A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217 to 1688

During the pause in hostilities between the end of February and the end of May, the scene of operations of the two fleets was shifted from the Channel to the North Sea. It was well understood on the English side that the most effectual way of breaking the power of the Dutch was to attack them on their own coast. Our headquarters were fixed for the brief remains of the war at Yarmouth and Harwich. The violent measure by which Cromwell ended for the time the existence of the Long Parliament made no change in the conduct of the naval war. It was on the 19th of April that he suddenly burst in on the eloquence of Sir Henry Vane by declaring that there had been too much of this, put his hat on, and ordered Colonel Harrison's regiment of musketeers to turn the honourable members into the street. His action was accepted, and had no doubt been foreseen, by the officers commanding the fleet, and the men followed the lead of their superiors. At a meeting of naval officers held on board the Resolution at Spithead on the 22nd of April 1653, a general declaration of adhesion to Cromwell was drawn up. It leaves no doubt that the fleet was at least prepared to accept Cromwell as the effectual ruler of England. It was addressed to the Council of Officers, and is as follows:—

This resolution was forwarded by Cromwell to the ships on other stations, and was everywhere accepted. Blake, indeed, did not sign it, for he was still confined on shore by his wound, but he continued to serve as admiral and general at sea.

Towards the end of May active operations were resumed. In spite of the losses suffered in February, the Dutch took the offensive. Their fleet, estimated at over a hundred ships, appeared in the Downs, and attacked the forts at Dover. On the day when the Dutch were insulting our coast for the last time in this war, Monk and Deane were at Yarmouth with the bulk of the English fleet. Eleven ships, very ill manned, were fitting out in the Thames under the command of Blake, who had returned to service, though still not cured of his wounds. It was known that Tromp was at sea, but great doubt prevailed as to his movements. Transports engaged in bringing stores from the Humber were warned to be on the outlook lest they should meet the Lieutenant-Admiral of Holland in the northern part of the German Ocean. Nimble vessels were despatched in search of him in every direction. On the 28th of May, on the day in which Tromp left the Downs for the north, the generals at sea were informed of his attack on Dover. They at once weighed, and fell down the coast to Southwold Bay. On the 31st of May they were at anchor off Dunwich, where a few fragments of brickwork and a disused church now mark the site of what was once one of the busiest trading towns on the east coast of England. Here they were informed that Tromp's fleet had been seen at the head of the Long Sand. The Long Sand is, with the exception of the Kentish Knock, the farthest out of the belt of shallows stretching from the mouth of the Thames to Orford Ness. Monk and Deane immediately sailed in pursuit. On the 2nd of June they caught sight of Tromp to leeward. During the 1st they had waited for Blake to join them from the river with his eleven ships. This reinforcement would have raised their fleet to a total strength of 126. But Blake was not yet ready, and the weather was thick and hazy. On the 2nd it cleared up, and the Dutch were seen to leeward. The English had the wind, and immediately sailed for the purpose of attacking.

Tromp, conscious that he was outmatched in strength of ships and weight of broadsides, adopted a plan of action which became habitual to the French admirals of the next century. He accepted battle to leeward, and retreated in a slanting direction, or, according to the sea phrase of the seventeenth century, "lasking." As the English line came down from windward, its van would naturally come into action before the centre, or rear, were within striking distance of the enemy. This would expose the leading ships of the attacking line to the fire of a superior number of enemies, and there would be considerable danger that they might suffer crippling damage. It was at this that the French admirals habitually aimed, and the Dutch adopted this more timid method of accepting battle when, as on the present occasion, they felt overmatched. Its advantage lay in this, that, if several of the van ships of the fleet acting on the offensive were severely damaged, the total injury done might be sufficient to deter the admiral in command from pressing his attack home. In later times, when English admirals had become pedantically devoted to the maintenance of an orderly and precise line, this conduct of the battle by the enemy to leeward did avail, never indeed to win a victory, but frequently to avert a defeat. As against the fiercer leadership of the seventeenth century it was not equally successful.

On the 2nd of June the advancing English fleet forced the action early in the afternoon. The Blue Division, under the command of John Lawson, was in the van, and appears to have struck upon the enemy's line in his van, under the command of Michael de Ruyter. The Dutch, pursuing the evasive manner of fighting they had adopted from a sense of weakness, flinched from the attack, and filed away to leeward, firing high, to do the utmost possible amount of damage to the masts and spars of the English. Tromp, indeed, bore up to support De Ruyter, that is to say, lay close to the wind, so as to bring himself near the English fleets, and within the range of effective fire. While the Blue Division and a part only of the remainder of our fleet were engaged, a shift of the wind altered the relative positions of the two fleets. It turned to the east, and therefore gave the weather-gage to the Dutch. The more distant centre and rear of the English fleet were thus thrown to leeward of the Blue Squadron, now closely engaged with the enemy. Tromp, as ready to attack where he had a reasonable prospect of success, as he was skilful to retreat before a superior enemy, immediately assumed the offensive, and endeavoured to throw the whole weight of his fleet on the Blue Division. Lawson met the attack firmly, while the Red and White Divisions worked to windward to his support. Then the wind changed again, giving the weather-gage once more to the English. The fleets were now so close together that the Dutch could not, even if they wished to do so, avoid a general action. They resumed their movement of retreat towards the coast of Flanders, but they bore away almost yardarm to yardarm with the English. The battle did not cease until nine at night, when the long daylight of early June came to an end. If the claim made by the English officers was well founded, their enemy suffered the loss of several vessels burnt or sunk. On our side the loss of life was comparatively slight, but it included the general-at-sea, Richard Deane, who sailed in the Resolution with his colleague Monk. Deane fell cut in two by a cannon shot in the first broadside fired by the Dutch at the Resolution. His blood was splashed all over Monk, who saw the fall of his friend and colleague with his usual imperturbable serenity. Fearing that the sight of Deane's body, mangled almost beyond recognition, might dishearten the men, and perhaps moved by a sense of decency, Monk took off his long cloak and threw it over the corpse.

