INTRODUCTION The history of the foreign policy of the protectorate in the years 1655- 56 depends, to an unusual degree, upon the evidence of foreign diplomats. That this should be so arises from the relative paucity of domestic records. Among the extremely exiguous collection of documents in the Public Record Office relating to Anglo-Swedish relations in these years, the only items having any reference to Coyet's and Bonde's mission are a handful of petitions from merchants claim- ing reparation for damage and loss alleged to have been sustained in the course of the recent Anglo-Dutch war.1 With one well-known exception, we have no record of the discussions in Cromwell's council of state, nor of those in the Committee of Trade and Plantations; though occasional lights as to their proceedings may be collected from the Calendar of State Papers (Domestic) for these years. They were years when Oliver was ruling without a parliament, so that we have neither protectoral allocutions nor parliamentary comment on foreign affairs. Until Lockhart was sent to France in May 1656, England had no permanent representative abroad, apart from Charles Longland at Leghorn and Sir Thomas Bendyshe at Constantinople, and they lay somewhat peripheral to the main centres of diplomatic activity. The State Papers of John Thurloe do indeed now and then afford glimpses of his attitudes—for instance, in letters to Henry Cromwell—besides convenient translations of the correspondence of foreign diplomats, furnished by Thurloe's agents; but on English foreign policy they have, surprisingly enough, very little to say.2 Bulstrode Whitelocke's Memorials of the English Affairs provides a detailed account of the commercial negotiations of 1656, but it becomes fully intelligible only when read in conjunction with Bonde's despatches. And Thurloe himself, in his 'Concerning the Forraigne Affairs in the Protector's Time', and other memoranda written after the Restoration for the guidance of Hyde, provides a short-range retrospective view of some aspects of the foreign policy of the period, which however needs to be read with some caution. Thus if a coherent record of the doubts and hesitations of protectoral policy is required, we must seek it in foreign sources: in the cor- respondence of Bordeaux and Mazarin, of Nieupoort and de Witt, in 1. PRO, SP, Foreign, Sweden, 1655-56 (SP 95/5B). The 'Proposicion for the man- ageing the Trade of Sweden', and the 'Propositions in Order to a Treaty with Sweden' (fos. 152-156) are both—the former probably, the latter certainly—to be dated to 1657. 2. I.e. in 1655-56: it was a different matter in 1657-8. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.219, on 28 Sep 2021 at 06:51:21, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068690500003974 2 SWEDISH DIPLOMATS AT CROMWELL S COURT the reports of Schlezer to the Great Elector, and even occasionally in the flood of newsletters sent off by Venice's representatives in London. Much of this is readily available in print: in the Lettres du Cardinal Mazarin and the appendixes to Guizot's History of Oliver Cromwell and the English Commonwealth, in the three collections of de Witt's correspondence, in the Urkunden und Actenstiicke zur Geschichte des Kur- fursten Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg, and in the Calendar of State Papers (Venetian). But the correspondence of Nieupoort and de Witt (for instance) is only one side of a story; and the other side is provided in the despatches of Coyet and Bonde. Apart from the extremely meagre Christer Bondes Diarium, most of which was printed in 1889 in the 42nd Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records, Appendix II, and some despatches from Fleetwood and Friesendorff in 1657, which were printed in Handlingar rb'rande Skandinaviens historia, (40 vols. Stockholm, 1816-60), v, 205-20, little Swedish diplomatic cor- respondence having any relation with Bonde's mission is available in print. A few letters from Johan Ekeblad, who made one of Bonde's suite, which are printed in Johan Ekeblads brev, ed. N. Sjoberg (Stock- holm 1911), give characteristically lively sidelights on Cromwell's England. In 1851 N. C. E. Treffenberg transcribed and published (as an Uppsala dissertation) Charles X's instructions to Coyet;1 and in the same year appeared the brief and jejune dissertation of Pehr Kalling,2 which printed paraphrases of or excerpts from some of Bonde's des- patches, though only down to the end of 1655. The same thing was done, on a much fuller and more satisfactory scale, by J. Levin Carlbom, who in addition printed, in whole or in part, many of the orders sent by Charles X to London.3 Much the same kind of assistance had long ago been provided in Samuel von Pufendorf's massive De rebus