ndia Expedition, the beginning of the War
with Spain, &c. But in Count Bundt there had been sent to Cromwell
perhaps the most high-tempered ambassador he had ever seen.
Immediately after the first audience, Dorset House, in Fleet
Street, taken and furnished at the Ambassador's own expense, had
become the head-quarters of the Embassy; and here, as month after
month had passed without approach to real business, his impatience
had flashed into fierceness. It broke out in his talk to Whitlocke,
who took every opportunity of being with him, the rather because
other "grandees" held aloof. "No Commissioners being yet come to
the Swedish Ambassador," writes Whitlocke, under date Dec. 1655,
"he grew into some high expressions of his sense of the neglect to
his master by this delay; which I did endeavour to excuse, and
acquainted the Protector with it, who thereupon promised to have it
mended." In truth, the warlike Swedish King had become by this time
a man whose embassy compelled attention. "_Letters of the success
of the Swedes in Poland and Lithuania," "Letters of the Swedes'
victory against the Muscovites," "The Swedes had good success in
Poland and Moscovia," "An Agreement made between the King of Sweden
and the Elector of Brandenburg:_" such had been pieces of
foreign news recently coming in. Accordingly, in January 1655-6,
Whitlocke, Fiennes, Strickland, and Sir Gilbert Pickering, had been
empowered, on the Protector's part, to treat with Count Bundt, and
the Treaty had begun.--There were preliminary difficulties,
however. Cromwell wanted a Treaty that should include the Dutch and
the King of Denmark, and be, in fact, a League of the chief
Protestant Powers of Europe in behalf of general Protestant
interests; Count Bundt, on the other hand, pressed that special
League between England and Sweden which he had come to propound,
arguing that, while it would be more advantageous to both countries
in the meantime, it might be extended afterwards. For a while there
was danger of wreck on this preliminary difference; and Cromwell
even talked of transferring the Treaty to Stockholm and sending
Whitlocke thither for the second time as
Ambassador-Plenipotentiary--greatly to Whitlocke's horror, who had
no desire for another such journey, and a good deal to Count
Bundt's displeasure, who thought himself and his mission slighted.
At length, the Ambassador having