Chapter XVI: Section II: From January 1654-5 to September 1656, or Through the (4)

On her own account she deserves it. We have already seen (ante Vol. III. 658-660) who she was,--by marriage the Viscountess Ranelagh, wife of Arthur Jones, second Viscount Ranelagh in the Irish Peerage, but by birth Catharine Boyle, daughter of the great Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, with the four surviving sons of that Earl for her brothers, and his five other surviving daughters for her sisters.--Of her four brothers, the eldest, Richard Boyle, second Earl of Cork, lived generally in Ireland, looking after his great estates there; and indeed it was in Ireland that most of the family had their chief properties. But the second brother, Roger Boyle, Lord Broghhill, already known to us for his services in Ireland under Cromwell, and for his conspicuous fidelity to Cromwell ever since, was now in Scotland, as President of Cromwell's Council there. _He_ may be called the literary brother; for, though his chief activity hitherto had been in war and politics, he had found time to write and publish his long romance or novel called _Parthenissa_, and so to begin a literary reputation which was to be increased by poems, tragedies, comedies, &c., in no small profusion, in coming years. His age, at our present date, was about thirty-four. Two years younger was Francis Boyle, the third brother, afterwards Lord Shannon, and four years younger still was the philosophical and scientific brother, Mr. Boyle, or "the Honourable Mr. Robert Boyle." When we last saw this extraordinary young man, after his return from his travels, i.e. in 1645-48, he was in retirement at Stalbridge in Dorsetshire, absorbed in studies and in chemical experiments, but corresponding eagerly with Hartlib and others in London, and sometimes coming to town himself, when he would attend those meetings of the _Invisible College_, the germ of the future Royal Society, about the delights of which Hartlib was never tired of writing to him. This mode of life he had continued, with the interruption of a journey or two abroad, till 1652. "Nor am I here altogether idle," he says in one of his latest letters to Hartlib from Stalbridge; "for I can sometimes make a shift to snatch from the importunity of my affairs leisure to trace such plans, and frame such models, as, if my Irish fortune will afford me quarries and woods to draw competent materials from to construct after them, will fit me to build a pretty house in Athens, where I may live to Philosophy and Mr. Hartlib." The necessity of looking after the Irish fortune of which he here speaks had since then taken him to Ireland and kept him there for the greater part of two years. He found it, he says, "a barbarous country, where chemical spirits were so misunderstood, and chemical instruments so unprocurable, that it was hard to have any Hermetic thoughts in it;" and he had betaken himself to "anatomical dissections" as the only kind of scientific pastime that Irish conditions favoured. On returning to England, in 1654, he had settled in Oxford, to be in the society of Wilkins, Wallis, Goddard, Ward, Petty, Bathurst, Willis, and other kindred scientific spirits, most of them recently transferred from London to posts in the University, and so forming the Oxford offshoot of the _Invisible College_, as distinct from the London original. But still from Oxford, as formerly from Stalbridge, the young philosopher made occasional visits to London; and always, when there, he was to be found at the house of his sister, Lady Ranelagh.--What property belonged to Lady Ranelagh herself, or to her husband, lay also mainly in Ireland; but for many years, in consequence of the distracted state of that country, her residence had been in London. "In the Pall Mall, in the suburbs of Westminster," is the more exact designation. Her Irish property seems, for the present, to have yielded her but a dubious revenue; and though she had a Government pension of £4 a week on some account or other, she seems to have been dependent in some degree on subsidies from her wealthier relatives. It also appears, though hazily, that there was some deep-rooted disagreement between her and her husband, and that, if he was not generally away in Ireland, he was at least now seldom with her in London. She had her children with her, however. One of these was her only son, styled then simply Mr. Richard Jones, though modern custom would style him Lord Navan. In 1655 he was a boy of fifteen years of age, Lady Ranelagh herself being then just forty. The education of this boy, and of her two or three girls, was her main anxiety; but she took a deep interest as well in the affairs of all the members of the Boyle family, not one of whom would take any step of importance without consulting her. She corresponded with them all, but especially with Lord Broghill and the philosophical young Robert, both of them her juniors, and Robert peculiarly her _protegé_. In his letters to her, all written carefully and in a strain of stately and respectful affection, we see the most absolute confidence in her judgment; and it is from her letters to him, full of solicitude about his health, and of interest in his experiments and speculations, that we obtain perhaps the best idea of that combination of intellectual and moral excellencies to which her contemporaries felt they could not do justice except by calling her "the incomparable Lady Ranelagh." For that name, which was to be hers through an entire generation more, was already as common in talk about her beyond the circle of her own family as the affectionate one of "Sister Ranelagh" was within that circle. Partly it was because she was one of the best-educated women of her time, with the widest tastes and sympathies in matters literary and philosophical, and with much of that genius of the Boyles, though in feminine form, which was represented by Lord Broghill and Robert Boyle among her brothers. Just before our present date we find her taking lessons in Hebrew from a Scotch teacher of that language then in London, who afterwards dedicated his _Gate to the Holy Tongue_ to her, with much respect for her "proficiency in so short a time," and "amidst so many abstractions as she was surrounded with." And so in things of greater grasp. In writing to her brother Robert her satisfaction with the new Experimental Philosophy which he and others are trying to institute can express itself as a belief that it will "help the considering part of mankind to a clearer prospect into this great frame of the visible world, and therein of the power and wisdom of its great Maker, than the rough draft wherein it has hitherto been represented in the ignorant and wholesale philosophy that has so long, by the power of an implicit faith in the doctrine of Aristotle and the Schools, gone current in the world has ever been able to assist them towards." But it was not merely by variety of intellectual culture that Lady Ranelagh was distinguished. One cannot read her letters without discerning in them a deep foundation of piety in the best sense, real wisdom, a serious determination with herself to make her own life as actively useful as possible, and a disposition always to relate herself to what was sterling around her. "Though some particular opinions might shut her up in a divided communion," said Burnet of her long afterwards, "yet her soul was never of a party. She divided her charities and friendships, her esteem as well as her bounty, with the truest regard to merit and her own obligations, without any difference made upon the account of opinion." This was true even at our present date, when she was an Oliverian in politics, like her brother Broghill, though perhaps more moderately so, and in religious matters what may be called a very liberal Puritan.[1]

