Notes on Horton, 1635-1638

Abstract my notes on the preceding chapter explain, what used to be called the ‘Horton Period ‘ must now be discussed as two periods, the terminal dates of each uncertain. No proof has been found that the Milton family lived at Horton before March 1637. The removal from Hammersmith may have had some connexion with the suit brought against the scrivener on 28 May 1636 by Sir Thomas Cotton (LR, I. 297-302), or, more likely, with the plague that came to London soon after, forcing adjournment of the Midsummer and Michaelmas terms (LR, I. 322). Did this further uprooting hasten the death of the poet ‘s mother on 3 April 1637? One can only speculate. In the absence of any conclusive evidence, the Horton period is here treated as beginning in 1635 because the earliest notes in the Commonplace Book seem to date from this year, because Milton is alleged by Wood to have been incorporated as an M.A. of Oxford in 1635 (but see note 22, below), and because he is not known to have written any poetry between November 1634 and November 1637. If these reasons do not seem compelling, neither do any that can be adduced for another year. Milton ‘s nephew Edward Phillips was the only early biographer to tell us that the poet once lived at Horton. As a little boy, he probably visited there; when he was six, he and his mother may have attended the funeral of his grandmother, Sara Milton. Had it not been for his memory, and his extraordinary interest in his uncle ‘s various places of residence, we might have known nothing of Milton at Horton until as late as 1880, when an affidavit of Christopher Milton was discovered (LR, I. 320). Meanwhile, however, Thomas Warton (1791 ed., p. 556) and Masson had made discoveries in the Horton church and parish register.