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and conscious of his inability to stem the torrent, determined once more to convoke a Parliament, and yield at least in a measure to necessity. Accordingly that Parliament, famous in history under the name of the "Long Parliament," on account of the length of its continuance, whose "rump" was finally dispersed by a stamp of the iron heel of Cromwell, was convened. Its first measure was to order the impeachment of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, the chief minister of the king, and Archbishop Laud. Against these men, companions in tyranny, and in some sort the authors of many of the evils under which the kingdom groaned, the popular feeling ran very high. Wentworth was shortly after tried and executed; Laud was instantly deposed from his Archiepiscopal see of Canterbury and thrown into the tower.

The next move of the Parliament was to curb the usurpations of the bishops, to demand the abolition of the Star Chamber court, and to settle the foundations of its power upon a basis which should be thereafter indestructible. The House of Commons, as the champion

of religious and civil liberty, had come to be the idol of the liberal masses. Its authority was singularly large, while the genius of its members, comprising such names as Hampden, Pyne, and Henry Vane, gave it an unusual amount of executive ability.

The king, after several foolish and treacherous attempts to break the truce just declared between himself and the Parliament, at length, despoiled of many of his prerogatives, and covered with shame, quitted London, hurried to the ancient city of York, and summoning his partisans to assemble beneath his banner, placed himself at the head of the reactionary party, inaugurating the civil war by assaulting, on the 23d of October, 1642, the forces of the Parliament lying at Edge-hill.

Hume declares that the nobility and more considerable gentry adhered to the royal side. The Catholic, the high-church, and the profligate parties also ranged themselves under that ensign. The éclat of family name, proud position, and glittering pomp were decidedly with Charles. But opposed to him stood the great

* Hist. Eng., Vol. VI., p. 425.

middle classes, then as now omnipotent in England. The Parliamentary muster was animated by an earnestness, an enthusiasm, and a unity of purpose which made its onset irresistible. Cromwell's "Ironsides" squadron was simply typical of the iron sides of the popular cause. Civil and religious liberty clasped hands, and trod in triumph from the southern coast of Britain to the Orkney islands.

CHAPTER VII.

THE preceding chapter is devoted to a succinct survey of the civil and ecclesiastical condition of Great Britain during the months which immediately portended and ushered in the Revolution. Let us now see what was Milton's connection with that initiatory period.

His first patriotic sensations on reaching England were somewhat benumbed by the calamity of a private loss-the death of his intimate friend and sometime schoolmate, Charles Deodati. Milton gave utterance to his sorrow on this occasion by the composition of his "Epitaphium Damonis," one of the most elegant and pathetic pastorals ever written, worthy alike of his genius and of Deodati's virtues.

This debt of fraternal duty paid, he hastened to London, where, after receiving the congratulations of his friends upon his safe return from his tour, and after sadly missing the

warmth of poor Deodati's greeting, he hired handsome lodgings, first in St. Bride's court, Fleet-street, and shortly in Aldersgate-street, a more retired locality. Here, taking a back room, into which the roar of the street should penetrate as little as possible, Milton arranged his library, and settled down into fixed ways.

The expense of his university education, and of his travels, seemed to make it proper that Milton should draw no longer upon the resources of his father, always so generously at his service. "My life," he says, "has not been unexpensive, in learning and voyaging about." Therefore remembering that he was not the only child, and desirous of becoming independent, Milton received the two sons of his sister, Mrs. Phillips, into his house to be instructed and educated. At the earnest solicitation of several others, all intimate friends, he consented to receive their sons also, for the same purpose.

The system of education which Milton adopted in his little academy, unlike the University Curriculum, upon which, as we have

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