rial dignity in the House of Austria by choosing the
late Emperor's son Leopold. The future of Germany and of
Protestantism in Germany was concerned deeply in that issue; and,
whatever may have been Cromwell's feelings in the special prospect of
the election of his ally Louis XIV. to the Empire, he was bound to
prefer that to the election of another incarnation of Austrian
Catholicism.[1]

[Footnote 1: Studied from scattered documents in Thurloe and from
those of Milton's State-Letters for Cromwell that appertain to Sweden
and Denmark and the missions of 1657, with help from a very luminous
passage in Baillie's Letters (III. 370-371), and with facts and dates
from the excellent abridged History forming the Supplement to the
_Rationarium Temporum_ of the Jesuit Petavius (edit. 1745, I.
562-564), and from Carlyle's _History of Frederick the Great_,
I. 222-223.]

At home meanwhile things went on smoothly. Cromwell had by this time
brought his Established Church into a condition highly satisfactory
to himself. The machinery of the _Ejectors_ and the
_Triers_ was still in full operation; and, on reports from the
_Trustees for the Maintenance of Ministers_, his Highness and
the Council still had the pleasure, from time to time, of ordering
new augmentations of clerical stipends. The Voluntaryism which still
existed in wide diffusion through the English mind had become
comparatively silent; and indeed open reviling of the Established
Church had been made punishable by Article X. of the _Petition and
Advice_. Perhaps the plainest speaker now against the principle of
an Established Church, or at least against the constitution of the
present one, was the veteran John Goodwin of Coleman Street. "_The
Triers (or Tormentors) tried and cast by the Laws of God and Men_"
was the title of a pamphlet of Goodwin's, which had been out since
May 1657, assailing the Commission of Triers. Goodwin was too eminent
a Commonwealth's man, and too fair a controversialist, to be treated
as a mere reviler; and it was left to the Protector's journalist,
Marchamont Needham, to reply through the press. "_The Great Accuser
cast down, or a Public Trial of Mr. John Goodwin of Coleman Street,
London, at the Bar of Religion and Right Reason_," was a pamphlet
by Needham, published July 31. It was dedicated "To His Most Serene
Highness, Oliver, Lord Protector," &c., in such terms as
these:--"Sir, It is a custom in all countries, when any man hath
taken a s