ident that
the interests of the new protector required a peace, the ambassadors began
to affect indifference on the subject, and demanded passports to depart.
Cromwell, in his turn, thought proper to yield; some claims

[Footnote 1: Le Clerc, i. 335. Basnage, i. 313. Several Proceedings, No.
197. Perfect Diurnal, No. 187. Thurloe, i. 392, 420, 448.]

were abandoned; others were modified, and every question was adjusted, with
the exception of this, whether the king of Denmark, the ally of the Dutch,
who, to gratify them, had seized and confiscated twenty-three English
merchantmen in the Baltic,[1] should be comprehended or not in the treaty.
The ambassadors were at Gravesend on their way home, when Cromwell
proposed[a] a new expedient, which they approved. They proceeded, however,
to Holland; obtained the approbation of the several states, and returned[b]
to put an end to the treaty. But here again, to their surprise, new
obstacles arose. Beverning had incautiously boasted of his dexterity;
he had, so he pretended compelled the protector to lower his demands by
threatening to break off the negotiation; and Cromwell now turned the
tables upon him by playing a similar game. At the same time that he rose in
some of his demands, he equipped a fleet of one hundred sail, and ordered
several regiments to embark. The ambassadors, aware that the States
had made no provision to oppose this formidable armament, reluctantly
acquiesced;[c] and on the 5th of April, after a negotiation of ten months,
the peace was definitively signed.[2]

By this treaty the English cabinet silently abandoned those lofty
pretensions which it had originally put forth. It made no mention of
indemnity for the past, of security for the future, of the incorporation
of the two states, of the claim of search, of the tenth herring, or of the
exclusion of the prince of Orange

[Footnote 1: Basnage, i. 289.]

[Footnote 2: Thurloe, i. 570, 607, 616, 624, 643, 650; ii. 9, 19, 28,
36, 74, 75, 123, 137, 195, 197. Le Clerc. i, 340-343. During the whole
negotiation, it appears from these papers that the despatches of, and to,
the ambassadors were opened, and copies of almost all the resolutions taken
by the States procured, by the council of state.--See particularly Thurloe,
ii. 99, 153.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. Jan. 6.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1654. Feb. 28.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1654. April 5.]

from the office of stadtholder. To these humiliating conditions the prid