“I... Steer Right Onward” 1654–1658synagogue. Milton found in Cromwell’s tolerationist inclinations his chief reason
to continue supporting the Protector, despite his failure to follow Defensio Secunda’s
proposals for church disestablishment and expanding personal liberty. But Milton
was not moved, as his friend Marvell was, to write a lengthy panegyric poem on the
first anniversary of Cromwell’s reign as Protector, or to celebrate any event in his
life and reign.^33
From October 1654 to May 1655 Milton had little diplomatic correspondence.
He may have been given a respite to work on the Pro Se Defensio. The letters he did
write concerned the promotion of a Protestant League, a matter close to Milton’s
heart. Cromwell sent parallel letters (October 27) to the king of Sweden and to the
consuls and senators of Bremen lamenting the outbreak of hostilities between them
that threatened the interests of all Protestants, and urging them to peace (CPW V.2,
678–81). In the second letter Cromwell voices, in Milton’s Latin, his wish “that the
entire name of Protestants should finally by brotherly consent and harmony unite
into one” (680). Writing (April 4, 1655) to the French Prince of Tarente who had
sought his friendship but was also reconciling with the French court, Cromwell
urges him to confess his ancestral Protestant faith openly and to protect it in his
homeland, stating that his own primary goal is “to serve either the enlargement, or
the preservation, or, most important, the peace of the Reformed church” (682–3).
Milton was paid his usual quarter-salary on February 13, 1655, but on April 17, in
an economy measure that reduced or eliminated several salaries in the Secretariat,
Milton’s was reduced from £288 to £150 and made payable for life. This order
designates Philip Meadows Secretary for the Latin Tongue and gives Milton no
formal title, perhaps reflecting the council’s initial intention to pension Milton off
to deserved retirement.^34 But they soon reconsidered, or perhaps responded to
Milton’s unwillingness to accept that status. Like several others for whom the April
17 order was revised or rescinded, Milton’s salary was soon increased to £200,
placing him on a par with Meadows.^35 As Robert Fallon shows, Milton did a great
deal of work throughout Cromwell’s Protectorate for Secretary of State Thurloe,
who now managed foreign affairs under Cromwell’s direction.
The Protector had occasion to realize almost immediately that he needed Milton
to produce the impassioned denunciations and stirring calls for Protestant unity
occasioned by the slaughter of the Waldensians, a notorious event in the annals of
Protestant martyrology. In April, 1655 Carlo Emanuele II, Duke of Savoy, for
reasons not fully understood, ordered his army to root out and destroy the
Waldensians, or Vaudois, who for centuries had lived in the mountainous regions
of Piedmont practicing what contemporary Protestants saw as a survival of primi-
tive Christianity uncontaminated by Rome. Historically they descended from a late
twelfth-century sect led by Pierre Valdes, which was at length excommunicated
but guaranteed toleration in certain regions of the Savoy by an edict of 1561. On
April 17 troops were sent purportedly to force those living outside the designated
regions to withdraw to them or else convert, but on August 24 a massacre began