Family-histories and genealogies : containing a series of ...

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subject of the great poet's " Epitaphium Damonis." Specially noteworthy,
in the relations of the two friends, is the contrast between Milton's studious
gravity and the blithesome cheerfulness of Diodati, whom " one fancies,"
says Masson, "as a quick, amiable, intelligent youth, with something of
his Italian descent visible in his face and manner."® He "was born about
1609," says Col. Chester, "as he matriculated at Oxford, from Trinity
College, 7 Feb. 1622-3, aged thirteen at his last birth-day;" and to the
same diligent antiquary we owe the discovery of the date of his death, in
August 1638, his burial having been at St. Anne's, Blackfriars, August 27,
1638, only seventeen days after that of his sister.
" Letters of Administra-
tion on his estate, in which he is described as a bachelor, were granted to
his brother John in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 3 Oct. 1638."^
John (grandfather of our WILLIAM, as we shall see), the brother
of Charles, was married at St. Margaret's, Westminster, July 28, 1635, to
Isabel Underwood; she died and was buried in June 1638, leaving a son
55 Richard}'^ who was baptized June 29 of the same year.
Philadelphia and Charles, though unmarried at the time of their
death, were not living with their father, but, as Col. Chester showed, at a
"Mr. Dollam's" in Blackfriars; which is explained by the supposition of
a family-disagreement consequent upon the second marriage of their father
—a fact plainly enough alluded to, indeed, in one of the Latin letters of
Milton, addressed to his friend in 1637 :
"quod, nisi bellum hoc novercale vel Dacico vel Sarmatico infestius sit, debebis
profecto maturare, ut ad nos saltern in liyberna concedas [i. e. for, unless this step-
motherly conflict be more disastrous than Dacian or Sarmatian, thou oughtest
certainly to bring it about to come to us at least for the winter]." "
" Id., i. 80.
'° In the Fourth Report of the Royal Commission of Historical Manuscripts. Part i. . . .
London, 1874, p. 36, under date of 1640, mention is made of a petition of John Diodate, administrator
to Charles Diodate, son of Doctor Diodate, for leave to proceed against the Earl of Cleveland and
Lord Wentworth for recovery of ;f 500.
" The Prose Works of John Milton. ... By Charles Symonds. . . . London, 1806, vi. 117.
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