John Milton Timeline – Friday Group 1

Education

·  1620: Pupil at St. Paul’s

·  1625: Arrives at Cambridge, Christ’s College.

·  1626: Plague inspires him to write several elegies, including vindictive anti-Catholic polemic in a series of Latin poems on the occasion of the Gunpowder Plot. In the last of five poems, In inventorem bombardae (On the inventor of gunpowder’) - the verse epic contains Milton’s first portrayal of Satan.

·  1627: Sent down from Cambridge University – illustrating his rebellious nature.

·  1628: His niece dies, which may be the key theme of his poem, ‘On the Death of a Fair Infant Dying of the Cough’ which conveys the harsh reality of the plague.

·  1629: He supplicated for his BA.

·  1631: Thomas Hobson, the driver of the Cambridge coach to London died, Milton wrote ‘On the University Carrier’ in his commemoration portraying one of the most graceful descriptions of mortality in English poetry (Death is personified as the bedroom attendant in an inn).

Hammersmith & Horton 1631 – 1638

·  1631: The Milton family move to Hammersmith. Milton becomes a Parishioner and chose to spend the next five years in private study.

·  1631: He signed the subscription book that acknowledged the supremacy of the King which he would later ignore and repudiate by applauding the execution of the King

·  1634: He is asked to compose the text of a masque which was to be mounted in Ludlow in honour of the inauguration of John Egerton, Earl of Bridgewater.

·  1637: April 3th, his mother Sara dies. He does not seem to have written a memorial poem for her.

·  1637: 10th August Edward King dies, a younger contemporary of Milton at Christ’s College and Milton writes ‘Lycidas’. Six days after the death of Edward King, Ben Johnson dies also and Milton included a copy of ‘Lycidas’ to commemorate his death.

·  1638: He writes to Wotton enclosing a copy of ‘Comus’ and mentioning his intention of travelling to Italy.

Italy 1638 – 1639

·  1638: In May, Milton leaves England, travelling to Paris where he met the ambassador for King Charles. By June he has arrived in Florence where he stays for around five months, this inspired several Italian poems in theme and form.

·  1638: Meets the illegitimate son of Galileo who arranges a visit with Galileo himself, which he later recalls in ‘Areopagitica’ (1644).

·  1638: In October he travels to Rome where he stays for two months.

Schoolmaster and polemicist 1639 – 1642

·  1639: He returns to London and takes responsibility for the education of his two nephews Edward and John Phillips. He gradually becomes a teacher as he takes on more pupils. He divided his time between being a teacher and his avocation as a polemicist.

·  1641: He wrote five anti-prelatical pamphlets.

·  1637 – 1642: He moved from being a constructively critical member of the national church to becoming an Independent.

Marriage & Prose Tracts 1642 – 1648

·  1642: He marries Mary Powell, but within a few weeks she returns to her home and they appear to be estranged, inspiring his divorce pamphlets.

·  1643: He argues that the traditional grounds for divorce were insufficient in a doctrine.

·  1644: He publishes ‘Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce’.

·  1644: He releases a Pamphlet of Education, setting out ‘a daunting programme of a Miltonic education’.

·  1644: He publishes his second divorce tract.

·  1644: Publishes ‘Areopagitica’ which was a response to the licensing order of 1643.

·  1645: He publishes his third and fourth divorce tract.

·  1645: He moves to Barbican and is joined by Mary.

·  1646: His daughter Ann is born.

·  1647: His father dies and he moves his young family to High Holborn.

·  1648: His daughter Mary is born.

·  1649: He drafted the first four books of the History of Britain, in between the execution of the King on the 30th of January and his appointment as Latin Secretary on the 13th March.