Read My Heart

by Jane Dunn

  If his chief delight was to observe true free speech in action, the most significant part of William’s journey into the United Provinces was his impromptu visit, while he and Martha were in The Hague, to Johan de Witt,* the grand pensionary and ruler of the republic. William had grown more respectful of de Witt during his residency in Brussels and this was the first time that they had met. An intellectual, moderate Calvinist and committed republican, de Witt presided over a period of enormous expansion in Dutch prestige, wealth and power. At forty-two and thirty-nine respectively, he and William were close in age and seemed to recognise in each other a similar frankness and integrity. William charmed de Witt by explaining his visit thus: ‘my only business was, to see the things most considerable in the country, and I thought I should lose my credit, if I left it without seeing him.’ He reported this went down very well with the grand pensionary who returned the compliment by saying he had heard very good reports of William’s character and diplomacy during negotiations both in Münster and Brussels. De Witt may well have thought that William was a contender for the job of the next ambassador to the United Provinces and he added, ‘[he] was very glad to be acquainted with me at a time when both our nations were grown friends’.21

  This two-day visit and the discussions on the shifting balances of power in Europe was the precursor for the most important diplomatic coup of William’s career, one that was to make him famous and celebrated beyond his lifetime. He had long argued the crucial importance of peace and alliance between the Dutch Republic and Britain, ‘perhaps the most important [conjuncture] that has been a great while in Christendom, and may have consequences that none alive will see the end of’. He feared, however, that trust between them might be wanting, ‘after such a sharp war as hath been for two years between us, and such a snarling peace as that at Breda’.22 It did not help that de Witt’s name had been blackened at Charles II’s court by Sir George Downing,* envoy to the United Provinces, who was a phenomenally energetic, ruthless and avaricious man. At the restoration, his blatant betrayal of his Cromwellian colleagues made Pepys label him ‘a perfidious rogue’.23 While a diplomat at The Hague, he sought backhanders from the fabulously rich East India Company and muddied the territorial waters between his own country and the United Provinces. De Witt even confided to William that he considered Downing’s activities a main contributory cause of the Anglo-Dutch hostilities.

  Politically de Witt was in opposition to the Orangists, a fact made more complicated in his relations with the English by the fact that the young Prince William of Orange was Charles II’s nephew. William remarked that until he had visited de Witt and given Charles his view of him as ‘a very able and faithful Minister to his State, and, I thought, a sincere dealer’, the whole court had considered him instead as unscrupulous as Sir George Downing himself, ‘but only craftier’.24

  With France’s success in the Spanish Netherlands, there was general anxiety across Europe at Louis XIV’s aggressive agenda. At the end of 1667, Charles II, recognising William’s newfound understanding with de Witt, commanded him to set off immediately for London via The Hague to sound out de Witt’s and his country’s concerns faced with the success of the French invasion. It was generally expected that come the following spring the French would drive even further into Flanders. The central anxiety was that, once they had overrun the Spanish Netherlands, they would turn their acquisitive gaze first to the United Provinces and then, much aggrandised and enriched, threaten Britain. The thought that Louis XIV might be able to harness both the formidable Dutch navy and the wealth of this most powerful mercantile nation to promote his aggressive policies was enough to propel a flurry of diplomatic double-dealing.

  As William made the hurried trip to The Hague he did not know the byzantine bluffs and counter-bluffs that Arlington had been involved in back in London, sounding out the possibilities of alternative alliances with both the French and Spanish ambassadors while William and de Witt, whose new respect and friendship for each other was to last until the latter’s murder, were talking in their characteristically honest, collaborative way. The French ambassador in London, the Marquis de Ruvigny, was oblivious of the way the tide was turning and made it clear he considered the Dutch diplomats to be rather unsophisticated and worthy of little other than ridicule: ‘surely,’ he wrote to Louis XIV, ‘they are bravely dressed, and their cocked hats, their cravats, their wide baldrics, their long swords, and above all, the proud mien of Monsieur Meerman,* provoke the raillery of this Court.’25

  Ignorant of the maze of diplomacy and deceit back home, William arrived in London and passed an enthusiastic report of his talks on to Charles who rapidly came to the conclusion William had long favoured, that the most useful defensive alliance for the present was with the United Provinces. It was 1 January 1668 and he gave the good news to his father: ‘his Majesty came last night to a resolution of the greatest importance which has yet passed, I think, here in any foreign affair, and begun the new year, I hope, with a good presage.’26

  Much relieved and excited at the part he had played in this momentous diplomacy, William only managed the shortest visit to Dorothy and his children. There was no time for cherry tree planting or pleasurable days at home surrounded by women and children who loved him. Instead, he could just tell her of the importance of his mission before turning round again to return to The Hague.

  William’s brother Henry, Martha’s twin, wanted to accompany him in order to see Holland for the first time and valiant Martha herself, having just returned with him from Brussels, now elected to join him on this mission and take charge of his domestic life, ‘which will be a great ease to me as well as satisfaction’, William wrote to their father; ‘and, by freeing me from all domestic cares, leave me the more liberty for those of my business, which, I forsee, will be enough to take up a better head than mine’.27 In his candid way he revealed his anxiety at having to bear the sole responsibility for negotiating a complex treaty he considered of major importance for European peace. The presence of Dorothy, his wise and judicious wife, his foil in philosophical discussions and confidante in diplomacy, would have given him greater confidence but she had to remain in England with the children until his next job was settled. William was grateful, however, for the sprightly company of his younger sister who offered practical competence and admiring support.

