does not ascribe to your most firm steadiness in my favour. Let
your Majesty be assured in turn that there shall be no want of
either care or integrity on our part in performing all that remains
of our agreement with the same faith and diligence as hitherto. For
the rest, I congratulate your Majesty on your successes and on the
very near approach of the capture of Bergen; and may God Almighty
grant that there may be as frequent exchanges as possible of such
congratulations between us." (4.) TO CARDINAL MAZARIN[2]. This is
on the same occasion and in the same strain. One sentence will
suffice. "With what faith and expression of the highest good-will
all was performed by you, though your Eminence's own assurance
fully satisfied me, yet, that I should have nothing more to
desiderate, our Ambassador, in carefully writing to me the details,
had omitted nothing that could either serve for my information or
answer your opinion of him."--It is curious, after these two last
letters, to turn to those letters of Lockhart's to which Cromwell
refers. They quite confirm his words, though they contain
expressions, about both the King and the Cardinal, of which
Cromwell would not perhaps have sent them literal copies. Thus, in
a letter to Thurloe, of June 14, the day before the delivery of
Dunkirk to the English, but when all the arrangements for the
delivery had been made, Lockhart, speaking of the difficulties he
anticipated in so arduous and delicate a post as the Governorship
of Dunkirk, especially with his small supplies and great lack of
money, adds,--"Nevertheless I must say I find him [the Cardinal]
willing to hear reason; and, though the generality of Court and
Army are even mad to see themselves part with what they call _un
si bon morceau_, so delicate a bit, yet he is still constant to
his promises, and seems to be as glad in the general,
notwithstanding our differences in little particulars, to give this
place to his Highness as I can be to receive it: the King is also
exceeding obliging and civil, and hath more true worth in him than
I could have imagined." Next day Lockhart wrote a brief note to
Thurloe announcing himself as actually in possession, "blessed be
God for this great mercy, and the Lord continue his protection to
his Highness"; and there were subsequent longer letters both to
Thurloe and to Cromwell himself[3]. Dunkirk was called "The Key