by Jane Dunn
The French mounted an overland invasion with some startling success and that June, in order to protect Amsterdam from the forces advancing from the south, the Dutch took dramatic and desperate action, deliberately flooding a large tract of land south of the Zuider Zee. Prince William of Orange, at only twenty-one, was elevated to captain-general and admiral-general of all the states and continued to show his decisive courage and strategic prowess. The failures in the war against the French, however, were blamed on Johan de Witt who, that August, was assassinated by a mob as he arrived to escort his elder brother Cornelis from prison at The Hague. Cornelis was to be released when a case against him for plotting the Prince of Orange’s death had been unproven but the crowd turned murderous, seemingly inflamed by an organised Orangist mob. Both men were attacked brutally, their bodies mutilated and abused. William Temple was suspicious enough of this uncharacteristically frenzied behaviour to initiate his own enquiries. In his memoirs he reported what he discovered about the death of his most admirable friend:
In the midst of this heat and passion, raised by these kind of discourses among the populace, the two brothers came out; some of the trained-bands stopped them, began to treat them at first with ill language, and from words fell to blows; upon which Monsieur de Witt, foreseeing how the tragedy would end, took his brother by the hand, and was at the same time knocked down with the butt-end of a musket. They were presently laid dead upon the place, then dragged about the town by the fury of the people, and torn in pieces. This ended one of the greatest lives of any subject in our age, about the 47th year of his own.18
Happy as William was to be, as he described it to a friend, ‘wholly sunk in my gardening, and the quiet of a private life; which I thank God, agrees with me as well as the splendour of the world’,19 he nevertheless continued to follow with interest the depressing progress of what he, and most thinking people at the time, considered to be an unprovoked and immoral war. He was also writing his long essay, Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands, which was to prove both important and popular. This was written largely towards the end of 1672 and published quickly in the spring of 1673. In an insightful, well-researched and affectionate portrait of the Dutch as sturdy heroes, and their political and social systems as tolerant and egalitarian, he propagated his views on the natural alliances between the Dutch and his own nation. There were veiled criticisms too of Charles II, whose betrayal of the Triple Alliance, William believed, had contributed to the low morale in the United Provinces that had allowed the French to grab their early victories on land: ‘Indeed, it was the name of England joining in the war against them that broke their hearts, and contributed more to the loss of so many towns and so much country than the armies of Munster or France.’
Impassioned and unequivocal in most things, William’s speed in writing and then publishing this extended essay indicate that he was much more interested in propagating his views during this controversial war than his self-deprecating preface suggested:
I write without other design than of entertaining very idle men, and, among them, myself. For I must confess, that being wholly useless to the public, and unacquainted with the cares of increasing riches (which busy the world;) being grown cold to the pleasures of younger or livelier men; and having ended the entertainments of building and planting, (which used to succeed them;) finding little taste in common conversation, and trouble in much reading, from the care of my eyes since an illness contracted by many unnecessary diligences in my employments abroad: there can hardly be found an idler man than I, nor, consequently, one more excusable for giving way to such amusements as this: having nothing to do, but to enjoy the ease of a private life and fortune, which, as I know no man envies, so, I thank God, no man can reproach.20
Just as the author was far from idle, his Observations was read by many more than those who had nothing better to do, for it caught the general public’s growing interest in the United Provinces, this most economically successful of neighbours, explained in pleasing prose by an Englishman who knew the country and its people well. It was so successful it reprinted almost immediately and in William’s lifetime ran to six editions, with translations published in The Hague and Utrecht. The book has also weathered the centuries remarkably well and, along with his essay on gardening, is still in print.
