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] [Footnote 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.