with their wives and children, houseless, roofless, poor, and destitute of all resource, through rugged and inhospitable spots and over snow-covered mountains.  And, through the days of this transaction, if only the things are true that fame at present reports everywhere (would that Fame were proved a liar!), what was not dared and attempted against them?  Houses smoking everywhere, torn limbs, the ground bloody!  Ay, and virgins, ravished and hideously abused, breathed their last miserably; and old men and persons labouring under illness were committed to the flames; and some infants were dashed against the rocks, and the brains of others were cooked and eaten.  Atrocity horrible and before unheard of, savagery such that, good God, were all the Neros of all times and ages to come to life again, what a shame they would feel at having contrived nothing equally inhuman!  Verily, verily, Angels are horrorstruck, men are amazed; heaven itself seems to be astounded by these cries, and the earth itself to blush with the shed blood of so many innocent men.  Do not, great God, do not seek the revenge due to this iniquity.  May thy blood, Christ, wash away this stain!—­But it is not for me to relate these things in order as they happened, or to dwell longer upon them; and what my Most Serene Master requests from your Royal Highnesses you will understand better from his own Letter.  Which letter I am ordered to deliver to your Royal Highnesses with all observance and due respect; and, should your Royal Highnesses, as we greatly hope, grant a favourable and speedy answer, you will both do an act most gratifying to the Lord Protector, who has taken this business deeply to heart, and to the whole Commonwealth of England, and also restore, by an exercise of mercy very worthy of your Royal Highnesses, life, safety, spirit, country, and estates to many thousands of most afflicted people who depend on your pleasure; and me you will send back to my native country as the happy messenger of your conspicuous clemency, with great joy and report of your exalted virtues, the deeply obliged servant of your Royal Highnesses for evermore."[3]

[Footnote 1:  So dated in the official copy preserved in the Record Office (Hamilton’s Milton Papers, p. 15) and in the copy actually delivered to the Duke (Morland, pp. 572-574)—­the phrase in both being “Dabantur ex aula nostra Westmonasterii, 25 Maii, anno 1654.”  In the Skinner Transcript, however, the dating is “Westmonsterio, May 10, 1655;” which again is changed into “Alba Aula, May 1655,” i.e.  “Whitehall, May 1655” (month only given) in the Printed Collections and in Phillips.]

[Footnote 2:  There are one or two slight verbal differences between Milton’s original draft, here translated, and the official copy as actually delivered to the Duke, and as printed by Morland.  Thus, in the first sentence, instead of "Redditae sunt nobis e Geneva, necnon ex Delphinatu aliisque multis ex locis ditioni vestrae finitimis, literae," the official copy has simply "Redditae sunt nobis multis ex locis ditioni vestae finitimis literae."]