The refusal of the Duke of York to take the test oath, and his marriage with the daughter of the Duke of Modena, Mary Beatrice, in 1673, filled the measure of the Protestant anxieties of the nation. In vain the two daughters of Anne Hyde, who had died in May, 1671, were publicly reared in the faith and practice of the Church of England; all feelings of security had departed from men's minds, and the rumor which began to spread abroad of a secret treaty, concluded some time before, between King Charles II. and Louis XIV., increased the suspicions of the people. The choice which the king made of a new minister served for some time to reassure men's minds. Sir Thomas Osborne, soon afterwards raised to the peerage as Earl of Danby, appeared favorable, in the House of Commons, to the country party. He was a Protestant, a thorough Englishman, and without being over-conscientious or scrupulous, he was yet not absolutely so wanting in principles as his predecessors in power. Ardently devoted to the royal prerogative, he endeavored to restore authority to the hands of the king, by relying not on the court party, but on the old Cavaliers and the Established Church. One element of his popularity was his antipathy to the alliance with France. Before his advent to power he had given as a toast at a public dinner in the city, "War with France!" The people felt assured that he would never lend his hand to those transactions humiliating for the honor of England and her sovereign, of which no one yet ventured to speak openly. The ambition and the weaknesses of men sometimes surpass the most gloomy apprehensions; of this, Danby was destined soon to furnish a proof.
Like the ministry of the Cabal, the new government began by making advances to the Dutch. A peace was concluded. Sir William Temple was charged with the care of foreign affairs, and was shortly afterwards despatched as an envoy to the Congress of Nimeguen, there to settle the terms of general peace. But Danby continually oscillated between the royal and the national policy, sometimes urging Charles to unite himself with Europe in a war against France, sometimes lending himself privately to the secret negotiations with Louis XIV. In the course of the year 1676 a new convention assured to Charles II. a pension of £100,000 sterling and the assistance of such French troops as might be necessary in his dominions. The letters of Danby do not permit us to doubt the knowledge that he had of the situation, if not his connivance at the treaty. Charles II. undertook to prolong the prorogation of Parliament, which had endeavored to force upon him an effective action in the general pacification of Europe. The war on the Continent still continued when the Houses at length assembled again in 1677. The Duke of Buckingham and Lord Shaftesbury maintained that the length of the prorogation amounted to a dissolution, but Danby was an accomplished master of the art of corruption; he disposed of the money from France. The country party was defeated in the House of Commons, and the authors of the proposition for a dissolution were sent to the Tower, where they were detained for several months.
Meanwhile the increasing successes of Louis XIV. began to alarm Danby as they alarmed England. Suddenly looking towards Holland, he obtained from the king authority to invite William of Orange to visit London, and negotiating secretly with that prince, he concluded a marriage between him and the eldest daughter of the Duke of York, the Princess Mary, whose hand had been previously offered to William without resulting in the manifestation of any eagerness on his part for the alliance. The importance of this concession was keenly felt in Paris. "Louis XIV. sent immediately for Montague, our ambassador," says Burnet, "who when he came to Versailles saw the king the most moved that he had ever observed him to be. He asked him when was the marriage to be made. Montague understood not what he meant, so he explained all to him. Montague protested to him that he knew nothing of the whole matter. The king said he always believed the journey would end in this, and he seemed to think that our court had now forsaken him. Lord Danby, who recalled Montague to London, asked him how the king had received the news of the marriage. The ambassador answered, 'As he would have done the loss of an army.'"
In England the joy was great. "The first tokens that I had of the marriage were the bonfires which were lighted in London," wrote Louis XIV. The alliance, offensive and defensive, concluded with Holland, and which at length compelled Louis to recall his auxiliary regiments, broke for the moment the secret relations between Louis XIV. and his crowned pensioner. The quarrel was not of long duration. The understandings constantly maintained between France and the English Parliament, as with their sovereign, kept the policy of England in a state of indecision and inconsistency, which rendered powerful aid to the firm and resolute conduct of Louis XIV., who was absolute master of his kingdom, his army, and his finances. "I do not envy the Grand Seignior, with his mutes and their bowstrings always ready to strangle according to his pleasure," said Charles II. to the Earl of Essex; "but I shall never think myself a king as long as those fellows keep watch on all my actions, interrogate my ministers, and demand an account of my expenses."
This was just what Parliament had attempted to do. Dreading at once the prodigality of the king and the growth of his power, demanding a war with France, and fearing to allow the sums voted for that purpose to be wasted, or to see troops, raised for the struggle with Louis XIV., turn their arms against the liberties of England, the House of Commons endeavored to limit the application of the sums voted to specific purposes, and required that an account should be rendered of expenditure. Such arrogance excited the indignation of the king, and his anger increased the feeling of alarm.
As a consequence of treachery and contradictory manœuvres the king of England ceased to have any weight on the Continent, even in the quality of mediator, when the general peace was concluded at Nimeguen. It was signed in July, 1678, under the influence of the States-General of Holland.
Thenceforth Louis XIV. was the arbiter of Europe. The English nation had learnt to distrust its king; but he was at the head of a small army, the subsidies from France were not yet exhausted, and Lord Danby was menaced in Parliament, over which he had so long exercised a paramount influence. Convicted of having taken part in the secret negotiations between Louis XIV. and his master, he was impeached in the House of Commons in 1678, and soon afterwards sent to a prison, where he remained until the death of Charles II. The court dreaded a trial which threatened to show the comparative innocence of the Lord Treasurer at the same time that it exposed the king's shame. Lord Shaftesbury was more eager to obtain the dissolution of Parliament than to bring his rival to trial. The Parliament of 1661—the "pensioned Parliament," as it had been nicknamed during the latter years of its existence—at length succumbed. The new Parliament assembled on the 6th of March, 1679.