ter from his own Letter. Which letter I am ordered to
deliver to your Royal Highnesses with all observance and due
respect; and, should your Royal Highnesses, as we greatly hope,
grant a favourable and speedy answer, you will both do an act most
gratifying to the Lord Protector, who has taken this business
deeply to heart, and to the whole Commonwealth of England, and also
restore, by an exercise of mercy very worthy of your Royal
Highnesses, life, safety, spirit, country, and estates to many
thousands of most afflicted people who depend on your pleasure; and
me you will send back to my native country as the happy messenger
of your conspicuous clemency, with great joy and report of your
exalted virtues, the deeply obliged servant of your Royal
Highnesses for evermore."[3]

[Footnote 1: So dated in the official copy preserved in the Record
Office (Hamilton's _Milton Papers_, p. 15) and in the copy
actually delivered to the Duke (Morland, pp. 572-574)--the phrase in
both being "_Dabantur ex aula nostra Westmonasterii_, 25
_Maii_, _anno_ 1654." In the Skinner Transcript, however,
the dating is "_Westmonsterio, May_ 10, 1655;" which again is
changed into "_Alba Aula, May_ 1655," i.e. "Whitehall, May 1655"
(month only given) in the Printed Collections and in Phillips.]

[Footnote 2: There are one or two slight verbal differences between
Milton's original draft, here translated, and the official copy as
actually delivered to the Duke, and as printed by Morland. Thus, in
the first sentence, instead of _"Redditae sunt nobis e Geneva,
necnon ex Delphinatu aliisque multis ex locis ditioni vestrae
finitimis, literae,"_ the official copy has simply _"Redditae
sunt nobis multis ex locis ditioni vestae finitimis literae."_]

[Footnote 3: I have translated the speech from the official Latin
draft, as preserved in the Record Office, and as printed by Mr.
Hamilton, _Milton Papers_, pp. 18-20. Mr. Hamilton has no doubt
that the composition is Milton's. He founds his opinion partly on the
style, and partly on the fact that the draft is "written in the same
hand as the other official copies of Milton's letters." I agree with
Mr. Hamilton, though the matter does not seem to be absolutely beyond
controversy. The style is generally like Milton's; there are phrases
repeated from Milton's Latin elsewhere--e.g. "_montesque nivibus
coopertos_," repeated from the Letter to the Duke of Savoy, and
"_totius nominis Italici