Saint Giles-in-the-Fields, a Palladian Revival church, stands at a crossroads in radical architectural change

Saint Giles Day is being celebrated in Saint Giles-in-the-Fields Church, London, today (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

When I was in London a few days ago, one of the churches I visited was Saint Giles-in-the-Fields. Saint Giles Day was last Monday (1 September 2025), and I marked the day by posting photographs and memories of a half a dozen churches I know with his name. But Saint Giles Day is being celebrated in Saint Giles-in-the-Fields today, with Choral Holy Communion, sung by the Saint Giles Quartet (11 am) and Evensong sung by the Saint Giles Choir.

Saint Giles-in-the-Fields is the parish church of the St Giles area in the London Borough of Camden. St Giles is part of the West End, and much or all of St Giles usually is taken to be a part of Bloomsbury. The places of interest include Saint Giles-in-the-Fields, Seven Dials, the Phoenix Garden, and St Giles Circus.

St Giles Circus was the site of a gallows until the 15th century, the Great Plague in 1665 started in St Giles, and in the 18th and 19th centuries the Rookery was one of the worst slums in Britain, with a large Irish Catholic population that gave the area nicknames such as ‘Little Ireland’ and ‘The Holy Land’. St Giles Rookery and the Seven Dials were known for poverty and squalor and became centres for crime, prostitution, gambling houses and ‘gin palaces’, and ‘Saint Giles’ Greek’ was a secret language used by thieves and beggars.

Inside Saint Giles-in-the-Fields, London, facing east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Church of Saint Giles-in-the-Fields gives its name to the surrounding district of St Giles, between Seven Dials, Bloomsbury, Holborn and Soho. But the church traces its story back to the chapel of a 12th-century monastery and leper hospital in the fields between Westminster and the City of London.

The present church is the third on the site since 1101 and was rebuilt in the Palladian style to designs by the architect Henry Flitcroft in 1731-1733.

The first recorded church on the site was a chapel of the Parish of Holborn attached to a monastery and leper hospital founded by Matilda of Scotland, the wife of Henry I, ca 1101-1109. It was later attached to the larger Hospital of the Lazar Brothers at Burton Lazars, Leicestershire.

When Saint Giles was founded, it stood outside the City of London, on the main road to Tyburn and Oxford. Between 1169 and 1189, Henry II granted the hospital the lands, gifts and privileges that secured its future.

Inside Saint Giles-in-the-Fields, London, looking towards the west end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The chapel probably began to function as the church of a hamlet that grew up around the hospital. The hospital buildings would have included the church, the Master’s House, and the ‘Spittle Houses’, and the Precinct of the Hospital may have included the whole of the island site now bounded by Saint Giles High Street, Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue.

A Papal Bull in the 13th century confirmed the hospital’s privileges and granted it special protection. Edward I assigned it in 1299 to the Hospital of Burton Lazars, Leicestershire, a house of the order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem. The warden of the hospital was answerable to the Master of Burton Lazars.

Richard II transferred the hospital, chapel and lands to the Cistercian abbey of Saint Mary de Graces by the Tower of London in 1391. But after a legal and sometimes violent dispute, the Cistercian ownership was revoked in 1402 and the hospital was returned to the Lazar Brothers.

Saint Giles Fields was at the centre of Sir John Oldcastle’s Lollard uprising in 1414. Many of the rebels were brutally executed and Oldcastle was hanged in chains and burnt ‘gallows and all’ in St Giles Fields on 14 December 1417.

The present church is the third on the site since 1101 and was rebuilt in the Palladian style to designs by the architect Henry Flitcroft in 1731-1733 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

At the dissolution of the monastic houses during the Tudor Reformation, Saint Giles Hospital and the Hospital of Burton St Lazar were dissolved in 1544, and all the hospital lands, rights and privileges, excluding the chapel, were granted to John Dudley, Lord Lisle, in 1548. The chapel survived as the local parish church, and when the first Rector of Saint Giles was appointed in 1547, the phrase ‘in the fields’ was added to the name to distinguish it from Saint Giles, Cripplegate.

Saint Giles was at the centre of the Babington Plot later in the 16th century. Pope Pius V issued a papal bull, Regnans in Excelsis, in 1570, giving licence to English Catholics to overthrow Elizabeth I. A group of recusants, secret Catholics and Jesuits drew up a plan in 1585 in the precincts of Saint Giles to murder Elizabeth I, invite a Spanish invasion of England, and place Mary Queen of Scots on the throne.

When the plot was exposed, the conspirators were returned to Saint Giles churchyard to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Ballard and Babington and others were executed on 20 September 1586; Mary Queen of Scots was executed on 8 February 1587.

The original churchyard and burying place is on the south side of the church on the site of the original burial yard of the Leper Hospital (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

After parts of the mediaeval church collapsed in the 1610s, work on building a new church began in 1623. It was completed in 1630 and was consecrated by William Laud, Bishop of London, on 26 January 1630.

The Rector of Saint Giles, the Revd Roger Maynwaring, was fined and deprived of his clerical functions by Parliament in 1628 after two sermons advocating the divine right of kings and he was accused of challenging the rights of Parliament.

When Archbishop Laud’s former chaplain, William Heywood, became the rector in 1638, he began to transform Saint Giles in the High Church, Laudian fashion. Puritan parishioners presented a petition to parliament accusing Heywood of ‘popish reliques’ and said he had introduced ‘at needless expense to the parish’, including an elaborate carved oak screen and expensive altar rails.

Heywood was still the rector when the English Civil War began in 1642, and most of the ornaments his ornamentation was stripped out and sold off in 1643. After Charles I was executed, Heywood fled London and lived in Wiltshire.

One of the few surviving chest tombs in Saint Giles Churchyard is the tomb of Richard Penderel, who sheltered King Charles II after the Battle of Worcester in 1651.

John Sharp introduced a weekly Holy Communion and restored the Daily Offices (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Puritan ministers were ejected from Saint Giles at the Restoration in 1660, and Heywood was re-instated. He was succeeded in 1663 by Dr Robert Boreman, another deprived Royalist, who is remembered for his bitter exchange with Richard Baxter, a leading Puritan and occasional parishioner of Saint Giles.

A number of Roman Catholic priests and laymen, executed for High Treason during the Titus Oates plot in 1681 were buried near the church’s north wall, including Archbishop Oliver Plunkett of Armagh, although his head is now in Drogheda and his body is at Downside Abbey, Somerset. All 12 were beatified by Pope Pius XI and Oliver Plunkett was canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1975.

Meanwhile, John Sharp, who became the rector in 1675, was seen as bridging the post-restoration divisions within the Church of England. He spent 16 years reforming and reconstituting the parish, preached twice on Sundays, introduced a weekly Holy Communion and restored the Daily Offices in the church. After the Williamite Revolution, Sharp became the Dean of Canterbury in 1689, and Archbishop of York in 1691.

