their secret treaty of Dover, to make a joint attack upon the Dutch. It is a mistake to suppose, as is commonly thought, that Charles II was induced to join France in 1672 merely by French bribes and his sympathy with Roman Catholicism. His alliance with France was undoubtedly aimed against civil and religious liberty at home; but abroad one of its objects was to cut down the naval and commercial growth of Holland, with whom the English had many unsettled quarrels both in America and in Asia.
By a secret treaty projected between France, England, and Portugal in 1673, the three powers were to send a joint naval expedition against the Dutch possessions in Asia, which were to be seized and divided among the allies. It is thus clear that there were strong and recurrent motives for hostility between the two nations, closely connected with Asiatic affairs. Even Sir William Temple, the negotiator of the Triple Alliance, discusses in one of his essays the question whether England would derive greater advantage than France from the ruin of Holland. Whether in that case it would be possible to bring over to England the Dutch trade and shipping, seemed doubtful to him; yet he feared that, unless England joined France against Holland, the two Continental states might combine against England.
In 1671, accordingly, England did join France in a war which ended, so far as we were concerned, in 1674, when the Dutch agreed to salute the English flag in the narrow seas and to refer all commercial differences to
