existed under his earlier government. On 24 Nov. 1655 a proclamation was issued prohibiting the use of the prayer-book, and imposing numerous disabilities on the ejected Anglican clergy. Several anabaptist preachers were thrown into prison for attacking the government in their sermons. ‘Our practice,’ said Cromwell in his defence, ‘hath been to let all this nation see that whatever pretensions to religion would continue quiet and peaceable, they should enjoy conscience and liberty to themselves, but not to make religion a pretence for blood and arms’ (Carlyle, Speech v.) The sincerity of Cromwell’s desire to respect freedom of conscience showed itself in the protection he extended to many persons outside the pale of legal toleration. Biddle the Socinian was indeed imprisoned, but saved from the severer penalties to which parliament had doomed him. Fox and other quakers were rescued by the Protector more than once from the severity of subordinate officials. The Jews, whose readmission to England Cromwell, after long discussion, felt unable to propose, were remitted privately to settle in London and to establish a synagogue there (Harleian Miscellany, vii. 617; Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd ser. iv, 3). In answer to an appeal from Mazarin, he avowed his inability to make any public provision for the catholics, but expressed his belief that under his rule they had less reason to complain as to rigour on men’s consciences than under the parliament. ‘I have plucked many,’ he continued, ‘out of the raging fire of persecution which did tyrannise over their consciences, and encroached by an arbitrariness of power upon their estates’ (Carlyle, Letter ccxvi.) With all its defects and restrictions the amount of religious liberty maintained by the Protector was far in advance of average public opinion even among his own party. The misfortune was that it depended, like the rest of his government, solely on the will of the strong man armed.
During this period of arbitrary rule the development of Cromwell’s foreign policy was marked by his championship of the Vaudois and his rupture with Spain. In the closing months of 1654, while it was yet doubtful whether the Protector would ally himself with France or Spain, he had despatched two great fleets, one commanded by Blake, the other by Penn. Blake’s fleet made English trade secure and the English flag respected throughout the Mediterranean. In April 1655 he bombarded Tunis and forced the dey to release all his English prisoners. The massacre of the Vaudois in the same April roused the sympathy and indignation of Cromwell. He declared that the misfortunes of the poor people of the Piedmontese valleys lay as near to his heart as if it had concerned the dearest relations he had in the world. He headed with a contribution of 2,000l. the national subscription raised for the sufferers. By the pen of Milton he called for the interference of all the protestant powers of Europe. He sent a special ambassador to bespeak the intervention of Louis XIV, and another to remonstrate with the Duke of Savoy. He urged the protestant cantons of Switzerland to attack Savoy, and even meditated using Blake’s fleet to capture Nice or Villafranca. But the protestant cantons were too cautious to accept his overtures for combined action. Mazarin, anxious to prevent a European war, and eager to secure the friendship of England, obliged the Duke of Savoy to patch up an accommodation with his protestant subjects (18 Aug. 1655). The treaty of Pignerol frustrated Cromwell’s wide-reaching plans for a league of all protestant states to defend their oppressed co-religionists, and also forwarded the treaty with France which Cromwell’s breach with Spain had made a necessity (Morland, Churches of Piedmont; Guizot, Cromwell, ii. 223, 233; Stern, Cromwell und die Evangelische Kantone der Schweiz). The causes of the war were the exclusiveness of Spanish colonial policy and the uncompromising character of Spanish catholicism. English traders in the American seas and English colonists in the West Indies were continual victims of Spain’s treacherous hostility. English merchants in Spanish ports were continually maltreated by the inquisition on account of their religion. For these injuries redress had been persistently denied, and Cromwell’s demand for freedom of trade and freedom of religion for English merchants was indignantly refused. Another series of considerations combined, with these to turn Cromwell against Spain. From the time of Queen Elizabeth Spain had been the traditional enemy of England and the traditional ally of English malcontents. Now, as then, Spain was the head of the catholic party in Europe. No honest or honourable peace was attainable with Spain, and even if a treaty were made it would be subject to the pope’s veto, and valid only so long as the pope said amen to it (Carlyle, Speech v. 17 Sept. 1656, Declaration of the Lord Protector showing the reasonableness of the cause of this against the Spaniards). The same mixture of religious and political motives appears in Cromwell’s letters to the English commanders in the West Indies. In one letter he bids the admiral in command at Jamaica remember ‘that the Lord Himself
