, and thus initiated that ignominious system of pensions and
dependence upon France which proved so injurious to English interests
later. But he was the promoter neither of the sale of Dunkirk on the
27th of October 1662, the author of which seems to have been the earl of
Sandwich,[14] nor of the Dutch War. He attached considerable value to
the possession of the former, but when its sale was decided he conducted
the negotiations and effected the bargain. He had zealously laboured for
peace with Holland, and had concluded a treaty for the settlement of
disputes on the 4th of September 1662. Commercial and naval jealousies,
however, soon involved the two states in hostilities. Cape Corso and
other Dutch possessions on the coast of Africa, and New Amsterdam in
America, were seized by squadrons from the royal navy in 1664, and
hostilities were declared on the 22nd of February 1665. Clarendon now
gave his support to the war, asserted the extreme claims of the English
crown over the British seas, and contemplated fresh cessions from the
Dutch and an alliance with Sweden and Spain. According to his own
account he initiated the policy of the Triple Alliance,[15] but it seems
clear that his inclination towards France continued in spite of the
intervention of the latter state in favour of Holland; and he took part
in the negotiations for ending the war by an undertaking with Louis XIV.
implying a neutrality, while the latter seized Flanders. The crisis in
this feeble foreign policy and in the general official mismanagement was
reached in June 1667, when the Dutch burnt several ships at Chatham and
when "the roar of foreign guns were heard for the first and last time by
the citizens of London."[16]

The whole responsibility for the national calamity and disgrace, and for
the ignominious peace which followed it, was unjustly thrown on the
shoulders of Clarendon, though it must be admitted that the disjointed
state of the administration and want of control over foreign policy were
largely the causes of the disaster, and for these Clarendon's influence
and obstruction of official reforms were to some extent answerable.
According to Sir William Coventry, whose opinion has weight and who
acknowledges the chancellor's fidelity to the king, while Clarendon "was
so great at the council board and in the administration of matters, there
was no room for anybody to propose any remedy to what was remiss ... he
managing all things with that grea