d his sister Henrietta, the Duchess of Orleans. It provided
that Charles should announce his conversion, and that in case of any
disturbance arising from such a step he should be supported by a French
army and a French subsidy. War was to be declared by both powers against
Holland, England furnishing only a small land force, but bearing the
chief burthen of the contest at sea on condition of an annual subsidy of
three hundred thousand pounds.

[Sidenote: The Cabal and the War.]

Nothing marks better the political profligacy of the age than that
Arlington, the author of the Triple Alliance, should have been chosen as
the confidant of Charles in his Treaty of Dover. But to all save
Arlington and Clifford the king's change of religion or his political
aims remained utterly unknown. It would have been impossible to obtain
the consent of the party in the royal council which represented the old
Presbyterians, of Ashley or Lauderdale or the Duke of Buckingham, to the
Treaty of Dover. But it was possible to trick them into approval of a
war with Holland by playing on their desire for a toleration of the
Nonconformists. The announcement of the king's Catholicism was therefore
deferred; and a series of mock negotiations, carried on through
Buckingham, ended in the conclusion of a sham treaty which was
communicated to Lauderdale and to Ashley, a treaty which suppressed all
mention of the religious changes, or of the promise of French aid in
bringing them about, and simply stipulated for a joint war against the
Dutch. In such a war there was no formal breach of the Triple Alliance,
for the Triple Alliance only guarded against an attack on the dominions
of Spain, and Ashley and his colleagues were lured into assent to it in
1671 by the promise of toleration.

[Sidenote: Ashley and the Dutch War.]

Toleration was still Ashley's first thought. He had provided for it only
a year before in the constitution which he had drawn up with the aid of
Locke for the new Colony of Carolina, which drew its name from King
Charles. He looked the more hopefully to the king that in Scotland
toleration had already been brought about by the royal authority.
Nowhere had the system of conformity been more rigidly carried out than
in the northern kingdom. Not only was the renunciation of the Covenant
exacted from every parson and official, but it was proposed to extend it
to every subject in the realm. The fall of Clarendon, however, at once
brought ab