Milan.  Though they held proof of his guilt in the matter of Ser Mafio’s murder, the Venetians were apparently unwilling to proceed to extremities against the King of England’s man.  Early in February, however, Sir William Paget surrendered him in the name of Lord Protector Somerset to the discretion of S. Mark.  Furnished with this assurance that Dall’Armi had lost the favor of England, the Signory wrote to demand his arrest and extradition from the Spanish governor in Milan.  He was in fact arrested on February 10.  The letter announcing his capture describes him as a man of remarkably handsome figure, accustomed to wear a crimson velvet cloak and a red cap trimmed with gold.  It is exactly in this costume that Lodovico has been represented by Bonifazio in a picture of the Massacre of the Innocents.  The bravo there stands with his back partly turned, gazing stolidly upon a complex scene of bloodshed.  He wears a crimson velvet mantle, scarlet cap and white feather, scarlet stockings, crimson velvet shoes, and rose-colored silk underjacket.  His person is that of a gallant past the age of thirty, high-complexioned, with short brown beard, spare whiskers and moustache.  He is good to look at, except that the sharp set mouth suggests cynical vulgarity and shallow rashness.  On being arrested in Milan, Lodovico proclaimed himself a privileged person (persona pubblica), bearing credentials from the King of England; and, during the first weeks of his confinement, he wrote to the Emperor for help.  This was an idle step.  Henry’s death had left him without protectors, and Charles V. felt no hesitation in abandoning his suppliant to the Venetians.  When the usual formalities regarding extradition had been completed, the Milanese Government delivered Lodovico at the end of April into the hands of the Rector of Brescia, who forwarded him under a guard of two hundred men to Padua.  He was hand-cuffed; and special directions were given regarding his safety, it being even prescribed that if he refused food it should be thrust down his throat.  What passed in the prisons of the State, after his arrival at Venice, is not known.  But on May 14, he was beheaded between the columns on the Molo.

Venice, at this epoch, incurred the reproaches of her neighbors for harboring adventurers of Lodovico’s stamp.  One of the Fregosi of Genoa a certain Valerio, and Pietro Strozzi, the notorious French agent, all of whom habitually haunted the lagoons, roused sufficient public anxiety to necessitate diplomatic communications between Courts, and to disquiet fretful Italian princelings.  Banished from their own provinces, and plying a petty Condottiere trade, such men, when they came together on a neutral ground, engaged in cross-intrigues which made them politically dangerous.  They served no interest but that of their own egotism, and they were notoriously unscrupulous in the means employed to effect immediate objects.  At the same time, the protection which they claimed from