FAMILY OF MILTON'S WIDOW.
(Vol. vii., p. 596.)
As your correspondent Cranmore has long been a deserter from the ranks of "N. & Q.," I may perhaps, without presumption, for once "stand in his shoes," and reply to the challenge addressed to him by V. M.
Much obscurity has all along prevailed among the many biographers of Milton, in reference to the family of Elizabeth Minshull, his third wife, and eventually, for more than fifty years, his widow. Philips, Warton, Todd, and numerous others, state her to have been "the daughter of Mr. Minshull, of Cheshire,"—a very vague assertion when we consider that there were at least three or four different families of that name then existing in the county. Pennant, who delighted in particularities, sometimes even at the expense of historical fact, tells us, for the first time, in 1782, that she was the daughter of Mr. (or Sir) Edward Minshull, of Stoke, near Nantwich, and that she died at the latter town in March, 1726, at an advanced age. Mr. Ormerod, again, whose splendid History of Cheshire will be the standard authority of the county for ages after he himself is carried to his fathers, has unfortunately adopted the same conclusion, and so given a colour, as it were, to this erroneous statement of our Cambrian antiquary. The Rev. Benjamin Mardon's paper, printed in the Journal of the British Archæological Association for 1849, is another and more recent instance of the way in which such errors as this may become perpetuated. Another writer (Palmer) conjectures her to have been the daughter of Minshull of Manchester; but this also has been proved to be entirely destitute of foundation.
The truth of the matter is (and I am indebted to Mr. Fitchett Marsh's clear and succinct dissertation in the Miscellany of the Chetham Society for the information), the poet's widow was daughter of Mr. Randle Minshull, of Wistaston in the county of Chester, whose great-great-grandfather, a younger son of Minshull of Minshull, settled on a small estate there in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and so founded the house of Minshull of Wistaston. Milton was introduced to his Cheshire wife by his friend Dr. Paget; and
it was by his advice that the author of Paradise Lost once more entered into the bonds of wedlock. Mr. Marsh, to clear up all doubt upon the subject, and having previously established the identity of the family, examined the parish register at Wistaston, and there found that "Elizabeth, the daughter of Randolph Mynshull, was baptized the 30th day of December, 1638;" so that, if baptized shortly after birth, she must have been about twenty-six years old when united to Milton in 1664, and about eighty-nine at her death, which occurred in 1727.
V. M., and all others who desire farther enlightenment on the subject, will do well to refer to the volume before mentioned, which forms the twenty-fourth of the series published by the Chetham Society.
T. Hughes.
Chester.