196 Battle off the Texel [1673 him, whereby the whole Blue squadron fell far behind the body of the fleet. Tromp concentrated his attack on Spragg's flag-ship, and the Royal Prince was speedily disabled and forced out of the line, Lord Ossory, Spragg's rear-admiral, taking his place. About midday, the wind suddenly shifted to the S. W., which gave the allies the weathergage, and deprived d'Estrées of his last excuse for not falling on the detachment which was containing him. However, he stood away to the S.E. and allowed Bankaert to bear up and actually pass through the rear of the French fleet on his way to join de Ruyter against Rupert. The Commander-in-Chief was thus very hard beset, having de Ruyter on his lee quarter, and the Zeelanders to windward of him, while his rearadmiral, Sir John Chicheley, who had fallen to leeward badly damaged, was cut off from the rest of the Red squadron and was in some peril, till Rupert, pressing hard on the Dutch to leeward of him and forcing them to bear away, brought him relief. After this there followed a lull in the action; and Rupert perceiving the Blue squadron some leagues to leeward decided to bear down and rejoin it. De Ruyter conformed to the move, and the two centres ran down parallel, within range of each other but without firing. It was just as well that Rupert made the move. Spragg had had a second flag-ship disabled, and in shifting to the Royal Charles his boat was sunk and he himself drowned. Tromp then pressed hotly on the Prince and other cripples, which were with difficulty protected by Lord Ossory and a few supporters, who had forced Tromp to sheer off when de Ruyter drew near," bearing down with all the sail he could to make himself master of our lamed ships." Meanwhile, Rupert was making strenuous endeavours to induce certain vessels of the Blue and Red, which were lying inactive to windward, to take their places in his wake. Failing to do this, he pushed on and, interposing between de Ruyter and the cripples, renewed the action very sharply. Had the French, who by this time had tacked and followed the Red, only obeyed Rupert's repeated signals and borne down upon the enemy, the action would probably have ended in a victory for the allies. "I must have routed them," Rupert wrote; "it was the greatest and plainest opportunity ever lost at sea." And the justice of his bitter complaints is admitted by de Martel. Nightfall at length parted the exhausted combatants, Rupert standing to sea under easy sail so as to carry off the disabled ships, and the Dutch making for their own coast. Desperate as the fighting had been, the only vessels lost were fire-ships and other small craft; and, in spite of his losses in officers and men and the injuries his ships had received, Rupert had no intention of acknowledging defeat by quitting the coast. He was furious at the conduct of the French, and some of his own captains had behaved in a manner with which he was strongly dissatisfied. But the bad weather which followed almost immediately after the action, and before damages could be repaired, forced him home (August 18, O.S.). 1673-4] The end of the War. Treaty of London 197 The season was now so far advanced that all thoughts of a descent upon Holland had to be laid aside; the camp at Yarmouth was broken up (September 1), and a little later the French departed for their own ports. By this time not only were the relations between the French and English fleets, admirals, officers and men alike, strained almost to breaking point, but the nation was heartily sick of the war; and the "dissatisfaction at this conjunction with the French" was so great that "the general speech in the City" was that "unless this alliance with France be broken the nation will be ruined." National hostility to commercial rivals was being obliterated by the rising tide of antipathy to France, in which men saw the champion of the Roman Catholicism which they dreaded. It was felt that English sailors were being sacrificed to fight the battles of Louis; and, when Parliament met in October, it was all but unanimous in its determination to bring the War to an end. Charles was the more disposed to yield to its importunity, because the revolution in Holland which had overthrown de Witt and had supplanted him by the Prince of Orange had involved him in an attempt to ruin his own nephew. The Dutch, eagerly grasping a chance of reducing the odds against them, were ready to grant favourable terms, acknowledging fully the "right of the flag" and restoring New York, which they had taken in the previous July. Thus on February 9, 1674 (O.S.), the Treaty of London ended a war in which the honours certainly rested with the Dutch, and more especially with de Ruyter. Nothing is more remarkable than the improvement in tone, discipline, skill, and all-round efficiency displayed by the Dutch navy