Clarendon had no mind to cultivate an alliance with Spain, which must be purchased by such concessions as would have inflicted grave injury on England. The Spanish Ambassador, Batteville, had, at his very first audience, pressed for the surrender of Jamaica, which had been taken from Spain by the King's rebellious subjects. He claimed also that Dunkirk and Mardyke, which had been handed over to Cromwell in virtue of his treaty with France, should be restored to their rightful sovereign. These demands he made, seemingly as matters of form. They were points which need not be pressed, if England were prepared to make a treaty which would be advantageous to Spain, and if Portugal received no encouragement from England. If Clarendon disliked the Spanish alliance he disliked quite as much the methods of Court intrigue by which it was pressed. Batteville was astute enough to take a correct measure of English courtiers. He conformed himself to the slipshod methods and the rollicking humour of Charles and his circle. He insinuated himself into the intimacy of the King's boon companions: availed himself of the easy access to the King, which Charles's nonchalance permitted, and knew how to suggest what might be useful to him as a diplomat, in the careless intercourse of the table, and amidst the jests of a carouse at Court. Bristol did his best to aid the Spanish diplomat. Charles's facile temper made him forget Bristol's double-dealing, and Bristol, having regained some of his favour, "had an excellent talent in spreading that gold-leaf very thin, that it might look much more than it was." [Footnote: Life, i. 505.] A whisper in the King's ear might do much to foster Spanish designs, and with them Bristol's influence. Clarendon knew well the dangers that success in that direction might involve.
Nor were solid attractions wanting in the Portuguese alliance. For national prosperity, there was no greater essential than an encouragement to commerce, in an age when commerce throughout Western Europe was making immense advances, in which England had already earned, and must secure, her share. If this country were to balance the growing naval power of the Dutch, and their increasing mercantile marine, she must strengthen her hold upon the ever extending trade in the Eastern and Western seas. Holland must always be more of a rival than an ally; and Spain was a power with which no permanent or favourable alliance was probable or desirable, except in so far as it might be a balance against the power of France. Portugal commanded a wider range of colonial trade, both in the East Indies and in Brazil, and it presently appeared, when definite proposals were laid before the King and his Ministers by the Portuguese Ambassador, that she was prepared to pay highly for the privilege of an English alliance. A dowry of £500,000 was promised with the Portuguese Princess— no ineffective bait for one whose coffers were so ill-supplied as those of Charles. The port of Tangier, which could easily be made into an effective harbour and seemed likely to offer a command of the Mediterranean trade, was to be placed in the hands of England. Bombay was to be granted to her in the East Indies; and perhaps most important of all—the privilege of free trade to the Portuguese colonies in Brazil and the East Indies was to be accorded to her. An abundant return was thus to be reaped both by the Crown and by the nation, at once in an enhancement of naval supremacy and in an extension of commercial opportunities. It was only necessary to guard against the danger lest a Portuguese alliance might involve England in a war with Spain,
Charles was attracted by the offers, and all the more so when he received from Montague—now Earl of Sandwich—a favourable account of the value of Tangier. Portugal had given more generous aid to the Royalist cause in its extremity than either Prance or Spain, and it had incurred the vengeance of Cromwell by giving shelter in the Tagus to Prince Rupert's fleet when it was hard pressed by Cromwell's ships. Such an alliance seemed not unlikely to be well received by the nation.
Clarendon encouraged, rather than checked, the proposal, and this is all that can be said of his attitude. But after the preliminary steps had been taken, and engagements had already proceeded far with Portugal, he found that the whole project was threatened by a secret intrigue. Again that restless and versatile contriver, Bristol, had set himself to overturn the scheme. It is hard to decide what were his motives. In spite of his adoption of Roman Catholicism, Bristol's religious convictions were hardly of a kind to dominate his policy; but he had linked his lot with that of the Catholics—he may perhaps have already suspected Charles's inclination to their faith—and he may well have thought that a Spanish alliance would confirm the influence which he hoped thus to acquire. It may be that he was angry only because he had not been taken into confidence at an earlier stage in the affair; such a motive is not to be set aside in the case of one in whose character personal vanity predominated so largely, and who could so little estimate the general tendency of national feeling. Be that as it may, Clarendon found that Bristol's influence was countermining the scheme, and that the King had been so far gained over as to contemplate the breach of an engagement to which his honour was already pledged, and which would have inflicted a galling wound on the pride of his expected allies. Already, it appeared, tempting offers had been conveyed to Charles of marriage with one or other of two Italian Princesses, whose dowry would be provided by the Spanish Court, and the choice of one of whom would have had its value enhanced by a close alliance with Spain. Even with one of more controlled temperament than Charles possessed, the element of personal qualifications might not unreasonably tell for a good deal in the selection of a wife. Bristol was commissioned to visit and report upon the ladies proposed for Charles's hand, and made no secret of the reason of his voyage to Italy. The Spanish ambassador spoke openly in disparagement of the person and the attractions of Catherine, and boasted that he had effectually stopped the presumption of the upstart Court of Braganza in attempting to bolster up its rebellion against the Spanish Crown by an English alliance.
