_Francois Turretin_.] Busy over his reply to the _Fides Publica_, Milton had stretched his dispensation from routine duty in his Secretaryship not only through November and December 1654 and January 1654-5, as was noted in last section, but as far as to April 1655 in the present section.
Through these five months there is, so far as the records show, a total blank, at all events, in his official letter-writing.

In April 1655, however, as if his reply to the _Fides Publica_ were then off his mind, and lying in the house in Petty France complete or nearly complete in manuscript, we do come upon two more of his Latin State-letters, as follows:-- (LII.) TO THE PRINCE OF TARENTE, _April_ 4, 1655[1]:--This Prince, one of the chiefs of the French nobility, but connected with Germany by marriage, was a Protestant by education, had been mixed up with the wars of the Fronde, and was altogether a very stirring man abroad.

He had written to Cromwell invoking his interest in behalf of foreign, and especially of French, Protestantism.

Cromwell expresses his satisfaction in having had such an address from so eminent a representative of the Reformed faith in a kingdom in which so many have lapsed from it, and declares that nothing would please him more than "to be able to promote the enlargement, the safety, or, what is most important, the peace, of the Reformed Church." Meanwhile he exhorts the Prince to be himself firm and faithful to his creed to the very last .-- The Prince of Tarente, it may be mentioned, had interested himself much in the lawsuit between Morus and Salmasius.

He had tried to act as mediator and induce Morus to withdraw his action--a condescension which Morus acknowledges, though he felt himself obliged, he says, to go on.
[Footnote 1: No.