in the Third Dutch War, the fruit very largely of the stringent measures of reform taken by de Witt and de Ruyter after the Peace of Breda. The Dutch had fought in a manner worthy of the best days of their race; they had realised the imminent peril of their country, and had ably seconded their great leader's brilliant combination of offence and defence, of vigorous attack and skilful avoidance of unequal combats. That even de Ruyter's great skill would have averted defeat if the French had co-operated cordially it would be bold to affirm. Rupert might fairly claim that, had d'Estrées played his part properly, the battle of the Texel would have had a very different result; and certainly he had no cause to feel ashamed of his own share in the war. Spragg's sweeping criticisms of his commander are the jealous words of a disappointed rival, and Rupert had had to contend against an untrustworthy ally, a defective administration, constant shortness of money, and a jealous and disobedient subordinate, whose conduct was typical of the insubordination and indiscipline which were gaining ground in the fleet. The Restoration standard of conduct was making itself felt. The tone of the Court could not but affect the navy; and the failures and other unsatisfactory features of the Third Dutch War were the inevitable result of the King's example. CHAPTER IX THE POLICY OF CHARLES II AND JAMES II (1667-87) CLARENDON's dismissal was Charles' opportunity, and he proceeded to take advantage of it with all the speed compatible with the caution of a far-seeing calculator whose immediate future, even at crises appalling to the most daring of his followers, was invariably pledged to his personal pleasure, and with the leisurely readjustment that attends transitions in great affairs. Clarendon was succeeded by the famous Cabal -Sir Thomas Clifford, Lord Arlington, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Ashley, and the Earl of Lauderdale - the initials of whose names gave notoriety and permanence to a word already in common use. They formed a Ministry containing two of the cleverest and two of the most capable men in all England; but, despite their varied talents, they never enjoyed the complete confidence of the King and never acquired an influence over his policy comparable to that enjoyed by the late Chancellor. Less than eighteen months after Clarendon's fall, Charles wrote to his sister, Henrietta of Orleans: "One thing I desire you to take as much as you can out of the King of France's head, that my ministers are anything but what I will have them... whatsoever opinion my ministers had been of, I would and do always follow my own judgment, and, if they take any other measures than that, they will see themselves mistaken in the end." Widely as the aims of the two men differed and widely as their characters differed in almost every other respect, Charles II may be compared to his nephew William of Orange, in the uncommon tenacity with which he pursued his object. That he was, when he chose, an excellent man of business, his Ministers were well aware; that he was among the most adroit men of his age his friends and enemies, both politicians of England and the able diplomatists of France, had ample experience; but that, in power of projecting a great scheme and maintaining it in the face of almost unexampled difficulties and dangers, in coolness of judgment and in keenness of foresight he deserved to be classed among statesmen of the first rank, only the history of eighteen years could show. 1667] Charles' policy, home and foreign 199 The policy of Clarendon at home had been a severely Anglican royalism of the old style. In foreign affairs he had at the beginning of the reign been regarded by Mazarin as consistently opposed to French interests; and, although there had of late years been more ground for the popular belief that he was on the contrary their active promoter, he had desired peace with the Dutch, had dreamed of an alliance between England, Sweden, and Spain, and claimed to have prepared the way for the Triple Alliance to oppose the encroachments of Louis XIV on the territory of the Spanish monarchy. From Clarendon's retirement to the end of the reign, the cardinal point in Charles' policy was dependence on France: not however the submissive dependence of servility, but dependence on support and supplies extorted by himself and used to free him from servitude to the Church of England, either by the destruction of her privileges or by compelling her enlistment in the service of the Crown. Even when under Danby's Ministry the Court returned to a policy resembling that of Clarendon, its intention was not to secure the supremacy of the Church, but at the price of the political annihilation of her adversaries, to buy her blind and perpetual support for the Crown. The position of the Crown in the