By 1666, when Traitor Angels takes place, Milton was a political outcast. A staunch antimonarchist, he had served as Oliver Cromwell’s Latin Secretary when England operated as a commonwealth and a protectorate. During this time, Milton went completely blind, a condition that provided plenty of fodder for his numerous political enemies throughout Europe. He became known as “the notorious Milton” and was castigated for his political ideals and his four divorce tracts.
When the government collapsed and Parliament invited Charles II to return to England in 1660, Milton’s life hung in the balance. He placed his three daughters, Anne, Mary, and Deborah, in the care of their maternal grandmother and went into hiding.
Some members of Parliament wanted Milton to be hanged as a traitor, but he was spared—no one now knows why, though many suspect that the intervention of influential friends, including the poet Andrew Marvell, kept Milton alive. After he came out of hiding, he was arrested and briefly imprisoned. Upon his release, he moved to new lodgings with his daughters. Three years later, he married his third wife, the much younger Elizabeth “Betty” Minshull.
When the plague struck London in 1665, Milton’s family fled to a nearby village, Chalfont St. Giles. It’s unknown when they returned to London; many scholars guess it was sometime in February–March 1666. Since the exact date is unclear, I decided to let the Miltons remain in Chalfont for a few months longer.
During this time, Milton was completing the work that would become his most famous: the epic poem Paradise Lost. The version of Paradise Lost that appears in Traitor Angels is the original ten-book 1667 edition. A later edition, published in 1674 and divided into twelve books, is the one commonly studied today. The poem itself is generally considered a masterpiece, both for its beautiful language and for its portrayal of Satan as a charismatic, brave, but ultimately evil character. Intriguingly, the poem’s only contemporary personage is Galileo, whom Milton refers to as “the Tuscan Artist.” In this book, when Milton dictates the “Tuscan Artist” section to Elizabeth, she forms her own interpretation of the passage. Although Paradise Lost is rich in allegories, there’s no indication that Milton hid a secret scientific message within its lines. The poem that directs Elizabeth, Antonio, and Robert to St. Paul’s is not Milton’s; I wrote it myself.
Milton dictated all of Paradise Lost—some say to his nephews and family friends; others say to his daughters Mary and Deborah. The two women were uncommonly well educated for females of their time. Both could read and write, and some historians believe they also knew foreign languages. (Milton himself was fluent in Latin, Greek, Italian, and Hebrew.) There’s conflicting evidence, however, that says Milton only taught them how to write foreign words phonetically, so he could dictate to them without their having any idea what he was saying. I decided to adhere to this latter theory, as I believe it’s in keeping with Milton’s character. The classroom lessons Milton teaches Elizabeth are based on the instruction he provided for his male students when he was a young teacher.
Anne, his eldest daughter, was illiterate. Although her exact medical condition has never been identified, we know she was lame, had a severe speech impediment, and apparently was mentally disabled.
Sometime during 1669–1670, Milton’s three daughters left home to become apprentices in the lace-making industry. Deborah didn’t last long in the profession; she became a lady’s companion in Ireland. She later married a weaver and had a daughter named Elizabeth. Mary remained single, while Anne married a master builder and died young, in childbirth. As for Betty Minshull Milton, she eventually sold off many of her late husband’s copyrights and died in 1727.
Charles II probably lived a life filled with more highs and lows than any other English monarch. As a teenager, he fought in the Civil War but was eventually ordered to leave England by his father, who feared that the tide of the war was turning against them and was concerned for his eldest son’s safety. Charles then spent over a decade in exile in Europe. At nineteen, he had a child, his first, with his mistress Lucy Barlow, who was also known as Lucy Walter. Although rumors of their marriage dogged Charles II for years, there’s no proof the two were ever wed. Lucy died in Paris in 1658. Their son, James, adopted a guardian’s surname. After his father was crowned, this James Crofts was made the Duke of Monmouth. He later married a Scottish noblewoman and took on her surname, becoming James Scott.
Charles II really was fascinated by “natural philosophy”—the seventeenth-century term for science. He maintained a private laboratory at his palace and carried out numerous experiments. After he died in 1685, his younger brother, James, the Duke of York, became king. Monmouth, who had been trying to prove his parents had been married and he was his father’s legitimate heir, openly opposed his uncle’s ascension to the throne. He staged an unsuccessful rebellion and was beheaded for treason less than six months after his father’s death. Per the etiquette of the time, Monmouth tipped his executioner six guineas before baring his neck for the blade. Aspects of Monmouth’s personality, and of Satan himself in Paradise Lost, inspired me to create Robert, who burns to rule just as fiercely as they did.
George Villiers, the second Duke of Buckingham, was raised alongside the young man who would become King Charles II after his father, the best friend—and, some say, the lover—of Charles I was assassinated. Buckingham fought on the royalist side during the Civil War and lived in exile in Europe with the future king for several years. After the Restoration, he was involved with a number of political intrigues, and was imprisoned in the Tower for various charges on a few occasions. He really did bring in a supposed unicorn’s horn to a Royal Society meeting. He died in 1687.