Henry Flitcroft’s spire was modelled on the steeple by James Gibbs at Saint Martin’s in the Fields (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The high number of plague burials in and around the church may have caused the damp problems that emerged in the church by 1711, and the churchyard had risen as much as eight feet above the nave floor.

The parishioners petitioned the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches for a grant to rebuild the church. A new church was built in 1730-1734, and was designed by the architect Henry Flitcroft in the Palladian style. The first stone was laid by the Bishop of Norwich, William Baker, a former rector, on Michaelmas, 29 September 1731.

Flitcroft was inspired by the Caroline buildings of Inigo Jones rather than the works of Wren, Hawksmoor or James Gibbs, although his spire was modelled on the steeple by James Gibbs at Saint Martin’s in the Fields.

The mosaic ‘Time, Death and Judgment’ by GF Watts (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Flitcroft’s church represents a shift from the Baroque to the Palladian form in church architecture in England. It has been described as ‘one of the least known but most significant episodes in Georgian church design, standing at a crucial crossroads of radical architectural change and representing … the first Palladian Revival church to be erected in London.’ The Vestry House was built at the same time.

The East Window depicts the Transfiguration. The paintings of Moses and Aaron on either side of the altar are by Francisco Vieira the Younger, court painter to the King of Portugal.

The mosaic ‘Time, Death and Judgment’ by GF Watts was formerly in Saint Jude’s Church, Whitechapel. The cartoon for it was drawn by Cecil Schott and the mosaic was executed by Salviati.

The children of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron were bapised in the baptismal font (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The baptismal font, dating from 1810, is of white marble with Greek Revival details and is said to have been designed by Sir John Soane. William and Clara Everina Shelley, the children of the novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley, were baptised in the font on 9 March 1818, along with Allegra, the illegitimate daughter of Mary’s step-sister Claire Clairmont and the poet Lord Byron.

The haste in baptising these children is attributed to Shelley’s debts, his ill-health and his fears about the custody of his children, along with the desire to take Allegra to her father who was then in Venice. All three children were to die in childhood in Italy.

John Wesley is said to have preached occasionally at Evening Prayer in Saint Giles. In the east end of the north aisle is a small box pulpit from a chapel where both John and Charles Wesley preached. George Whitfield and John William Fletcher also preached from the same pulpit. The chapel later became All Saints’ Church, West Street, and when it closed the pulpit was moved to Saint Giles.

The Resurrection Gate at the west end of the churchyard was rebuilt to designs by William Leverton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Resurrection Gate at the west end of the churchyard facing Flitcroft Street is a grand lychgate in the Doric order. It once stood on the north side of the churchyard, where condemned prisoners would see it on their way to their execution at Tyburn. The gate is adorned with a bas-relief of the Day of Judgment, probably carved in 1686.

The gate was rebuilt in 1810 to designs by William Leverton. It was deemed unsafe in 1865, taken down and re-erected opposite the west door in anticipation of the re-routing of Charing Cross Road. But Charing Cross Road by-passed Flitcroft Street, and the gate now faces a narrow alley.

The Transfiguration depicted in the east window … most of the Victorian stained glass in Saint Giles was destroyed during World War II (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

As the population of the area grew in the 18th and 19th centuries, no more room was available for burials in the graveyard, and many parishioners, including the architect Sir John Soane, were buried in the churchyard at Saint Pancras Old Church.

The architects Sir Arthur Blomfield and William Butterfield made minor alterations to the interior of the church in 1875 and 1896.

Most of the Victorian stained glass in Saint Giles was destroyed during World War II and the roof of the nave was severely damaged. The Vestry House was filled with rubble, the churchyard was fenced with chicken wire, and the Rectory on Great Russell Street was destroyed.

Saint Giles-in-the-Fields uses the Book of Common Prayer (1662) and the King James Bible, and the church is a corporate member of the Prayer Book Society (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Revd Gordon Taylor, who was appointed rector after the war, set about rebuilding the church and parish. The church was designated a Grade I listed building on 24 October 1951 and Gordon Taylor raised funds for a major restoration in 1952-1953, praised by Sir John Betjeman as ‘one of the most successful post-war church restorations’.

Taylor also rebuilt the congregation, refurbished the Saint Giles’s Almshouses and revived the ancient parochial charities. Despite the liturgical changes introduced in the 1960s, he maintained the use of the Book of Common Prayer.

George Chapman’s memorial was designed by Inigo Jones (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Giles is often known to as the ‘Poets’ Church’ because of its connections with several poets, dramatists, actors and translators, and the Poetry Society holds its annual general meeting in Saint Giles Vestry House.

An early post-reformation rector, Nathaniel Baxter, was a priest and poet, and was once a tutor to Sir Philip Sidney. He is the author of a lengthy philosophical poem ‘Sir Philip Sydney’s Ourania’ (1606).

Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, who was buried at Saint Giles in 1648, was a brother of the priest-poet George Herbert and was a poet too.

George Chapman (1559-1634) published the first complete English translation of the works of Homer, and is the subject of John Keats’s sonnet ‘On first looking into Chapman’s Homer’. Inigo Jones designed his memorial.

James Shirley and Thomas Nabbes are both buried in the churchyard, and the politician, pamphleteer, poet and MP Andrew Marvell was buried at Saint Giles in 1678.

The translator Sir Roger L’Estrange, who produced the first English translation of Aesop’s fables for children is buried at Saint Giles. L’Estrange also discovered and foiled the Rye House Plot in 1683. John Milton’s daughter Mary was baptised in Saint Giles in 1647 and L’Estrange is often remembered for his attempt to suppress lines from Book I of John Milton’s Paradise Lost for potentially impugning the king:

As when the Sun new ris’n
Looks through the Horizontal misty Air
Shorn of his Beams, or from behind the Moon
In dim Eclips disastrous twilight sheds
On half the Nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes Monarchs

The organ was rebuilt in 1699 by Christian Smith, a nephew of the organ builder ‘Father’ Smith (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The 17th century organ was destroyed in the English Civil War. George Dallam built a replacement in 1678, which was rebuilt in 1699 by Christian Smith, a nephew of the organ builder ‘Father’ Smith. A second rebuilding was completed in 1734 by Gerard Smith the younger. The organ was rebuilt in 1856 and in 1960, and it was extensively restored by William Drake in 2006.

People with memorials in Saint Giles include: Luke Hansard, printer to the House of Commons; Thomas Earnshaw, watchmaker; Cecil Calvert, the first proprietor of Maryland; William Balmain, one of the founders of New South Wales; and John Coleridge Patteson, first Anglican Bishop of Melanesia and martyred, who is commemorated in the Church of England on 20 September.

Saint Giles-in-the-Fields is the custodian of the White Ensign flown by HMS Indefatigable at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay 80 years ago, on 5 September 1945.

Saint Giles is the patron of beggars, so it is appropriate the mission of Saint Giles gives a priority to the destitute and the homeless, and the church works with many homeless charities.

The Simon Community provides a weekly Street Café outside the church every Saturday and Sunday. Quaker Homeless Action provide a lending library at Saint Giles every Saturday for people who otherwise would not have access to books.

