e his Highness with
"a large discourse," and his Highness indeed intimating that he did
not find himself well enough to talk much. But all was very amicable,
and at the end of the interview Cromwell, saying he hoped to be in
London next week, insisted on conducting the Ambassador to the door
of the antechamber, leaving Lawrence, Strickland, and Thurloe, to do
the rest by attending him through the galleries back to the coaches.
On that same day there had been a Council-meeting at Hampton Court,
the last at which Cromwell was present. Possibly Dutch business was
discussed there, and also at the next meeting of Council, which was
at Whitehall on the 3rd of August, and without Cromwell. On the 5th,
at all events, when the Council again met at Hampton Court, Cromwell
not present, there was, as we have seen (ante, p. 355), a minute on
Dutch business of a very ominous character. Cromwell's heart was now
with the magnanimous Swede rather than with the merchandizing Dutch;
and, in all probability, had he lived longer, Ambassador Nieuport
would have had to send home news that might not have been pleasant to
their High Mightinesses. But the next day (August 6) Lady Claypole
was dead; and from that day, through the remaining four weeks of
Cromwell's life, the concerns of the foreign world grew dimmer and
dimmer in his regards. Perhaps to the last moment of his
consciousness what did most interest him in that foreign world was
the great new commotion round the Baltic in which his Swedish brother
was the central figure, and in which both the Dutch and the
Brandenburg Elector were playing anti-Swedish parts, the Elector
avowedly, the Dutch more warily, "The King of Sweden hath again
invaded the Dane, and very probably hath Copenhagen by this time,"
wrote Thurloe from Whitehall to Henry Cromwell at two o'clock in the
morning of August 27. Cromwell, therefore, had learnt that fact
before his death, and it must have mingled with his thoughts in his
dying hours. In these very hours, we find, not only was Ambassador
Nieuport close at hand again, for Dutch negotiations in which the
fact would naturally be of high moment, but Herr. Schlezer also, the
London agent of the Brandenburg Elector, was at the doors of the
Council office, with express letters from the Elector, which he was
anxious to deliver to Thurloe himself, in case even at such a time
some answer might be elicited. Thurloe choosing to be inaccessible,
he had left the letters with