First Stadtholderless Period - The First Anglo-Dutch War and The Act of Seclusion

The First Anglo-Dutch War and The Act of Seclusion

De Witt's genius as a statesman came first to the fore during the First Anglo-Dutch War. Due to certain strategic disadvantages of the Dutch and to a neglect of the Dutch navy after the end of the Eighty Years' War, the war went badly for the Dutch, at least in the theatre of war closest to both countries (elsewhere, the Dutch managed to achieve a strategic victory). The consequence was that Dutch economic interests were severely damaged; about 1200 ships were captured by the English; the herring fishery was paralyzed; Dutch Brazil was definitively lost to the Portuguese, because no reinforcements could be sent; a large part of the long-distance trade had to be suspended. Because of all this, the economy suffered a severe slump.

The ruling regent class was blamed for these losses by its Orangist opponents, especially the Frisian Stadtholder William Frederick. A veritable deluge of anonymous pamphlets excoriated the regime, and many Calvinist preachers tried to foment public unrest against the regents. This intimidated the States Party in the province of Zeeland sufficiently, bringing it to the brink of submitting to the demand that the three year old Prince of Orange should be appointed stadtholder of Zeeland. Their backs had to be stiffened by a delegation of the States of Holland, in which De Witt (not yet Grand Pensionary) played a leading role. Other provinces were wavering also. But the danger the country was in also helped restrain the Orangists from doing their worst. For the moment, therefore, William Frederick did not achieve his objective.

The "republican system" of the States Party (faced with the pressure from the English without, and the Orangist Party within) was saved by the cohesion of Hollands regents (who now closed ranks), the dissension in the other provinces, and the vulnerability of the English to strategic attack anywhere outside the "Narrow Seas". As long as the Dutch were not definitively defeated, and were rebuilding their fleets, the English were forced to concentrate their own navy in home waters, so that they could not break the hold of the Dutch on sea-lanes farther away. As a consequence, English commerce was paralyzed to an even greater extent than Dutch commerce. Dutch ally Denmark closed the Sound to English shipping, aided by a Dutch blockade fleet, stopping all English trade with the Baltic. In the Mediterranean the English Levant fleet was trapped at Leghorn, and an English relief fleet was destroyed by admiral Johan van Galen in the Battle of Leghorn. In the East Indies the EIC was swept from the seas by the Dutch East India Company. Even in the North Sea Dutch privateers equaled the captures of their English colleagues.

The Commonwealth and its leader Oliver Cromwell were therefore ready to come to terms by November, 1653. While the war dragged on, and English economic losses mounted, the English dropped most of their demands. By the Spring of 1654 only the demand that the Republic should never again appoint a Prince of Orange (who also happened to be a grandson of Charles I of England) to high office, remained. This demand (which may very well have originated with the wily De Witt, though Cromwell later officially denied this) caused an uproar under the Orangists in the Republic. This was an obstacle to the peace both parties by now heartily yearned for, as the other provinces would never ratify it. De Witt broke this impasse by officially taking this item off the table (though it was non-negotiable to the English, ratification by Parliament depending on it), but secretly agreeing to the Act of Seclusion as a secret annexe to the official treaty. The trick here was that this Act would only bind the province of Holland. The States General ratified the treaty without the secret annexe, not knowing of its existence, and Parliament awaited ratification of the Act by the States of Holland, before itself ratifying the entire treaty. Only the two plenipotentiaries of the province of Holland (Hieronymus van Beverningh and Willem Nieupoort) knew of the ruse. The Frisian representative was left in the dark. The main "victims" of De Witt's duplicity were therefore his colleagues in the Dutch government.

To save the peace, De Witt first had to ram the Act through the States of Holland. Despite the opposition of a large minority of the voting cities he succeeded in getting the Act approved on May 4, 1654. Of course, this caused vehement argument among the Orangists in the province of Holland and elsewhere. Friesland in particular was outraged. The Delegated States of Friesland even went so far as to demand an inquiry by the States General into the conduct of the Dutch treaty negotiators. The other provinces were again too much internally divided, however, to offer a coherent opposition. Their paralysis prevented taking any action by the States General. Only Zeeland could have joined Friesland, but only uttered a verbal protest, because this province was well aware that an abrogation of the Act would mean an abrogation of the peace treaty, and Zeeland could not afford a resumption of the war.

The suspicion that De Witt was not unhappy with the Act was reinforced by the justification he had published (after having it adopted first by the States of Holland) in July 1654. In it he repeated the constitutional claims of the provincial-sovereignty doctrine as a justification for blocking young William's ascent to high office. He held that the Union of Utrecht was just an alliance of seven sovereign states, leaving each of those states free to make its own constitutional and political arrangements. Each could refrain from appointing anyone to any of its offices, and was not constrained to consider any particular person for any office, provincial or federal, or to refer to other provinces in these matters. He furthermore fulminated against the "hereditary principle" for filling offices, as experience in other republics (both in antiquity and in contemporary Italy) had proved this a "peril to freedom.".

Though De Witt had achieved a diplomatic triumph by making peace with England without making any concession to England's commercial, colonial, and maritime interests (and introducing the principle of arbitration into international treaties for the first time, as the Treaty of Westminster left a number of conflicts to be resolved by international arbitration) this came with a heavy political price. Holland reigned supreme within the Republic for the moment, and Holland's commerce was not really damaged by the fact that England maintained its Navigation Acts (England not being an essential market for the Amsterdam Entrepôt). But the resentment of the Orangists, especially at being outsmarted, would later exact a heavy price.