in Chief. Charles undertook the burden of the war by sea, Louis sending thirty ships of war and ten fire ships, and maintaining them at his expense. The English fleet was to consist of at least fifty large ships and ten fire-ships; the French auxiliary squadron to be commanded by a Vice-Admiral or Lieutenant-General, who would obey the Duke of York in virtue of powers given him by the two Kings, each for his own ships. Louis was to pay Charles three millions of francs a-year while the war lasted. As to conquests, England's portion was to be the islands of Walcheren and Cadsand and the port of L'Ecluse. This secret treaty was ratified by the two Kings on the 14th of June, 1670, by an interchange of letters mutually addressed by one to the other, and sealed with their respective private seals.1

The knowledge of this secret treaty was confided only to the Duke of York and to the four signataries, Arlington, Clifford, Lord Arundel of Wardour, and Bellings. Nothing was known of it by other high officers and members of the Cabinet or Cabal, by the Duke of Buckingham who was ostensibly Prime Minister, by Lord Ashley or by Lord Lauderdale, by Sir Orlando Bridgman, the

1 This secret treaty was first published by Dr. Lingard, in 1830, in his History of England, from the papers of Lord Clifford, one of the signataries. An account of it had been published in 1682, by the Abbé Primi, in Italian and French, at the, instigation of Louis XIV. but the Abbé's book was immediately suppressed on strong representations from the English government. The substance of Primi's statements was published in England immediately after the Revolution. Hume, who published his volumes of Charles II.'s reign in 1756, made no allusion to Primi's book or the secret treaty. Bishop Burnet refers to the Abbé Primi's book (Own Time, i. 503), and so does Edmund Calamy in his Autobiography, written before 1731 (Life and Times, i. 69). Calamy, in the same passage, mentions a sermon of Archbishop King, preached in Dublin in 1691, in which he gives an account of the treaty, derived from a paper found in Lord Tyrconnel's closet. Lord Tyrconnel at the time of the treaty was Colonel Richard Talbot, a favourite of the Duke of York.

The

Lord Keeper, or by Sir John Trevor, Arlington's colleague as Secretary of State. It was judged necessary to prepare a second treaty for publication, in which nothing should be said of the King's professing the Roman Catholic religion; and for this second treaty the aid of Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale was procured, Buckingham to be the chief negotiator, and all three to be kept in ignorance of the existence of the secret treaty. The Protestant feelings of Ashley and Lauderdale were feared by the secret conspirators, and the secret was kept from Buckingham, not from fear of his principles, but from fear that he would chatter and betray the secret. wiles and artifices employed by the secret conspirators to delude Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale, during negotiations which were prolonged for six months, are a marvellous and disgraceful episode of English history. On the last day of the year a second treaty was signed, again by Colbert for France, and for England by Buckingham, Arlington, Lauderdale, Ashley, and Clifford.' This new treaty, intended for publication, represented the two millions of francs, which by the secret treaty were to be given to Charles for declaring himself a Roman Catholic, as an addition to the first year's French subsidy of three millions; and nothing was said in it of French aid to subdue rebellion in England. Louis had vainly endeavoured to obtain Charles's consent to a secret engagement to be entered into by the Commissioners who had signed the secret treaty on June 1, that the present treaty for publication should be held null and void, except where it differed from the secret treaty. When the treaty was signed, Charles signed a declaration that the two

This second treaty is called traité simulé in the French documents. See Dalrymple's Memoirs, and Mignet, Négociations relatives à la Succession d'Espagne.

millions of francs which he was to receive in two instalments, and were represented as for preparations for war, in addition to the first year's subsidy of three millions, were really given him in view of his declaring himself a Roman Catholic, as had been agreed by the secret treaty.

