scharged by
yearly payments of forty thousand pounds; and as five years had elapsed,
the debt was now reduced to six hundred thousand pounds; and in
fifteen years more, if the truce were renewed, it would be finally
extinguished.[**]

* Rymer, tom. xvi. p. 341. Winwood, vol. ii. p. 351.

** Sir Dudley Carleton's Letters, p. 27, 28.

But of this sum, twenty-six thousand pounds a year were expended on the
pay of the garrisons: the remainder alone accrued to the king: and the
states, weighing these circumstances, thought that they made James a
very advantageous offer, when they expressed their willingness, on the
surrender of the cautionary towns to pay him immediately two hundred and
fifty thousand pounds, and to incorporate the English garrisons in their
army. It occurred also to the king, that even the payment of the forty
thousand pounds a year was precarious, and depended on the accident that
the truce should be renewed between Spain and the republic: if war broke
out, the maintenance of the garrisons lay upon England alone; a burden
very useless, and too heavy for the slender revenues of that kingdom:
that even during the truce, the Dutch, straitened by other expenses,
were far from being regular in their payments; and the garrisons were at
present in danger of mutinying for want of subsistence: that the annual
sum of fourteen thousand pounds, the whole saving on the Dutch payments,
amounted, in fifteen years, to no more than two hundred and ten thousand
pounds; whereas two hundred and fifty thousand pounds were offered
immediately, a larger sum; and if money be computed at ten per cent.,
the current interest more than double the sum to which England was
entitled:[*] that if James waited till the whole debt were discharged,
the troops which composed the garrisons remained a burden upon him, and
could not be broken, without receiving some consideration for their past
services: that the cautionary towns were only a temporary restraint
upon the Hollanders; and, in the present emergence, the conjunction of
interest between England and the republic was so intimate as to render
all other ties superfluous; and no reasonable measures for mutual
support would be wanting from the Dutch, even though freed from the
dependence of these garrisons: that the exchequer of the republic was at
present very low, insomuch that they found difficulty, now that the
aids of France were withdrawn, to maintain themselves in that po