make peace with Spain, even if Jamaica should
have to be given back and there should have to be other sacrifices?
This idea had diffused itself, it appears, pretty widely among the
pure Commonwealth's men, and was in favour with some of the
Wallingford-House party. Why be always at war with Spain? True, she
was Roman Catholic, and the more the pity; but what did that concern
England? Was there not enough to do at home?[1] (2) _Assistance to
the King of Sweden_. A great surprise to all Europe just before
Cromwell's death had been, as we know, the sudden rupture of the
Peace of Roeskilde between Sweden and Denmark, with the reinvasion of
Zealand by Charles Gustavus, and his march on Copenhagen (ante p.
396). Had Cromwell lived, there is no doubt that, with whatever
regret at the new rupture, he would have stood by his heroic brother
of Sweden. For was not the Swedish King still, as before, the one
real man of mark in the whole world of the Baltic, the hope of that
league of Protestant championship on the Continent which Cromwell had
laboured for; and was he not now standing at bay against a most ugly
and unnatural combination of enemies? Not only were John Casimir and
his Roman Catholic Poles, and the Emperor Leopold and his Roman
Catholic Austrians, and Protestant Brandenburg and some other German
States, all in eager alliance with the Danes for the opportunity of
another rush against _him_; the Dutch too were abetting the
Danes for their own commercial interests? Actually this was the state
of things which Richard's Government had to consider. Charles
Gustavus was still besieging Copenhagen; a Dutch fleet, under Admiral
Opdam, had gone to the Baltic to relieve the Danes (Oct. 1658): was
Cromwell's grand alliance with the Swede, were the prospects of the
Protestant League, were English interests in the Baltic, to be of no
account? Applications for help had been made by the Swedish King;
Mazarin, through the French ambassador, had been urging assistance to
Sweden; the inclinations of Richard, Thurloe, and the rest, were all
that way. Here again, however, the perplexity of home-affairs, the
want of money, the refusal of Mazarin himself to lend even L50,000,
were pleaded in excuse. All that could be done at first was to
further the despatch to the Baltic of Sir George Ayscough, an able
English Admiral who had for some years been too much in the
background, but of whom the Swedish Count Bundt had conceived a high
opinion dur