Argyle's Speech is reprinted from the original edition, published by authority, at London, by Laurence Chapman, June 27, 1646.]
Not the less, while the two Houses had thus been watching the King atNewcastle and corresponding with him, had they been acting as the realGovernment of England without him.
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 (antè, 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 compromise 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 Parliamentary Commissioners to assist and control the Congregational Elderships. Instead of the contemplated sets of Commissioners in each ecclesiastical Province, there was now to be one vast general Commission for all England, consisting of about 180 Lords and Commoners named (Cromwell, Vane, and everybody else of any note among them); which Commissioners, 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 ofConsiderations and Cautions, explaining that the Parliamentary Rule for Presbyterianism was not yet in all points satisfactory to their consciences. [Footnote: Commons Journals, June 3 and 9, 1646; Baillie, II. 377; Neal'sPuritans(ed. 1795) III. 106.]
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 personal stand for Episcopacy at Newcastle, the Presbyterian machinery was coming into operation in the capital. "Matters here," writes Baillie, July 14, "look better upon it, blessed be God, than sometimes they have. On Sunday, 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 August 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 Presbyteries 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 distinct Lancashire parish at all, but it had one minister, Mr. John Fogg, and he was put into the fifth Presbytery. The names of all the Lancashire ministers thus classified, and 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. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 378 and 388; Neal, III. 307-310 (List of classes or Presbyteries of London). The division of Lancashire into Presbyteries is given in the Commons Journals, Sept. 15,1646. See also Halley's "Lancashire: its Puritanism and Nonconformity" (1869), Vol. I. pp. 432 et seq., where there are many details concerning the first introduction of the Presbyterial system into Lancashire. According to Dr. Halley, the system was set up more rigidly in Lancashire than in London itself, chiefly in consequence of the activity and energy of Richard Heyricke, or Herrick, M.A., warden of the Collegiate Church, Manchester. He was one of the Divines of the Westminster Assembly (see Vol. II. p. 510); but he had returned to Lancashire, prefering Presbyterian leadership in that county to second rank in London.]
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 ofThe Frame of Church Governmentout of its hands, and laid on the shelf of finished work beside theNew Directory of Worshipconcluded 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 FaithandThe 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. Rous's Metrical Version of the Psalms, referred to them by Parliament 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 Nov. 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 "Revised Rous's Psalter" (which Rous 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. William Barton, so that their concurrence was withheld; but that was not the fault of the Assembly. Rous's Psalter, therefore, as well as the Directory and the Frame of Government being done with, what was to hinder them longer from the Confession and Catechisms? Only one impediment— those dreadfuljus divinuminterrogatories which the Parliament, 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 Confession of Faith and Catechise." The order thus meritoriously 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 theConfession of FaithandCatechisms. 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 Prolocutor, 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. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 378-9; Commons Journals, July 22, 1646; and Mr. David Laing's Notices of Metrical Versions of the Psalms in Appendix to Baillie, Vol. III. pp. 537-540.]
There was a death about this time more important than that of Dr. Twisse:—The health of Henderson had for some 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 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 Presbyterian ministers, Mr. Robert Blair, Mr. Robert Douglas, and Mr. Andrew Cant, all 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 question 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 theReliquiæ Sacræ Carolinæor Printed Works of Charles I., what purports to be the actual series of Letters exchanged between the King and Henderson. 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; Henderson replies July 2; and two short letters of the King, being the fourth and fifth on his side, are both dated July 16. There the correspondence ends, Henderson having, it is believed, thought it fit that his Majesty should 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 Henderson, 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 heartbreak, 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 1lth 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 with 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 19th 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. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 381- 387; Burnet's Memoirs of the Hamiltons (ed. 1852), 356-7; Wodrow's Correspondence (Wodrow Society), III. 33, 34; Life of Mr. Robert Blair, by Row (Wodrow Society), 185-188; and "Reliquiæ Sacræ Carolinæ: or, The 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'sPuritans(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 became an incident of even mythical value to the Royalists. 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 convinced him, and confessing his repentance 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 little before his death) that he was utterly displeased with the King's ways, and over the longer the more; and whoever say otherwise, I know they speak false. That man died as he lived, in great modesty, piety, and faith." But the lie could not be extinguished; it circulated among the Royalists; and within two years it was turned into cash or credit by some scoundrel Scot in England, who forged and published a document entitledThe Declaration of Mr. Alexander Henderson, principall Minister of the Word of God at Edinburgh, and chief Commissioner from the Kirk of Scotland to the Parliament and Synod of England, made upon his death-bed.This forgery was immediately denounced by the General Assembly of the Scottish Church in a solemn Declaration set forth by them Aug. 7, 1648, stating particulars of Henderson's last days, and vindicating his memory. Nevertheless the fiction was too convenient to be given up: it lasted; was embalmed by Clarendon in his History (605); and still leaves its odour in wretched compilations.—The genuineness of the series of Letters on Episcopacy 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 by subsequent Presbyterian critics. In the year 1826, however, the eminent and acute Godwin, in an elaborate note in hisHistory of the Commonwealth(II. 179-185), did challenge the genuineness 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 conferences," and that the whole thing was a Royalist forgery of 1649, contemporary with theEikon Basilike, and for the same purpose. In venturing on so bold an opinion, Godwin, besides undervaluing other evidence to the contrary, seems to have dismissed too easily Burnet's information, in hisLives of the Hamiltonsin 1673, as to the manner in which the Letters were 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. Henderson's papers and the copies of the King's." After all, however, Godwin's sceptical inquiry leaves a shrewd somewhat behind it. For, granted that a written correspondence did take place, "the question remains," as Godwin asserts, "whether the papers now to be found in King Charles's works are the very papers that were so exchanged at Newcastle. The suspicion here suggested tells, in my mind, more against the King's letters as we now have them than against Henderson's. The King's letters, we may be sure, would be pretty carefullyeditedin 1649; and what may have been the amount and kind ofeditingthought allowable?"]