The natural good health of William’s youth had begun to break down by the time he was in his early forties. Not only did he begin to suffer with rheumy eyes that at times made reading difficult but his sister wrote that his teeth too caused him trouble, both afflictions blamed on the chill and exhaustion he suffered in various of his official duties, most notably the breakneck ride, when already unwell, to intercept payment to the perfidious Bishop of Münster. Gout, the universal scourge of middle age then, was to grip him intermittently in its agonising vice from the age of forty-seven until he died. However, such was his intellectual vitality that his experiences of this disease also inspired him to search for possible cures and to write an essay about his findings. (He reckoned garlic was a proven remedy but, reluctant to subject his family and friends to chronic garlic breath, did not turn to it long-term.) One thing he was clear on, it was better to avoid the ministrations of doctors, telling his sister ‘he hoped to dye without them & trusted to the advice but chiefely to the care of his friends [with the meaning here of family] wch he often express’d him selfe to be soe happy in as to want nothing but health’.21
William’s father’s remarkable vitality was beginning to fail with age and, now in his seventies and wishing to sort out his estate and legacies, Sir John needed help with his affairs from his eldest son and heir. William sailed to Dublin in the spring of 1673, where his father was still Master of the Rolls, and found so much to do that he remained for three months. Apart from the battle with Sir John over his determination to marry Dorothy, William’s relationship with the old man became a confiding and respectful one, and grew increasingly close with maturity. Indeed, four years later and not long before he died, Sir John wrote a letter to William that revealed his fatherly admiration, affection and pride in the man that his over-emotional and pig-headed boy had become:
I am old and very weak and find myself to moulder away apace, so as it is high time for me to think of my great change [death and the afterlife], for which the appointed time cannot either in reason [or] by the course of nature to be expected to be far off; let me have your prayers to assist in so great a work. In the meantime you have mine, which I daily send up to the great God of heaven for a blessing upon all your great undertakings and that he will continue you a glorious instrument in his service for the good of his church and his people, and so rest and shall always remain
Your most loving father
J. Temple22
William and Dorothy’s life of familiar domesticity, gardening and study was not allowed to continue undisturbed. Once more William was called upon to be that ‘glorious instrument’ – the peace-maker, in the service of his king and country – and, as he and his father saw it, God too. The war against the Dutch was increasingly unpopular at home and conspicuously unproductive. The English colony of New York had been recaptured by the Dutch in the summer of 1673 and renamed New Orange and two naval battles attempting to land Anglo-French troops on Dutch soil had been abortive and costly. There was a groundswell of anti-French feeling that surprised the Venetian ambassador: ‘No one is able to explain why the people of England detest the French alliance so violently or why they wish for peace with Holland at any cost.’23 But he was ignoring wide-ranging populist grievances: the French navy had not adequately supported the British navy and Louis XIV was an increasingly absolutist monarch, bribing Charles to go the same way while corrupting his court. The political temperature in the United Provinces had changed too. The radical republican de Witt brothers had been replaced by the Prince of Orange and this was a less controversial way of governance to the British, who had welcomed the restoration of their own king with such relief and hope on
ly thirteen years earlier.
By the beginning of 1674 parliament had forcefully persuaded Charles II to agree to the peace being sued for by the Dutch. In need of an ambassador and negotiator the committee of foreign affairs immediately agreed that William Temple was the man for the job; indeed the king had added, ‘there was no man else to be thought of’.24 William was ready to depart for The Hague with only two days’ notice. Having argued that speed and personal contacts were of the essence, he declared he would rather proceed as envoy extraordinary than as the fully accredited ambassador, encumbered by protocol and red tape. He had also told Dorothy and Martha he would not allow either to accompany him as the difficult sea voyage was made even more arduous by the February winds and the bitter cold. But both women were concerned for his health and unhappy at his going alone. Poised to catch the coach to Harwich (the wind was in the wrong direction for him to go by boat down the Thames), William was stopped in his tracks: the Spanish ambassador to Charles’s court had been given full powers by the United Provinces to negotiate on their behalf in London. He was half relieved to be saved the journey and do the business quickly and at home.
Proud of his no-nonsense, straight-talking style of negotiation and his ability to cut to the nub of a matter, William once again managed to conclude this peace in record time and felt justifiably pleased with himself. The Treaty of Westminster was thrashed out in three days and signed on 19 February. The Dutch agreed to return New York and to accept the British right of salute in the Channel in return for retaining all their trading advantages in the East Indies.
Charles’s reward was to offer William the top diplomatic job, to go as ambassador extraordinary to Spain. Martha’s old admirer Sir William Godolphin, whose conversion to Catholicism had made parliament suspicious of his allegiances, was due to be recalled. William himself was in two minds, as he wrote to his father: ‘I like the climate, but you know I never cared for a remove, being ever apt to like the place and condition I am in.’ Being the one in the family too often charged with collecting her husband’s long overdue salary and expenses and anxious to conserve the modest family fortune, Dorothy was much more positive about the suggested move to Madrid, ‘both upon respects of advantages to my fortune and my health, which she thinks suffered much in Holland’. Surprising to William was his sister’s antipathy to it, even though of all of them she was ‘the better Spaniard’.25 The person who really decided whether this post was acceptable or not, though, was Sir John Temple. William had told the king he would need his father’s permission before he would put such a distance between himself and his elderly parent at this time. Martha wrote that Sir John was by now too old and close to death to be happy to agree to such a move, and she was right.
On declining the Spanish post, William was then offered the position of secretary of state of the northern department,* but at the cost of £6,000 [about £730,000] to be paid to the outgoing secretary, who happened to be Lord Arlington. Arlington had already offered this position to Sir Joseph Williamson† but was happy to let William have it on the same terms if he would put in a good word for him to Dorothy’s cousin and former suitor, Lord Danby,* who had just come to prominence as lord treasurer. This position William also declined, declaring publicly that he could not afford such a large sum of money until after he had come into his inheritance on the death of his father, but privately he stated his dislike of the accepted practice of buying and selling government jobs. ‘I have ever detested the custom grown amongst us,’ he wrote to his father, ‘of selling places, and much more those of so much importance to the Crown.’
This disgust might have originated close to home, for while he and Dorothy were both scrupulously honest, her cousin’s wife, Lady Danby, was notorious for her avarice and opportunism: ‘Several persons had got possessed of good employments, not so much by my Lord Danby’s favour and kindness as by giving money to his lady, who had for some time driven on a private trade of this sort, though not without his lordship’s participation and concurrence,’26 as Sir John Reresby† related in his memoirs.
