544 DUTCH MISSIONS TO ENGLAND IN 1689 October more attempt was made to get the British commissioners to deal with this and the minor commercial questions that had arisen in the meantime, but they roundly refused, on the ground that they could not reverse arrangements enacted by parliament.* No doubt it would have been as good as impossible at that stage in the reconstruction of British policy to withdraw the great measures against which the Dutch protested. It would inevitably have led the English to believe that their interests were being sacrificed to those of the Dutch. What would have made this look still more likely was the fact that the Dutch offered nothing in return for the concessions they asked. Even without the long tradition of jealousy between the two nations, and without the heightened suspicions of the moment, which were shown clearly in the difficulties about the repayment of the Dutch expenses of 1688, it would have demanded an exceptional enlightenment for the English to make a one-sided concession of what they almost unanimously believed to be their artificial commercial advantage. But, indeed, the Dutch had not pressed very strongly. They had not at any point tried to make the success of the negotiations for an alliance depend on the arrangement of the commercial treaty. The alliance was for them too obviously necessary. They had not even wrangled and obstructed over this as they did over the questions of naval rank and trade with France and the right to make a separate peace. The states general had not pressed them to gain the point. Dutch public opinion had remained indifferent. The commercial negotiations were not serious enough even to deserve the name of a flash in the pan. The completeness of their failui*e is best seen from the small subordinate points. Various separate commodities were men- tioned on which concessions might have been got. There had been a small but steady export of Delft china to England : Dutch tiles may still be found in old houses along the English coast and rivers from Exeter to Scarborough. Imitations of Delft china were made at Lambeth from the middle of the seventeenth century and at Bristol from about the end of it, at Liverpool a little later. In 1676 John Ariens van Hamme, by the encouragement of Temple, the ambassador at The Hague, came over and was given a patent for fourteen years ' for the art of making Tiles and Porcelain and other Earthen Wares after the way practised in Holland '. In 1688 the brothers Elers came over with William and set up the work in Staffordshire.^ The Dutch representatives frequently refer to an act of parliament forbidding the imjjortation, but the prohibition seems to have
- Witsen to Heinsius, 23 July/2 August (van der Heim, i. 19).
» LI. Jewitt, The Ceramic Art of Britain, 2nd edition, pp. 76, 92, 208-11, 311.
