(L.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF THE CITY OF BREMEN, Oct. 25, 1654:—­There has come to be a conflict between the City of Bremen and the new King of Sweden, arising from military designs of that King on the southern shores of the North Sea and the Baltic, Bremen is in great straits; and the authorities have represented this to Cromwell through their agent, Milton’s friend, Henry Oldenburg, and have requested Cromwell’s good offices with the Swedish King.  Cromwell answers that he has done what they want.  He has great respect for Bremen as a thoroughly Protestant city, and he regrets that there should he a quarrel between it and the powerful Protestant Kingdom of Sweden, having no stronger desire than that “the whole Protestant denomination should at length coalesce in one by fraternal agreement and concord.”

(LI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, Oct. 28, 1654:—­As announced to the Bremeners in the last letter, Cromwell did write on their behalf to the Swedish King.  He had hoped that the great Peace of Munster or Westphalia (1648) had left all continental Protestants united, and he regrets to hear that a dispute between Sweden and the Bremeners has arisen out of that Treaty.  How dreadful that Protestant Swedes and Protestant Bremeners, once in league against the common foe, should now be slaughtering each other!  Can nothing be done?  Could not advantage be taken of the present truce?  He will himself do anything in his power to bring about a permanent reconciliation.

These three letters, it will be observed, belong to the first two months of that cramped and exasperated condition in which Oliver found himself when he had his First Parliament by his side; and there is not a single preserved letter of Milton for Oliver between Oct. 26, 1654, the date of the last of the three, and Jan. 22, 1654-5, the date of the sudden dissolution of the Parliament.  The reason of this idleness of Milton, in his Secretaryship during those three months, leaving all the work to Meadows, must have been, I believe, that he was then engaged on a Reply to More’s Fides Publica in the imperfect state in which it had just come forth.  All along, as we have seen, the Literary Defence of the Commonwealth on every occasion of importance had been regarded as the special charge of Milton in his Secretaryship, to which routine duty must give way; and, as his Defensio Secunda in reply to the Regii Sanguinis Clamor had been, like several of his preceding writings, a task performed by him on actual commission from the Rump Government, though not finished till the Protectorate had begun, Oliver and his Council may have thought it but fair that another pamphlet of the same series in reply to the Fides Publica of Morus should count also to the credit of Milton’s official services, even though it must necessarily be more a pamphlet of mere personal concern than any of its predecessors.  But, indeed, by this time, Mr. Milton was a privileged man, who might regulate matters very much for himself, and drop in on Thurloe and Meadows at the office only when he liked.