The instructions, however, were to compel the Swedish King to a pacification, and to co-operate with the Dutch and the Danes in that interest.

As regarded the Dutch themselves, among whom Downing was grudgingly continued as Resident, there was the most studious care for a friendly intercourse.

There was no revival now of that imperious project of the old Commonwealth Government for a union of the two Republics which had alarmed the Dutch and led to the great naval war with them.

It was enough that the English should mind their own affairs, and the Dutch theirs.

But the determination to have no more of Cromwell's "spirited foreign policy" was most signally manifested in the business of the French alliance and the war with Spain.