was easy to bring about his fall and clear the stage for fresh efforts
after a religious toleration. The popular temper made their task of
forcing on a war an easy one. The king was won over, partly by playing
on his old resentment at the insults he had suffered from Holland during
his exile, partly by his hope that the suffering which war would bring
on Holland would end in the overthrow of the aristocratic republicans
who had governed the United Provinces ever since the fall of the House
of Orange, and in the restoration of his young nephew, William of
Orange, to the old influence of his family over the State. Such a
restoration would not only repay the debt of gratitude which the
Royalist cause owed to the efforts of William's father in its support,
but would remove the dread which the English government never ceased to
feel of the encouragement which the Dissidents at home derived from the
mere existence close by of a presbyterian and republican government in
Holland. Against the combined pressure of the king, the people, and his
enemies in the cabinet and the court, Clarendon was unable to contend.
Attacks on the Dutch settlements, on the Gold Coast, and the American
coast, made war inevitable; a fleet was manned; and at the close of 1664
the Parliament in a fit of unwonted enthusiasm voted two millions and a
half for the coming struggle.

[Sidenote: The Dutch War.]

The war at sea which followed was a war of giants. No such mighty fleets
have ever disputed the sovereignty of the seas, nor have any naval
battles equalled the encounters of the two nations in dogged and
obstinate fighting. In the spring of 1665 the two fleets, each a hundred
ships strong, mustered in the Channel, the Dutch under Opdam, the
English under the Duke of York. Their first battle off Lowestoft,
obstinate as all the engagements between the two nations, ended in a
victory for the English, a victory due chiefly to the superiority of
their guns and to a shot which blew up the flag-ship of the Dutch
Admiral in the midst of the engagement. But the thought of triumph was
soon forgotten in a terrible calamity which now fell on London. In six
months a hundred thousand Londoners died of the Plague which broke out
in May in the crowded streets of the capital, and which drove the
Parliament from London to assemble in October at Oxford. To the dismay
caused by the Plague was added the growing irritation at the increasing
pressure of the war and a sen