Though Charles had been restored with the approbation of a very large portion of his subjects, his most zealous friends were the Royalists and Episcopalians; hence he almost immediately subsided into the character of a party ruler. It was deemed necessary that he should maintain an armed force for the protection of his person, and to keep down popular disturbances. He therefore caused several horse regiments to be embodied under the name of Life Guards, being chiefly composed of Royalist gentlemen upon whom a perfect dependence could be placed; and he afterwards added two or three foot regiments, the whole amounting to about 5000 men. The King paid these troops chiefly out of the money allowed for his own support, for Parliament did not sanction his keeping up such a force, and the nation generally beheld it with suspicion. This was the commencement of a _standing army_ in England. Personally indolent, dissolute, and deficient in conscientiousness, and surrounded almost exclusively by the ministers of the basest pleasures, Charles was not qualified to retain the sincere respect of a people whose habitual character is grave and virtuous. His extravagant expenditure soon cooled the affections of his Parliament, and he began to find considerable difficulties in obtaining money. To relieve himself from this embarrassment, he accepted £40,000 from the French king for Dunkirk, a French port, which had been acquired by Cromwell. For the same purpose, he married a Portuguese princess of the Catholic religion, who possessed a dowry of half a million. He also commenced (1664) a war against Holland, for apparently no better reason than that, in applying the Parliamentary subsidies necessary for keeping up hostilities, he might have an opportunity of converting part of the money to his own personal use. This Dutch war was chiefly conducted by sea. On the 3d of June 1665, an English fleet of 114 sail met a Dutch one which numbered just one ship less, near Lowestoffe, and after an obstinate fight, gained a complete victory, depriving the enemy of eighteen vessels, and compelling the rest to take refuge on their own coast. The commander on this occasion was the Duke of York, the king’s younger brother; a man of greater application and more steady principles, but who soon after became unpopular, in consequence of his avowing himself a Catholic.