Holland, being itself a Republic, might have been expected to sympathise and fraternise with the English Commonwealth, but the circumstances of the Court prevented the spread of this feeling. The Stadtholder, William II., had married the Princess Royal of England, the daughter of Charles I., and sister of Charles II. From the first of the contest, therefore, Holland had supported the claims of both the Charleses. The second Charles had spent much of his exile at the Hague, not being at all cordially received in France, where his mother resided. His brother, the Duke of York, had long resided there, as Rupert and Maurice had done before. There was thus a great league between the family of the Stadtholder and the Stuart faction, and the Stadtholders themselves were gradually making themselves as despotic as any princes of Europe. All the money which enabled the Stuarts in England to make head and invade it from Scotland came from the Hague. On the other hand, the large Republican party in Holland, which was at strife with the Stadtholder on account of his regal and despotic doctrines, looked with favour on the proceedings of the English Parliament, and thus awoke a deep jealousy in the Stadtholder's Court of the English Parliament, which entertained ideas of coalescing with Holland into one great Republic. From these causes no satisfaction could ever be obtained from the Stadtholder for the murder of Dr. Dorislaus, nor would he admit Strickland, the ambassador of the Parliament, to an audience. But on the 6th of November, 1650, William died of small-pox, and on the 14th of that month his widow gave birth to William III., who afterwards became King of England. The infancy of the Stadtholder now encouraged the Republican party to abolish that office, and to restore the more democratic form of government. On this, the Parliament of England, in the commencement of 1651, determined to send ambassadors to the States, and in addition to Strickland sent St. John, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. But no good was done. There were numbers of English Royalists still hanging about at the Hague, and the Dutch, through the internal wars of England, France, and Spain, had grown so prosperous that they were become proud and insolent, and had come to regard the English Parliament, through the misrepresentation of their enemies, as a power that they might treat with contempt. St. John found insurmountable difficulties in negotiating with the rude, haughty States-General. He was openly insulted in the streets of the Hague; the ignorant populace hooted and hissed him and his colleague, and the Royalists were suffered to annoy them with impunity.