protector. They concluded that the best thing they could do was to
seek a reconciliation. There were not wanting friends of Milton's
also, some perhaps divining his secret discontent, who thought that
such reconciliation would be better for him too, than perilling his
happiness upon the experiment of an illegal connexion. A conspiracy of
the friends of both parties contrived to introduce Mary Powell into
a house where Milton often visited in St. Martin's-le-Grand. She was
secreted in an adjoining room, on an occasion when Milton was known
to be coming, and he was surprised by seeing her suddenly brought in,
throw herself on her knees, and ask to be forgiven. The poor young
thing, now two years older and wiser, but still only nineteen,
pleaded, truly or falsely, that her mother "had been all along the
chief promoter of her frowardness" Milton, with a "noble leonine
clemency" which became him, cared not for excuses for the past. It was
enough that she was come back, and was willing to live with him as his
wife. He received her at once, and not only her, but on the surrender
of Oxford, in June, 1646, and the sequestration of Forest Hill, took
in the whole family of Powells, including the mother-in-law, whose
influence with her daughter might even again trouble his peace.

It is impossible not to see that Milton had this impressive scene,
enacted in St. Martin's-le-Grand in 1645, before his mind, when he
wrote, twenty years afterwards, the lines in _Paradise Lost_, x.
937:--

... Eve, with tears that ceas'd not flowing
And tresses all disorder'd, at his feet
Fell humble, and embracing them, besought
His peace...