Milton's England

by Lucia True Ames Mead

hrough Milton’s lifetime and for nearly a century after, there stood on Gresham Street and Basinghall Street the famous Gresham College, founded in 1579, in honour of Sir Thomas Gresham, who gave the Royal Exchange to the city on condition that the corporation should institute lectures on divinity, civil law, astronomy, music, geometry, rhetoric, and physics, to be delivered at his residence. His dwelling-house was a spacious edifice of brick and timber, “with open courts and covered walks which seemed all so well suited for such an intention, as if Sir Thomas had it in view, at the time he built his house.” Seven professors were appointed and lectured in the morning in Latin, in the afternoon in English for two hours each day. Among the number was Sir Christopher Wren, who not only was the greatest architect, but, as is elsewhere said, was one of the famous astronomers of his day. It was out of his lectures on astronomy, which were attended by learned men, that the Royal Society originated. On Cromwell’s death, all college matters were put in abeyance, and the college was temporarily turned into barracks, and so polluted that Bishop Sprat wrote to Wren that he “found the place in such a nasty condition, so defiled, and the smells so infernal, that if you should now come to make use of your tube [telescope] it would be like Dives looking out of hell into heaven.”

After the Fire, Gresham College was temporarily used for an Exchange, where merchants met. “Gresham College became an epitome of this great city, and the centre of all affairs, both public and private, which were then transacted in it.”

Except “London stone” and bits of the Old Wall, little more remains to consider among the important landmarks of the city that was nightly locked within the city gates, and which still endures after the Great Fire. Of this little part, Austin Friars Church, on the site of the Augustinian Convent, is the most notable. Of the extensive and magnificent establishment that was founded here in 1253, nothing to-day remains but the nave of the great church of former days, which is now reached through narrow passages from Old Broad Street north of the Bank. Originally the church was cruciform, with choir, transepts, and a “most fine, spired steeple, both small and straight.” Henry VIII. at the Dissolution bestowed the house and grounds upon the first Marquis of Winchester, but the church was given by the young King Edward VI. “to the Dutch nation in London, to be their preaching place.” From that day to this the Dutch have worshipped here, and in the days of persecution it was the religious home of other Continental refugees. In the generation before Milton, thousands of the skilled artisans of the Netherlands and France had fled to England, impoverishing the lands of the short-sighted tyrants who drove them forth, to add to English industry and commerce. The most eminent pastor of these exiles was a Polish nobleman, John a Lasco, who shepherded, not only this flock, but all the other foreigners in England, and superintended their schools as well. He was a friend of Melanchthon and Erasmus, was with the latter when he died, and became possessed of his library.

It was to these refugees in London, Norwich, and other towns that harboured them, that England owed the introduction of many new, choice flowers, among them, the gillyflower, carnation, Provence rose, and others. The handiwork of these industrious folk produced many new stuffs unknown to English ladies, among others the fine light fabric known as bombazine. One of the Dutch ladies, who taught the English to starch and launder cambric ruffs, was so much sought after and charged such high fees, that she soon earned herself a competence. Evidently these strangers paid their way.

The church assigned to them in London once possessed a marvellous array of tombs of noted men. The register is crowded with the names of earls and barons, all of whose monuments were sold by the impecunious and callous marquis for £100. Just before Milton’s birth the fourth Marquis of Winchester was compelled to part with all his possessions in Austin Friars. At about this time the tower, declared to be “one of the beautifullest and rarest spectacles” in the city, was pulled down, and the choir and transepts were demolished. The size of the original building may be imagined when we remember that the length of the nave alone is one hundred and fifty feet to-day. The chronicler records that in the beginning of the Dutch services, the church was filled to overflowing. Whether there are fewer Dutch in London four centuries later, or fewer who are glad to worship in their own tongue, cannot be said. But to-day, the visitor, who on a Sunday morning walks through the silent and deserted streets north of the Bank of England, and penetrates to the seclusion of Austin Friars Church, will find but a scant congregation of perhaps two hundred, who gather cosily within the curtains in the centre of the nave, which shut out the great bare aisles. If he thinks of the old days when Roger Williams taught Dutch to his learned pupil, John Milton, he may let his fancy picture to him these men, who ranked among the nation-builders of their day, stepping some Sunday morning under its Gothic arches from out the greensward that then surrounded them, and listening to the gospel in the tongue of those brave exiles who, like them, had fought for freedom of conscience.

If the visitor waits after service, he may see in the pastor’s room the portrait of John a Lasco, to whom all the congregation point back with pride, as the first and greatest preacher in their history; and the courteous pastor may point out many things of interest that would escape the casual observer. Standing at the front of the church, beside the little tower at the left, whose beautiful spire no longer rises aloft, one finds himself in the heart of the modern business world, relentless, pushing, loving neither beauty nor the sacredness of age. One sign—Barnato Brothers—may attract his attention in a window close to the gray church walls. Here the ambitious and ill-starred king of African mines, Barney Barnato, brought his power to bear upon the men on ’Change a decade since. A decade hence his name, like John a Lasco’s, will be remembered by few. These names and the associations they suggest are no unfitting theme for meditation on a Sunday morning stroll amid the stony streets of London past and present.

Further west, amid the district swept by the Great Fire, stands Guildhall, not as it stood either before or after the fire, but still worthy of mention in the category of buildings that withstood the flames. Only the roof perished in the fire, and its walls stood intact; but so great have been the changes since their restoration that very little which belonged to Milton’s London remains above the crypt.

A clergyman, writing the year after the Great Fire, thus describes it, as he saw it during that terrible conflagration: “And amongst other things that night, the sight of Guildhall was a fearful spectacle, which stood the whole of it together, after the fire had taken it, without flames (I suppose because the timber was such solid oake), like a bright shining wal, as if it had been a palace of gold, or a great building of burnished brass.”

The present roof is as nearly as possible a reproduction of the one that perished in the fire: it is an open oak roof, and has a central louvre. The figures of giants in its hall represent Gog and Magog, who were the Corineus and Gogmagog of the ancient city pageants. The former was a companion of Brutus, the Trojan, and according to tradition killed Gogmagog, the aboriginal giant.