Richard, his son, is stated, but not proved, to have been an under-ranger of Shotover Forest.  He appears to have married a widow named Jeffrey, whose maiden name had been Haughton, and who had some connection with a Cheshire family of station.  He would also seem to have improved his circumstances by the match, which may account for the superior education of his son John, whose birth is fixed by an affidavit to 1562 or 1563.  Aubrey, indeed, next to Phillips and Milton himself, the chief contemporary authority, says that he was for a time at Christ Church, Oxford—­a statement in itself improbable, but slightly confirmed by his apparent acquaintance with Latin, and the family tradition that his course of life was diverted by a quarrel with his father.  Queen Mary’s stakes and faggots had not affected Richard Milton as they affected most Englishmen.  Though churchwarden in 1582, he must have continued to adhere to the ancient faith, for he was twice fined for recusancy in 1601, which lends credit to the statement that his son was cast off by him for Protestantism.  “Found him reading the Bible in his chamber,” says Aubrey, who adds that the younger Milton never was a scrivener’s apprentice; but this is shown to be an error by Mr. Hyde Clarke’s discovery of his admission to the Scriveners’ Company in 1599, where he is stated to have been apprentice to James Colborn.  Colborn himself had been only four years in business, instead of the seven which would usually be required for an apprentice to serve out his indenture—­which suggests that some formalities may have been dispensed with on account of John Milton’s age.  A scrivener was a kind of cross between an attorney and a law stationer, whose principal business was the preparation of deeds, “to be well and truly done after my learning, skill, and science,” and with due regard to the interests of more exalted personages.  “Neither for haste nor covetousness I shall take upon me to make any deed whereof I have not cunning, without good advice and information of counsel.”  Such a calling offered excellent opportunities for investments; and John Milton, a man of strict integrity and frugality, came to possess a “plentiful estate.”  Among his possessions was the house in Bread Street destroyed in the Great Fire.  The tenement where the poet was born, being a shop, required a sign, for which he chose The Spread Eagle, either from the crest of such among the Miltons as had a right to bear arms, among whom he may have reckoned himself; or as the device of the Scriveners’ Company.  He had been married about 1600 to a lady whose name has been but lately ascertained to have been Sarah Jeffrey.  John Milton the younger was the third of six children, only three of whom survived infancy.  He grew up between a sister, Anne, several years older, and a brother, Christopher, seven years younger than himself.