To Cromwell, as to most of his party, one of the worst sins of Charles I was that he had induced the Huguenots to revolt against Louis XIII, and then left them to be crushed by his forces. Englishmen abroad were accustomed to be taunted with their desertion of their co-religionists. 'I have heard,' wrote John Cook, 'fearful exclamations from the French Protestants against the King and the late Duke of Buckingham for the betraying of Rochelle; and some of the ministers told me ten years ago that God would be revenged of the wicked King of England for betraying Rochelle[10].' One of the arguments which agents of the Huguenots of Guienne used when they appealed to Cromwell was 'that the churches of these parts have endured a very great brunt by the deceitful promises which have been made to them by the former supreme powers of Great Britain[11].' To this argument Cromwell was particularly accessible. He said that England had ruined the Protestant party in France and that England must restore it again[12]. In the twenty-second article of the draft-treaty which he proposed to Mazarin in July, 1654, he demanded the right of superintending the execution of the edicts in favour of the French Protestants and seeing that they were scrupulously observed--a demand which naturally met with a refusal from Mazarin[13]. To obtain information of the condition of the French Protestants and of their political attitude Cromwell despatched to France about the close of 1653, or early in 1654, a Swiss who is often mentioned by Burnet, namely, Jean Baptiste Stouppe. Burnet describes him as 'a Grison by birth, then minister of the French church in the Savoy, and afterwards a brigadier-general in the French armies: a man of intrigue but of no virtue.' Condé, continues Burnet, had sent over 'to offer Cromwell to turn Protestant: and if he would give him a fleet with good troops he would make a descent on Guienne, where he did not doubt he should be assisted by the Protestants; and that he should so distress France, as to obtain such conditions for them and for England as Cromwell himself should dictate. Upon this offer Cromwell sent Stouppe round all France, to talk with their most eminent men, to see into their strength, into their present disposition, the oppressions they lay under, and their inclinations to trust the Prince of Condé. He went from Paris down the Loire, then to Bordeaux, from thence to Montauban, and cross the south of France to Lyons: he was instructed to talk to them only as a traveller, and to assure them of Cromwell's zeal and care for them, which he magnified everywhere. The Protestants were then very much at their ease: for Mazarin, who thought of nothing but to enrich his family, took care to maintain the edicts better than they had been in any time formerly. So Stouppe returned and gave Cromwell an account of the ease they were in, and of their resolution to be quiet. They had a