The pulpit from which John and Charles Wesley once preached (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Giles-in-the-Fields is a parish church in the Diocese of London, and is served by three clergy members and a licensed lay minister: the Revd Tom Sander has been the rector since 2021; the Revd Chris Smalling is an associate priest; the Revd Philip Dawson has been the curate since 2023; and Will James is a licensed lay minister. Jonathan Bunney is the Director of Music.

The two Sunday services are Sung Eucharist at 11 am and Evensong at 6:30 pm. The church is open daily for quiet prayer, with Morning Prayer every morning at 8:15 am, and said Holy Communion on Wednesdays at 1 pm. Saint Giles uses the Book of Common Prayer (1662) and the King James Bible, and the church is a corporate member of the Prayer Book Society. On the first Sunday in the month, the extended form of Sung Eucharist includes sung responses, Creed and Gloria.

The patronal Feast of Saint Giles is celebrated on the nearest Sunday to 1 September, and this year the feast is being celebrated today (Sunday 7 September 2025).

The seal of the mediaeval hospital of Saint Giles (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Botolph’s Church in Colchester and Saint Botolph’s Priory, the first Augustinian foundation in England

Saint Botolph’s Priory, Colchester, founded ca 1093 … the first and leading Augustinian house in England (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

During our recent visit to Colchester, I visited some of the churches in the town centre, as well as the castle, the Roman and Norman walls, the town hall, the former Jewish quarter in Stockwell Street, and the sites of the town’s synagogues.

Saint Botolph’s Priory in Colchester was founded ca 1093, and was the first and leading Augustinian house in England until it was dissolved at the Tudor reformation in 1536.

The priory was founded on the site of a Saxon church dedicated to Saint Botolph, with a tower that resembled the Saxon tower of Holy Trinity Church in Colchester. The church’s transformation into an Augustinian priory was initiated by priest named Norman, who had studied under Anselm of Canterbury in France before returning to England and settling in Colchester.

In Colchester, Norman joined a college of secular priests at Saint Botolph’s Church who wanted to join a religious order. Norman suggested the Augustinian order, which at the time had no houses in England, and received the approval of Anselm as Archbishop of Canterbury.

Saint Botolph’s Church became Saint Botolph’s Priory, and Norman later left Colchester to become the first prior of Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate.

Saint Botolph’s Priory, Colchester, was built on the site of an earlier Saxon church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Unlike nearby Saint John’s Abbey, Saint Botolph's Priory at first received little support from rich patrons, despite an endowment from Henry I, and it was several decades before the priory church was fully built. It was built in the Norman style on the site of the earlier church, and the work was completed by 1177 when the priory church was dedicated.

The house was headed by a Prior, and initially had 12 canons representing the 12 Apostles; a thirteenth canon was added to the foundation in 1281. The church was 53.7 metres (176 ft) long – about twice as long as the surviving standing ruins – with a central tower and transepts. The nave was 33.5 metres (110 ft) long, and 16.75metres (55 ft) wide. The rose window in the gable is thought to have been one of the earliest examples in England.

The church had several side chapels, including a lady chapel and chapels dedicated to Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Thomas Becket and the Holy Trinity.

The main west door of the church was known as the Pardon Door, because it was there pardons were granted on the feast of Saint Denis (9 October), known as Pardon Day in mediaeval Colchester.

The cloisters were on its south side of the church, and the canons’ dormitory was refurbished in 1383.

The church had at least two bells, a Sanctus bell and a requiem bell.

The main west door of the priory church was known as the Pardon Door (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Although Saint Botolph’s not as wealthy as its neighbour and rival, Saint John’s Abbey, the priory had considerable holdings in Essex and other places in south and east England. The church of Saint Peter, Colchester, was appropriated to the priory in 1318, and other churches attached to the priory included All Saints’, Saint James’s, and Saint Martin in Colchester, and the church in Frating.

A violent clash between the prior and canons of Saint Botolph’s and the monks of Saint John’s Abbey in the mid-14th century arose out of disputes over Saint Peter’s Church in Colchester.

Thomas Turner, the last prior of Saint Botolph’s, was elected 1527. The prior and seven canons of Saint Botolph’s took the oath of fealty in 1534, and the priory was dissolved in 1535, when it was granted to Sir Thomas Audley. The nave of the priory church was retained as a parish church, but the choir was demolished along with the cloisters, chapter house and other monastic buildings.

During the Siege of Colchester in 1648 in the Second English Civil War, when Colchester was besieged by the Parliamentarian New Model Army, Saint Botolph’s was caught in the crossfire of the assault on South Gate, and was reduced to ruins.

Saint Botolph’s Priory was destroyed by a Parliamentarian assault during the siege of Colchester in 1648 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The parish of Saint Botolph’s was left without a parish church after the siege of Colchester, and for almost 200 years the parishioners worshipped at All Saints’ Church on the High Street.

A Gothic Victorian church was built next to the priory ruins in 1837, on the site of the monastic kitchens and refectory. It was designed by the architect William Mason (1810-1897), and his design, inside and outside, reflects that of its 12th century predecessor.

Saint Botolph’s Church, dominated by its massive tower, was built in white brick, earning it the nickname of ‘the White Elephant’. The external brickwork has weathered to a darker hue, but, inside, the visitor is greeted by a bright contrast of white, scarlet and gold.

The church retains its original plan and most of its three-sided gallery in the style of the gallery churches in London. The east windows are of splendid Flemish stained glass and a window in the south aisle commemorates Samuel Harsnett (1561-1631), Archbishop of York (1629-1631), who was born in Colchester. His writings are said to have influenced Shakespeare and Milton.

Saint Botolph’s Church, built beside the priory ruins in 1837, was designed by William Mason (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The nave was reordered in the 1970s, when the cast iron rood screen and pulpit were removed from the chancel and the fixed pews were removed from the nave.

The raised daises, left after the pews were taken out, were removed in 1988 and the nave was levelled. A dividing partition was installed at the west end in 1990 to give a separate welcome area and some hospitality facilities. The church extension in 2001 provided a hall, kitchen, toilets and a vestry and meeting room.

The ruins of Saint Botolph’s Priory are now a public park, and improvements in 2010-2012 made the ruins more accessible to the public.

Saint Botolph’s Church, Colchester, was once nicknamed ‘the White Elephant’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A Mulberry tree at the Open University recalls a Cambridge tree that inspired Milton

The Mulberry tree, thought to be the oldest tree on the Walton Hall estate, gives the Mulberry Lawn at the Open University its name (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

I was back on the campus of the Open University in Milton Keynes late last week for lunch with an old friend, Dr Fidèle Mutwarasibo, Director of the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership and Lecturer in Work-Based Learning in the Department of Public Leadership and Social Enterprise.

We had lunch in the Hub, and later had coffee looking out onto the Mulberry Lawn, on the west side of Walton Hall. The Mulberry Lawn is named after the large Mulberry tree that is thought to be the oldest tree on the Walton Hall estate. It is believed to have been planted in 1908 to commemorate the birth of the painter Primrose Harley (1908-1978), a year after her father, Professor Vaughan Harley (1864-1923), bought Walton Hall.