Samuel Pepys, who after this story’s timeframe became the secretary of naval affairs, is one of the most famous diarists of all time. His journal offers a fascinating glimpse into seventeenth-century life in London. A member of the Royal Society, he was also instrumental in carrying out naval reforms. At the king’s request, he stayed in London throughout the plague. When the Great Fire of 1666 occurred, he personally brought news of the blaze to the king. He really did bury a wheel of Parmesan cheese in his garden to keep it safe from the encroaching fire. He died in 1703.
The Royal Society, a pioneering scientific organization, was founded in 1660. Its original patron was Charles II. The Royal Society was the first of its kind; previously, scientists had jealously guarded their own discoveries. This group, however, encouraged the open sharing of ideas. The members met weekly to discuss scientific advances and their own individual experiments. Any mention of religion or politics was forbidden. The Royal Society still exists today.
Robert Hooke, who demonstrates his experiments on Galileo’s theory of gravity in this book, was the Royal Society’s curator. In real life, during the summer of 1664 he dropped objects from the roof of St. Paul’s Cathedral to test Galileo’s postulations. He was a gifted engineer and originated the physics principle known as Hooke’s law, which states that when expanding or compressing a spring a certain distance, the force needed is proportional to distance.
Robert Boyle, who shows Elizabeth, Antonio, and Robert around the Royal Society meeting room, is considered the father of modern chemistry. He conducted a series of experiments with air pumps Hooke constructed that led to the creation of Boyle’s law—namely, that the volume of a confined gas varies inversely with the pressure applied to it.
Galileo Galilei is often called the father of modern science. His work in astronomy, physics, and science methodology and his trial before the Italian Inquisition have become legendary. While a young mathematics professor at the University of Padua, he really did take a riposo in an underground room with two of his friends. This room, as was common with country villas during this time, was ventilated and cooled by a conduit that supplied wind from a waterfall in a nearby mountain cave. When the three men woke from their nap two hours later, they experienced cramps, chills, intense headaches, hearing loss, and muscle lethargy. Within days, both of Galileo’s friends
died. Although Galileo survived, his health was affected for the remainder of his life.
During Galileo’s time, people believed that meteors, or falling stars, were atmospheric disturbances, similar to lightning. Apart from his discovery of the meteorite, Galileo’s inventions and scientific theories presented in this book are real.
Vincenzo Viviani was a brilliant mathematician who became Galileo’s assistant and secretary in 1639 when he was seventeen. He lived with Galileo until the latter’s death. Later he became the court mathematician to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand II, and was one of the first members of the duke’s experimental academy, the Accademia del Cimento. He tirelessly tried to repair Galileo’s reputation and convince the Catholic Church to pardon the scientist but was unsuccessful. He died childless in 1703 at the age of eighty-one and was buried with his beloved teacher, in accordance with his wishes.
Antonio’s telescope is based on one Galileo himself built and gave to Cosimo II de’ Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1609 to 1621.
The Great Fire of London began in the early hours of Sunday, September 2, 1666. Although no one knows exactly what caused the blaze, it’s commonly believed that a stray ember from baker Thomas Farriner’s ovens started it. Farriner provided biscuits for the Royal Navy, and therefore he really did know Samuel Pepys.
London, which hadn’t had rain for nearly a year, was a powder keg waiting to explode. When the fire overtook London Bridge, a number of its residents escaped by jumping into the Thames, just as Elizabeth and Antonio do.
When the fire was finally extinguished by Thursday morning, the city was a ruin—a hundred thousand people were left homeless and four-fifths of all of the property in London had been destroyed. The country’s largest church, St. Paul’s, was decimated. Christopher Wren, who served on the real-life commission to renovate the church, became extensively involved in rebuilding the city, and designed another St. Paul’s, which still stands today.
Like London, Milton’s and Galileo’s reputations have undergone a rebirth of sorts, too. Milton, the one-time “notorious” political pariah who died in genteel poverty, is now widely considered one of the most important writers in English history. Galileo’s name was blackened for centuries. It wasn’t until 1992, after a thirteen-year-long investigation into the Italian Inquisition’s case against Galileo, that Pope John Paul II formally acknowledged that the Church had erred in condemning Galileo for asserting the earth revolves around the sun. Although the Church has reversed its standing in Galileo’s case, struggles such as those Galileo encountered hundreds of years ago in attempting to reconcile science and religion continue to confront all of us to this very day.
Selected Bibliography
Ackroyd, Peter. London: The Biography. New York: Nan A. Talese / Doubleday, 2001.
Beer, Anna. Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008.
Bevan, Bryan. James, Duke of Monmouth. London: Robert Hale, 1973.
Black, Christopher F. The Italian Inquisition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
The Bodleian Library in the Seventeenth Century: Guide to an Exhibition Held During the Festival of Britain, 1951. Oxford: Bodleian Library, 1951.
Boschiero, Luciano. “Post-Galilean Thought and Experiment in Seventeenth-Century Italy: The Life and Work of Vincenzo Viviani.” History of Science 43, no. 1 (March 2005): 77–100.
Bryson, Bill, ed. Seeing Further: The Story of Science, Discovery and the Genius of the Royal Society. New York: William Morrow, 2010.
