resolved to have recourse to arms in order to humiliate this insolent republic which had dared to hamper his designs.
For four years, every effort of his diplomacy tended solely to make Holland isolated in Europe.
It was to England that France would naturally first turn her eyes.

The sentiments of King Charles II.

and of his people, as regarded Holland, were not the same.

Charles had not forgiven the Estates for having driven him from their territory at the request of Cromwell; the simple and austere manners of the republican patricians did not accord with his taste for luxury and debauchery; the English people, on the contrary, despite of that rivalry in, trade and on the seas which had been the source of so much ancient and recent hostility between the two nations, esteemed the Hollanders and leaned towards an alliance with them.

Louis XIV., in the eyes of the English Parliament, was the representative of Catholicism and absolute monarchy, two enemies which it had vanquished, but still feared.