After the battle of Edgehill, in October, Charles marched towards London, anxious to possess himself of that citadel of the empire. So near did the royal army come, that many of the citizens were scared by the sound of Prince Rupert's cannon. The horrors of a siege or invasion of a city, penned in by lines of threatening troops, expected every hour to burst the gates or scale the walls—the spectacle of soldiers scouring the streets, slaying the peaceful citizen, pillaging his property, and burning his dwelling—such were the anticipations that presented themselves before the eyes of the Londoners in that memorable October, creating an excitement in all ranks, which the leaders of the popular cause sought to turn to practical account.
Eight speeches spoken in Guildhall on Thursday night, October 27th, 1642, have come down to us; and as we look on the old reports, which have rescued these utterances from the oblivion into which the earnest talking of many busy tongues at that time has fallen, we seem to stand within the walls of that civic gathering-place, amidst the dense mass of excited citizens assembled at eventide, their faces gleaming through the darkness, with the reflected light of torches and lamps, and to hear such sentences as the following from the lips of Lord Saye and Sele, whose words were applauded by the multitude, till the building rings again with the echo: "This is now not a time for men to think with themselves, that they will be in their shops and get a little money. In common dangers let every one take his weapons in his hand; let every man, therefore, shut up his shop, let him take his musket, offer himself readily and willingly. Let him not think with himself, Who shall pay me? but rather think this, I will come forth to save the kingdom, to serve my God, to maintain his true religion, to save the parliament, to save this noble city." The speaker knew what kind of men he was appealing to; that their feelings were already enlisted in the cause; that they had already given proofs of earnest resolution to support it, and of a liberal and self-denying spirit. While his majesty had been getting himself "an army by commission of array, by subscription of loyal plate, pawning of crown jewels, and the like—London citizens had subscribed horses and plate, every kind of plate, down to women's thimbles, to an unheard-of amount; and when it came to actual enlisting, London enlisted four thousand in one day." As might have been expected, therefore, the audience responded to Lord Saye and Sele, and prepared themselves to obey the summons of their leaders; so that a few days afterwards, on hearing that Prince Rupert with his army had come to Brentford, and on finding that the roar of his cannon had reached as far as the suburbs, the train bands, with amazing expedition, assembled under Major-General Skippon, and forthwith marched off to Turnham Green. Besides enlistment of apprentices and others, and contributions of all kinds for raising parliament armies, measures were adopted for the permanent defence of London. The city walls were repaired and mounted with artillery; the sheds and buildings which had clustered about the outside of the city boundaries in time of peace were swept away. All avenues, except five, were shut up, and these were guarded with military works the most approved. The first entrance, near the windmill, Whitechapel-road, was protected by a hornwork; two redoubts with four flanks were raised beside the second entrance, at Shoreditch; a battery and breastwork were placed at the third entrance, in St. John's street; a two-flanked redoubt and a small fort stood by the fourth entrance, at the end of Tyburn, St. Giles's Fields; and a large fort with bulwarks overlooked the fifth entrance, at Hyde Park Corner. Other fortifications were situated here and there by the walls, so as to fit the city to stand a long siege. A deep enthusiasm moved at least a considerable party in the performance of these works. They were not left to engineers or artillerymen and the paid artificers, who in ordinary times raise bastions and the like. "The example of gentlemen of the best quality," says May, "knights and ladies going out with drums beating, and spades and mattocks in their hands, to assist in the work, put life into the drooping people." While warlike harangues, enlistments, contributions, and the building of fortifications, were going on, and the bustle and music of military marches were heard in the street, while the walls and gates bristled with cannons and soldiery, there were those within that war-girdled city who sympathized indeed in the popular cause, but who were far differently employed in its defence and promotion.
There was at this time residing in London one
"Whose soul was like a star, and dwelt apart;
Who had a voice whose sound was like the sea."
His place of abode was in Aldersgate-street, in an humble house, with a small garden—"the muses' bower," as he called it; and there his marvelous mind was searching out the foundations of laws and governments, breathing after liberty, civil and religious, and picturing an ideal commonwealth of justice, order, truth, purity, and love, which he longed and hoped to see reduced to a reality in his own native land; he was preparing, also, for some high work, which should be "of power to imbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of public virtue and public civility, to allay the perturbation of the mind, and set the affections in right tune—a work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the vapors of wine, nor to be obtained by the invocation of dame Memory and her syren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases."
John Milton, who thus describes his employment in grand and sonorous English, such as he alone could write, was by birth a Londoner, having first opened his eyes in one of the houses of old Bread-street, and received the elements of his vast and varied learning at St. Paul's School. Antiquarian research has traced him through successive residences in St. Bride's Churchyard, Aldersgate-street, Barbican, Holborn, Petty France, Bartholomew-close, Jewin-street, Bunhill-fields, to his last resting-place in the upper end of the chancel of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. (Knight's London, vol. ii, p. 97.) In youth he had pursued his studies in his native city, after his removal from Cambridge,
"I, well content, where Thames with refluent tide
My native city laves, meantime reside,
Nor zeal, nor duty, now my steps impel
To reedy Cam, and my forbidden cell.
If peaceful days in lettered leisure spent
Beneath my father's roof be banishment,
Then call me banished: I will ne'er refuse
A name expressive of the lot I choose;
For here I woo the muse, with no control;
For here my books, my life, absorb me whole."
In the maturity of his manhood, at the outbreak of the civil war, Milton was pursuing his favorite studies at his house in Aldersgate-street, combining with his literary researches and sublime poetic flights, deep theological inquiries and lofty political speculations. At a time when the rumors of invasion were afloat, and the inroads of an incensed enemy expected, he appealed to the chivalrous cavalier in his own classic style:—
"Lift not thy spear against the muse's bower.
The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground; and the repeated air
Of sad Elecha's poet had the power
To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare."
Relieved from the fears of invasion, he continued to occupy his pen in the production of those wonderful prose works, which, scarcely less than his poetry, are monuments of his enduring fame. Probably it was in his house in Barbican—the queer old barbican of that day, with a portion of the Barbican, or tower, still standing, and picturesquely gabled and carved dwellings crowded close against it—that Milton, musing on his native city, wrote some of his most stirring political tracts. He was the representative of a large class of London citizens, who, without taking up arms on either side, earnestly entered into the great struggle, and thought and talked, and worked and wrote, as men agitated and in travail for the restoration and welfare of their distracted and bleeding country.