[120] ‘To help their bested mother church and country, they have deserted their charges abroad to their great loss, which they knew she was never able to make up.’ Baillie, Sept. 1639, i. 223.
[121] ‘They are a people that can live of nothing, and we that can want nothing.’ Countess of Westmoreland to Windebank: Hardwicke Papers ii. 129.
[122] Depêche de Bellièvre, 12 Mai: ‘Les seigneurs qui étoient à York s’étoient déjà assemblés pour voir ce qu’il il y auroit à faire en ce rencontre, et avoient été à trouver le comte d’Arundel, qui est le premier, pour porter la parole.’
[123] Sir Henry Devick’s account of this conference in Burnet, Dukes of Hamilton 133. Although it there appears to have taken place later than the application to the King, yet it must have preceded it. The application was made in consequence of the conference.
[124] Pacification of Berwick. Hardwicke Papers ii. 241.
[125] Giustiniano July 1-8, 1639.
CHAPTER II.
RELATIONS OF THE ENGLISH COURT WITH THE COURT AND POLICY OF FRANCE.
Let us now once more direct our close attention to the relations between England and France, which at that time, as they had almost always done, determined the general course of European policy.
In July 1637 the two powers, between which, notwithstanding the above-mentioned objections on the part of Wentworth, negotiations had always been going on, came to an agreement about the articles of an alliance for mutual assistance, which opened a wide prospect for the general relations of Europe, especially with regard to Germany[126].
By this agreement they combined in proposing to restore the Estates of the German Empire, which had been overpowered by the house of Austria, and especially the Palatine house, to those possessions and rights which they had enjoyed before the war. The King of England pledged himself that he would not permit either money or the necessaries of war to be supplied in future to the Austro-Spanish house, but on the contrary, that he would equip a fleet which should entirely prevent any transport of the kind: that he would never again allow the Spaniards to enlist soldiers in his dominions, but that he would give this permission to the French. In return the King of France promised not to conclude peace either with the German or with the Spanish line of the house of Austria without the consent of the King of England, and A.D. 1637. above all not to do so unless the complete restoration of the Palatinate had been obtained. In order to achieve this end, their allies, Holland and Sweden, were to be invited, in common with the two Kings, to lay before the house of Austria and the Duke of Bavaria conditions for a general agreement, and were to enforce these by arms if they were not accepted within a month. The two Kings were then to sanction any kind of enterprise on the part of their subjects against the possessions of the crown of Spain in America, in the East Indies, or in Europe: they were to cut off the communications of Spain with the distant parts of the world, as well as with Flanders and Germany; and they were to settle beforehand how to deal with the conquests which they hoped to make in the Spanish Netherlands.