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." TheHopeshere 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 dreadful 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.
The effect of Milton'sAreopagitica, immediately after its publication 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 transgression. 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'sAreopagitica," 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 discharged that office." [Footnote: Toland's Memoir of Milton prefixed to the Amsterdam (1698) edition of Milton's Prose Works, p. 23.] Toland is in a slight mistake here, at least in his dating. The person whom he means—Gilbert Mabbott,not'Mabol'—was Rushworth'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 Rushworth's part to do, through the year 1645, but he was expressly recommended 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.[Footnote: My notes from the Stationers' Registers of 1645 and subsequent years; Lords Journals, Sept. 30, 1647; and Commons Journals, May 22, 1649. There is some evidence, however, that, before this last date, Mabbott had found the duty irksome (see Commons Journals, Aug. 31, 1648).] The effect of Milton's argument on Mabbott in particular, therefore, was not so immediate as Toland represents. There can be no doubt, however, that as Milton, in hisAreopagitica, had tried to make the official licensers of books, and especially those of them who were ministers, ashamed of their office, so his reasons and sarcasms, conjoined with the irksomeness 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 (antè, 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 denounced 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 Pædo-Baptism." [Footnote:Gangræna: Part I. (ed. 1646), pp. 38, 39. In Part III. Edwards devotes three pages (102— 105) to a castigation of Mr. Bachiler for his offences as a licenser. Bachiler, he says, "hath been a man-midwife to bring forth more monsters begotten by the Devil and born of the Sectaries within the last three years than ever were brought into the light in England by all the former licensers, the Bishops and their Chaplains, for fourscore years." He was in the habit, Edwards adds, of not only licensing sectarian books, but also recommending them; and among the Toleration pamphlets he had licensed was the reprint of Leonard Busher's tract of 1614 calledReligious Peace(seeantè, p. 102). "I am afraid," says Edwards, "that, if the Devil himself should make a book and give it the titleA Plea for Liberty of Conscience, with certain Reasons against Persecution for Religion, and bring it to Mr. Bachiler, he would license it, and not only with a bareimprimatur, but set before it the commendations of 'a useful treatise' or 'a sweet and excellent book.'"] TheAreopagitica, 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 question of the liberty of Unlicensed Printing. It was Milton that had taught the Independents, and the Anti-Presbyterians 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 theAreopagitica, 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 Parliament; 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 anImprimatur." [Footnote: Lilburne, as quoted by Prynne in hisFresh Discovery of Blazing Stars, p. 8.] There is proof, in the writings of other Independents and Sectaries, that Milton's jocular specimens of theimprimatursin 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 anonymousArraignment of Persecution, the author of which was a Henry Robinson (antè, 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-Clergy," appointed by the author to print the same, presume to do so. [Footnote: Quoted by Prynne in hisFresh Discovery, p. 8.] 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, Robinson, he says, was one of the chief publishers of scandalous libels, having brought printers from Amsterdam, and set up a private printing press for the purpose. [Footnote: I may take this opportunity of announcing a rather curious fact, of which I have ample and incontestable proof, thought the proper place for stating it in detail is yet to come. It is that Milton, the denouncer of the Licensing System, and the satirist of the official licensers of 1644, was himself afterwards an official censor of the Press. He was one of the licensers of newspapers through 1651 and a portion of 1652, doing the very work from which Mabbott had begged to be excused. The fact, however, is susceptible of an easy explanation, which will save Milton's consistency.]
On the whole, then, Milton's position among his countrymen 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 Cromwell 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. While Cromwell was away in the Army, or occasionally when he appeared in the House and his presence was felt there in some new Independent motion, or some arrest of a Presbyterian motion, there was no man, outside of Parliament, who observed him more sympathetically than Milton, 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 champions, 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 Independency, 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.
In 1645 Milton still gloried in the asterisk. All the copies of the second and augmented edition ofThe Doctrine and Discipline of Divorcehaving been sold, there was a reprint of it in this year, forming substantially 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 hisBucer Tract, hisTetrachordon, and hisColasterion, he had identified himself with the Divorce subject by a total mass of writing larger than he had yet devoted to any other. While 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 theTetrachordonto 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 announcement, 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 marry again, might marry again in defiance of the Law.
