Paper su “Royal prerogative and the general interest in the parliamentary debates on Charles II’s foreign policy (1674)”, presentato il 6 settembre 2017 all'Università di Orléans nella 69a Conferenza annuale della International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions (ICHRPI), Orléans-Parigi, 5-9 settembre 2017.

In 1670, Charles II’s England entered into a treaty with Louis XIV’s France signed at Dover. The secret Treaty of Dover provided for substantial financial help from France in the war against the Dutch Republic, with which England forcedly had allied at the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. It also mentioned Charles II’s public conversion to Catholicism, which accounted for the secrecy of the treaty. In 1672, Charles II entered the Third Anglo-Dutch War, and in January 1674 Parliament began to inquire into the alliance with France and caused the King to speak in front of the Lords and Commons. Charles publicly denied that any ‘secret articles’ there existed, and finally had to make peace with the Dutch. The parliamentary debates highlight the role of Parliament, and in particular of the Commons, which considered themselves as the interpreters of the general interest as opposed to the Crown’s foreign policy.