Charles II and the Treaty of Dover, 1670
The secret treaty of Dover, which concluded with the diplomatic aid of the King’s sister, Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, has been much denounced by Whig historians. A.A. Mitchell asks, what is the truth about the King’s intentions?
Either his reputed mirth and cynicism or, more likely, teenage experience of the whole spectrum of emotions made Charles II the least tearful of the Stuarts: when he wept, therefore, on January 25th, 1669, confessing ‘how uneasy it was to him not to profess the Faith he beleev’d,’ there seemed good reason to accept his Catholicism as real.
The King’s brother, James, Duke of York, was easily convinced; himself a recent convert and disposed to believe, James was in any case too poor a judge of others’ principles to have really doubted at all. Clifford, Arlington and Arundel, who also witnessed the event, were similarly sympathetic towards Rome and found it unexceptionable that Charles should have sought their advice ‘about the ways and methods fittest to be taken for the settling of the Catholic Religion in his Kingdoms’.
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