rd the
Ambassador Whitlocke did for those on his part. The employment of MR.
MILTON was excused to him, because several other servants of the
Council, fit for that employment, were then absent."[1] If this is
exact, Count Bundt, having been promised the Latin translation on the
8th of April, did not receive it till about the 22nd, and he had been
nursing his wrath on the subject for a fortnight more before it
exploded. In the delay itself he had certainly good ground for
complaint. There was reason also in the complaint that important
secret documents had gone to a blind man, who must employ an
amanuensis, unless the Commissioners could have replied that the
Protector and the Council had thoroughly seen to that matter, and
that Milton's amanuensis on such occasions was always a sworn clerk
from the Whitehall office. On the whole, the Commissioners seem to
have taken more easily than became their places, or than the
Protector would have liked, the insinuation of the imperious Count
that the Protector's official retinue must be a ragged and
undisciplined rout, not to be compared with Karl Gustav's. May not
Whitlocke himself, however, thinking at that moment of his own Latin
sufficiency, have sharpened the point of the insinuation?[2]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 257.]

[Footnote 2: Whitlocke, from his interest in Swedish affairs, had
taken ample notes of the negotiations with Count Bundt; and his story
of them is unusually minute. One observes that more than once in the
course of it he dwells on the fact that, though employed by the
Protector in this business, and taking the lead in it, he was still
_not_ one of the Council.]

The excuse of the Commissioners to Count Bundt for having sent the
Articles to Milton for translation was that "several other servants
of the Council, fit for that employment, were then absent." They mast
have referred, in particular, to Mr. Philip Meadows, the Latin
Secretary in Ordinary. He had, we find, taken some part in the
negotiation in its earlier stage;[1] but, before it had proceeded
far, he had been selected for a service which took him out of
England. In December 1655 it had been resolved to send a special
agent to Portugal; and on the 19th of February, 1655-6, at a Council
meeting at which Cromwell himself was present, Meadows, thought of
from the first, was formally nominated as the fit person. It was a
great promotion for Meadows; for, whereas his salary hitherto in the
Latin Sec