XIII
The Sixteenth Sonnet (Masson): 'To the Lord General Cromwell, May,
1652: On the Proposals of Certain Ministers at the Committee for
Propagation of the Gospel.' Printed by Philips, _Life of Milton_,
1694. In defence of the principle of Religious Voluntaryism,
and against the intolerant Fifteen Proposals of John Owen and
the majority of the Committee.
XIV
The Eighteenth Sonnet (Masson). 'Written in 1655,' says Masson,
and referring 'to the persecution instituted, in the early part
of the year, by Charles Emmanuel II., Duke of Savoy and Prince
of Piedmont, against his Protestant subjects of the valleys of
the Cottian Alps.' In January, an edict required them to turn
Romanists or quit the country out of hand; it was enforced with
such barbarity that Cromwell took the case of the sufferers in
hand; and so vigorous was his action that the Edict was withdrawn
and a convention was signed (August 1655) by which the Vaudois
were permitted to worship as they would. Printed in 1673.
XV
The Nineteenth Sonnet (Masson) 'may have been written any time
between 1652 and 1655,' the first years of Milton's blindness,
'but it follows the Sonnet on the Piedmontese Massacre in Milton's
own volume of 1673.'
XVI, XVII
From the choric parts of _Samson Agonistes_ (i.
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