he changed his religion, and was cast off by his father, we may fix the interval between 1585 and 1590 as the probable time of his arrival in London. Received there into the office of some friend or relative, who was a scrivener, he qualifies himself, on easier terms than usual, for that profession; and some years before the death of Elizabeth he is in business on his own account. Scriveners, as the name implies, were originally penmen of all kinds of writings,-literary manuscripts as well as charters and law-documents. Chaucer has an epigram in which he blames his "scrivener," Adam, for negligent workmanship. In process of time, however, and especially after the invention of printing, the business of the scrivener had become very much that of a modern attorney, or of an attorney in conjunction with a law-stationer. Scriveners "drew up wills, leases, and such other assurances, as it required but little skill in law to prepare."1 In Middleton's "Michaelmas Term" (1607), Dustbox, a scrivener, comes in with a bond drawn, to see it executed between Mr. Easy and Quomodo, a rascally woollen-draper; and in the "Taming of the Shrew," a boy is sent for the scrivener to draw up a marriage-settlement: "We'll pass the business privately and well. Send for your daughter by your servant here: We have also had specimens of the scrivener's business in the two transactions in which the scrivener Milton was engaged in 1603, between the merchant Sanderson and the goldsmith Sparrow. The following form of oath, however, required of every freeman of the Scriveners' Company, will give the best idea of the nature of the profession in the reigns of Elizabeth and James: "I, N. D., do swear upon the Holy Evangelists, to be true and faithful unto our sovereign lord the King, his heirs and successors, kings and queens of England, and to be true and just in mine office and service, and to do my diligence that all the deeds which I shall make to be sealed shall be well and truly done after my learning, skill, and science, and shall be duly and advisedly read over and examined before the sealing of the same; and especially I shall not write nor suffer to be written by any of mine, to my power or knowledge, any deed or writing wherein any deceit or falsehood shall be conceived, or in my conscience subscribe to lie, nor any deed bearing any date of long time past before the sealing thereof, nor bearing any date of any time to come. Neither shall I testify, nor suffer any of mine to testify, to my power, or knowledge, any blank 1 Hawkins's History of Music, III. 367. 2 Dyce's Middleton, I. 457. charter, or deed sealed before the full writing thereof; and neither for haste nor covetousness I shall take upon me to make any deed, touching inheritance of lands or estate for life or years, whereof I have not cunning, without good advice and information of counsel. And all the good rules and ordinances of the Society of Scriveners of the City of London I shall well and truly keep and observe to my power, so far as God shall give me grace: so help me God and the holy contents of this book."1 2 This oath was sanctioned by Lord Chancellor Bacon and the two Chief Justices in 1618, when the regulations of the Scriveners' Company were revised by them. But the oath, or a similar one, had long been in use; and the scriveners, though not formally incorporated till 1616, had for a century or more been recognized as one of the established city companies, governed, like the rest, by a master, wardens, and other office-bearers, and entitled to appear at the city-feasts and ceremonies. They were a pretty numerous body. Though liable to be "sent for," as in the "Taming of the Shrew," much of their business was carried on in their own "shops," the furniture of which was much the same as that of modern lawyers' offices-a pew or chief desk for the master, inferior desks for the apprentices, pigeon-holes and drawers for papers and parchments, and seats for customers when they called. A scrivener who had money could find good opportunities for lending it at a profit. Being "a man of the utmost integrity" (viro integerrimo), as his son takes pride in saying, and conspicuous also, as his grandson Philips informs us, for "industry and prudent conduct of his affairs,” the scrivener Milton prospered rapidly. In the end, says Aubrey, he had a "plentiful estate," and was possessor not only of the Spread-Eagle in Bread-street, but also of "another house in that street, called the Rose, and other houses in other places." The Rose may have been his place of business in Bread-street before his removal to the Spread-Eagle. Before that removal-apparently in the year 1600, and when, if our calculation is correct, he was about thirty-seven years of age, he had married. His wife's Christian name was Sarah; but respecting her surname there is some uncertainty. Here are the data whence a conclusion on the point must be drawn: 1. In the parish registers of Allhallows, Bread-street, there is this entry: "The 22d day of February, A° 1610, was buried in this parish Mrs. Ellen Jeff 1 "Sundry papers relating to the company of Scriveners:" Harl. MS. 2295. 