From butterboxes to wooden shoes: the shift in English popular sentiment from anti-Dutch to anti-French in the 1670s

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhile Restoration historians have traditionally assumed that there was little public interest in foreign affairs, and that English attitudes towards Europe were determined either by religious or domestic concerns, this essay argues that there was a lively and sophisticated English debate about Europe which turned on the proper identification of the universal monarch rather than religion. In the later 1660s the English political nation was deeply divided in its understanding of European politics. Enthusiastic supporters of the restored monarchy thought that the republican United Provinces sought universal dominion, while the monarchy's radical critics identified absolutist France as an aspirant to universal monarchy. French success in the early phases of the third Anglo-Dutch war, the failure of the French navy to support the English fleet at sea, and the overthrow of the Dutch republican regime in favour of William III, Prince of Orange, convinced the vast majority of the English that France represented the greater threat. Ultimately popular pressure compelled Charles II to abandon the French alliance. In addition, the popular conviction that Louis XIV had succeeded in corrupting the English court resulted in a new-found desire for popular accountability in foreign affairs, and a consequent diminution of the royal prerogative in that sphere.