and Spain alternately, 'constant only in his inconstancy'.[1] In April 1654 the Baron de Baas, a special agent of Mazarin, astonished Cromwell, at an audience, with the abundance and accuracy of his information regarding the Protector's designs and intrigues, and concluded with the ironical request that Cromwell would extricate him with honour from the labyrinth. Oliver's countenance, we are told, fell; the words came from his mouth more slowly than was his wont; and the interpreter,[2] after conveying a halting explanation of the words of the Protector, 'conveniently remembered that his Highness had an engagement which made it impossible to prolong the conversation, though he would be glad to resume it on a more fitting occasion'.[3] At no other time in the history of England have the profession and the pursuit of an ideal in the conduct of foreign policy been so deeply and confusedly involved with material motive; and it was entanglement with the ideal that brought Cromwell to his gravest perils both in morality and in achievement. Be it added, in this connexion, that, although many of the facts and circumstances were unknown to the great royalist historian and statesman, Clarendon, in The History of the Rebellion we find the true discreet type of mind that is required for estimate of the interests that underlie the conduct of policy among nations; and Clarendon is appreciative of Cromwell's regard for such interests.[4]
But farther back still we might with advantage go—back as far, perhaps, as Henry VII for the lessons to be gathered from one who is unsurpassed among English kings and statesmen for combined sagacity and subtlety;[5] back, certainly, to
- ↑ Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, ii. (1897), 477.
- ↑ Baas spoke in French.
- ↑ Gardiner, op. cit., 437–8.
- ↑ See, e.g. vii. (ed. 1736), 20–1, 24–6, 37.
- ↑ Contemporary English writers, it has been said, were not adequately equipped for an appreciation of Henry VII, even in his home policy: they could not 'penetrate the veil of subtle statesmanship by which
