egion, ascertaining the
state of Religion in it, and any exigency requiring interference.
That remained only a project; but meanwhile there was the agency of
Jephson with the King of Sweden, of Meadows with the King of Denmark,
of Downing with the United Provinces, and of other Envoys here and
there, all working for peace among the Protestant States and joint
action against the common enemy. In the Council Order Books for May
1658 one comes also upon new considerations of the old subject of the
Protestants of the Piedmontese valleys, with a fresh remittance of
L3000 for their relief, and an advance at the same time of L500 out
of the Piedmontese Fund for the kindred purpose of relieving twenty
distressed Bohemian families. Indeed in that month his Highness was
again at white heat on the subject of his favourite Piedmontese. The
Treaty of Pignerol, by which the persecuting Edict of 1655 had been
recalled and liberty of worship again yielded to the poor Vaudois
(ante pp. 43-44), had gradually been less and less regarded; there
were new troubles to the Vaudois from the House of Savoy; there were
even signs of a possible repetition in the valleys of all the former
horrors. How to prevent that was a serious thought with Cromwell amid
all his other affairs; and he made his most effective stroke by an
immediate appeal to the French King. On the 26th of May there went to
his Majesty one of Milton's Latin State Letters in the Protector's
name, adjuring him, by his own honour and by the faith of their
alliance, to save the poor Piedmontese and secure the Treaty which
had been made in their behalf by former French intervention; and on
the same day there went a letter to Lockhart urging him to his utmost
diligence in the matter, and suggesting that the French King should
incorporate the Piedmontese valleys with his own dominion, giving the
Duke of Savoy some bit of territory with a Catholic population in
exchange. Reaching Louis XIV. and Lockhart at the moment of the great
success before Dunkirk, these letters accomplished their object. The
will of France was signified at Turin, and the Protestants of the
Valleys had another respite.[1]

[Footnote 1: Burnet (ed. 1823), I. 133; Letters of Downing, &c. in
Thurloe, Vol. VII.; Council Order Books of date; Carlyle, III.
357-365.]

Were one asked what subject of home concern had the first place in
Cromwell's attention through all the events and transactions that
have hitherto been not