2 Stow's London, edit. 1603, p. 541. 3 Defensio Secunda: Works, VI. 296. erys, the mother of Mr. John Mylton's wife, of this parish." The SpreadEagle is in Allhallows parish; and the probability is that, at the time of the old lady's death, which occurred when her grandson the poet was a child of two years, she was residing as a widow with her daughter and son-in-law. Had this been the sole authority, we should at once have concluded that the maiden name of Milton's mother was Jefferys. 2. Aubrey, in the text of his MS., distinctly writes, " His mother was a Bradshaw," inserting the words with an appended sketch of arms, (argent, two bendlets sable), as a bit of information procured by recent inquiry; and in the pedigree at the end, he repeats the same thing more distinctly by introducing the name in full, "Sarah Bradshaw," accompanied by another sketch of the same arms of Bradshaw (see facsimile, p. 6.) Wood adopts this account, and says, "His mother Sarah was of the ancient family of the Bradshaws." 3. Philips has a different account. He speaks of Milton's mother (his own grandmother) as Sarah, of the family of the Castons, derived originally from Wales." 4. The antiquary Peck, in his Memoirs of Milton, published in 1740, questions the statements both of Wood and Philips: "I have great reason," he says, "to believe both these gentlemen under a mistake. Mr. Milton's mother, I am informed, was a Haughton, of Haughton Tower, Lancashire, as appears by the arms of his father and mother, in pale upon a board, a quarter of a yard square, some time since in possession of his widow-where under his father's arms is wrote Milton in com. Oxon.' and under his mother's Haughton of Haughton Tower in com. Lanc.'" Peck gives as his authority for this statement, "A letter of Roger Comberbach of Chester, Esq. to William Cowper, Esq. Clerk of the Parliament, dated 15th December, 1736.”1 The last of these accounts may be disposed of first. Peck was so foolish a person in the main that very naturally little attention has hitherto been paid to his statement. Yet it is given bonû fide. Roger Comberbach was Roger Comberbach the younger, son of an elder of that name, who was born in 1666, and became recorder of Chester and author of some legal works. Both father and son were interested in the antiquities of Cheshire, and both knew Nantwich well, where the elder had been born. Milton's widow died at Nantwich in 1727, and might have been known to both. If she had a coat of arms that had belonged to her late husband, they were likely to examine it. But she did have such a coat of arms. "Mr. Milton's pictures and coat of arms" is one of the entries in the inventory of her effects at her death. Some such board as Peck 1 Quoted (but with a misprint of the date) in a pedigree of Milton by Sir Charles Young, Garter King, prefixed to Mr. Mitford's edi tion of Milton's Works. 2 New Memoirs of the Life and Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton, etc., by Francis 3 Ormerod's Cheshire, and Comberbach pedigree in Harl. MS. 2153, f. 141. 4 Inventory published by J. F. Marsh, Esq., 1855 (see previous note, page 3). describes, did, therefore, exist. But may not the arms on the board have been, not those of the poet's father and mother, but of his paternal grandfather and grandmother, i. e. of old Milton of Holton or Stanton St. John's, and the Haughton (intermediately Jeffrey) whom he had married? Had that union been represented heraldically, it would have been precisely as described by Comberbach,the arms of Milton in pale with those of Haughton; and, had such a board been in the scrivener's possession, might it not have descended to his eldest son and so to his widow? And thus, while the pedigree of the Aubrey MS. would explain Peck's statement, that statement in return would become an independent proof of what is alleged in Aubrey's pedigree, that there was a Haughton in the poet's ancestry.1 With respect to the "Jefferys" there needs be no difficulty. The mother of the scrivener's wife may