The "Pacification of Birks," as it was called, was embodied in two documents. One was a Royal Declaration, in which his Majesty, while guarding himself against being supposed to approve the acts of "the pretended Assembly" at Glasgow, or of the pretended Tables," did nevertheless substantially promise all that was claimed. He promised the future regulation of all ecclesiastical and civil affairs in Scotland by free annual Assemblies of the Kirk, and free Parliaments of the realm; one such Assembly to be held on the 6th of August, and one such Parliament on the 20th of August immediately following, at both of which his Majesty hoped, God willing, to be personally present. The other document, entitled Articles of Pacification, consisted of eight Articles, relating to the immediate disbanding of the two armies, and the mutual restoration of persons, goods, ships, &c., seized on either side-one Article providing for the resurrender to the King of his castles and forts in Scotland. Any demur to the terms of these Articles was rather on the Scottish side than on the English; and when, on the 24th of June, the English army was disbanded, it was, says Norgate, like the "break-up of a school." Less polite to the Scots than Norgate's words on the occasion, but equally to the purpose, are those of Thomas Windebank, eldest son of Secretary Windebank, and in attendance on the King as groom of the chamber. "We have had," he says, in a letter from the camp to his cousin Reade in London after the Peace was concluded, "a most cold, wet, and long "time of it; but we kept our soldiers warm with the hopes "of rubbing, fubbing, and scrubbing those scurvy, filthy, dirty, nasty, lousy, itchy, scabby, slovenly, snotty-nosed, loggerheaded, foolish, insolent, proud, beggarly, impertinent, absurd, grout-headed, villanous, barbarous, bestial, false, "lying, roguish, devilish, long-eared, short-haired, damnable, "atheistical, Puritanical crew of the Scotch Covenant. But now there is peace in Israel." 3

1 Rushworth, III. 943-946; and Baillie, I. 217, 218.

2 Letter to Reade in S. P. O.

3 Letter in S. P. O. dated "Berwick,

June 22." I have omitted two of Windebank's adjectives as unpresentable. We shall meet this humorous young gentleman again.

A very precarious peace it was. Hardly had the treaty been concluded when the King's ill humour with it began to show itself. For about a month, indeed, he remained at Berwick, consulting about Scottish affairs with Rothes, Argyle, Montrose, and others of the Covenanting leaders, summoned thither to meet him. But these consultations, on his side, were changed into reproaches. In consequence of the popular discontent in Scotland arising from the phrases "pretended Assembly" and "pretended Tables" used by the King in his Declaration, and from the too great advantages seemingly given to the King in some of the Articles of the treaty, it had been found necessary to accompany the formal proclamations of the treaty in Scottish towns with certain "informations against mistaking the same." Of these Charles spoke as "seditious glosses," and he was very quarrelsome on account of them, not only with Rothes, Argyle, and Montrose, but also with the Earls of Pembroke and Salisbury, and some others of the English Commissioners, who were accused of having abetted the Scots in their private dealings with them. At all events, he could not think of now countenancing Scotland so far as to go to Edinburgh to open the Assembly and the Parliament as he had intended! Accordingly, having appointed Traquair as his Commissioner for that duty (Hamilton positively refusing to serve in the office again), he turned his back to Scotland on the 29th of July; and on the 3rd of August he was again at Whitehall.1

1 There are more detailed accounts of the King's conduct at Berwick after the Peace in Baillie, I. 220, 221; Stevenson, 384 et seq.; Rushworth, III. 946 et seq.; and in MSS. in the S. P. O.

Among the last is a correspondence between Secretary Windebank and the Earls of Pembroke and Salisbury relating to their alleged complicity with the Scots.

CHAPTER II.

MILTON BACK IN ENGLAND-OLD FRIENDS-EPITAPHIUM DAMONISLODGINGS IN ST. BRIDE'S CHURCHYARD-LITERARY PROJECTSMILTON'S SISTER AND HIS TWO NEPHEWS.

MILTON may have received the news of the conclusion of the King's war with the Scots either at Geneva or at Paris, in which last city there appeared an official gazette, of date July 20, 1639, containing Le Traité fait entre le Roy de la Grande Bretagne et les Ecossois du Covenant.1 Crossing to Dover, he was back in London, or probably in his father's house at Horton, Buckinghamshire, almost exactly at the time when the Londoners were receiving Charles back from his unsuccessful northern expedition.

