into intimate relations by
their common detestation of Spain, with which power both had now formal
treaties of alliance and friendship. This was the result of their mighty
projects for humbling the house of Austria and annihilating its power.
England hated the Netherlands because of the injuries she had done them,
the many benefits she had conferred upon them, and more than all on
account of the daily increasing commercial rivalry between the two most
progressive states in Christendom, the two powers which, comparatively
weak as they were in territory, capital, and population, were most in
harmony with the spirit of the age.

The Government of England was more hostile than its people to the United
Provinces. James never spoke of the Netherlanders but as upstarts and
rebels, whose success ought to be looked upon with horror by the Lord's
anointed everywhere. He could not shut his eyes to the fact that, with
the republic destroyed, and a Spanish sacerdotal despotism established in
Holland and Zeeland, with Jesuit seminaries in full bloom in Amsterdam
and the Hague, his own rebels in Ireland might prove more troublesome
than ever, and gunpowder plots in London become common occurrences.

The Earl of Tyrone at that very moment was receiving enthusiastic
hospitality at the archduke's court, much to the disgust of the
Presbyterian sovereign of the United Kingdom, who nevertheless, despite
his cherished theology, was possessed with an unconquerable craving for a
close family alliance with the most Catholic king. His ministers were
inclined to Spain, and the British Government was at heart favourable to
some kind of arrangement by which the Netherlands might be reduced to the
authority of their former master, in case no scheme could be carried
into, effect for acquiring a virtual sovereignty over those provinces by
the British crown. Moreover, and most of all, the King of France being
supposed to contemplate the annexation of the Netherlands to his own
dominions, the jealousy excited by such ambition made it even possible
for James's Government to tolerate the idea of Dutch independence. Thus
the court and cabinet of England were as full of contradictory hopes and
projects as a madman's brain.

The rivalry between the courts of England and France for the Spanish
marriages and by means of them to obtain ultimately the sovereignty of
all the Netherlands, was the key to most of the diplomacy and
interpalatial intrigue of the sev