King Charles II (46 page)

‘For I assure you, they brag very much already of his friendship,’ Charles told Madame in August; without Louis
XIV
’s support, ‘it may be they would not be so insolent as they are’. In September he wrote of the Dutch preparations, ‘I am resolved they shall now send first, that all the world may see I do not desire to begin with them, and that if there comes any mischief by it, they have drawn it upon their own heads.’ In October he described almost casually the capture of one Dutch possession on the East coast of America: ‘A very good town, but we have got the better of it, and ’tis now called New York.’ Even here he made it clear the town ‘did belong to England heretofore’. In late December he was sending her a printed paper, ‘which will clearly inform you of the state of the quarrel between me and Holland, by which you will see that they are the aggressors
and the breakers of the peace, and not me’. He asked Madame to read it carefully, for he was sure that the Dutch Ambassador in Paris would use ‘all sorts of arts’ to ‘make us seem the aggressors’.
³⁵

But King Louis did not budge.

Already by November the sheer aggression of ordinary Englishmen, and of Members of Parliament in particular, towards the Dutch was making it difficult for the King to continue his delaying tactics much longer. As he admitted to Madame in September, ‘the truth is they [the Dutch] have not great need to provoke this nation, for except myself I believe there is scarce an Englishman that does not desire passionately a war with them’. On 24 November the King gave vent to a calculatedly patriotic speech to Parliament on the subject of his preparations for war: ‘If I had proceeded more slowly, I should have exposed my own honour and the honour of the nation, and should have seemed not confident of your affections.’
³⁶

It was significant that the King also had to dismiss as ‘a vile jealousy’ the rumour that he might graciously accept the war subsidy now voted by Parliament, and then, having made a sudden peace, turn it to his own uses. War did pose an acute financial problem to a Crown already heavily embarrassed. It was true that the nationalistic optimism which pervaded the period, in the matter of this Dutch War, made light of such difficulties: Dutch prizes were expected to compensate for military costs. But so notoriously unstable were the King’s finances by now, that he found the greatest difficulty in raising the actual cash needed in the first place. New remedies were desperately sought. Sir George Downing had always advocated the punctual payment of interest on Treasury loans to uphold the King’s credit, but this had not always been done – because it had not always been possible to do it. This was the occasion of the issue of a government fiduciary currency; those who advanced the King money were for the first time enabled to obtain repayment ‘in course’, that is in rotation as funds reached the Exchequer.
³⁷
Thus inevitably expenditure galloped ahead of revenue. Even so, people were reluctant to lend for the Dutch War – at eight or ten per cent interest. They might cheer the
brave British sailors and shake their fists at the cowardly Dutch. But when it came to the deployment of funds, the government’s finances were not such as to inspire any kind of confidence among the hard-headed.

It was better to concentrate on the magnificent possibilities of war. In December 1664 Captain Thomas Allin was ordered to attack the Dutch merchant fleet, homeward bound from Smyrna: in the event, the attack did not produce much effect. In February of the following year King Charles, tired of waiting for King Louis, declared war.
^fn2

There were wise heads who opposed the war. But they were overruled. Apart from these counsellors there were few in England who did not anticipate a glorious outcome of ‘the Dutch business’. Dryden captured the heroic mood of patriotic anticipation on the eve of the Dutch War, when he wrote,

Now, anchors weighed, the seamen shout so shrill

That heaven, and earth, and the wide ocean rings….

1
Historically, this is always known as the Second Dutch War, the First Dutch War having taken place under the Commonwealth, 1652–4. It is here referred to as ‘the Dutch War’ for the convenience of the narrative.

2
The Dutch were responsible for an outburst of unusually coarse language from the King to Madame. Told that a Dutchman had insulted him, he countered, ‘You know the old saying in England, the more a T—— is stirred, the more it stinks, and I do not care a T—— for anything a Dutchman says of me.’
³⁰
It was the language of exasperation.

Black Day accurs’d!…

When aged Thames was bound with Fetters base, And Medway chaste ravish’d before his Face…

T
he Dutch War brought in its train a series of damaging assaults on reputation. First, there were the Dutch victories, which, in view of English complacency beforehand, were difficult to assimilate psychologically. Then there was the attack on the credit of those who could be held officially responsible for the war – principally Clarendon. Thirdly, of most moment to the biographer of Charles
II
, there was the corrosion of the King’s own royal image, like a bright statue tarnished by bad weather – the storms in this case being those of naval defeat.

It was ironic that King Charles had gone to war, in part at least, to satisfy that English appetite for martial success against their traditional seventeenth-century foes. The attitudes of a war lord were not even particularly agreeable to the King. Striking attitudes in general seemed to him to be a waste of enthusiasm. He had travelled far since those golden days at York on the eve of the Civil War, when, as a boy prince, he had vaulted onto his horse in full armour like Hotspur. The travels were as much of the spirit as of the body.

It was also ironic, as well as unfortunate, that such a militaristic conception of leadership had been incarnated quite recently – by the Protector Cromwell. The sour smell of national disgrace
recalled sweeter perfumes. How different had been yesterday’s battles! The shadows of the remembered Cromwellian triumphs lengthened and grew black across the reputation of the Stuart king. From memories they became myths, and no less menacing for that. As a legendary leader in the minds of his people, King Charles
II
had begun to fail.

There is a comparison to be made with the similar decline in the public esteem of King James
I
at the beginning of the century. On his accession, he had been greeted with delight, as a welcome respite from the cantankerous old woman Queen Elizabeth had become. A few years later such realities were quite forgotten in the shower of golden illusions which surrounded the name of ‘the great Eliza’.

