I ever had an infinite value for your friendship, and as every letter is a fresh mark of it, I have in every one new matter of satisfaction; yet I could not read your last without equal surprize and concern; and if I did not positively believe your integrity, as I am acquainted with your capacity, I should be at a loss what construction to put upon it: for all _Europe_ has been deaf for I know not how many years, with more and more accounts how your kings grew upon their people, and we ever look’d upon the _English_ as very jealous of their privileges. I need not tell you how odious your two last kings were to us of these parts; nay, and all _Germany_ too, papist and protestant; for instead of holding the balance between _France_, _Spain_ and the _Empire_, as the situation of your country, and its mighty power by sea made ’em capable of doing, and the character of guarantees for the peace of _Nimeguen_, and the truce for twenty years oblig’d ’em to it; their siding with _France_, notwithstanding all the endeavours of foreign ministers to the contrary, and their own real interest too, may be justly said to have laid the foundation of all those calamities that the arms and intrigues of _France_, have since that time brought upon _Europe_. But tho’ we had so many reasons to be dissatisfied with the proceedings of king _Charles_ II. and king _James_ too, yet we never diminish’d any thing of our good will we bore the _English_ nation; because we cou’d not but believe they were as far from approving those transactions as we were, and repin’d as much as we did at the growing grandeur of the _French_ monarch. The clandestine measures both those kings took to enslave their subjects to the power of _France_, and the _Romish_ religion, was as good a demonstration of a natural enmity between those two sorts of people. His present majesty’s descent was concerted with most of the princes of the empire after it was so earnestly propos’d to him, and almost press’d upon him by the very best of your nation. The friendship between the two crowns was no longer a secret, tho’ the _English_ envoy at the _Hague_ deny’d it positively when I was there: This was more than an umbrage to the discerning part of your kingdom, and what the very commonality could not think on without terrible apprehensions: and all of us here in like manner look’d upon this enterprize as a thing on which depended the safety or ruin of the whole protestant affairs of _Europe_.