ABSTRACT
'Cavalier' polices entailed unqualified support for the restored Anglican Church, the suppression of all nonconformity as seditious by the enforcement of the Clarendon Code, and a Protestant foreign policy. 'Catholic' policies, on the other hand, combined toleration for Protestant and Catholic nonconformists at home with alliance with France abroad. On the contrary, in January 1668 England joined the United Provinces and Sweden in a formal anti-French treaty. In February 1674, in the face of this hardening opposition, Charles, as in the previous year, withdrew by making peace with the Dutch by the Treaty of Westminster which made no major changes in the pre-war situation. Charles thus aligned the English monarchy in the eyes of many Englishmen with popery and absolutism, and so ensured that it would be much harder to gain parliamentary cooperation in the 1670s than in the 1660s.
