The exception is a brief scrap thrown in at the end of the Letters for Cromwell both in the Printed Collection and in the Skinner Transcript, but omitted by Phillips in his translation as not worthwhile.

It was not written for Cromwell or his Council, but only for the Commissioners of the Great Seal--whether for those under the Protectorate, or for their predecessors, does not appear, though perhaps that might be ascertained.

The scrap may be numbered at this point, though inserted only as a note:--( CXXXIII.) "We, Commissioners of the Great Seal of England, &c., desire that the Supreme Court of the Parliament of Paris will, on request, take such steps that Miles, William, and Maria Sandys, children of the lately deceased William Sandys and his wife Elizabeth Soame, English by birth and minors, may be able, from Paris, where they are now under protection of the said Court, to return to us forthwith, and will deliver the said children into the charge of the Scotchman James Mowat, a good and honest man, to whom we have delegated this charge, that he may receive them where they are and bring them to us; and we engage that, on opportunity of the same sort offered, there will be a return from this Court of the like justice and equity to any subjects of France."] [Footnote 2: The uniformly Miltonic style of the greater letters for the Protector, the same style as had been used in the more important letters for the Commonwealth, utterly precludes the idea that Milton was only the translator of drafts furnished him.

In the smaller letters, about ships wrongfully seized and other private injuries, the case may have been partly so, though even there Milton must have had liberty of phraseology, and would imbed the facts in his own expressions.

But there was not a man about the Council that could have furnished the drafts of the greater letters as we now have them.