Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/561

 1920 DUTCH MISSIONS TO ENGLAND IN 1689 553 a third party, was receiving succour from its ally.^ This treaty had, however, been modified within a few months of its conclusion. The later arrangement was that of Temple's treaty of 26 July in the same year, a treaty intended only to deal with the tem- porary circumstances of that time, by which, provisionally, England was to furnish a third more ships of war than the states, and the states a third more troops on land.^ When the first of the Dutch missions of 1689 set out for England, the casus foederis under the former of these treaties, that of March 1678, had already arisen, so that the extraordinary deputies were instructed on the assumption that this would be admitted by the English.^ Their main business was to arrange for the co-operation of the fleets, and the scheme laid down for them by the admiralty deputies and the naval committee of the states general was the transference to the naval contingents of the proportion of five to three applied in the old treaty to the military forces. Instead of supplying one-third more ships than the Dutch, as under Temple's treaty, the English were to be asked to give two- fifths more. The French fleet was estimated at eighty sail, and the Dutch hoped for a combined fleet of at least equal strength, in the proportion of five-eighths English to three-eighths Dutch, or fifty English and thirty Dutch. In addition to this, they wanted ten light frigates to cruise for the protection of commerce in the North Sea and for the blockade of Dunkirk, the dangerous nest of privateers on the flank of the Channel trade-route. The provi- sion of convoys for merchant shipping of the two nations was the only other principle of joint action included in the instructions. These principles of co-operation were accepted by the English practically without discussion. Certain difficulties arose and were overcome before the signature of the treaty for the co-operation of the fleets, but they were not connected with the proportionate efforts demanded of the two allies. By the time the deputies had been in England well over a month, the necessary steps had been taken in Holland for raising a fleet of thirty ships of the line,^ and the two sets of deputies now in England, the first party and those of the admiralties, had got their case ready for conferences with the English. On the same day with the king's notification that he had chosen as commissioners to treat with them Notting- ham, Herbert, afterwards Lord Torrington, and Admiral Sir Edward Russell, there came the letter and resolution of the states general raising the three former to the rank of ambassadors Hague, 1697), ii. 354 f. Rousset, Recueil Historique, xix. 413. " Text in Lamberty, Memoires, i. 456 ; Courtenay, Life of Temple, ii. 470. 6/15 February
 * Text in Actes et Memoires des Negociations de la Paix de Nimegue, 2nd edition (The
 * Stat. Gen. Seer. Res., 26 December/5 January 1688/9.
 * 19/29 January ' Provisionele begrooting ', Stat. Gen. Ees., 21/31 January,