Milton and the Confessionalization of Antiquarianism

Milton would have been exposed at Cambridge to a far greater range of major contemporary historical writing than his later History of Britain would suggest, and these early encounters with historical scholarship provide a neglected context for reading Milton's neo‐Latin poetry in Poems 1645. Recent work on library catalogues has shown that contemporary antiquarian writings by Camden and others, as well as the major works of European ars historica, were widely owned. The purchasing list of Joseph Mede, colleague of Milton's tutor, includes works by Speed, Brerewood, and Camden. Charles Diodati wrote an elegy for Camden (in Oxford's 1624 memorial volume), a poem which Milton almost certainly knew.