Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/34

Milton  was Joseph Hall [q. v.], bishop of Exeter, who had published in the previous February a defence of the ‘Divine Right of Episcopacy,’ and now (January 1640-1) brought out a ‘Humble Remonstrance’ to parliament. He was opposed by the five ministers whose united initials formed the name Smectymnuus. Their book appeared in March. Hall replied in April by a ‘Defence’ of the ‘Remonstrance,’ and also persuaded Archbishop Ussher to publish (in May) a short tract entitled ‘The Judgment of Doctor Rainoldes,’ supporting a qualified version of the episcopal theory. Smectymnuus rejoined in June by a ‘Vindication’ of the previous book. Professor Masson thinks, on rather slight grounds, that Milton had some hand in this ‘Vindication’ (, ii. 260).

One of the Smectymnuan divines was Thomas Young, Milton's old teacher. Milton now supported Smectymnuus in three pamphlets. The first, ‘Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England’ (May - June 1641), vehemently attacked episcopacy upon historical grounds. The second, on ‘Prelatical Episcopacy’ (June-July), was a reply to Ussher. The third, ‘Animadversions upon the Remonstrance Defence’ (July), was a fierce attack upon Hall's last book, from which a series of passages were cited, with a bitter comment appended to each. These writings were all anonymous, though no secret was made of the authorship. In February 1641-2 Milton published, under his own name, a pamphlet called ‘The Reason of Church-Government urged against Prelacy,’ containing an elaborate argument upon general grounds, and including, after his custom, a remarkable autobiographical statement (at the beginning of the second book). The argument refers partly to a collection of seven tracts upon the episcopal side, published in 1641 as ‘Certaine Briefe Treatises.’ Meanwhile Hall, after a ‘Short Answer’ to the Smectymnuus in the autumn of 1641, left Milton's animadversions unnoticed till in the beginning of 1642 he issued a ‘Modest Confutation of a Slanderous and Scurrilous Libel.’ This pamphlet seems to have been the joint work of Hall and his son Robert, a canon of Exeter and a Cambridge man, two years older than Milton. They had made inquiries as to Milton's character, and the result appeared in much personal abuse. To this Milton replied by an ‘Apology’ (about April 1642), defending himself, attacking the bishops, and savagely reviling Hall, with frequent references to his enemy's early satires and other questionable writings. This ended Milton's share in the discussion. The pamphlets are characteristic, though not now easily readable. They breathe throughout a vehemence of passion which distorts the style, perplexes the argument, and disfigures his invective with unworthy personalities. His characteristic self-assertion, however, acquires dignity from his genuine conviction that he is dedicated to the loftiest purposes; and in his autobiographical and some other passages he rises to an eloquence rarely approached, and shows the poet of ‘Paradise Lost’ struggling against the trammels of prose. The ecclesiastical doctrine shows that he was at this time inclined to presbyterianism (see, ii. 229, 239, 249, 361, 398, for dates of his pamphlets).

The outbreak of the civil war at the end of 1642 did not induce Milton to enter the army. He says himself (Defensio Secunda) that as his mind had always been stronger than his body, he did not court camps in which any common person would have been as useful as himself. Professor Masson thinks, but upon apparently very inadequate grounds, that he had practised himself in military exercises (, ii. 402, 473-81), and Phillips gives an obviously incredible report that there was a design for making him adjutant-general in Waller's army. The expected assault on the city when the king's army was at Brentford in 1642 occasioned Milton's sonnet, which decidedly claims a peaceful character. Meanwhile his father and his brother Christopher had removed to Reading, which was taken by the Earl of Essex in April 1643. About Whitsuntide (21 May 1643) Milton took a journey into the country, assigning no reason, and came back with a wife. She was Mary, eldest daughter of Richard Powell of Forest Hill, near Shotover, Oxfordshire. Powell had bought an estate at Forest Hill about 1621. He had also a small estate at Wheatley, valued at 40l. a year. Altogether he had about 300l. a year, but with many encumbrances. Mary (baptised 24 Jan. 1625) was the third of eleven children, and Powell appears to have been a jovial and free-living cavalier. Forest Hill was in the neighbourhood in which Milton's ancestors had lived, and with which the descendants possibly kept up some connection. For some unknown reason Powell had in 1627 acknowledged a debt of 312l. to Milton, who was then an undergraduate, and this debt, among others, was still undischarged. There are no other traces of previous familiarity to explain Milton's sudden journey into a royalist district and his return with a bride of seventeen. Milton's father, dislodged from Reading, came to live with him at the time of his marriage, and some of his wife's family paid