Passing north to Aldgate, Milton must have seen the great gate, which was not destroyed until 1760. It was the chief outlet to the eastern counties from the time of the Romans until its destruction.

In the dwelling over the gate, according to Loftie, the poet Geoffrey Chaucer lived in 1374. This gate, however, was pulled down just before Milton’s birth, and rebuilt the year after he was born, in 1609. When he saw it, a gilded statue of James I. adorned its eastern side, and on the west were statues of Peace, Fortune, and Charity.

Aldgate to-day is the entrance into that sordid, dismal region, known as Whitechapel, where within easy walking distance from the site of the ancient gate is its chief attraction to all tourists. On Commercial Street, standing in a group, are the little church of St. Jude, and close beside it that Social Settlement, reared in memory of the gentle Oxford scholar and philanthropist, Arnold Toynbee. This is one of the few beautiful oases in a desert of squalor and commonplaceness, which the name Whitechapel now signifies to most readers.

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ST. CATHERINE CREE CHURCH IN 1736

The steeple dates from about 1505. The old church was pulled down in 1628, and the present one finished in 1630. Cree Church is a corruption of Christ-Church.

From an old engraving.

But for Milton’s haunts, we need not wander farther east than Aldgate; for though Whitechapel Street was thickly lined with houses for some distance even in his day, little of interest remains. Turning back through Leadenhall Street, one sees a little gray stone church, with a low tower and round-arched windows, known as St. Catherine Cree’s. This was rebuilt in Milton’s youth in 1629, and consecrated two years later by the ill-fated Archbishop Laud. The ceremonies which he used on this occasion savoured so much of Popery, however, that they were later brought against him, and helped to accomplish his downfall. In an older church, upon this site, the famous Hans Holbein, to whom we are indebted for his portraits of Henry VIII., Sir Thomas More, and other famous Englishmen, was buried in 1554, after his death by the plague. Within the church may be seen the effigy in armour of a man who played an important part in England when Milton’s father was a boy. To-day, only the historian recalls the name of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, whose daughter married Walter Raleigh, who was chamberlain of the exchequer, ambassador, and chief butler of England. The stories of his fruitless embassy to Mary Queen of Scots to prevent her marriage with Darnley, and the records of his trial, imprisonment, and death of a broken heart must have been as familiar to the youth of Milton’s time as the life of Disraeli or Joseph Chamberlain is to Cambridge youth to-day.

Above the gateway, in the churchyard, is a ghastly memorial to the builder of it in the form of a shrouded skeleton on a mattress. In Shakespeare’s time, within this churchyard, which is now much smaller than it was then, and is concealed by modern buildings, scaffolds were erected on all sides, and religious plays were performed on Sundays.