The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660: Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His TimeMasson, David
History
The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660: Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His Time
Masson, David
Milton, John, 1608-1674; Poets, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Biography
him go abroad again, or to send him and his wife to the Plantations,
security had been accepted for his good behaviour, and he had been
allowed to live as he liked at Eltham in Kent. Here, and elsewhere,
he sometimes preached, and was in much esteem among the Quakers; and
here, on Saturday the 29th of August, 1657, he died. On the following
Monday his corpse was removed to London and conveyed to the house
called "The Bull and Mouth" at Aldersgate, the chief meeting-place of
the London Quakers. "At this place, that afternoon, assembled a
medley of people, among whom the Quakers were most eminent for
number; and within the house a controversy Was whether the ceremony
of a hearse-cloth should be cast over his coffin; but, the major
part, being Quakers, not assenting, the coffin was about five o'clock
in the evening brought forth into the street. At its coming out,
there stood a man on purpose to cast a velvet hearse-cloth over the
coffin, and he endeavoured to do it; but, the crowd of Quakers not
permitting it and having gotten the body on their shoulders, they
carried it away without further ceremony, and the whole company
conducted it into Moorfields, and thence into the new churchyard
adjoining to Bedlam, where it lieth interred." Lilburne at his death
was but thirty-nine years of age. He was popular to the last with the
Londoners, and there were notices of him, comic and serio-comic,
long after his death. By order of Council, Nov. 4, his Highness
himself present, payment of the arrears of an allowance he had of
40_s._ a week, with continuation of the same allowance
thenceforward, was granted to his wife, Elizabeth.[1]
[Footnote 1: Sewel's _History of the Quakers_. I. 160-163
(where, however, there is an error as to the date of Lilburne's
death); Wood's Ath. III. 357; _Cromwelliana_, 168; Council
Order Books of Nov. 4, 1657.]
When the subdued Lilburne thus went to his grave among the Quakers,
his unsubdued successor in the trade of Anti-Cromwellian conspiracy,
the Anabaptist ex-Colonel Sexby, was in the Tower, waiting his doom.
He had been arrested, July 24, in a mean disguise and with a great
over-grown beard, on board a ship that was to carry him back to
Flanders after one of his visits to London on his desperate design of
an assassination of Cromwell, to be followed by a Spanish-Stuartist
invasion. What _would_ have been his doom can be but guessed. He
became insane in the Tower, and died there in that state Jan. 13,
1657-8. He had previously confessed to Barkstead, the Lieutenant of
the Tower, that he had been the real mover of the Sindercombe Plot,
that he had been in the pay of Spain, and also, apparently, that he
was the author of _Killing no Murder_.[1]
[Footnote 1: _Merc. Pol._ of dates, as quoted in
_Cromwelliana_, 167-170.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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