st of the
crew away to the East Indies, after landing fourteen of the crew on
the Guinea coast. For this daring act he had pleaded no excuse,
except that his own fleet wanted provisions and that he believed
the owners of his fleet would make good the loss. The Protector
now demands that L16,000 be paid to Messrs. Baker and Co., and also
that Giles de la Roche be punished. It concerns his French
Majesty's honour to see to this, after that recent League with the
English Commonwealth to which his royal oath is pledged. Otherwise
all faith in Leagues will be at an end.

(LXXXIV.) TO CARDINAL, MAZARIN, _Aug._ 1656:--On the same
subject as the last. While writing to the King about such an
outrage, the Protector cannot refrain from imparting the matter
also to his Eminence, as "the sole and only person whose singular
prudence governs the most important affairs of the French and the
chief business of the kingdom, with equal fidelity, counsel, and
vigilance."

(LXXXV.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES,
_Aug._ 1656. A Letter of some length, and very important. "We
doubt not," It begins, "but all will bear us this testimony--that
no considerations have ever been stronger with us in contracting
foreign alliances than, the duty of defending the Truth of
Religion, and that we have never accounted anything more sacred
than the union and reconciliation of those who are either the
friends and defenders of Protestants, or at least not their
enemies." With what grief, then, does his Highness hear of new
dissensions breaking out among Protestant powers, and especially of
signs of a rupture between the United Provinces and Sweden! Should
there be war between those two great Protestant powers, how the
common enemy will rejoice! "To the Spaniard the prospect has
already brought such an access of spirit and confidence that he
has not hesitated, through his Ambassador residing with you, to
obtrude most audaciously his counsels upon you, and that about the
chief concerns of your Republic: daring even partly to terrify you
by throwing in threats of a renewal of war, partly to solicit you
by setting forth a false show of expediency, to the end that,
abandoning by his advice your old and most faithful friends, the
French, the English, and the Swedes, you would be pleased to form a
close alliance with your former enemy and tyrant, pacified now
forsooth, an