John Middleton Monck

“ The Monastery at Deer in Aberdeenshire was founded by Saint Columba as a branch house from Iona.↑ The so-called Itala version is the older Latin translation of the Bible, which existed previous to the recension of Saint Jerome.↑ A very interesting Psalter of similar style and date is preserved in the library of St John's College, Cambridge; its ornaments are of the unmixed Celtic style, broad in treatment without any of the marvellous minuteness of the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow.↑ See Westwood, Irish Manuscripts, Pl. ”

“ Middleton carried his point, and levelled every political right of the kirk at a blow. The ministers of the kirk in astonishment met to consult and to protest; they sent a deputation to the king with a remonstrance; but they arrived at a time likely to inspire them with awe, and did not escape without a painful evidence that they were no longer in the proud position of their fathers. Charles had shed the blood of vengeance plentifully in England, and there were those in Scotland whom he looked on with a menacing eye. The chief of these was the marquis of Argyll. ”

“ In civil affairs he bade him rely upon St. John, Broghill, Thurloe, and similar councillors, and to endeavour to engage to himself 'those of power and interest amongst the people, for which he has a better opportunity than his father, having not the same obligations to so many disquiet spirits.' Monck's distrust of the leaders of the English army is very noticeable. ”

“ No less than thirteen monasteries in Scotland and twelve in England were founded by Irish monks from the mother settlement in Iona. In fact the whole of Britain seems to have owed its Christianity, during the Anglo-Saxon period, to the Irish missionaries from Iona, with the important exception of the kingdom of Kent, which was occupied by the Roman mission of Saint Augustine.
Celtic missionaries. In the year 635, at the request of Oswald King of Northumbria, the Scottish king sent an Irish monk from Iona, named Aidan, to preach Christianity to the Northumbrian worshippers of Thor and Odin. ”

“ To have made Shakespeare's Falconbridge out of the old lay figure, to have created the scenes between Hubert and John, and Hubert and Arthur, out of that decrepit skeleton—that is the work of a commanding poetical genius on the threshold of full mastery of its powers, worthy of all wonder, no doubt, but doubly worthy of close examination. ”

“ He advised him, substantially, to persevere in the later or very conservative policy of his father, but with certain differences or additions, which would be now easy. He ought, said Monk, at once to secure the affections of the great Presbyterian body, by attaching to himself privately some of the most eminent Presbyterian divines, and by publicly calling an Assembly of Divines, in which Moderate Presbyterians and Moderate Independents together might agree on a standard of orthodoxy, and so stop the blasphemy and profaneness "too frequent in many places by the great extent of Toleration." ”

“ Although we have presumed the reader to be acquainted with the manner in which such results are commonly attained, it is not to be supposed that the triumph of Middleton, either over the prejudices of the father or over those of the daughter, was achieved without difficulty. Religion formed a stubborn and nearly irremovable obstacle with both. The devoted man patiently submitted to a formidable essay, father Ignatius was deputed to make in order to convert him to the true faith. The effort on the part of the worthy priest was systematic, vigorous, and long sustained. ”

“ Had not the Secluded Members virtually made a compact with Monk upon these terms? Milton will not, for the present, suppose either Monk or the Parliament false in the main matter. He will only suppose that they have perceived, with himself, the infatuated drift of the popular humour towards a restoration of Royalty, and will themselves listen, and allow the country to listen, to what he had written on that subject two or three weeks ago. ”

“ There are fine truths also scattered through his dramas as:—
"To see what solitariness is about dying princes! As heretofore they have unpeopled towns, divided friends, and made great houses inhospitable, so now, O justice, where are their flatterers? Flatterers are but the shadows of princes' bodies; the least thick cloud makes them invisible."
Of Middleton, who wrote from twenty to thirty plays, in some of which, according to a very prevalant fashion of that age, he called in the aid of Rowley, Decker, Fletcher, and Massinger ”

