One sentence will suffice.

"With what faith and expression of the highest good-will all was performed by you, though your Eminence's own assurance fully satisfied me, yet, that I should have nothing more to desiderate, our Ambassador, in carefully writing to me the details, had omitted nothing that could either serve for my information or answer your opinion of him."-- It is curious, after these two last letters, to turn to those letters of Lockhart's to which Cromwell refers.

They quite confirm his words, though they contain expressions, about both the King and the Cardinal, of which Cromwell would not perhaps have sent them literal copies.

Thus, in a letter to Thurloe, of June 14, the day before the delivery of Dunkirk to the English, but when all the arrangements for the delivery had been made, Lockhart, speaking of the difficulties he anticipated in so arduous and delicate a post as the Governorship of Dunkirk, especially with his small supplies and great lack of money, adds,--"Nevertheless I must say I find him [the Cardinal] willing to hear reason; and, though the generality of Court and Army are even mad to see themselves part with what they call _un si bon morceau_, so delicate a bit, yet he is still constant to his promises, and seems to be as glad in the general, notwithstanding our differences in little particulars, to give this place to his Highness as I can be to receive it: the King is also exceeding obliging and civil, and hath more true worth in him than I could have imagined." Next day Lockhart wrote a brief note to Thurloe announcing himself as actually in possession, "blessed be God for this great mercy, and the Lord continue his protection to his Highness"; and there were subsequent longer letters both to Thurloe and to Cromwell himself[3].

Dunkirk was called "The Key of Spanish Flanders"; and the conquest of this place for the Protectorate was, it is to be remembered, among the last of Cromwell's great acts.
[Footnote 1: This Letter is not to be found in the Printed Collection or in Phillips; but it is in the Skinner Transcript (No.
102 there), and has been printed by Mr.Hamilton in his _Milton Papers_, 7-8.] [Footnote 2: Neither is this Letter in the Printed Collection.