avenant having
requited a like obligation under which he lay to Milton himself. More to
his honour this than to have been the offspring of Shakespeare, but one
tale is no better authenticated than the other. The simplest explanation
is that twenty people were found more hated than Milton: it may also
have seemed invidious to persecute a blind man. It is certainly
remarkable that the authorities should have failed to find the
hiding-place of so recognizable a person, if they really looked for it.
Whether by his own adroitness or their connivance, he avoided arrest
until the amnesty resolution of August 29th restored him to the world
without even being incapacitated from office. He still had to run the
gauntlet of the Serjeant-at-Arms, who at some period unknown arrested
him as obnoxious to the resolution of June 16th, and detained him,
charging exorbitant fees, until compelled to abate his demands by the
Commons' resolution of December 15th. Milton relinquished his house in
Westminster, and formed a temporary refuge on the north side of Holborn.
His nerves were shaken; he started in his broken sleep with the
apprehension and bewilderment natural to one for whom, physically and
politically, all had become darkness.

His condition, in sooth, was one of well-nigh unmitigated misfortune,
and his bearing up against it is not more of a proof of stoic fortitude
than of innate cheerfulness. His cause lost, his ideals in the dust, his
enemies triumphant, his friends dead on the scaffold, or exiled, or
imprisoned, his name infamous, his principles execrated, his property
seriously impaired by the vicissitudes of the times. He had been
deprived of his appointment and salary as Latin Secretary, even before
the Restoration: and he was now fleeced of two thousand pounds, invested
in some kind of Government security, which was repudiated in spite of
powerful intercession. Another "great sum" is said by Phillips to have
been lost "by mismanagement and want of good advice," whether at this
precise time is uncertain. The Dean and Chapter of Westminster
reclaimed a considerable property which had passed out of their hands in
the Civil War. The Serjeant-at-Arms had no doubt made all out of his
captive that the Commons would let him. On the whole, Milton appears to
have saved about L1500 from the wreck of his fortunes, and to have
possessed about L200 income from the interest of this fund and other
sources, destined to be yet further reduced