MILTON'S SUFFOLK SCHOOLMASTER.
Stowmarket--The Rev. Thomas Young--Bishop Hall and the Smectymnian
divines--Milton's mulberry-tree--Suffolk relationships.
'My father destined me,' writes John Milton, in his 'Defensio Secunda,'
'while yet a little boy, for the study of humane letters, which I served
with such eagerness that, from the twelfth year of my age, I scarcely
ever went from my lessons to bed before midnight, which, indeed, was the
first cause of injury to my eyes, to whose natural weakness there were
also added frequent headaches; all which not retarding my natural
impetuosity in learning, he caused me to be instructed both at the
Grammar School and under other masters at home.' Of the latter, the best
known was the Rev. Thomas Young, the Puritan minister, of Stowmarket,
Suffolk.
It is generally claimed for Young that he was an East Anglian. Professor
Masson has, however, settled the question that he was a Scotchman, of the
University of Aberdeen. Be that as it may, like most Scotchmen, he made
his way to England, and was employed by Mr. Milton, the scrivener of
Bread Street, to teach his gifted son. As he seems to have been married
at the time, it is not probable that he resided with his pupil, but only
visited him daily. Never had master a better pupil, or one who rewarded
him more richly by the splendour of his subsequent career. The poet,
writing to him a few years after he ceased to be his pupil, speaks of
'the incredible and singular gratitude he owed him on account of the
services he had done him,' and calls God to witness that he reverenced
him as his father. In a Latin elegy, after implying that Young was
dearer to him than Socrates to Alcibiades, or than the great Stagyrite to
his generous pupil, Alexander, he goes on to say: 'First, under his
guidance, I explored the recesses of the Muses, and beheld the sacred
green spots of the cleft summit of Parnassus and quaffed the Pierian
cups, and, Clio favouring me, thrice sprinkled my joyful mouth with
Castalian wine;' from which it is clear that Young had done his duty to
his pupil, and that the latter ever regarded him with an affection as
beautiful as rare. Never did a Rugby lad write of Arnold as Milton of
Thomas Young. How long the latter's preceptorship lasted cannot be
determined with precision. 'It certainly closed,' writes Professor
Masson, in that truly awful biography of his, 'when Young left England at
the age of thirty-five, and became pastor of the congregation of British
merchants settled at Hamburg.'
As one of the leaders of the Presbyterian party, Dr. Thomas Young became
Vicar of Stowmarket in due time. He was one of the Smectymnian divines.
As it is not every schoolboy who knows what the term means, let me
explain who they were. Two or three hundred years ago people were much
more controversial than they are now, and very fierce was the battle on
the subject of the relative claims, from a Scriptural point of view, of
Prelacy or Presbytery. One of the most distinguished champions of the
former was Dr. Hall, Bishop of Norwich--a simple, godly, learned man, who
deserves to be held in remembrance, if only for the way in which he got
married. 'Being now settled,' he writes, 'in that sweet and civil county
of Suffolk, the uncouth solitariness of my life, and the extreme
incommodity of that single housekeeping, drew my thoughts, after two
years, to condescend to the necessity of a married state, which God no
less strangely provided for me; for walking from the church on Monday, in
the Whitsun week, with a grave and reverend minister, I saw a comely and
modest gentlewoman standing at the door of that house where we were
invited to a wedding-dinner, and inquiring of that worthy friend whether
he knew her, "Yes," quoth he, "I know her well, and have bespoken her for
your wife." When I further demanded an account of that answer, he told
me she was the daughter of a gentleman whom he much respected--Mr. George
Whinniff, of Brettenham; that out of an opinion he had of the fitness of
that match for me he had already treated with her father about it, whom
he found very apt to entertain it. Advising me not to neglect the
opportunity, and not concealing the just praises of the modesty, piety,
good disposition, and other virtues that were lodged in that seemly
presence, I listened to the motion as sent from God, and at last, upon
due prosecution, happily prevailed, enjoying the comfortable society of
that meet-help for the space of forty-nine years.' A young clergyman so
good and amiable ought to have fared better as regards the days in which
his lot was passed. Hall should have lived in some theological Arcadia.
