in France, and be with you, so as to be able
assiduously to signify to you my singular respect for your Majesty,
and my desire not only for the preservation of peace between us but
also for the perpetuation of friendship, has received from us the
amplest instructions. We request, therefore, that you will receive
him kindly, and give him gracious audience as often as there may be
occasion, and place absolutely the same trust in whatsoever may be
said and settled by him in our name as if the same things had been
said and settled by Ourselves in person. We shall hold them all as
ratified. Meanwhile we pray all peace and prosperity for your
Majesty and your kingdom."

(LXXIII.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, _April_ 9, 1656 (?):--A Letter
accompanying the above, and introducing LOCKHART specially to the
Cardinal. It is also worth translating entire: "Seeing the affairs
of France most happily administered by your counsels, and daily
increasing in prosperity to such a degree that your high popularity
and high authority in government are justly increased and enlarged
accordingly, I have thought it fit, when sending an ambassador to
your King with letters and instructions, to recommend him also most
expressly to your Eminence: to wit, WILLIAM LOCKHART, a man of
honourable family, closely related to us, and respected by us
besides for his singular trustworthiness. Wherefore your Eminence
may receive as our own whatsoever shall be communicated by him in
our name, and may also freely commit and entrust to him in my
confidence whatever you shall think fit to communicate in return.
From him too you will learn more at large, what I now again
profess, as more than once already, how high is my feeling of your
great services to France, and what a well-wisher I am to your
reputation and dignity."[1]

[Footnote 1: Neither of these Letters about Lockhart is in the
Printed Collection or in Phillips; but both are in the Skinner
Transcript (Nos. 110 and 111 there), whence they have been printed
by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton Papers_ (pp. 9-10). He dates
them both, as in the Transcript, "_West., Aug._ 1658;" but that
is clearly a mistake, and the letters are out of their proper places
in the Transcript. Lockhart was nominated for the Embassy in Dec.
1655, and he "took ship at Rye on the 14th of April, 1656, on his way
to France" (see a letter of Thurloe's to Pell in Vaughan's
_Protectorate_, I.