Going Dutch_ How England Plundered Holland's Glory - Lisa Jardine [19]
Locke’s Two Treatises were written during his own exile in the United Provinces. Indeed, all his political writings date from the period between his flight from England to the Low Countries in 1683 and his return home in 1689. Prior to that his professional reputation was that of a distinguished medical man with republican leanings. Men like Burnet and Locke were moulded by the Dutch Republic and its mores into political thinkers who harnessed the eloquence and lucidity of the English language to the levelheaded pragmatism of the Dutch.
Moreover, it is not just the Declaration of reasons – so heavily influenced by the temperament and literary style of Gilbert Burnet – that has permanently shaped the telling of the story of the invasion which led to the Glorious Revolution. Burnet’s monumental, six-volume History of his own Times, written towards the end of his long and eventful life, has also seen to it that a version of the Dutch intervention as driven exclusively by religious and ethical ideals has persisted down to the present day. The motto for the invasion proclaimed its purpose (’pro religione et liberate’), and that Burnet-style justification has remained the legitimising slogan for the Dutch intervention ever since.
In fact, however plausibly contemporaries pointed to Princess Mary’s claim on the English crown and her husband’s entitlement to try to secure a reliably Protestant succession, there were strong, entirely Dutch political reasons for William of Orange’s invasion. The strategic planning which culminated in the great fleet leaving harbour on 1 November 1688 appears in a different light when looked at squarely from the point of view of its Dutch participants. In the eyes of the Dutch States General, as well as those of key players like Prince William himself and his close advisers, it was driven by the urgent need to get the English King, in spite of his Catholicism, to commit to a ‘defensive alliance’ with the Dutch Republic, against the increasingly alarming expansionist moves of forces of the French King on the Republic’s borders.
James II’s accession to the throne in 1685 had raised immediate anxieties with the Dutch States General. The Dutch were deeply concerned, not only that James was strengthening the position of practising Catholics inside his own country, but also that he was reinforcing the English army. ‘The King makes large-scale preparations, equips, fills his storehouses, ambassador Skelton is sent to Paris, has ambitions in the East Indies – everything highly suspect,’ a Dutch agent reported. The fear was that a Catholic, expansionist Anglo–French coalition was about to form again, recalling the nightmare of 1672, when Louis XIV had been stopped from overrunning the Low Countries with English backing. Then, the French King’s aggression and expansionist ambitions had brought down the republican regime of the brothers De Witt, as William of Orange emerged as the only leader capable of marshalling and focusing the support of politicians and the military. Now, once again, it was to be William, as the nominated Orange ruler or Stadholder, who proved capable of leading a robust Dutch response against renewed French military aggression.
William sent Dijkvelt to London as ambassador, charged with winning over James to form an alliance with the Dutch, rather than with France. When this initiative failed (largely because James was too preoccupied with internal English politics), William introduced a number of special envoys, acting on his behalf, charged with forging closer relations with the English King who was both his uncle and his father-in-law. This too met with little support, so Bentinck, who oversaw this network of contacts on the Stadholder’s behalf, developed it as an efficient machine for collecting detailed intelligence on the English political situation.
It was through this network of informants that Bentinck