s before the war: the English planters in Surinam
were allowed to remove at pleasure: and the states agreed to pay to the
king the sum of eight hundred thousand patacoons, near three hundred
thousand pounds. Four days after the parliament was prorogued, the peace
was proclaimed in London, to the great joy of the people. Spain had
declared, that she could no longer remain neuter, if hostilities were
continued against Holland; and a sensible decay of trade was foreseen,
in case a rupture should ensue with that kingdom. The prospect of this
loss contributed very much to increase the national aversion to the
present war, and to enliven the joy for its conclusion.

There was in the French service a great body of English, to the number
of ten thousand men, who had acquired honor in every action, and had
greatly contributed to the successes of Lewis. These troops, Charles
said, he was bound by treaty not to recall; but he obliged himself to
the states by a secret article not to allow them to be recruited. His
partiality to France prevented a strict execution of this engagement.

CHAPTER LXVI

CHARLES II.

{1674.} IF we consider the projects of the famous cabal, it will appear
hard to determine, whether the end which those ministers pursued were
more blamable and pernicious, or the means by which they were to
effect it more impolitic and imprudent. Though they might talk only of
recovering or fixing the king's authority, their intention could be no
other than that of making him absolute; since it was not possible to
regain or maintain, in opposition to the people, any of those powers of
the crown abolished by late law or custom, without subduing the people,
and rendering the royal prerogative entirely uncontrollable. Against
such a scheme they might foresee that every part of the nation would
declare themselves; not only the old parliamentary faction, which,
though they kept not in a body, were still numerous, but even the
greatest royalists, who were indeed attached to monarchy, but desired to
see it limited and restrained by law. It had appeared, that the present
parliament, though elected during the greatest prevalence of the
royal party, was yet tenacious of popular privileges, and retained a
considerable jealousy of the crown, even before they had received any
just ground of suspicion. The guards, therefore, together with a small
army, new levied and undisciplined, and composed, too, of Englishmen,
were a