glishman,
has had certain goods and household stuff violently seized at
Bruges by Sir Richard Grenville. The goods had originally been sent
from England to Holland in 1643 by the then Earl of Suffolk, in
pledge for a debt owing to Harbord; and Grenville's pretext was
that he also was a creditor of the Earl, and had obtained a decree
of the English Chancery in his favour. Now, by the English law,
neither was the present Earl of Suffolk bound by that decree nor
could the goods be distrained under it. The decision of the Court
to that effect is herewith transmitted; and His Serenity is
requested to cause Grenville to restore the goods, inasmuch as it
is against the comity of nations that any one should be allowed an
action in foreign jurisdiction which he would not be allowed in the
country where the cause of the action first arose. "The justice of
the case itself and the universal reputation of your Serenity for
fair dealing have moved us to commend the matter to your
attention; and, if at any time there shall be occasion to discuss
the rights or convenience of your subjects with as, I promise that
you shall find our diligence in the same not remiss, but at all
times most ready."[1]

[Footnote 1: Undated in Printed Collection and in Phillips; dated
"Aug. 1658" in the Skinner Transcript, but surely by mistake. Such
a letter can hardly have been sent to the Archduke after Oct. 1655,
when the war with Spain broke out. I have inserted it at this point
by conjecture only, and may be wrong.]

In April 1655, when these two letters were written, Oliver was in the
sixteenth month of his Protectorship. His first nine months of
personal sovereignty without a Parliament, and his next four months
and a half of unsatisfactory experience with his First Parliaments
were left behind, and he had advanced two months and more into his
period of compulsory Arbitrariness, when he had to govern, with the
help of his Council only, by any means he could. Count all the Latin
State-Letters registered by Milton himself as having been written by
him for Cromwell during those first fifteen months and more of the
Protectorate, and they number only nine (Nos. XLV.-XLVIII in Vol. IV.
pp. 635-636, and Nos. XLIX.-LIII. in the present volume). These nine
Letters, with the completion and publication of his _Defensio
Secunda_, and now the preparation of a Reply to More's _Fides
Publica_, and also perhaps occasional cal