As it was, he had to fight much and suffer much. In those distracted
times he was all for peace. When the storm was brewing in Church and
State, which for a time swept away Bishop and King, he published--but,
alas! in vain--his 'Via Media.' 'I see,' he wrote, 'every man to rank
himself unto a side, and to draw in the quarrel he affecteth. I see no
man either holding or joining their hands for peace.' Bishop Hall was
the most celebrated writer of his time in defence of the Church of
England. Archbishop Laud got him to write on 'The Divine Right of
Episcopacy,' nor could he have well placed the subject in abler hands.
This was followed, after Laud had fallen, with 'An Humble Remonstrance to
the High Court of Parliament,' in which treatise he vindicated the
antiquity of liturgies and Episcopacy with admirable skill, meekness, and
simplicity, yet with such strength of argument that five Presbyterian
divines clubbed their wits together to frame an answer. These
Presbyterian ministers were--Stephen Marshal, then lecturer at St.
Margaret's, whom Baillie terms the best of the preachers in England;
Edmund Calamy, who had long been a celebrated East Anglian preacher,
first at Swaffham, then at Bury St. Edmunds, who, as we all know, refused
a bishopric when offered him, and whom, therefore, at any rate, his
adversaries must allow to have been sincere; Thomas Young, Matthew
Newcomen, and William Spurstow. To this reply was given the name of
Smectymnuus--a startling word, as Calamy calls it, made up of the initial
letters of these names. This work, which was published in 1641, gave,
says Dr. M'Crie, the first serious blow to Prelacy. It was composed in a
style superior to that of the Puritans in general, and was, by the
confession of the learned Bishop Wilkins, a capital work against
Episcopacy. Dr. Kippis says, 'This piece is certainly written with great
fierceness and asperity of language,' and quotes, as evidence, some
strong things said against the practice of the prelates. But Neal, who
has given a long account of the work, states that, if the rest of the
clergy had been of the same temper and spirit with Bishop Hall, the
controversy between him and the Smectymnian divines might have been
compromised.
Stowmarket, as I have said, had the honour of being placed under the
pastoral care of one of these Smectymnian divines. He came there in
March, 1628, on the presentation of Mr. John Howe, a gentleman then
residing in the town, and a man of wealth, whose ancestors had been great
cloth-manufacturers in that place and neighbourhood. Since the time of
Edward III. the cloth manufacture had been very active in Suffolk, and it
is little to the credit of its merchants that we find them, in 1522,
petitioning for the repeal of a royal law which inflicted a penalty
against those who sold cloth which, when wetted, shrunk up, on the plea
that, as such goods were made for a foreign market, the home-consumer was
not injured. Stowmarket, when I was a lad, had reached its climax in a
pecuniary sense. In the early part of the present century it was spoken
of as a rising town. Situated as it was in the centre of the county, it
was a convenient mart for barley, and great quantities of malt were made.
Its other manufactures were sacking, ropes, and twine. Its tanneries
were of a more recent date, as also its manufactory of gun-cotton,
connected with which at one time there was an explosion of a most fatal
and disastrous character. In 1763 it was connected with Ipswich by means
of a canal, which was a great source of prosperity to the town. Up to
the time of the great Reform Bill, it was the great place for county
meetings, and for the nomination of the county representatives. In our
day it has a population of 4,052. When I was a lad it was one of the
first towns to welcome the Plymouth Brethren into Suffolk, and they are
there still. The Independent Chapel for awhile suffered much from them.
The pastor was a very worthy but somewhat dry preacher. His favourite
quotation in the pulpit, when he would describe the attacks of the enemy
of God and man, was
'He worries whom he can't devour
With a malicious joy.'
Suffolk had its great lawyers as well as Norfolk. The first to head the
list is Ranulph de Glanville, a man of great parts, deep learning, for
the times, eminent alike for his legal abilities and energetic mind. He
was said, by one account, to have been born at Stowmarket. It is certain
he founded Leiston Abbey, near Aldborough, and Bentley Priory. As Chief
Justice under Henry II. he naturally was no favourite with Richard I.,
who deprived him of his office and made use of his wealth. He lived,
however, to accompany Richard to the Holy Land, and died at the siege of
Acre. His treatise on our laws is one of the earliest on record. It
must be remembered also that Godwin, the author of 'Political Justice,'
and 'Caleb Williams,' a novel still read--the husband of one gifted
woman, and the father of another--was at one time an Independent minister
at Stowmarket.