[Footnote 1: Birch's Life of Robert Boyle, prefixed to edition of Boyle's Works, pp. 27-33; Letters of Boyle to Lady Ranelagh and of Lady Ranelagh to Boyle in Vol. V. of his Works; Notes by Mr. Crossley to his edition of _Worthington's Diary and Correspondence_ for the Chetham Society, I. p. 164-165, and 366. Mrs. Green's Calendar of State-Papers for 1651, p. 574.]

How long Lady Ranelagh had known Milton is uncertain; but, as her nephew, the young Earl of Barrimore, had been one of Milton's pupils in his house in the Barbican, and as we had express information that he had been sent there by his aunt, the acquaintance must have begun as early as 1646 or 1647. And now, it appears, through all the intermediate eight years of Milton's changes of residence and fortune, including his six in the Latin Secretaryship, the acquaintanceship has been kept up, and has been growing more intimate, till, in 1655, in his widowerhood and blindness in his house in Petty France, there is no one, and certainly no lady, that more frequently calls upon him, or whose voice, on the staircase, announcing who the visitor is, he is more pleased to hear. They were close neighbours, only St. James's Park between their houses; and his having taught her nephew, the young Earl of Barrimore, was not now the only link of that kind between themselves. She had not been satisfied till she had contrived that her own son should, to some extent, be Milton's pupil too. "My Lady Ranelagh, whose son for some time he instructed" are Phillips's words on this point; and, though we included Lady Ranelagh's son, Mr. Richard Jones, afterwards third Viscount and first Earl of Ranelagh, in our general enumeration of Milton's pupils, given under the year 1647, when the Barbican establishment was complete, it was with the intimation that this particular pupil, then but seven years old, could hardly have been one of the Barbican boys, but must have had the benefit of lessons from Milton in some exceptional way afterwards. The fact, on the likeliest construction of the evidence, seems to have been that Milton, to oblige Lady Ranelagh, had quite recently allowed the boy to come daily, or every other day, from his mother's house in Pall Mall to Petty France, to sit with him for an hour or two, and read Greek and Latin. To the end of his life Milton found this easy kind of pedagogy a pleasant amusement in his blindness, and made it indeed one of his devices for help to himself in his readings and references to books; and Lady Ranelagh's son may have been his first experiment in the method. That he retained an interest in this young Ranelagh of a semi-tutorial kind, as well as on his mother's account, the sequel will prove.

Strange things do happen in real life; and actually it was possible that, on the day of one of Lady Ranelagh's visits to Milton, she might have had a call in her own house from Dr. Peter Du Moulin. For her ladyship's circle of acquaintance did include this gentleman. He had been tutor in Ireland to her two nephews, Viscount Dungarvan and Mr. Richard Boyle, sons of her eldest brother, the Earl of Cork, and he had come with them, still in that capacity, to Oxford (ante p. 224), and so had been introduced into the whole Boyle connexion.[1] What amount of awkwardness there may have been in a possible meeting between Du Moulin and Milton themselves through this common social connexion of theirs in London has been already discussed. The Ranelagh circle, for the rest, included all those, or most of them, that were Milton's friends independently, and could converse about him in her ladyship's own spirit. The family of Lord President Lawrence, for example, were in high esteem with Lady Ranelagh; and the President's son, Mr. Henry Lawrence, Milton's young friend, and presumably one of his former pupils of the Barbican days, seems to have been about this time much in the company of her ladyship's nephew, the Earl of Barrimore. That young nobleman, we may mention, had become a married man, shortly after he had ceased to be Milton's pupil in the Barbican, and was now leading a gallant and rather idle life about London, but not quite astray from his aunt's society, or perhaps from Milton's either.[2] Then there were Hartlib, Durie, Haak, and other lights of the London branch of the _Invisible College_, friends of Robert Boyle for years past, and corresponding with him and the other luminaries of the Oxford colony of the _College_. Hartlib, in particular, who now lived at Charing Gross, and who had found a new theme of interest in the wonderful abilities and wonderful experiments of Mr. Clodius, a German chemist, who had recently become his son-in-law, was still in constant correspondence with Boyle, and was often at Lady Ranelagh's on some occasion or other.[3] Nor must Milton's new German friend, Henry Oldenburg, the agent for Bremen, be forgotten. He also, as we shall find, had been drawn, in a special manner, into the Boyle and Ranelagh connexion, and was, in fact, entering, by means of this connexion, on that part of his interesting career for which he is remembered in the annals of English science. He was to marry Durie's only daughter, and be retained by that tie, as well as by others, in the Hartlib-Durie cluster of Milton's friends.