The tree is over 100 years old. But there is also a 400-year tradition linking mulberry trees with universities and colleges. One of the best-known veteran mulberry trees in England is the ‘Milton Mulberry’ in the Fellows’ Garden at Christ’s College in Cambridge.

The tree was planted in 1609 and I first saw it virtually 400 years later in 2008 when I was a student on a course at Sidney Sussex College on a course organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies. A former student at the Church of Ireland Theological College, the Revd Christopher Woods, who was then the chaplain, invited me to dinner in the Fellows’ dining room at Christ’s College. That year, Christ’s College was marking the 400th anniversary of Milton’s birth.

Christopher is now the Vicar of Saint Barnabas in Jericho, Oxford. He invited me back to Christ’s College in 2009, to preach at the Solemn Orchestral Mass for the Eve of Candlemas and as part of the Lent Term series, ‘The ears of the heart.’ That year, Christ’s College marked the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 400th anniversary of the planting of the ‘Milton Mulberry’ in the Fellows’ Garden in 1609.

I stayed in Christ’s College again in 2010 for a weekend and saw Milton’s Mulberry once again before moving into rooms in Sidney Sussex College, where I was taking part in the IOCS annual summer school. Throughout that year, Christ’s College Chapel celebrated the 500th anniversary of its consecration in 1510.

Milton’s Mulberry was planted at the same time as several other Cambridge colleges, including Emmanuel College, Jesus College and Corpus Christi College, planted mulberry trees as part of James I’s project to start an English silk industry, with mulberry groves feeding the silkworms.

The tree at Christ’s has long associations with the poet John Milton (1608-1674), who was a student at Christ’s from 1625 and graduated in 1629, receiving his master’s degree in 1632. The tree would have been at least 20 years old when the young poet knew it and already a decent size, but hardly impressive enough to inspire poetry.

It is said Milton spent hours creating many of his greatest works while writing in the shade of this mulberry tree, and that he composed Lycidas under the tree. But most of his major works, including Paradise Lost, are from a much later date.

John Milton was a student at Christ’s College Cambridge from 1625 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

James I’s silk project soon ran out of steam, but its legacy is found in a number of veteran mulberries throughout England that have survived from the 17th century and that produce copious quantities of jam.

The tree in Christ’s College is not the only mulberry associated with Milton. In the early 17th century, he was a regular guest of his former schoolboy tutor, the Revd Thomas Young, after Young became Vicar of Stowmarket in Suffolk in 1628. Young was part of a group of controversial Puritan clergy who were later defended by Milton in his pamphlets.

The garden of the Old Vicarage in Stowmarket, now known as Milton House, has a splendid black mulberry tree said to date back to Milton’s visits. The tree was blown over in 1939, but mulberries are great survivors and are able to grow again from flattened trunks and branches that touch the ground.

To escape the plague in London in 1665, Milton moved with his wife and daughter to a cottage in Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire. There he wrote his major works, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.

The late 16th century cottage is now known as Milton’s Cottage. Until recently, the Grade II listed historic garden had an old mulberry tree, grown from a cutting from the tree in Christ’s College, Cambridge. The tree was felled some years ago, but a cutting was taken from it and planted nearby.

Another celebrated offspring of the Milton Mulberry is the ‘Queen’s Mulberry’ in Preacher’s Court at Charterhouse in London. The tree is thought to have been planted around 1840, and is one of seven mulberries at Charterhouse.

As part of celebrations of the 400th anniversary of Milton’s birth in 2008, a cutting from the mulberry in Christ’s College was given to the Woodland Trust for planting at Drovers Wood, in Upper Breinton, Hereford, as part of the Hay Literary Festival.

Walton Hall and the campus of the Open University in Milton Keynes (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Fidèle and I have known each other for almost 25 years, since I was a curate in Whitechurch Parish, Rathfarnham, Dublin. He and I were also involved in the Discovery project in inner-city Dublin.

We had lunch in the Hub, first built in 1970 as the ‘Catering Building.’ Later it was called the Refectory, and was rebuilt and rebranded as ‘The Hub’ in 2010. The Hub complex also houses the Hub Theatre, the Mulberry Suite and the Medlar and Juniper Suites, frequent venues for functions and events.

After lunch, we sat over coffee for some time at a large window in the Hub, looking out at the old Mulberry Tree and enjoying the sunshine on the lawn beside Walton Hall.

There is no connection between John Milton and the name of Milton Keynes, yet it is interesting that the Mulberry Tree was planted in 1908, the year that marked the 300th anniversary of the birth of John Milton.

The old tree is now banked up and propped up. I wonder whether it still produces fruit. And I wonder – given the year it was planted – whether it is a ‘descendant’ of the Milton Mulberry in Christ’s College, Cambridge.

The Mulberry Tree was planted beside Walton Hall in 1908, the year that marked the 300th anniversary of the birth of John Milton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The real Milton Keynes, the economist, the poet and the mediaeval village at the heart of Milton Keynes

The Swan Inn in Milton Keynes Village … almost as old as the village that gives its name to Milton Keynes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

Until I moved to this area almost last year, I accepted the popular assumption that Milton Keynes was given its name to honour the poet John Milton and the economist John Maynard Keynes.

I was soon dissuaded of this popular belief, and quickly learned that the name of the new city comes from one of the historic villages that already existed in this part of north Buckinghamshire, Milton Keynes Village.

Charlotte and I celebrated my birthday earlier this week in Milton Keynes Village, where we had lunch at the Swan Inn, a thatched country pub and restaurant that claims to date back to the 13th century.

This could be chocolate-box-cover England or picture-postcard England. The village has many pretty houses and cottages that are half-timbered with thatched roofs. Certainly, the Swan Inn was known in the village of Milton Keynes since 1550, and the present building dates largely from the 16th and 17th centuries. The dates point to the antiquity of Milton Keynes, and provide clues to its centuries-long history.

Milton Keynes Village is at the heart of Middleton, a district of Milton Keynes, and part of the historic civil parish of Milton Keynes, which predates the foundation of the new city in 1967. The village was originally known as Middeltone in the 11th century, and was later known as Middelton Kaynes or Caynes in the 13th century, Milton Keynes in the 15th century, and Milton alias Middelton Gaynes in the 17th century.

Many of the houses and cottages in Milton Keynes Village are half-timbered with thatched roofs (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Before the Conquest, Queen Edith held this manor, which in 1086 was held of the king by Godric Cratel. The de Cahaines family held the manor from 1166 to the late 13th century, as well as other manors that they gave their name to, including Ashton Keynes, Wiltshire, Somerford Keynes, Gloucestershire, and Horsted Keynes, West Sussex.

The Keynes suffix was added in the 12th century when members of the de Cahaignes or Keynes family were the lords of the manor. The village became known as Middleton Keynes, eventually shortening to Milton Keynes, although ‘Mydilton Keynes’ and ‘Milton Keynes’ appear on the same record in 1452.

