Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 6: The Treaty of Westminster is signed

This treaty, signed on April 5, 1654, ended the first Anglo-Dutch War. Interestingly, you could say that the treaty was being negotiated before the war even started, as both the English and the Dutch wanted to come to agreement on a number of issues. The English wanted the Dutch to remove the royalist exiles who fled to the Netherlands after Cromwell took office. The Dutch wanted a number of changes, mostly on shipping and commerce. No agreement was made, tensions rose after England passed the Navigation Acts, and an incident at sea started the war.

While the Dutch navy lost a number of naval battles, the English were still locked out of the Baltic and southeast Asia by the Dutch (and their Danish allies), and both countries suffered economically. This brought both parties back to the negotiating table, with the resulting treaty that settled few of the issues from the original negotiations, but at least brought peace.

Perhaps the most notable feature of the treaty was the secret clause that required the Dutch to keep William III from leading the Netherlands. This was done through the Act of Seclusion, which was then deemed null after the Restoration, as the Dutch argued that the agreement was made with the Commonwealth of England. William would not only go on to lead the Netherlands, but became the king of England, Ireland, and Scotland after the Glorious Revolution.