“With Dangers Compast Round” 1660–1665made plans to take that course again. On June 7 he assigned the statute staple he had
from Thomas Maundy in 1658 to Giles and Baldwin Hamey for the sum he paid
for it, £500 – probably to raise ready money for the move. His erstwhile student,
the young Quaker Thomas Ellwood, writes that Milton asked him to find him a
suitable residence in Ellwood’s own area of Buckinghamshire, some 23 miles or so
out of the city:
Some little time before I went to Aylesbury Prison, I was desired by my quondam
Master Milton to take an House for him, in the Neighbourhood where I dwelt, that
he might get out of the City, for the Safety of himself and his Family, the Pestilence
then growing hot in London. I took a pretty Box for him in Giles-Chalfont, a Mile
from me; of which I gave him notice: and intended to have waited on him, and seen
him well settled in it; but was prevented by that Imprisonment.^78As Ellwood was arrested on July 1 with several other Quakers and imprisoned for a
month, he evidently arranged for Milton’s retreat sometime in June. The cottage
he found was owned by the eldest daughter of the regicide George Fleetwood:
Milton claimed a friendship “from boyhood” with George’s brother, Charles.^79
Loading on a cart what belongings he could take with him, Milton brought his
family to Chalfont sometime in July, before the very worst of the plague struck
London in August and September. While the move caused obvious disruptions in
his life and work, he may have welcomed it for reasons other than sheer relief in
escaping that dire peril. As a young man he had delighted in occasional rural re-
treats, and he could now again enjoy salubrious air and pastoral calm in the pretty
village of Chalfont St Giles.
“My Best and Most Precious Possession”: De Doctrina
Christiana (1658?–1674)
Though not prepared finally for publication, Milton’s De Doctrina Christiana is a
document of the first importance in tracing the evolution of his fundamental ideas
about God, man, the church, and the good life. It formulates and argues his final
positions on issues that had concerned him in his prose tracts. And it supplies valu-
able insights into the assumptions and ideas he dramatized on the stage of his imagi-
nation in his late great poems.^80
It is reasonable, though somewhat arbitrary, to consider De Doctrina here; though
it was composed and revised over many years, Milton likely undertook during
these trying years to formulate more completely and thereby strengthen his reli-
gious faith. A fair copy of the whole, from a still earlier draft, was produced by
Jeremie Picard, who served as Milton’s amanuensis in 1658–60 and perhaps also in
the early 1660s.^81 Picard entered many additions and revisions, as did an undeter-