[Footnote 1: Dr. Peter Du Moulin was one of Robert Boyle's friends and correspondents both before and after the Restoration. It was at Boyle's request that Du Moulin translated and published in 1658 a little book called _The Devil of Mascon_, a French story of well-authenticated spirit-rapping; and the book was dedicated by Dumoulin to Boyle, and Boyle contributed an introductory letter to it. Moreover, it was to Boyle that Du Moulin in 1670 dedicated the first part of his _Parerga_ or Collection of Latin Poems, the second part of which contained his reprint of the Iambics against Milton from the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_.--See Birch's Life of Boyle, p. 60, and four letters of Du Moulin to Boyle in Boyle's Works, Vol. V (pp 594-596). In three of these letters, all written after the Restoration, Du Moulin presents his respectful services to "My Honourable Lady Ranelagh" in terms implying long-established acquaintanceship. But there are other scattered proofs of Du Moulin's long intimacy with the whole Boyle family.]

[Footnote 2: The young Earl had married, hastily and against his mother's will, in 1649, shortly after he had been Milton's pupil. See a letter of condolence on the subject from Robert Boyle to his sister, the young Earl's mother (Boyle's Works, V. 240). For the intimacy between the young Earl of Barrimore and young Henry Lawrence see a letter of Hartlib's to Boyle. (Ibid. V. 279).]

[Footnote 3: Letters of Hartlib to Boyle in Vol. V. of Boyle's Works.]

Marvell, Needham, and Cyriack Skinner are not certainly known to have been among Lady Ranelagh's acquaintances. _Their_ visits to Milton, therefore, have to be imagined apart. Marvell's, if he were still domiciled at Eton, can have been but occasional, but must have been always welcome. Needham's cannot have been, as formerly, on business connected with the _Mercurius Politicus_; for Milton had ceased for some years to have anything to do with the editorship of that journal. The duty of licensing it and its weekly double, _The Public Intelligencer_, also edited by Needham and published by Newcome, was now performed regularly by the omnipotent Thurloe. Both journals would come to Milton's house, to be read to him; and Needham, in his visits, would bring other gossip of the town, and be altogether a very chatty companion. "Above all, Mr. Cyriack Skinner" is, however, Phillips's phrase in his enumeration of those of his uncle's friends who were most frequently with him about this time. The words imply that, since June 1654, when this old pupil of Milton's had again "got near" him (Vol. IV. pp. 621-623), his attention to Milton had been unremitting, so that Milton had come to depend upon it and to expect him almost daily. On that understanding it is that we may read most luminously four private Sonnets of Milton, all of the year 1655, two of them addressed to Cyriack Skinner, and one to young Lawrence. The remaining sonnet, standing first of the four in the printed editions, is addressed to no one in particular; but the four will be read best in connexion. In reading them Cyriack Skinner is to be pictured as about twenty-eight years of age, and Lawrence as a youth of two and twenty:--

(1)

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He, returning, chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies:--"God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."

(2)

Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, though clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot;
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
In Liberty's defence, my noble task,
Of which all Europe talks from side to side.
This thought might lead me through the world's vain masque
Content, though blind, had I no better guide.

(3)

Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,
Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,
Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire
Help waste a sullen day, what may be won
From the hard season gaining? Time will run
On smoother, till Favonius reinspire
The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire
The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun.
What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise
To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice
Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?
He who of those delights can judge, and spare
To interpose them oft, is not unwise.

(4)

Cyriack, whose grandsire on the royal bench
Of British Themis, with no mean applause,
Pronounced, and in his volumes taught, our laws,
Which others at their bar so often wrench,
To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench
In mirth that after no repenting draws;
Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause,
And what the Swede intend, and what the French.
To measure life learn thou betimes, and know
Toward solid good what leads the nearest way;
For other things mild Heaven a time ordains,
And disapproves that care, though wise in show,
That with superfluous burden loads the day,
And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.

It has been argued that the last two of these Sonnets must be out of their proper chronological places in the printed editions. They must have been written, it is said, before Milton lost his sight: for how are such invitations to mirth and festivity reconcileable with Milton's circumstances in the third or fourth year of his blindness? There is no mistake in the matter, however. In Milton's own second or 1673 edition of his Minor Poems the sonnets, in the order in which we have printed them,--with the exception of No. 2, which had then to be omitted on account of its political point,--come immediately after the sonnet on the Piedmontese Massacre; and there are other reasons of external evidence which assign Nos. 1, 3, and 4, distinctly to about the same date as No. 2, the opening--words of which date _it_ near the middle of 1655. But, indeed, we should miss much of the biographic interest of the last two sonnets by detaching them from the two first. In No. 1 we have a plaintive soliloquy of Milton on his blind and disabled condition, ending with that beautiful expression of his resignation to God's will in which, under the image of the varieties of service that may be required by some great monarch, he contrasts his own stationariness and inactivity with the energy and bustle of so many of his contemporaries. In No. 2, addressed to Cyriack Skinner, he treats of the same topic, only reverting with pride, as he had done several times in prose, to the literary labour that had brought on his calamity. In both the intimation is that he has disciplined himself to live on as cheerfully as possible, taking daily duties, and little pleasures too, as they come. What more natural, therefore, than that, some little while after those two affecting sonnets on his blindness had been written, there should be two others, in which not a word should be said of his blindness, but young Lawrence and Cyriack Skinner should find themselves invited, in a more express manner than usual, to a day in Milton's company? For that is the proper construction of the Sonnets. They are cards of invitation to little parties, perhaps to one and the same little party, in Milton's house in the winter of 1655-6. It is dull, cold, weather; the Parks are wet, and the country-roads all mire; and for some days Milton has been baulked of his customary walk out of doors, tended by young Lawrence or Cyriack. To make amends, there shall be a little dinner in the warm room at home--"a neat repast" says Milton temptingly, adding "with wine," that there may be no doubt in that particular--to be followed by a long talk and some choice music. So young Lawrence is informed in the metrical missive to _him_; and the same day (unless, as we may hope, the little dinner became a periodical institution in Milton's house), Cyriack is told to come too. Altogether they are model cards of invitation.[1]