But to return to Dr. Young. He, like Mr. Newcomen, had become an East
Anglian, and Smectymnuus may therefore more or less be said to have an
East Anglian original. As the living of Stowmarket was at that time
worth 300 pounds a year, and as 300 pounds a year then was quite equal to
600 pounds a year now, Dr. Young must have been in comfortable
circumstances while at Stowmarket. A likeness of him is hung up, or was
preserved, in Stowmarket Vicarage. 'It,' wrote an old observer,
'possesses the solemn, faded yellowness of a man much given to austere
meditation, yet there is sufficient energy in the eye and mouth to show,
as he is preaching in Geneva gown and bands, that he is a man who could
write and think, and speak with great vigour.' One of Milton's
biographers terms him, contemptuously, a Puritan who cut his hair short.
The Rev. Mr. Hollingsworth writes that it is an error to suppose that
Young remained long as chaplain to merchants abroad. 'He must have
remained generally in constant residence, because we possess his
signature to the vestry accounts, in a curious quarto book, which
contains the annual accounts of Stow upland Parish for eighty-four years.
At the parish meetings, and at the audit of each year's accounts Vicar
Young presided, with some exceptions, from the year 1629 to 1655, and his
autograph is attached to each page.' As an author, Dr. Young had
distinguished himself before he appeared as one of the Smectymnians. In
1639, while the Stuarts and the Bishops were doing all they could to
break down the sanctity of the Sabbath, and to make it a day of vulgar
revelry and rustic sport, Dr. Young published a thin quarto in Latin,
entitled 'Dies Dominica,' containing a history of the institution of the
Sabbath, and its vindication from all common and profane uses. There is
no place of publication named, the signature is feigned, 'Theophilus
Philo Kunaces Loncardiensis,' and in the copy reserved at Stowmarket is
added, in characters by no means unlike that of the handwriting of the
Vicar himself, 'Dr. Thos. Young, of Jesus.' The tractate is described as
a very elaborate and learned compilation from the Fathers upon the
sanctity of the Sabbath. A spirit of laborious and determined energy
pervades it, nor is it unworthy the abilities and erudition of the
author. The work was written at Stowmarket, and may have been published
in Ipswich. Its paper and type are coarse; the name of the author was
concealed, because at that time a man who reverenced the Sabbath had a
good chance of being brought before the Star Chamber, and of being
roughly treated by Archbishop Laud, as an enemy to Church and State.
About ten years before, Dr. Young had heard how, for writing his plea
against Prelacy, Dr. Alexander Leighton had been cast into Newgate,
dragged before the Star Chamber, where he was sentenced to have his ears
cut off, to have his nose slit, to be branded in the face, to stand in
the pillory, to be whipped at the post, to pay a fine of 10,000 pounds,
and to suffer perpetual imprisonment. Dr. Young might well shrink from
exposing himself to similar torture. But Dr. Young had other warnings,
and much nearer home.
Dr. Young, like most of the men of that time, persecuted witches. These
latter were supposed to have existed in great numbers, and a roving
commission for their discovery was given to one Matthew Hopkins, of
Manningtree, in Essex, to find them out in the eastern counties and
execute the law upon them. It was a brutal business, and Hopkins
followed it for three or four years. He proceeded from town to town and
opened his courts. Stowmarket was one of the places he visited. The
Puritans are said to have hung sixty witches in Suffolk, but the Puritans
were not alone responsible. It is a fact that, up to fifty years ago two
supposed witches lived in Stowmarket.
Dr. Young escaped the Star Chamber, but, like most good men who would be
free at that time he had to fly his native land for awhile. Milton
refers to this exile in his Latin elegy:
'Meantime alone
Thou dwellest, and helpless on a soil unknown,
Poor, and receiving from a foreign hand
The aid denied thee in thy native land.'
