fraternal sympathy and friendship which have always existed between us.’ When the same marquis sends his seneschal and councillor, Pietro de Tebaldeschi, to Rome, he recommends him to the Medici. Ercole of Este and his consort, Lodovico, Federigo, Rodolfo Gonzaga, Leonello Pio of Carpi, Jacopo Appiani, the Sanseverini, with King René and his son, Duke John, all turn to the Medici; King Edward IV. of England applies to them in mercantile affairs; Ferdinand of Aragon and Sicily recommends to them a nobleman who had conducted the administration of Corsica, and who wished to be Podestà in Florence. Numerous are the letters of Federigo of Montefeltro, whether they concern the settlement of his pecuniary affairs, or his recommendation to offices, or the like. ‘I know well,’ he writes in a letter addressed in April 1476 to Lorenzo, on behalf of M. Francesco da Sassatello, ‘that it is unnecessary to recommend to you such as your friends and servants, especially when I also am interested in them.’ Most numerous of all, however, are the communications with King Ferrante and his family, after the year 1471. There are requests of every kind, recommendations of Florentine merchants settled in Naples, or Jews from Nola and Salerno, imprisoned in Florence, for whose loyalty the king pledges himself. We find also intercessions for Madonna Selvaggia, wife of Piero Gambacorta, of the family who formerly ruled in Pisa, but had removed to Florence on account of a lawsuit; for Raffaello Acciaiuoli, Agnolo’s son, who, like his father, was sentenced to banishment in consequence of Diotisalvi Neroni’s conspiracy, for the Abbot of St. Paul’s at Rome, and for numerous Neapolitans, who had interests or business in the territory of the Republic. ‘If we,’ writes the king to Lorenzo on July 12, 1476, ‘wish to obtain any kind of favour from the illustrious Republic, we long for no other mediator and representative than Your Magnificence, as your great authority is known to us, and we have always known by experience how readily you fulfil our wishes.’ In September 1473, Ferrante begs him to charge his business correspondents in Lyons and Vienne to forward the despatches of the Neapolitan ambassador at the court of King Louis XI. with their own communications. And so one letter follows another. The same relations continued with the king’s sons, especially the two eldest, Alfonso and Federigo. We have already spoken of the personal connections of both with Lorenzo, and their repeated meetings; their epistolary correspondence answered to this friendly relation, and the sons added their recommendations to their father’s.