(CXLIII.) To ALFONSO V., KING OF PORTUGAL, Feb. 23, 1658-9:[1]—­Congratulations to his Portuguese Majesty upon a victory he had recently obtained over “our common enemy the Spaniard,” with acknowledgment of his Majesty’s handsome behaviour, through his Commissioners in London, in the matter of satisfaction, according to an article in the League between Portugal and the English Commonwealth, to those English merchants who had let out their vessels to the Brazil Company.  But there is still one such merchant unpaid—­a certain Alexander Bence, whose ship, The Three Brothers, John Wilks master, had made two voyages for the Company.  They refuse to pay him, though they have fully paid others who had made but one voyage; and “why this is done I do not understand, unless it be that in their estimation a person is more worthy of his hire who has earned it once than one who has earned it twice.”  Will his Majesty see that Bence receives his due?

[Footnote 1:  In the Printed Collection and Phillips, and also, I think, in the Skinner Transcript, the king’s name is given as “John”; but John IV. of Portugal had died in 1656 and been succeeded by Alfonso.]

These six letters belong to the first month of Richard’s Parliament, with its very large and freely elected House of Commons representing England, Scotland, and Ireland, and its anomalous addition or excrescence of another or Upper House, consisting of the two or three scores of recently-created Cromwellian “Lords.”  The battle between the Republicans and the Protectoratists had begun in the Commons, Thurloe ably leading there for the Protectoratists; the Republicans had been beaten on the first great question by the recognition of the Single-Person principle and of Richard’s title to the Protectorship; and the House had gone on to the question of the continued existence and functions of the other House, with every prospect that the Cromwillians would beat the Republicans on that question too.  From January to April, not only in the Parliament, but also over the country at large, the all-engrossing interest, as we know, was this controversy between pure old Republicanism, desiring neither single sovereignty nor aristocracy, and that more conservative form of Commonwealth which had been set up by the Oliverian constitution.  Over the country, no less than in the Parliament, the conservative policy was in favour, and the Cromwellians or Protectoratists, among whom the Presbyterians now ranked themselves, were far more numerous than the old Republicans.  Royalism, or at least Stuart Royalism, was at its lowest ebb.  Many that had been Royalists heretofore had accepted the constitutionalized Protectorate as the best substitute for Royalty that circumstances allowed, and saw no course left them but to cooperate with the majority of their countrymen in confirming Richard’s rule.