The Protector's new Privy Council for his Second Protectorate was not constituted till Monday, July 13, 1657, more than a fortnight after his installation. Then, his Highness being present, there were sworn in, according to the new oath of fidelity provided by the Petition and Advice, Lord President Lawrence, General Desborough, Lord Commissioner Fiennes, the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Viscount Lisle, Mr. Rous, Lord Deputy Fleetwood, Lord Strickland, and Mr. Secretary Thurloe. This last took his seat at the board as full Councillor by special nomination of his Highness. In the course of the next few meetings there came in Colonel Sydenham, Major-General Skippon, Sir Gilbert Pickering, and Sir Charles Wolseley, raising the number to thirteen; which completed the Council for some time, though Colonel Philip Jones and Admiral Montague afterwards took their seats, and Lord Richard Cromwell, as we have seen, was added Dec. 31. On comparing the total list with that of the Council of the First Protectorate (Vol. IV. p. 545), it will be seen that Cromwell retained all that were alive of his former Council, except Lambert, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, and Mr. Richard Mayor. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper had been a deserter from the former Council as early as Dec. 1654, and had since then been so conspicuous in the opposition that he had been one of the ninety-three excluded from the House at the opening of the Second Parliament. Mr. Mayor, Richard Cromwell's father-in-law, though still nominally in the Council, seems to have been now in poor health and in retirement. The one extraordinary omission was that of Lambert. He had taken all but the chief part in the foundation of the First Protectorate; why was he absent from the Government of the Second? His Oliverianism, it appears, had evaporated in the late debates about the Kingship and the new constitution. Certain it is that he did not present himself at the first meeting of the new Council, and that, after an interview with Cromwell in consequence, he surrendered his two regimental colonelcies, his major-generalship, and £10 a day which he had for the last, and withdrew into private life. Still called "Lord Lambert," and with a pension of £2000 a year granted him by Cromwell, he retired to Wimbledon, where his chief amusement was the cultivation of tulips.1
1: Council Order Books of July 13, 1657, and thenceforward; Ludlow, 593-594; Godwin, IV. 446-447.
The new Council having been constituted, and having begun to hold its meetings twice or thrice a week, the administration of affairs, home and foreign, was free to go on, in his Highness's hands and the Council's, without farther Parliamentary interruption till Jan. 20, 1657-8. Foreign affairs may here have the precedence.
Blake's grand blow at the Spaniard in Santa Cruz Bay was still in all people's minds, and they were looking for the return of that hero, recalled as he had been, June 10, either for honourable repose in his battered and enfeebled state after three years at sea, or for further employment nearer home in connexion with the French-English alliance and the Flanders expedition. He was never, alas! to set foot in England. Off Plymouth, as his fleet was touching the shores, he died, utterly worn out with scurvy and dropsy, Aug. 7, 1657, aged fifty-eight. As the news spread, there was great sorrow; and on the 13th of August it was ordered by the Council, "That the Commissioners for the Admiralty and Navy do forthwith give order for the interment of General Blake in the Abbey Church at Westminster, and for all things requisite to be prepared for the funeral of General Blake in such sort as was done for the funeral of General Deane, and that they give direction for the preparing of Greenwich House for the reception of the body of General Blake, in order to his funeral." The body, having been embalmed, lay at Greenwich till Sept. 4, when it was brought up the Thames with all funereal pomp, mourning hangings on the barges and the wherries all the way, and so buried in Henry the Seventh's chapel, the Council, the great Army officers, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, and other dignitaries standing round, while a multitude thronged outside. It was observed that Lord Lambert had made a point of being present, as if to signify that the great sailor and he had always understood each other. How Blake would have farther comported himself had he lived no one really knows. At sea he had made it a principle to abstain from party-politics. "When news was brought him of a metamorphosis in the State at home, he would then encourage the seamen to be most vigilant abroad; for, said he, 'tis not our duty to mind State-affairs, but to keep foreigners from fooling us." The idea among the ultra-Republicans of using Blake's popularity to undermine Cromwell had long come to nothing.1
1: Council Order Books, Aug. 13, 1657: Godwin, IV. 420-421; Wood's Fasti, I. 371.
