As scoutmaster-general, Downing had been in charge of gathering intelligence and managed a network of spies. During this residency in the Netherlands, Downing considered that gaining intelligence, both about Dutch intentions and any plots by exiled royalists, was a major part of his function, and he employed similar tactics later against regicides and other republicans there. Cromwell's aims were to effect a union of the Protestant European powers, to mediate between Portugal and the Dutch Republic and between Sweden and Denmark, but also to defend the interests of the English traders against competing Dutch merchants. Political union between the two nations had already been rejected emphatically by the Dutch in 1654, as was a proposal for a military alliance against Spain in return for a promise to exempt the Netherlands from the provisions of the Navigation Act, but Cromwell persisted.