Mynshull House is near Manchester cathedral. There is a tablet high on the wall on it are the words "Here was born Elizabeth Mynshull, daughter of Thomas Mynshull, 3rd and Best wife of John Milton". She married 55 year old Milton when she was 24 in 1663. They lived in London but moved In 1665 to Chalfont St Giles due to the plague. They lost their London house and all their money through the fire of London and the restoration (Milton had worked for Cromwell). He wrote Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained and Samson and Agonistes, which allowed him to live peacefully with his three girls from the first marriage and Elizabeth. "Betty" was an intelligent and capable young woman who looked after Milton for his last 10 years. She was a widow for 53 years. Milton left all his estate to her except the portion of his first wife that went to his three daughters by her.[Lancashire Life magazine]
Upon Milton's death in 1674 he left the entirety of his estate to Elizabeth, cutting his three daughters out of his will entirely. They threatened to sue, until Elizabeth volunteered a satisfactory compromise. She retained the Bunhill house until her death in 1724, and Masson records a touching vignette of Elizabeth, living as an elderly woman in genteel poverty, proudly exhibiting to visitors the relics of her famous husband.[ John Aubrey's "brief life".
