“Studious Retirement” 1632–1638Hammersmith was a hamlet on the north bank of the Thames in the parish of
Fulham, about seven miles west of St Paul’s Cathedral.^4 Milton’s earlier references
to country walks and sojourns may suggest that this or another rural residence
served the family for some years as a refuge from the plague and the heat of sum-
mer.^5 The London excursions he refers to would have been comparatively easy
from Hammersmith. His efforts to keep up with new developments in music were
no doubt facilitated by his father’s connections with the London music world.^6 His
mathematical interests he may have pursued at Gresham College, the only center in
London for lectures and studies in that subject.^7
Living once again with his family, Milton had reason to reaffirm his conviction
that the commercial and legal professions were not for him. Edward Phillips sup-
posed, wrongly, that the scrivener, “having got an Estate to his content,” left off
the cares of business when he retired (EL 55). In fact, he was involved for several
years with suits and countersuits pertaining to two complex Chancery cases, in
which plaintiffs Rose Downer and John Cotton and their heirs charged Milton
senior and Thomas Bower with mismanagement of funds entrusted to them for
lending out. There seems to have been some sharp practice and bad faith in the
first case and perhaps in the second, though most witnesses and the court judg-
ments ascribed the fault to Bower. As a partner, however, Milton senior retained
some liability.^8 By 1637 the poet’s younger brother Christopher was a practicing
lawyer; after spending only five terms at Cambridge, he left when Milton did and
at age 17 began studying law at the Inner Temple. He drafted some legal papers in
the Cotton affair, including a petition on April l that his father be allowed, by
reason of age and infirmity, to give his depositions at Horton rather than West-
minster.^9
During the 1630s also, changes in the English church reinforced Milton’s doubts
about taking orders. Before Laud, many Puritans and other reform-minded Protes-
tants were able to swear, as Milton himself did when he took his degrees, to the
lawfulness of the Book of Common Prayer and the truth of the Thirty-nine Articles.
Like most of Queen Elizabeth’s bishops, they could understand the Articles in a
Calvinist sense and (like Thomas Young at Stowmarket) they could often avoid
compliance with such ritual and ceremony as offended their consciences. But after
Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury on August 6, 1633 he accelerated the
process of recasting the church in a high-church mold, leading it, many feared, ever
closer to Rome. He appointed his own men – Arminian bishops, university offic-
ers, and parish clergy – who rigorously repressed Calvinist predestinarian doctrine
and Puritan efforts to reform church ritual and government. New ordinances re-
quired fixed altars rather than communion tables, the full panoply of vestments and
sacramental rituals, strict adherence to the Book of Common Prayer, and diligent
supervision by bishops to enforce all this. Bishops were also to eject Puritan-leaning
ministers and to control lectureships and private chaplaincies – common resorts for
Puritan preachers outside the parish structure. Orders designed to silence Puritans