Clarendon's reply was as dignified as it was candid. "He had no apprehension that any sober man in England, or his highness himself, should believe that he could fail in his duty to him, or that he would omit any opportunity to make it manifest, which he could never do without being a fool or a madman." But on the other hand he would never give advice, nor consent to anything, which his judgment and his conscience told him would be mischievous to the Crown and to the Kingdom, "though his royal highness, or the King himself, were inclined to it." From the first, the King, he told the Duke, had been "averse from any thought of this war;" but he did not deny that he had done all in his power to confirm the King in that opinion. A few too complacent friends, he told the Duke, might for the moment concur in his view; reflection would soon change their minds. "A few merchants, nor all the merchants in London, were not the city of London, which had had war enough, and could only become rich by peace." The hopes of a liberal grant from Parliament were delusions. He was old enough to remember what had been the fate of James I., who had been tempted "to enter into a war with Spain, upon promise of ample supplies; and yet when he was engaged in it, they gave him no more supply, so that at last the Crown was compelled to accept of a peace not very honourable;" and, Clarendon might have added, to begin that long struggle over supply which had led to the Rebellion.
Clarendon's plain speaking did not end here. The Duke plumed himself upon his military prowess, and was eager for the war because of the laurels which he believed it had in store for him. With a better appreciation of his son-in-law's abilities, Clarendon begged him to reflect "upon the want of able men to conduct the counsels upon which such a war must be carried on." For a time it had seemed as if the Duke were ready to listen to reason, and there had been less talk of war; but the recent aggressions on both sides had dispelled such hopes. De Ruyter had inflicted heavy injury on the English merchants on the African Coast. This was answered by an attack by Prince Rupert's fleet upon the Dutch merchantmen in the Channel. War had virtually begun, in spite of all the Chancellor's counsels of prudence, and all his warnings of the imminent danger. Specious proposals for a settlement were now too late.
"Though I am very glad," wrote Clarendon to Downing, [Footnote: Letter of October 28th, 1664.] "to find any temperate and sober considerations, which dispose that people to peace, I wish they had entertained it sooner, for I scarce see time left for such a disquisition as is necessary. They have too insolently provoked the King to such an expense, that fighting is thought the better husbandry."
It was now needful to apply to Parliament, which met on November 24th. Clarendon was again prostrated by a severe attack of gout, and could not himself appear in Parliament; but a narrative in writing, which was to be the basis for asking for a liberal grant, was laid before the House. The treachery of the Dutch and their open aggressions were exposed; and as the King was thus "forced to put himself in the posture he is now in for the defence of his subjects at so vast an expense," he trusted that Parliament "would cheerfully enable him to prosecute the war with the same vigour he hath prepared for it, by giving him supplies proportionate to the charge thereof."
Those very men, such as Bennet and Coventry, who had chiefly urged the war, were now backward in risking their popularity by asking for an adequate grant. It was left to Clarendon and Southampton to urge that the amount to be asked for should be commensurate with the vastness of the undertaking, and that the resolution of the King and his subjects, to carry out the great task to which they had applied themselves, should be proved to the world by an abundant supply. This they could not reckon at less than two millions and a half. It was an unprecedented charge, and must necessarily strain the relations between the Crown and the Parliament, and stimulate that very discontent which Clarendon knew to be slumbering and ready to break out.
When Parliament came to consider the matter, there was no apparent lack of zeal, but there was, amongst the crowd of private members, no one ready to name a sum. The Chancellor and the Treasurer had prepared for this, by consultations with two or three members of established reputation and of weight in the House and the country; and after an ominous pause, Sir Robert Paston, one of these members, proposed that "the present supply ought to be such as might as well terrify the enemy as assist the King, and that it should therefore be two millions and a half." "The silence of the House," Clarendon proceeds in his narrative, "was not broken." Some one, "who was believed to wish well to the King"—with that sort of well- wishing which characterized the time-serving of Bennet and his confederates—moved that the grant should be much smaller. But those who had been prepared by Clarendon manfully backed the suggestion of Sir Robert Paston; and it was carried by a majority of 172 to 102 in the grudging silence of those who dreaded lest such a grant might secure Clarendon against the odium of repeated applications to the generosity of Parliament. The very men who had secretly opposed it, were not ashamed now, in view of this lavish grant, to stimulate the King to a new warlike zeal, and to confirm the hostile inclinations of the nation at large.
"There appeared," says Clarendon, "great joy and exaltation of spirit upon this vote, and not more in the Court than upon the exchange, the merchants being unskilfully inclined to that war, above what their true interest could invite them to, as in a short time afterwards they had cause to confess." [Footnote: Life, ii. 311.]
Clarendon's prophetic fears were not diminished as time went on. He knew well how quickly such warlike zeal as now prevailed would spend itself, when the burdens of war were felt, and when the interference with commerce made those burdens all the harder. He had good reason to know the corruption that prevailed in the dockyards, and how soon money would melt away in the hands of those who took care that all warlike preparations should yield an abundant harvest of illegal gain to those engaged in them. But the die was now cast, and on February 22nd, 1665, war was declared. Never was hazard run with more reckless thoughtlessness, and with less of a spirit of stern resolution, and of that mood that could brace the nation to such work. The Chancellor knew well that he had lost the confidence of the King, and he was under no delusion as to what loss of confidence involved with one so selfish and so unprincipled as Charles. Never had the Court stood so low in the estimation of all that was soundest in the nation. Clarendon's own words bear the impress of his misgivings.
"All serious and prudent men took it as an ill presage, that whilst all warlike preparations were made in abundance suitable to the occasion, there should be so little preparation of spirit for a war against an enemy, who might possibly be without some of our virtues, but assuredly was without any of our vices." [Footnote: Life, ii. 352.]
It is hard to estimate the burden of bitter disappointment that is compressed into these words.