Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/546

 538 DUTCH MISSIONS TO ENGLAND IN 1689 October are not being made with much regard to economy either of money or of labom*. When the admiralty deputies appear, he thinks that their number is needlessly large : de Wildt alone, the able secretary of the Amsterdam college, would have been able to do what was wanted.^ Here Witsen was pretty certainly right, because later in the year, in order to arrange the following campaign, de Wildt came on a similar mission by himself.^ The embassy extraordinary, however, went much further in the direction of wasting time and money. William, a few days after he was proclaimed as king, being now in a position to deal with the questions betveen the two nations in established forms and wanting also a splendid demonstration of the alliance and of his new position, suggested to the states general that their deputies, already in England, should be accredited to him as sovereign.^ The states general gave them the highest of diplomatic ranks, according it for the first time in twenty years, and added to their number two more, van Citters, the resident minister, and Alexander Schimmelpennink van der Oije, lord of Engelen- burg, a nobleman of Gelderland, the first of the provinces in precedence. For the purpose of impressiveness this was excellent. Long after it was over, Witsen ^ calculated that it cost the United Provinces 7,300,000 gulden or about £600,000, a sum for which they might well have been thankful if they had kept it till later in the war. Nor was the embassy a very efficient body. It concluded four conventions, counting that on naval co-operation which was finished off by the original three deputies, but the amount of discussion and correspondence was unusually small. Yet the ambassadors, except Odijk, who left somewhat earlier to attend to the affairs of Zeeland, remained in England from March till November. Witsen had so little to do that, besides many English authors, he read through the whole of the Bible.^ The ambassadors did not get on well together, and there was much besides the overriding of their opinions to make Witsen and some of the others feel that they were superfluous. Dijkveld was far nearer to the king than any of the others : Witsen said that they were ciphers in the figure, and that Dijkveld used to write many of the king's letters even to Heinsius.^ This last suggestion may be not quite accurate, as also the statement in the same account that the unasked recall of the ambassadors of the states of Holland was decided as a result of a letter from Dijkveld to ' See de Jonge, Gesch. van het Ned. Zeewezen, 2nd edition, iii. 194. ruary/7 March). » Scheltema, Mengelwerk, in. ii. 159.
 * Scheltema, Mengelvoerlc, lu. ii, 136.
 * Witsen to burgomasters, letter dated 25 February {Res. Stat. Oen., 28 Feb-
 * In the autobiography.
 * Ibid. pp. 162, 166.