It seems from this that the living at Stowmarket was under sequestration.
A little while after Young is back in Stowmarket, and Milton thus
describes his daily life--a personal experience of the poet's, not a
flight of fancy:
'Now, entering, thou shalt haply seated see
Besides his spouse, his infants on his knee;
Or, turning page by page with studious look
Some bulky paper or God's holy Book.'
Good times came to Dr. Young. The seed he had sown bore fruit. For
awhile England had woke up to attack the Stuart doctrine of royal
prerogative in Church and State. The men of Suffolk had been the
foremost in the fight, and in 1643 we find the Doctor in Duke's Place,
London. A sermon was preached by him before the House of Commons, and
printed by order of the House. A Stowmarket Rector speaks of it
naturally as a very prolix, learned, somewhat dull and heavy effort to
encourage them to persevere in their civil war against the King; but he
has the grace to add: 'There is much less of faction in it than many
others, and it is rather the production of a contemplative than of an
active partisan.' 'One of his examples,' writes Mr. Hollingsworth, 'is
from 2 Sam. xiii. 28, where the command of Absalom was to kill Amnon:
"Could the command of a _mortal man_ infuse that courage and valour into
the hearts _of his servants_ as to make them adventure upon a _desperate_
design? And shall not the command of the _Almighty God_ raise up the
hearts of His people employed by Him in any work to which _He_ calls
them, raise up their hearts in following at His command!"' The Doctor
had not cleared himself of all the errors of his times. He urged on his
hearers, by the example of the Emperors, the necessity of maintaining the
doctrine of the Trinity uncorrupt, by the aid of the civil power. He
urged, however, on them personal holiness, in order that the reformation
of the Church might be more easily accomplished. The two legislative
enactments he wished them to pass were to confer a power upon the
Presbyterian clergy to exclude men from the Sacrament, and enforce a
better observance of the Sabbath-day. The sermon is scarce, but is bound
up with others in the Library at Cambridge, preached at the monthly fasts
before the House of Commons.
In the library of the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, where assuredly
the portrait of the Stowmarket Rector should find a place, there is a
copy of this sermon, which was preached at the last solemn fast.
February 28, 1643, with the notice that 'It is this day ordered by the
Commoners' House of Parliament that Sir John Trevor and Mr. Rous do from
this House give thanks to Mr. Young for the great paines hee tooke in the
sermon hee preached that day at the intreaty of the said House of Commons
at St. Margaret's, Westminster, it being the day of publike humiliation,
and to desire him to print this sermon;' which accordingly was done,
under the title of 'Hope's Encouragement.' The motto on the outside was:
'Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul both sure and steadfast, and
entereth into that which is within the veil.' The sermon was printed in
London for Ralph Smith, at the sign of the Bible, in Cornhill, near the
Royal Exchange. In his sermon the preacher took for his text: 'Be of
good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart, all ye that wait upon
the Lord.' The three propositions established are: First, that God's
people are taught by the Lord in all their troubles to wait patiently on
Him. The second is that such as wait patiently upon the Lord must rouse
themselves with strength and courage to further wait upon Him; and that,
thirdly, when God's people wait upon Him, He will increase their courage.
