Notes to Chapter 1Chapter 7 “Service... Between Private Walls” 1645–16491 See chapter 5, pp. 150–2.
2 Thomas Hobbes, The History of the Civil Wars of England (London, 1679), 4. As early as
1640 Henry Parker could toss off the comment, “wee know that of all kindes of gov-
ernment Monarchiale is the worst”: The Case of Shipmoney briefly discoursed (London,
1640), 22.
3 This illustration of the Barbican house, with whatever alterations over the centuries, is
from the Illustrated London News (July 16, 1864), 45. The house was demolished in 1864
or 1865.
4 The exact date of the move is uncertain: see Masson, III, 442–3 and Parker, I, 299. For
Cyriack Skinner, see chapter 6, note 23.
5 Viscountess Ranelagh was a learned woman from the distinguished Boyle family; her
brother was the scientist Robert Boyle. After the Irish rebellion (1641) she fled Ireland
and remained in London during most of the 1640s and 1650s. She was apparently
estranged from her husband, Arthur Jones, second viscount in the Irish peerage. Just
when Milton came to know her is not clear; for their further contacts see chapter 9, p.
309, and n. 85).
6 EL 24–5, 67. Aubrey mentions one “Mr Packer who was his Scholar” (EL 8), but no
likely person of that name has been identified; Aubrey may have misheard Packer for
Picard, the Jeremy Picard who later became one of Milton’s amanuenses (Parker, II,
925). Edward Lawrence, son of the parliamentarian Henry Lawrence and the addressee
of Sonnet XX, may also have been Milton’s pupil at some time.
7 The register entry reads, “Master Mozeley. Entred... under the hand of Sr NATH:
BRENT and both the wardens a booke called Poems in English & Latyn, by Mr John
Milton” (SR 1640–1708, I, 196).
8 Milton, Poems, 1645, sigs a3–a4. The book evidently appeared late in 1645; George
Thomason dated his copy January 2, 1646.
9 He had already published James Howell’s Dodona’s Grove (London, 1640, 1645). But
his editions of Suckling, Fragmenta Aurea (London, 1646), Crashaw, Steps to the Temple
(London, 1646), Shirley, Poems (London, 1646), and Cowley, The Mistress (London,
1647) all postdate Milton’s Poems. Moseley subsequently acquired copyrights for Sir
John Denham’s Coopers Hill (London, 1642) and Carew’s Poems (London, 1640), as
well as for works by other poets and dramatists past and present.
10 Waller’s Poems (London, 1645) was entered in the Stationers Register on December 14,
- Moseley added some of Waller’s speeches in parliament to the volume: his stand
with parliament against shipmoney and Laud, and also his abject apology and plea for
his life after being caught in the plot. Waller was in exile in France when the volume
was first published by Thomas Walkley, who then sold his rights to Moseley.
11 CPW IV.2, 750–1. For the epigram and picture, see below, and plate 8.
12 In TM the first draft is followed by a fair copy, both in Milton’s hand; the fair copy is
titled (in the hand of an amanuensis) “To Mr Hen: Laws on the publishing of his
Aires.” Another copy in TM, in a scribal hand, used this title and then modified it to
“To Mr. H. Lawes, on his Aires.” That last title must postdate 1653, when Lawes’s
Ayres and Dialogues was first published; it is used in Milton’s Poems (1673). For Milton’s
six sonnets of 1646–8, I cite the versions in the Trinity manuscript.
Notes to Chapter 7