over their ancient foe. The court of the Lord Protector was thronged with noble representatives of foreign courts, who came to congratulate the invincible sovereign of the English Commonwealth on his new victory. London was recalled from the memory of plots and cabals by the more attractive displays of gorgeous pageantry and state ceremonial; and while the populace forgot for a time their fancied wrongs in the passing show, thinking men rejoiced in the supremacy of a stable executive. England, in fact, felt once more that the ablest man of his age was her Protector and King.

CHAPTER XX.

DOMESTIC AFFLICTIONS.

THE position of England in this year, 1658, the closing year of the Protectorate, was one which demanded in an especial manner the oversight of her great chief. He had need of all his wisdom, and all the brave endurance that had borne him through his victorious career of policy and war; for now there were "fightings without and fears within." Not royalist assassins alone strove to win royalty's knighthood and military honours by the strange pathway of hireling-murder; even the religious enthusiasts of the period had recourse to the dagger and stilletto: fifth-monarchy men, and other enthusiasts, persuading themselves that nothing but the removal of Cromwell was needed to take the hindrance away that stayed the advent of "King Jesus," and the political millennium they believed to be at hand. But Cromwell was equal to either fortune. If parliament would work with him, well; if not, he could work without them. If royalists would sit down content with firm but definite

and just rule, he was prepared for administering justice to all; if not, he had justice for them also whom nought but another revolution would suffice. He had taken his stand for life, fully persuaded in his own mind of the integrity of his cause, and he never swerved from the emphatic declaration made to his second parliament :"The wilful throwing away of this government, such as it is, so owned by God, so approved by men, so witnessed to 'by the leaders and vast majority of the people of this nation,' were a thing which-in reference, not to my good, but to the good of these nations, and of posterity,-I can sooner be willing to be rolled in my grave, and buried with infamy, than I can give my consent unto!"

Yet Cromwell's large heart and comprehensive genius could spare a thought for others, amid all his difficulties. While occupied at home with a parliament of disaffected republicans, secret conspirators, and perjured politicians of all sorts, and with insurrection, threatening or breaking out on every hand, he had still time to remember his suffering Protestant brethren in the valleys of Piedmont, whom he had already rescued from persecution and death. Their cowardly persecutors probably flattered themselves that they might renew their former deeds of cruelty and oppression with impunity, now that the Lord Protector of England's Commonwealth was beset by such threatening difficulties and dangers at home. But they knew not the indomitable spirit of the man. Once more he stretched forth his hand for their protection, and bade the sword of their oppressor be sheathed. The following letter of Milton, written at his command to Louis XIV., is one of the last and noblest evidences of the consistent honesty and firmness of his foreign policy, by which he won for England so proud a standing among the nations, that even the degradation and venality of his successors sufficed only to stain it with their infamy, as with a passing shade.

"To the most serene and potent Prince, Louis, King

of France.

"MOST SERENE and potent KING, MOST AUGUST FRIEND AND ALLY.

"Your Majesty may recollect that during the negotiation between us for the renewing of our alliance, (which many advantages to both nations, and much damage to their common enemies, resulting therefrom, now testify to have been very auspiciously done,) there happened that miserable slaughter of the people of the Valleys; whose cause, on all sides deserted and trodden down, we recommended with the greatest earnestness and commiseration to your mercy and protection. Nor do we think your Majesty, for your own part, has been wanting in an office so pious and indeed so humane, in so far as either by authority or favour you might have influence with the Duke of Savoy: we certainly, and many other princes and states, by embassies, by letters, by entreaties directed thither, have not been wanting.

"After that most sanguinary massacre, which spared neither age nor sex, there was at last a peace given; or rather, under the specious name of peace, a certain more disguised hostility. The terms of the peace were settled in your town of Pignerol: hard terms indeed, but such as those indigent and wretched people, after suffering all manner of cruelties and atrocities, might gladly acquiesce in; if only, hard and unjust as they are, they were adhered to. They are not adhered to: the purport of every one of them is, by false interpretation and various subterfuges, eluded and violated. Many of these people are ejected from their old habitations; their religion is prohibited to many; new taxes are exacted; a new fortress has been built over them, out of which soldiers frequently sallying, plunder or kill whomsoever they meet. More.

over, new forces have of late been privily got ready against them; and such as follow the Romish religion are directed to withdraw from among them within a limited time; so that everything seems now again to point towards the extermination of all those unhappy people whom the former massacre had left.

"Which now, O most Christian King, I beseech and obtest thee, by thy right hand, which pledged a league and friendship with us, by the sacred honour of that title of Most Christian,-permit not to be done; nor let such license of butchery be given, I do not say to any prince, (for indeed no cruelty like this could come into the mind of any prince, much less into the tender years of that young Prince, or into the woman's heart of his mother,) but to those most cursed assassins; who, while they profess themselves the servants and imitators of Christ our Saviour, who came into the world to save sinners, abuse his merciful name and commandments to the cruelest slaughterings of the innocent. Snatch, thou who art able, and who in such an elevation art worthy to be able, those poor suppliants of thine, from the hands of murderers, who, lately drunk with blood, are again athirst for it, and think convenient to turn the discredit of their own cruelty upon the score of their Prince's. Suffer not either thy titles or the frontiers of thy kingdom to be polluted with that discredit, or the all-peaceful Gospel of Christ to be soiled by that cruelty, in thy reign. Remember that these very people became subjects of thy ancestor, Henry, that great friend to Protestants; when Lesdiguières victoriously pursued the Savoyard across the Alps, through those same valleys, where indeed lies the most commodious pass to Italy. The instrument of their surrender is yet extant in the public acts of your kingdom: in which this among other things is specified and provided against, That these people of the Valleys should not thereafter be delivered over to any one except

on the same conditions under which thy invincible ancestor had received them into fealty. This protection they now implore: the protection promised by thy ancestor they now suppliantly demand from thee, the grandson. To be thine rather than his whose they now are, if by any means of exchange it could be done, they would wish and prefer: if that may not be, thine at least by succour, by 'commiseration and deliverance.

"There are likewise reasons of state which might induce thee not to reject these people of the Valleys flying to thee for refuge: but I would not have thee, so great a King as thou art, be moved to the defence of the unfortunate by other reasons than the promise of thy ancestors, and thy own piety and royal benignity and greatness of mind. So shall the praise and fame of this most worthy action be unmixed and clear; and thyself shalt find the Father of mercy, and his Son Christ the King, whose name and doctrine thou shalt have vindicated from this hellish cruelty, the more favourable and propitious to thee through the whole course of thy life.

"May the Almighty, for his own glory, for the safety of so many most innocent Christian men, and for your true honour, dispose your Majesty to this determination. "Your Majesty's most friendly

"OLIVER, PROTECTOR OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND.

"Westminster, 26th May, 1658.**

It was worthy of England's great poet to be thus found linked with her greatest statesman in thus standing between the oppressor and the oppressed. Nor did the exertions of Cromwell stop here. He wrote to Sir William Lockhart, his ambassador at the French court, calling on him to employ all his influence in securing the safety and

Milton's Prose Works, London, 1832, p. 815.