the Duke of Savoy in behalf of the Protestants in his
Territory was this day read. _Ordered_, That it be offered to
his Highness as the advice of the Council that his Highness will
please to sign the said Letter and cause it to be sent to the said
Duke."

_Wednesday, May_ 23:--"Colonel Fiennes reports from the
Committee of the Council the draft of two letters in reference to
the sufferings of the Protestants in the territories of the Duke of
Savoy, the one to the States-General of the United Provinces, the
other to the Cantons of the Swisses professing the Protestant
Religion; which were read, and, after several amendments, agreed.
_Ordered_, That it be offered to his Highness the Lord
Protector as the advice of the Council that he will please to send
the said letters in his Highness's name to the said States-General
and the Cantons respectively."

Though Milton's name is not mentioned in these minutes, it was he,
and no other, that penned, or at least turned into Latin, for the
Committee, and so for the Council and the Protector, the particular
letters minuted, and indeed all the other documents required by the
occasion. The following is a list of them:--

(LIV.) TO THE DUKE OF SAVOY, _May_ 25, 1655:[1]--This Letter
may be translated entire. It is superscribed "OLIVER, Protector of
the Commonwealth of England, &c., to the Most Serene Prince,
EMANUEL, Duke of Savoy, Prince of Piedmont, Greeting "; and it is
worded as follows:--"Most Serene Prince,--Letters have reached us
from Geneva, and also from the Dauphinate and many other places
bordering upon your dominion, by which we are informed that the
subjects of your Royal Highness professing the Reformed Religion
were recently commanded by your edict and authority, within three
days after the promulgation of the said edict, to depart from their
habitations and properties under pain of death and forfeiture of
all their estates, unless they should give security that,
abandoning their own religion, they would within twenty days
embrace the Roman Catholic one, and that, though they applied as
suppliants to your Royal Highness, begging that the edict might be
revoked, and that they might be taken into their ancient favour and
restored to the liberty granted them by your Most Serene ancestors,
yet part of your army attacked them, butchered many most cruelly,
threw others into chains, and drove the rest into