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 t