in wording his documents.

[Footnote 1: No. 29 in Skinner Transcript (where exact date is
given); No. 47 in Printed Collection and in Phillips (where month
only is given).]

(L.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF THE CITY OF BREMEN, _Oct.
25_, 1654:--There has come to be a conflict between the City of
Bremen and the new King of Sweden, arising from military designs of
that King on the southern shores of the North Sea and the Baltic,
Bremen is in great straits; and the authorities have represented
this to Cromwell through their agent, Milton's friend, Henry
Oldenburg, and have requested Cromwell's good offices with the
Swedish King. Cromwell answers that he has done what they want. He
has great respect for Bremen as a thoroughly Protestant city, and
he regrets that there should he a quarrel between it and the
powerful Protestant Kingdom of Sweden, having no stronger desire
than that "the whole Protestant denomination should at length
coalesce in one by fraternal agreement and concord."

(LI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _Oct._ 28, 1654:--As
announced to the Bremeners in the last letter, Cromwell did write
on their behalf to the Swedish King. He had hoped that the great
Peace of Munster or Westphalia (1648) had left all continental
Protestants united, and he regrets to hear that a dispute between
Sweden and the Bremeners has arisen out of that Treaty. How
dreadful that Protestant Swedes and Protestant Bremeners, once in
league against the common foe, should now be slaughtering each
other! Can nothing be done? Could not advantage be taken of the
present truce? He will himself do anything in his power to bring
about a permanent reconciliation.

These three letters, it will be observed, belong to the first two
months of that cramped and exasperated condition in which Oliver
found himself when he had his First Parliament by his side; and there
is not a single preserved letter of Milton for Oliver between Oct.
26, 1654, the date of the last of the three, and Jan. 22, 1654-5, the
date of the sudden dissolution of the Parliament. The reason of this
idleness of Milton, in his Secretaryship during those three months,
leaving all the work to Meadows, must have been, I believe, that he
was then engaged on a Reply to More's _Fides Publica_ in the
imperfect state in which it had just come forth. All along, as we
have seen, the Literary Defence of the Commonwealth on every occasion
o