[Footnote 1:  The translation of this letter by Phillips is unusually careless.  It jumbles the tenses in such a manner that the Peace between Sweden and Denmark does not seem to have yet taken place, but only to be hoped for by Cromwell.  In fact, Phillips’s translation robs the letter of all its meaning and interest.]

[Footnote 2:  Baillie, III. 371.]

(CXIX.) TO THE GRAND-DUKE OF TUSCANY, April 7, 1658:—­A John Hosier, master of a ship called The Lady, had been swindled in April 1656 by an Italian named Guiseppe Armani, who has moreover possessed himself fraudulently of 6000 pieces of eight belonging to one Thomas Clutterbuck.  There is a suit against Armani at Leghorn; but Hosier, after going to great expenses, is deterred from appearing there by threats of personal violence.  “We therefore request your Highness both to relieve this oppressed man, and also to restrain the insolence of his adversary, according to your accustomed justice.”

(CXX.) TO LOUIS XIV.  OF FRANCE, May 26, 1658:[1]—­This is a very momentous letter.  It is Cromwell’s appeal to the French King in behalf once more of the poor Piedmontese Protestants:—­“Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,—­Your Majesty may remember that, at the time when there was treaty between us for the renewing of our League [April 1655]—­the highly auspicious nature of which transaction is now testified by many resulting advantages to both nations and much damage to the common enemy—­there fell out that miserable massacre of the People of the Valleys, whose cause, forsaken on all hands and sorely beset, we commended, with all ardour of heart and commiseration, to your pity and protection.  Nor do we think that your Majesty, of yourself, was wanting in a duty so pious, nay so human, in as far as, by your authority or by the respect due to your person, you could prevail with the Duke of Savoy.  We, certainly, and many other Princes and States, were not wanting, in the matter of embassies, letters, interposed entreaties, on the subject.  After a most bloody slaughter of both sexes and of every age, Peace was at last granted, or rather a kind of more guarded hostility clothed with the name of Peace:  the conditions of the Peace were settled in your town of Pignerol—­hard conditions indeed, but in which wretched and poor people that had suffered all that was dreadful and brutal might easily acquiesce, if only, hard and unjust as they are, they were to be stood to.  They are not stood to; for the promise of each and all of them is eluded and violated by false interpretation and various asides:  many are thrown out of their ancient abodes; many are interdicted from their native religion; new tributes are exacted; a new citadel is hung over their heads, whence soldiers frequently break forth, plundering or murdering all they meet:  in addition to all which, new forces of late are secretly being got ready against them,