Nothing marks better the political profligacy of the age than that Arlington, the author of the Triple Alliance, should have been chosen as the confidant of Charles in his Treaty of Dover. But to all save Arlington and Clifford the king's change of religion or his political aims remained utterly unknown. It would have been impossible to obtain the consent of the party in the royal council which represented the old Presbyterians, of Ashley or Lauderdale or the Duke of Buckingham, to the Treaty of Dover. But it was possible to trick them into approval of a war with Holland by playing on their desire for a toleration of the Nonconformists. The announcement of the king's Catholicism was therefore deferred; and a series of mock negotiations, carried on through Buckingham, ended in the conclusion of a sham treaty which was communicated to Lauderdale and to Ashley, a treaty which suppressed all mention of the religious changes, or of the promise of French aid in bringing them about, and simply stipulated for a joint war against the Dutch. In such a war there was no formal breach of the Triple Alliance, for the Triple Alliance only guarded against an attack on the dominions of Spain, and Ashley and his colleagues were lured into assent to it in 1671 by the promise of toleration.
Toleration was still Ashley's first thought. He had provided for it only a year before in the constitution which he had drawn up with the aid of Locke for the new Colony of Carolina, which drew its name from King Charles. He looked the more hopefully to the king that in Scotland toleration had already been brought about by the royal authority. Nowhere had the system of conformity been more rigidly carried out than in the northern kingdom. Not only was the renunciation of the Covenant exacted from every parson and official, but it was proposed to extend it to every subject in the realm. The fall of Clarendon, however, at once brought about a change. Lauderdale, who now took the lead in Scotch affairs, published in 1669 a royal decree which enabled many of the Presbyterian ministers to return to their flocks. A parliament which was called under his influence not only recognized the royal supremacy, but owned the king's right to order the government of the Church and to dispense with ecclesiastical laws. The new system was just set on foot in Scotland when Charles came forward to tempt his English ministers with the same pledge of toleration. With characteristic audacity he removed the one stumbling-block in the way of his project by yielding the point to which he had hitherto clung, and promising, as Ashley demanded, that no Catholic should be benefited by the Indulgence. Whether the pledge of toleration was the only motive which induced the ministers to consent to the war with Holland it is hard to tell. Ashley had shown in bringing about the previous strife that he was no friend of the Dutch. He regarded a close alliance with France as the one means by which Charles could find himself strong enough to maintain religious liberty against the pressure of the Parliament. It is possible that like most statesmen of the time he looked on the ruin of Holland as a thing inevitable, and was willing to gain for England whatever he could out of the wreck. If the United Provinces were to become a part of France it was better that a part of their territory, and that the most important part, the Brill, Flushing, and the mouths of the Scheldt, should fall as had been stipulated to England than that Lewis should have all.