The Life of John Milton Volume 3 1643-1649 / Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His Time

by David Masson

PEDAGOGY IN THE BARBICAN: LIST OF MILTON'S KNOWN PUPILS: LADY RANELAGH.

Yet precisely this spring of 1647, if we are to believe his nephew Phillips, was Milton's busiest time with his pupils. "And now," says Phillips, after mentioning the death of Milton's father, and the departure at last of the Powell kindred from the house in Barbican, "the house looked again like a house of the Muses only, though the accession of scholars was not great. Possibly his proceeding thus far in the education of youth may have been the occasion of some of his adversaries calling him Pedagogue and Schoolmaster; whereas it is well known he never set up for a public school to teach all the young fry of a parish, but only was willing to impart his learning and knowledge to relations, and the sons of some gentlemen that were his intimate friends, besides that neither his converse, nor his writings, nor his manner of teaching ever savoured in the least anything of pedantry; and probably he might have some prospect of putting in practice his academical institution, according to the model laid down in his sheet Of Education!" Taking this passage in connexion with prior passages already quoted from the same memoir, we are to conclude that, though Milton's practice in teaching had begun as far back as 1639-40, when he gave lessons to his two nephews in his lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard, and although the practice had been kept up all through the time of his residence in Aldersgate Street, when his nephews boarded with him and other pupils were gradually added (1640-45), yet it was in the Barbican house, and there more especially in 1647, that his employment in pedagogy was most engrossing. The house had been taken expressly that there might be accommodation for additional pupils, and such pupils had come in—not in any considerable number, nor yet miscellaneously from the neighbourhood, but rather by way of favour on Milton's part to select boys whose parents knew him well, and were anxious that they should have the benefit of his instructions.

As to Milton's theories and methods of education we are already sufficiently informed. This may be the place, however, for a list of those who can be ascertained to have had the honour of being his pupils. Perhaps that honour may have been shared by as many as twenty or thirty youths in all, afterwards distributed through English society in the seventeenth century, and some of them living even into the eighteenth; but I have been able to recover only the following:—[Footnote: It is to be understood that Milton may have continued the practice of pedagogy, in individual cases at least, after the Barbican period of its fullest force, and hence that one or two of the pupils in my present list may not have been in the Barbican house, but may be strays afterwards undertaken by him, on special request, in those later days and those other houses into which we have yet to follow him. As it is not worth while, however, to break up such a list, I present all Milton's known pupils, of whatever date, in one cluster.]

EDWARD PHILLIPS (the elder nephew):—Not ten years old when he first received lessons from Milton in the St. Bride's Churchyard lodging, this elder nephew, after five years of board in Aldersgate Street, and about a year and a half in Barbican, had reached his seventeenth year. He had received the full benefit so far of his uncle's method of teaching; and, if he were to go to the University, it was about time that he should be preparing. About two years after our present date, or in March 1648-9, by whatever management of his uncle, or of his mother and step-father, Mrs. and Mr. Agar, he did enrol himself in Magdalen Hall, Oxford. The rest of his life will concern us hereafter. [Footnote: Wood's Ath., IV. 760, and Godwin's Lives of the Phillipses, p. 12.]

JOHN PHILLIPS (the younger nephew):—This nameson of Milton's, first committed to his entire charge in the St. Bride's Churchyard lodging, had been as long under training as his elder brother, and had now reached his sixteenth year. He was to remain a more unmixed example of his uncle's training, for he never went to any University. He also will reappear in the subsequent course of his uncle's life. [Footnote: Wood's Ath., IV. 764, and Godwin.]

RICHARD HEATH, OR HETH:—That a person of this name was among Milton's pupils, rests on the evidence of one of Milton's own Epistolæ Familiares, dated Dec. 1652, and addressed "Richardo Hetho." As he was then a minister of the Gospel somewhere, it is to be inferred that he was one of the earliest pupils of the Aldersgate Street days. I have not been able to identify him farther.

——PACKER:—"Mr. Packer, who was his scholar," is one of Aubrey's Jottings about Milton, written in 1680 or thereabouts. This is a very insufficient clue. A John Packer, who had taken the degree of Doctor of Physic at Padua, was incorporated in the same degree at Oxford, Feb. 19, 1656-7. [Footnote: Aubrey's Notes on Milton's Life (Godwin's reprint, p. 349); Wood's Fasti, II. 196.]

