the duke of Bavaria and the
count of Bucquoy, and advanced upon his enemy in Bohemia. In the Low
Countries, Spinola collected a veteran army of thirty thousand men.
When Edmonds, the king's resident at Brussels, made remonstrances to the
archduke Albert, he was answered, that the orders for this armament
had been transmitted to Spinola from Madrid, and that he alone knew
the secret destination of it. Spinola again told the minister that his
orders were still sealed; but, if Edmonds would accompany him in
his march to Coblentz, he would there open them, and give him full
satisfaction.[**] It was more easy to see his intentions, than to
prevent their success. Almost at one time it was known in England, that
Frederic, being defeated in the great and decisive battle of Prague,
had fled with his family into Holland, and that Spinola had invaded the
Palatinate, and, meeting with no resistance, except from some princes
of the union, and from one English regiment of two thousand four hundred
men, commanded by the brave Sir Horace Vere,[***] had, in a little time,
reduced the greater part of that principality.

* Franklyn, p. 48.

** Franklyn, p. 44. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 14.

*** Franklyn, p. 42, 43. Rushworth, vol. i p. 15. Kennet, p.
723.

High were now the murmurs and complaints against the king's neutrality
and inactive disposition. The happiness and tranquillity of their own
country became distasteful to the English, when they reflected on the
grievances and distresses of their Protestant brethren in Germany. They
considered not, that their interposition in the wars of the continent,
though agreeable to religious zeal, could not, at that time, be
justified by any sound maxims of politics; that, however exorbitant the
Austrian greatness, the danger was still too distant to give any just
alarm to England; that mighty resistance would yet be made by so many
potent and warlike princes and states in Germany, ere they would yield
their neck to the yoke; that France, now engaged to contract a double
alliance with the Austrian family, must necessarily be soon roused from
her lethargy, and oppose the progress of so hated a rival; that, in the
further advance of conquests, even the interests of the two branches
of that ambitious family must interfere, and beget mutual jealousy and
opposition; that a land war, carried on at such a distance, would waste
the blood and treasure of the English nation, without any