moaning and starving; and not a few, women and infants especially, perished amid the snows.  On the 27th of April some of the remaining Protestant pastors and others, gathered together somewhere, addressed a circular letter to Protestants outside the Valleys, stating the hard case of the survivors.  “Our beautiful and flourishing churches,” they said, “are utterly lost, and that without remedy, unless God Almighty work miracles for us.  Their time is come, and our measure is full.  O have pity upon the desolations of Jerusalem, and be grieved for the afflictions of poor Joseph!  Shew the real effects of your compassions, and let your bowels yearn for so many thousands of poor souls who are reduced to a morsel of bread for following the Lamb whithersoever he goes."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Morland’s History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piedmont, with a Relation of the Massacre (1658), 287-428; Guizot, II. 213-215.]

There was a shudder of abhorrence through Protestant Europe, but no one was so much roused as Cromwell.  In the interval between the Duke of Savoy’s edict and the Massacre he had been desirous that the Vaudois should publicly appeal to him rather than to the Swiss; and, when the news of the Massacre reached England, he avowed that it came “as near his heart as if his own nearest and dearest had been concerned.”  On Thursday the 17th of May, and for many days more, the business of the Savoy Protestants was the chief occupation of the Council.  Letters, all in Milton’s Latin, but signed by the Lord Protector in his own name, were despatched (May 25) to the Duke of Savoy himself, to the French King, to the States General of the United Provinces, to the Protestant Swiss Cantons, to the King of Sweden, to the King of Denmark, and to Ragotski, Prince of Transylvania.  A day of humiliation was appointed for the Cities of London and Westminster, and another for all England.  A Committee was appointed, consisting of all the Councillors, with Sir Christopher Pack and other eminent citizens, and also some ministers, to organize a general collection of money throughout England and Wales in behalf of the suffering Vaudois.  The collection, as arranged June 1, was to take the form of a house-to-house visitation by the ministers and churchwardens in every city, town, and parish on a particular Lord’s day, for the receipt of whatever sum each householder might freely give, every such sum to be noted in presence of the donor, and the aggregates, parish by parish, or city by city, to be remitted to the treasurers in London, who were to enter them duly in a general register.  The subscription, which lagged for a time in some districts, produced at length a total of L38,097 7_s._ 3_d._—­equal to about L137,000 now.  Of this sum L2000 (equal to about L7500 now) was Cromwell’s own contribution, while London and Westminster contributed L9384 6_s._ 11_d._, and the various counties sums of various magnitudes, according to their size, wealth, and zeal, from Devonshire at