have become a Jefferys by a second marriage, after having been a Caston or a Bradshaw by the first. There would then be the coincidence, it is true, of both grandmothers of the poet having during portions of their lives borne the same or similar names. But, though curious, the coincidence would not be perplexing. The names Jeffrey and Jefferys were usually distinguished then as now, so that it would not be necessary to suppose the husbands of the two grandmothers to have been relations; and, were that supposition true, it would but furnish a bond bringing the poet's father as the stepson of a dead Jeffrey, and his mother as the stepdaughter of a living Jefferys, within easier marrying distance.3 The alternative, therefore, is Caston or Bradshaw. On the principle that a man ought to know his grandmother's maiden name, Philips's account might be preferred. But, besides that Philips's words are somewhat vague, "Sarah, of the family of the Castons, originally derived from Wales," Philips was but a child when his grandmother died, and one of his characteristics is extreme inaccuracy wherever he mentions dates, names, and places. Thus he makes Abingdon in Oxfordshire; he makes 1606 the year of the poet's birth, etc. Aubrey, though rambling enough in other cases, collected his jottings about Milton with peculiar diligence, and at 1 The board described by Peck may still be in existence; and, if discovered, it might explain itself. 2 In wills of the period I have found them distinguished more constantly than I should have expected. 3 I have had in my mind the possibility that Aubrey, having heard of the Mrs. Ellen Jeffcrys, the poet's maternal grandmother, made a blunder by transferring her as "Jeffrey " to the wrong side of the pedigree. But I have found the supposition untenable -irreconcilable with the "Jeff: Haughton," and the other facts of the case. 1 a considerably earlier period than that at which Philips wrote. Now Aubrey twice sets down the name Bradshaw as that of the poet's mother, and twice appends to it the sketch of the arms of Bradshaw. Almost certainly his authority was Christopher Milton; and, if so, we should have the authority of the son for "Bradshaw " against that of the grandson for "Caston." Moreover, Wood adopts Aubrey's account, and Wood was a man who set down nothing hastily. Altogether, whatever connection there may have been, in fact as well as in Philips's head, with a family of Castons, the evidence seems decisive that the poet's mother was a Bradshaw. All the Bradshaws in England prior to the year 1647, it was the common belief of genealogists, had come of one stock-that of Sir John Bradshaw, of Bradshaw in Lancashire, a Saxon landowner, who was repossessed after the Conquest. The arms of these original Bradshaws of Bradshaw were, "Argent, two bends sable," exactly as in Aubrey's sketch of the arms of Milton's mother, unless the bends there are bendlets. But from this main stock there had been many ramifications. Chief of these were the Bradshaws or Bradshaighs, of Haigh in Lancashire, respecting whom the legend was that they had issued from the marriage of a younger Bradshaw in the Crusading times with the heiress of Haigh. The arms of these Bradshaws (who remained zealous Catholics till the reign of Charles I.) were those of the original Bradshaws with a difference, being "Argent, two bendlets between three martlets sable;" but this difference, it appears, as well as the name Bradshaigh for Bradshaw, had been assumed first about 1568. Besides these Bradshaws or Bradshaighs of Haigh, there were the Bradshaws of Wendley in Derbyshire, the Bradshaws of Marple in Cheshire, and still other families of Bradshaws in Cheshire, Leicestershire, etc. The known friendship that there was between Milton and the famous President Bradshaw, has led to the belief of some relationship between the poet and the line of Cheshire Bradshaws of whom the President was born in 1602, and who in 1606 became Bradshaws of Marple. There is, however, a difference in the traditional arms of these Cheshire Bradshaws as compared with those assigned by Aubrey to the poet's mother; nor would it be easy to find a 1 Aubrey all but says that Christopher Milton was his authority for this particular fact. In the very same line of the MS. where he has written" His mother was a Bradshaw," he writes, a little way off on the paper, the words "Xpher Milton [his broth. Inner Temple] Bencher." Godwin, in his reprint of Aubrey's life, runs the two jottings together, as if the second were the appended authentication of the first. Perhaps it is. |