All this did not seem favourable to the prospects of a Protestant League, and Cromwell's envoys, Meadows, Jephson, Bradshaw, and Downing, had been going to and fro with their wits on the stretch.

Such, in general, was the condition of affairs when Milton for Cromwell wrote as follows:--"Most serene and potent King, most dear Friend and Ally,--As often as we look upon the ceaseless plots and various artifices of the common enemies of Religion, so often our thought with ourselves is how necessary it is for the Christian world, and how salutary it would be, for the easier frustration of the attempts of these adversaries, that the Potentates of Protestantism should be conjoined in the strictest league among themselves, and principally your Majesty with our Commonwealth.

How much, and with what zeal, that has been furthered by Us, and how agreeable latterly it would have been to us if the affairs of Sweden and our own had been in such a condition and position that the League could have been ratified heartily by us both, and with all fit aid the one to the other, We have testified to your agents from the time when they first treated of the matter with Us.

Nor, truly, were they wanting to their duty; but, as was their custom in other things, in this matter also they displayed prudence and diligence.

But we have been so exercised at home by the perfidy of wicked citizens, who, though several times received back into trust, do not yet cease to form new conspiracies, and to repeat their already often shattered and routed plots with the exiles, and even with the Spanish enemy, that, occupied in beating off our own dangers, we have not hitherto been able, as was our wish, to turn our whole attention and entire strength to the guardianship of the common cause of Religion.