One infers that he was already there and that the poem was written there, if not also that Letter to a Friend which has given the key to our present chapter. Horton, at all events, was to be his main residence for nearly six years after his leaving the University, or from his twenty-fourth year to his thirtieth. Before we follow him thither it may be well to have some more distinct ideas respecting that condition of Church and State which had repelled him for the present from public into private life, but which was to implicate all his future career more openly and engrossingly than he could yet foresee, and also respecting the condition in 1632 of that Literature of the British Islands with which, in an independent way of his own, it was his present purpose to connect himself.

Milton's partner; and the fact that the third, Hatton, is designated in 1628 as "apprentice of John Milton " only would seem to indicate that the partnership between Milton and Thomas Bower had not then been formed.Besides this information as to apprentices of Milton who became eventually scriveners themselves, the Bodleian volume furnishes, Mr. Sides reports, some particulars as to Milton's standing and reputation in the Scriveners' Company. Though found elected an "Assistant" of the Company, i. e. one of the court or governing body, as early as April 1615, he seems to have rather held aloof from the official or corporate business of the company after its reorganization by its new charter in the following year. They did, however, in 1622 re-elect him to be one of the two "Assistants taken in "as coadjutors to the "Master" and the two" Wardens" of the Company, and he appears then to have served. In 1625 he was chosen one of the two "Stewards" of the Company, along with a Thomas Hill, and seems again to have served. In 1627 they elected him as one of the "Wardens" for the year, the next rank under the Mastership; but, if Mr. Sides rightly interprets an asterisk put opposite his name, and also opposite that

of his former comrade in the Stewardship, Thomas Hill, together with the fact that the names of the two persons who did actually serve the Wardenship that year are given as Francis Mosse and Jeffery Bower, we have to conclude that he declined to serve that year and either was excused or preferred paying the statutory fine of £20 exacted from every elected Master or Warden who refused the trouble of office. Finally (though we here anticipate a little in date) Mr. Sides finds that in 1634 John Milton was the person elected to the Mastership, or highest office, of the Scriveners' Company, but that again he avoided office, whether by excuse or by payment of the required fine, leaving the Mastership to a Charles Yeomans. Mr. Sides thinks that this election to the Mastership in 1634 rather militates against the supposition that the scrivener had retired from business in 1632. It seems certainly to imply that he had not wholly ceased to be a recognised London scrivener and to have an interest in the Bread Street shop; but it is quite consistent with the fact of his retirement to Horton in 1631 or 1632, leaving the active management of the Bread Street business thenceforward to his younger partner, Thomas Bower,

CHAPTER II.

CHURCH AND GOVERNMENT UNDER KING CHARLES AND
BISHOP LAUD: WITH A RETROSPECT TO 1603.

THE entire population of England in 1632 may be reckoned at something under five millions. Though all of these were considered to belong legally to the Church of England, there were exceptions in fact.

One of the exceptional classes consisted of THE PAPISTS, called also, in a special sense, THE RECUSANTS. The proportion of these to the entire population cannot be exactly estimated. In the early part of Elizabeth's reign they are said to have amounted to one-third, but this proportion had been vastly diminished during her reign and that of her successor. The degree of rigour with which the laws against Roman Catholics were enforced had varied from time to time in both reigns, according to ideas of state necessity, and more particularly according to the varying relations in which England stood to the Catholic powers abroad. About the middle of the reign of Elizabeth, when the Pope had excommunicated her and her subjects, and the English Roman Catholics were supposed to be in traitorous correspondence with the Spanish invader, many priests and Jesuits had been executed; but, on the whole, towards the end of her reign, though the minor penalties of fine and imprisonment continued to be inflicted annually on considerable numbers of the Recusants, their condition had been such as to increase their confidence. Under James the Gunpowder Plot had furnished for many years a reason for renewed severity; but about the year 1622, when the Spanish Match was on hand, there had begun a tendency the other way. While the match was pending meetings for

Roman Catholic worship were openly held in London, Jesuits and friars went about freely, nunneries were established, and Richard Smith, as Bishop of Chalcedon, came over from the Continent to exercise jurisdiction over the English Roman Catholics and appoint subordinates. Even after the Spanish Match was broken off, and Charles I. sat on the throne, with the French Henrietta Maria for his queen, the same reasons of state operated in favour of the Papists. While the Queen had her private chapel and confessors it was not to be expected that her husband would be more severe against his Roman Catholic subjects than he could help. At all events, after Charles had dismissed his Parliament in March 1628-9, and had been governing by his own authority, he showed no extraordinary readiness against the Roman Catholics. From that time, on the contrary, they were regarded as a class of his subjects whose loyalty it would be worth while to cultivate against a possible emergency. According to a Remonstrance which had been drawn up by the Commons, there were about ninety Papists, or suspected Papists, some of them noblemen and the rest knights or gentlemen, in places of political or civil trust about the court or elsewhere; and Catholic historians give a list of 193 gentlemen of property and distinction who from this time forward, through the rest of Charles's reign, represented Roman Catholicism in a more or less resolute manner in different English counties.1