Pepys’ later diary entries – towards the end of the sixties – are full of flattering references to ‘Oliver’. In the early 1670s it was possible for Marvell to depict the two equestrian statues at Charing Cross arguing over the foreign policies of Cromwell and Charles
II
respectively. One horse declared himself firmly for Cromwell:

Though his government did a tyrant resemble

He made England great and his enemies tremble…

Even the French Ambassador was reported to have snubbed the English King with the remark that Cromwell had been a great man and made himself feared by land and by sea.

It was unfair perhaps to identify a monarch so closely with the fortunes of his country. But so long as national figureheads existed – and Charles
II
had been restored on that ticket – it was unavoidable. Besides, was not the ability to declare war – in short, the direction of foreign policy – one of the planks of the King’s prerogative? The personalization of war remained a factor during this period. As the Lord Treasurer enquired plaintively of Charles’ strenuous efforts to borrow money for the war from the City, ‘Why will they not trust the King as well as Oliver?’
¹
The perilous Commonwealth finances were apparently forgotten, as were Cromwell’s own difficulties in securing money from the City.

To Charles in his innocence the prosecution of the Dutch War seemed at first a not unenjoyable occupation. Evelyn gives a delightful vignette of him stopping a chapel service to hear news of a battle, and then promptly turning the occasion into a thanksgiving.
²
It certainly gave him ample opportunities to pursue his naval interests: the inspection of coastal fortifications replaced visits to the yacht-builders’ yards. At the beginning of the war the English had about 160 ships, with 5,000 guns and something over 25,000 men; the Dutch had fewer and smaller ships – but these were of course easier to manage in shallow waters; they also had more guns and more men. The English Navy was put under the command of the Duke of York, who had been confirmed in his boyhood title of Lord High Admiral at the Restoration. The appointment was not purely nepotistic; James, like his brother, was fascinated by the sea. He had already gained much popularity within the Admiralty Office for his serious approach to naval matters.

At the first proper engagement of the war, the Battle of Lowestoft on 13 June 1665, the Dutch were resoundingly defeated by the English under James’ command. The element of personal involvement was carried further, the two flagships actually fighting each other, until the
Royal Charles
(carrying the duke of York) succeeded in sinking its opposite number, killing the Dutch commander in the process. But James’ position as heir presumptive to the throne was a complication: an odd incident during the battle led to the
Royal Charles
eschewing the rest of the fighting; possibly secret orders had been given to preserve James’ life from danger.
³
After the battle Charles certainly forbade James to risk it further by presence at the scene of action.

The veto did of course make sense, particularly in view of the lack of suitable heirs to the throne. It was pure chance which had saved James aboard the
Royal Charles
. No less than three of his friends had died as a result of a single gunshot. Standing amidst them, he had been drenched by their blood. Nevertheless, casting one’s mind back to that episode in 1648, when Charles refused to let his brother go to sea, one cannot altogether acquit the King of rivalry. As a character, King
Charles was certainly not poisoned by jealousy, as the evidence of his private life will show; but, like most human beings, he knew the emotion. The prospect of James’ direct participation in naval warfare (an area of such obsession to Charles) may well have aroused it.

It was the superiority of the English guns which carried the day at Lowestoft. They were loud enough to be heard, speaking ‘thick like angry men’ in the capital itself. Dryden gives an unforgettable picture of the reaction of those in London to the noise of the bombardment: ‘Everyone went following the sound as his fancy led him; and, leaving the town almost empty, some took towards the Park, some across the River, others down it, all seeking the noise in the depth of silence.’
⁴

Although the Dutch claimed Lowestoft as a victory (much as the Royalists had claimed that first Cromwellian success at Marston Moor), it was indubitably an English triumph. Less fortunate was the course of the war immediately afterwards. The daring Dutch Admiral de Ruyter – who had not been present at Lowestoft – captured a rich merchant fleet in northern waters. Furthermore, the English failed to recover it by a clumsy rescue attempt which depended on the connivance of the King of Denmark. In the end, the Danes even allied with the Dutch, although their participation remained nominal.

This England under stress of war was also beset by an enemy within. It was during the summer of 1665 that the ominous and disgusting signs of plague began to be found in London.
⁵
The first Bill of Mortality, giving it as the cause of death, occurred in the parish of St Giles in the Fields in early May. The June heatwave which followed – that same glorious weather which gave the English fleet off Lowestoft ‘not a cloud in the sky, nor the least appearance of any alteration of wind or weather’ – gave a fatal impetus to the spread of the disease. In one week alone at the end of June, one hundred plague deaths were registered. Soon the thin summer darkness was illuminated by the lights of innumerable night burials. Many unidentifiable corpses went to their resting-place under such pathetic labels as ‘a child from Kingshead alley’, ‘a man from New Street’, ‘a maid
from the Crown in Fleet Street’. On 10 August Pepys considered it time to draw up his own will –‘the town growing so unhealthy that a man cannot depend upon living two days to an end’. By the end of the month, burial in consecrated ground had been abandoned in favour of communal plague pits.

The King and Court remained in the capital till July and then headed for Oxford. Parliament was prorogued, and the Exchequer transferred to Nonsuch, a palace near Ewell. It was not a particularly convenient move, in view of the development of the Dutch War – not quite that easily terminated struggle which the English had anticipated. There would have to be a new campaign in the new year. Arlington commented in November on the difficulty of raising money at this distance (that is, from Nonsuch) ‘towards our preparations for the next spring’.
⁶
It was also possible to criticize the Court for cowardice.