Early in 1645, at all 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 been a message or two of contempt and insult. Law or no law, it was all over between him and that girl! All the circumstances where 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 Aldergate 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 complication 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 commemorated 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 whowasthought 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 understanding haply the progress he had infixed by his first undertakings of that nature, he laid out for a larger house, and soon found it out. But, in the interim, before he removed, there fell out a passage which, though it altered not the whole course he was going to steer, yet it put a stop, or rather an end, to a grand affair, which was more than probably thought to be then in agitation: it was indeed a design of marrying one of Dr. 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 married 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 narrowly 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 reception 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."
Phillips 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 time when the mere name was probably enough for Londoners, does not inform us; nor have I been able, with any certainty, to identify him. [Footnote: There had been a Thomas Davies, M.D., born about 1564, and educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he had graduated in medicine in 1591, and who was afterwards a medical practitioner in London, and Licentiate and Censor of the Royal College of Physicians there. As he had died in 1615, the youngest of any surviving daughters of his in 1645 must have been past her thirtieth year. But, on the whole, Phillips's words suggest that the Dr. Davis he means was alive in 1645 or had recently been alive; so that this is not likely to have been the one. There was a Nicholas Davis, or Davys, M.D., who had taken that degree at Leyden in 1638, had been incorporated in the same degree at Oxford in 1642, and may have been afterwards in practice in London (Munk's Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London, and Wood's Fasti, II. 9). The date of his graduation at Leyden, however, seems rather late for the hypothesis that he was Phillips's Dr. Davis. After all, there may have been some other conspicuous Dr. Davis among Milton's acquaintances, and he need not have been a medical doctor.] 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.
Rumours 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 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-fortunes were no longer what they had been when Mary Powell had left her Parliamentarian husband and taken refuge again under the maternal wing, amid her Royalist relatives and acquaintances, close to the King's head-quarters. Crippled already, like other Royalist 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. Especially 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 Royalist 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 Foresthill 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 frowardness" [Footnote: Wood, Fasti, I. 482.]—that it would be best for the daughter to return to London 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 necessary, and preparation of a mode for approaching Milton. But that, too, had been thought of. Communications were opened or had already been 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 wasnotwilling? 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 whichtheywould not quarrel with him; the real question with them was as to the continued practical implication of his own life 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 reconciliation 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 themselves so that the public would hear no more of the perilous 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—i.e.in that bend of Aldersgate Street which waswithinthe 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 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 resolutionI came, still dreading thy displeasure, Samson,Which to have merited, without excuse,I cannot but acknowledge: yet, if tearsMay expiate (though the fact more evil drewIn the perverse event than I foresaw),My penance hath not slackened, though my pardonNo way assured. But conjugal affection,Prevailing over fear and timorous doubt,Hath led me on desirous to beholdOnce more thy face, and know of thy estate;If aught in my ability may serveTo lighten what thou suffer'st, and appeaseThy mind with what amends is in my power,Though late, yet in some part to recompenseMy rash, but more unfortunate, misdeed.
Samson.Out, out! hyæna!Samson Agonistes, 725-747.
Mood Second.
She ended weeping, and her lowly plight,Immoveable till peace obtained from faultAcknowledged and deplored, in Adam wroughtCommiseration: soon his heart relentedTowards 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.
Was this Milton's idealized history long 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 Dalila in the land of the Philistines, 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 her 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 reconciliation that had been effected. Meanwhile, the friends of both wife and husband were delighted with their success; and, till the new house in the Barbican should be ready, young Mrs. Milton went to lodge in the house of the Widow Webber, Christopher Milton's mother-in-law, near St. Clement's Church in the Strand.
September 1645, when the New Model Army had stormed Bristol and was otherwise carrying all before it in the English South-west, when Montrose in Scotland had been extinguished by David Leslie at Philiphaugh, and when the Presbyterian system had been so far arranged for England that the first order of Parliament for the election of Elders 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 derived its name, according to Stow, from the fact that at one time there had stood there "aburgh-kenning, or watch-tower of the city, called in some language abarbican;" and modern etymologists perfect Stow's observation by tracing the name, through the mediæval Latinbarbacana, to the Persianbála khaneh, meaning "upper chamber," whence our less corrupt formbalcony, actually identical with barbican. [Footnote: Stow, as quoted in Cunningham'sLondon, Art. "Barbican;" and Wedgwood'sDict. of English Etymology, Art. "Balcony."] 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 ofComus. 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 occupied. Nay more, till within a few years ago; Milton's own house in Barbican, with some modern change of frontage, and some filling-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. [Footnote: My information about the interior of the house is from a friend who visited it just when it was doomed. Though I had passed it often when it was yet complete, I had unfortunately, not expecting its doom, deferred going in till it was too late; and my last homage to it had to be a lingering saunter near and in the railway gap behind, when there was only the remnant of it described in the text.]