Nederlandse historische bronnen 10

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Anglo-Dutch relations (1728-1732). The Chesterfield-Waldegrave correspondence
Edited by J.M. Black

I Introduction

The purpose of this note is to draw attention to and print a series of letters that throw light upon the Earl of Chesterfield's embassy at The Hague (1728-1732). The letters are from Chesterfield to a fellow diplomat James, Lord Waldegrave. Waldegrave, who became an Earl in 1729, was British ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary at Vienna, from April 1728 until June 1730, and held the same rank at Paris from June 1730 until October 1740. The letters which cover four years with an interval of one and a half year between 1 February 1729 (letter 10) and 24 September 1730 (letter 11) form part of the collection of the first Earl's papers amongst the Waldegrave papers, currently held at the seat of the family - Chewton House, Chewton Mendip, Somerset. I am most grateful to the Earl and Countess Waldegrave for giving me permission to consult and print these papers, and for supplying me with the photocopy of the Chesterfield-Waldegrave correspondence from which this note has been prepared. None of the letters are listed in Dobrée's edition of Chesterfield's correspondence¹; and none has been printed, except the private letter of 12 October 1728², which is included here for the sake of completeness. None of Waldegrave's replies are known to survive.

Chesterfield's letters to Waldegrave throw light upon both his personality and his views. His rakish interests are recounted at some length³. These interests were shared by many members of the British diplomatic corps. Waldegrave, a widower, was a prominent womaniser, ‘the King of the Belles’ according to Thomas Robinson, his successor at Vienna⁴. The Earl of Essex, ambassador at Turin, shared his tastes⁵, whilst brigadier Richard Sutton, envoy extraordinary at Hesse-Cassel, had a penchant for laundry-maids, and Abraham Stanyan, ambassador in Constantinople, was described by his successor, the Earl of Kinnoull, as a ‘complaisant

1 Dobrée, The letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (6 vols.). For other letters of the period not in Dobrée: Rogers, ‘Lord Chesterfield’, 48-50; Black, ‘A fresh Chesterfield letter of 1729’, 208-209. For other letters ommitted from the Dobrée edition: Gulick, Some unpublished letters of Lord Chesterfield; Price, ‘Five unpublished letters by Lord Chesterfield’, 3-10; Price, ‘One of Chesterfield's letters to his son’, Times Literary Supplement (1 July 1955) 572.

2 Black, ‘An unknown letter of Lord Chesterfield's’, 141-143. In this article letter 7.

3 Chesterfield to Waldegrave, 12 Oct. 1728, Chewton. In this article letter 7.

4 Waldegrave to ?, no date (1725), Thomas Robinson to Waldegrave, 26 Jan. 1732; Earl of Essex, ambassador at Turin, to Waldegrave, 18 April, 4 July 1734, Chewton.

5 Essex to Waldegrave, 18 April, 4 July 1734, Chewton.

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gentleman of an indolent temper ... whose life here these twelve years past, as I am informed, has been upon a sofa with the women’⁶.

The letters, aside from providing information about the diplomatic life in the period, are also most valuable for the light they shed on the diplomacy of the period. Chesterfield went to The Hague as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary in the spring of 1728 during a period of international tension that posed grave problems for British foreign policy. The Austro-Spanish alliance of 1725, the First Treaty of Vienna, had been countered by the Alliance of Hanover, signed later that year, which strengthened the Anglo-French alliance negotiated in 1716. Cold war in 1725-1727 was followed in 1728 by the unsuccessful attempt to negotiate a peace settlement at the Congress of Soissons. In November 1729 the Vienna Alliance was dissolved by the Treaty of Seville, an alliance of Britain, France, Spain, and the United Provinces. Austria was threatened with war, but growing British disenchantment with the French alliance led to the unilateral, secret British decision to negotiate a reconciliation with Austria. This was achieved by the Second Treaty of Vienna, of 16 March 1731, and, thereafter, Chesterfield's mission in the United Provinces became a matter of attempting to negotiate the Dutch accession to this Treaty⁷. After considerable delays, which exasperated Chesterfield and led him to make many bitter comments about the Dutch constitution, this was achieved in 1732; and followed by Chesterfield's return to London to take up his post as Lord Steward, before moving into opposition the following year.

The Chesterfield-Waldegrave correspondence provides indications of the attitudes of a senior British diplomat: Chesterfield had been mentioned as a potential Secretary of State in the autumn of 1727, was a candidate for a Secretaryship in 1729-1730, and, in 1729 a confidant of Viscount Townshend, the Secretary of State for the Northern Department. Particularly interesting is his mistaken belief that France would accept the Second Treaty of Vienna.

The letters also cast light on Anglo-Dutch relations in this period⁸. Of particular interest is the information on the East-Friesland crisis in 1728, on Dutch fears in 1728 of the consequences of greater Prussian power in the Rhineland, and on British anger in 1731 over Dutch delays in acceding to the Second Treaty of Vienna. Despite respect for individual Dutch statesmen, particulary Van Slingelandt, the picture that emerges is of a Britain that tended to take the United

6 Sutton to George Tilson, Undersecretary of State in the Northern Department, 17 May 1729, London, Public Record Office (PRO), num. 81/123; Kinnoull to Charles Delafaye, Undersecretary of State in the Southern Department, 19 Aug. 1730, PRO, num. 97/26.

7 For international relations in this period: Höfler, Der Congress von Soissons; Marini, La Politica Sabauda alla Corte Inglese; Chance, The Alliance of Hanover; Wilson, French foreign policy; Lodge, ‘The Treaty of Seville’; Black, British foreign policy in the age of Walpole; Black, George II.

8 On Anglo-Dutch relations: Goslinga, Slingelandt's efforts; Dunthorne, ‘The alliance of the Maritime Powers’; Van Rappard, Briefwisseling tussen Simon van Slingelandt en Sicco van Goslinga; Aalbers, De Republiek en de Vrede van Europa. On East-Friesland: Kappelhoff, Absolutistisches Regiment.

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Provinces for granted and to treat them as the junior partner in the Anglo-Dutch alliance. Given the attitudes expressed in these letters, it is not surprising that the alliance showed increasing signs of strain in the early 1730s, culminating in the unilateral Franco-Dutch agreement of 1733 for the neutrality of the Austrian Netherlands.

In this edition I have marked personal letters with a * to distinguish them from ‘official letters’. Though only some of the dates were endorsed NS (New Style), all the letters were dated new style. In the footnotes all dates are new style apart from those marked OS (Old Style), which was eleven days behind. The cypher Chesterfield employed was either a book code in which numbers corresponded to letters on a particular page in a specific book or a number code. There is no information on this point. Waldegrave followed the usual practice of writing in the decyphered words above those passages that were in code.