As Evelyn, the diarist, puts it, this great man's
fall was the work of "the buffoones and ladys of pleasure."
It really is a very tangled story--this inner history of the fall
of Clarendon, with which the school-books are not concerned. In a
sense, it is also the story of the King's marriage and of Catherine
of Braganza, his unfortunate little ugly Queen, who must have
suffered as much as any woman wedded to a sultan in any country
where the seraglio is not a natural and proper institution.
If Clarendon could not be said to have brought about the
marriage, at least he had given it his suffrages when proposed by
Portugal, which was anxious to establish an alliance with England
as some protection against the predatory designs of Spain. He had
been influenced by the dowry offered--five hundred thousand
pounds in money, Tangier, which would give England a commanding
position on the Mediterranean, and the Island of Bombay. Without
yet foreseeing that the possession of Bombay, and the freedom to
trade in the East Indies--which Portugal had hitherto kept
jealously to herself--were to enable England to build up her
great Indian Empire, yet the commercial advantages alone were
obvious enough to make the match desirable.
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