1660-1664

COMMERCIAL RIVALS

589

three years. As the whole of the machinery invented by the Long Parliament for giving effect to such a clause (see p. 530) had vanished, no king could now be compelled to summon Parliament unless he wished to do so.

17 Growing Hostility between England and the Dutch. 1660-1664.-It was not fear, but commercial rivalry, which made England hate the Dutch. In 1660 the Convention Parliament had re-enacted the Navigation Act (see p. 565). Legislation alone, however, could not prevent the Dutch from driving the English out of the markets of the world, either by superior trading capacity, or by forcibly excluding them from ports in which Dutch influence was supreme. Besides this, the Dutch refused to surrender Pularoon, a valuable spice-bearing island in the East Indies, though they had engaged to do so by treaty. If there was anything about which Charles II. was in earnest it was in the spread of English colonies and commerce. He had also private reasons for bearing ill-will against the Dutch, who by abolishing the office of Stadholder (see p. 565) in 1650, had deprived the young William of Orange, the son of Charles's sister Mary, of any post in the Republic. The seven provinces were held together by the necessity of following the counsels of the Province of Holland, by far the most extensive and the wealthiest of the seven, if they were to preserve any unity at all. The opinion of this Province was the more readily accepted because the provincial states by which it was governed submitted to be led by their pensionary, John de Witt, one of the most vigorous and most prudent statesmen of the age. A pensionary was only an officer bound to carry out the orders of the States, but the fact that all business passed through his hands made a man of John de Witt's ability, the director of the policy which he was supposed to receive from others.

18. Outbreak of the First Dutch War of the Restoration. 1664-1665. In 1664 hostilities broke out between England and the Dutch Republic, without any declaration of war. English fleets captured Dutch vessels on the coast of Africa, seized islands in the West Indies, and took possession of the Dutch settlement in America called by its founders New Amsterdam, but re-named by the English New York, after the king's only surviving brother, the Duke of York, who was Lord High Admiral. Later in the year, De Ruyter, one of the best of the Dutch admirals, retaliated by seizing most of the English forts on the coast of Guinea, and in 1665 war was openly declared. Parliament made what was then

the enormous grant of 2,500,000l., and on June 3 a battle was fought off Lowestoft in which the English were completely victorious.

19. The Plague. 1665.-The rejoicing in England was marred by a terrible calamity. For more than half a century the Plague had appeared in England, at intervals of five years. It now broke out with unusual virulence, especially in London. The streets there were narrow and dirty, and the air was close, because the upper storeys of the houses overhung the lower ones. No medical aid appeared to avail anything against the Plague. On the door of every house in which it appeared was painted a red cross with the words, "The Lord have mercy upon us." Every one rich enough fled into the country and spread the infection. "How fearful," wrote a contemporary, "people were, thirty or forty, if not a hundred miles from London, of anything that they brought from any mercer's or draper's shop; or of any goods that were brought to them; or of any persons that came to their houses! How they would shut their doors against their friends; and if a man passed over the fields, how one would avoid another!" The dead were too numerous to be buried in the usual way, and carts went their rounds at night, accompanied by a man ringing a bell and calling out, "Bring out your dead." The corpses were flung into a huge pit without coffins, there being no time to provide them for so many. It was not till winter came that the sickness died away.

20. The Five Mile Act. 1665.-In October, Parliament met at Oxford, through fear of the Plague. It offered the king 1,250,000l. for the war if he would consent to fresh persecution of the Dissenters. He took the money, and gave his assent to the Five Mile Act. The Conventicle Act had been largely evaded, and, during the Plague, Dissenting ministers had preached in pulpits from which the clergy had fled through fear of infection. The Five Mile Act was to strike at the ministers ejected on St. Bartholomew's day. Not one of them was allowed to come within five miles of a borough town, or of any place in which he had once held a cure, and was therefore likely to find a congregation, unless he would take the oath of non-resistance, and swear that he would never endeavour to alter the government in Church or State, a condition to which few, if any, of the Dissenters were willing to submit.

