for the interests of both Commonwealths.  Meanwhile may God long preserve your Majesty, to His own glory and for the guardianship and defence of the Orthodox Church.”—­The peculiar state of the relations between the Swedish King and the English Government is here to be remembered.  The heroic Swede, by his sudden recommencement of war with Denmark, had brought a host of enemies again around him; and the question, just before Oliver’s death, was whether Oliver would consider himself disobliged by the rupture of the Peace with Denmark, which had been mainly of his own making, or whether he would stand by his brother of Sweden and think him still in the right.  That the second would have been Oliver’s course there can be little doubt.  The question had now descended to Richard and his Council.  They were anxious to adhere to the foreign policy of the late Protector in the Swedish as in all other matters; but there were difficulties.

(CXXXVI.  AND CXXXVII.) To CHARLES GUSTAVUS OF SWEDEN, Oct. 1659:—­Two more letters to his Swedish Majesty, following close on the last:—­(1) In the first, dated “Oct. 13,” Richard acknowledges a letter received from the King of Sweden through his envoy in London, and also a letter from the King to Philip Meadows, the English Resident at the Swedish Court, which Meadows has transmitted.  He is deeply sensible of his Swedish Majesty’s kind expressions, both of sorrowing regard for his great father’s memory, and of goodwill towards himself.  There could not be a greater honour to him, or a greater encouragement in the beginning of his government, than the congratulations of such a King.  “As respects the relations entered into between your Majesty and Us concerning the common cause of Protestants, I would have your Majesty believe that, since I succeeded to this government, though our Affairs are in such a state as to require the extreme of diligence, care, and vigilance, chiefly at home, yet I have had and still have nothing more sacredly or more deliberately in my mind than not to be wanting, to the utmost of my power, to the Treaty made by my father with your Majesty.  I have therefore arranged for sending a fleet into the Baltic Sea, with those commands which our Internuncio [Meadows], whom we have most amply instructed for this whole business, will communicate to your Majesty.”  This was the fleet of Admiral Lawson, which did not actually put to sea till the following month, and was then wind-bound off the English coast.  See ante p. 428; where it is also explained that Sir George Ayscough was to go out with Lawson, to enter the Swedish service as a volunteer.—­(2) The other letter to Charles Gustavus, though dated “Oct.” merely in the extant copies, was probably written on the same day as the foregoing, and was to introduce this Ayscough.  “I send to your Majesty (and cannot send a present of greater worth or excellence) the truly distinguished and truly noble man, George Ayscough, Knight, not only famous and esteemed for