The charitable work was to detain Morland in Geneva or its neighbourhood for more than a year, nor was the great business of the Piedmontese Protestants to be wholly out of Cromwell's mind to the day of his death.[1] [Footnote 1: Morland, 605-673; Guigot, II.

220-225; Council Order Book, July 17.] Just at the date of the happy, though not perfect, conclusion of the Piedmontese business, came almost the only chagrin ever experienced by Cromwell in the shape of the failure of an enterprise.

It was now some months since he had made up his mind in private to a rupture with Spain, intending that the fact should be first announced to the world in the actions of the fleet which he had sent with sealed orders to the West Indies under Penn's command.

The instructions to Penn and to General Robert Venables, who went with him as commander of the troops, were nothing less, indeed, than that they should strike some shattering blow at that dominion of Spain in the New World which was at once her pride and the source of her wealth.

It might be in one of her great West-India Islands, St.Domingo, Cuba, or Porto Rico, or it might be at Cartagena on the South-American mainland, where the treasures of Peru were amassed, for annual conveyance across the Atlantic.