Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/310

 and print an attack on the established clergy entitled 'An Alarm to the Priests.' He afterwards visited London and met George Fox the younger.

About November 1660 Ellwood invited a quaker of Oxford named Thomas Loe to attend a meeting at Crowell. Loe was at the moment in prison in Oxford Castle, and Ellwood's letter fell into the hands of Lord Falkland, lord-lieutenant of the county. A party of horse was sent to arrest him: he was taken before two justices of the peace at Weston, refused to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and was imprisoned for some months at Oxford in the house of the city marshal, a linendraper in High Street named Galloway. His father procured his release and vainly tried to keep him from quakers' meetings for the future. In April 1661 the elder Ellwood and his two daughters left Crowell to live in London; at Michaelmas the son sold by his father's directions all the cattle and dismissed the servants. For a time he lived in complete solitude. He often visited Aylesbury gaol, where many of his quaker friends were in prison. At a quakers' meeting held at Pennington's house he was, for a second time, arrested, but was soon discharged. For no apparent reason he was immediately afterwards arrested as a rogue and vagabond by the watch at Beaconsfield while walking home from Chalfont St. Peters, but was released after one night's detention.

Early in 1662 Ellwood was attacked by smallpox, and on his recovery went to London for purposes of study. His friend Pennington consulted Dr. Paget in the matter, and Paget arranged that he should read with the poet Milton, who 'lived now a private and retired life in [Jewin Street] London, and having wholly lost his sight kept always a man to read to him.' Ellwood obtained lodgings in Aldersgate, near Milton's house, and went 'every day in the afternoon, excepting on the first day of the week, and sitting by [the poet] in his dining-room read to him in such books in the Latin tongue as he pleased to hear me read.' Milton taught Ellwood the foreign mode of pronouncing Latin. After six weeks' application Ellwood fell ill, went to Wycombe to recruit, and returned in October 1662. On the 26th of that month he was arrested at a quakers' meeting held at the Bull and Mouth in Aldersgate, and was confined till December in the old Bridewell in Fleet Street. At first he was so ill supplied with money that he was in danger of starvation, but his father and the Penningtons forwarded him a few pounds, and he made 'night waistcoats of red and yellow flannel' for a hosier of Cheapside. On 19 Dec. he was taken before the recorder at the Old Bailey, declined to take the oath of allegiance, and was committed to Newgate. His plea of illegal detention was overruled. In Newgate he was 'thrust into the common side' to share the society of 'the meanest sort of felons and pickpockets.' The unsanitary condition of the prison caused the death of a quaker, one of Ellwood's many companions. At the inquest the foreman of the jury expressed deep disgust at the prisoners' treatment. Ellwood was consequently removed to the old Bridewell, where he lived under easy discipline till his discharge in January 1662-3.

From that date till 1669 Ellwood resided with the Penningtons as Latin tutor to their young children, and he managed their estates in Kent and Sussex. He consented to the sale of Crowell by his father, and thus acquired a little ready money. In June 1665 he hired a cottage for Milton at Chalfont St. Giles, where the poet lived while the plague raged in London. On 1 July he was arrested while attending a quaker's funeral at Amersham, and spent a month in Aylesbury gaol. On his discharge he paid Milton a visit, and the poet lent him the manuscript of 'Paradise Lost.' Ellwood, when returning the paper, remarked, ' Thou hast said much of "Paradise Lost," but what hast thou to say of "Paradise Found"?' When Ellwood called on Milton in London in the autumn, he was shown the second poem, called 'Paradise Regained,' and Milton added, 'This is owing to you, for you put it into my head by the question you put to me at Chalfont, which before I had not thought of.' Pennington was in prison at Aylesbury for nine months during 1665 and 1666; his household was broken up, and Ellwood staved with his pupils at Aylesbury, Bristol, and Amersham. From 13 March 1685-6 till 25 June Ellwood was himself imprisoned once again at Wycombe for attending a meeting at Hedgerley, Buckinghamshire. On 28 Oct. 1669 he was married according to quaker rites to a quakeress named Mary Ellis. On her death in 1708 she was stated to be eighty-five years old, and was therefore Ellwood's senior by sixteen years. His father resented the ceremony, and declined to make any provision for his son, contrary to a previous promise. Meanwhile Ellwood actively engaged in controversy both within and without the quaker community, and grew intimate with the quaker leaders, Fox and Penn. The latter married his friend. Gulielma Pennington. In 1668 he lent assistance to George Fox in his attempt to crush John Perrot, leader of a body of dissentient 