The commercial rivalry of the nations was exasperated by political dislike between the Governments. John de Witt had been forced by Cromwell to pass the Perpetual Edict, a law of the States General, designed to exclude the House of Orange Nassau from the position it had held in the United Provinces. However unwilling the Grand Pensionary may have been to take this step under foreign dictation, the exclusion of the Princes of Orange from the place of Stadtholder, with command of the army and fleet, was so consistent with the interest of the Loevenstein Party that they could not repeal the Edict. But the young Prince of Orange was the nephew of the King of England. Family feeling has rarely induced any prince to abstain from indulging his ambition, but it is a useful pretext for doing what has already been resolved on for less avowable reasons. Charles II. had not forgiven the Dutch for excluding him from their territory at the instance of Oliver Cromwell. When he was recalled in 1660, they had, with some poorness of spirit, endeavoured to pacify him by profuse honours and by a loan of money. Even if Charles II. had been a less cynical man than his education had rendered him, he would hardly have put a high value on courtesies which were manifestly dictated by fear. His jesting remark on the ample table provided for him by the States General shows that he estimated their attentions at their true value. "Their High Mightinesses," he said, "no doubt provided a good dinner, but several of them always came to share it, and he thought that they might be said to entertain themselves at least as much as him." When the king returned, the interest he took in the commerce of his country served to make him share the jealousies of his subjects. The king and his brother became large shareholders in the Royal Guinea Company. This was a trading corporation established for the purpose of supplying slaves in the West Indies and America. It had its agents in our own possessions in the Antilles, and it cherished the hope of monopolising the whole trade in slaves. In the West Indies the local agents were busy in endeavouring to compel the Spaniards to buy their negroes from us. The reluctance of the Spanish authorities to take the business away from the Genoese Company, which already enjoyed the monopoly, and indeed to allow English trade in any form, had much to do with provoking the attacks on their possessions by the buccaneers who were commissioned and sent out by the king's governor in Jamaica. In this field of activity also we had to expect the rivalry of the Dutch, who held several stations on the West Coast of Africa, and were no less eager than ourselves to smuggle blacks into Spanish America. At the same time, they were very well disposed to carry on the trade with our possessions. The English planter, like the Spaniard, preferred to buy his negroes cheap, and, when a Dutchman would sell them for less