SAVOY (undated)[1]:--This letter to the prince
on whom the Piedmontese massacre has conferred such dark celebrity
is on very innocent and ordinary business. The owners of a London
ship, called The Welcome, Henry Martin master, have Informed his
Highness that, on her way to Genoa and Leghorn, she was seized by a
French vessel of forty-six guns having letters of marque from the
Duke, and carried into his port of Villafranca. The cargo is
estimated at L25,000. Will the Duke see that ship and cargo are
restored to the owners, with damages? He may expect like justice in
any similar case in which he may have to apply to his Highness.

[Footnote 1: Not in Printed Collection nor in Phillips; but in the
Skinner Transcript as No. 120 with the title _Duci Subaudiae_,
and printed thence by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton Papers_ (pp.
11-12). No date is given in the Skinner Transcript; and the insertion
of the letter here is a mere guess. The place where it occurs in the
Skinner Transcript suggests that it came rather late in the
Protectorate, perhaps even after the present point. The years 1656
and 1657 seem the likeliest.]

(CXI.) TO THE MARQUIS OF BRANDENBURG, _Sept._ 1657:--This is
an important letter. "By our last letter to your Highness," it
begins, "either already delivered or soon to be delivered by our
agent WILLIAM JEPHSON, we have made you aware of the legation
intrusted to him; and we could not but there make some mention of
your high qualities and signification of our goodwill towards you.
Lest, however, we should seem only cursorily to have touched on
your superlative services in the Protestant cause, celebrated so
highly in universal discourse, we have thought it fit to resume
that subject, and to offer you our respects, not indeed more
willingly or with greater devotion, but yet somewhat more at large.
And justly so, when news is brought to our ears every day that your
faith and constancy, though tempted by all kinds of intrigues,
solicited by all contrivances, yet cannot by any means be shaken,
or diverted from the friendship of the brave King your ally,--and
that too when the affairs of the Swedes are in such a posture that,
in preserving their alliance, it is manifest your Highness is led
rather by regard to the common cause of the Reformed Religion than
by your own interests; when we know too that, though surrounded on
all sides, and all but besieged, either