Early Life of John Milton - College

College

On 12 February 1625, Milton was admitted into Christ's College, Cambridge as a minor pensioner. Christ's under Thomas Bainbrigg, Master from 1622, was harmonious on religious questions, a great contrast to the situation some years earlier when Valentine Carey had clashed with William Ames, and the fellowship of 13 included a range of views. Milton matriculated on 9 April 1625 with William Chappell as his tutor. He intended, according to the Subscription Book, to become a minister, and his course of study at Cambridge was based around this vocation. More of Milton's studies at Cambridge is unknown, but he did begin to study with Chappell, who was a respected scholar and became a staunch Arminian and Laudian. Milton would have attended lectures by Samuel Collins, Robert Creighton, and Robert Metcalfe, in addition to hearing Richard Sibbes and George Herbert preach. The Fellow of Christ's with the greatest reputation for his contemporaries was Joseph Mede, but it has not been shown that he had personal influence on Milton. It has been argued that Milton later took from Mede's writings some conceptions on the millennium.

When the plague hit England in August 1625, the University of Cambridge had to be shut down until December. Milton had been there only for a few months before he had an altercation with Chappell and he was rusticated by this time. It is possible that the conflict originated in Chappell's Arminianism conflicting with Milton's Calvinistic views. He was suspended temporarily from the college, and returned to London from April to July 1625. During this period, Milton composed many of his earlier poems; his poems on the Gunpowder Plot, his Hobson poems, and his An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester were written while working on various college exercises. Other poems, such as On the Morning of Christ's Nativity or On Time, Upon the Circumcision, and At a Solemn Music, were written during Milton's free time.

When Milton returned in 1626, he changed his tutor, because Chappell had wanted Milton removed from the college completely. His new tutor, Nathaniel Tovey, was a friend to both Diodati's family and to Chappell, which eased the personal problems. Tovey's views were Calvinist, and he was a Ramist in logic, a style followed later by Milton in his Art of Logic. Milton spent time writing Latin verse with other students, including Elegy II, which honored Richard Ridding after his death 26 September 1626. Another elegy was written for the vice-chancellor, John Gostlin, who died on 21 October 1626. In the poem, Milton relies on Horatian poetics. The poem was placed first among the Latin poems in his 1645 collection. It is possible that the work was partly from an early poem that was then expanded in memory of Gostlin. In Elegy III, Milton honours Lancelot Andrewes, the Bishop of Winchester, who died 25 September 1626. In the poem, he also honours two others, whose deaths compounded his time of mourning, and the many Protestants who died during the Thirty Years War.

He received a bachelor's degree in 1629. In 1630, Milton composed "On Shakespeare". The poem became the first poem of Milton's to be published, and it was including anonymously in the Second Folio of Shakespeare's Works. During this time, Milton began composing a series of love-sonnets, with seven of the poems written during his college years and a final set of three written after 1642. In 1632, he received a master of arts degree. He graduated cum laude, but the route into academia was blocked to him by the Christ's College statutes, there already being a Fellow of London origins, Michael Honywood.