At Horton Milton found little changed. His father was still there, going about hale as usual; and his younger brother, Christopher, and Christopher's young wife, Thomasine, in whose charge he had left the old man, were still residing under the paternal roof. Christopher was not yet called to the bar, though he had been for nearly seven years a student of the Inner Temple. Of one little appearance and disappearance in the Horton household during his absence Milton would now hear both from the old man and the young, and also, more sadly, from the young wife. Examining the Horton parish-register, I came, not without some feeling myself, upon this entry-" 1639: An infant sonne of Christopher Milton, gent., buried March ye 26th." It is the small remaining record now of the existence of a little nephew of Milton's, the firstborn of Christopher and his wife, who had died without.

1 There is a copy of this gazette in the S. P. O. Both Charles and Windebank were evidently anxious about the

impression made abroad by recent events in Britain.

having lived long enough to have a name, or to have been seen by his uncle. They had laid the little body, I suppose, in the same grave, in the chancel of the church close by, where Milton had seen his mother buried two years before, and the plain blue stone covering which, and inscribed with the name and the date of the death, is now the most sacred object in that quiet rustic church. The Rector of the parish, Mr. Goodall, who had entered the little burial in the register, had himself, as another entry in his hand proves, had a new little one born to him in the Rectory.1 In the colony of the Bulstrodes, already known to us as the chief people of Horton, and as living partly in the manor-house with Squire Henry Bulstrode and partly in other adjacent houses, there had been a very recent death. But, indeed, the deaths in Horton seem at that time, and chiefly from mortality among infants, to have been preponderating over the births. Against 28 burials in the year 1638, and 27 in the year 1639, I read in the registers of but 13 christenings and 10 christenings respectively. The Horton marriages for 1638 are 4, and for 1639 they are 6; so that there may have been about half-a-dozen weddings in the place while Milton was abroad. What other little incidents of the familiar neighbourhood during his absence may have had some interest for him, or for his serving-man, after their return, are now as irrecoverable as those golden days of an English autumn that again beheld him enjoying the rest of his father's house, or walking amid the richly-wooded English meadows round it, with the towers of Windsor once more in his view.

Would not one of his first walks, in the direction of those towers, be to Eton College, to pay his respects, after his return, to that good old Sir Henry Wotton, whose acquaintance he had made just before his departure, who had then spoken so handsomely both of him and of his Comus, who had expressed his desire that they might yet see more of each other, and who had sent after him so thoughtfully a letter of introduction to friends in Paris, and that memorable advice

1 It is among the baptisms: "1639: Anne, daughter of Edward and Sarah Goodall, bap. May 28."

2 "Isaac, sonn of Edwarde and Mildred Bulstrode, buried July 28th."

V

for his behaviour in Italy, the fruit of his own former diplomatic experience there, "I pensieri stretti, et il viso sciolto"?1 Alas! the good old Provost of Eton, the first man of public mark that had recognized the genius of Milton in what we should now consider fit terms, was all but on his deathbed. As late as the spring of this very year he had been in his usual health, taking his usual interest in the affairs of the day, and corresponding as usual with his numerous friends. He had been following with anxiety the course of the King's expedition against the Scots, had been reading Dr. Baleanquhal's "Large Declaration" of the grounds which the King had for war upon his Scottish subjects, and, influenced partly by the representations of that work, and partly by the habits of thought of an old politician, had considered the cause of the Covenanters very untenable, and their conduct “very black." 2 He had set out from Eton on his usual summer tour, and had visited, among other places, Winchester School, where he had been educated, and where the sight of the youngsters playing at the same games that he had played at sixty years before pleased his benevolent heart. But he had scarcely returned to Eton when asthma and other infirmities laid him prostrate. He could no longer go abroad, or continue his wonted hospitalities within doors, or even enjoy his favourite solace of tobacco. He would still converse, indeed, with John Hales, and other fellows of the College in close attendance upon him, to whom he was leaving the care of his books, pictures, and manuscripts. Occasionally he would refer to public affairs; but chiefly he confined himself, as his biographer tells us, to pious retrospects of his long and chequered life, and to expressions of thanksgiving to God for all his many mercies. It is very doubtful whether, in these circumstances, Milton could have had access to him, or whether, if Milton did see him, anything more could have passed than the merest tokens of respectful regret on the one hand, and kindly questionings about the Italian journey on the other. Certain it is that that renewal of their acquaint

1 See Vol. I. 683–685.

2 Letter of Wotton, dated April 21,

1639, in Reliquice Wottonianæ (edit. 1685), p. 580.