[Footnote 1:  Whitlocke, IV. 257.]

[Footnote 2:  Whitlocke, from his interest in Swedish affairs, had taken ample notes of the negotiations with Count Bundt; and his story of them is unusually minute.  One observes that more than once in the course of it he dwells on the fact that, though employed by the Protector in this business, and taking the lead in it, he was still not one of the Council.]

The excuse of the Commissioners to Count Bundt for having sent the Articles to Milton for translation was that “several other servants of the Council, fit for that employment, were then absent.”  They mast have referred, in particular, to Mr. Philip Meadows, the Latin Secretary in Ordinary.  He had, we find, taken some part in the negotiation in its earlier stage;[1] but, before it had proceeded far, he had been selected for a service which took him out of England.  In December 1655 it had been resolved to send a special agent to Portugal; and on the 19th of February, 1655-6, at a Council meeting at which Cromwell himself was present, Meadows, thought of from the first, was formally nominated as the fit person.  It was a great promotion for Meadows; for, whereas his salary hitherto in the Latin Secretaryship had been L200 a year, his allowance for the Portuguese agency was to be L800 a year or more.  On the 21st of February he had L300 advanced to him for his outfit; on the 28th he was voted L100, being for two quarters of his Secretarial salary due to him, with L50 more for the quarter then current but not completed; and within a few days afterwards he was on his way to Lisbon.[2] His departure, I should say—­preceded perhaps by a week or two of cessation from office duty in preparation for it—­was the real cause of the re-employment of Milton at this time in such routine work as we have seen him engaged in.  All or most of his former letters for the Protector, it may have been noticed, e.g. those on the Piedmontese business, had been on important occasions, such as might justify resort to the Latin Secretary Extraordinary; but in the batch written since Dec. 1655, when Meadows’s Portuguese mission had been resolved on, the ordinary and the extraordinary come together, and Milton, in writing letters about ships, as well as in translating draft articles, does work that would have been done by Meadows.  And this arrangement, we may add, was to continue henceforth.  For, despite the sneers of Count Bundt as to the poverty of the Protector’s official staff, the Protector and Council, we shall find, were in no hurry to fill up the place left vacant by Meadows, but were quite satisfied that Mr. Milton should go on doing his best alone, with Thurloe to instruct him, and with the help of such underlings in Latin as Thurloe could put at his disposal.  My belief is that Milton was pleased at this trust in his renewed ability for ordinary business.

[Footnote 1:  Whitlocke, IV. 218; where it is mentioned that in Dec. 1655 Meadows communicated with Whitlocke on the subject of the Treaty by Thurloe’s orders.]