William also refused to be complicit in the discourtesy to Sir Joseph Williamson who had been offered the job first, deploring the lack of constancy and trust in the current climate: ‘I have seen such changes at Court, that I know not yet what to make of this last; and still remember poor Monsieur de Witt’s word of, fluctuation perpetuelle dans la conduite d’Angleterre [perpetual flux in the conduct of English affairs], which of all things in the world I am not made for.’27
Once again, Dorothy was keen that William should consider this position. Perhaps she was particularly concerned by their lack of funds, and felt it was a luxury to be so morally scrupulous when the family was in need of greater financial security. Certainly as a girl she had suffered from her own family’s diminished fortune and the necessity for her to marry money. Money bought you status and freedom and no thoughtful mother would want her son and daughter to be similarly constrained by their parents’ impoverishment. William’s income, until his father died, did not exceed £500 a year and his embassies abroad had cost him more than they had earned him.
Following his father’s advice, William agreed to the next offer, that he go as ambassador extraordinary to the United Provinces but, in a concession to Dorothy’s concerns perhaps, he held out for a better package of allowance, expenses and equipage. His whole family would accompany him, but Dorothy and their son John, who had returned from a lengthy stay in France, decided first to go to Dublin to see the ailing Sir John. William and Dorothy were evidently pleased with their eighteen-year-old son’s progress and wanted to show him off to his grandfather, for he was the only son and heir of his own eldest son and heir. William wrote with some satisfaction to his father: ‘my wife will not consent to my going [to Holland] without either her or my sister; and she has a great mind to carry over her son to you herself, after having been so long in France, and at an age when commonly the great changes are made, which you will judge of when you see him.’28
By the middle of July 1674, William and Martha were back in The Hague, probably with Diana, his daughter. Dorothy was to join them soon after. Their son John was expected in September and William offered his services as a trustworthy courier to Arlington, who had just been appointed lord treasurer, assuring him with fatherly pride, ‘though he be young, yet, I am pretty confident, he may be trusted with it; for he has a good plain steady head, and is desirous to do well’. William felt that once he had dispatched his current duties he was ready to quit the public stage and leave it to his son and the next generation: ‘if I have the honour of atchieving [the reconciliation of the interests of Charles and William of Orange] it will be enough for such a life as mine: and that the King will then give me leave, I hope, to go and sleep at home, and leave my son in the busy world, which requires men spirited with some other heats, than I have about me.’29
William had to wait, however, until November to reacquaint himself with the prince. William of Orange was at the head of his forces in the southern Netherlands, allied with the Spanish and Austrian forces, in a campaign against the French there. The prince showed exemplary personal courage and some recklessness when he decided to march towards Paris to force the French to act. On 11 August a bloody battle ensued at Seneffe in the Spanish Netherlands when the young prince’s forces met the wily French general, ‘the Great Condé’.* It was estimated that nearly 20,000 perished or were wounded in what in the end was an indecisive battle. William Temple relayed the first news as it arrived to Arlington in London: Condé had shown great courage, the German and the Dutch troops could not have fought more bravely, the Spanish less so, and ‘the Prince himself most extream gallantly in his Person, and for several hours in the very hottest of the danger, and where most were kill’d. That it was fought from Eleven in the Morning till Ten at Night, and with very great slaughter.’30
The young Prince of Orange, now fully blooded, returned to The Hague in November, having just turned twenty-four years old. W
illiam’s diplomatic duties this time were not as significant as they had been on previous missions. He was to encourage the prince to make peace with the French, against his personal inclinations, for the young man had admitted to him that he had discovered the exhilaration of war and how well it suited his skills and disposition: ‘[he] loves the trade, and thinks himself better in health and humour, the less he is at rest’.31 But William’s other duties as ambassador centred more this time on trade discussions and shipping rights than grand plans.
More important than any official business, however, was the growing friendship that began at this time between William of Orange and the Temple family that would lead to their encouragement of his marriage to Princess Mary, a marriage that would eventually change the face of British history. Although not recognised as such at the time, this was fundamentally of huge significance and much greater lasting importance than the fleeting, if spectacular, Triple Alliance, negotiated so successfully and swiftly nearly seven years before.
William, Prince of Orange, was a highly responsible, self-contained and taciturn young man whose natural qualities of seriousness and deep inarticulate feeling were exaggerated by his difficult childhood. He was born on 14 November 1650, a week after his father William II had died of smallpox at the age of twenty-four. His mother, Charles II’s sister Mary, turned nineteen on the very day her first and only child entered the world, but this was not to prove the bond astrologers might have hoped. Baby William was born into a black-draped and grief-stricken household, to a mother in shock. She had never reconciled herself to being away from England and could not settle into Dutch life, missing the warmth and charm of Charles II who, along with her other brother James, Duke of York, had spent some of their exile with her in The Hague. A humorous and affectionate older brother, Charles inspired a nostalgic longing in both his adult sisters, Mary, Princess of Orange, and Henriette-Anne, Duchess of Orléans, both of whom died in their twenties.