This name Middleton means the middle of three settlements or farmsteads; the two other settlements were Bro(c)tone (Broughton) and Waltone (Walton).

The Middleton part of the name was gradually shortened to Milton, although some documents used the form Middleton until the 19th century.

There is no record of Milton for almost a century after Domesday, but it appears to have been held by the Bereville family, whose line ended in a daughter and heir Mabel, who married Hugh de Kaynes (Chahaines, Caaignes, Kahaignes) ca 1166. He owned land in other parts of Buckinghamshire and in neighbouring Bedfordshire and Berkshire.

Hugh de Kaynes died at the beginning of the 13th century, and Mabel de Bereville died ca 1221. Their son Luke de Kaynes was the lord of Milton in 1234. When he died ca 1259, he was succeeded by his son John de Kaynes, who died ca 1283.

Abbot’s Cottage … the Abbey of St Albans acquired land in Milton in the early 14th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The Abbey of St Albans acquired land in Milton in the early 14th century, and the abbey continued to acquire property in the area until the Reformation.

Milton Manor passed to Philip Aylesbury who married Margaret de Kaynes, and who was holding the manor in 1302 and 1316. The Staffords obtained the whole of Milton and Broughton in the early 15th century when Humphrey Stafford married Eleanor Aylesbury. He was slain in Jack Cade’s Rebellion in 1450, and was succeeded by his son Humphrey. A later Humphrey Stafford was executed as a traitor 1486. Milton Keynes was then granted to Sir Edward Poyning, who gave his name to ‘Poyning’s Law’ in Ireland.

When Poyning died in 1521, Milton Keynes was restored to Humphrey Stafford, and Milton Keynes remained in the hands of the Stafford family for almost a century.

William Stafford inherited the estate in 1643, but by then the estate had been mortgaged by his father to Sir Lewis Watson, afterwards Lord Rockingham of Rockingham, and Henry Stafford sold the manor in 1677 to Daniel Finch, who later succeeded as 2nd Earl of Nottingham, and then as 7th Earl of Winchilsea.

When George Finch, 9th Earl of Winchilsea, died unmarried in 1826, the manor passed to his illegitimate son George Finch of Burley-on-the-Hill, near Oakham in Rutland. The Finches lived in a Palladian house in Rutland and never lived permanently in the village of Milton Keynes, although they held on to the estate until just before World War II. Their control of the village made it a ‘closed’ community that changed little for many centuries. The only other land holder in the village was the church, and the rectors were appointed by the lords of the manor.

When Wilfred Finch died, the estate was sold in 1939. It was bought by William Mitchell, who sold it to the Society of Merchant Venturers of Bristol at the end of World War II. The society held several estate villages in the area, and for a time its estate office was at Sunnyside, a house on Willen Road.

The Society of Merchant Venturers of Bristol sold Milton Keynes village and estate when the new city was being planned in the 1960s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

When the new city of Milton Keynes was planned in the 1960s,the society was sold the estate to the Milton Keynes Development Corporation. Those searching for a name lighted on the ancient village of Milton Keynes, which was within the designated area and appeared to have attractive associations with the poet John Milton and the economist John Maynard Keynes.

John ‘Jock’ Middleton Campbell, Lord Campbell of Eskan, was the first chairman of the Milton Keynes Development Corporation. He would recall the decision on a name for the town had been given to Dick Crossman, a minister in Harold Wilson’s cabinet.

Crossman’s wife Ann had worked at Bletchley Park during World War II. He was looking at a map of the area where the town was going to be built and spotted the village’s name, before remarking: ‘Milton the poet, Keynes the economic one. “Planning with economic sense and idealism, a very good name for it”.’

The Milton Keynes Development Corporation re-used the name Middleton for the ‘grid square’ in which the village sits. The original core village of the district, along Walton Road and Broughton Road, has retained its Milton Keynes road signs and has several rural village houses and the thatched Swan Inn. It is now known as Milton Keynes Village.

After lunch, we strolled around the village, visiting All Saints’ Church, the old rectory built at the turn of the 17th and 18th century, and the village school, built in 1859.

As dusk enfolded Milton Keynes, we returned to the Swan Inn. The inn lost its thatch in a fire in 1970, but was fully restored. Sadly, fire visited the Swan again on the afternoon of 7 December 2011, but not all the building was affected, and the Swan reopened partly on 23 December and reopened fully on 23 November 2012. The staff called us a taxi, and we were back in Stony Stratford late in the evening.

The story of All Saints’ Church is for telling another day.

Dick Crossman, a minister in Harold Wilson’s cabinet, is said to have elected the name of Milton Keynes Village for the new city (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Praying with the Psalms in Ordinary Time: 17 June 2022 (Psalm 114)

‘When Israel went out from Egypt … The sea looked and fled’ (Psalm 114: 1-3) … an illustration in the ‘Passover Haggadah’ by the Polish-American artists Arthur Szyk

Patrick Comerford

In the Calendar of the Church, this is Ordinary Time. Two of us are staying in Lichfield, and planning to return to the Chapel of Saint John's Hospital and Lichfield Cathedral later today. But, before this day begins, I am taking some time this morning to continue my reflections drawing on the Psalms.

In my blog, I am reflecting each morning in this Prayer Diary in these ways:

1, Short reflections on a psalm or psalms;

2, reading the psalm or psalms;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Psalm 114:

Psalm 114 is the second of the six psalms (Psalms 113-118) comprising the Hallel (הַלֵּל, ‘Praise’). It is sometimes known by its opening phrase in Latin, In exitu Israel. In the slightly different numbering system in the Greek Septuagint and in the Latin Vulgate, this psalm is the first part of Psalm 113.

Psalms 113-118 are among the earliest prayers written to be recited in the Temple on days of national celebration. They were sung as accompaniment to the Pesach or Passover sacrifice. Early rabbinic sources suggest that these psalms were said on the pilgrimage festivals – Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot.

These psalms are known as the ‘Egyptian Hallel’ because of the references in this psalm to the Exodus from Egypt.

Psalm 114 is a lyrical account of how nature itself trembled and rejoiced at the Exodus, when the Supreme Power intervened and recused the powerless.

This psalm begins with the Hebrew:

בְּצֵאת יִשְׂרָאֵל, מִמִּצְרָיִם; בֵּית יַעֲקֹב, מֵעַם לֹעֵז

In Hebrew this is an acrostic poem. At eight verses, this psalm is comparatively concise. It is composed of four stanzas of two lines, which the word Jacob envelops. The two central stanzas evoke with images full of life the miracle of the Red Sea and the passage of the Jordan. God is evoked only at the end of the Psalm, doubtless to arouse the expectation.

