changes more rousingly than for Milton's. A Puritan by family-training from his boyhood, he had been so much of a Puritan in his subsequent youth, after a higher and rarer fashion of his own devising, that he had shrunk from entering the Church for which he had been destined by his parents. He had preferred the prospect of a solitary intellectual life, unattached, undignified, and apparently "cut off from all action," rather than launch himself on a career which he considered that Laud and the like of him had blasted, made dishonourable, and indeed nauseous. It had become a career to be shunned, as he says daringly, by all consciences save such as "could not retch," and his was not such a conscience. He had resolved not to be a Churchman. But the reasons for the resolution were always in his memory. During the eight years which had elapsed since he had taken it, his conduct had been that of a man "church-outed by the Prelates," and with a fund of rage in him on that account against the existing system in Church and State, though compelled, like the rest of his countrymen, to be silent and prudent. Among his friends, doubtless, he had spoken out; but in anything he had published it was only the general tone, and perhaps a passage here and there, too obscure and subtle to alarm the censorship, that had revealed the strength of his politics. Of all that he had written, perhaps a passage in his Lycidas, published in 1638, had approached the nearest to what Laud, had it been brought to his notice, would have pronounced to be a libel. It is that passage in which, among the various lamentations of the death of Edward King, there is introduced one supposed to be spoken by St. Peter, as the representative of the Church:

"How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
Enow of such as, for their bellies' sake,

Creep and intrude and climb into the fold!
Of other care they little reckoning make
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast

And shove away the worthy bidden guest.

Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold

A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least

That to the faithful herdman's art belongs!

What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw.
The hungry sheep look up and are not fed,
But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly and foul contagion spread,
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.
But that two-handed engine at the door

Stands ready to smite once and smite no more."

What did Milton mean by the last two lines? What was that metaphorical "two-handed engine" which was to break open the door of the corrupted Church and let in reform and light. Commentators have been sorely puzzled. The "axe of the Gospel," say some; "the literal axe that was to smite off Laud's head," say others more foolishly; the sword of the Archangel Michael which he wielded with "huge two-handed sway," say a third party, all in the clouds and vague. May not Milton, whatever else he meant, have meant a coming English Parliament with its two Houses? Whatever he meant, his prophecy had come true. As he sat among his books in Aldersgate Street, the two-handed engine at the door of the English Church was already on the swing. Once, twice, thrice, it had swept its arcs to gather energy; now it was on the backmost poise, and the blow was to descend.

Milton's own words give the best description of the state of his mind at this moment. "As soon as might be, in affairs so disturbed and fluctuating," he says, "I, looking about for a place in which to establish myself, hired (conduxi) a house "in the city sufficiently large for me and my books, and there "betook myself happily enough to my intermitted studies, committing the issue of affairs to God in the first place,

and to those next to whom the people gave that duty in "trust. Meanwhile, the Parliament proceeding with the busi"ness strenuously, the pride of the Bishops was brought down. "As soon as the liberty of speech at least began to be granted,

all mouths were opened against the Bishops; some to "expostulate on the vices of the men, others on the vice of "the order itself-that it was an unjust thing that he English

"should differ from all Churches, as many as were Reformed, "and that it was fit that the Church should be governed by "the example of the brethren, but most of all according to "the will of God. Roused by the cognizance of these things, "inasmuch as I perceived that the true way to liberty fol"lowed on from these beginnings, these first steps-that the "advance was most rightly made to a liberation of the entire "life of men from servitude, if a discipline taking its rise "within religion should go forth thence to the manners and "institutions of the Commonwealth-and inasmuch also as "I had so prepared myself from my youth that above all things I could not be ignorant what is of divine and what "of human right, and had asked myself whether ever I should "be of any use afterwards if then I should be wanting to "my country, yea, to the Church, and to so many brethren exposing themselves to danger for the cause of the Gospel— "I resolved, though I was then meditating certain other "matters, to transfer into this struggle all my genius and all "the strength of my industry. First, accordingly, I . . ."1 Here I interrupt the quotation, leaving the exact results of these deliberations of Milton to appear presently.

