ABSTRACT
According to Sir William Coventry the second war was caused by 'strange accidental things concurring from several parts and parties without any interest to help each other', but his convoluted contention is at best half true. Certainly the WIC and the Royal Adventurers, the rival trading companies competing for the now immensely lucrative slave trade from west Africa, engaged in local hostilities without seeing, or caring, that these might escalate into a formal war between the two states. Sir George Downing, who is usually loaded with the main responsibility for the war, made major miscalculations about the effects of the policy which he had originally formulated on his own initiative. He applied relentless pressure on the Dutch to make concessions, assuming that they would be so afraid of a new war that they would give way to his demands in order to avoid one. In the event his bullying tactics had the contrary effect: they convinced De Witt that if he made major concessions he would be regarded as an appeaser convinced of his state's weakness, and that this would only provoke further English demands. Instead De Witt calculated that a resolute stand, backed as it was by a greatly strengthened navy, would deter the English administration from aggression. It did not have the effect that De Witt expected, because it was not the administration of Clarendon and Charles II that was intent on pressing anti-Dutch policies but an aggressive combination of courtiers, junior politicians, naval officers and City merchants which was associated with, and led by, James, duke of York. He and his followers were able to initiate and prosecute these policies because of the peculiar characteristics of the king's administration in the first years after the Restoration. Clarendon's conscious rejection of the role of acting as a prime minister weakened his ability to insist on a single and consistent line of policy, as the king's attempt to introduce a form of religious toleration in 1662—63 demonstrated. After this failed Charles did not sponsor new policies, or ones that differed fundamentally from those approved by the Council, but he either encouraged or condoned the efforts of junior ministers and courtiers to launch new and independent lines of policy without reference to the Council, but with James's approval. Charles, then, did not originate or explicitly authorize antiDutch policies, but he made no effort to check their development. 1
