criminals; and, in a Latin letter to Cromwell, dated “Alcantara, May 26, N.S.,” he professed his desire to have them punished, whether they were English refugees or native Portuguese.[2] The present Letter by Milton is the Protector’s reply.  Though there has been some interval since the receipt of his Majesty’s letter, his Highness has not yet heard that the criminals have been apprehended; and he insists that there shall be a vigorous prosecution of the search and recommends that it should be put into the hands of “some persons of honesty and sincerity, well-wishers to both nations.”

[Footnote 1:  Thurloe to Pell, June 26, Vaughan’s Protectorate, I. 432.]

[Footnote 2:  See Letter itself in Thurloe, V. 28.]

(LXXXIII.) To Louis XIV. of France, Aug. 1656:—­Again about a ship, but this time in a peremptory strain.—­Richard Baker and Co. of London have complained to the Protector that a ship of theirs, called The Endeavour, William Jopp master, laden at Teneriffe with 300 pipes of rich Canary wine, had, in November last, been seized by four French privateer vessels under command of a Giles de la Roche, who had carried ship, cargo, and most of the crew away to the East Indies, after landing fourteen of the crew on the Guinea coast.  For this daring act he had pleaded no excuse, except that his own fleet wanted provisions and that he believed the owners of his fleet would make good the loss.  The Protector now demands that L16,000 be paid to Messrs. Baker and Co., and also that Giles de la Roche be punished.  It concerns his French Majesty’s honour to see to this, after that recent League with the English Commonwealth to which his royal oath is pledged.  Otherwise all faith in Leagues will be at an end.

(LXXXIV.) TO CARDINAL, MAZARIN, Aug. 1656:—­On the same subject as the last.  While writing to the King about such an outrage, the Protector cannot refrain from imparting the matter also to his Eminence, as “the sole and only person whose singular prudence governs the most important affairs of the French and the chief business of the kingdom, with equal fidelity, counsel, and vigilance.”

(LXXXV.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, Aug. 1656.  A Letter of some length, and very important.  “We doubt not,” It begins, “but all will bear us this testimony—­that no considerations have ever been stronger with us in contracting foreign alliances than, the duty of defending the Truth of Religion, and that we have never accounted anything more sacred than the union and reconciliation of those who are either the friends and defenders of Protestants, or at least not their enemies.”  With what grief, then, does his Highness hear of new dissensions breaking out among Protestant powers, and especially of signs of a rupture between the United Provinces and Sweden!  Should there be war between those two great Protestant powers, how