[Footnote 1: More detailed reasons for the dating of Sonnets 1, 3, and 4 (for Sonnet 2 dates itself) will be found in the Introductions to those Sonnets in the Cambridge Edition of Milton. In line 12 of No. 2 I have substituted the word "talks" for the word "rings," now always printed in that place. "Of which all Europe rings from side to side," is the reading in the copy of the Sonnet as first printed by Phillips in 1694 at the end of his memoir of Milton; but that copy is corrupt in several places. The original dictated draft of the Sonnet among the Milton MSS. at Cambridge is to be taken as the true text; and there the word is "talks." Phillips had doubtless the echo of "rings" in his ear from the Sonnet to Fairfax. The more sonorous reading, however, has found such general acceptance that an editor hardly dares to revert to "talks."]

We are now in the winter of 1655-6, and we have seen no Secretarial work from Milton since his letters and other documents in the business of the Piedmontese Protestants in May, June, and July, 1655. Officially, therefore, he had had another relapse into idleness. Not, however, into total idleness. "_Scriptum Dom. Protectoris Reipublicæ Anglicæ, Scotiæ, Hiberniæ, &c., ex Consensa atque Sententia Concilii Sui Edictum, in quo Hujus Reipublicæ Causa contra Hispanos justa esse demonstratur_, 1655" ("Manifesto of the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland. Ireland, &c., put forth by the consent and advice of his Council, in which the justice of the cause of this Commonwealth against the Spaniards is demonstrated, 1655"), is the title of a Latin document, of the length of about twenty such pages as the present, now always included in editions of Milton's prose-writings, on the probability, though not quite the certainty, that it was Milton's performance. If so, it was the third great document in the nature of a Declaration of War furnished by Milton for the Commonwealth, the two former having been his Latin version of the Declaration of the Causes of War against the Scots in June 1650 (IV. 228) and his similar version of the Declaration against the Dutch in July 1652 (IV. 482-483). The present manifesto was perhaps a more difficult document to draft than either of those had been, inasmuch as Cromwell had to justify in it his recent attack upon the Spanish possessions in the West Indies. Accordingly, the manifesto had been prepared with some pains. It passed the Council finally on the 26th of October, 1655, four days after the Spanish ambassador Cardenas had left England, and two days after the Treaty between Cromwell and France had been signed;[1] and the Latin copies of it were out in London on the 9th of November.[2] Unlike the previous Declarations against the Scots and the Dutch, which had been printed in several languages, it appears to have been printed in Latin only.

[Footnote 1: Council Order Book of date.]

[Footnote 2: Dated copy among the Thomason Pamphlets.]

A general notion of the document will be obtained from, an extract or two in translation. The opening is as follows:--

"That the causes that induced us to our recent attack on certain
Islands in the West Indies, now for some time past in the
possession of the Spaniards, are just and in the highest degree
reasonable, there is no one but will easily understand if only he
will reflect in what manner that King and his subjects have always
conducted themselves towards the English nation in that tract of
America ... Whenever they have opportunity, though without the
least reason of justice, and with no provocation of injury, they
are incessantly killing, murdering, nay butchering in cold blood,
our countrymen there, as they think fit, seizing their goods and
fortunes, destroying their plantations and houses, capturing any of
their vessels they may meet on those seas, and treating their crews
as enemies and even pirates. For they call by that opprobrious name
all of any nation, themselves alone excepted, who dare to navigate
those waters. Nor do they profess to have any other or better right
for this than reliance on some ridiculous donation of the Pope, and
the fact that they were the first discoverers of some parts of that
western region ... Certainly it would have been disgraceful and
unworthy in us, in possession as we were, by God's bounty, of so
many ships, furnished, equipped, and ready for every use of
maritime warfare, to have chosen to let them rot idly at home,
rather than employ them in those parts in avenging the blood of the
English, so unjustly, so inhumanly, and so often, shed by the
Spaniards there,--nay, the blood too of the Indians, inasmuch as
God 'hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all
the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before
appointed, and the bounds of their habitation' [Acts xvii. 26] ...
Our purpose, however, is to show the right and equity of the
transaction itself, rather than to state all our several reasons
for it. And, that we may do this the more clearly, and explain
general assertions by particulars, it will be proper to cast our
eyes back a little into the past, and to run strictly over the
transactions between the English and the Spaniards, observing the
state of affairs on both sides, as far as mutual relations were
concerned, from the time of the first discovery of the West Indies
and of the Reformation of Religion. For those two great events, as
they were nearly contemporary, occasioned everywhere in the world
vast changes, but especially as between the English and the
Spaniards; which two nations have from that time followed diverse
and almost opposite methods and principles in the management of
their affairs."

