Ann (Milton) Agar (abt. 1604 - abt. 1640)

Born about 1604 in Bread St Cheapside, London, England

Ancestors

Wife of Edward Phillips — married 22 Nov 1623 in Sherehog, London, England

Wife of Thomas Agar — married about 1637 in London, England [uncertain]

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Biography

Ann (Milton) Agar was born in the City of London, England.

Ann was born about 1604. She is the daughter of John Milton and Sarah Jeffreys.

John Milton: The Self and the World, page 89-90 " We do not know when Anne died, but the boarding of his nephews certainly tells us of a disruption in her household. Without Anne's being alive in autumn 1639, Thomas Agar would have had the care of two step-sons, aged nine and eight, and a daughter, aged six or so. While we may like to think that he would want to care for his step-sons and provide an education, they were not his own children, and his salary as deputy clerk was not high. There is hereafter no mention of Anne in 90 John Milton: The Self & the World connection with her sons, who seem to have remained with Milton through the 1640s. Parker speculated that Edward left around 1646, and he was a student at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, briefly in 1650.40 By the time of his majority (1651) he was working and residing in Shrewsbury. John, on the other hand, seems to have stayed with his uncle until about the time his majority was reached, in 1652. An argument against the preceding construction is Ralph Hone's belief that Anne Phillips's name on a Shropshire (Shrewsbury) deed dated December 29, 1639, means that she was then alive.41

But of course it doesn't. Not only is she not Anne Phillips Agar on the deed, as she had been since 1632, showing the recorder's ignorance of her, but the entry is simply a pro forma copying from its earlier recording without adjustment of time. She was listed on the early form as part-owner, and that continued. It is not strange that the recorder of the deed in Shropshire did not know about the principals in the transactions.

PHILLIPS, EDWARD (1630-1696), English author, son of Edward Phillips of the crown office in chancery, and his wife Anne, only sister of John Milton, the poet, was born in August 1630 in the Strand, London. His father died in 1631, and Anne Phillips eventually married her husband's successor in the crown office, Thomas Agar. Edward Phillips and his younger brother, John, were educated by Milton.

Anna was buried on 3 August 1642 in St Martin-In-The-Fields, London, Westminster, England.^[1]

In late 1631 his sister Anne, a recent widow, had two young children, Edward Phillips, aged one, and John Phillips, newborn. She would seem to have married Thomas Agar in January 1632 and thus became stepmother to his infant daughter, and she gave birth again in October 1632. John Milton: The Self and the World John T. Shawcross

Agar—deputy clerk of the Crown in the Court of Chancery, succeeding Milton's brother-in-law, Edward Phillips—and his family came to live comparatively near the Miltons, it would seem, in Kensington, where Agar's brother John also resided. Anne could hardly be expected to take close care of her parents in 1631- 32 or afterward. (Another daughter was born a year or so later, perhaps in 1633.) Milton's brother Christopher, sixteen or seventeen in 1631-32, withdrew from Cambridge and entered the Inner Temple as a law student, perhaps in September 1632. Clearly, he too was in no position to care for his aging parents. It was only after the mother's death, any evidence shows, that Milton could contemplate maintaining his studiousness, but not in retirement. The move to Horton, Bucks, took place in 1635, and the so-called Horton period, which early biographers and (in error) some current commentators still date as 1632-37, is the second part of that studious retirement in 1635-37 John Phillips (1631–1706) was an English author, the brother of Edward Phillips, and a nephew of John Milton.

Research Notes

Lives of Edward and John Philips, Nephews and Pupils of Milton, pp 2-3 [1] Their mother, Ann Milton, only sister to the poet, it is added, “had a considerable dowry given her by her father in marriage.” She was probably several years older than Milton, as it appears that one of her children died an infant when he was in the seventeenth 1625. The earliest of Milton's English poems, in which he gives us in no contemptible degree a foretaste of the sort of writer he was afterward to become, is on the death of this infant. It was written in the first year of his studies at Cambridge. It is full of classical allusion and imagery; the versification is harmonious and flowing; and, what is particularly worthy of notice, it displays in a conspicuous manner that affectionate nature, and those true touches of tenderness, which eminently accompanied our poet through all the stages of life. He shows us, particularly in the fifth stanza, with what genuine kindness, and with what melting heart, he had often looked on the unfortunate child, shall I say ? to whose memory his verses are dedicated. “ Yet can I not perswade me thou art dead, Or that thy coarse corrupts in earth’s dark wombe , Or that thy beauties lie in wormie bed, Hid from the world in a low delved tombe. Could Heaven for pittie thee so strictly doom? Oh, no ! for something in thy face did shine Above mortalitie, that shewed thou wast divine." The last stanza is particularly extraordinary; and, while it proves in no trivial degree the poet's affection for his sister, certainly surprises us with an uncommon boldness of prophecy, upon which a man of matured understanding would hardly have ventured. “ Then thou, the mother of so sweet a child, Her false, imagined loss cease to lament, And wisely learn to curb thy sorrows wild; Think what a present thou to God hast sent, And render him with patience what he lent; This if thou do, he will an offspring give, That till the worlds last end shall make thy name to live."

