Birth of John Milton

In the early years of the reign of James I, on a winter morning, a baby son was born to the Milton family in a substantial wooden house in Bread Street in the City of London. Their oldest son, he was christened John, after his father, in nearby All Hallows Church, which was destroyed fifty-eight years later in the Great Fire. John was then the most popular Christian name in England. A child’s godparents were called ‘gossips’ in those days and there would have been a cheerful party, or ‘gossiping’, after the baptism.