have
received an injury, and are disposed to return it.

The Duke of Ormonde's army consisted of eighteen thousand of Her
Majesty's subjects, and about thirty thousand hired from other princes,
either wholly by the Queen, or jointly by her and the States. The Duke
immediately informed the court of the dispositions he found among the
foreign generals upon this occasion; and that, upon an exigency, he
could only depend on the British troops adhering to him; those of
Hanover having already determined to desert to the Dutch, and tempted
the Danes to do the like, and that he had reason to suppose the same of
the rest.

Upon the news arriving at Utrecht, that the Duke of Ormonde had refused
to engage in any action against the enemy, the Dutch ministers there
went immediately to make their complaints to the lord privy seal;
aggravating the strangeness of this proceeding, together with the
consequence of it, in the loss of a most favourable opportunity for
ruining the French army, and the discontent it must needs create in the
whole body of the confederates. Adding, how hard it was that they should
be kept in the dark, and have no communication of what was done in a
point which so nearly concerned them. They concluded, that the Duke must
needs have acted by orders; and desired his lordship to write both to
court, and to his grace, what they had now said.

The bishop answered, "That he knew nothing of this fact, but what they
had told him; and therefore was not prepared with a reply to their
representations: only, in general, he could venture to say, that this
case appeared very like the conduct of their field-deputies upon former
occasions: That if such orders were given, they were certainly built
upon very justifiable foundations, and would soon be so explained as to
convince the States, and all the world, that the common interest would
be better provided for another way, than by a battle or siege: That the
want of communication which they complained of, could not make the
States so uneasy as their declining to receive it had made the Queen,
who had used her utmost endeavours to persuade them to concur with her
in concerting every step towards a general peace, and settling such a
plan as both sides might approve and adhere to; but, to this day, the
States had not thought fit to accept those offers, or to authorize any
of their ministers to treat with Her Majesty's plenipotentiaries upon
that affair, although they had been