There had been many changes of sentiment and much negotiation, disingenuous on both sides, as to when Charles should make his declaration of the Roman Catholic religion. Louis had in the first instance wished Charles to postpone the declaration until after the declaration of war, and Charles in the first instance had been loth to postpone it. At that time Louis wished to begin the war in the spring of 1671. Charles, daunted by the difficulties which he thought might follow the anouncement of his change of religion, became willing to postpone it, but doubted his being able to be ready so soon for war. Then Louis changed his mind, and wished the declaration of war to be postponed for a year. But he instructed Colbert not to inform Charles of his wish for postponement; he was to let delay come, as Louis then felt sure that it would come, from Charles. Strange to say, Charles was now eager to begin war in the spring of 1671. Later, Charles agreed to the postponement. This agreed upon, Louis made an attempt to postpone the payment of the sum which he had promised in consideration of Charles's promised declaration of the Roman Catholic religion, and made another attempt to induce Charles to fix the time for this declaration. Charles resisted these two attempts, and they were abandoned. The treaty, concluded on December 31, fixed April or May, 1672, as the time for beginning war. The time of Charles's declaring the Roman Catholic religion was not fixed, and this part of the conspiracy between the two Kings never came to pass.

War was ultimately declared by both nations against Holland in March 1672. By that time Louis had paid to Charles the two millions of francs, which was really the price for his promised declaration of the Roman Catholic religion; and Louis had also paid, in the end of January 1672, before the war began, the first quarterly instalment of the promised annual subsidy of three million francs. Charles had in the meantime been released by Louis from the obligation of providing his promised auxiliary land force of six thousand men during the first year of the war.

Shortly before war was declared, the treaty of December 31, 1670, was replaced by a substantially similar treaty, signed on the 2nd of February, 1672, by the same Commissioners as before, Colbert for France, and Buckingham, Lauderdale, Arlington, Ashley, and Clifford, for England. The object of making this new treaty was apparently no other than to prevent those to whom the facts would now have to be disclosed from knowing how long the treaty had been in existence.

The initials of the five ministers who signed the treaties of December 31, 1670, and February 2, 1672, made the name Cabal. A remarkable and obnoxious set of acts preceded the beginning of the war; the stop of the Exchequer in January 1672 to obtain the use for the war of one million three hundred thousand pounds deposited on call by the bankers, in reliance on the faith of government; an urgent Declaration of Indulgence to Protestant Dissenters and Roman Catholics, issued in March, in order to promote peace and union within against the Dutch enemy; and on the very eve of the beginning of war an attempt, without proclamation, to seize a rich Dutch merchant fleet on its way home through the Channel, again in order to procure funds for the war. This last attack

excited great disapproval; the odium of it was increased by failure. The stop of the Exchequer, for a sum which would now be a trifle, had caused a panic in the City, deranged trade, and brought great distress on bankers' depositors. The Declaration of Indulgence offended Churchmen and Protestants, and opposition to its substance was swelled by objections to the use of the prerogative superseding legislation. Public opinion visited on all the five ministers, and on none others, the blame of all these acts. The Cabal was the one great sinner. This was a nickname given to the five ministers; and history has formally endorsed the nickname. "The war," says Sir William Temple, "had been begun and carried on as far as it would go, under the ministry of five men, who were usually called the Cabal, a word unluckily falling out of the five first letters of these names, that is: Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale."

But these were not the only cabinet ministers of that time. First of all there was the Duke of York, the Lord High Admiral, foremost for the French alliance and the Dutch war, and eager supporter of all subsidiary measures. The Lord Keeper, Sir Orlando Bridgman, was another member of the cabinet not in the secret, any more than Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale, as to the intention of declaring the Roman Catholic religion, but necessarily aware, before the war began, of all the rest of the French policy, and putting the scal, after some objections, to the Declaration of Indulgence. Prince Rupert was a member of the Cabinet; his sentiments were stoutly Protestant and anti-French. Sir John Trevor, the second Secretary of State, by right a member of the 'Temple's Memoirs, from 1672 to 1679, in Works, vol. ii. p. 255, 4 vols. 8vo.

1814.