cheerfully joined in the toast. But one of them denounced him to the all-powerful Bishop Laud – almost certainly the famous William Chilling-worth, Laud’s protégé. Not only did Gil speak slightingly of Buckingham, and place him in hell; he also wrote of James and Charles as ‘the old fool and the young one’, in papers which were seized. Charles, Gil added, was ‘fitter to stand in a Cheapside shop with an apron before him and say “What lack ye?” than to govern a kingdom’. Under examination he did not improve matters by adding that drinking Felton’s health was common in London and elsewhere. He admitted saying that ‘he had oftentimes had in mind to do the same deed upon the Duke, but for fear of hanging’. He was explicit about Buckingham’s homosexual tendencies. A poem was found in which Gil called on God to save
My sovereign from a Ganymede
Whose whorish breath hath power to lead
His Majesty which way it list.
The song continued in denunciation of flatterers, court corruption, illegal taxes, papists and especially Jesuits.2
It was decided to make an example of Gil, who was certainly right in saying that he had only expressed what many felt.3 He was had up before Star Chamber, degraded from the ministry and from his degrees, fined £2,000, sentenced to the pillory and to lose both his ears. Under great pressure from his friends – his father no doubt had useful connections – the physical mutilation was remitted. But he stayed in prison for over two years before being pardoned, and the sentence was not just in terrorem. In the same year Alexander Leighton suffered the tortures which had been designed for Gil, and then languished in prison for ten years, for publishing Sions Plea against the Prelacie. This was the first of many savage sentences, including those on Prynne, Burton, Bastwick and Lilburne, for which Laud was usually held responsible.1 Milton’s revulsion against episcopacy and clerical interference in politics must have been intensified by the Gil case. The line in his sonnet on the new forcers of conscience, ‘Clip your phylacteries but baulk your ears’, may refer to Gil as well as to Prynne and the others.2
We can assume that Milton knew the political views of the loquacious and extrovert Gil: they had ‘almost constant conversations’ together. Two months before Gil’s attack on Buckingham and Charles, Milton confided to him his own fear lest ‘the priestly ignorance of a former age may gradually attack our clergy’. Two years later – probably writing to Gil in prison – Milton chose for special praise the latter’s poem celebrating a Dutch victory over the Spaniards, and hoped that Gil might have the opportunity of writing something even greater ‘if by chance our own affairs [become] at last more fortunate’. Already in his Sixth Prolusion Milton had sneered at Buckingham’s foreign policy. There is never the slightest suggestion in his letters to Gil of political disagreement or disapproval: whether or not he supported Gil’s seditious sentiments in 1628, he certainly did so later. In 1631–2 Gil published verses and pamphlets on behalf of the Protestant cause and Gustavus Adolphus. In 1639 a poem by him was prefixed to Henry Glapthorne’s The Tragedy of Albertus Wallenstein. This poem was dated 1634, but the date could refer to Wallenstein’s death rather than to Gil’s poem. Both in Glapthorne’s play and in Gil’s poem Wallenstein is referred to as ‘the Duke’, ‘traitor Duke’.3 Margot Heinemann suggests that Gil may have seen an analogy between Wallenstein, whose assassins claimed to be executing God’s sentence, and the Duke of Buckingham.4 Ultimately Gil turned round and won the favour of Laud and the King sufficiently to succeed his father as High Master of St. Paul’s in 1635. His friendship with Milton does not seem to have survived this volte face. Gil lived to tell Charles in 1641 that the sentence on Strafford was tragic but just.5 He was dismissed from St. Paul’s in 1640, and died soon after. He may have failed to trim his sails to the new political winds in time.
So two of the people who most impinged on the young Milton were relatively radical. Gil was perhaps not very stable, but eloquent, witty and outrageous in his political views: Young a dour, solid martyr for convictions which Milton would leave behind in the forties but which represented in the twenties and thirties a fundamental critique of the existing order. The third influence, the greatest of the three, is similar – Charles Diodati. Their friendship probably dates from Milton’s schooldays at St. Paul’s. The Diodatis were an immensely talented family, originally from Lucca. They found the religious and political atmosphere of Counter-Reformation Italy stifling, and in various exciting ways they escaped into exile. The main branch settled in Geneva, where Giovanni Diodati was Professor of Hebrew and an internationally famous theologian – liberal by Genevan standards. He translated the Bible into Italian and attended the Synod of Dort in 1618–19 as Genevan representative. He was an important figure in international Protestant circles, secretly revisiting Italy several times and travelling to Holland and England. He collaborated closely with the English Ambassador to Venice, Sir Henry Wotton, in attempts to win the republic for the Protestant cause in 1608. He was a patron of John Dury’s attempts at Protestant reunion.1 Diodati’s Annotations on the Bible were translated into English in 1643, and were selling excellently in London by the following year. In 1645 Milton referred to Diodati as a theologian ‘of best note’, although by that time Diodati had expressed Royalist sympathies.2
Another branch of the Diodatis settled in Paris: we shall meet them later.3 Charles Diodati’s father, Theodore, came to England about 1598, and for a refugee prospered remarkably. He became tutor to Sir John, second Lord Harington, an intimate friend of the heir to the throne, Prince Henry. When Harington died in 1612 Richard Stock preached his funeral sermon. Theodore then became physician to Henry’s sister Elizabeth, until she left England on marrying the Elector Palatine in 1613. With this flying start Diodati went on to a very successful medical career, claiming in 1621 to be as good a man as the President of the College of Physicians. His will was witnessed in 1649 by (probably) Major-General Skippon, a member of the Council of State which had just appointed Milton Secretary for Foreign Tongues.4
The circle around Prince Henry included many internationally-minded radical Protestants, who were critical of James I’s pacific foreign policy. After Henry’s premature and much lamented death in 1612, the husband of his sister Elizabeth became the key figure in this international grouping. His acceptance of the throne of Bohemia in 1619 precipitated the Thirty Years War: throughout the sixteen-twenties and -thirties the Queen of Bohemia was the toast of the Parliamentarian and patriotic opposition, her exile and the defeat of her cause standing evidence of the ineffectiveness of the government. It is inconceivable that Milton did not discuss these matters with Charles Diodati as well as with Alexander Gil. Diodati’s family was almost a symbol of international Protestantism, and knowing them must have contributed to Milton’s bitter criticisms of the Stuarts’ failure to live up to the ideals of Protestant patriotism and internationalism. These ideals were accepted not only by the Parliamentary opposition but also by devotees of the Winter Queen of Bohemia like Sir Henry Wotton, a friend of Lord Harington. The international connections of the Diodatis must have been of great use to Milton in his careful preparations for his Italian journey.1
We can only speculate on Charles Diodati’s influence over Milton before his premature death in 1638. Milton clearly adored him more than he ever adored any human being except possibly his second wife. Diodati was slightly younger than the poet, but he went up to the university earlier and started a career earlier. He had all the ebullient charm of Alexander Gil and much more sense. Clearly he took the lead and Milton followed: the latter developed slowly as long as Diodati lived. His death during Milton’s absence in Italy was a terrible blow. The Epitaphium Damonis was the first poem Milton took the trouble to get separately printed. In Latin because of the continental connections of the Diodatis, it marks some sort of a turning point and re-dedication of Milton. One of the most extraordinary passages which Milton ever wrote is the conclusion of Epitaphium Damonis in which he envisaged the dead Charles enjoying Bacchic orgies in heaven.2 Earlier lines suggest that he may have seen himself as married to Diodati (65 – ‘innube’). Psychologists may speculate on the significance for Milton of what
