In August 1657 Milton, after three months of total rest, so far as the records show, from the business of writing foreign Letters for the Protector, resumed that business. We have attributed his release from it for so long to the fact that his old assistant MEADOWS was again in town, and available in the Whitehall office, in the interval between his return from Portugal and his departure on his new mission to Denmark; and the coincidence of Milton's resumption of this kind of duty with the precise time of Meadows's preparations for his new absence is at least curious. Though it had been intended that he should set out for Denmark immediately after his appointment to the mission in February, he had been detained for various reasons; and now in August, the great war between Denmark and Sweden having just begun, he was to set out in company with another envoy: viz. MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM JEPHSON, whom Cromwell had selected as a suitable person for a contemporary mission, to the King of Sweden (ante p. 312). It will be observed that eight of the following ten Letters of Milton, all written in August or September 1657, and forming his first contribution of letters for the Second Protectorate, relate to the missions of Jephson and Meadows:—
(CI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, August 1657:—His Highness has heard with no ordinary concern that war has broken out between Sweden and Denmark. [He had received the news August 13: see ante p. 313.] He anticipates great evils to the Protestant cause in consequence. He sends, therefore, the most Honourable WILLIAM JEPHSON, General, and member of his Parliament, as Envoy-extraordinary to his Majesty for negotiation in this and in other matters. He begs a favourable reception for Jephson.
(CII.) TO THE COUNT OF OLDENBURG, August 1657:—On his way to the King of Sweden, then in camp near Lubeck, JEPHSON would have to pass through several of the German states, and first of all through the territories of this old and assured friend of the English Commonwealth and of the Protector (see Vol. IV. pp. 424, 480-1, 527, 635-6). Cromwell, therefore, introduces JEPHSON, and requests all furtherance for him.
(CIII.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF BREMEN, August 1657:—Also to introduce and recommend JEPHSON; who, on his route from Oldenburg eastwards, would pass through Bremen.
(CIV.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF HAMBURG, August 1657:—Still requesting attention to JEPHSON on his transit.
(CV.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF LUBECK, August 1657:—Still recommending JEPHSON; who, at Lubeck, would be near his destination, the camp of Charles Gustavus.
(CVI.) TO FREDERICK-WILLIAM, MARQUIS OF BRANDENBURG, August 1657:—At first this Prince, better known now as "The Great Elector, Friedrich-Wilhelm of Prussia," had been on the side of Sweden against Poland; and, in conjunction with Charles Gustavus, he had fought that great Battle of Warsaw (July 1656) which had nearly ruined the Polish King, John Casimir. Having been detached from his alliance with Sweden, however, in a manner already explained (ante p. 313), he had now a very difficult part to play in the Swedish-Polish-German-Danish entanglement.—As Jephson had instructions to treat with this important German Prince, as well as with the King of Sweden, Cromwell begs leave to introduce him formally. "The singular worth of your Highness both in peace and in war, and the greatness and constancy of your spirit, being already so famed over the whole world that almost all neighbouring Princes are eager for your friendship, and no one could desire for himself a more faithful and constant friend and ally, in order that you may understand that we also are in the number of those that have the highest and strongest opinion of your remarkable services to the Christian Commonweal, we have sent to you the most Honourable WILLIAM Jephson," &c.: so the note opens; and the rest is a mere request that the Elector will hear what Jephson has to say.—The relations between the Elector and the Protector had hitherto been rather indefinite, if not cool; and hence perhaps the highly complimentary strain of this letter.
(CVII.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF HAMBURG, August 1657:—All the foregoing, for Jephson, must have been written between August 13, when the news of the proclamation of war between Sweden and Denmark reached London, and August 29, when Jephson set out on his mission. MEADOWS left London, on his distinct mission, two days afterwards.1 His route was not to be quite the same as Jephson's; but he also was to pass through Hamburg. He is therefore recommended separately, by this note, to the authorities of that city. His letters of credence to the King of Denmark had, doubtless, already been made out,—possibly by himself. They are not among Milton's State-letters.
1: Whitlocke, under Aug. 1657.
(CVIII.) To M. DE BORDEAUX, AMBASSADOR EXTRAORDINARY FOR THE FRENCH KING, August 1657:—There has been presented to the Lord Protector a petition from Samuel Dawson, John Campsie, and John Niven, merchants of Londonderry, stating that, shortly after the Treaty with France in 1655, a ship of theirs called The Speedwell ("name of better omen than the event proved"), the master of which was John Ker, had been seized, on her return voyage from Bordeaux to Derry, by two armed vessels of Brest, taken into Brest harbour, and sold there with her cargo. The damages altogether are valued at £2,500. The petitioners have not been able to obtain redress in France. The matter has been referred by the Protector to his Council. They find that the petitioners have a just right either to the restitution of their ship and cargo or to compensation in money. "I therefore request of your Excellency, and even request it in the name of the most Serene Lord Protector, that you will endeavour your utmost, and join also the authority of your office to your endeavours, that as soon as possible one or other be done." The wording shows that the letter was not signed by the Protector himself, but only by Lawrence as President of the Council. It was probably not in rule for the Protector personally to write to an Ambassador in such a case.
(CIX.) TO THE GRAND-DUKE OF TUSCANY, Sept. 1657:—A letter of rather peculiar tenor. A William Ellis, master of a ship called The Little Lewis, had been hired at Alexandria by the Pasha of Memphis, to carry rice, sugar, and coffee, either to Constantinople or Smyrna, for the use of the Sultan himself; instead of which the rascal, giving the Turkish fleet the slip, had gone into Leghorn, where he was living on his booty. "The act is one of very dangerous example, inasmuch as it throws discredit on the Christian name and exposes to the risk of robbery the fortunes of merchants living under the Turk." The Grand-Duke is therefore requested to be so good as to arrest Ellis, keep him in custody, and see to the safety of the ship and cargo till they are restored to the Sultan.