The first stanza recalls by the verb that the Hebrew people are born in the Exodus. The words sanctuary and domain designate the entire inheritance of God, not only in the geographical sense but also in a spiritual sense. The miracles that allow Israel to cross the Red Sea and cross the River Jordan are poetically enhanced by the process of hyperbole and by images evoking a life of natural elements, water and mountains. It is a means of manifesting all creation, with Israel and actively participating in its march towards the Promised Land.

1, Verses 1-3 recall the Exodus and its initial and final events: the people led Egypt, and were able to cross the Red Sea and the Jordan.

2, Verse 4 may be referring to the earth tremors that accompanied God’s appearance on Mount Sinai.

3, Verses 5-6 ask why these miracles too place.

4, Verses 7-8 tell us this was because the Lord of all creation was present. He commanded water to spring from the rock, quenching the thirst of the people during the Exodus.

As the physical earth responded to God’s command then, how do we respond?

Part of the Psalm 114 is quoted at the beginning of Dante’s Purgatorio, and this psalm was associated with burial and funeral rites in the Mediaeval Church. Later, John Milton wrote ‘A Paraphrase on Psalm 114’ among his poems of 1645.

‘The Lord … turns the rock into a pool of water’ (Psalm 114: 7-8) … rocks by the beach at Preveli on the south coast of Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Psalm 114 (NRSVA):

1 When Israel went out from Egypt,
the house of Jacob from a people of strange language,
2 Judah became God’s sanctuary,
Israel his dominion.

3 The sea looked and fled;
Jordan turned back.
4 The mountains skipped like rams,
the hills like lambs.

5 Why is it, O sea, that you flee?
O Jordan, that you turn back?
6 O mountains, that you skip like rams?
O hills, like lambs?

7 Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord,
at the presence of the God of Jacob,
8 who turns the rock into a pool of water,
the flint into a spring of water.

Today’s Prayer:

The theme this week in the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) is ‘Focus 9/99,’ which was introduced on Sunday by the Revd M Benjamin Inbaraj, Director of the Church of South India’s SEVA department.

Friday 17 June 2022:

The USPG Prayer invites us to pray today in these words:

We give thanks for ecumenism and the ecumenical example shown by the Church of South India. May we remember that we have much in common with different denominations across the world.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Praying in Ordinary Time 2021: 110, All Hallows’ Church, Bread Street

A plaque from All Hallows’ Church in the churchyard of Saint Mary-le-Bow recalls the baptism of the poet John Milton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Good morning from Crete, where I am staying on the eastern fringes of Rethymnon.

Before the day begins, I am taking a little time this morning for prayer, reflection and reading. Each morning in the time in the Church Calendar known as Ordinary Time, I am reflecting in these ways:

1, photographs of a church or place of worship;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

My theme for these few weeks is Wren churches in London, and my photographs this morning (16 September 2021) are from All Hallows’ Church, Bread Street.

All Hallows’ Church, Bread Street, was a parish church in the Bread Street ward of the City of London. It stood on the east side of Bread Street, on the corner with Watling Street, and was first mentioned in the 13th century.

The church was closed for a month in 1551 following a bloody fight between two priests. As penance, they were obliged to walk barefoot from Saint Paul’s through Cheapside and Cornhill. During the reign of Queen Mary I, the rector, Laurence Saunders, was burnt at the stake in 1555 for preaching Protestant doctrine. John Milton was baptised in All Hallows in 1608.

The church was destroyed in the Great Fire in 1666, and was rebuilt in 1681-1684 by Sir Christopher Wren.

The parish of All Hallows Bread Street was combined with that of Saint Mary-le-Bow in 1876 and the church demolished in 1878. The pulpit is now in Saint Vedast alias Foster, the organ case in Saint Mary Abchurch and the font cover in Saint Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe.

The font and cover in Saint Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe came from All Hallows’ Church, Bread Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 7: 36-50 (NRSVA)

36 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. 37 And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. 38 She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. 39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him – that she is a sinner.’ 40 Jesus spoke up and said to him, ‘Simon, I have something to say to you.’ ‘Teacher,’ he replied, ‘speak.’ 41 ‘A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 When they could not pay, he cancelled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?’ 43 Simon answered, ‘I suppose the one for whom he cancelled the greater debt.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You have judged rightly.’ 44 Then turning towards the woman, he said to Simon, ‘Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. 45 You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. 47 Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.’ 48 Then he said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ 49 But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, ‘Who is this who even forgives sins?’ 50 And he said to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace.’

The pulpit from All Hallows is now in Saint Vedast alias Foster (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (16 September 2021) invites us to pray:

We pray for Holy Cross Theological College (in the Diocese of Yangon) and the work they do to train and equip ministers in the Church of the Province of Myanmar.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Why strolling through London is better than using the Underground

Saint Mary-le-Bow … the sound of Bow Bells determines who is a true Cockney (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

I have learned in recent years that it is probably easier and certainly more healthy and much more interesting to walk through London instead of trying to use the London Underground.

Many writers, including Bill Bryson, point out that the standard tube map distorts geography so that it is not clear most times whether a tube trip is necessary at all. There is high density of stations in the city around Bank, Cannon Street, Mansion House and Saint Paul’s, when a walk between the stations is shorter, fitter and healthier than using public transport.

I have long learned that for meetings at the USPG offices in Southwark, I am better off when I arrive at Liverpool Street station to start walking instead of taking the tube. And I repeat this exercise at the end of the day, walking back to Liverpool Street for the Stanstead Express.

This walk allows me to enjoy the views of magisterial London architecture in buildings such as the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange, the Mansion House and Saint Paul’s Cathedral, to stroll through the side-streets by the Tate Modern, with their cafés, buskers and book shops, to enjoy the vista from the south side of the Millennium Bridge or the clutter of tourists around the Globe Theatre, to discover parts of London I have not known before, including Old Jewry and Lothbury, and to see some of the many surviving Wren Churches that are such an integral part of the heritage of London.

On Thursday morning I walked from Liverpool Street down Old Broad Street, Threadneedle Street, Poultry, Cheapside, the main east-west axis in the City, New Change and Saint Paul’s Churchyard, Sermon Lane and Peter’s Hill, before crossing the river on the Millennium Bridge. And then, after yesterday’s meeting, I retraced my steps.

On previous occasions, I have extended my stroll, taking opportunities to see Dr Johnson’s House in Gough Square, Saint Martin’s Church on Ludgate Hill, Saint Bride’s Church off Fleet Street, and Saint Dunstan-in-the West on Fleet Street, or stroll through Paternoster Square and the network of sidestreets that are clustered around Saint Paul’s Cathedral.

On Thursday afternoon, I stopped to see both the Church of Saint Mary-le-Bow and to stroll through the former ghetto that gives its name to Old Jewry.

A plaque from All Hallows in the churchyard of Saint Mary-le-Bow recalls the baptism of the poet John Milton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Saint Mary-le-Bow with its steeple and bells is a London landmark. Tradition says that a true Cockney is someone born within the sound of Bow Bells, which could be heard as far away as Hackney Marshes. The story goes that when he heard the sound of the bells of Saint Mary’s, Dick Whittington turned back from Highgate with his cat, returned to London and later became Lord Mayor.

