gers which were to spring from French
ambition; and as early as 1661 the London mob backed the Spanish
ambassador in a street squabble for precedence with the ambassador of
France. "We do all naturally love the Spanish," Pepys comments on this
at the time, "and hate the French." The marriage of Catharine, the sale
of Dunkirk, were taken as signs of the growth of a French influence over
English policy, and the jealousy and suspicion they had aroused were
seen in the reception with which the Parliament met the announcement of
Lewis's hostility. No sooner had the words fallen from Charles's lips
than "there was a great noise in the Parliament," writes the French
statesman Louvois, "to show the joy of the two Houses at the prospect of
a fight with us." But even the warlike temper of the Parliament could
not blind it to the new weight which was given to the struggle by this
intervention of France. Above all it woke men to the dangers at home.
The policy of Clarendon had broken England into two nations. Whatever
might be the attitude of Monk or Ashley in the royal closet the
sympathies of the Nonconformists as a whole could not fail to be opposed
to a war with the Dutch; and as Charles was striving with some show of
success to rouse the Orange party in the States to active opposition
against the dominant republicans, so the Dutch statesmen summoned the
banished regicides to Holland, and dreamed of a landing in England which
would bring about a general rising of the Dissidents against Charles.
The less scrupulous diplomacy of Lewis availed itself of every element
of opposition, called Algernon Sidney to Paris and supplied him with
money as a possible means of rousing the English republicans, while it
corresponded with the Presbyterians in Scotland and the hardly less
bitter Catholics of Ireland.

[Sidenote: The Religious Persecution.]

The dread of internal revolt was quickened by the new attitude of
resistance taken by the Nonconformists. When the clergy fled from London
at the appearance of the Plague, their pulpits were boldly occupied in
open defiance of the law by the ministers who had been ejected from
them. The terror and hatred roused by this revival of a foe that seemed
to have been crushed was seen in the Five Mile Act, which completed in
1665 the code of persecution. By its provisions every clergyman who had
been driven out by the Act of Uniformity was called on to swear that he
held it unlawful under any pretext t