Blake gone, the naval hope of England now was Admiral Montague. Since August 11 he had been cruising up and down the Channel with his fleet under general orders. The interest of the war with Spain now lay chiefly in Flanders, where the Protector's army of 6000 foot under General Reynolds was co-operating with the larger French army of Louis XIV. commanded by Turenne. Here Cromwell had, again to complain of Mazarin's wily policy. By the Treaty the great object of the expedition was to be the reduction of the coast-towns, Gravelines, Mardike, and Dunkirk; but these sieges had been postponed, and Turenne had been campaigning in the interior, the English troops obliged to attend him hither and thither, and complaining much of their bad accommodation and bad feeding. Mazarin, in fact, was studying French interests only, A peremptory communication from Cromwell through Ambassador Lockhart, Aug. 31, changed the state of matters. "I pray you tell the Cardinal from me," he said, "that I think, if France desires to maintain its ground, much more to get ground, upon the Spaniard, the performance., of his Treaty with us will better do it than anything appears yet to me of any design he hath." He offered 2000 more men from England, if necessary; but he added in a postscript, "If indeed the French be so false to us as that they would not have us have any footing on that side the water, then I desire ... that all things may be done in order to the giving us satisfaction, and to the drawing-off of our men. And truly, Sir, I desire you to take boldness and freedom to yourself in your dealing with the French on these accounts." The Cardinal at once succumbed, and the siege of Mardike by land and sea was begun Sept. 21. The place was taken in a few days, and, in terms of the Treaty, given into the possession of General Reynolds for the English. A little while afterwards, a large Spanish force under Don John of Austria, the Duke of York serving in it with four regiments of English and Irish refugees, attempted a recapture of the place; but, by the desperate fighting of the garrison and Montague's assisting fire from his ships, the attempt was foiled. The Protector had thus obtained at least one place of footing on the Continent; and, with English valour to assist the military genius of Turenne, there was prospect, late in 1657, of still more success in the Spanish Netherlands. Lockhart was again in London for consultation with Cromwell Oct. 15, and Montague was back Oct. 24, on which day he took his oath and place in the Council.1
1: Carlyle, III. 306-315 (including two Letters of Cromwell to Lockhart); Godwin, IV. 543-544; Guizot, II. 379-381; Cromwelliana, 168; Council Order Books, Oct. 24, 1657.
Various other matters of foreign concern occupied the Protector and his Council in the first months of the new Protectorate. There is an order in the Council Books, July 28, 1657, for the despatch of £1000 more to the Piedmontese Protestants, and for certain sums to be paid to Genevese and other ministers for trouble they had taken in that matter; and, as late as Nov. 25, there is an order for another despatch of £1500. There were, indeed, to be farther collections for the Piedmontese sufferers, and new interposition in their behalf with the Duke of Savoy. Nay, by this time, the generosity of his Highness in the Piedmontese business had led to applications from distressed Protestants in other parts of Europe. Thus, Nov. 4, his Highness being himself present in the Council, and having communicated "a petition from the pastors of several churches of the Reformed Religion in Higher Poland, Bohemia, &c., now scattered abroad through persecution in those parts, desiring some relief, and also a petition from Adam Samuel Hartmann and Paul Cyril, delegates from these exiles, together with a narrative of their condition and sufferings," it was ordered that the matter should be referred to the Committee for the Piedmontese Protestants and preparations made for another collection of money. All the while, of course, there had been the more usual and regular diplomatic business between the Protector and the various agencies of foreign powers in London. One hears especially of the arrival, Aug. 1657, of a new Ambassador-Extraordinary from Portugal, Don Francisco de Mello, of entertainments to him, and of audiences granted to him; also of much intercourse between his Highness and the Dutch Ambassador Lord Nieuport, now so long resident in England and so much regarded there. But the latter half of 1657 is also remarkable for the despatch by his Highness of three special Envoys of his own to the northern Protestant Powers. MR. PHILIP MEADOWS, appointed Envoy to Denmark as long ago as Feb. 24, 1656-7 (ante p. 294), but detained meanwhile in London, set out on his mission at last, Aug. 31; and at the same time MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM JEPHSON, distinguished for his services in Ireland, and returned as member for Cork and Youghal to both Parliaments of the Protectorate, set out as Envoy to his Swedish Majesty. He had been chosen for the important post Aug. 4. Finally, on the 18th of December, partly in consequence of the departure of the Dutch Ambassador Nieuport in the preceding month, for some temporary stay at home on private affairs, GEORGE DOWNING, ESQ. (ante pp. 43 and 191) was appointed to follow him in the capacity of Resident for his Highness in the United Provinces.1
1: Council Order Books of dates; Whitlocke, IV. 311-313; and Cromwelliana, 168-169.
