month had passed without approach to real business, his impatience had flashed into fierceness. It broke out in his talk to Whitlocke, who took every opportunity of being with him, the rather because other "grandees" held aloof. "No Commissioners being yet come to the Swedish Ambassador," writes Whitlocke, under date Dec. 1655, "he grew into some high expressions of his sense of the neglect to his master by this delay; which I did endeavour to excuse, and acquainted the Protector with it, who thereupon promised to have it mended." In truth, the warlike Swedish King had become by this time a man whose embassy compelled attention. "_Letters of the success of the Swedes in Poland and Lithuania," "Letters of the Swedes' victory against the Muscovites," "The Swedes had good success in Poland and Moscovia," "An Agreement made between the King of Sweden and the Elector of Brandenburg:_" such had been pieces of foreign news recently coming in. Accordingly, in January 1655-6, Whitlocke, Fiennes, Strickland, and Sir Gilbert Pickering, had been empowered, on the Protector's part, to treat with Count Bundt, and the Treaty had begun.--There were preliminary difficulties, however. Cromwell wanted a Treaty that should include the Dutch and the King of Denmark, and be, in fact, a League of the chief Protestant Powers of Europe in behalf of general Protestant interests; Count Bundt, on the other hand, pressed that special League between England and Sweden which he had come to propound, arguing that, while it would be more advantageous to both countries in the meantime, it might be extended afterwards. For a while there was danger of wreck on this preliminary difference; and Cromwell even talked of transferring the Treaty to Stockholm and sending Whitlocke thither for the second time as Ambassador-Plenipotentiary--greatly to Whitlocke's horror, who had no desire for another such journey, and a good deal to Count Bundt's displeasure, who thought himself and his mission slighted. At length, the Ambassador having signified that he had received new instructions from his master, which would enable him to meet Cromwell's views in some points, he was allowed to have his own way in the main; and in February 1655-6 the Treaty was on foot, both in the Council meetings at Whitehall, and in meetings of Whitlocke and the other English Commissioners with the Ambassador at Dorset House. "A long debate touching levies of soldiers and hiring of ships in one another's dominions;" "long debates touching contraband goods, in which list were inserted by the Council corn, hemp, pitch, tar, money, and other things:" such are Whitlocke's descriptions of the Dorset House meetings. The Treaty, in fact, was partly commercial and partly political, pointing to new advantages for England, but also to new responsibilities, all round the Baltic and throughout Germany.