Saint Mary-le-Bow is one of the old London churches rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London in 1666. But there is archaeological evidence that there was a church on this site from Saxon times.

The church known as Sancta Maria de Arcubus was rebuilt in the later Norman period, and was known for its two arches or “bows” of stone. From the 13th century, the church was one of the 13 “peculiars” of the Diocese of Canterbury, so that it came within the ambit of the Archbishops of Canterbury rather than the Bishops of London.

These 13 parishes were: All Hallows’, Bread Street; All Hallows’, Lombard Street; Sait Dionis Backchurch, Lime Street; Saint Dunstan in the East; Saint John the Evangelist, Watling Street; Saint Leonard, Eastcheap; Saint Mary, Aldermary; Saint Mary Bothaw; Saint Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside; Saint Michael, Crooked Lane; Saint Michael Royal; Saint Pancras, Soper Lane; and Saint Vedast, Foster Lane.

Because of this connection with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Saint Mary-le-Bow became the seat of the Court of Arches, which took its name from the two arches or bows of stone.

The Court of Arches is the provincial court for the Province of Canterbury in the Church of England. The equivalent in the Province of York is the Chancery Court. The Court of Arches is presided over by the Dean of the Arches, who is appointed by the two archbishops. The dean must be a barrister of 10 years’ High Court standing or the holder or former holder of high judicial office.

Saint Mary-le-Bow remains the permanent home of the Court of Arches and the regular sittings include those to confirm the election of each new diocesan bishop in the Province of Canterbury.

In the past, the “bow bells” were used to order a curfew in the City of London, until the church burned down in the Great Fire of London of 1666.

In all, 88 parish churches were burned during the Great Fire. Sir Christopher Wren and his office rebuilt Saint Paul’s Cathedral and 51 parish churches.

Because Saint Mary-le-Bow was the second most important church in the City of London after Saint Paul’s Cathedral, it was one of the first churches to be rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren after the fire. The present church was built to Wren’s designs in 1671-1673, and the 68 metre steeple was completed in 1680.

Most distances from London are measured from Charing Cross but, before the late 18th century, distances on the road from London to Lewes were calculated from the church door at Saint Mary-le-Bow, and the mileposts along the route were marked with a cast-iron depiction of a bow and four bells. Since the early 1940s, a recording of the Bow Bells made in 1926 has been used by the BBC World Service as an interval signal for some English-language broadcasts.

Like many Wren and City churches, much of Saint Mary-le-Bow was destroyed by a German bomb during the Blitz in 1941, and the famous Bow Bells crashed to the ground during the fire on 10 May.

Restoration work began in 1956. New Bow Bells were cast in 1956 and they were eventually installed to resume ringing in 1961. The church was re-consecrated in 1964, and is now a Grade I listed building. Today, the church, like many City churches, ministers to the financial industry and livery companies.

The paved churchyard has a statue of Captain John Smith of Jamestown, founder of Virginia and a former parishioner of Saint Mary-le-Bow. Inside, the church there is a memorial to the first Governor in Australia, Admiral Arthur Phillip, who was born in the parish. Beneath the church in the crypt is the appropriately-named Café Below.

Another Canterbury ‘peculiar,’ All Hallows’ in Bread Street, was pulled down in 1876, and the parish was amalgamated with Saint Mary-le-Bow. But a memorial from All Hallows, recalling that the poet John Milton was baptised there, has been re-erected on the walls of Saint Mary’s.

Two plaques recall Saint Thomas Becket was born in Cheapside (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Further east along Cheapside, two plaques on a street corner marks the birthplace of Saint Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury (1162-1170). He was born in Cheapside on the Feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle, 21 December, in 1119 or 1120.

Old Jewry stands in the heart of the original Jewish ghetto in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

A little further on, I stopped at Old Jewry, a one-way street in the City that runs from Poultry to Gresham Street, close to Bank underground station and Cannon Street mainline station. The street now houses mainly offices for banks and financial companies but was once at the heart of the original Jewish ghetto in London.

A plaque on a wall marks where the Great Synagogue of London stood until 1271. In 2001, archaeologists discovered a mikveh or ritual bath near to Old Jewry, on the corner of Gresham Street and Milk Street, under what is now the State Bank of India. It would have fallen into disuse after 1290, when the Jews were expelled from England.

The original inhabitants are also remembered in the name of nearby church, Saint Lawrence Jewry, on Gresham Street, next to the Guildhall. This is another Wren church rebuilt after the Great Fire in 1666.

Saint Lawrence Jewry was described by Sir John Betjeman as “very municipal, very splendid.” It is yet another one on my list of Wren and City churches to visit instead of traveling underground.

Looking back at Saint Paul’s and the City of London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Anglican spirituality and poetry: (3): John Milton (1608-1674)

Oliver Cromwell (left) and John Milton (right) in the central pair of windows in the apse in Emmanuel Church, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

In this tutorial group, we are looking at poets who have had an interesting influence on Anglican piety, prayer, theology and self-understanding. In November, we looked at TS Eliot, and in December we looked at John Betjeman.

This morning we are looking at John Milton (1608-1674), who once considered ordination as an Anglican priest, later became one of the most vocal Puritans, and in his final days he was marginalised even from the successors of the Puritans, the Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Baptists.

Despite that alienation at the end of his life, Milton is celebrated in a stained-glass window in the apse Emmanuel Church, Cambridge, standing alongside Oliver Cromwell and other leading Puritans associated with Cambridge, which makes him, I suppose, the nearest thing to a Puritan saint.

Milton was an English poet and polemicist, and a leading Puritan figure in 17th century England. He wrote in English, but also in Latin, Greek, and Italian, at a time of religious and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost.

Milton’s poetry and prose reflect his deep personal religious beliefs and convictions, his passion for freedom and self-determination, and the political issues of his day.

John Milton was born in Bread Street, London, on 9 December 1608, the son of a composer John Milton (1562-1647), who moved to London around 1583 after being disinherited by his devout Catholic father, Richard Milton, for his Protestant views.

As a child, his private tutor was Thomas Young, a Scottish Presbyterian who introduced him to religious radicalism. Milton then went to Saint Paul’s School, London, and then from 1625 Christ’s College, Cambridge. He graduated BA in 1629, and in preparation for ordination as an Anglican priest he stayed on to receive his MA in 1632.

At Cambridge, Milton earned a reputation for poetic skill and general erudition, but was often alienated from his peers and university life. There he wrote a number of his well-known shorter English poems, including ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,’ his ‘Epitaph on the admirable Dramatick Poet, W. Shakespeare,’ and his first poems to appear in print, L’Allegro and Il Penseroso.

After receiving his MA in 1632, Milton retired to Hammersmith, and also lived at Horton in Berkshire, where he continued to write poetry and to study. From May 1638 until July or August 1639, he went on a “Grand Tour” of France and Italy.