The second exceptional class of the English population consisted of the PROTESTANT SEPARATISTS. These were but a handful numerically, composed of such extreme Puritans as had considered themselves bound, whether on doctrinal or on ritual grounds, to separate from the Church of England and set up a worship of their own. The majority of those whose Puritanism had led them thus far had found it necessary to emigrate to Holland or to America; but some remained at home, a peculiar leaven in English society. The congregation of Independents, as they were afterwards. called, which had been founded in London in 1616 by 1 Dod's Church History: temp. Charles I.

Henry Jacob, still continued to exist under the ministry of Mr. John Lathorp, formerly a Church clergyman of Kent; distinct from these Independents were a few scores of Baptists, in London, in Norwich, and elsewhere, who met secretly for mutual encouragement in brewhouses and barns; and distinct from both these sects were the so-called Familists.

The Roman Catholics and the Protestant Separatists were exceptional bodies, existing at the peril of the law; and the theory that the whole population of England belonged to the Church of England was still in substantial correspondence with the fact. There were, in all, 9,284 parish-churches in England, endowed with glebe and tithes, and each provided with its minister appointed to the spiritual charge of all within his parish. Of these parochial charges only 5,439 were filled by "rectors," regularly appointed by patrons, and enjoying the full rights of the benefices. The remaining 3,845 were either appropriated (i. e. in the possession of Bishops, Cathedrals and Colleges, who, being themselves therefore both patrons and rectors, performed the duties generally by means of deputies named "vicars," to whom they allowed only a part of the tithes), or impropriated (i. e. in the possession of laymen to whose ancestors or legal antecessors they had been given at the Reformation, and who also paid "vicars" to do the work, retaining the rest of the fruits for themselves). In addition, however, to these 9,281 parish clergymen known as "rectors" or "vicars," there were the two Archbishops, the twenty-five Bishops, the Deans, the Archdeacons, &c., and the great body of "curates" or assistants to the parochial clergy. Moreover, a class of ministers of considerable importance at this time, though not very numerous, were the so-called "Lecturers." These were men who, having obtained the necessary licence from the ecclesiastical authorities, were supported by voluntary contributions, and employed simply as preachers in localities where there was a deficiency of the ordinary clerical

1 Fuller, Church History: sub anno 1630.

means, or where the people were unusually zealous. They had no local cure of souls, and did not perform Church rites, but confined themselves to religious teaching and discoursing on market-days or on Sunday afternoons. They were first heard of in Elizabeth's reign, when the Puritan laity in towns, on the one hand, were glad to have such a lawful means of access to doctrine more to their taste than was always supplied by the parish clergy, and when, on the other hand, many Puritans, educated for the ministry, were glad to have the opportunity of following their calling without such a degree of conformity to Church discipline as would have been necessary if they had taken full priest's orders and accepted parochial livings. About the beginning of the reign of Charles there was a movement among the Puritans for their increase, and a scheme for that purpose, among others, had been set on foot by the Puritan leader, Dr. Preston. A committee of twelve persons was appointed, four of whom were divines, four lawyers, and four London merchants. Among the clerical members of the committee were Sibbes of Cambridge and Mr. Stocke of London. The twelve, acting as trustees, were to apply such funds as might be collected by themselves or others to the purchase of lay impropriations as they came into the market. When a lay impropriation was thus bought, it was in the power of the trustees not only to appoint a minister of the right sort, but also to apply the residue of the tithes to their proper spiritual destination by using them for the support of "lecturers" over the country. The scheme was effective. In the course of five years, it is true, only thirteen impropriations were bought in, at an expense of between five and six thousand pounds, supplied chiefly by wealthy Puritans of London; but it was calculated that in the course of fifty years all would be bought in and the Church thus rid of one particular scandal.1

Such, as regards the number and classification of the clergy, was the Church of England in 1632. But the grand fact in

1 Fuller's Church History, sub anno 1630; and Neal's Puritans, II. 221-2.