In April 1655, when these two letters were written, Oliver was in the sixteenth month of his Protectorship.  His first nine months of personal sovereignty without a Parliament, and his next four months and a half of unsatisfactory experience with his First Parliaments were left behind, and he had advanced two months and more into his period of compulsory Arbitrariness, when he had to govern, with the help of his Council only, by any means he could.  Count all the Latin State-Letters registered by Milton himself as having been written by him for Cromwell during those first fifteen months and more of the Protectorate, and they number only nine (Nos.  XLV.-XLVIII in Vol.  IV. pp. 635-636, and Nos.  XLIX.-LIII. in the present volume).  These nine Letters, with the completion and publication of his Defensio Secunda, and now the preparation of a Reply to More’s Fides Publica, and also perhaps occasional calls at Thurloe’s office and occasional presences at interviews with ambassadors and envoys in Whitehall, were all he had been doing for fifteen months for his salary of L288 a year.  The fact cannot have escaped notice.  He had himself called attention to it, as if by anticipation, in that passage of his Defensio Secunda in which he spoke of the kind indulgence of the State-authorities in retaining him honourably in full office, and not abridging his emoluments on account of his disability by blindness.  The passage may have touched Cromwell and some of the Councillors, and there was doubtless a general feeling among them of the worth, beyond estimate in money, of Milton’s name to the Commonwealth, and of his past acts of literary championship for her.  Economy, however, is a virtue easily recommended to statesmen by any pinch of necessity, and it so chanced that at the very time we have now reached, April 1655, the Protector and his Council, being in money straits, were in a very economical mood (see ante p. 35).  Here, accordingly, is what we find in the Council Order Books under date April 17, 1655.

Tuesday, April 17, 1655:—­Present the Lord President Lawrence, Lord Lambert (styled so in the minute), Colonel Montague, Colonel Sydenham, Sir Charles Wolseley, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Major-General Skippon.

  “The Council resumed the debate upon the Report made from the
  Committee of the Council to whom it was referred to consider of the
  Establishment of the Council’s Contingencies.

  “Ordered:—­

“That the salary of L400 per annum granted to MR. GUALTER FROST as Treasurer for the Council’s Contingencies be reduced to L300 per annum, and be continued to be paid after that proportion till further order.

“That the former yearly salary of MR. JOHN MILTON, of L288, &c., formerly charged on the Council’s Contingencies, be reduced to L150 per annum, and paid to him during his life out of his Highness’s Exchequer.