(LXV.) TO THE DOGE OF VENICE, Dec. 1655:—­His Highness congratulates the Venetians upon their recent naval victory over the Turks, but brings to their notice the fact that among the ships they had taken in that victory there was an English one, called The Great Prince, belonging to William and Daniel Williams and Edward Beal, English merchants.  She had been pressed by the Turks at Constantinople, and employed as a transport for Turkish soldiers and provisions to Crete.  The crew had been helpless in the affair, and the owners blameless; and his Highness does not doubt that the Doge and Senate will immediately give him a token of their friendship by causing the ship to be restored.—­The naval victory of the Venetians was, doubtless, that which Morus had celebrated In the Latin poem for which he received his gold chain (ante pp. 212-213).

(LXVI.) To LOUIS XIV.  OF FRANCE, Dec. 1655:—­Samuel Mico, William Cockain, George Poyner, and other English merchants have petitioned his Highness about a ship of theirs, called The Unicorn, which had been seized in the Mediterranean as long ago as 1650 by the Admiral and Vice-Admiral of the French fleet, with a cargo worth L34,000.  The capture was originally unfair, as there was then peace between England and France, and express promises had been recently given by Cardinal Mazarin and the French Ambassador, M. de Bordeaux, that amends would be made as soon as the Treaty with France was complete.  That happily being now the case, his Highness expects from his Majesty the indemnification of the said merchants as “the first-fruits of the renewed friendship and recently formed alliance.”

(LXVII.) To LOUIS XIV.  OF FRANCE, Jan. 1655-56:[1]—­His Highness has been informed of very extraordinary conduct on the part of the French Governor of Belleisle in the Bay of Biscay.  On the 10th of December last, or thereabouts, he not only admitted into his port one Dillon, a piratic enemy of the English Commonwealth, and assisted him with supplies, but also prevented the recapture of a merchant ship from the said Dillon by Captain Robert Vessey of the Nightingale war-ship, and further secured Dillon’s escape when Vessey had fought him and had him at his mercy.  All this is, of course, utterly against the recent Treaty:  and his Majesty will doubtless take due notice of the Governor’s conduct and give satisfaction.

[Footnote 1:  Not in the Printed Collection nor in Phillips; but in the Skinner Transcript (No. 46 there), and printed thence in Hamilton’s Milton Papers (p. 4).]