a Carolo Gustavo Sveciae rege gestis commentariorum libri septem (Stockholm 1694), since 1913 available in a full Swedish translation.4 There has long existed, however, a transcript of these despatches which is readily accessible: Add. MS 38100 in the British Library. It covers the following collections in Riksarkivet, Stockholm: Diplo- matica, Anglica, vols. 10 (letters of Coyet to Charles X), 13-14 (letters of Bonde to Charles X: some gaps in the series being supplied by the transcriber from copies in Bonde's Register), and portions of vols. 17 (Barkman's letters to Charles X), and 515 (Bonnel's reports). It was made at some time during the late nineteenth century for S. R. 1. N.C.E. Treffenberg, K. Carl X Gustafs instruction for Secreteraren Coijel under dess beskickning till England 1654, (Uppsala 1851). 2. Om Riks-R&det Frih. Christer Bondes Ambassad till England 7655 (Uppsala 1851). 3. J. Levin Carlbom, Sverige och England 1655-aug. 1656 (Goteborg 1900). 4. Samuel von Pufendorf, Sju bb'cker om Konung Carl X:s bragder, trans. Adolf Hillman, Downloaded(7 fromvols .https://www.cambridge.org/core Stockholm 1913-15): I hav. eIP use address:d this 170.106.40.219 version. , on 28 Sep 2021 at 06:51:21, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068690500003974 INTRODUCTION 3 Gardiner; but otherwise the only information available about it on enquiry is that it was donated to the British Museum by Sir Charles Firth; who does not, however, seem to have used it. Gardiner on the other hand did, as appears from Chapter XLVII of his The History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate 1640-1656 (2nd edn. 4 vols. 1903). Guernsey Jones used it also in his less than satisfactory The Diplomatic Relations between Cromwell and Charles X (Lincoln, Neb. 1898). Wilbur C. Abbott, in his monumental The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (4 vols. Cambridge, Mass. 1937—1947) drew on it, not too profitably; for the translations he incorporated are crude, and not seldom simply wrong; his frequent paraphrases are unsatisfactory and sometimes misleading; and the essential points at issue do not emerge clearly from his pages. It therefore seemed that it might be appropriate to present a translation of these despatches in print. The translation is full, except as regards some of the despatches of Coyet, which fall into two distinct categories. Coyet wrote all the despatches dealing with his negotiation in Swedish; but those which were essentially newsletters designed to be sent to a number of recipients are in German; and since it seemed probable that most historians might be able to read these in the original (which perhaps is not the case in regard to despatches written in Swedish) it was thought sufficient to present a full summary of them, on the lines of those offered in the Calendar of State Papers (Venetian). The letters of Benjamin Bonnel, who acted as commissioner during the first half of 1655, and those from Johan Barkman, who acted as secretary after Bonde's departure, are omitted: Bonnel's because they are really newsletters of small importance; Barkman's because at the time when they were written the essential object of Bonde's negotiations—an Anglo-Swedish alliance—had been temporarily abandoned, and they have therefore little interest either for Swedish or for English policy. The treaty of Uppsala, which Whitelocke concluded on 11 April 1654, made a Swedish mission to England necessary: partly on formal and ceremonial grounds—to exchange ratifications, to give notice of Charles X's accession—but also to resolve points which in 1654 had been left unsettled, of which much the most important was the nature and terms of the alliance between the two countries which had been suggested, and agreed on in principle, during Whitelocke's sojourn in Sweden. For such negotiations it was clearly necessary that Sweden be represented in London by diplomats of higher rank, and with a greater knowledge of the aims of Swedish policy, than Commissioner Benjamin Bonnel: hence the despatch first of Coyet and then of Bonde. Peter Julius Coyet (1618-67), wno was accredited as envoye pending Downloadedth frome arriva https://www.cambridge.org/corel of Christer Bond. IP address:e as 170.106.40.219ambassador-extraordinary, on 28 Sep 2021 at 06:51:21, ha, subjectd to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068690500003974 4 SWEDISH DIPLOMATS AT CROMWELL'S COURT attended the university of Leiden, where he had been a pupil of Salmasius, and from him had acquired a command of international and civil law of which he found opportunities to avail himself on occasion during his stay in London; and when he returned to Sweden he found appropriate employment in the appellate division of the council of state.