whole city into the utmost confusion. The bankers stopped payment, the merchants could answer no bills; distrust took place every where, with a stagnation of commerce, which universally affected the public. During nearly eighteen months the exchequer remained shut for its payments, but not for receiving as usual the produce of the taxes, which the king continued to appropriate to himself. Interest of six per cent. for a year was, however, allowed to persons unpaid.

In the mean time Charles, by virtue of his supreme power in ecclesiastical matters, issued a pro. clamation suspending the penal laws enacted against all non-conformists or recusants whatsoever, and grant, ing-to the protestant dissenters, the public exercise of their religion-to the catholics, the exercise of it in private houses. A similar experiment, opposed by the parliament and retracted by the king, had already been unsuccessfully made a few years after the restoration. But Charles expected that the parliament, whenever it should meet, would now be tamed to greater submission, and would no longer dare to controul his measures. Meanwhile this indulgence mollified the dissenters towards the court, and the catholics enjoyed more liberty than the laws had hitherto allowed them.

The lord keeper having refused to affix the great seal to the declaration for suspending the penal laws, was removed from his place, and Shaftesbury was appointed chancellor.

Before any declaration of war, an attack was attempted upon the Dutch Smyrna fleet, consisting of seventy sail, valued at a million and a half, but they defended themselves so valiantly that they lost only one of their ships of war and two of their most inconsiderable merchantmen. All disguise was at last thrown off by a formal declaration of war and

a manifesto founded on reasons, too evidently false, or frivolous to justify so flagrant a violation of the treaty of the triple alliance, from which Sweden was also detached by the influence of Lewis XIV. On the same day of the publication of Charles's manifesto Lewis's declaration of war against Holland was published in France, and contained no other, motive for a rupture but that the behaviour of the Hollanders had been such, that it did not consist with his majesty's glory any longer to bear it. The bishop of Munster and the elector of Cologne were engaged by subsidies to take part against the Dutch,

De Wit exerted himself with the utmost activity to resist that formidable confederacy. The Dutch army was completed to seventy thousand men, but it was without discipline. The prince of Orange. was appointed both general and admiral of the commonwealth, but his partisans were unsatisfied so long as the perpetual edict remained in force, by which he was excluded from the stadtholdership.

The naval preparations were hastened by de Wit, who particularly wished to revenge himself on the English, of whose conduct he thought he and his country had great reasons to complain. Ruyter commanded the Dutch fleet, which consisted of ninety-five ships of war and forty-four fire ships. He surprised in Solebay the combined fleets of France and England. The earl of Sandwich had in vain warned the duke of York of his danger. His foresight had been attributed to fear; yet, when the enemy appeared in sight, he alone, with the squa dron he commanded, was prepared for action. He hastened out of the bay, and the determined courage with which he attacked Ruyter, gave time to the duke of York, who commanded the main body, and to mareschal d'Estrées, admiral of the rear, to disengage themselves and form in order. He sunk

three fire ships, which endeavoured to grapple with him; and though his vessel was torn in pieces with shot, and of a thousand men she contained, nearly six hundred were laid dead upon the deck, he still continued to thunder with all his artillery in the midst of the enemy. But another fire ship having laid hold of his vessel, her destruction was now inevitable. Warned by his captain, he refused to make his escape, and bravely embraced death as a shelter from that ignominy, which a rash expression of the duke's, he thought, had thrown upon him.

During this fierce engagement of Sandwich with admiral Van Ghent, whom he killed and beat off his ship, Ruyter attacked the duke of York, and fought him with such fury for above two hours, that of thirty-two actions in which that admiral had been engaged, he declared this combat, fought June 6th, to be the most obstinately disputed. The duke's ship was so shattered, that he was obliged to leave her and remove his flag to another.

His squadron was overpowered with numbers, till sir Joseph Jordan, who had succeeded to Sandwich's command, came to his assistance, and the fight being now more equally balanced, was continued till night, when the Dutch retired, and were not followed by the English. The loss sustained on both sides was nearly equal, if not rather more heavy on the English.

On land, the victories of Lewis XIV. were less doubtful, He passed the Meuse at Vizet, and in three days carried Orsai; he then divided his army, and invested at once four other places regularly fortified, and not unprovided with troops. In a few days all these places were surrendered. The astonishment and dismay with which the rapidity of these conquests struck the Dutch, contributed, with the dryness of the season, to facilitate that passage

of the Rhine so much celebrated by the French historians and poets. In a few weeks Lewis was in possession of the provinces of Guilderland, Overyssel and Utrecht. Groningen was threatened, Frietzland was exposed, and the conquering monarch was deliberating concerning the proper measures for reducing the other provinces.

Amsterdam alone seemed to retain some courage; its sluices were opened, and the neighbouring country was laid under water. All the provinces followed the example. The states were assembled; the nobles gave their vote, that provided their religion, liberty, and sovereignty could be saved, every thing else should, without scruple, be sacrificed to the conqueror. Eleven towns concurred in the same sentiments. Amsterdam alone declared against all treaty with insolent and triumphant enemies. Ambassadors, however, were dispatched to offer terms of peace to the French and English monarchs. It was resolved to abandon to Lewis, Maestricht, and all the frontier towns without the bounds of the seven provinces, and to pay him a large sum for the expenses of the war.

Lewis, far from being satisfied with these offers, demanded that all the frontier towns of the republic should be yielded to him; a sum of twenty millions of livres to defray the charges of the war; the public exercise of the catholic religion in the united provinces; and that they should present him every year with a golden medal, as an acknowledgement that they owed him the preservation of their liberty.

Charles required that the Dutch should give up the honour of the flag without the least reserve or limitation; nor should whole fleets, even on the coast of Holland, refuse to strike or lower their topsails to the smallest ship carrying the British flag; that all persons guilty of treason against the king,

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or of writing seditious libels, should, on complaint, be banished for ever the dominions of the states; that the Dutch should pay the king a million sterling for the charges of the war, together with ten thousand pounds a year, for permission to fish on the British seas; that they should share the Indian trade with the English; that the prince of Orange and his descendants should enjoy the sovereignty of the united provinces; at least that they should be invested with the dignities of stadtholder, admiral, and general, in as ample a manner as had ever been enjoyed by any of his ancestors; and that the isle of Walcheren, the city and castle of Slues, together with the isles of Cadsant, Goree, and Vorne, should be put into the king's hands as a security for the performance of articles.

These demands reduced the Hollanders to the utmost despair; their rage soon broke all bounds, and instead of being directed against their enemies, it fell upon their own ministers and leaders. The virtuous de Wit and his brother were the victims of their blind fury. Even their massacre did not satiate the brutality of the multitude; they exercised the most shocking indignities on their dead bodies, and till they were tired with these repeated acts of ferocity, they permitted not the friends of the deceased to approach or to bestow on their mangled corpse the honour of a funeral, silent and unattended.

The death of the de Wits put an end to the remains of their party, and placed the whole authority in the hands of the prince of Orange, who, by sentiments becoming the head of a brave and free people, proved worthy of that heroic family from which he sprang. He exhorted the states to reject with scorn the exorbitant conditions proposed to them, and by his advice, they put an end to negociations, which served only to break the courage of