Dolnick, Edward. The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World. New York: HarperCollins, 2011.
Evelyn, John. The Diary of John Evelyn. Edited by John Bowle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Fraser, Antonia. Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.
Gribbin, John. The Fellowship: Gilbert, Bacon, Harvey, Wren, Newton, and the Story of a Scientific Revolution. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2007.
Hanson, Neil. The Great Fire of London: In That Apocalyptic Year, 1666. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2002.
Heilbron, J. L. Galileo. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Hill, Christopher. Milton and the English Revolution. New York: Viking Press, 1978.
Hollis, Leo. London Rising: The Men Who Made Modern London. New York: Walker, 2008.
Jones, Nigel H. Tower: An Epic History of the Tower of London. London: Hutchison, 2011; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012.
Lewalski, Barbara K. The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000.
Milton, John. Areopagitica. 1644. In Milton, The Riverside Milton, 997–1024.
———. “Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.” 1644. In Milton, The Riverside Milton, 930–976.
———. Eikonoklastes. 1650. In Milton, The Riverside Milton, 1078–1095.
———. “Of True Religion.” 1673. In Milton, The Riverside Milton, 1151–1155.
———. Paradise Lost: A Poem Written in Ten Books. Transcribed and edited by John T. Shawcross and Michael Lieb. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2007.
———. “The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth.” 1660. In Milton, The Riverside Milton, 1136–1149.
———. “The Reason of Church-Government Urg’d Against Prelaty.” 1642. In Milton, The Riverside Milton, 903–925.
———. The Riverside Milton. Edited by Roy Flannagan. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
———. “The Second Defense of the English People.” 1654. In Milton, The Riverside Milton, 1097–1118.
Ogg, David. England in the Reign of Charles II. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934, 1955, 1956.
Ollard, Richard. The Image of the King: Charles I and Charles II. New York: Atheneum, 1979.
Parkes, Joan. Travel in England in the Seventeenth Century. London: Oxford University Press, 1925.
Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Vol. 6, 1665, and Vol. 7, 1666. Edited by Robert Latham and William Matthews. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.
Picard, Liza. Restoration London: From Poverty to Pets, from Medicine to Magic, from Slang to Sex, from Wallpaper to Women’s Rights. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997.
Porter, Stephen. Pepys’s London: Everyday Life in London 1650–1703. Gloucestershire: Amberley, 2011.
Sobel, Dava. Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love. New York: Walker, 1999.
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Tames, Richard. A Traveller’s History of Oxford. New York: Interlink Books, 2003.
Thurley, Simon. Whitehall Palace: An Architectural History of the Royal Apartments, 1240–1698. New Haven: Yale University Press in association with Historical Royal Palaces, 1999.
Tinniswood, Adrian. By Permission of Heaven: The Story of the Great Fire of London. London: Pimlico/Random House, 2004.
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Wootton, David. Galileo: Watcher of the Skies. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.
Acknowledgments
So many people to thank! As always, I’m grateful to my editor, Kristin Daly Rens, who is as brilliant as she is kind and whose editorial letters I simultaneously look forward to and dread because she catches every single misstep. Kristin, thank you for making me work so hard. Ich bin fest davon überzeugt das wir dazu bestimmt waren zusammen Zuarbeiten. Das wir beide Deutschland und Paradise Lost lieben war lediglich das Tüpfelchen auf dem i. Thanks for letting me indulge my Miltonic urges and name a character in your honor. For those wondering, Kristin and Lady Katherine share surnames, fabulous hair, and steel spines, but the similarities end there.
Many thanks to everyone at Balzer + Bray/HarperColl
ins, including Alessandra Balzer, Donna Bray, Nellie Kurtzman, Jenna Lisanti, and Megan Barlog in marketing, and designer Michelle Taormina for a gorgeous design and a book jacket that I cannot stop calling “my preeeeeecious.” Big thanks to Caroline Sun in publicity for promoting my books, making sure my events go smoothly, and trading recipes and pictures of our little ones. Smash cakes for the win! I’m grateful to copy editor Bethany Reis for all of her hard work and to copy editor Janet Fletcher, who probably needed a glass of wine after the amount of fact checking she had to do. Special effects artist Sean Freeman created a cover that made me gasp the first time I saw it. And a special thanks to Kelsey Murphy, who read early drafts of Traitor Angels and helped me figure out how to make Paradise Lost more accessible for readers who are unfamiliar with the poem.
I’m grateful to everyone at Adams Literary, including Josh Adams and Samantha Bagood, and especially my agent, Tracey Adams. There’s no one else I’d rather have in my corner than you, Tracey. Thanks for always looking out for me—and for letting me name a character after you!
I could not have written Traitor Angels without the assistance of several experts. Hugh Jenkins, professor of English at Union College, sparked my fascination with Paradise Lost when I took his seminar course on John Milton during my senior year. When I began researching this novel, Hugh’s advice on Milton, seventeenth-century British literature, and resources was invaluable. Hugh, thanks for letting me pick your brain and for (patiently) answering my many questions. I’ll always cherish the memory of coteaching a class with you on Paradise Lost’s Book Ten when I returned to campus to serve as the spring term’s Alumna Writer.