Bristol had shot his bolt prematurely, and was foiled in his attack upon Clarendon. For the moment the Chancellor's authority seemed to be consolidated by the very machinations of his enemies. But the rancour of the intriguers was none the less vigorous, and it required all his courage and steadfastness to maintain the load of public care that hung upon him while he saw his influence undermined by secret slander. He knew well that the King was listening to those who spared no effort to excite his jealousy of Clarendon's control; that the easy humour which prompted Charles to avoid a rupture was no trustworthy shield against the effects of his growing irritation. He saw that the Court was sinking deeper in the mire of licentiousness and corruption, and was daily rousing against it more emphatically the anger and contempt of the nation, and making his own task of consolidation more hopeless. The anxieties and hardships of long years of civil war, of exile, and of poverty, were telling sorely upon his own health, and much of his work had to be carried on from a sick-bed, and under the strain of painful illness. Ambition had never played a great part in his life; and even gratified ambition would have been ill-paid by high place and sounding titles, when these were accompanied by baffled hopes, and by the sight of his ideals fading into unreality. But his difficulties were now to be increased, as he saw the nation gradually drifting into war, under the promptings of a selfish and reckless faction, who exploited national jealousies for their own purposes, and, mistaking a spirit of boastful bluster for courage and determination, sought to supply the place of deliberate preparation by thoughtless provocations. And all the while he knew perfectly well that, if disaster ensued, his enemies would lay the blame on him.
Between England and the Dutch Republic, the causes of irritation had been rapidly accumulating. The centre of the commerce of the world had now shifted to North-Western Europe, and the growing commercial interests of the day were a sure and increasing source of international jealousy. The rivalry between England and Holland had begun before the Civil War, and during that war Holland had found in England's distractions a splendid opportunity for stealing a march on her most powerful rival. In her colonial enterprise she had easily outstript Spain and Portugal, and more than held her own with England. Her trade was the largest of the world. Her fleet was admirably equipped, and the great traditions of her naval commanders were worthily maintained since the death of Van Tromp, by De Ruyter. If her marvellous prosperity carried within itself the seeds of decay, these were not as yet apparent; and however dangerous were her internal dissensions, they were for the time neutralized by the cunning and the capacity of De Witt. No Power had better reason to recognize the imperial force of Cromwell, and none was more keenly conscious of the contrast between his master will, and the vacillating and distracted counsels that now prevailed at the Court of England. Clarendon saw the position as well as they. He knew how poor was the bulwark supplied by the noisy loyalty of the Restoration, and how imperatively necessary it was to consolidate authority at home before launching upon a foreign war. We have already spoken of Cromwell's Navigation Act, forbidding any imports into England except those carried in English ships, or in ships belonging to the country of origin, and of the deadly wound which that Act had inflicted upon the Dutch carrying trade. The Act had, as we have seen, been renewed by the Parliament of 1661; but it remained to be seen whether England could maintain by force of arms the supremacy which such legislation assumed. If this was to be done, it could be only by careful preparation, by establishing a sound financial system, and by presenting a united front. All these essentials were ignored by the recklessness of Clarendon's enemies, and his efforts to secure them were baffled by the profusion, the waywardness, and the petty irritation of the King.
The Dutch could offer no direct opposition to the Navigation Laws; but in colonial affairs they had ample opportunity for inflicting injury upon England, and they were not slow to avail themselves of it. A tariff war between the two countries had already begun. The woollen manufacturers of England were threatened by the high import duties imposed by the Dutch upon English goods; and England endeavoured to meet these by prohibiting the export of wool. Each Parliamentary session saw new import duties imposed upon foreign goods imported into England, and in many cases their importation was absolutely prohibited. The rivalry in the fishing trade led to conflicts which were carried almost to the point of war, and the fishing fleets from the Dutch and English ports both reckoned, as an ordinary experience, on having to defend themselves by armed force. But it was on the West coast of Africa, and in the East Indies, that the two Powers came into most serious collision, and there the bitterness of rivalry was increased by a long catalogue of wrongs suffered on both sides. The estrangement was intensified when the chief colonial rival of Holland seemed likely to become, by the marriage treaty, the ally of England, and when Portugal threatened, in the confidence of that alliance, to prosecute her schemes of vengeance for the aggressions of the Dutch. It became of the first importance for the Dutch to patch up some sort of treaty with Portugal before the English alliance should be cemented, and this was the object of the statesmen of the United Provinces. To counteract this seemed to some to be the soundest policy for England.
