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The Rosenbach Milton Documents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

James Holly Hanford
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Extract

On December 7, 1920 there was sold at the Anderson Galleries in New York an interesting collection of Milton documents hitherto entirely unknown to the poet's biographers. These documents, which contain the record to two financial transactions in which Milton was concerned in the years 1657/58 and 1665, were submitted to me for examination by their purchaser, Mr. Rosenbach of Philadelphia, and it is through his courtesy that I am enabled to present an analysis of their contents. Their history previous to their sale in America has not been divulged, but it is to be presumed that they have been preserved as a part of the evidence of title to certain properties described in them, and there is not the slightest question as to their genuineness.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , June 1923 , pp. 290 - 296
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1923

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References

1 I have adopted a different and more logical numbering than that given in the Anderson announcement.—Sale No. 1539 (Dec. 6, 7, 1920).

2 A series of later deeds belonging to the same collection shows the acquisition of other properties in Little Chelsea (Kensington) by the Hamey family and the subsequent transfer of these properties (including the Maundy and Milton mortgages along with mortgages on other properties of Maundy) to Henry Middleton of Little Chelsea and, in the year 1700 to John Harwood. In these documents the terms of the Milton-Maundy agreements are recited at length.

3 Life of Milton, VI, 444-5.

4 This sum is definitely fixed by the records. See Masson VI, p. 735 ff. The £1500 mentioned by Phillips Masson takes to represent what remained of the £4000 of invested funds after the Restoration.

5 The evidence is given in my article “The Date of Milton's De Doctrina Christiana” (Studies in Philology, July, 1920, pp. 309 ff.), where the characteristics of the handwriting of the scribe in question are discussed. The specimen here reproduced does not do justice to the variations of which his virtuosity is capable. The reader who wishes to put the matter to a test should examine carefully the specimens of the De doctrina MS. in Sotheby.

6 The entry in Milton's family Bible reads as follows: “Katherin my daughter, by Katherin my second wife, was borne the 29th of October, between S and 6 in the morning and dyed the 27th of March following, 6 weeks after hir mother, who dyed the 3rd of February, 1657.” The burial records of St. Margaret's, Westminster, give the dates of mother and child as Feb. 10 and Mar. 20. Phillips says and Milton in the Sonnet on his Deceased Wife implies that Katharine Milton died in childbirth.

7 For the particulars of Hamey's career see the article in the Dict. of Nat. Biography.