, unable to make any further effort, and living
with difficulty on a grant from Louis XIV. of 600 livres a month.
Various missions to foreign powers met with failure; he was excluded
from Holland by the treaty made with England in April 1654, and he
anticipated his expulsion from France, owing to the new relations of
friendship established with Cromwell, by quitting the country in July.
He visited his sister, the princess of Orange, at Spa, and went to
Aix-la-Chapelle, thence finally proceeding in November to Cologne, where
he was hospitably received. The conclusion of Cromwell's treaty with
France in October 1655, and the war between England and Spain, gave hope
of aid from the latter power. In April 1656 Charles went to Bruges, and
on the 7th of February 1658 to Brussels, where he signed a treaty with
Don John of Austria, governor of the Spanish Netherlands, by which he
received an allowance in place of his French pension and undertook to
assemble all his subjects in France in aid of the Spanish against the
French. This plan, however, came to nothing; projected risings in
England were betrayed, and by the capture of Dunkirk in June 1658, after
the battle of the Dunes, by the French and Cromwell's Ironsides, the
Spanish cause in Flanders was ruined.

As long as Cromwell lived there appeared little hope of the restoration
of the monarchy, and Charles and Hyde had been aware of the plots for
his assassination, which had aroused no disapproval. By the protector's
death on the 3rd of September 1658 the scene was wholly changed, and
amidst the consequent confusion of factions the cry for the restoration
of the monarchy grew daily in strength. The premature royalist rising,
however, in August 1659 was defeated, and Charles, who had awaited the
result on the coast of Brittany, proceeded to Fuenterrabia on the
Spanish frontier, where Mazarin and Luis de Haro were negotiating the
treaty of the Pyrenees, to induce both powers to support his cause; but
the failure of the attempt in England ensured the rejection of his
request, and he returned to Brussels in December, visiting his mother at
Paris on the way. Events had meanwhile developed fast in favour of a
restoration. Charles, by Hyde's advice, had not interfered in the
movement, and had avoided inconvenient concessions to the various
factions by referring all to a "free parliament." He left Brussels for
Breda, and issued in April 1660, together with the letters to the
council,