1658" in the Skinner Transcript, but surely by mistake.

Such a letter can hardly have been sent to the Archduke after Oct.

1655, when the war with Spain broke out.

I have inserted it at this point by conjecture only, and may be wrong.] In April 1655, when these two letters were written, Oliver was in the sixteenth month of his Protectorship.

His first nine months of personal sovereignty without a Parliament, and his next four months and a half of unsatisfactory experience with his First Parliaments were left behind, and he had advanced two months and more into his period of compulsory Arbitrariness, when he had to govern, with the help of his Council only, by any means he could.