CYRIACK SKINNER:—He was the third son of William Skinner, a Lincolnshire squire (son and heir of Sir Vincent Skinner, Knt., of Thornton College, co. Lincoln) who had married Bridget Coke, second daughter of the famous lawyer and judge, Sir Edward Coke. As his father died in 1627, Cyriack must have been at least twenty years of age in 1647: he had, therefore, been one of the Aldersgate Street pupils. The fact that he was a grandson of the great Coke was one of his distinctions through life; but he was to become of some note in London society on his own' account. The connexion formed between him and Milton continued, as we shall find, unbroken and affectionate through future years. Indeed, there came to be associations, presumably through Cyriack, between Milton and other persons of the name of Skinner. A Daniel Skinner, and a Thomas Skinner, presumably relatives of Cyriack's, are heard of as merchants in Mark Lane, London, from 1651 onwards. This Daniel Skinner, merchant, had a son, Daniel Skinner, junior, whose acquaintance with Milton in the end of his life led to curious and important results. Care must be taken, even now, not to confound this far future Daniel Skinner, junior (not born till about 1650), with our present Cyriack, his senior, and probable kinsman. [Footnote: Aubrey's Notes; Wood's Ath., III. 1119; Skinner's Pedigree in Introd. to Bishop Sumner's Translation of Milton's Treatise on Christian Doctrine (1825); Hamilton's Milton Papers, 29 et seq. and 131-2. Wood (Fasti, I. 486) has confounded Cyriack Skinner in one particular with the much later Daniel Skinner junior, and the mistake has been kept up.]

HENRY LAURENCE:—There is no positive attestation, as in the other cases, that this person, certainly intimate with Milton in subsequent years, began acquaintance with him as one of his pupils. The presumption is so strong, however, that I risk including him. He was the second son of Henry Laurence, of St. Ives, Hunts, member for Westmoreland in the Long Parliament, known in 1647 as a thoughtful man, and author of "A Treatise of our Communion and War with Angels," and afterwards a staunch Oliverian, President of Cromwell's Council (1654), and one of his Lords (1657). He had an elder son, Edward, who was fourteen years of age in 1647, and died in 1657, when Henry became the heir. Therefore, if we are right in supposing Henry to have been Milton's pupil in the Barbican, he cannot have been older than twelve or thirteen at the time. [Footnote: Wood's Ath., IV. 63, 64; note by Bliss.]

SIR THOMAS GARDINER, OF ESSEX:—That a person of this name was among Milton's pupils in the Barbican, either with the title already, or having it to come to him, seems to be implied in a statement of Wood, quoted in the next paragraph.

