They were to prosecute this question in conference, if necessary, with the chief Army officers and others; and, if they should not come to a conclusion within six weeks, the question was to return to the Wallingford-House Council itself.[1] [Footnote 1: Letter of M.de Bordeaux to Mazarin of date Nov.

6, 1659 (i.e.Oct.28 in English reckoning), in Appendix to Guizot, II.
274-278.] In the matter of foreign relations the Committee of Safety had little to do, the arrangements of the late Rump for withdrawing from foreign entanglements still holding good for the present.

Meadows, who had become tired of his agency with the two Scandinavian powers, no longer such an inspiring office as it had been under the Protectorate, had asked the Rump more than once to recall him.

He had remained in the Baltic to as late as October, but was now back in London, anxious about his own future and about his arrears of salary.
If the present Government should succeed, there might possibly be a revival of the Cromwellian policy of co-operation with Charles Gustavus, and then the services of Meadows might be again in request; but meanwhile Algernon Sidney and the other plenipotentiaries sent by the Rump into the Baltic, though checking the heroic Swede and scorned by him in return, might represent the only policy yet possible.

Downing, though also much exercised by the rapid turns of affairs, and thinking of scoundrel-like means for securing himself, does not seem to have been so dissatisfied with his position at the Hague as Meadows was with his in the Baltic.