“ In 1693 the earl joined the exiled king at St Germains, where he became his secretary of state; afterwards he held the same office at the court of James Edward, the old pretender, in Flanders and in Lorraine. He was partly responsible for the unsuccessful expedition of the Jacobites to Scotland in 1707, and he resigned his office as secretary in 1713. Middleton, who had been created earl of Monmouth by the pretender, died in 1719. ”

“ Throughout the Notes, however, one sees that even this small lingering of confidence in Monk is forced, and that Milton is too sadly convinced of the probable predetermination of all now in power to fulfil the general expectation and bring in Charles. In the following passage there is a half-veiled intimation that, rather than see that ignominious conclusion, Milton would reconcile himself to Monk's own assumption of the Crown:—
"Free Commonwealths have been ever counted fittest and properest for civil, virtuous, and industrious nations, abounding with prudent men worthy to govern ”

“ Every morning Uncle John would lift Toby up and show him the garden, and Toby would slip out of his arms and walk among the trees and plants. And the place would grow bigger and bigger until it was all the world, and Toby would lose himself; amongst the tangle of trees and flowers and creepers. He would see butterflies there and tame animals, and the sky was full of birds of all colours, ugly and beautiful ”

“ No man ever got up the mountain except one good monk; and he was miraculously favored, and brought down with him a plank which is still preserved in the monastery at the foot of the mountain. It is inexpressibly gratifying to observe that Sir John did not accept all the stories that were told him, but exercised a little judicious discrimination ”

“ How uncertain it was yet whether Monk would ever desert the Commonwealth, and how anxious the Royalists were on the subject, appears from a letter of Mordaunt to Charles, dated Feb. 17, 1659-60, or four days before the Restoration of the Secluded Members (Clar. State Papers, III. 683) . Speaking of Monk, Mordaunt writes thus:—"The visible inclination of the people; the danger he foresees from so many enemies; his particular pique to Lambert; the provocation of the Anabaptists and Sectaries, with whom I may now join the Catholics; the want of money to continue standing armies ”

“ Hardy is the last of that great line. If we long for sweetness—as we do long for it, and with how poignant a pain!—we must seek it out, like men who rush dusty and irritable from the babble and fever of the town. The rhythm of the earth never enters into their gait; they are like spies among the birds and flowers, like collectors of antique furniture in the haunts of peace. The Georgians snatch at nature; they are never part of it. And there is some element of this desperation in Mr Masefield. ”

“ He rallied the last energies of his failing body and mind to testify his firm belief in the religion for which he had sacrificed so much. He received the last sacraments with every mark of devotion, exhorted his son to hold fast to the true faith in spite of all temptations, and entreated Middleton, who, almost alone among the courtiers assembled in the bedchamber, professed himself a Protestant, to take refuge from doubt and error in the bosom of the one infallible Church. ”

“ Year by year the universe grows vaster, and man, by virtue of the growing brightness of his little lamp, sees himself more and more as a child born in the midst of a dark forest, and finds himself less able to claim the obeisance of the all. Yet if he would be a poet, and not a harper of threadbare tunes, he must at each step in the downward passing from his sovereignty, recognise what is and celebrate it as what must be. Thus he regains, by another path, the supremacy which he has forsaken.
Edward Thomas's poetry has the virtue of this recognition. ”

“ Always some poor little nuns or honest monks were made a part of the farce. It seemed as if the people could take no pleasure except in ridiculing God and the Church. The people, however, persisted in the opinion that the ideas of a monk and of God were not inseparable. ”

“ The foremost monk, his life and his death Is clos-ed in my hand! Abide, churl monk," said Little John, "No farther that thou gone; If thou dost, by dere-worthy God, Thy death is in my hond. And evil thrift on thy head," said Little John, "Right under thy hat's bond, For thou hast made our master wroth, He is fast-ing so long." "Who is your master?" said the monk. Little John said, "Robin Hood." "He is a strong thief," said the monk, "Of him heard I never good." "Thou liest!" then said Little John, "And that shall rew-e thee; He is a yeoman of the for-est, To dine hath bod-e thee." ”