RICHARD BARRY, 2ND EARL OF BARRIMORE:—"To this end that he might put it in practice," says Wood, after describing Milton's system of education as explained in his Letter to Hartlib, "he took a larger house, where the Earl of Barrimore sent by his aunt the Lady Ranelagh, Sir Thomas Gardiner of Essex, to be there with others (besides his two nephews) under his tuition." [Footnote: Wood's Fasti (edit. by Bliss), I. 483. The sentence is exactly in the same form in earlier editions.] The pointing and structure of the sentence make it obscure; but I take the meaning to be that Wood had heard of two of Milton's pupils in the Barbican house specially worth naming on account of their rank—the Earl of Barrimore and Sir Thomas Gardiner—and that he had also been informed that it was the Earl of Barrimore's aunt, the Lady Ranelagh, that had placed that young Irish nobleman under Milton's charge. The full significance of this was clear when Wood wrote, for Lady Ranelagh was then still alive, and known as one of the most remarkable women of her century; but readers now may need to be informed who Lady Ranelagh was.—Her husband was Arthur Jones, 2nd Viscount Ranelagh in the Irish peerage; but that was not her chief distinction. By birth she was a Boyle, one of the daughters of that Richard Boyle, an Englishman of Kent, who, having gone over to Ireland in 1588, had risen there, by his prudence and integrity through three reigns, to be successively Sir Richard Boyle, Lord Boyle of Youghall, Viscount Dungarvan, and Earl of Cork, with the office of Lord High Treasurer of Ireland, and with vast estates both in Ireland and England. This great Earl, dying in good old age in 1643, after some final service against the Irish Rebellion, left four sons mid six daughters surviving out of a total family of fifteen. The eldest surviving son, Richard, till then Viscount Dungarvan, succeeded to the Earldom of Cork, and was afterwards created Lord Clifford of Lanesborough (1644) and Earl of Burlington (1664) in the English peerage; the second, Roger, created Baron Broghill in his father's lifetime, bore that title till the Restoration, with a high character for wisdom and literary talent, which he maintained afterwards as Earl of Orrery; the next, Francis, after giving proof of his Royalism both in England and in exile, received a place with his brothers in the Irish peerage as Viscount Shannon; and the fourth and youngest, born Jan. 25, 1626-7, was called to the end of his days merely "The Hon. Mr. Robert Boyle," but became the most famous of them all as "the divine philosopher," and founder of English Chemistry. So also, among the daughters, though all were "ladies of great piety and virtue and an ornament to their sex," one was the paragon. This was Catharine, Viscountess Ranelagh, born March 22, 1614-15, or twelve years before her brother Robert. Of her reputation for "vast reach both of knowledge and apprehension," "universal affability," and liberality both of mind and of purse, there is the most glowing tradition, interspersed with facts and anecdotes; and the singularly strong mutual affection that subsisted between her and her brother Robert till the close of their lives runs like a silver thread through that philosopher's biography. At our present date she was yet a young woman, but her influence among the members of her family was already recognised. Since the Irish Rebellion the fixed residence of herself and her husband had been in (Pall Mall?) London. Here her relatives from Ireland and elsewhere gathered round her; and here in 1644 her youngest brother, the future chemist, turning up brown and penniless, a foreign-looking lad of eighteen, after his six years of travel abroad, had been received with open arms. He had remained in her house about five months, and then had retired to his estate of Stalbridge in Dorsetshire, where he continued mainly till 1650, corresponding with her from amid his speculative studies and his apparatus for chemical experiments.—One other service, if Anthony Wood's information is correct, Lady Ranelagh must have rendered about the same time to another member of her family. Most of her sisters had married into noble English or Irish houses; but the eldest of them, Alice, Lady Barrimore, had been left a widow with three young children by the death of her husband, David, first Earl of Barrimore. This death had occurred before that of her father the great Earl of Cork, and in that Earl's will, dated Nov. 24, 1642, he had shown his concern for this unexpected widowhood of his eldest daughter by special bequests to her three children. Two of them, being daughters, were to receive 1,000_l._ apiece; and for the behoof of the only son there was this provision: "For that I have ever cordially desired the restitution and recovery of the Earl of Barrimore's noble and anciently honourable house, that his posterity may raise the same to its former lustre and greatness again, and in regard that in my judgment there is no way so likely and probable (God blessing it) to redeem and bring home the encumbered and disjointed estate of the said Earl, and his house and posterity, as by giving a noble, virtuous, and religious education to the said now young Earl, my grandchild, who, by good and honourable breeding, may (by God's grace) either by the favour of the prince, or by his service to the King and country, or a good marriage, redeem and bring home that ancient and honourable house, which upon the marriage of my daughter unto the late Earl I did with my own money freely clear: I do hereby, for his lordship's better maintenance and accommodation in the premises, bequeath unto my said grandchild, Richard, now Earl of Barrimore, from the time of my decease, for, during, and until he shall attain the full age of 22 years, one yearly annuity of 200_l._" This was the boy who, a year or two afterwards, was sent to Milton's in the Barbican for tuition. His aunt Ranelagh had heard of Milton, or had come to know him personally; and she thought he was the very man to give the boy the training which his wise grandfather had desired for him.—There will be proof in time that Lady Ranelagh did know Milton well, saw him often, and entertained a high regard for him, which he reciprocated. Meanwhile we may anticipate so far as to say that she was not content with having obtained Milton's instructions for her nephew, the Earl of Barrimore, but secured them also for her only son, Richard Jones, afterwards third Viscount and first Earl of Ranelagh. This nobleman, who lived to as late as 1712 with considerable distinction of various kinds, and on the site of whose last house at Chelsea Ranelagh Gardens were established, is also to be reckoned, we shall find, in the list of Milton's pupils. It is just possible he may have begun his lessons, with his cousin Barrimore, in the Barbican house; but, as he was but seven years of age in 1647, this is hardly probable. [Footnote: Birch's Life of Robert Boyle, prefixed to the 1714 edition of Boyle's Works in five volumes folio (pp. 1-20); Collins's Peerage by Brydges, VII. 134 et seq. (Boyle, Lord Boyle), and VI. l84; Irish Compendium or Rudiments of Honour (1756), for Barrimore family, Debrett's Peerage, for Ranelagh family; Worthington's Diary, by Crossley, I, 164-7; Cunningham's Handbook of London, 373 and 418; Phillips' Memoir of Milton; and four letters "Nobili Adolescenti Richardo Jonslo" in Milton's Epistolæ Familiares.]