Clarendon took his usual method in dealing with such a mixture of intrigue and arrogance. To the somewhat nauseous personal details which were furnished in disparagement of the Portuguese Princess, he perhaps, as politician, gave but scant attention. He permitted Bristol to depart on his extraordinary mission, and addressed himself to the King with his customary plainness of speech. He exposed to him the braggart boasts of Bristol, whose vanity had not permitted him to keep even a secret of his own contriving. He desired him to remember the extent of his own engagement to Portugal, and how far his honour was involved. If arguments were to be found for withdrawing from the project, it would be well to consult on these with his Council. The choice of a consort was perhaps a matter somewhat too delicate for discussion at a Council Board. But Clarendon might, at least, suggest that the King of England could hardly with dignity submit his marriage to the judgment of the Court of Spain.
The Chancellor knew his master well. It was by appeals to his vanity and to his love of ease that Charles could best be moved. The plain reproaches of his Minister were irksome, and in the long run became unbearable to him, but they impressed his pliable spirit. He minimized the extent of the charge given to Bristol, and then consented to his recall. He found, or fancied that he found, that the portrait of Catherine belied the unflattering accounts he had deceived. His temper was irritated by the impudent threats of the Spanish ambassador, who was imperiously commanded to quit the Kingdom, Above all, the Ministers of France took steps to prevent that triumph to Spain which would have accrued from a breach of the alliance. La Bastide was sent with full credentials to deal personally with the Chancellor. The French King, he told him, was friendly to Portugal, although for the present his alliance with Spain prevented any overt assistance to the Braganza family. But he was ready to help the King of England with financial aid, if Charles should himself, by private understanding, undertake such assistance. Meanwhile he thought that the King "could not bestow himself better in marriage than with the Infanta of Portugal." Further, hints were given that an understanding might be reached between the Crowns as to their relations to the States of Holland, and as to the steps to be taken against the dangers which the Dutch naval power threatened to both.
The matter proceeded no further than an interchange of friendly proposals; but there was one incident connected with it, of which Clarendon has given us a full account. Before the negotiations closed, La Bastide took the opportunity of a confidential interview with the Chancellor to broach to him a proposal which, to one of Hyde's character, was nothing but an insult. He was commissioned, La Bastide said, by Fouquet, the Finance Minister of France, to express his deep respect for Clarendon, and his sense of the trust and power he now enjoyed. But he understood how easily the Chancellor might, under present circumstances, be hard put to it to maintain his high position from scantiness of means, and he had therefore sent him a present, small indeed, but only as an earnest of as much, or more, to be paid him every year. He would have need of it to secure, by becoming generosity, the means of meeting the secret machinations of his enemies at Court. La Bastide concluded by showing him bills for £10,000, payable at sight.
However much such a proposal was in accordance with the political morality of the day, Clarendon did not hesitate to show his indignation, and his disgust that it should have been made to him. "If this correspondence must lead him to such a reproach," he said, "he would unwillingly enter upon it." La Bastide must let Monsieur Fouquet know "that the Chancellor of England could receive wages only from his own master. "Such an excess of scrupulosity could only appear, to one trained in the school to which La Bastide was accustomed, as merely assumed. He still pressed the absolute secrecy of the gift, until Clarendon broke off the interview in stern anger.
The sequel was what we might expect. The King and the Duke of York came to Clarendon before the angry fit was gone, and heard the story told with Hyde's usual plainness of indignant speech. "They both laughed at him, saying 'that the French did all their business that way;' and the King told him 'he was a fool,' implying 'that he should take his money.'" The Chancellor vainly sought to impress upon the King something of his own feeling of pride, and besought him "not to appear to his servants so unconcerned in things of that nature." Either the French King would believe that he took the money without his master's knowledge, and so look on him as a treacherous knave; or "that he received it with his Majesty's approbation, which must needs lessen his esteem of him, that he should permit his servants of the nearest trust to grow rich at the charge of another prince, who might the next day become his enemy." [Footnote: Life, i. 523.] The King could only smilingly reply "that few men were so scrupulous." There is something almost comical in the effort on the part of Clarendon to press upon the King that self-respect, which he had long since cast aside, and the place of which was supplied by a mask of cynicism. It was quite true that scruples such as those of Hyde were rare in his day, and formed no part of the usages of the Court of France. But Clarendon did not know that it would soon be unnecessary to go to France for an example of shameless venality. The time was not far distant when Charles, having got rid of his irksome Mentor, was himself to fill his own coffers by accepting a bribe more infamous than that which he vainly tried to persuade his prouder servant not to reject with scorn and contempt.
For good or ill, the project of the Portuguese alliance weathered the storm of intrigue directed against it at home and abroad. Without being its proposer, or the chief guide in the negotiations, Hyde did not refuse a joint responsibility for its arrangement. We shall afterwards see how little it realized his hopes; in what sordid wrangles it involved him; how unpopular it became; and how much it contributed to deepen the degradation of Charles's Court. But for the time the prospect seemed promising enough.