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The successes which attended Monk in Scotland were no less decisive. That able general laid siege to Stirling Castle, and though it was well provided for defence, it was soon surrendered to him. He there became master of all the records of the kingdom; and he sent them to England. The earl of Leven, the earl of Crawford, Lord Ogilvy, and other noblemen, having met near Perth, in order to concert measures for raising a new army, were suddenly set upon by Colonel Alured, and most of them taken prisoners. Sir Philip Musgrave, with some Scots, being engaged at Dumfries in a like enterprise, met with a like fate. Dundee was a town well fortified, supplied with a good garrison under Lumisden, and full of all the rich furniture, the plate and money of the kingdom, which had been sent thither as to a place of safety. Monk appeared before it; and having made a breach, gave a general assault. He carried the town; and following the example and instructions of Cromwell, put all the inhabitants to the sword, in order to strike a general terror into the kingdom. Warned by this example, Aberdeen, St. Andrew’s, Inverness, and other towns and forts, yielded of their own accord to the enemy. Argyle made his submissions to the English commonwealth; and excepting a few royalists, who remained some time in the mountains, under the earl of Glencairn, Lord Balcarras, and General Middleton, that kingdom, which had hitherto, through all ages, by means of its situation, poverty, and valor, maintained its independence, was reduced to total subjection.

The English parliament sent Sir Harry Vane, St. John, and other commissioners to settle Scotland. These men, who possessed little of the true spirit of liberty, knew how to maintain the appearance of it; and they required the voluntary consent of all the counties and towns of this conquered kingdom, before they would unite them into the same commonwealth with England. The clergy protested; because, they said, this incorporating union would draw along with it a subordination of the church to the state in the things of Christ.[*] English judges, joined to some Scottish, were appointed to determine all causes; justice was strictly administered; order and peace maintained; and the Scots, freed from the tyranny of the ecclesiastics, were not much dissatisfied with the present government.[**] 25 The prudent conduct of Monk, a man who possessed a capacity for the arts both of peace and war, served much to reconcile the minds of men, and to allay their prejudices.

1652.

By the total reduction and pacification of the British dominions, the parliament had leisure to look abroad, and to exert their vigor in foreign enterprises. The Dutch were the first that felt the weight of their arms.

During the life of Frederic Henry, prince of Orange, the Dutch republic had maintained a neutrality in the civil wars of England, and had never interposed, except by her good offices, between the contending parties. When William, who had married an English princess, succeeded to his father’s commands and authority,[***] the states, both before and after the execution of the late king, were accused of taking steps more favorable to the royal cause, and of betraying a great prejudice against that of the parliament. It was long before the envoy of the English commonwealth could obtain an audience of the states general. The murderers of Dorislaus were not pursued with such vigor as the parliament expected. And much regard had been paid to the king, and many good offices performed to him, both by the public, and by men of all ranks, in the United Provinces.

After the death of William, prince of Orange,[****] which was attended with the depression of his party and the triumph of the Dutch republicans, the parliament thought that the time was now favorable for cementing a closer confederacy with the states.

* Whitlocke, p. 496. Heathe’s Chronicle, p. 307.

** See note Y, at the end of the volume.

*** 1647.

**** October 17, 1650.

St. John, chief justice, who was sent over to the Hague, had entertained the idea of forming a kind of coalition between the two republics, which would have rendered their interests totally inseparable; but fearing that so extraordinary a project would not be relished, he contented himself with dropping some hints of it, and openly went no further than to propose a strict defensive alliance between England and the United Provinces, such as has now, for near seventy years taken place between these friendly powers.[*] But the states, who were unwilling to form a nearer confederacy with a government whose measures were so obnoxious, and whose situation seemed so precarious, offered only to renew the former alliances with England. And the haughty St. John, disgusted with this disappointment, as well as incensed at many affronts which had been offered him with impunity by the retainers of the Palatine and Orange families, and indeed by the populace in general, returned into England, and endeavored to foment a quarrel between the republics.

The movement of great states are often directed by as slender springs as those of individuals. Though war with so considerable a naval power as the Dutch, who were in peace with all their other neighbors, might seem dangerous to the yet unsettled commonwealth, there were several motives which at this time induced the English parliament to embrace hostile measures. Many of the members thought, that a foreign war would serve as a pretence for continuing the same parliament, and delaying the new model of a representative, with which the nation had so long been flattered. Others hoped, that the war would furnish a reason for maintaining, some time longer, that numerous standing army, which was so much complained of.[**]

* Thurloe, vol. i. p. 182.

** We are told, in the Life of Sir Harry Vane, that that
famous republican opposed the Dutch war, and that it was the
military gentlemen chiefly who supported that measure.

On the other hand, some, who dreaded the increasing power of Cromwell, expected that the great expense of naval armaments would prove a motive for diminishing the military establishment. To divert the attention of the public from domestic quarrels towards foreign transactions, seemed, in the present disposition of men’s minds, to be good policy. The superior power of the English commonwealth, together with its advantages of situation, promised success; and the parliamentary leaders hoped to gain many rich prizes from the Dutch, to distress and sink their flourishing commerce, and by victories to throw a lustre on their own establishment, which was so new and unpopular. All these views, enforced by the violent spirit of St. John, who had great influence over Crom-well, determined the parliament to change the purposed alliance into a furious war against the United Provinces.

To cover these hostile intentions, the parliament, under pretence of providing for the interests of commerce, embraced such measures as they knew would give disgust to the states. They framed the famous act of navigation; which prohibited all nations from importing into England in their bottoms any commodity which was not the growth and manufacture of their own country. By this law, though the terms in which it was conceived were general, the Dutch were principally affected; because their country produces few commodities, and they subsist chiefly by being the general carriers and factors of Europe. Letters of reprisal were granted to several merchants, who complained of injuries which, they pretended, they had received from the states; and above eighty Dutch ships fell into their hands, and were made prizes. The cruelties committed on the English at Amboyna, which were certainly enormous, but which seemed to be buried in oblivion by a thirty years’ silence, were again made the ground of complaint. And the allowing the murderers of Dorislaus to escape, and the conniving at the insults to which St. John had been exposed, were represented as symptoms of an unfriendly, if not a hostile disposition in the states.