6 Colorado College Studies. 



But to celebrate, whether the Guifts or Graces, the natural 

 Endowments, or acquir'd laudable Habitts of Persons emi- 

 nent in thir Generations, while it gives glory to God, the 

 bestower of all good things, and (by furnishing a INIodell) 

 tends to the edification of our Brethren, is little less than the 

 duty of every Christian: AVhich seems acknowleg'd by the 

 late Supervisors of our Common Prayer-.^* when they added 

 to the Collect for the Church militant, a Clause commem- 

 orating the Saints and Servants of God departed this life 

 in his Fear. 



That Hee Avho is the subject of this discourse, made it his 

 endeavor to bee thought worthy of that high Character, will, 

 I make no doubt, appeer to the impartial Reader from the 

 particulars, w^^ I shall with all sincerity relate of his life 

 and "Works. 



The learned ]\F John Milton, born about the year sixteen 

 hundred and eight, is said to bee descended from an antient 

 Knightly Family in Buckinghamshire,^^ that gave name to 

 the chief place of thir abode. However that bee, his Father 

 was entitled to a true Nobility in the Apostle Pauls Heraldry ; 

 having bin disinherited about ye beginning of Queen Eliza- 

 beths reign^*^ by his Father a Romanist, who had an estate 

 of five hundred pound" a yeer at Stainton St. John in Ox- 

 fordshire, for reading the Bible. ^^ Upon this occasion he 



"Revision of 1661-2. 



"' \Yoocl gives Aubrey's opinion and liis own when he says the poet 

 was ' descended from those of his name who had lived beyond all record 

 at Milton, near Halton and Thame, in Oxfordshire.' Phillips's statement 

 is: 'He is said to have been descended of an ancient family of Miltons 

 of Milton, near Abingdon, in Oxfordshire, where they had been a long 

 time seated.' Joseph Hunter discovered the record of a John de Milton 

 in Buckinghamshire in 1428. {Milton: a Sheaf of Gleanings, p. 6.) 



'° This would seem to make the life of Milton's father somewhat 

 longer than Professor Masson conjectures. The latter supposes he was 

 born about 1562 or 1563. However, the significance of about is elastic. 



'" See the reference to this passage, above, p. 5. 



" C'f. Aubrey's ' Quaere — he found a Bible in Englisli, in his cham- 

 ber ' (Clark's Aubrey's Brief Lives, ii. 62). 



