The Colonial Prelude and the Approach of the Second Dutch War

Abstract

The Anglo-Dutch Treaty was scarcely signed when Charles appointed Henry Bennet to be Secretary of State. Bennet’s promotion to high office is the real turning-point in Anglo-Dutch relations. Although in his early career he had owed much to Clarendon, he had joined the opposition to Clarendon overtly in the previous year.1 Bennet’s sympathies were pro-Spanish, anti-Portuguese, and above all anti-Dutch, and the party to which he was allied in the Commons was held together by virtually only one common bond: the majority of its members were rabid for a war against Holland. With Bennet in the highest office concerned with foreign and domestic policy—subject only to Clarendon’s personal ascendancy—the Duke of York as Lord High Admiral, and the king separated from his Chancellor by a growing gulf, the chances of Clarendon’s policy surviving grew smaller daily. Perhaps the reason why war was postponed, officially at any rate, for another three years was the knowledge that war with Holland might, and probably would, now involve war with France too.