Church, Oxford--a statement in itself improbable, but slightly confirmed
by his apparent acquaintance with Latin, and the family tradition that
his course of life was diverted by a quarrel with his father. Queen
Mary's stakes and faggots had not affected Richard Milton as they
affected most Englishmen. Though churchwarden in 1582, he must have
continued to adhere to the ancient faith, for he was twice fined for
recusancy in 1601, which lends credit to the statement that his son was
cast off by him for Protestantism. "Found him reading the Bible in his
chamber," says Aubrey, who adds that the younger Milton never was a
scrivener's apprentice; but this is shown to be an error by Mr. Hyde
Clarke's discovery of his admission to the Scriveners' Company in 1599,
where he is stated to have been apprentice to James Colborn. Colborn
himself had been only four years in business, instead of the seven which
would usually be required for an apprentice to serve out his
indenture--which suggests that some formalities may have been dispensed
with on account of John Milton's age. A scrivener was a kind of cross
between an attorney and a law stationer, whose principal business was
the preparation of deeds, "to be well and truly done after my learning,
skill, and science," and with due regard to the interests of more
exalted personages. "Neither for haste nor covetousness I shall take
upon me to make any deed whereof I have not cunning, without good advice
and information of counsel." Such a calling offered excellent
opportunities for investments; and John Milton, a man of strict
integrity and frugality, came to possess a "plentiful estate." Among his
possessions was the house in Bread Street destroyed in the Great Fire.
The tenement where the poet was born, being a shop, required a sign, for
which he chose The Spread Eagle, either from the crest of such among the
Miltons as had a right to bear arms, among whom he may have reckoned
himself; or as the device of the Scriveners' Company. He had been
married about 1600 to a lady whose name has been but lately ascertained