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
Protector's shadow.
[Footnote 1: Orme's Life of Owen (1820), p. 113.]
[Footnote 2: Life of Cudworth, as cited by Godwin, IV. 596.]
All that could be expected by divines and scholars ranking in our
second category, i.e. as subjects of the Protectorate by mere
compulsion, and known to be strongly disaffected to it, was
protection and safety on condition of remaining quiet. This they did
receive. For a month or two, indeed, after the terrible ordinance of
Nov. 24, 1655, threatening the expulsion of the ejected Anglican
clergy from the family-chaplaincies, schoolmasterships, and
tutorships, in which so many of them had found refuge, and forbidding
them to preach anywhere or use the Book of Common Prayer, there had
been a flutter of consternation among the poor dispersed clerics.
That Ordinance, however, as we saw, had merely been _in
terrorem_ at a particular moment, and had remained a dead letter.
The admirable John Hales, it is true, did resign a chaplaincy which
he held near Eton rather than bring the good lady who sheltered him
into trouble; and by his death soon afterwards England lost a man of
whom the Protector must have had as kindly thoughts as of any of the
old Anglicans. That case was exceptional. Ex-Bishop Hall, in the end
of his much-battered life, lived quietly near Norwich, remembering
his past losses and sequestrations under the Long Parliament rather
than suffering anything more of the kind. Peter Heylin was in similar
circumstances in Oxfordshire, and by no means bashful. Jeremy Taylor
alternated between the Earl of Carbery's seat, called "the Golden
Grove," in Caernarvonshire, near which he taught a school, and the
society of his friend John Evelyn, in London or at Sayes Court in
Surrey,--tending on the whole to London, where he resumed preaching,
and, after a brief arrest and some little questioning, was left
unmolested. Hammond was mainly at Sir John Packington's in
Worcestershire; Sanderson and Fuller were actually in parochial
livings, the one in Lincolnshire, the other in Essex; and Pocock was
in a Professorship. Sorely vexed as such men were, and poorer in the
world's goods than they had been, this was the time of the greatest
literary productiveness of some of them. Old Bishop Hall had not
ceased to write, but was to leave trifles of his last days to be
published after the Restoration as "Shakings of the Olive Tree"; and
works, or tracts and sermons, by Sanderson, Heylin, Hammond, Fuller,
and Jeremy Taylor, some of them of a highly Episcopal tenor, were
among the publications of the Protectorate. Fuller's _Church
History of Britain_, one of the best and most lightsome books in
our language, was published in 1655-6. Brian Walton's great Polyglott
had not yet been carried farther than the third volume; but the
Protector had continued to that scholar the material furtherance in
his arduous work which had been yielded first by the Rump Government,
apparently on some solicitation by Milton (Vol. IV. pp. 446, 447);
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account