The preacher quotes the Hebrew and Augustine, and reasons in a most
undeniable manner in support of his propositions; but above all things he
is practical. 'The work you are now called on to do,' he says to the
M.P.'s, 'is a work of great concernment. It is the purging of the Lord's
floor. As it hath reference both to the Church and the Commonwealth, a
work sure enough to be encountered with great opposition. Yet I must say
it is a work with the managing whereof God hath not so honoured others
which have gone before you in your places, but hath reserved it to make
you the instruments of His glory in advancing it, and that doth much add
unto your honour. Was it an honour to the Tyrians that they were counted
amongst the builders of the Temple when Hiram sent to Solomon things
necessary for that work? How, then, hath God honoured you, reserving to
you the care of re-edifying His Church (the throne of the living God) and
the repairing of the shattered Commonwealth, so far borne down before He
raised you to support it, that succeeding ages may with honour to your
names, say, "This was the Reforming Parliament," a work which God, by His
blessing on your unwearied pains, hath much furthered already, whilst He,
by you, hath removed the rubbish that might hinder the raising up of that
godly structure appointed and prescribed by the Lord in His Word.' They
were to stick to the truth, contended the preacher, quoting the edict of
the Emperor Justinian in the Arian controversy, and the reply of Basil
the Great to the Emperor's deputy: 'That none trained up in Holy
Scriptures would suffer one syllable of Divine truth to be betrayed; but
were ready, if it be required, to suffer any death in the defence
thereof.' People, he maintained, are ever carried on by the example of
their governors. 'How,' he asks, 'was the Eastern Empire polluted with
execrable Arianism, whilst yet the Western continued in the truth? The
historians give the reason of it. Constantine, an Arian, ruled in the
East when at the same time Constans and Constantius, sons to Constantine
the Great, treading in the steps of their pious father, adhered to the
truth professed by him, and so did as far ennoble the Western Empire with
the truth as the other did defile the Eastern with his countenancing of
error and heresy.' The preacher here asks his hearers to make no laws
against religion and piety, and 'recall such as have been made in time of
ignorance against the same, and study to uphold and maintain such
profitable and wholesome laws as have been formerly enacted for God and
His people. Improve what was well begun by others before you, and not
perfected by them.' Under this latter head he dwelt on the possible
abuse of the Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and the irreligious
profanation of the Lord's Day.
In 1643 the Earl of Manchester ejected many of the Royalist clergymen
from their livings who were scandalous ministers. Dr. Sterne having been
deprived of the mastership of Jesus College, Cambridge, the Stowmarket
Vicar was placed there in his stead. He held the situation till 1654,
when, on his refusal of the engagement, Government deprived him of his
office. At the time the sermon was preached Dr. Young was one of the
far-famed Assembly of Divines which met in Henry VII.'s chapel in
accordance with the Solemn League and Covenant, which proposed three
grand objects: 'To endeavour the extirpation of Popery, Prelacy
superstition, heresy, and profaneness; to endeavour the preservation of
the reformed religion in Scotland and the reformation of religion in the
kingdoms of England and Ireland in doctrine, worship, discipline, and
government according to the Word of God and the example of the best
Reformed Church; and to endeavour to bring the Churches of God in the
three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in
religion--confession of faith, form of Church government, directory for
worship and catechizing; that we and our posterity after us may as
brethren live in faith and love, and that the Lord may delight to dwell
in the midst of us.' A clause was inserted to the effect that it was
English prelacy which they contemned; and thus modified, after all due
solemnities, and with their right hands lifted to heaven, was the Solemn
League and Covenant sworn to by the English Parliament and by the
Assembly of Divines in St. Margaret's Church, September 25, 1643. It
was, writes a Presbyterian divine, too much the creature of the Long
Parliament who convoked the meeting, selected the members of Assembly,
nominated its president, prescribed its bye-laws, and kept a firm hold
and a vigilant eye on all their proceedings. Still, with all these
drawbacks, it must be admitted that Parliament could hardly have made a
selection of more pious, learned, and conscientious men. The Assembly
consisted of men nominated by the members for each county sending in
suitable names. The two divines appointed for Suffolk were Mr. Thomas
Young, of Stowmarket, and Mr. John Phillips, of Rentall. The Vicar, it
is said, sometimes acted as chairman, but this, as Mr. Hollingsworth
remarks, is doubtful.
Mr. Young's claim to fame rests on something greater than his sermon, or
his position in the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, or his mastership
of Jesus College. He was, as we have said, Milton's schoolmaster. The
poet tells us:
''Tis education forms the common mind;
Just as a twig is bent the tree's inclined.'
