After the French evacuated
Holland, the congress broke up; and the seizure of Prince William of
Furstenburg by the Imperialists, afforded the French and English a good
pretence for leaving Cologne. The Dutch ambassadors, in their memorials,
expressed all the haughtiness and disdain so natural to a free state,
which had met with such unmerited ill usage.
The parliament of England was now assembled, and discovered much greater
symptoms of ill humor than had appeared in the last session. They had
seen for some time a negotiation of marriage carried on between the
duke of York and the archduchess of Inspruc, a Catholic of the Austrian
family; and they had made no opposition. But when that negotiation
failed, and the duke applied to a princess of the house of Modena, then
in close alliance with France, this circumstance, joined to so many
other grounds of discontent, raised the commons into a flame; and they
remonstrated with the greatest zeal against the intended marriage. The
king told them, that their remonstrance came too late, and that the
marriage was already agreed on, and even celebrated by proxy. The
commons still insisted; and proceeding to the examination of the other
parts of government, they voted the standing army a grievance, and
declared, that they would grant no more supply unless it appeared that
the Dutch were so obstinate as to refuse all reasonable conditions of
peace.
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