s own supported his brother in law
passionately and obstinately.

The attempts of the rival ministers to surmount and supplant each other
kept the court in incessant agitation. Halifax pressed the King to
summon a Parliament, to grant a general amnesty, to deprive the Duke of
York of all share in the government, to recall Monmouth from banishment,
to break with Lewis, and to form a close union with Holland on the
principles of the Triple Alliance. The Duke of York, on the other hand,
dreaded the meeting of a Parliament, regarded the vanquished Whigs with
undiminished hatred, still flattered himself that the design formed
fourteen years before at Dover might be accomplished, daily represented
to his brother the impropriety of suffering one who was at heart a
Republican to hold the Privy Seal, and strongly recommended Rochester
for the great place of Lord Treasurer.

While the two factions were struggling, Godolphin, cautious, silent,
and laborious, observed a neutrality between them. Sunderland, with his
usual restless perfidy, intrigued against them both. He had been turned
out of office in disgrace for having voted in favour of the Exclusion
Bill, but had made his peace by employing the good offices of the
Duchess of Portsmouth and by cringing to the Duke of York, and was once
more Secretary of State.

Nor was Lewis negligent or inactive. Everything at that moment favoured
his designs. He had nothing to apprehend from the German empire, which
was then contending against the Turks on the Danube. Holland could
not, unsupported venture to oppose him. He was therefore at liberty
to indulge his ambition and insolence without restraint. He seized
Strasburg, Courtray, Luxemburg. He exacted from the republic of Genoa
the most humiliating submissions. The power of France at that time
reached a higher point than it ever before or ever after attained,
during the ten centuries which separated the reign of Charlemagne from
the reign of Napoleon. It was not easy to say where her acquisitions
would stop, if only England could be kept in a state of vassalage. The
first object of the court of Versailles was therefore to prevent the
calling of a Parliament and the reconciliation of English parties.
For this end bribes, promises, and menaces were unsparingly employed.
Charles was sometimes allured by the hope of a subsidy, and sometimes
frightened by being told that, if he convoked the Houses, the secret
articles of the treaty of Dove