If so, much of Milton's piety and lofty principle and massive learning
must have come to him from the Stowmarket Vicar. In our day there is
little chance of a young scholar becoming imbued with Miltonian ideas on
the subject of civil and religious liberty. That sublime genius which
was to sing in immortal verse of
'Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,'
must have owed much to Dr. Young--a debt which the poet acknowledged, as
we have already seen, in no niggardly way. Amongst Milton's Latin
letters is the following, which has been translated by Professor Masson
thus: 'Although I had resolved with myself, most excellent preceptor, to
send you a certain small epistle composed in metrical numbers, yet I did
not consider that I had done enough unless I also wrote something in
prose: for, truly, the singular and boundless gratitude of my mind which
your deserts justly claim from me was not to be expressed in that cramped
mode of speech, straitened by fixed feet and syllables, but in a free
oration--nay, rather, if it were possible, in an Asiatic exuberance of
words. To express sufficiently how much I owe you, were a work far
greater than my strength, even if I should call into play all those
commonplaces of argument which Aristotle or that dialectician of Paris
(Ramus) has collected, or even if I should exhaust all the fountains of
oratory. You complain as justly that my letters have been to you very
few and very short; but I, on the other hand, do not so much grieve that
I have been remiss in a duty so pleasant and so enviable, as I rejoice,
and all but exult, at having such a place in your friendship, as that you
should care to ask for frequent letters from me. That I should never
have written to you for over more than three years, I pray you will not
misconceive, but, in accordance with your wonderful indulgence and
candour, put the more charitable construction on it; for I call God to
witness how much, as a father, I regard you, with what singular devotion
I have always followed you in thought, and how I feared to trouble you
with my writings. In sooth, I make it my first care, that since there is
nothing else to commend my letters, that their rarity may commend them.
Next, as out of that most vehement desire after you which I feel, I
always fancy you with me, and speak to you, and beheld you as if you were
present, and so, as always happens in love, soothe my grief by a certain
vain imagination of your presence, it is, in truth, my fear, as soon as I
meditate sending you a letter, that it should suddenly come into my mind
by what an interval of earth you are distant from me, and so the grief of
your absence, already nearly lulled, should grow fresh and break up my
sweet dream. The Hebrew Bible, your truly most acceptable gift, I have
already received. These lines I have written in London, in the midst of
town distractions, not, as usual, surrounded by books; if, therefore,
anything in this epistle should please you less than might be, and
disappoint your expectations, it will be made up for by another more
elaborate one as soon as I have returned to the haunts of the Muses.'
When the above letter was written, Milton had become a Cambridge student,
where he was to experience a new kind of tutor. Milton could not get on
with Chappell as he did with Young. The tie between the Stowmarket Vicar
and the poet was of a much more cordial character.
Again the poet appears to have forwarded the following letter to the
Stowmarket Vicarage. It is to be feared that few such precious epistles
find their way there now. Milton writes to the Doctor: 'On looking at
your letter, most excellent preceptor, this alone struck me as
superfluous, that you excused your slowness in writing; for though
nothing could come to me more desirable than your letters, how could I or
ought I to hope that you should have so much leisure from serious and
more sacred affairs, especially as that is a matter entirely of kindness,
and not at all of duty? That, however, I should suspect that you had
forgotten me, your so many recent kindnesses to me would by no means
allow. I do not see how you could dismiss out of your memory one laden
with so great benefits by you. Having been invited by you to your part
of the country, as soon as spring has a little advanced I will gladly
come to enjoy the delights of the year, and not less of your
conversation, and will then withdraw myself from the din of town to your
Stoa of the Iceni, as to that most celebrated porch of Zeno or the
Tusculan Villa of Cicero, where you with moderate means, but regal
spirit, like some Serranus or Curius, placidly reign in your little farm,
and contemning fortune, hold as it were a triumph over riches, ambition,
pomp, luxury, and whatever the herd of man admire and are amazed by. But
as you have deprecated the blame of slowness, you will also, I hope,
pardon me the fault of haste; for having put off this letter, I preferred
writing little, and that rather in a slovenly manner, to not writing at
all. Farewell, much-to-be respected Sir.'