The manifesto, accordingly, then reviews the history of the relations between Spain and England from the time of Henry VIII., appending at last a long list of more recent outrages by the Spaniards on English ships and settlements in the West Indies, the dates all duly given, with the names of the ships and their captains, and the values of the cargoes. After which, returning to more general considerations, it discusses the two pretexts of the Spaniards for their sole sovereignty in the West Indies,--the Papal donation, and the right of first discovery. Both are dismissed as absurd; and the document ends with an appeal to the common interests of Protestantism throughout Europe. Even the recent massacre of the Vaudois Protestants is brought into the plea. Thus:--

"If meanwhile we suffer such grievous injuries to be done to our
countrymen in the West Indies without any satisfaction or
vengeance; if we consent to be all excluded from that so important
part of the world; if we permit our bitter and inveterate enemy
(especially now that peace has been made with the Dutch) to carry
home unmolested those huge treasures from the West Indies, by
which he can repair his present losses, and restore his affairs to
such a condition that he shall be able again to betake himself to
that deliberation of his in 1588 'whether it would be more prudent
to begin with England for the recovery of the United Provinces of
Holland, or to begin with them for the subjugation of
England';--beyond a doubt he will find for himself not fewer, but
even more reasons, why the beginning should now be made with
England. And, should God permit him ever to carry out these
designs, then we should have good grounds for expecting that on us
first, but eventually on all Protestants wheresoever, there would
be wreaked the residue of that most brutal massacre suffered lately
by our brothers in the Alpine valleys: which massacre, if credit is
to be given to the published complaints of those poor orthodox
Christians, was originally schemed and appointed in the secret
councils of the Spanish Court, through the agency of those paltry
friars whom they call missionaries (_per illos fraterculos
missionarios quos vacant Hispanicæ aulæ consiliis intimis
informata primitus ac designata erat_)."

How far Milton's hand helped in this important document of the Protectorate may fairly be a question. The substance was probably drafted by the Council and Thurloe, and only handed to Milton for re-expression and translation; nay, it is possible that even in the work of translation, to save time, Milton and Meadows may have been partners. All in all, however, as the proofs are all but certain that Milton's hand was to _some_ extent employed in the document, it may mark his return to ordinary official work in Oct.-Nov. 1655, after three months of renewed exemption from such work, following his batch of state-letters on the subject of the Massacre in Piedmont.[1]

[Footnote 1: The _Scriptum Domini Protectoris contra Hispanos_ was reprinted, as indubitably Milton's, in 1738, and again in 1741, to assist in rousing British feeling afresh against Spain; and Birch and all succeeding editors of Milton have agreed in regarding it as his. Godwin, however (_Hist. of Commonwealth_, IV. 217-219, footnote), suggests doubts.]

What adds to the probability that Cromwell's Manifesto against Spain, dated Oct. 26, 1655, and published Nov. 9, was partly of Milton's composition, is the fact, to which we have now to request attention, that he did about this time resume ordinary office-work to an extent beyond expectation. The following is a list of Letters to Foreign States and Princes written by him for Cromwell from Dec. 1655 to May 1656 inclusively. Two or three of them are important Cromwellian documents, and require elucidation:--

(LXV.) TO THE DOGE OF VENICE, _Dec. 1655_:--His Highness
congratulates the Venetians upon their recent naval victory over
the Turks, but brings to their notice the fact that among the ships
they had taken in that victory there was an English one, called
_The Great Prince_, belonging to William and Daniel Williams
and Edward Beal, English merchants. She had been pressed by the
Turks at Constantinople, and employed as a transport for Turkish
soldiers and provisions to Crete. The crew had been helpless in the
affair, and the owners blameless; and his Highness does not doubt
that the Doge and Senate will immediately give him a token of their
friendship by causing the ship to be restored.--The naval victory
of the Venetians was, doubtless, that which Morus had celebrated
In the Latin poem for which he received his gold chain (ante pp.
212-213).

(LXVI.) To LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, Dec. 1655:--Samuel Mico, William
Cockain, George Poyner, and other English merchants have petitioned
his Highness about a ship of theirs, called _The Unicorn_,
which had been seized in the Mediterranean as long ago as 1650 by
the Admiral and Vice-Admiral of the French fleet, with a cargo
worth £34,000. The capture was originally unfair, as there was then
peace between England and France, and express promises had been
recently given by Cardinal Mazarin and the French Ambassador, M. de
Bordeaux, that amends would be made as soon as the Treaty with
France was complete. That happily being now the case, his Highness
expects from his Majesty the indemnification of the said merchants
as "the first-fruits of the renewed friendship and recently formed
alliance."

(LXVII.) To LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, _Jan._ 1655-56:[1]--His
Highness has been informed of very extraordinary conduct on the
part of the French Governor of Belleisle in the Bay of Biscay. On
the 10th of December last, or thereabouts, he not only admitted
into his port one Dillon, a piratic enemy of the English
Commonwealth, and assisted him with supplies, but also prevented
the recapture of a merchant ship from the said Dillon by Captain
Robert Vessey of the _Nightingale_ war-ship, and further
secured Dillon's escape when Vessey had fought him and had him at
his mercy. All this is, of course, utterly against the recent
Treaty: and his Majesty will doubtless take due notice of the
Governor's conduct and give satisfaction.

[Footnote 1: Not in the Printed Collection nor in Phillips; but in the Skinner Transcript (No. 46 there), and printed thence in Hamilton's Milton Papers (p. 4).]