Wikipedia contributors, "John Phillips (author)," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Phillips_(author)&oldid=1032770192 (accessed January 15, 2023).

John Phillips (1631–1706) was an English author, the brother of Edward Phillips, and a nephew of John Milton.

Anne Phillips, mother of John and Edward, was the sister of John Milton, the poet. In 1652, John Phillips published a Latin reply to the anonymous attack on Milton entitled Pro Rege et populo anglicano. He appears to have acted as unofficial secretary to Milton, but, unable to obtain regular political employment, and (like his brother) chafing against the discipline he was under, he published in 1655, a bitter attack on Puritanism titled a Satyr against Hypocrites (1655). In 1656, he was summoned before the privy council for his share in a book of licentious poems, Sportive Wit, which was suppressed by the authorities, but almost immediately replaced by a similar collection, Wit and Drollery.

In Montelion (1660) he ridiculed the astrological almanacs of William Lilly. Two other skits of this name, in 1661 and 1662, also full of coarse royalist wit, were probably by another hand. In 1678, he supported the agitation of Titus Oates, writing on his behalf, says Anthony Wood, many lies and villanies. Dr Oates's Narrative of the Popish Plot indicated it was the first of these tracts. In the same year he published the first English translation of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier's 'Six Voyages' recounting a lifetime of travel in the Middle East and South Asia.[1]

He began a monthly historical review in 1688, entitled Modern History or a Monthly Account of all considerable Occurrences, Civil, Ecclesiastical and Military, followed in 1690, by The Present State of Europe, or a Historical and Political Mercury, which was supplemented by a preliminary volume giving a history of events from 1688. He executed many translations from the French language, and a version (1687) of Don Quixote, which has been called by Quixote translator Samuel Putnam the worst English translation ever made of the novel. Putnam goes so far as to say in his Translator's Preface that Phillips's version "cannot be called a translation". This is largely because Phillips actually changes the novel by substituting references to famous English locales in place of the original Spanish ones, and including references to things British not found in the original novel.

An extended account of the brothers is given by Wood in Athenæ Oxononienses (ed. Bliss, iv. 764 seq.), where a long list of their works is dealt with. This formed the basis of William Godwin's Lives of Edward and John Phillips (1815), with which was reprinted Edward Phillips's Life of John Milton.

Of the infancy of Edward and John Philips nothing is known . But , when Milton returned from his travels on the continent , recalled , as he tells us , before his time , by the news of the civil distempers of his country , and “ thinking it a dis honourable thing , that he should be travelling at his leisure for the improvement of his mind , while his fellow - citizens con tended in arms for their common liberty , ” d one of the first objects of his attention seems to have been the children of his beloved sister . That sister had married again ; and he there fore felt it the part of an uncle to take these boys under his care , and in some manner to adopt them for his own . His mind was stored with knowledge of various sorts , acquired by copious industry , and derived from all those sources to which his intelligence and judgment directed him ; and believing it to be his portion and business in life to consecrate himself to purposes of usefulness , he regarded it as one indispensible duty , to communicate the knowledge and improvement he had re ceived to a certain number of young and susceptible minds . Lives of Edward and John Philips, Nephews and Pupils of Milton William Godwin Jan 1815 · Hamilton page 4

Sources

1. ↑ Burial: "Westminster, London, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1558-1812"
   City of Westminster Archives Centre; London, England; Westminster Church of England Parish Registers; Reference: STM/PR/6/3
   Ancestry Sharing Link - Ancestry Record 61865 #1941242 (accessed 22 May 2023)
   Anna Milton burial on 3 Aug 1642 in St Martin-In-The-Fields, London, Westminster, England.