  The January weather was atrocious and the voyage back turned into a desperate battle with the elements in which, during a mighty storm that lasted thirty hours, Martha recalled, ‘neither passengers nor seamen had much hopes of escapeing [alive]’.28 Only the chance encounter with a Dutch pilot boat, itself blown off course, saved them at last by leading them to the coast and safety. Interestingly, in his report of this tempestuous journey to Charles, William dwelled less on the privations he was prepared to endure to perform His Majesty’s diplomacy than on the heroic efforts of an undermanned crew, ‘sixteen poor seamen, so beaten out with wet and toil, that the compassion, I had then for them, I have still about me’. William and Martha had travelled courtesy of Charles in one of his royal yachts, a vessel much praised by William, but frank as always, even to his king, he pressed for the overworked sailors’ relief: ‘five or six more will be necessary for your yacht, if you use her to such passages as this’.29 It says much for both men that Charles put up with being lectured about his shortcomings by a junior member of his government and William had imagination and care enough to argue for better safety and conditions for some of the kingdom’s least regarded workers.

  Having faced death at sea, once he was safe on land again, William brought a driving urgency and vigour to his task. Negotiations were hard and complex, involving consultation with all the heads of the provinces, some of them more concerned to maintain an alliance with the French, but their spokesman de Witt was as dedicated, cooperative and industrious as William himself. Within five days and nights of almost continuous discussion, the defensive treaty between England and the United Provinces was ratified. De
Witt told William that his honest face and straightforward dealings had given him confidence from the first time they had met and he needed no further reassurance than his word. Both countries had agreed to come to each other’s aid in the event of attack by another power and the forces required were exactly and exhaustively described, the basic promise being 40 warships fully fitted out, 6,000 foot soldiers and 400 cavalry. The treaty also pledged to attempt to bring peace between Spain and France and, in a secret clause, to try to broker peace between Spain and Portugal.

  The participants could hardly believe they had managed to agree such a treaty and in record time. There was even talk at The Hague of it being a miracle. William was exhausted but euphoric: ‘After sealing, we all embraced with much kindness and applause of my saying upon that occasion, A Breda comme amis, icy comme freres [At Breda as friends, here as brothers].’30 The initial treaty was signed on 23 January 1668. Sweden, in the person of the ambassador, Count von Dhona,* was also keen to sign up to the same terms and in doing so it became known famously as the Triple Alliance.

  At the close of the previous year English spirits were generally downcast and anxious. Discontent with Charles II’s court and the influence of various self-seeking and careless favourites undermined the people’s confidence in government, as did the disunity of parliament. Pepys was not alone in despairing at the lack of any curb on the king’s excesses and deplored the fact that ‘he is only governed by his lust and women and rogues about him’.31 The most influential woman, Charles’s mistress Lady Castlemaine, was rumoured to gamble wildly, with money given her by the king, wagering up to £1,500 a time (more than the disputed equipage allowed for the ambassador to the United Provinces) and quite capable of losing £15,000 in a night (the equivalent of more than £11/2 million today).

  Details like this seemed to epitomise the growing divide between the activities and aspirations of the court and those of the people. The city of London and its citizens had still not recovered from the physical and emotional aftermaths of the plague and fire. In fact, the Great Fire was still almost too cataclysmic to be understood in everyday terms and as Lord Lisle, William and Dorothy’s neighbour at Sheen, explained, ‘The burning of the city begins to be talked of as a story like that of the burning of Troy.’32 The south-east of the country remained in some fear of possible invasion by the French, or even the Dutch whose confidence in their navy was riding high. Londoners were insecure and unhappy, struggling with different realities from those that seemed to preoccupy their masters.

  A couple of cold and miserable weeks into the New Year, the court and city were warmed with the breath of a thousand clattering tongues. The gossip had turned incandescent with details of a scandalous and fatal duel fought by the king’s favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, with the husband of the duke’s mistress, the Earl of Shrewsbury. It became a bloodbath with three men against three, the duke running the earl through the breast with his sword (he took two months to die) and having one of his seconders killed outright by a kinsman of Shrewsbury’s. There was widespread shock and condemnation – and lurid rumours, the worst being that Lady Shrewsbury had attended the duel disguised as a page, held her lover Buckingham’s horse while his sword pierced her betrayed husband’s heart, and afterwards bedded him in the shirt sodden with the victim’s blood. That shameless detail was untrue but indicative of a growing revulsion from the excesses of the court and Charles’s apparent acceptance of the wildest behaviour among unworthy men and women to whom he accorded power and influence. When the king was quick to issue pardons to both sides in the fight, before they had been brought to trial, it further undermined his moral authority. Pepys expressed something of the widespread dismay and cynicism at the time: ‘This will make the world think that the King hath good councillors about him, when the Duke of Buckingham, the greatest man about him, is a fellow of no more sobriety than to fight about a whore.’33

