Hello and welcome to a history of the United States.

Episode 78, God save the King, unless it's Catholic.

Last time out, we began our catch-up of events in England. We looked at the situation which followed

the English Civil War and the restoration of Charles II. We moved things through the

1660s and into the 1670s looking at the emergence of two new political parties in England,

the Tories and the Whigs. We also looked at the situation on the continent, the growing power of France and what this meant for Anglo-Dutch relations.

Today we'll begin by looking in a bit more detail about where this took things.

Parliament favoured a close relationship with the Dutch.

The Whig faction contained a Puritan element,

and had long been close with the Dutch. The Tories were staunchly Anglican, and so had no such

Calvinist bonds with Holland, but they did hate Catholics. The only group which favoured the Catholics

was the Royal Faction in Whitehall, which was very quickly separating itself from the Cavaliers

Parliament. Charles kept leaning towards France, and he had managed to prevent England becoming sucked into a Protestant league with Holland and Sweden, the two other Protestant powers in Europe.

But in 1674, it was finally realised that England could not submit herself to France.

Such a thing would hand France control of the continent.

I mentioned last time that it would take until the glorious revolution for the French to be fully shaken off, but they did not have things all their own way. In 1674, Charles turned from his pro-Catholic

faction in Whitehall and formed an alliance with the leader of the Cavalier Parliament, Thomas Osborne,

the Earl of Danby. Danby is considered by many to be the real founder of the Tory party. He was a typical Tory and a

brilliant statesman. He was, like Clarendon before him, another indication of the growing power of

Parliament compared to the monarch. He was a minister of the king, but his power was based entirely on his position

in the House of Commons. He marks a step on the path towards the creation of the post of prime

minister. Dambi opposed France, and he saw a strong relationship with the Dutch as a perfect solution.

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