en. All which being known to Mazarin, that wily
statesman saw that no time was to be lost. While Mr. Downing was
still only on his way to Geneva through France, Mazarin had
instructed M. Servien, the French minister at Turin, to insist, in
the French King's name, on an immediate settlement of the Vaudois
business. The result was a _Patente di Gratia e Perdono_, or
"Patent of Grace and Pardon," granted by Charles Emanuel to the
Vaudois Protestants, Aug. 19, in terms of a Treaty at Pignerol, in
which the French Minister appeared as the real mediating party and
certain Envoys from the Swiss Cantons as more or less assenting. As
the Patent substantially retracted the Persecuting Edict and restored
the Vaudois to all their former privileges, nothing more was to be
done. Cromwell, it is true, did not conceal that he was disappointed.
He had looked forward to a Treaty at Turin in which his own envoys,
Morland and Downing, and D'Ommeren, as envoy from the United
Provinces, would have taken the leading part, and he somewhat
resented Mazarin's too rapid interference and the too easy compliance
of the envoys of the Cantons. The Treaty of Pignerol contained
conditions that might occasion farther trouble. Still, as things
were, he thought it best to acquiesce. Downing, who had arrived at
Geneva early in September, was at once recalled, leaving Morland and
Pell still there, to superintend the distribution of the English
subscription-money among the poor Vaudois, instalment after
instalment, as they arrived. The charitable work was to detain
Morland in Geneva or its neighbourhood for more than a year, nor was
the great business of the Piedmontese Protestants to be wholly out of
Cromwell's mind to the day of his death.[1]

[Footnote 1: Morland, 605-673; Guigot, II. 220-225; Council Order
Book, July 17.]

Just at the date of the happy, though not perfect, conclusion of the
Piedmontese business, came almost the only chagrin ever experienced
by Cromwell in the shape of the failure of an enterprise. It was now
some months since he had made up his mind in private to a rupture
with Spain, intending that the fact should be first announced to the
world in the actions of the fleet which he had sent with sealed
orders to the West Indies under Penn's command. The instructions to
Penn and to General Robert Venables, who went with him as commander
of the troops, were nothing less, indeed, than that they should
strike some shattering blow at that