SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF MILTON. a JOHN MILTON, fon of John and Sarah Milton, was born on the 9th of December a 1608, at the house of his father, who was then an eminent scrivener in London, and lived at the fign of the Spread Eagle (which was the armorial enfign of the family) in Bread-street. The ancestry of the poet was highly refpectable. His father was educated as a gentleman, and became a b member of Chrift Church, Oxford; in which fociety, as it may be prefumed, he imbibed his attachment to the doctrines of the Reformation, and abjured the errours of Popery; in confequence of which, his father, who was a bigotted papift, difinherited him. The ftudent therefore chofe, for his fupport, the profeffion already mentioned; in the practice of which he became fo fuccefsful as to be enabled to give his children the advantages of polished education, and at The xxth daye of December 1608 was baptized John, the fonne of John Mylton, fcrivenor." Extract from the Register of All-hallows, Bread-Street. b See the Note on Ad Patrem, vol. vi. P. 333. length to retire with comfort into the country. The grandfather of the poet was under-ranger or keeper of the forest of Shotover, near Halton in Oxfordshire; and probably refided at the village of Milton in that neighbourhood, where the family of Milton, in remoter times, were diftinguished for their opulence; till, one of them having taken the unfortunate fide in the civil wars of York and Lancaster, the estate was sequestered; and the proprietor was left with nothing but what he held by his wife. There is a tradition that the poet had once refided in this village, while he was Secretary to Cromwell. The mother of Milton is faid by Wood, from Aubrey, to have been a Bradshaw; defcended from a family of that name in Lancashire. Peck relates, that he was informed "fhe was a e f In the Registers of Milton, as I have been obligingly informed by letter from the Rev. Mr. Jones, there are however no entries of the name of Milton. Philips, Milton's nephew, fays that the family refided at Milton near Abingdon in Oxfordshire, as appeared by the monuments then to be feen in Milton church. But that Milton is in Berkshire; and Dr. Newton fearched in vain for the monuments faid to exist in that church. The information of Wood is most probably correct, that they lived at Milton near Halton and Thame. d 4 Philips's Life of Milton, 1694. p. iv. e Communicated to me by letter from Milton. Fafti Ox. vol. i. p. 262, &c. chiefly taken, as Mr. Warton has obferved, from Aubrey's manuscript Life of Milton, preferved in the Afhmolean Museum, Oxford. • Memoirs of Milton, 1740. p. 1. |