Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/337

] to an occasional piece of assassination. One of the servants of Charles II.'s ambassadors, Hyde and Cottington, was one of the assassins, which brought the ambassadors into suspicion; but they protested firmly against any participation in so base a business. The assassins fled to a church for sanctuary, except one who got to the Venetian ambassador's, and 80 escaped. The other five were brought from their asylum, tried, and condemned to die, but the courtiers sympathised so much with the royalists, that they were returned again to their asylum, except a protestant of the name of Sparkes, who, being taken a few miles from the city, was put to death. This matter blowing over, the peace with Spain continued. With Holland the case was different.

Holland, being itself a republic, might have been expected to sympathise and fraternise with the English commonwealth, but the circumstances of the court prevented the spread of this feeling. The stadtholder, William II., had married the princess royal of England, the daughter of Charles I., and sister of Charles II. From the first of the contest, therefore, Holland had supported the claims of both the Charles's. The second Charles had spent much of his exile at the Hague, not being at all cordially received in France, where his mother resided. His brother, the duke of York, had long resided there, as Rupert and Maurice had done before. There was thus a great league betwixt the family of the stadlholder and the Stuart faction, and the stadtholders themselves were gradually making themselves as despotic as any princes of Europe. All the money which enabled the Stuarts in England to make head and invade it from Scotland, came from the Hague. On the other hand, the large republican party in Holland, which was at strife with the stadtholder on account of his regal and despotic doctrines, looked with favour on the proceedings of the English parliament, and this awoke a deep jealousy in the stadtholder's court of the English parliament, which entertained ideas of coalescing with Holland into one great republic.

From these causes no satisfaction could ever be obtained from the stadtholder for the murder of Dr. Dorislaus, nor would he admit Stricland, the ambassador of the parliament, to an audience. But in November, 1650, William died of small-pox, and a few days afterwards, on the 6th of that month, his widow gave birth to William II., who afterwards became king of England. The infancy of the stadtholder now encouraged the republican party to abolish that office, and to restore the more democratic form of government. On this, the Parliament of England, in the the commencement of 1681, determined to send ambassadors to the states, and in addition to Strickland sent St. John, the chief justice of the common pleas. But no good was done; there were numbers of English royalists still hanging about at the Hague, and the Dutch, through the internal wars of Holland, France, and Spain, had grown so prosperous, that they were become proud and insolent, and had grown to regard the English parliament, through the representation of their enemies, as a power that they might treat with contempt. St. John found insurmountable difficulties in negotiating with the rude, haughty states-general. He was openly insulted in the streets of the Hague; the ignorant populace hooted and hissed him and hie colleague, and the royalists were suffered to annoy them with impunity. Edward, a younger brother of Rupert and Maurice, publicly called the ambassadors rogues and dogs; the royalists scornfully styled them "the things called ambassadors;" the servants of Strickland were attacked at his door by the cavaliers with drawn swords. They attempted to break into St. John's bedchamber, where, had they succeeded, they would, no doubt, have murdered him, as they did Ascham; and the duke of York meeting St. John in the streets, because he did not give him the wall, snatched his hat from his head, and flung it in his face, saying, "Learn, parricide, to respect the brother of your king." St. John was not a man to submit tamely to such an insult; he replied that he did not acknowledge any of that race of vagabonds, and the duke drawing his sword, there would have been bloodshed, had not the spectators interfered.

The parliament of England had in good faith proposed their scheme of confederacy against their common enemies both by sea and land, but the states-general made so many objections and delays that the term fixed for the negotiation expired, and the English ambassadors took their leave in disgust. The battle of Worcester awoke the Dutch to their mistake, and they then sent in haste to propose terms of alliance on their part, but it was too late. St. John, strong ill his feelings as he was deep in his intellect, had represented their conduct in such terms that the English parliament received them with a earl haughtiness the counterpart of their own in the Late attempt at treaty. St. John had also employed himself in a measure of revenge on the Dutch which was in its effects most disastrous to them. Owing to the embarrassments of the other European states, the Dutch had grown not only to be the chief merchants of the nations, but the great carriers of all mercantile goods. St. John passed a navigation act, by which it was forbidden to introduce any of the products of Asia, Africa, or America into England, except in English bottoms, or any of the manufactures of Europe, except in English ships or the ships of the countries which produced them. This at one blow lopped off the greater part of the commerce of Holland, and the demands of the ambassador that this terrible act should be repealed, or at least suspended till the conclusion of a treaty, were totally disregarded. But this was not the only offensive weapon which St. John's resentment had found. Letters of marque had been issued against French vessels, and they were permitted to be used against Dutch ones, on pretence that they had French property on board. Still more, the massacre of the English at Amboyna, which had been slightly passed over, owing to the desire of the English court to maintain the alliance of Holland against Spain, had never been forgotten by the English people, and there were now loud demands, especially from the sailors, that all survivors of the Dutch concerned in that murder should be given up. In fact, a determined spirit of hostility had sprung up betwixt the two maritime nations.

The Dutch, at the call of their merchants for protection, prepared a fleet, and placed at the head of it the three greatest admirals that their nation ever produced—Van Tromp, De Ruyter, and De Witt. The English parliament, on its part, ordered its admirals to insist on the same homage being paid to their flag in the narrow seas as had boon paid