One result of the West Indian expedition was that the long-delayed alliance with France was now a settled affair. Cardenas had his pass-ports sent him, and on the 22nd of October, 1655, he left England. The Court of Madrid had already recalled him, laid an embargo on all English property in Spain, and conferred a Marquisate and pension on the Governor of Hispaniola. On the 24th of October the Treaty of Peace and Commerce between Cromwell and Louis XIV. was finally signed; and within a few days afterwards there was out in London an elaborate document entitled "_Scriptum Domini Protectoris, ex consensu atque sententia Concilii sui editum, in quo hujus Reipublica causa contra Hispanos justa esse demonstratur_" ("The Lord-Protector's Manifesto, published with the consent and advice of his Council, in which the justice of the Cause of this Commonwealth against the Spaniards is demonstrated"). Now, accordingly, the Commonwealth entered on a new era of her history. Cromwell and Mazarin were to be fast friends, and the Stuarts were to have no help or countenance any more from the French crown; while, on the other hand, there was to be war to the death between the Commonwealth and Spain, war in the new world and war in the old, and Spain was thus naturally to adopt the cause of Charles II., and employ exiled English Royalism everywhere as one of her agencies,--Of the consciousness of the Lord-Protector and the Council of this increased complexity of the foreign relations of the Commonwealth in consequence of the rupture with Spain there is a curious incidental illustration. "That several volumes of the book called _The New Atlas_ be bought for the use of the Council, and that the Globe heretofore standing in the Council Chamber be again brought thither," had been one of the Council's instructions to Thurloe at their meeting of Oct. 2. Thenceforth, doubtless, both the Globe and the Atlas were to be much in request.--More important, however, than such fixed apparatus in the Council Room was the moving instrumentality of envoys and diplomatists in the chief European cities and capitals. Above all, an able ambassador in Paris was now an absolute necessity. Nor was the fit man wanting. Among the former Royalists of the Presbyterian section that had become reconciled to the Commonwealth, and attached to the Protector by strong personal loyalty, was the Scottish WILLIAM LOCKHART, member for Lanarkshire in the late Parliament. He had been trained to arms in France in his youth, and had since then served as a Colonel among the Scots. In this capacity he had been in Hamilton's Army of the Engagement, defeated by Cromwell at Preston, and in David Leslie's subsequent Army for Charles II., defeated at Dunbar. Having received some insults from Charles, of such a kind that he had declared that "no King on earth should use him in that manner," he had snapped his connexion with the Stuarts before the Battle of Worcester; and for some time after that