The negotiations at the Hague were carried on by Sir George Downing, who without being a leading statesman, or wielding any considerable authority in England, yet managed to exert no little influence upon the course of affairs at a very critical juncture. His career had been a strange one. He was of obscure birth, but had managed to ingratiate himself with the Protector, and was employed in various capacities—ranging, it would appear, from chaplain to scout-master—in the Scottish army. In 1656, he appeared in Cromwell's Parliament, as member for Haddington, and secured for himself a plurality of offices, which combined a tellership of the Exchequer, with the captaincy of a troop of horse. The time was favourable for the adventurer whose advance was delayed by no scruples of conscience, and no deficiency of self-assurance; and Downing increased his importance by a marriage with the sister of Howard, first Earl of Carlisle. We next find him resident at the Hague, as Cromwell's representative, and exerting himself, with obtrusive zeal, in urging the exclusion from Dutch territory of the exiled King and his Court. But Downing was one of those who readily, and with no troublesome qualms of conscience or of honour, accommodate themselves to changes of political circumstances. He was astute enough to foresee the coming Restoration, and easily secured the confidence and gratitude of Charles by betraying the secrets of those whose agent he was. He rendered a useful service in betraying to Charles's advisers the double-dealing of Sir Richard Willis, the Royalist who stooped to be spy for Cromwell, and compounded with his conscience by taking care that his betrayals should be accompanied by warnings which enabled those whose movements he betrayed, to provide for their own safety. Downing carefully copied the manoeuvres he exposed, and was dexterous enough to arrange that he should continue, by an easy transference of allegiance, to act at the Hague for Charles, in the same capacity as he had acted for Cromwell, He had gained experience which was eminently useful; and he was soon ready to show the same relentless skill in tracing the hiding places of fugitive rebels, as he had lately shown in harassing the exiled Royalists. He was a man of unquestionable ability, of dauntless audacity, and restless activity; but he moved the hatred and contempt alike of Royalist and rebel, for his arrogance, his brazen insolence, and his cynical lack of conscience. Clarendon had now to use him as agent in a series of complicated diplomatic transactions. To his perspicacity, promptness, and determination, the Chancellor might trust. But again and again, in his correspondence, Clarendon has to urge caution, to rebuke Downing's arrogance, and to expostulate with him for an attitude deliberately provocative, and neglectful of the plainest instructions inculcating prudence and reserve. Clarendon was to have his instinctive dislike of the man aggravated by many future provocations in other fields. At this time, he found him the most dangerous of agents in a negotiation of the utmost delicacy—one impatient of control, impetuous in temper, reckless by his greed of self-glorification, and too intent upon achieving a diplomatic triumph, to pay any attention to the risks of premature hostilities. Downing was determined to prevent the concession of any substantial advantages to the Dutch by means of the Portuguese treaty, and did not hesitate to assert that any such concession would be treated by the King of England as a breach of the engagement between Portugal and himself. Clarendon was not prepared to assume such an attitude. An open breach between Portugal and the United Provinces would undoubtedly have involved England in war.
"You must set all your wits on work to prevent this war, which will produce a thousand mischiefs, "wrote Clarendon to Downing; [Footnote: Letter of November 22nd, 1661.] "the Dutch will undergo their full share of them; nor can any good Dutchman desire that Portugal should be so distressed as to fall again into the hands of the Spaniards."
Clarendon, of course, was alive to the disadvantages of a grant by Portugal to the Dutch of privileges of trade equal to those possessed by England. But if Portugal agreed to indemnify England for any loss of exclusive privilege, then, in God's name, let them sign what treaty they pleased. Anything rather than be plunged in a war to which the resources of the nation were not equal, and which would inflict a far more crushing blow upon those commercial interests in defence of which it would be waged, than could be involved in any unduly generous treaty concessions to a rival. The treaty was ratified, and for the moment the breach between the United Provinces and Portugal was avoided.
Other grounds of quarrel soon supervened. Charles had strongly espoused the interests of his sister's child, the young Prince of Orange, whose exclusion, through the instrumentality of De Witt, from the office of Stadtholder, which had been held by his father, was keenly resented by the English King. Downing was instructed to support the Prince's claim, and was ready, with his usual headstrong pugnacity, to make it an essential condition of any treaty that these should be conceded. "The Dutch would not hazard their trade," he wrote, "upon such a point." But he failed to notice that the point involved the influence of De Witt, the most powerful man in Holland. Once again Clarendon had to moderate the impetuosity of his representative: we could make no such stipulation. "Upon what grounds, I pray," wrote Clarendon to Downing, "can the King, in renewing a league with the States-General, demand that they should choose a general of his recommendation?" It would be time enough to intervene when we had established peace. Then, and then only, could we think of fighting against the intrigues of De Witt with any prospect of success.
Clarendon knew well that nothing would suit the plans of Louis XIV. so entirely as an internecine war between England and the Dutch. Nor was this the sole danger to be feared from engaging in hostilities. It was only by a peace with Holland, that the fear of new dissensions at home could be allayed.
"There is nothing," writes Clarendon to Downing, in August, 1661, "the seditious and discontented people here do so much fear as a peace with Holland, from the contrary to which they promise themselves infinite advantages." "If this peace can be handsomely made up, and speedily, great conveniences will arise from it; and we may, after two or three years' settling at home, be in the better position to do what we find fit."
For the present, the aim of Clarendon's policy was to restore the position to what it had been under Cromwell. If the conditions essential for the free expansion of English trade were secured, the more distant quarrels between the different trading companies in the East Indies and Africa might be matter for subsequent argument, and the dynastic claims of the House of Orange might be postponed to a more convenient season. With these clear aims before him, it was not found impossible by Clarendon to arrange a treaty between England and the United Provinces, which was signed at Westminster, in September, 1662. Each was to aid the other against rebels, and neither was to harbour fugitive rebels from the other Power. The naval supremacy of England was to be acknowledged by the lowering of the flag by Dutch vessels. The island of Polerone in the Malay Archipelago—an old subject of contention—was to be restored by Holland. There was to be full freedom of trade between the two Powers. The quarrels of the independent trading companies of each Power in Africa and the East Indies were not to involve war, but were to form subject of arbitration, and equitable settlement after a due interval. No dispute was to be revived which dated earlier than 1654, and later claims which were still outstanding were to be settled by Commissioners appointed by the two Powers. This last article alone was soon found to involve grounds of dissension far-reaching enough to have broken up the peace, even had no other irritating causes supervened.