“ Out of the grave came all the dead Puritan ancestors of Mr. Middleton, a long procession back to Massachusetts Bay. The elders of Salem who had ordained that a man should not smoke within five miles of a house, the lawgivers who had prescribed the small number, brief length, and sad color of ribbons a woman might wear and who forbade a man to kiss his wife on Sunday, all these righteous and uncomfortable folk stirred in Mr. Middleton’s blood and obsessed him. ”

“ They went up to the Sa-yl-es, These yeomen all three; They look-ed east, they look-ed west, They might no man see. But as he looked in Barnisdale, By the high way, Then were they ware of two black monks, Each on a good palfray. Then bespak-e Little John, To Much he gan say, "I dare lay my life to wed, That these monks have brought our pay. Make glad cheer," said Little John, "And frese our bows of yew, And look your hearts be sicker and sad, Your strings trust-y and true. The monk hath fifty-two men, And seven som-ers full strong, There rideth no bishop in this land So royally, I understond. ”

“ In 1648 he was appointed lieutenant-general of the cavalry in the army raised by the Scottish estates to rescue the king from the hands of the sectaries, and on his march south he received a wound at Mauchline-Muir in dispersing some two thousand ultra-covenanters, who had assembled in arms on the Monday, after a communion, to resist the action of the government in connection with ‘the engagement.’ Middleton behaved with great bravery at the battle of Preston, but his horse having been shot under him he was taken prisoner and confined at Newcastle. ”

“ When the sound of the bugles died, having crowned reveillé with the equal challenge of the last post, how easily we might have been persuaded that there was a silence, if there had not been one whose voice rose only so little above that of the winds and trees and the life of undertone we share with them as to make us first doubt the silence and then lend an ear to the incessant pulses of which it is composed. ”

“ One day, we believe, a great book will be written, informed by the breath which moves the Spirits of Pity in Mr Hardy's Dynasts. It will be a delicate, yet undeviating record of the spiritual awareness of the generation that perished in the war. It will be a work of genius, for the essence that must be captured within it is volatile beyond belief, almost beyond imagination. We know of its existence by signs hardly more material than a dream-memory of beating wings or an instinctive, yet all but inexplicable refusal of that which has been offered us in its stead. ”

“ The Captain has brought China, Lutestrings, taffeties and Paduasoys, they wear so well, but the colors are not as good as those of our manufacture.”
PRICE OF TEA
Tea was also brought, and Dr. Conyers Middleton had 4 lbs. at 16s. a pound. He had just brought out his “Free Enquiry into the Miraculous Powers.” Matthew Robinson writes of it on December 17, “Middleton will tell you there is no belief to be given to any of the miracles related by the Fathers, Hume [466] says that there is no belief to be given to miracles related by any man whatsoever.” ”

“ This story I do therefore repeat, that you may see of what force these enticements are, if they be opportunely used, and how hard it is even for the most averse and sanctified souls to resist such allurements. John Major in the life of John the monk, that lived in the days of Theodosius, commends the hermit to have been a man of singular continency, and of a most austere life; but one night by chance the devil came to his cell in the habit of a young market wench that had lost her way, and desired for God's sake some lodging with him. ”

“ Middleton was a man of handsome and vigorous appearance; his voice was clear and sonorous, and his preaching impressive. Kaye (Christianity in India, pp. 312–14) calls him ‘a cold and stately formalist’ who had ‘an overweening sense of the dignity of the episcopal office,’ though he admits that the bishop was not actuated by personal vanity, and that the externals of religion had been too much neglected in India before his arrival. ”

“ Monastic life, I admit, presents great attractions for me, but that does not mean that I shall become a monk. My mother does not understand an impersonal admiration for anything. She cannot understand that it is impossible to become a monk unless you have a vocation. It is all a question of vocation.'
Later in the day Mrs. Norton stopped John as he was hurrying to his room. She was much excited by the news just received of the engagement of one of the Austin girls. She approved of the match, and spoke enthusiastically of the girl's beauty. ”