485 value, by the Oxford sequestrators to Appletree, and in the 3001. worth of his timber which had been hastily bestowed by Parliament on the people of Banbury. To these matters it would be time enough to attend when the Committee at Goldsmiths' Hall had returned their answer to his Petition. Not till then either need he go through the formality of subscribing the Covenant in the presence of a parish-minister or other authorized person. That was, indeed, an indispensable formality for any Delinquent who would sue out his composition, or otherwise signify his submission to Parliament. But it was a formality which a Delinquent in Mr. Powell's circumstances would willingly put off to the last moment. Milton's father-in-law was not the only one of his relatives who were engaged about this time in the disagreeable business of compounding for their Delinquency. His younger brother, Christopher Milton, was in the same predicament. Our last glimpse of this gentleman was after the surrender of Reading to the Parliamentarian Army under Essex, in April 1643. He was then, we found (Vol. II. pp. 488—490), a householder in Reading, and decidedly a Royalist; and, after the siege, when his father came from Reading to London, to reside with his Parliamentarian brother, he himself remained at Reading, a Royalist still. In the interim he had even been rather active as a Royalist, having been "a Commissioner for the King, under the great seal of Oxford, for sequestering the Parliament's friends of three Counties." Latterly, in some such capacity, he had gone to Exeter; and he had been residing in that city, if not in 1644, when Queen Henrietta Maria was there, at least some time before its siege by the New Model Army. On the surrender of Exeter (April 10, 1646), on Articles similar to those afterwards given to Oxford, he had come to London on very much the same errand as that on which Mr. Powell came three months later. More forward in one respect than Mr. Powell, he had at once begun his submission to Parliament by taking the Covenant. He did so before William Barton, minister of John Zachary, in Aldersgate Ward, on the 20th of April, or almost immediately on his arrival in London. That preliminary over, he had been residing, most probably, in the house of his mother-in-law, Widow Webber, in St. Clement's Churchyard, Strand, where Milton had boarded his wife while the house in Barbican was getting ready. Not till August 7, the day after Mr. Powell had sent in his Petition for compounding to the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee, did Christopher Milton send in his petition to the same body. Then, still styling himself "Christopher Milton, of Reading, in the county of Berks, Esq., a Councillor at Law," he acknowledged his Delinquency in having served as a Commissioner of Sequestrations for the King, but prayed that he might have the benefit of the Exeter Articles of Surrender, so as to be allowed to compound for his little property now sequestered in turn. "I am seized in fee, to me "and to my heirs," he said in his accompanying statement, "in possession of and in a certain messuage or tenement "situate, standing, and being within St. Martin's parish, Lud"gate, called the sign of the Cross Keys, and was of the yearly "value, before these troubles, 401. Personal estate I have "" 'none but what hath been seized and taken from me and "converted to the use of the State. "of all my estate, real and personal, for which I only desire "to compound to free it out of sequestration, and do submit "unto and undertake to satisfy and pay such fine as by this "Committee for Compositions with Delinquents shall be im"posed and set to pay for the same in order to the freedom " and discharge of my person and estate." Two years' value of an estate was about the ordinary fine for Delinquency; but different grades of Delinquency were recognised, and the fines for very pronounced Delinquency were heavier.1 This is a true particular We have arrived, biographically as well as historically, at August 1646. In this month, while Mr. Powell and Christopher Milton had begun severally to sue out their compositions for Delinquency, it is on a rather crowded domestic tableau round Milton in Barbican that the curtain drops. On one side of him was his own old father, on the other was 1 Particulars about Christopher Milton and his Delinquency are from Hamilton's Milton Papers, pp. 62-64, and from Documents lxii. and lxiii. in Appendix. his father-in-law; the mother-in-law, Mrs. Powell, was there, with her married daughter Mrs. Milton, and the little baby Anne; how many of Mrs. Milton's brothers and sisters were in the group can hardly be guessed; the two boys Phillips, and one knows not how many other pupils, fill up the interstices between the larger people in front; and one sees Christopher Milton, his wife Thomasine, their children, and perhaps the Widow Webber, as visitors in the background. Of the whole company, I should say, the mother-in-law, Mrs. Powell, was, for the time being, and whether to Milton's private satisfaction or not, the chief in command. BOOK IV. AUGUST 1646-JANUARY 1648-9. HISTORY-THE LAST TWO YEARS AND A HALF OF THE REIGN OF CHARLES I. : I. HIS CONTINUED CAPTIVITY WITH THE SCOTS AT NEW- II. HIS CAPTIVITY AT HOLMBY HOUSE, AND THE QUARREL III. HIS CAPTIVITY WITH THE ENGLISH ARMY, AND THEIR PROPOSALS TO HIM; IV. HIS CAPTIVITY IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT, AND THE SECOND V. HIS TRIAL AND DOOM. BIOGRAPHY:-MILTON IN BARBICAN AND IN HIGH HOLBORN. PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ANXIETIES: ODE TO ROUS, TWO MORE |