The Secret Treaty of Dover
Months after promising England would help Holland escape the clutches of Catholic Europe, Charles II did a secret deal with France to sell out Holland and England together.
1668
King Charles II 1649-1685
Months after promising England would help Holland escape the clutches of Catholic Europe, Charles II did a secret deal with France to sell out Holland and England together.
1668
King Charles II 1649-1685
In 1668, Charles II formed the ‘Triple Alliance’ to stop Louis XIV of France from forcing Holland, a Protestant country, into a European league of Catholic states. Just two years later, egged on by his brother James, Duke of York, Charles not only offered to carve up Holland with Louis, but engaged to bring England along too. Barely a soul knew until Sir John Dalrymple broke the story a hundred years later.
THE same zeal which made the Duke [of York] avow his conversion, as soon as it was completed, persuaded him, that he could not expiate former errors, without extending the effects of that conversion to the rest of human kind. So early as the 25th of January 1669-70,* a plan was formed in his closet with Lord Clifford and Lord Arundel of Wardour,* both of the popish religion, and Lord Arlington who was well affected to it,* for a secret treaty with France for that purpose. In an evil hour for Charles II Clarendon* had taught him, in the very first years of his reign, to receive money from France, unknown to his people.
Presuming upon the same aid, the Duke, and his three associates, formed the project of a treaty between the Kings of France and England:
* A means of dating necessary at a time when some people kept New Year on January 1st and others kept it, like the Anglo-Saxons, on Lady Day, March 25th. For the former, these events happened in 1670, for the latter in 1669. In both cases the dates are Old (Julian) Style: England did not adopt the Gregorian Calendar until 1752.
Thomas Clifford (1630-1674), 1st Baron Clifford of Chudleigh, was an MP from 1660. In 1673, Charles’s rapidly deteriorating relationship with Parliament obliged the King to sign off on the Test Acts disbarring Catholics from sitting Parliament, and Clifford had to resign his seat. Richard Arundell (1616-1687), 1st Baron Arundell of Trerice in Cornwall was an MP from 1640 to 1664 when his elevation to the peerage meant that he had to give up his Commons seat.
Henry Bennet (1618-1685), 1st Earl of Arlington, was ennobled in 1665 as Baron Arlington, having served as Keeper of the Privy Purse and risen to favour at court; one of his duties was to supply the King with mistresses. As Dalrymple indicates, he was not a Roman Catholic but a sympathetic member of the Church of England.
Edward Hyde (1609-1674), 1st Earl of Clarendon, who had been a close confidante of Charles’s father, Charles I, during the Civil War and had served Charles himself as Lord Chancellor between 1660 and 1667.