Lewis applied the phrase to the United Provinces
long before Napoleon applied it to England, should have foiled his
plans at the very moment of their realization "stung him," as he owned,
"to the quick." He had always disliked the Dutch as Protestants and
Republicans; he hated them now as an obstacle which must be taken out of
his way ere he could resume his projects upon Spain. If he refrained
from an instant attack on them it was to nurse a surer revenge. Four
years were spent in preparations for a decisive blow. The French army
was gradually raised to a hundred and eighty thousand men, while Colbert
created a fleet which rivalled that of Holland in number and equipment.
The steady aim of French diplomacy from the moment when Lewis was forced
to sign the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was to isolate the United
Provinces, to secure the neutrality of the Empire in any attack on them,
to break the Triple Alliance by detaching Sweden from it and securing
Charles, and to leave the Dutch without help save from the ineffectual
good-will of Brandenburg and Spain.

[Sidenote: Charles and the Cabal.]

In England the French designs were favoured by the political
difficulties which at once followed on the fall of Clarendon. The new
Ministry, representing as it did the Presbyterian party and a policy of
toleration, was in itself a declaration on the king's part that the
executive power was no longer necessarily to act in harmonious
co-operation with the Parliament. Its first steps in releasing
Nonconformists from prison, in suffering conventicles to reopen, and
suspending the operation of the Act of Uniformity, were in open defiance
of the known will of the two Houses. But when Charles again proposed to
his counsellors a general toleration he no longer found himself
supported by them as in 1663. Even Ashley's mood was changed. The policy
of the Council in fact was determined by the look of public affairs
abroad. The victories of Lewis, the sudden revelation of the strength of
France, roused even in the most tolerant minds a dread of Catholicism.
Men felt instinctively that the very existence of Protestantism and with
it of civil freedom was again to be at stake. Instead of toleration
therefore the ministers pressed for a union of Protestants which would
have utterly foiled the king's projects; and a scheme of Protestant
comprehension which had been approved by the moderate divines on both
sides, by Tillotson and Stillingfleet on the p