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Going Dutch
How England Plundered Holland's Glory

Chapter One

England Invaded by the Dutch: The Conquest that Never Was

The Fame of the Intended Invasion from Holland, was spread all over the Nation, & most Men were preparing for the Generall Insurrection which ensu'd, when I was obliged to go to London to settle my accounts, in October 1688, & had not continu'd there above 3 weeks, before the News came of the Dutch Fleet's being sail'd to the Westward, & seen off the Isle of Wight.¹

The assault on the supposedly impregnable sovereign territory came out of the blue—the slickest feat of naval planning and execution ever to have been witnessed in Europe.

On 1 November 1688 (new style), Prince William of Orange, elected ruler or Stadholder of the Dutch Republic, and husband of the English King James II's eldest daughter, Mary Stuart, embarked upon a seaborne invasion of the British Isles. His invasion force consisted of an astounding five hundred ships, an army of more than twenty thousand highly trained professional troops, and a further twenty thousand mariners and support staff. As a naval and military undertaking, the sheer scale, temerity and bold ambition of the venture captured the European imagination for years afterwards. The exact numbers of the invading forces were a matter of dispute and deliberate exaggeration (and have remained so ever since), but there was no uncertainty at all about William of Orange's intentions—this was a redoubtable force, and it was headed for the English coast.

Rumours of dramatic action against the increasingly absolutistbehaviour of James II had been circulating for months. As early as May, John Evelyn recorded anxiously in his diary:

The Hollanders did now al'arme his Majestie with their fleete, so well prepar'd & out before we were in any readinesse, or had any considerable number to have encountered them had there been occasion, to the great reproch of the nation.²

Reliable intelligence on Dutch naval and troop movements was unusually hard to come by. Some snippets of information, though, had leaked out. There was talk that troops were on the move on the Dutch borders. There were anxious whispers that France was making preparations to come to the assistance of the Catholic English regime (what Evelyn refers to as 'the Popery of the King' was increasingly an issue). Right up to the moment when William's fleet left the shelter of the Dutch coastline and headed out across open water, northern Europe was awash with unsubstantiated rumour and hearsay, anecdote and false alarm. Once the assault was under way, there was talk of little else.

The joint naval and military operation was on an unprecedented scale. Its meticulous organisation astonished political observers. There had initially been some suggestion that the build-up of troops in the Low Countries was in preparation for a land engagement with the French. It was then rumoured that the Dutch might send these forces to help prevent an imminent French invasion of the Palatinate. But by the time the size of the operation became clear in the middle of October there could be no doubt as to its destination or its purpose. The Dutch, reported the stunned English ambassador at The Hague, intended 'an absolute conquest' of England.³

'Never was so great a design executed in so short a time. All things as soon as they were ordered were got to be so quickly ready that we were amazed at the dispatch,' wrote one of those involved in the secret plan-ning,⁴ while the English ambassador at The Hague warned that 'such a preparation was never heard of in these parts of the world'.⁵ Not only the foreign diplomats at The Hague but all Europe was astounded by the unusual speed and efficiency with which the Dutch state—which historians generally like to describe as one of the less well-organised in seventeenth-century Europe—assembled so enormously complicated an expedition.⁶

William, it slowly emerged, had started to build up his army in the first half of 1688, without consulting the Dutch government—the States General. His closest and most trusted favourites, Hans Willem Bentinck and Everard van Weede van Dijkveld, had shuttled clandestinely around Europe for months securing backing from those known to be sympathetic to the Protestant cause, and negotiating supporting troops and financial loans. Between June and October they surreptitiously assembled a massive force of well-trained, well-paid and experienced soldiers drawn from right across Protestant Europe. They also made arrangements for troops from neighbouring territories to move into place to fill the gap left on the European mainland, to defend the Dutch borders against possible French attack once William had switched his best troops to the English campaign.⁷

The uncertainty and swirling rumours seem to have paralysed the English administration. By mid-September the diarist John Evelyn, on a visit to James II's court in London, 'found [it] in the uttmost consternation upon report of the Pr: of Oranges landing, which put White-hall into so panic a feare, that I could hardly believe it possible to find such a change'.⁸ He also reported 'the whole Nation disaffected, & in apprehensions'. The King himself was suffering from recurrent nosebleeds (a sign of raised blood pressure, perhaps). Strategically, over a period of months, the combination of extreme secrecy, rumour and false alarm sapped English morale.

The Dutch government was not consulted officially until well into September (and the French ambassador got wind of this through his 'intelligencers'—undercover agents—only days later). On 8 October William had let it be known in Holland that his invasion—if it took place—was to be both an intervention on behalf of the Dutch state, to prevent James II from forming an anti-Dutch Catholic alliance with France, and a bid to secure his own and his wife's dynastic interests. The States General were finally asked for, and gave, their approval, on the understanding that 'His said Highness has decided to start the said matter upon His Highnesse's and Her Royal Highnesse's own names, and to make use of the States' power only as auxiliary.'⁹