  Into these dark days the news burst suddenly of William Temple’s triumph in negotiating a defensive treaty that lifted the threat to his country from the Dutch, but particularly the fear of invasion by the French. The people on both sides of the North Sea greeted this unexpected turn of events with surprised joy. Pepys hailed it as ‘the first good act that hath been done a great while, and done secretly and with great seeming wisdom’.34 William reported to Arlington from The Hague: ‘[it] is here so generally applauded as the happiest and wisest, that any Prince ever took for himself or his neighbours’, making it clear he was the hero of the hour showered from many quarters with ‘endless, and even extravagant [praise]’.35 To a friend and fellow diplomat he allowed himself to boast more openly, ‘They will need have me pass here for one of great abilities, for having finished and signed in five days a treaty of such importance’, and then explained its ease with a scientific metaphor of working with, rather than against, natural momentum: ‘I will tell you the secret of it: to draw things out of their center requires labour and address to put them in motion; but, to make them return thither, nature helps so far, that there needs no more than just to set them a-going. Now, I think, a strict alliance is the true center of our two nations.’36

  The success of the treaty left William elated, his reputation riding high and his friendship with de Witt consolidated for life. Spontaneous warmth and expressiveness of feeling was a distinctive part of his character and it overflowed now into appreciation for his new friend: ‘[I] look on him as one of the greatest genius’s I have known, as a man of honour, and the most easy in conversation, as well as in business’.37 He gave an amusing vignette of how in later ratifications of the treaty’s articles of commerce he had been sent two directives from his own government, partly in cipher, that he struggled to decode for more than six hours but at the end ‘am not one word wiser’. Rather than have de Witt lose confidence in his honesty and think he was purposefully delaying the talks, he returned to him at ten o’clock at night: ‘I very frankly pulled out my Letter, and my Key, and my Paper with the Rules.’ Although the point of the cipher was to keep what was written from Dutch intelligence, the trust and friendship between the men and William’s independence of action was such that they both applied themselves to the puzzle, but to no avail: ‘we fell to work together for Two Hours, and all to as much purpose as picking Straws.’38 They gave up with a laugh, determined to wait for the more straightforward instructions that would follow.

  It was generally expected that William Temple would be further honoured by the king for his work on this treaty. In fact his friend Lord Halifax was keen that he got some significant reward, deeming an earldom entirely appropriate. But William, with a remarkable lack of the kind of zeal for self-promotion and greed for honours and financial profit that had come to characterise Charles’s court, demurred; he did not want to ask, he said, while acknowledging that it was a time when honours only went to those who sought them: ‘I will confess to you, that considering … my good fortune in this business, I think, a wiser man might possibly make some benefit of it; and some of my friends have advised me to attempt it, but it is in vain: for I know not how to ask, nor why, and this is not an age where anything is given without it.’

  He added a sentence that expressed perhaps not mere false modesty but rather his own philosophical cast of mind, that of the gardener-sage who had learned from his love of planting fruit trees the necessity of judging things in the long term, not getting carried away in the excitement of the moment: ‘by that time you see me next, you shall find in all this which was so much talk to my advantage for nine days, as much forgotten as if it had never been, and very justly, I think; for in that time it received a great deal more than its due.’39

  If William’s head was not turned by all the fleeting flattery and praise, he certainly knew how to enjoy some of the celebrations. On 3 February 1668 he wrote: ‘I am engaged to spend this evening at M. De Witt’s, with the Prince of Orange (whom I have seen only once upon my return), where we are to play the young men, and be as merry as cards and eating
and dancing can make us; for I do not think drinking will have any share. The next day, M’ De Witt is at leaisure to have a match at tennis, where I hope to acquit myself better than tonight, if I have not forgot all the abilities I ever had.’40

  William’s sister had written of her brother’s natural good humour and how he ‘made entertainement out of every thing that could afford it’. Gambling at cards was one of his pleasures and his exuberance tended to make him reckless with his bets: Martha pointed out he was not a very successful gambler, as William himself seemed to anticipate as he set off to party at de Witt’s that night. He eventually learned his lesson, ‘by reckoning his losses several years found himselfe every one of them so considerably a looser, he resolv’d to give it quite over’.41

  Despite the excitement at the time, William was prescient in some ways about the longevity of his triumph, for only six months later one of the king’s chief ministers, Thomas Clifford,* was reported as saying, in reference to the enthusiastic reception parliament had given the Triple Alliance: ‘Well, for all this noise, we must yet have another war with the Dutch before it be long.’ And indeed, within two years Charles II allowed Louis XIV to bribe him into dismantling what William had described as ‘the true center of our two nations’, the defensive union between the British and the Dutch.

  However, if William did not look for financial advantage from his successes, Dorothy was less romantic, more practical and tough-minded about the family’s lack of income. In their long courtship the want of a fortune on either side, which had set their families so obdurately against their marriage, had taught her a painful lesson about the necessity of financial settlements. William always claimed that love was all that mattered, but Dorothy was wiser about the world and more judicious.