t college, and made a formal memorandum
of the same in the form then usual, which still exists. The debt was
never wholly discharged; "for in 1650-1 we find Milton asserting on
oath that he had received only about L180, 'in part satisfaction of my
said just and principal debt, with damages for the same, and my costs
of suit.'" Mr. Keightley supposes him to have taken "many a ride over
to Forest Hill" after he left Cambridge and was living at Horton, which
is not very far distant; but of course this is only conjecture. We
only know that about 1643 "he took," as his nephew relates, "a journey
into the country, nobody about him certainly knowing the reason, or
that it was any more than a journey of recreation. After a month's
stay, home he returns a married man, that went out a bachelor; his wife
being Mary, the eldest daughter of Mr. Richard Powell, then a justice
of the peace" for the county of Oxford. The suddenness of the event is
rather striking; but Philips was at the time one of Milton's pupils,
and it is possible that some pains may have been taken to conceal the
love affair from the "young gentlemen." Still, as Philips was Milton's
nephew, he was likely to hear such intelligence tolerably early; and as
he does not seem to have done so, the _denouement_ was probably rather
prompt. At any rate, he was certainly married at that time, and took
his bride home to his house in Aldersgate Street; and there was
feasting and gayety according to the usual custom of such events. A
few weeks after, the lady went home to her friends, in which there was
of course nothing remarkable; but it is singular that when the natural
limit of her visit at home was come, she absolutely refused to return
to her husband. The grounds of so strange a resolution are very
difficult to ascertain. Political feeling ran very high; old Mr.
Powell adhered to the side of the king, and Milton to that of the
Parliament: and this might be fancied to have caused an estrangement.
But on the other hand, these circumstances must have been well known
three months before. Nothing had happened in that quarter of a year to
change very materially the position of the two parties in the state.
Some other cause for Mrs. Milton's conduct must be looked for. She
herself is said to have stated that she did not like her husband's
"spare diet and hard study." [14] No doubt, too, she found it dull in
London: she had probably always lived in the country, and must