the care of their High Mightinesses “the Princess my sister and the Prince of Orange my nephew, persons who are extremely dear to me.”  He had previously expressed the same wish to De Witt privately; and compliance with it, i.e. the annulling of the Act of Exclusion, was inevitable.  But all the actors in this comedy were playing a part.  Charles was not deceived by all this subservience, and, continuing to entertain a bitter grudge against De Witt and his party, only waited his time to repay their enmity in kind.  De Witt on his side, though in his anxiety to conciliate the new royalist government he consented to deliver up three regicides who were refugees in Holland (an act justly blamed), refused to restore the Prince of Orange to any of the ancient dignities and offices of his forefathers.  Acting however on his advice, the Estates of Holland passed a unanimous resolution declaring William a ward of the Estates and voting a sum of money for his maintenance and education.

Very shortly after this momentous change in the government of England, Cardinal Mazarin died (March, 1661); and the youthful Louis XIV took the reins of power into his own hands.  Outwardly all seemed well in the relations between France and the republic, and in point of fact an offensive and defensive alliance for twenty-five years was concluded between them on April 27,1662.  Later in the same year Count D’Estrades, formerly ambassador in the time of Frederick Henry, resumed his old post.  The relations between him and De Witt were personally of the friendliest character, but the conciliatory attitude of D’Estrades did not deceive the far-sighted council-pensionary, who was seriously disquieted as to the political aims of France in the southern Netherlands.

By the treaty of the Pyrenees, 1659, the French had already acquired a large slice of territory in Flanders and Artois.  They had since obtained Dunkirk by purchase from Charles II.  Moreover Louis XIV had married the eldest daughter of Philip IV, whose only son was a weakly boy.  It is true that Maria Theresa, on her marriage, had renounced all claims to the Spanish succession.  But a large dowry had been settled upon her, and by the treaty the renunciation was contingent upon its payment.  The dowry had not been paid nor was there any prospect of the Spanish treasury being able to find the money.  Besides it was no secret that Louis claimed the succession to Brabant for his wife and certain other portions of the Netherlands under what was called the Law of Devolution.  By this law the female child of a first wife was the heir in preference to the male child of a later marriage.  The Dutch dreaded the approach of the French military power to their frontiers, and yet the decrepitude of Spain seemed to render it inevitable.  There appeared to De Witt to be only two solutions of the difficulty.  Either what was styled “the cantonment” of the southern Netherlands, i.e. their being formed into a self-governing republic under Dutch