In Florence, he met the astronomer Galileo, who was under house arrest, in Rome, he dined the English College, and went to the opera with Cardinal Barberini. He also spent time in Geneva, Pisa, Naples, Lucca, Bologna, Ferrara and Venice, before returning through Paris and Calais to England.

Back in England, he began writing prose Puritan tracts against episcopacy, and he vigorously attacked the High Church party and the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud.

In 1642, at the age of 35, he married 16-year-old Mary Powell, but after a mere month, she returned to her family and did not return until 1645. Her desertion prompted Milton to publish a series of pamphlets arguing for the legality and morality of divorce, followed by his attacks on press censorship.

Samuel Cooper’s portrait of Oliver Cromwell in the hall at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

With the parliamentary victory in the English Civil War, Milton defended popular government and the regicide. In 1649, he became Cromwell’s Secretary for Foreign Tongues. In 1652, he published his Latin defence of the English People, Defensio pro Populo Anglicano, also known as the First Defence, and his Sonnet 16 in praise of “Cromwell, our chief of men.”

The English Republic collapsed following Cromwell’s death in 1658, but Milton stubbornly clung to his political and religious beliefs, attacking the concept of a state Church and arguing for a non-monarchical government.

After the Restoration in 1660, Milton, who was then completely blind, was deprived of all public office. Milton went into hiding, a warrant was issued for his arrest and his writings were burnt. He re-emerged after a general pardon was issued, but was arrested and briefly imprisoned.

In 1663, Milton married his third wife, Elizabeth (Betty) Minshull, then aged 24. He spent the rest of his life living quietly in London, only retiring to Milton’s Cottage in Chalfont St Giles during the Great Plague of London.

In these final years, he wrote most of his major works of poetry, and several minor prose works. He died of kidney failure on 8 November 1674 and was buried in the church of Saint Giles Cripplegate, Fore Street, London. When he died, Milton he was impoverished and on the margins of English intellectual life. But he was famous throughout Europe and unrepentant for his political choices.

Milton’s magnum opus, the blank-verse epic poem Paradise Lost was written Milton when he was blind and impoverished Milton between 1658 and 1664. Being blind, he dictated his verse to a series of aides. It has been argued that the poem reflects his personal despair at the failure of the Revolution, yet affirms an ultimate optimism in human potential.

The sequel, Paradise Regained, was published alongside the tragedy Samson Agonistes in 1671. Just before his death in 1674, he also supervised a second edition of Paradise Lost.

Milton’s theology and legacy

Snow blankets the First Court in Christ’s College, Cambridge, where John Milton was a student (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Milton held many unorthodox theological views. He rejected the Trinity in favour of Arianism, believing the Son was subordinate to the Father. He was sympathetic to Socinianism, and in 1650 he was involved in the publication of the Racovian Catechism, based on a non-Trinitarian creed.

After the Restoration, he stood apart from all sects, although apparently he found the Quakers most congenial. He never went to any religious services in his later years. When a servant brought back accounts of sermons from nonconformist meetings, Milton became so sarcastic that the man at last gave up his place.

Samuel Johnson praised Paradise Lost as “a poem which ... with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human mind.”

Johnson’s praise is true praise indeed, for the Lichfield writer was a committed Tory and the recipient of royal patronage, and he dismissed Milton for his politics, describing him as an “acrimonious and surly republican.” He wrote

“It appears in all his writings that he had the usual concomitant of great abilities, a lofty and steady confidence in himself, perhaps not without some contempt of others; for scarcely any man ever wrote so much, and praised so few. Of his praise he was very frugal; as he set its value high, and considered his mention of a name as a security against the waste of time, and a certain preservative from oblivion.”

William Blake considered Milton the major English poet. William Hayley called him the “greatest English author” (1796).

Later, Milton had a great impact on the Romantic movement in England, and Wordsworth called upon him to rise from the dead and aid in returning England to its former glory.

John Milton’s ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’

The Great Gate of Christ’s College, Cambridge, where Milton was a student in 1629 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John Milton’s poem ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,’ was written while he was a 21-year-old at Christ’s College, Cambridge. Although it was written in 1629, it was not published until 1645, when it appeared as the first poem in the Poems of Mr John Milton.

Milton wrote this ode in December 1629, having celebrating celebrated his 21st birthday a few days earlier. Earlier that year, he had graduated BA at Cambridge, where he had been an undergraduate at Christ’s College, where I have stayed in the past and where I have preached and lectured.

At the time Milton wrote ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ in Cambridge, his Puritan contemporaries were stepping up their opposition to the celebration of Christmas Day. But, with Christmas Day approaching in December 1629, and conscious of both his own birthday and his birth, Milton, who was still at Christ’s College, was moved to write this ode about Christ’s birth.

Although the ode was the first poem in his 1645 collection, this was not the first poem he had written, for he wrote many of his Latin and Greek poems at an earlier time. Yet this ode often serves as an introduction to Milton’s poetry.

This is one of a set of poems that celebrates important Christian events: Christ’s birth, the feast of the Circumcision, and Good Friday. These poems place Milton alongside other English poets of the 17th century, including George Herbert, John Donne and Richard Crashaw. At the same time, however, it also reflects the origins of his opposition to Archbishop William Laud and his supporters within the Church of England.

The poem describes Christ’s Incarnation and his overthrow of earthly and pagan powers, and also connects Christ’s Incarnation with his Crucifixion, for God becomes human in Christ at his Nativity to redeem fallen humanity, and humanity is redeemed in Christ’s sacrifice at the Crucifixion.

Milton also connects the Nativity with the creation of the world, a theme that he expands later in Book VII of Paradise Lost. Like the other two poems of the set, and like other poems at the time, the ode describes a narrator within the poem and experiencing the Nativity.

Thomas Corns says this poem is “Milton’s first manifestation of poetic genius and, qualitatively,” and he puts it among his most significant poetic works – even before Paradise Lost. He also claims that the ode “rises in many ways above the rather commonplace achievements of Milton’s other devotional poems and stands out from the mass of other early Stuart poems about Christmas.”

The first complete setting of this ode was undertaken in 1928 by the Cambridge composer Cyril Rootham, with a setting for soli, chorus, semi-chorus and orchestra. Later, portions of the ode were set by Vaughan Williams in 1954, as part of the text of his Christmas cantata, Hodie.

On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, John Milton

I

On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity
This is the month, and this the happy morn
Wherein the Son of Heav’n’s eternal King,
Of wedded Maid, and Virgin Mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
That he our deadly forfeit should release,
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.

II

That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty,
Wherewith he wont at Heav’n’s high council-table,
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside, and here with us to be,
Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

III

Say Heav’nly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain,
To welcome him to this his new abode,
Now while the heav’n, by the Sun’s team untrod,
Hath took no print of the approaching light,
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?

IV

See how from far upon the eastern road
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:
O run, prevent them with thy humble ode,
And lay it lowly at his blessed feet;
Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,
And join thy voice unto the angel quire,
From out his secret altar touched with hallowed fire.

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This essay was prepared as supplemental notes for a presentation in a tutorial group with MTh students on 16 January 2016.