The question is, Did Milton carry out this intention, and pay Stowmarket
a visit? Professor Masson thinks he may have been there in the memorable
summer and autumn of 1630. The Rev. Mr. Hollingsworth, the Stowmarket
historian argues that it is not unlikely that several, if not many,
visits, extending over a period of thirty years, while the tutor held the
living, were made by the poet to the place. Tradition has constantly
associated his name with the mulberry-trees of the Vicarage, which he
planted, but of these only one remains. 'This venerable relic of the
past,' continues the Vicar, 'is much decayed, and is still in vigorous
bearing. Its girth, before it breaks into branches, is ten feet, and I
have had in one season as much as ten gallons from the pure juices of its
fruits, which yields a highly flavoured and brilliant-coloured wine.' It
stands a few yards distant from the oldest part of the house, and
opposite the windows of an upstair double room, which was formerly the
sitting-parlour of the Vicar, and where, it is to be believed, the poet
and his friend had many a talk of the way to advance religion and liberty
in the land, to remove hirelings out of the Church, and to abolish the
Bishops. There too, perhaps, might have come to the guest visions of
'Paradise Lost.' In his first work Milton throws out something like a
hint of the great poem which he was in time to write. 'Then, amidst,' to
quote his own sonorous language, 'the hymns and hallelujahs of saints,
_someone_ may, perhaps, be heard offering in high strains, in new and
lofty measures, to sing and celebrate Thy Divine mercies and marvellous
judgments in this land throughout all ages.' We can easily believe how,
in the Stowmarket Vicarage, the plan of the poet may have been talked
over, and the heart of the poet encouraged to the work. Regarding Young
as Milton did, we may be sure that he would have been only too glad to
listen to his suggestions and adopt his advice. There must have been a
good deal of plain living and high thinking at the Stowmarket Vicarage
when Milton came there as an occasional guest. This is the more probable
as Milton's earliest publications were in support of the views of
Smectymnian divines. His friendship for Young probably led him into the
field of controversy, for he owns that he was not disposed to this manner
of writing 'wherein, knowing myself inferior to myself, led by the genial
power of nature to another task, I have the use, as I may account, but of
my left hand.' It is a fact that Milton was thus drawn into the
controversy, and what more natural than that he should have been induced
to do so by the Stowmarket Vicar in the Stowmarket Vicarage? The poet's
family were familiar with that part of Suffolk, and his brother, Sir
Christopher, who was a stanch Royalist and barrister, lived at Ipswich,
but twelve miles off. He went to see Milton, and Milton might have
visited Ipswich and Stowmarket at the same time. Be that as it may,
tradition and probability alike justify the belief that Milton came to
Stowmarket, and that he went away all the wiser and better, all the
stronger to do good work for man and God, for his age and all succeeding
ages. Young, as it may be inferred, was held in high honour by his
friends. He was spoken of by two neighbouring ejected Rectors as the
reverend, learned, orthodox, prudent, and holy Dr. Young. When he died,
an epitaph was inscribed with some care by a friendly hand, and an
unwilling admission is made of the opposition he had encountered. It is
now illegible, and some of its lines appear to have been carefully
erased--by some High Church chisel, probably. But the following copy was
made when the epitaph was fresh and legible:
'Here is committed to earth's trust
Wise, pious, spotlesse, learned dust,
Who living more adorned the place
Than the place him. Such was God's grace.'
Is the verse of this epitaph from Milton's pen or not? Mr. Hollingsworth
writes: 'The probability is quite in favour that the pupil should write
the last memorial of one whom he so highly honoured and loved as his old
master. Nor is the verse itself, with the exception of the last line,
unlike the character of Milton's poetry, and this last may have been
mutilated and rendered inharmonious by the action of the stone-cutter,
who also confused the death of the father and son.' It is pleasant to
think, not only that Milton now and then came to the Stowmarket Vicarage,
but that in the church itself there is a slight record of his poetical
fame. Let me add, as a further illustration of the connection of the
great poet with the county of Suffolk, that I am informed one of the
family of the Meadowses, of Witnesham, was for a time one of his
secretaries.
Young died, aged sixty-eight, in the year 1655, when Milton was fully
embarked in public life, when he could spare but little time; but we may
be sure that he would be the last at that time of life to forget all that
he owed to his tutor Young. Wife and son had predeceased the Vicar. It
seems as if there was no one left but the poet to record on the marble in
the middle aisle, in front of the present reading-desk, the virtues of a
character which had long exercised so beneficial an influence on his own,
and which he had loved so well. Milton's regret for the loss of such a
guide, philosopher, and friend must have been lasting and sincere.