These splendid victories enabled Cromwell to conclude advantageous treaties with Holland, France, Denmark, Portugal, and Sweden. Most of these Powers sent over ambassadors to congratulate him on his elevation, and these were received at Whitehall with much state. The royal apartments were furnished anew in very magnificent style, and in the banqueting-room was placed a chair of State raised on a platform with three steps, and the Lord-Protector gave audience seated in it. The ambassadors were instructed to make three obeisances, one at the entrance, one in the middle of the room, and the third in front of the chair, which the Protector acknowledged with a grave inclination of the head. The same ceremony was repeated on retiring. Cromwell received the ambassadors of Holland to dinner, sitting on one side of the table alone, and the ambassadors with a few of the lords of the Council on the other. The Lady-Protectress at the same time entertained their ladies. In his appearances abroad the Protector assumed very much the state of a king with State coaches, Life Guards, pages, and lacqueys richly clothed. He took up his abode instantly in the royal palaces, quitting the Cockpit altogether, Whitehall being his town house, and Hampton Court his country one, where he generally went on Saturday afternoon, and spent the Sunday. It was not, however, without many heartburnings and some plots for his destruction that his wonderful elevation was witnessed by many of his old comrades, as well as his natural enemies. The Anabaptists and Fifth-Monarchy men, who carried their notions of political liberty as far beyond Cromwell as the Chartists of more modern times carried theirs beyond the Whigs, were exceedingly violent, and denounced him as an apostate and deceiver. Feak and Powell, two Anabaptist preachers in Blackfriars, thundered from their pulpits against him as the "beast in the Apocalypse," the "old dragon," and the "man of sin." "Go, tell your Protector," they cried, "that he has deceived the Lord's people, and is a perjured villain." They declared that he was worse than the last tyrant usurper, the crookback Richard, and would not reign long. Having borne the violent abuse of these men for some time, he at length sent them to the Tower. But amongst his own generals and former colleagues were men not less exasperated. Harrison and Ludlow were Fifth-Monarchy men, who believed that none but Christ ought to reign, and they joined the most disaffected. Harrison being asked if he would own the new protectoral government, answered fiercely, "No!" and Cromwell was obliged to send him to his own house in the country, and afterwards to commit him also to the Tower. Vane and others were not less angered, though less openly violent.