“Against... the Bishops” 1639–1642Newcastle on August 28, 1640 the royal forces were soon routed. The Scots occu-
pied Newcastle, Durham, Tynemouth, and all Northumberland, and a preliminary
treaty on October 27 required the king to maintain them there until final terms
were agreed. Under pressure from the Scots and his dissaffected English subjects,
Charles also agreed to call a new parliament.
Milton probably moved house about the time that new parliament assembled on
November 3, 1640. He needed, Edward Phillips explains,
a place to dispose his Books in, and other Goods fit for the furnishing of a good
handsome House... a pretty Garden-House he took in Aldersgate-Street, at the end
of an Entry, and therefore the fitter for his turn, by the reason of the Privacy, besides
that there are few Streets in London more free from Noise then that.^22This rented house was situated just beyond the city walls outside Aldersgate, in the
second precinct of St Botolph’s parish. A servant, Jane Yates, managed the house-
hold tasks and Edward Phillips joined his brother John as a boarding pupil. Phillips
explains that Milton set himself and his pupils a program of “hard Study, and spare
Diet,” but that he also enjoyed a young man’s pleasures about town, permitting
himself every three or four weeks a “Gawdy-day” with two Gray’s Inn friends –
“Young Sparks of his Acquaintance... the Beau’s of those times.”^23 This occa-
sional conviviality is in line with Milton’s belief that he and all men need some
recreation as a balance to arduous labor.^24
Milton taught his nephews for about six years (1640–6). Edward Phillips’s report
of their studies corresponds in essence to the more elaborate and detailed model
Milton set forth in Of Education (1644).^25 “Through his excellent judgment and
way of Teaching,” Phillips explains, the students read “many Authors, both of the
Latin and Greek... far above the Pedantry of common publick Schooles (where
such Authors are scarce ever heard of).” He specifies the “four Grand authors” in
Latin (presumably Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Cicero) and also several other Latin
and Greek texts in literature, moral philosophy, mathematics, natural science, as-
tronomy, and warfare.^26 In Italian they read Giovanni Villani’s history of Florence
and in French, Pierre d’Avity’s world geography.^27 They learned enough Hebrew,
Chaldean (Aramaic), and Syriac “to go through the Pentateuch,” some part of the
Chaldee Paraphrase, and several chapters of Matthew’s gospel. On Sundays they
read a chapter of the Greek Testament and heard Milton expound it; they also
wrote from his dictation “some part... of a Tractate which he though fit to collect
from the ablest of Divines... Amesius, Wollebius, &. viz. A perfect System of Di-
vinity” (EL 61). This was apparently the starting point for Milton’s De Doctrina
Christiana, written many years later but following the general organization of topics
in Wolleb and Ames.
Taking heart from the convening of parliament, Milton felt free to concern
himself with his own affairs in his new house, “willingly leaving the outcome of