But Milton did not share Cromwell’s belief in the necessity of an Established Church, and it was Vane, not Cromwell, whom he praised as the statesman who knew the true bounds of either sword, and had learnt what severed the spiritual from the civil power. By the time the sonnet to Vane was written, ecclesiastical controversies had fallen into the background; the short period of peace and reform was over; Cromwell and Vane alike were forced to turn their attention to the problems of foreign policy and the tasks of war.
When Cromwell left England in the summer of 1649, all the world seemed hostile to the Republic. Worcester made Great Britain once more a power in Europe, and foreign States began to seek the friendship of the Republic, or at least to fear its enmity.
This great change was chiefly due to Cromwell’s victories. “Truth is,” wrote Bradshaw to Cromwell after Dunbar, “God’s blessing upon the wise and faithful conduct of affairs where you are gives life and repute to all other attempts and actions upon the Commonwealth’s behalf.” Much, too, was due to the successes of Blake. By the spring of 1652, the navy had swept royalist privateers from the British seas and the Mediterranean, and reduced, one after another, all the colonies or dependencies which refused to submit to the Republic. Rupert’s fleet, blockaded in Kinsale by Blake from May to November, 1649, could do nothing to help Ormond in capturing Dublin and Londonderry, or to hinder Cromwell’s progress in Ireland. When Rupert escaped he made his way to Lisbon, and under the protection of the King of Portugal refitted his ships and captured English merchantmen. In March, 1650, Blake appeared off the mouth of the Tagus, and kept Rupert’s ships cooped up there for the next six months. At last, in October, 1650, during Blake’s absence, Rupert put to sea, and entering the Mediterranean began to plunder and burn English merchantmen. Blake captured or destroyed most of his ships off Malaga and Cartagena, and with the two which were left him Rupert took refuge in Toulon. Next came the turn of the islands, which were the headquarters of the royalist privateers. In May, 1651, Sir John Grenville surrendered the Scilly Islands to Blake, just in time to prevent their falling into the hands of a Dutch fleet sent to punish Grenville’s attacks on Dutch commerce. The Isle of Man fell in October. In December, Blake captured Jersey and Guernsey, where Sir George Carteret had carried on the business of piracy on a larger and still more lucrative scale than Grenville. Finally, in January, 1652, Sir George Ayscue’s fleet reduced Barbadoes and the West Indian islands, while in March, Virginia and Maryland gave in their submission. Lords of all the territories the Stuarts had ruled, and with a stronger army and fleet than they had ever possessed, the republican leaders were free to intervene in European politics.
The Thirty Years’ War had ended with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. France and Spain were still fighting, but with no great vigour, the one distracted by the civil wars of the Fronde, the other weak from misgovernment and the decay of its trade. Each wanted the help of England, but while Spain had recognised the Republic in December, 1650, France still delayed, and while Spain had allowed Blake to victual his fleet in Spanish ports, France gave shelter to Rupert’s ships in its harbours, and allowed him to sell his prizes there. Not only French privateers but French men-of-war attacked English commerce in the Levant; and in France Charles gathered around him the exiled Royalists, and plotted against the peace of the Republic. At the moment, even religious as well as political motives favoured an alliance with Spain. In the Spanish dominions, there were no Protestants left to be persecuted, but the Huguenots of Southern France, relying upon the tradition of English policy which had existed since the Reformation, still looked to their co-religionists in England for support. The wars of the Fronde supplied a second motive for intervention, and to support the last defenders of political freedom in France against the encroachments of a centralising monarchy was a cause which naturally appealed to enthusiastic republicans. When Condé and the Frondeurs of Guienne applied to England and Spain for help against Mazarin, Spain responded at once, and a strong party in the English Council of State was ready to return a favourable answer. Whether the Spanish or the French party in that body would gain the upper hand depended largely on the decision of Cromwell. Ever since Worcester, and indeed earlier, foreign diplomatists had turned their attention to the General, reported his casual utterance, and striven to divine his intentions.
People who believed that the Republic would seek to propagate republican institutions abroad regarded Cromwell as the destined instrument of that policy. “If he were ten years younger,” Cromwell was rumoured to have said, “there was not a king in Europe he would not make to tremble,” and that as he had better motives than the late King of Sweden he believed himself capable of doing more for the good of nations than the other did for his own ambition. Marvell hailed him on his return from Ireland as a deliverer,—one whose future conquests should mark a new era in the history of all oppressed nations.
“A Cæsar he ere long to Gaul,
To Italy a Hannibal,
And to all states not free
Shall climacteric be.”
Cromwell’s acts, however, showed no trace of the revolutionary zeal attributed to him. He revealed himself at his first appearance in foreign politics as a keen and realistic statesman, more anxious to extend his country’s trade and his country’s territory than to spread republican principles in foreign parts. The only sentimental consideration which seemed to move him was sympathy for oppressed Protestants. He refused the proposals which Condé’s agents made to him immediately after Worcester, but he did not hesitate to send one emissary to Paris to negotiate with De Retz, and another to ascertain the real condition of the south of France. The question how to improve the position of the Huguenots was the one which interested him most, and it soon appeared evident that to effect this by an understanding with the French Government would be easier than to attempt armed intervention in their favour. From the beginning, therefore, Cromwell showed a preference for the French rather than the Spanish alliance. In the spring of 1652, he and two other members of the Council of State opened a secret negotiation with Mazarin for the cession of Dunkirk. Its garrison was hard pressed by the Spaniards, and the opinion was that the French Government, being unable to relieve it, would rather see it in English than Spanish hands. In April, five thousand English soldiers were collected at Dover, to be embarked for Dunkirk at a moment’s notice. But Mazarin refused to pay the price demanded for the English alliance, and while he hesitated and haggled, the partisans of a Spanish alliance gained the upper hand in the English Council and the negotiation was broken off. As France continued its refusal to recognise the Republic unconditionally, it became necessary to use force. In September, 1652, Blake swooped down on a French fleet sent to revictual Dunkirk, took seven ships, and destroyed or drove ashore the rest, with the result that the besieged fortress surrendered to the Spaniards the next day. At last, in December, 1652, an ambassador arrived in London announcing, in the name of Louis XIV., that the union which should exist between neighbouring states was not regulated by their form of government, and formally recognising the Commonwealth.