The future of Germany and of Protestantism in Germany was concerned deeply in that issue; and, whatever may have been Cromwell's feelings in the special prospect of the election of his ally Louis XIV.

to the Empire, he was bound to prefer that to the election of another incarnation of Austrian Catholicism.[1] [Footnote 1: Studied from scattered documents in Thurloe and from those of Milton's State-Letters for Cromwell that appertain to Sweden and Denmark and the missions of 1657, with help from a very luminous passage in Baillie's Letters (III.

370-371), and with facts and dates from the excellent abridged History forming the Supplement to the _Rationarium Temporum_ of the Jesuit Petavius (edit.

1745, I.
562-564), and from Carlyle's _History of Frederick the Great_, I.222-223.] At home meanwhile things went on smoothly.

Cromwell had by this time brought his Established Church into a condition highly satisfactory to himself.