ph of the book, dated 1626, was extant in London at the date
of Milton's letter, though not in the Tower. An edition of the book,
"enriched with a large addition from the author's original MS.," was
published in 1768; and the MS. itself is now in the British Museum
(Bonn's _Lowndes_, Article "Elsynge").]

The Herald in charge of the Records in the Tower, mentioned in
Milton's letter as one of his acquaintances, was, I believe, WILLIAM
RYLEY, Norroy King-at-arms. He had been Clerk of the Records, under
the Master of the Rolls, for some years, and was to continue in the
post till after the Restoration. A more interesting person was the
"MR. STOUPE" who took charge of the cash to Bigot for the Byzantine
volumes, and was to see to their conveyance to London.--He was no
common character. A Grison by birth, he had settled in London as
minister of the French Church in the Savoy; but he had left that post
to be one of Thurloe's travelling-agents and political intelligencers
or spies. For two years or more he had been employed in secret
missions to France and Switzerland, chiefly for negotiation in the
interests of the continental Protestants; and his success in this
kind of employment, often at considerable personal risk, and his
talent for collecting information in London itself by means of
correspondence from abroad, had gradually recommended him to the
Protector. Burnet, who knew him well in after life, when he was more
a frantic Deist than either a Protestant or "Christian," had more
anecdotes about Cromwell from him than from any other man. The
anecdotes he liked best to tell were those in which his own
intriguing ability figured. Thus it was Stoupe, according to his own
account, that knew of Cromwell's design on the Spanish West Indies
before all the rest of the world. One day, late in 1654, having been
called into the Protector's room on business, he had noticed him very
intent upon a map and measuring distances on it. Information being
Stoupe's trade, he contrived to see that the map was one of the Bay
of Mexico, and drew his inference. Accordingly, when the fleet of
Penn and Venables was ready to sail, but nobody knew its destination,
"Stoupe happened to say in a company he believed the design was on
the West Indies. The Spanish Ambassador, hearing that, sent for him
very privately, to ask him upon what ground he said it; and he
offered to lay down L10,000 if he could make any discovery of that.
Stoupe owned to me tha