“With Dangers Compast Round” 1660–1665house day by day.” Marvell’s point is that Parker assiduously sought out Milton’s
acquaintance and advice (apparently about what course to take after the Restora-
tion) but now, Judas-like, has turned on him.^47 From one of his visitors Milton
probably heard that Gauden’s authorship of the Eikon Basilike had become a very
open secret; Gauden used it to pressure the king and Clarendon for a wealthy
bishopric, receiving as reward the see of Worcester.^48
Edward Phillips, though he now wrote in the royalist interest,^49 remained close
to his uncle and sometimes read to and wrote for him. So did others: Phillips states
that many men “greedily catch’d at the opportunity of being his Readers, that they
might as well reap the benefit of what they Read to him,” and that several boys
were “sent by their Parents to the same end” (EL 77). One who came was the
young Quaker Thomas Ellwood, then 22. He had had a defective early education
and despaired of improving his knowledge of Latin without guidance. Ellwood’s
friend Isaac Pennington and Pennington’s friend Dr Paget, both of them friends of
Milton, brought Milton and Ellwood together, probably in March or April, 1662.
Ellwood took lodgings near Milton’s house and began to read to him whatever
books he desired every afternoon except Sunday, giving the mornings to his own
studies; Milton in turn corrected his pronunciation and explained passages he did
not understand. After six weeks Ellwood felt he had made great progress, but then
a serious illness forced him to stop; when he recovered, he was pleased to be again
“very kindly received by my Master,” who had, he thought, conceived a good
opinion of him.^50 On October 26, however, Ellwood was arrested at a Quaker
meeting-house and spent several months in prison. Upon his release in early 1663
he began to work with Milton again, but gave over when the Penningtons pressed
him to stay with them in Buckinghamshire as tutor to their three children.
Toward the end of 1662 Dr Paget produced a resolution for Milton’s domestic
difficulties: a third marriage. He introduced Milton to Elizabeth Minshull, a young
woman of 24 who was Paget’s first cousin once removed. Born and bred in Chesh-
ire, she was then living and perhaps working in London. Milton applied for a
marriage license on February 11, 1663, listing his intended’s London parish as St
Andrew, Holborn and describing her as a maiden “att her owne disposing” (LR IV,
381). Amusingly, 54-year-old Milton gives his own age as “about 50”; as often
before he wants to appear, and seems to think of himself, as younger than he is.^51
His bride he describes as “about 25 years.” He made the effort to sign the applica-
tion himself, a large slanting blotted signature, evidently made with a scratchy pen.^52
They were married on February 24 at St Mary Aldermary, whose rector, Dr Robert
Gell, had been a fellow of Christ’s College during Milton’s residence there.^53 The
fact that he held that living through the Protectorate and was reputed to be a
preacher of mystical lights suggests that Milton may have chosen a minister with
whom he felt some theological affinity. John Aubrey, who knew Elizabeth after the
marriage, described her as “a gent[le] person” of a “peacefull & agreable humour”
(EL 3); reportedly, she could read and write well and had red hair.^54 Though their