Lord President Lawrence, Lord Lambert, General Desborough, the Earl of Mulgrave, Colonel Fiennes, Colonel Jones, Colonel Sydenham, Colonel Montague), “Colonel Fiennes reports from the Committee of the Council to whom the same was referred the draft of a Letter to be sent from his Highness to the King of France concerning the Protestants in the Dukedom of Savoy; which, after some amendments, was approved and ordered to be offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council.”

Tuesday, May 22:—­Present:  Lord President Lawrence, Colonel Sydenham, Mr. Rous, Colonel Montague, Colonel Jones, General Desborough, Mr. Strickland, Colonel Fiennes, Lord Viscount Lisle, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Lord Lambert.  “The Latin draft of a Letter to the Duke of Savoy in behalf of the Protestants in his Territory was this day read. Ordered, That it be offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council that his Highness will please to sign the said Letter and cause it to be sent to the said Duke.”

Wednesday, May 23:—­“Colonel Fiennes reports from the Committee of the Council the draft of two letters in reference to the sufferings of the Protestants in the territories of the Duke of Savoy, the one to the States-General of the United Provinces, the other to the Cantons of the Swisses professing the Protestant Religion; which were read, and, after several amendments, agreed. Ordered, That it be offered to his Highness the Lord Protector as the advice of the Council that he will please to send the said letters in his Highness’s name to the said States-General and the Cantons respectively.”

Though Milton’s name is not mentioned in these minutes, it was he, and no other, that penned, or at least turned into Latin, for the Committee, and so for the Council and the Protector, the particular letters minuted, and indeed all the other documents required by the occasion.  The following is a list of them:—­

(LIV.) TO THE DUKE OF SAVOY, May 25, 1655:[1]—­This Letter may be translated entire.  It is superscribed “OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, &c., to the Most Serene Prince, EMANUEL, Duke of Savoy, Prince of Piedmont, Greeting “; and it is worded as follows:—­“Most Serene Prince,—­Letters have reached us from Geneva, and also from the Dauphinate and many other places bordering upon your dominion, by which we are informed that the subjects of your Royal Highness professing the Reformed Religion were recently commanded by your edict and authority, within three days after the promulgation of the said edict, to depart from their habitations and properties under pain of death and forfeiture of all their estates, unless they should give security that, abandoning their own religion, they would within twenty days embrace the Roman Catholic one, and that, though they applied as suppliants to your Royal Highness, begging that the edict might be revoked, and that