college but few if any had the time or inclination to observe this rule. We cannot be certain of how Milton occupied his free hours but he later insisted that he was an adept swordsman so it is possible that he acquired this skill at Cambridge. ‘When he was Young’ claims Richardson, ‘he learnt to Fence, probably as a Gentlemanly Accomplishment, and that he might be Able to do Himself Right in Case of an Affront’ (Darbishire, 1932, p. 204). Just as likely, the vast acres of open land surrounding the colleges encouraged his enduring love of walking in the countryside. After vespers, supper would be taken at seven and unless they had a special dispensation no one was allowed out of college after nine o’clock.
His friend Diodati had gone up to Oxford two years earlier and it is likely that the Miltons chose Cambridge because of its reputation as generally more sympathetic to the cause of radical Protestantism. University dons were mostly clergymen, but if Milton had expected to join a community which addressed itself to the theological and political controversies of the day he was to be very disappointed. His Cambridge experiences, of which in any event there are few reliable records, can best be described as dull. He made no close friends there; the curriculum, unchanged for several hundred years, involved the standard retinue of rhetoric, logic and ethics, with a smattering of Greek and mathematics (Latin was the language of instruction). Speculation and open argument during disputations were frowned upon, and inculcation preferred. If the move from school to university involved the expectation of a shift from regimentation to intellectual challenge, this for Milton seemed to have gone into reverse. St Paul’s had offered a far more stimulating, unorthodox environment than his new home.
Christ’s might have conformed to the educational regime of the rest of the university but another aspect of its milieu contributed to the one notable occurrence during Milton’s time there as a student, his temporary expulsion from the university in the Spring Term of 1626. Most of the fellows and students were advocates of various aspects of Calvinism and Puritanism and by the time Milton arrived Christ’s, along with Emmanuel and Sidney Sussex, was becoming an outpost of resistance against the High Anglicanism that had taken root in much of the rest of the university. Milton’s younger brother Christopher would many years later tell of how John had, after disagreements with his tutor William Chappell, ‘received some unkindness’. Speculative biographers subsequently assumed that this had meant that he had been ‘sent down’ from the university as a punishment for insubordination and such assumptions are based upon a poem in Latin by Milton himself called ‘Elegia prima ad Carlolum Diodati’ (‘Elegy I to Charles Diodati’) which is a versified letter to his friend – they corresponded regularly and always in Latin – which includes references to his college rooms as ‘forbidden’, and to his ‘exile’ and ‘banishment’.
Whatever the exact nature of the event – and Christopher also refers to Chappell as having ‘whip’t him [contrary to] ye Rules of ye College’ – what is known is that Chappell had a reputation as a formidable intellectual disciplinarian and unyielding debater, having once reduced James I to virtual silence during a University Assembly. He was also an intractable Arminianist, unwilling even to countenance the possibility of any other theological principle. As has been made clear, Milton too would come to champion the Arminianist emphasis upon freewill and the power of conscience but it is likely that he took against a man who exemplified theological totalitarianism, even if he shared his interpretation of Scripture. The fact that on his return Milton was assigned a different tutor, Nathaniel Tovey, reinforces the suspicions of a temperamental antipathy between him and Chappell, as does the poem to Diodati on his ‘exile’ to London. ‘I am not pining away for any rooms … I do not like having always to stomach the threats of a stern tutor and other things which my spirit will not tolerate’ (II, 12–16 translated from the original Latin into English prose). Aside from the poem, we cannot be certain of what exactly Milton did during his time away from the university, yet so rhapsodic is his portrayal of what amounts to his first period of independence that one begins to wonder about its authenticity. He speaks of ‘how badly that place [Cambridge] suits the worshippers of Phoebus!’ and tells of his days walking in the countryside just beyond the city, of his new-found enjoyment of the theatre, of the vibrancy of the streets, and writes almost in wonder at the visions of womanhood abroad in the metropolis, as if he had encountered real members of the opposite sex for the first time. Does he protest too much? The fact that the poem is in Latin might seem of no great significance since it would have been standard for Milton and Diodati to advertise their mutual respect as able practitioners of the language and its poetic conventions but it seems not accidental that it was also a suitable vehicle for his presentation of experiences that might have been borrowed from any number of Classical poems celebrating the joys of bucolic, social and literary life. And, despite numerous attempts during the Renaissance to reconcile Classical culture and learning with Christianity, the former remained doggedly pre-Christian. Perhaps Milton was creating for himself, and Diodati, a fantasy world in which the pressures and conflicts of Cambridge, which exemplified those of England as a whole, might be suspended.
Apart from a few revisions of psalms the only poems in English by Milton before he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1629 were ‘On the Death of an Infant Dying of a Cough’ and ‘At a Vacation Exercise in College’. Both are skilled and competent pieces of work, yet as the latter suggests they read more as exercises than as confident poetic statements. The ‘Elegia’ to Diodati on the other hand is a precocious, masterly blend of technical refinement and candid informality. Latin seemed to be the medium in which the teenage Milton felt most comfortable. It was the principal language of intellectual and theological debate, reliable and established; while English, like England, appeared to incorporate unease and uncertainty.
In February 1626, Charles I was crowned at Westminster Abbey. His predecessor James I (crowned 1604) had attempted to maintain Elizabeth’s balance between religious radicalism and conservatism and with a degree of success. But for various reasons – including the fact that James had previously been King of Scotland and had brought with him to London many Calvinist advocates of Scottish Presbyterianism – division still continued in England. Little was known of Charles’s intentions but it soon became evident to those close to the centre of power that the new monarch lacked the intellectual and tactical acumen of his two predecessors and that the traditionalist rather than the Puritan wing of the Church of England was gaining ground. For example, it would have been customary for the Dean of Westminster, John Williams, to have officiated at the Coronation but Williams was known to sympathise with the more radical elements of Anglicanism. He was mysteriously absent, his place being taken by William Laud, then Bishop of Bath and Wells, who favoured the practice of Catholic rites and who would eventually become Archbishop of Canterbury and fervent supporter of the Royalist cause during the Civil War.
As the episode with Chappell suggests, there is evidence that Milton maintained an informed awareness of contemporary religious and political developments. Indeed, during 1626 Cambridge itself became the stage for a series of events which reflected the ongoing tensions of London. Two candidates stood for the post of Chancellor of the University: George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham enjoyed the explicit support of the king, while Thomas Howard, Earl of Berkshire was promoted by the House of Commons. Effectively, it was High Anglicanism versus Puritanism. Chancellors were elected by fellows of colleges and Buckingham won by a very slight majority. The Commons suspected Royal intrigue and vote rigging, demanded the suspension of Buckingham, and Charles, in response, prorogued Parliament on 26 June. It was as though the early scenes of the Civil War were being rehearsed in the Halls of Academe.
Milton would have witnessed these events – the election was the subject of public debate throughout the university – and a Latin poem written a few months later in early 1627, as a letter to his ex-tutor Thomas Young, shows that he knew and thought a great deal about closely related matters. In ‘Elegia Quarta’ he presents Hamburg, where Young was still Pastor of the English Church, as a city under siege by the pro-Catholic armies of the ongoing Thirty Years War. (In military terms it was not, but its reputation as a centre for Lutheran Protestantism offered evidence to its symbolic status as a bastion.) In the poem he addresses Young as a tragic exemplar of the true religion who like many others has been forced to flee to the solidly Protestant enclaves of Europe or New England.
Milton,
