Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/547

 1920 DUTCH MISSIONS TO ENGLAND IN 1689 539 Heinsius.^ Witsen, remembering the embassy after it was over, was on the whole more gloomy than during its actual course, but it is certain that he did not get on well with Dijkveld.^ Neither did Odijk, who complained to Huygens about Dijkveld's atti- tude.^ Huygens believed that there was an old feud between the two, and Dijkveld told him a story about a quarrel they had had in the states general.^ It might have been expected that this would bring Witsen and Odijk together, but on one of the questions on which Witsen tried to stand against Dijkveld and the king, Odijk, although he too came from a maritime province with interests like those of Amsterdam, went against Witsen, so that Witsen naturally accuses him of wishing to flatter the king.^ Even Dijkveld, although the others complained of him as getting too much of his own way, was not satisfied with the manner in which business was done. He wrote to Heinsius, in explaining the remissness of the ambassadors in not dealing with an urgent piece of business, that he dared not say how few meetings they had and how few discussions on the advice they should give the states general.^ The king's own position on both sides of the negotiations was a little delicate, especially since he considered all his ministers except Lord Halifax hostile to the Dutch, so that he tried to avoid giving offence to the English and did not concern himself much with the transactions.' He stood, however, all the time for a definite policy, the policy of subordinating every other considera- tion to the infliction of damage on France. This was not the policy of the merchants of Amsterdam. They had many points which they wished to see insured as well as the point of efiectively con- ducting the war, points of interest, points of dignity and of jealousy or merely of prejudice. Witsen, therefore, just as he was not on good terms with Dijkveld, had little influence with the king, and on one occasion, though only on one, the king lost his temper with the burgomaster.^ Engelenburg and Citters remain dim figures in the story, though Citters was sometimes in opposition along with Witsen, and sulked in the country when one of the conventions was to be signed.^ A clear division of work does not seem to have existed : memorials on precisely similar disputes about ships are sometimes put in by Citters, sometimes by the ambassadors 1 Scheltema, Mengelwerk, ni. ii. 160. - Ibid. pp. 147-8, 163, 158-68. ^ Huygens, 18 January 1689. * Ibid. 15 April. ' Scheltema, Mengelwerk, in. ii. 153, 158. ' Witsen to burgomasters, 11/21 June, where Citters' name has been erased from the original ; cf. Scheltema, Mengelwerk, in. ii. 152. The provincial archives at Ainhem have no separate reports of Engelenburg to Gelderland.
 * Scheltema, Mengelwerk, in. ii. 156.
 * Letter dated 20 September 1689 (Heinsius Papers, I a).
 * Ibid. pp. 147-8, and the autobiography.