State was the constant object of Charles' undertakings: his involved intrigues in affairs both at home and abroad were only the means to assure it. The first field in which the influence of Charles' government was decisively exerted on continental politics was the Low Countries. On July 31, 1667, the Treaty of Breda was signed. Six weeks earlier, Louis had declared what became known as the War of Devolution against Spain, and had poured a large and well-equipped army under Turenne into the Spanish Netherlands. On June 2 Charleroi was taken; and before the end of August Tournay, Douay, Courtray, and Lille were in French hands and the greater part of Flanders was occupied. The intention of Louis to make good the claim which he had openly abandoned to the property, if not the title, of the Spanish throne was thus revealed to the world with startling abruptness. To the Dutch the opening of the Scheldt, which it clearly forecast, meant the rise of Antwerp and the corresponding decline of Amsterdam; to the English it dimly foreshadowed the extension of Louis' system-the system of Catholic absolutism over practically the whole of civilised Europe. Far-seeing - minds could perhaps perceive that the curtain had been rung up on a drama of incalculable gravity, of which the scene was to shift from one end of Europe to the other, and the last act was not to be played till after the lapse of more than a generation. The opponents of French aggrandisement were fortunate in the English Minister at Brussels. Sir William Temple had during the negotiations at Breda convinced himself that the only means of safeguarding the peace of Europe from Louis' ambition lay in an alliance between England and Holland, and in the following months urged the plan repeatedly on his Government. In 202 Charles and Rome. James' conversion [1668-70 unanimity of the Ministers in an age of divided Ministries, could mollify the Commons, who proceeded to petition the King for a proclamation against conventicles and to read a Bill for their suppression by 114 votes to 78. Their natural bias was accentuated by the chance, since the policy of the Triple Alliance was irreproachable, of opposing the Court on the question of religion. Their Bill was passed, but, to their indignation, did not reach a second reading in the Lords, where it was dropped on the prorogation of Parliament; they returned, however, to the charge, and in April, 1670, a Bill of increased stringency for continuing the Conventicle Act, which had expired in 1668, became law. The Commons made it plain to the King that, however gladly they might be rid of Clarendon's personality, so far as the Church was concerned they were not going to desert his principles. There can be little doubt that this had a great effect on Charles' mind. The Commons' uncompromising determination made it impossible for him, were they unresisted, to retain a shadow of authority or to pursue the national policy towards which the Triple Alliance seemed to point the way. His statesmanlike dream had been of a national Church, formally organised on the basis of the Roman Catholic religion, but broad enough to include the majority of moderate Protestants, depending but slightly on Rome in political affairs, and perfectly tolerant of dissent. But, because neither Rome would admit such privileges nor Parliament so much as allow a temporary toleration, a dream it remained. In 1668, he seems to have made another attempt in the same direction. Charles' own son, his eldest bastard, born to him by a lady of good family in Jersey, had been bred a Catholic and had recently entered the Society of Jesus at Rome. Under the name of James de la Cloche he was now at his father's request dispatched by the Jesuit General to receive a communication from the mouth of Charles, who saw him and sent him back with an oral commission as his "secret ambassador to the Father General." The rest is shrouded in mystery. The return of the youth to Rome, the nature of his mission, his subse quent career, are hidden from us: nothing more is known for certain of the eldest child of Charles II. Nor did more considerable results attend the journey to London of the papal Internuncio at Brussels a short time. after, and his secret interview with the King at the Pope's command. The decisive action was to be taken in another quarter. In January, 1669, a remarkable meeting took place at St James' Palace. The King was present and informed the Duke of York, Clifford, Arlington, and Arundel, that he desired to reconcile himself to the Catholic faith and to turn England Catholic with him. A short e before, James had announced his conversion to his brother, but the Duke's change was probably in the main religious, Charles acing rather from political motives. In the course of the next year version was suspected, though it was not until the spring of |