Sweden had survived another year and the alliance threatening it had begun to dissolve. Tsar Peter gradually withdrew his forces eastwards during the next year, 1717, and the prospect of an invasion of Sweden from Denmark receded. The Swedish attack on Norway could therefore be revived. At sea the threat of the Swedish fleet at Karlskrona and the squadron at Gothenburg remained, and the Swedish privateers were allowed to go on annoying everyone. Karl XII sent emissaries to raise money, notably in the neutral United Provinces, and others went on more purely diplomatic ventures. Peter travelled Europe – Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin – as his own diplomat.

For George I in his dual capacity as king and elector, the situation was threatening in more than one way. He was always apprehensive about any likely threat to his Hanoverian lands, and at the same time eager to expand them; he was especially keen to acquire the Swedish territories of Bremen and Verden, between the estuaries of the Elbe and the Weser. In Britain the Jacobite issue was alive still, as was the threat of the Baltic privateers to any British ship that ventured into that sea, and even in the North Sea they hung about the Dogger Bank waiting to snap up unwary vessels. Further, a new problem, involving all Europe, was developing in the Mediterranean, where Spain was reviving and ambitious, and was more than sympathetic to the Jacobites.

It was clearly necessary to send another fleet into the Baltic in the spring of 1717, and, while it was certain that the merchantmen would again need to be shepherded and protected, the Jacobite issue had also to be addressed. Whether Karl XII was really promoting a Jacobite expedition from Sweden, or simply using London’s paranoia for his own ends, the British fleet for the Baltic in 1717 would need to be on the alert on the issue. The arrest of some Swedish diplomats and the publication of their correspondence, suitably excerpted and exaggerated, seemed to ‘prove’ this Jacobite plot, and increased the general British animosity towards Sweden. News of a near famine in Sweden prompted the British government to turn the screws by proclaiming a trade blockade of the Swedish ports, which was also a reply to the privateering menace. This would also require a fleet in the Baltic to enforce it.