(LXVIII.) TO THE EVANGELICAL SWISS CANTONS, _Jan._ 1655-6. To
understand this important letter it is necessary to remember that
in 1653 there had broken out, for the second or third time, a Civil
War of Religion among the Swiss. The Popish Cantons of Schwytz,
Uri, Zug, Unterwalden, Luzern, &c., had quarrelled with the
Protestant or Evangelical Cantons of Zurich, Basel, Schaffhausen,
Bern, Glarus, Appenzell, &c.; and, as the Popish Cantons trusted to
help from surrounding Catholic powers, the Confederation and Swiss
Protestantism were in peril. It had been to watch events and
proceedings in this struggle that Cromwell had sent into
Switzerland, early in 1654, Mr. John Pell and Mr. John Durie, as
his agents (ante p. 41). Durie had remained only about a year; but
Pell was still there, reinforced now by Morland, who, after his
special mission to the Duke of Savoy on the business of the
Piedmontese Massacre of April 1655, had taken up his abode in
Geneva to superintend the distributing of the money collected for
the Piedmontese Protestants. That massacre had been ominous to the
Swiss, and had complicated the strife between the Popish and the
Evangelical Cantons. In the Popish Cantons, especially that of
Schwytz, there had been severe persecutions of Protestant
Dissenters; the union of these Cantons among themselves and their
Anti-Protestant temper had become stronger; and altogether the news
from Switzerland was bad. Application had been made by the
Evangelical Cantons, through Pell, for help from Cromwell, similar
application being made at the same time to the Dutch; and the
following is Cromwell's answer:--"Both from your public acts
transmitted to us by our Commissioners at Geneva [Pell and
Morland], and from your letter dated at Zürich, Dec. 27, we
understand abundantly in what condition your affairs are.--too
abundantly, since it is none of the best. Wherein, though we grieve
to find your peace at an end and so lasting a Confederacy ruptured,
yet, as it appears that this has happened by no fault on your part,
we trust that hence, from the very iniquity and obstinacy of your
adversaries, there is again being furnished you only so much new
occasion for displaying your courage and your long-known constancy
in the Evangelical Faith. For what the Schwytz Cantoners are
driving at in their resolution to make it a capital offence in any
one to embrace our Religion, and who they are that have instigated
them to proceedings of such a hostile spirit to the Orthodox Faith,
no one can avoid knowing who has not yet forgotten that foul
slaughter of our brethren in Piedmont. Wherefore, well-beloved
friends, as you always have been, be still, by God's help, brave;
do not yield your rights and federate privileges, nay, Liberty of
Conscience and Religion itself, to be trampled on by worshippers of
idols; and so prepare yourselves that you may not only appear the
champions of your own liberty and safety, but may be able also to
succour and stand by your neighbouring brethren by all means in
your power, especially those most sorrow-stricken Piedmontese:
firmly persuaded of this, that the intention was to have opened a
passage to your persons over their bodies and deaths. For my part,
be assured [the expression in the singular: _de me scitote_]
that your safety and prosperity are no less my care and anxiety
than if this fire had broken out in this our own Commonwealth, or
than if those axes of the Schwytz Cantoners had been sharpened, and
their swords drawn (as they veritably are, for all the Reformed are
concerned), for our own necks. No sooner, therefore, have we been
informed of the state of your affairs, and the obdurate temper of
your enemies, than, taking counsel with some very honourable
persons, and some ministers of the Church of highest esteem for
their piety, on the subject of the assistance it might be possible
to send you consistently with our own present requirements, we have
come to those resolutions which our agent Pell will communicate to
you. For the rest, we cease not to commend to the favour of
Almighty God all your plans, and the protection of this most
righteous cause of yours, whether in peace or in war."--From a
private letter of Thurloe's to Pell, of the same date as this
official one, we learn that the persons consulted by Cromwell on
the occasion were the Committee for the Piedmontese Collection
(ante pp. 40-41), his Highness regarding the Piedmontese business
and the Swiss business as radically identical, and desiring to
prepare the public mind for exertions, if necessary, in behalf of
Swiss Protestantism as extraordinary as those that had been made
for the Piedmontese. The conferences on the subject were very
earnest, with the result that his Highness instructed Pell to offer
the Cantons of Zürich and Bern a subsidy of £20,000, at the rate of
£5000 a month, on security for repayment--the first £5000, however,
to be sent immediately, without waiting for such security.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Thurloe's Letter in Vaughan's _Protectorate_, I, 334-337.]