The general purport of these three missions of Cromwell in 1657 requires explanation. Not commercial interests merely, but also zeal for union among the Protestant Powers, had all along moved his diplomacy; and now the state of things in the north of Europe was so extraordinary that, on the one hand, the cause of Protestant union seemed in fatal peril, but, on the other hand, if it could be retrieved, it might be retrieved perhaps in a definite and magnificent form. The prime agency in bringing about this state of things had been the vast energy of the young Swedish King, Charles X. or Karl-Gustav. Cromwell had by this time contracted an especial admiration of this prince, and had begun to regard him as a kindred spirit and the armed champion of Continental Protestantism. To see him succeed to the last in his Polish enterprise, and then turn himself against Austria and her Roman Catholic clientage in the Empire, had come to be Cromwell's desire and the desire in Great Britain generally. For a time that had seemed probable. In the great Battle of Warsaw, fought July 28-30, 1656, Charles-Gustavus and his ally the Elector of Brandenburg routed the Poles disastrously; and, Ragotski, Prince of Transylvania, also abetting and assisting the Swede, "actum jam videbatur de Polonia" as an old annalist says: "it seemed then all over with Poland." But a medley of powers, for diverse reasons and interests, had been combining themselves for the salvation of Poland, or at least for driving back the Swede to his own side of the Baltic. Not merely the Austrians and the German Catholic princes were in this combination, but also the Muscovites or Russians, and, most unnatural of all, the Danes, with countenance even from the more distant Dutch. Nay, the prudent Elector of Brandenburg, hitherto the ally of the Swede, was drawn off from that alliance. This was done by a treaty, dated Nov. 10, 1656, by which the Polish King, John Casimir, yielded to the Elector the full sovereignty of Ducal Prussia or East Prussia, till then held by the Elector only by a tenure of homage to the Polish Crown. All being ready, the Danish King, Frederick III., gave the signal by declaring war against Sweden and invading part of the Swedish territories. When the news reached Cromwell, which it did Aug. 13, 1657, it affected him profoundly. He had previously been remonstrating, as we have seen, both with the Danes and the Dutch, by letters of Milton's composition (ante pp. 272-3 and 290), trying to avert such an unseemly Protestant intervention in arrest of the Swedish King's career. And now, having his two envoys, MEADOWS and JEPHSON, ready for the emergency, he despatched them at once to the scene of that new Swedish-Danish war in which what had hitherto been the Swedish-Polish war was to be at once engulphed. For Karl-Gustav had turned back out of Poland to deal directly with the Danes, and the interest was now concentrated on the struggle between these two powers—the Poles, the German Catholics, the Muscovites, the Elector of Brandenburg, the Dutch, and other powers, looking on more or less in sympathy with the Danes, and some of them ready to strike in. To end the war, if possible, by reconciling Charles X. and Frederick III, was Cromwell's first object; and, with that aim in view, Jephson was to attach himself more particularly to Charles X., whatever might be his war-track, and Meadows more particularly to Frederick III. But they might cross each other's routes, deal with other States along these routes, and work into each other's hands. RICHARD BRADSHAW, likewise, who had been sent as Envoy to the Czar of Muscovy in the beginning of the year (ante pp. 292-294), would be moving about usefully on the east of the Baltic. And, if a reconciliation between Sweden and Denmark should by any means be brought about, what then should be aimed at but a repair of the rupture between the Elector of Brandenburg and the Swedish King, so as to save the Elector from the threatened vengeance of the Swede, and then farther the aggregation of other Protestant German States, and of the Dutch, round this nucleus of a Swedish-Danish-Brandenburg alliance, for common action against Poland, Austria, and German Catholicism? Even the Muscovites, as of the Greek Church, might be brought in, or at least they might be rendered neutral. All this was in contemplation, as a tissue of ideal possibilities, when MEADOWS and JEPHSON were despatched in August, and the mission of DOWNING four months later to the United Provinces was partly in the same great interest. It may seem matter for wonder that a man of Cromwell's practical sagacity, already so deeply implicated on the Continent by his Flanders enterprise and his alliance with France, should have had such a passion for farther interference as thus to insert his hands into the apparently measureless entanglement in northern and eastern Europe. But, in the first place, his practical sagacity was not at fault. Precisely that it should not be an entanglement, but a marshalling of powers in two sets according to their true religions and political affinities, was the essence of his aspiration; there were deep tendencies towards that result; sagacity consisted in perceiving these, and practicality in promoting them. Cromwell's aspiration in connexion with the Swedish-Danish war was also, it could be proved, that of other thoughtful Protestants then contemplating the war and speculating on its chances. But, in the second place, the business of the French alliance and the Flanders enterprise was vitally inter-connected with the so-called entanglement in the north and east. The German Emperor Ferdinand III. had died in April 1657; the Empire was vacant; Mazarin had set his heart on obtaining that central European dignity for his young master, Louis XIV., and was intriguing with the Electors for the purpose; it was still uncertain whether, when the time came, a majority of the Electoral College would vote for Louis XIV. or would retain the Imperial dignity in the House of Austria by choosing the late Emperor's son Leopold. The future of Germany and of Protestantism in Germany was concerned deeply in that issue; and, whatever may have been Cromwell's feelings in the special prospect of the election of his ally Louis XIV. to the Empire, he was bound to prefer that to the election of another incarnation of Austrian Catholicism.1