"

"

During the months of November and December 1640, and thence onwards, let the reader fancy Milton passing from and to his house in Aldersgate Street, with such thoughts in his mind as he has himself described. Now and then, perhaps, he is a spectator, with others, at the doors of the two Houses in Westminster, while Bedford, Saye and Sele, Pym, Hampden, Cromwell and others are entering. Certainly, at this time he is in the habit of seeing Young, Calamy, and others of the Root-and-Branch Puritan ministers in London, He sees them, I should say, more frequently than the two Gray's Inn beaux, Messrs. Miller and Alphry.

1 Defensio Secunda pro Pop. Angl.: Works, VI. 289, 290.

CHAPTER III.

THE CHURCH QUESTION IN AND OUT OF PARLIAMENT-BISHOP HALL AND SMECTYMNUUS—BISHOPS' EXCLUSION BILL-SCHEMES OF LIMITED EPISCOPACY-A ROOT-AND-BRANCH BILL.

As

THE Root-and-Branch party made the first great move. early as Nov. 13, 1640, there had been petitions to the Commons for Church-reform from the "nobility, knights, gentry, ministers, &c.," of the counties of Bedford and Warwick; and other petitions had followed. But on the

11th of December there came what was then considered a monster petition. It was a petition from the City of London, signed by no fewer than 15,000 persons (Milton probably one of them), and presented by Alderman Pennington, one of the members for the City, whom a great crowd had accompanied to the House. "Whereas the government of Archbishops and "Lord-Bishops, Deans and Archdeacons, &c., with their courts "and ministrations in them, hath proved prejudicial and very dangerous both to the Church and Commonwealth," so the petition began; and, after a few more sentences of accusation, supported by an appended schedule of twenty-eight particulars, it wound up: "We therefore most humbly pray and "beseech this Honourable Assembly, the premises considered, "that the said government, with all its dependencies, roots, "and branches, may be abolished, and all laws in their "behalf made void, and the government according to God's "word may be rightly placed among us." This petition was very respectfully received by the Commons, as were also subsequent petitions more or less in the same strain. On the 12th of January there were Anti-Episcopal petitions simultaneously from three counties, one being the county of Kent;

on the 19th there was a similar petition from the city of Gloucester; and on the 23rd there was a petition as notable as even the London petition. It was called "The Ministers' Petition," and was signed by 700 ministers of the Church of England. Without actually praying for the abolition of Episcopacy, it urged the removal of the Bishops from Parliament, and of Clergymen generally from all secular offices, and also the revision of the offices and revenues of Deans and Chapters, and the admission of the body of the Clergy to a share in ordination and other ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Possibly some of those who signed it shrank as yet from absolute Root-and-Branch.1

Stunned at first by the mere meeting of the Long Parliament, the High Church party had hitherto not dared to speak, but had waited to know the amount of humiliation to which they were to be subjected. But, after the London and the other petitions, with the commentary upon them furnished by daily pamphlets, Bishop Hall thought that longer silence would be culpable. In the last week of January there appeared from his pen a pamphlet of 43 small quarto pages with this title: "Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament: By a Dutifull Sonne of the Church." Though Hall did not give his name, it was at once known to be his, both from the style and as being published by the same Nathaniel Butter who had published Hall's larger treatise of the preceding year, Episcopacy by Divine Right.

The Humble Remonstrance, in form an appeal to the two Houses, was in substance a reassertion of the principles of Hall's former treatise, with just so much of abatement as was to be accounted for by the absence of Laud's tight supervision this time, and by the general change of circumstances. "Whilst the orthodox part in this whole realm," it said, "hath (to the praise of their patience) been quietly silent, as securely conscious of their own right and innocence, how

1 Rushworth, IV. 93-96 and 135; Parl. Hist. II. 673-678; Commons Journals; Baillie, I. 280.

2 "London: Printed for Nathaniel Butter in Paul's Churchyard at the Pyde Bull near St. Austin's Gate:

1640." A reference to the pamphlet by Baillie determines the exact date of the publication. Writing Jan. 29, 164041, Baillie speaks of it as published "this week."