he Spirit of Contention�127most of whom were on good terms with the Orange court at The Hague.23 Informally Portland, though probably a Voetian, inquired about the opinion of Coccejan ministers in Amsterdam, and the impression arises that he took a very pragmatic stance in this matter.24 The report of the commission, returned to Portland, endorsed most of the proposals for comprehension set out by Archbishop Tillotson. One of the theologians, Samuel Desmarets, a Walloon, argued that such a union would be he most mortal blow which papism can receive�25 Fredericus Spanheim, neither Voetian nor Coccejan, had reasonably argued that Presbyterian and Episcopalian churches could adapt better to republican and monarchical forms of government respectively.26 It appears that Portland view comes close to this. He was certainly not indifferent, clearly promoted Voetianism in the United Provinces and preferred Presbyterianism in Scotland, but his ideas were broader and it appears he thought rather in the vaguer terms of European Protestantism. In his seminal study on the odly revolution� Tony Claydon has shown how, spearheaded by Burnet, a providential explanation that 榗onsisted of a series of interlocking assumptions about the prince and Protestantism in England, and was based upon a deeply spiritual analysis of history�emerged after 1688. A group of court propagandists adopted this defence of the Revolution Settlement and linked William foreign policy to the defence of European Protestantism.27 These notions of European Protestantism come close to Portland ideas on religion and politics.28 II The political situation in each of William realms had its own distinct features, but there were also similar patterns. Dutch and British historians have rcely debated the two-party models (Tory揥hig in England, Orangist揜epublican in the United Provinces, and Episcopalianresbyterian in Scotland) as instruments to analyse political structures in the 1690s. In English historiography the main current is now to see a two-party system of Tories and Whigs, upset now and then by Courtountry controversies. Dutch historians have emphasized the predominance of factions,23 Quoted in J. van den Berg, utch Calvinism and the Church of England in the Period of the Glorious Revolution�in: S. Groenveld and M. Wintle (eds), The Exchange of Ideas. Religion, Scholarship and Art in Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Seventeenth Century (Zutphen, 1994), 84�9, 94, transl. from French. Cf. J. van Genderen, Herman Witsius (The Hague, 1953), 72. 24 Witsen, erbaal� 168. 25 Van den Berg, utch Calvinism� 95; Letters to Portland Oct. 1689, Lambeth Palace Library, Gibson Manuscript 932, f 70�5. 26 Hampden letter to Harley of November 1690 seems to imply that Portland was a member of the Church of England, HMC, Portland Mss, III. 451. 27 A.M. Claydon, William III and the Godly Revolution (Cambridge, 1996), 51 and passim. 28 Cf. Ch. 2.