(CX.) TO THE DUKE OF 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 £25,000. 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.
1: Not in Printed Collection nor in Phillips; but in the Skinner Transcript as No. 120 with the title Duci Subaudiæ, 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 by hidden or nearly imminent enemies, you yet, with your valiant but far from large forces, stand out with such firmness and strength of mind, such counsel and prowess of generalship, that the sum and weight of the whole business seems to rest, and the issue of this war to depend, mainly on your will." The Protector goes on to say that, in such circumstances, he would consider it unworthy of himself not to testify in a special manner his sympathy with the Elector and regard for him. He apologizes for delay hitherto in treating with the Elector's agent in London, JOHN FREDERICK SCHLEZER, on the matters about which he had been sent; and he closes with fervent good wishes.—Evidently, the recognition of the importance of the Elector, and anxiety as to the part he might take in the war now involving Sweden, Denmark, Poland, and part of Germany, had been growing stronger in Cromwell's mind within the last few weeks. From the language of the letter one would infer either that Cromwell did not yet fully know of that treaty of Nov. 1656 by which the Polish King had bought off the Elector from the Swedish alliance by ceding to him the full sovereignty of East Prussia, or else that since then the Elector had been oscillating back to the alliance.—SCHLEZER had been in London since 1655, and had lodged at Hartlib's house in the end of that year.1
1: Letter of Hartlib's in Worthington's Diary and Correspondence, edited by Crossley (I, 66).
Ten Latin State-letters nearly all at once, implying as they do consultations with Thurloe, if not also interviews with the Protector and the Council, argue a pretty considerable demand upon Milton at this date for help again in the Foreign Secretaryship.
It would seem, however, that it had occurred to the Protector and the Council that they were again troubling Mr. Milton too much or left too dependent on him, and that, with the increase of foreign business now in prospect in consequence of the Swedo-Danish war and its complications, it would be well to have an assistant to him, such as Meadows had been. Accordingly, at a meeting of the Council on Tuesday Sept. 8, 1657, Cromwell himself present, with Lawrence, Fleetwood, Lord Lisle, Strickland, Pickering, Sydenham, Wolseley, and Thurloe, there was this minute: "Ordered by his Highness the Lord Protector, by and with the advice of the Council, that MR. STERRY do, in the absence of Mr. Philip Meadows, officiate in the employment of Mr. Meadows under Mr. Secretary [Thurloe], and that a salary of 200 merks per annum be allowed him for the same."1 Whether this Mr. Sterry was the preacher Mr. Peter Sterry, already employed and salaried as one of the Chaplains to the Council, or only a relative of his, I have not ascertained; but it is of the less consequence because the appointment did not take effect. The person actually appointed was MR. ANDREW MARVELL at last. We say "at last," for had he not been recommended for the precise post by Milton four years and a half before under the Rump Government? Milton may have helped now to bring him in, or it may have been done by Oliver himself in recognition of Marvell's merits in his tutorship of young Dutton and of his Latin and English Oliverian verses. There seems to be no record of Marvell's appointment in the Order Books; but he tells us himself it was in the year 1657. "As to myself," he wrote in 1672, "I never had any, not the remotest, relation to public matters, nor correspondence with the persons then predominant, until the year 1657, when indeed I entered into an employment for which I was not altogether improper." When Marvell wrote this, he was oblivious of some particulars; for, though it is true that he was in no public employment under the Protectorate till 1657, it can hardly be said that he had not "the remotest relation" till then to public matters, nor any "correspondence with the persons then predominant." Enough for us that, from the year he specifies, and precisely from September in that year, he was Milton's colleague in the Foreign or Latin Secretaryship. "Colleague" we may call him, for his salary was to be £200 a year (not 200 merks, as had been proposed for Sterry), the same as Milton's was, and the same as Meadows's had been; and yet not quite "colleague," inasmuch as Milton's £200 a year was a life-pension, and also inasmuch as, in stepping into Meadows's place, Marvell became one of Thurloe's subordinates in the office, while something of the original honorary independence of the Foreign Secretaryship still encircled Milton.—Just as Marvell had for some time been wistful after a place in the Council Office, suitable for a scholar and Latinist, so there was another person now in the same condition of outside waiting and occasional looking-in. "Received then of the Right honble. Mr. Secretary Thurloe the sume of fifty pounds: £50: by mee, JOHN DRIDEN" is a receipt, of date "19 October 1657," among Thurloe's papers in the Record Office—the words "by mee, JOHN DRIDEN" in a neat slant hand, different from the body of the receipt. The poet Dryden, it may be remembered, was the cousin and client of Sir Gilbert Pickering, one of the most important men in the Council and one of the most strongly Oliverian. The poet left Cambridge, his biographers tell us, without his M.A. degree, "about the middle of 1657," and it was a taunt against him afterwards that he had begun his London life as "clerk" to Sir Gilbert. As he cannot have got the £50 from Thurloe for nothing, the probability is that he had been employed, through Sir Gilbert, to do some clerkly or literary work for the Council. No harm, at all events, in remembering the ages at this date of the three men of letters thus linked to the Protectorate at its centre. Milton was in his forty-ninth year, Marvell in his thirty-eighth, Dryden in his twenty-seventh.2
1: Council Order Books of date.