21. Continued Struggle with the Dutch. 1665-1666. In the autumn of 1665 the ravages of the Plague kept the English fleet in the Thames, and the Dutch held the sea. On land they were

1666

THE DUTCH WAR

591

exposed to some peril. Ever since their peace with Spain, in 1648, they had allowed their military defences to fall into decay, on the supposition that they would have no more enemies who could dispose of any formidable land-force. Now even a petty prince like the Bishop of Münster, hired by Charles, was able, in October, to over-run two of their eastern provinces. The Dutch called upon the king of France, Louis XIV., for help, and he, being bound by treaty to assist them, declared war against England in January

1666. If he had given earnest support to the Dutch the consequences would have been serious for England, but though he and other continental allies of the Dutch frightened off the Bishop of Münster from his attack on the Republic, Louis had no wish to help in the destruction of the English navy. What he wanted was to see the Dutch and English fleets destroy one another in order that his own might be mistress of the sea. Through the first four days of June a desperate naval battle was fought between the English and the Dutch, off the North Foreland, at the end of which the

English fleet, under Albemarle and Rupert, was driven to take shelter in the Thames, whilst the Dutch had been so crippled as to be forced to put back to refit. On July 25 and 26 there was another battle off the mouth of the Thames. This time the Dutch had the worst, and in August the English fleet sailed along the islands at the entrance of the Zuyder Zee, destroying 160 merchant ships and burning a town. The struggle had been a terrible one. The sailors of both nations were equally brave, and equally at home in a sea-fight, but the English ships were better built and the English guns were better, whilst the Dutch commanders did not work well together in consequence of personal and political jealousies.

22. The Fire of London. 1666.-In September, 1666, London suffered a calamity only second to that of the Plague. A fire broke out, and burnt for three days. All the City from the Tower to the Temple, and from the Thames to Smithfield, was absolutely destroyed. Old St. Paul's, the longest cathedral in England, perished in the flames. Great as the suffering caused by the fire was, it was not without its benefits, as the old houses with their overhanging storeys were destroyed by it, and were replaced by new ones built in the modern fashion, so that there was more air in the streets. After this reconstruction of London it was never again visited by the Plague.

23. Designs of Louis XIV. 1665-1667.—Soon after the fire died down Parliament voted 1,800,000l. for continuing the war, but the country was exhausted, and it was known that it would be impossible to collect so large a sum. Both king and Parliament were therefore anxious for peace, and there were now reasons which made the Dutch also ready to make peace. In 1665 Philip IV. of Spain died, and was succeeded by his only surviving son, Charles II., as yet a mere child, hopelessly weak in body and mind. Philip also left two daughters, the elder, Maria Theresa, a child of his first wife, being the wife of Louis, whilst the younger, Margaret Theresa, the wife of the Emperor Leopold I., was, with Charles II., the offspring of a second marriage.1 Both of the daughters had renounced all future claim to the Spanish Crown, but Louis, knowing that the young Charles II. of

1 Genealogy of the surviving children of Philip IV :

1. Elizabeth of France Philip IV. 2. Mary of Austria.

Maria Theresa Louis XIV.

Margaret Theresa = Leopold I.

Charles II.

1667

THE WAR OF DEVOLUTION

593

Spain was so sickly as to make his early death probable, was prepared to assert his wife's claim whenever that event took place. In the meanwhile he put forward a demand that the greater part of the Spanish Netherlands should be immediately handed over to her, because in those countries there was a law, known as the law of devolution, enacting that the daughter of a first wife should receive a larger share of her father's property than a son of the second. Louis chose to construe a right to succeed to property as though it implied a right to govern. In March, 1667, he made a secret treaty with Charles II. of England, in which, on condition of his engaging not to help the Dutch, he was allowed to do as he pleased in the Spanish Netherlands. In May he began what is known as the War of Devolution, with Spain. Spain had neither money nor means to defend her territory in the Netherlands, and the French armies captured one place after another.

24. The Dutch in the Medway, and the Peace of Breda. 1667. The advance of Louis into the Spanish Netherlands and the establishment of the French armies so near their frontier in the place of the now exhausted forces of Spain greatly alarmed the Dutch. The mere risk of this danger had, even before the war Detween France and Spain began, inclined them to peace with England, and a conference was opened at Breda to consider the terms. All was quickly agreed on except the question about the right of England to Pularoon (see p. 589), and Charles, imagining that this would be settled in his favour, dismissed his sailors and dismantled his fleet, in order to save money to spend on his own extravagant pleasures. The Dutch fleet at once entered the Thames, sailed up the Medway, burnt three men-of-war, and carried off a fourth. For some days it blockaded the Thames, so that the Londoners could get no coals. Men openly said that such things would not have happened if Oliver had been living. Orders were sent to the English ambassadors at Breda to give up Pularoon, and on July 31 the Treaty of Breda was signed. It was not wholly disastrous. If England lost her last hold on the spice islands of the East, she gained New York and all the territory formerly Dutch in the West, which had broken up the continuity of her colonies in America.

25. Clarendon and the House of Commons. 1667.-The events of the last months of the war had produced important effects upon the temper of Parliament. Long before the Dutch appeared in the Medway, the House of Commons had demanded an inquiry into the expenditure of the money granted to the