(LXIX.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _Feb._ 1655-6:[1]--This
letter also is very important, though less in itself than in its
circumstances; and it requires introduction.--Charles X., or
Charles Gustavus (Karl Gustav), the successor of Queen Christina on
the Swedish throne, was proving himself a man of energy. Chancellor
Oxenstiern, so long the leading statesman of Sweden, had died in
Aug. 1654, just after the accession of Charles; and under the new
King, with the younger Oxenstiern for his Chancellor, Sweden had
entered on a career of war, which was to continue through his whole
reign, and the aim of which was little less than the extension of
Sweden into an Empire across the Baltic. He had begun with Poland,
between which and Sweden there was an old feud, and the King of
which then was John Casimir. Other powers, however, had been
immediately stirred by the war. Denmark, Russia, and the German
empire generally, were interested in saving Poland, and therefore
tended to an alliance against Karl Gustav; while, on the other
hand, the Great Elector of Brandenburg, Friedrich-Wilhelm, found it
convenient for the present, in the interests of his Prussian
possessions, to be on the side of Sweden. Cromwell had not been
likely at first to interfere directly in such a complicated
continental quarrel; and, indeed, as we have seen from a previous
letter of his to the Swedish King (ante p. 166), his first feeling
on hearing of the Swedish movements on the Continent had been that
of regret at the disturbance of the Peace of Westphalia. Still
Sweden was a power which commanded Cromwell's respect. Nor was
Charles X., on his side, less anxious to retain the friendship of
the great English Protector. On succeeding Christina he had
accepted and ratified her Treaty with Cromwell--"Whitlocke's
Treaty," as it may be called; he had sent a Mr. PETER COYET to be
Swedish Resident in London; and, after he had begun his Polish war,
there was nothing he desired more than some yet closer partnership
between himself and Cromwell, that might unite Sweden and England
in a common European policy. Accordingly, in July 1655, Charles X.
being then in camp in Poland, there had arrived in London a
splendid Swedish embassy extraordinary, consisting of COUNT
CHRISTIERN BUNDT, and other noblemen and gentlemen, with
attendants, to the number of two hundred persons in all, "generally
proper handsome men and fair-haired." Whitlocke, who was naturally
called in by the Protector on this occasion, describes with unusual
gusto the reception of the Embassy. There was a magnificent
torchlight procession of coaches, most of them with six horses, to
convey the Ambassador and his suite from Tower Wharf, where they
landed, to Sir Abraham Williams's house in Westminster; there were
feastings and other entertainments, at the Lord Protector's charge,
for three days; and at length on the third day Count Bundt had
audience in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, in the midst of a
great assembly, with ladies in the galleries. It was difficult to
say whether in this audience the Ambassador or the Protector
acquitted himself best. "The Ambassador's people," says Whitlocke,
"were all admitted into the room, and made a lane within the rails
in the midst of the room. At the upper end, upon a footpace and
carpet, stood the Protector, with a chair of state behind him, and
divers of his Council and servants about him. The Master of the
Ceremonies [still Sir Oliver Fleming] went before the Ambassador on
the left side; the Ambassador, in the middle, betwixt me and
Strickland, went up in the open lane of the room. As soon as they
[the Ambassador and his immediate suite] came within the room, at
the lower end of the lane, they put off their hats, the Ambassador
a little while after the rest; and, when he was uncovered, the
Protector also put off his hat, and answered the Ambassador's three
salutations in his coming up to him; and on the foot-pace they
saluted each other as friends usually do; and, when the Protector
put on his hat, the Ambassador put on his as soon as the other.
After a little pause, the Ambassador put off his hat, and began to
speak, and then put it on again; and, whensoever in his speech he
named the King his master, or Sweden, or the Protector, or England,
he moved his hat: especially if he mentioned anything of God, or
the good of Christendom, he put off his hat very low; and the
Protector still answered him in the like postures of civility." The
speech, which was in Swedish, but immediately translated into Latin
by the Ambassador's secretary, was to the effect that the King of
Sweden desired to propound to His Highness some matters for
additional treaty. Cromwell's reply, delivered in English, which
the Ambassador understood, was to the effect that he was very
willing to enter into "a nearer and more strict alliance" with the
King of Sweden and would nominate some persons to hear Count
Bundt's proposals.--All this had been in the last days of July
1655; but, though there had been subsequent audiences of the
Ambassador, and banquets given to him and the other chief Swedes by
the Protector himself at Hampton Court, August had passed, and
September, and October, and November, and still the actual Treaty
had been avoided. Other things engrossed the Protector--the Treaty
with France, the West-India Expedition, the beginning of the War
with Spain, &c. But in Count Bundt there had been sent to Cromwell
perhaps the most high-tempered ambassador he had ever seen.
Immediately after the first audience, Dorset House, in Fleet
Street, taken and furnished at the Ambassador's own expense, had
become the head-quarters of the Embassy; and here, as month after
month had passed without approach to real business, his impatience
had flashed into fierceness. It broke out in his talk to Whitlocke,
who took every opportunity of being with him, the rather because
other "grandees" held aloof. "No Commissioners being yet come to
the Swedish Ambassador," writes Whitlocke, under date Dec. 1655,
"he grew into some high expressions of his sense of the neglect to
his master by this delay; which I did endeavour to excuse, and
acquainted the Protector with it, who thereupon promised to have it
mended." In truth, the warlike Swedish King had become by this time
a man whose embassy compelled attention. "_Letters of the success
of the Swedes in Poland and Lithuania," "Letters of the Swedes'
victory against the Muscovites," "The Swedes had good success in
Poland and Moscovia," "An Agreement made between the King of Sweden
and the Elector of Brandenburg:_" such had been pieces of
foreign news recently coming in. Accordingly, in January 1655-6,
Whitlocke, Fiennes, Strickland, and Sir Gilbert Pickering, had been
empowered, on the Protector's part, to treat with Count Bundt, and
the Treaty had begun.--There were preliminary difficulties,
