France had occupied a large part of the Republic, but the Anglo-French fleet had been heavily damaged by Lieutenant-Admiral Michiel de Ruyter.

[citation needed] The English had also been convinced by Dutch propaganda that the war was part of a plot to make their country Roman Catholic again.

The commander of the Royal Navy, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, a devout Protestant, had begun to lead a vociferous movement aimed at breaking the French alliance.

Parliament demanded securities for the defence of the Anglican Church against papism, the disbanding of the standing army (commanded by York) and the removal of pro-French ministers.

[1] When the situation threatened to escalate, Charles, on the advice of the French envoy but against the opinion of the Privy Council, prorogued Parliament.

He removed his enemies from office, among them Chancellor Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, the main opponent of York's marriage.

At the same time, Charles tried to lessen fears by reaffirming anti-Catholic measures such as the suspension of the Royal Declaration of Indulgence and by publicising many of his secret treaties with France.

[3] Charles felt that continuing the alliance with France had become a grave threat to his personal position and expected that Parliament would no longer fund the war.

[4] He told the Dutch via the Spanish consul in London, the Marquess del Fresno,[4] that his main war aim, to install his noble nephew as stadtholder, having been attained, he no longer objected to concluding a lasting peace between the two Protestant brother nations if only some minor "indemnities" could be paid.

However, stadtholder William III of Orange convinced them that there was some chance of bringing Charles into the war against France eventually, which this had to take precedence over petty considerations of retribution that were unworthy of their high office.

Furthermore, Spain had not yet declared war on France and was willing to do so only if England made peace because it feared English attacks on its American colonies.

[5] Though the herald was promptly arrested by the town mayor, the letters were sent to Lord Arlington, who hurriedly brought them in person to del Fresno.

[5] Arlington was, in turn, on 15 January, impeached by Sir Gilbert Gerard for high treason, as the very act showed him to have had secret dealings with the enemy.

[7] While addressing both Houses, Charles first emphatically denied the existence of any secret provisions of the Treaty of Dover[7] and then produced the peace proposal, to the great satisfaction of the members,[7] who, in turn, had to pretend surprise although Parliament had been informed by the Dutch beforehand of its full content.

[citation needed] Most of the initial peace conditions demanded by the English in the Accord of Heeswijk of 1672 were not met, but the Dutch paid two million guilders, from an original demand of ten million, to be paid over a period of three years, basically to compensate for the loss of French subsidies, and again affirmed the English right of salute, their Dominium Marium, now extended from "Lands End", at the Bay of Biscay, northward to "Staten Land", on the Norwegian coast.

From the Soundings of England, i.e. its southwestern continental shelf edge, to the coast of Norway, fighting should end by 8 March; south to Tangier by 7 April; from there to the Equator, by 5 May; and in the rest of the world, after 24 October 1674.