On the 5th, at all events, when the Council again met at Hampton Court, Cromwell not present, there was, as we have seen (ante, p.

355), a minute on Dutch business of a very ominous character.

Cromwell's heart was now with the magnanimous Swede rather than with the merchandizing Dutch; and, in all probability, had he lived longer, Ambassador Nieuport would have had to send home news that might not have been pleasant to their High Mightinesses.

But the next day (August 6) Lady Claypole was dead; and from that day, through the remaining four weeks of Cromwell's life, the concerns of the foreign world grew dimmer and dimmer in his regards.

Perhaps to the last moment of his consciousness what did most interest him in that foreign world was the great new commotion round the Baltic in which his Swedish brother was the central figure, and in which both the Dutch and the Brandenburg Elector were playing anti-Swedish parts, the Elector avowedly, the Dutch more warily, "The King of Sweden hath again invaded the Dane, and very probably hath Copenhagen by this time," wrote Thurloe from Whitehall to Henry Cromwell at two o'clock in the morning of August 27.