however. Cromwell wanted a Treaty that should include the Dutch and
the King of Denmark, and be, in fact, a League of the chief
Protestant Powers of Europe in behalf of general Protestant
interests; Count Bundt, on the other hand, pressed that special
League between England and Sweden which he had come to propound,
arguing that, while it would be more advantageous to both countries
in the meantime, it might be extended afterwards. For a while there
was danger of wreck on this preliminary difference; and Cromwell
even talked of transferring the Treaty to Stockholm and sending
Whitlocke thither for the second time as
Ambassador-Plenipotentiary--greatly to Whitlocke's horror, who had
no desire for another such journey, and a good deal to Count
Bundt's displeasure, who thought himself and his mission slighted.
At length, the Ambassador having signified that he had received new
instructions from his master, which would enable him to meet
Cromwell's views in some points, he was allowed to have his own way
in the main; and in February 1655-6 the Treaty was on foot, both in
the Council meetings at Whitehall, and in meetings of Whitlocke and
the other English Commissioners with the Ambassador at Dorset
House. "A long debate touching levies of soldiers and hiring of
ships in one another's dominions;" "long debates touching
contraband goods, in which list were inserted by the Council corn,
hemp, pitch, tar, money, and other things:" such are Whitlocke's
descriptions of the Dorset House meetings. The Treaty, in fact, was
partly commercial and partly political, pointing to new advantages
for England, but also to new responsibilities, all round the Baltic
and throughout Germany. In the debates no one more resolute, no one
more clear-headed, no one more contemptuous when he pleased, than
Count Bundt; and he had, it appears, a very able second in his
subordinate, the Swedish Resident in ordinary, Mr. Coyet.--In the
midst of these laborious debates over the Treaty news had arrived
of the birth at Stockholm of a son and heir to the Swedish King.
The birth of this Prince, afterwards Charles XI. of Sweden,
occasioned a grand display of loyalty at the Swedish Embassy in
London. "Feb. 20," writes Whitlocke, "the Swedish Ambassador kept a
solemnity this evening for the birth of the young Prince of Sweden.
All the glass of the windows of his house, which were very large,
being new-built, were taken off, and instead thereof painted papers
were fitted to the places, with the arms of Sweden upon them, and
inscriptions in great letters testifying the rejoicing for the
birth of the young Prince: on the inside of the papers in the rooms
were set close to them a very great number of lighted candles,
glittering through the painted papers: the arms and colours and
writings were plainly to be discerned, and showed glorious, in the
street: the like was in the staircase, which had the form of a
tower. In the balconies on each side of the house were trumpets,
which sounded often seven or eight of them, together. The company
at supper were the Dutch Ambassador, the Portugal and Brandenburg
Residents, Mynheer Coyet, Resident for Sweden, the Earls of Bedford
and Devon, the Lords St. John, Ossory, Bruce, Ogilvie, and two or
three other young lords, the Count of Holac (a German), the Lord
George Fleetwood, and a great many knights and gentlemen, besides
the Ambassador's company. It was a very great feast, of seven
courses. The Swedish Ambassador was very courteous to me; but the
Dutch and others were reserved towards me, and I as much to
them."--Milton's Letter to the Swedish King in Cromwell's name
relates itself to this last incident. The King had written
specially to Cromwell announcing the happy news of the birth of his
son and heir; and Cromwell replies in this fashion:--"As it is
universally understood that all concerns of friends, whether
adverse or prosperous, ought to be of mutual and common interest
among them, the performance by your Majesty of the most agreeable
duty of friendship, by vouchsafing to impart to us your joy by
express letters from yourself, cannot but be extremely gratifying
to us, in regard that it is a sign of singular and truly kingly
civility in you, indisposed as you are to live merely for yourself,
so to be indisposed even to keep a joy to yourself, without feeling
that your friends and allies participate in the same. We duly
rejoice, therefore, in the birth of a Prince, to be the son of so
excellent a King, and the heir, we hope, of his father's valour and
glory; and we congratulate you on the same happy coincidence of
domestic good fortune and success in the field with which of old
that King of renowned fortitude, Philip of Macedon, was
congratulated--the birth of whose son Alexander and his conquest of
the powerful nation of the Illyrians are said to have been
simultaneous. For we make no question but the wresting of the
Kingdom of Poland by your arms from the Papal Empire, as it were a
horn from the head of the Beast, and your Peace made with the Duke
of Brandenburg, to the great satisfaction of all the pious, though
with growls from your adversaries, will be of very great
consequence for the peace and profit of the Church. May God grant
an end worthy of such signal beginnings; may He grant you a son
like his father in virtue, piety, and achievements! All which we
truly expect and heartily pray of God Almighty, already so
propitious to your affairs,"--It is clear that Cromwell desired to
be all the more polite to the Swedish monarch because of the long
delay of the Treaty with Count Bundt. That Treaty was going on
slowly; and we shall hear more of Milton in connexion with it.[2]

[Footnote 1: So dated in Printed Collection, Phillips, and Skinner Transcript.]

[Footnote 2: Whitlocke, IV. 208-227; i.e. from July 1655 to Feb. 20, 1655-6.]

(LXX.) To FREDERICK III., KING OF DENMARK, _Feb._
1655-6(?)[1]:--John Freeman, Philip Travis, and other London
merchants, have represented to his Highness that a ship of theirs
was seized and detained by the Danish authorities in March 1653
because the Captain tried to slip past Elsinore without paying the
toll. He was a Dutchman and had done this dishonestly on his own
account, that he might pocket the money. There had been
negotiations on the subject with the Danish Ambassador when there
had been one in London, and redress had been promised; but, though
the merchants had since sent an agent to Copenhagen, the only
effect had been to add expense to their loss. By the Danish law it
is the master of a ship that is punishable for the offence of
evading toll, and the ship may be condemned, but not the goods. The
offender in this case is now dead, but left a confession; the sum
evaded was small; the cargo detained was worth £3000; will his
Majesty see that the goods are restored, with reparation?

[Footnote 1: Quite undated in Printed Collection, Phillips, and Skinner Transcript, but conjecturally of about this date.]