that the great
constitutional revolution which was slowly removing the control of
affairs from the hands of the Crown into those of the Parliament would
go just as steadily on. But if Charles refused to dissolve the
Parliament he longed to free himself from its power; and the mediation
of France enabled a peace congress to assemble at Breda in May 1667. To
Holland, eager to free its hands so as to deal with the French invasion
of the Netherlands, an invasion which was now felt to be impending,
peace was yet more important than to England; and a stroke of singular
vigour placed peace within her grasp. Aware of the exhaustion of the
English treasury and of the miserable state of the English navy, the
persevering De Witt suddenly ordered the Dutch fleet, sixty vessels
strong, to sail in June to the Thames. England was taken utterly by
surprise. Neither ships nor forts were manned when the Hollanders
appeared at the Nore. Pushing their light vessels without show of
opposition up the Thames to Gravesend they forced the boom which
protected the Medway, burned three men-of-war which lay anchored in the
river, and withdrew only to sail proudly along the coast, the masters of
the Channel.

[Sidenote: Fall of Clarendon.]

The thunder of the Dutch guns in the Medway and the Thames woke England
to a bitter sense of its degradation. The dream of loyalty was roughly
broken. "Everybody nowadays," Pepys tells us, "reflect upon Oliver and
commend him, what brave things he did, and made all the neighbour
princes fear him." But Oliver's successor was coolly watching this shame
and discontent of his people with the one aim of turning it to his own
advantage. To Charles the Second the degradation of England was only a
move in the political game which he was playing, a game played with so
consummate a secrecy and skill that it not only deceived close observers
of his own day but still misleads historians in ours. The blow at once
brought about the peace he desired. Each of the combatants retained what
it had won, save that Holland gained the isle of Polaroon on the Bombay
coast, and England the settlement of New Amsterdam on the Hudson, which
was soon to be better known as her colony of New York. A result still
more to the king's taste was the ruin of Clarendon. Clarendon had had no
part in the reduction of the navy which had proved so fatal to English
renown, but the public resentment fell on him alone. The Parliament,
enraged by his coun