When night fell, both fleets were in sight of Dunkirk. The Dutch, taking advantage of the shallow draught of their ships, ran close in shore, where the deeper-keeled English vessels could not follow them. The sound of the cannon had been heard by the ships under Blake's immediate command in the estuary of the Thames. He was still ill, and found himself growing daily worse, but he made an effort to aid his brother generals-at-sea. On the morning of the 3rd he was clear of the Thames, but the wind was very light, and the day was far advanced before he could reach the scene of battle. The want of wind had in the meantime suspended the action between the two fleets. It was not until the afternoon that Monk, now in sole command, was again able to bring the Dutch to battle. The second day's fight was less fiercely contested than the first. The Dutch, convinced of their inferiority, fought in retreat along the coast of Flanders, keeping as much as they could in the shallow water, and heading for the protection of their own harbours. Blake came up in time to take part in the end of the battle, but he and Monk were unable to prevent Tromp from taking refuge in the Weilings, the name we gave to the land-locked waters between the island of Walcheren and the mainland.

The actual loss of the Dutch fleet was undoubtedly exaggerated in the English reports, but, although we over-estimated the number of vessels destroyed, there can be no doubt that the defeat of the Dutch had been complete, and was of a kind to depress them greatly. It could not be accounted for by accident or mere mismanagement, but was manifestly due to the inferior quality of the fleet. This was fully recognised by the brave and able men in command of the Dutch Navy. Tromp told the States General that they must build better ships if they hoped to fight the English successfully; while Cornelius de With, always an outspoken man, declared that the English were masters of "us and of the sea." The approaching ruin of their commerce and fisheries broke the spirit of the United Provinces. The loss already suffered had been enormous. Thousands of merchants were bankrupt. The fisheries were annihilated, and the Zuyder Zee was crowded with merchant vessels unable to proceed on their voyage from fear of the English fleets. In the meantime the partisans of the House of Orange were stirring. The oligarchical Government established after the death of William II. was threatened by a most dangerous rebellion. Under pressure from abroad and at home, it appealed for peace. The Protector insisted upon the full demands that had been made by the Council of State. Much as the Dutch had suffered, they were not prepared to submit so fully as this, and the harsh insistence of England provoked a revival of national pride. Declaring that it was better to die sword in hand than to submit to the outrageous demands made upon them, the States General resolved to attempt one last determined effort to regain the free use of the sea. Every nerve was strained to equip a great fleet, and for the time all commerce was suspended, in order the better to fit out a fighting force.

The English were no less resolute to maintain and, if possible, improve their advantages. The fleet was not brought back from the coast of Holland, but remained for the purpose of blockading the Dutch in their own ports. Food and munitions of war were sent out from England to Monk, who was again left in sole command by the illness of Blake, whose strength broke down completely under the strain of active service. With Penn as his second in command, and Lawson as his third, Monk was equal to his duties. He may not have been a seaman, though by this time he had been much at sea, but he was in the highest sense of the word a general, a fighter, who did his work thoroughly, used the force of his command to the utmost of its strength, and understood how to strike, with a great compact mass, at the heart of his enemy. Towards the end of July he stood across the North Sea for stores, and then returned at once to his cruising-ground off the Texel, the island which prolongs the State of North Holland, and between which and the mainland runs the chief passage to the Zuyder Zee. Some thirty Dutch warships belonging to the squadron of Amsterdam were at anchor behind the protection of the land. Tromp, with eighty sail, was at Flushing, between Walcheren and the mainland. The object of the Dutch admiral was to unite these two divisions, and thereby raise his force to a slight superiority over the English. Monk's aim was naturally to prevent the junction of the enemy, and, if possible, to crush his divisions in detail while they were endeavouring to unite. Thus the last battle of the war was preceded by skilful manœuvring. In the earlier movements success was fairly won for his flag by the nerve and skill of Tromp. On the 26th of July some of his ships appeared to the south of the English fleet, then riding outside the Texel. Monk started in pursuit on the 28th, and soon sighted the enemy. The wind was at W., and it was too late for any extensive movement. On the 29th the Dutch were still in sight to the south. As the English approached, they fell back. Monk pressed on, with his lighter and better sailing ships in advance. These vessels, the frigates of his fleet, directed their attack on the rear of the Dutch line. Their better sailing powers enabled them to force on an engagement, and so compelled Tromp to turn to the support of the vessels attacked. But it was too late on the 29th for a decisive engagement. At night both fleets anchored near Camperdown. The English, who had in all probability aimed at getting the weather-gage, had apparently stood farther out than Tromp, whose vessels were in any case better able to approach the shore. Thus, when the fleets came to an anchor, the Dutch were nearer in, and it would also seem that the English had somewhat overshot the enemy, for they anchored a little farther to the south. All through the night and the following day it blew a gale with heavy squalls from the W.N.W. The wind was so high that ships under way could scarcely bear their topsails, and, as they were on a lee shore, the fleets had enough to do to keep off it, without attacking one another. During the afternoon of the 30th the Amsterdam squadron joined Tromp, raising his force to something over a hundred and twenty vessels. So far he had effected his purpose, and had shown himself worthy of his great reputation as a skilful captain. On the morning of the 31st both fleets stood off the shore. The wind was still at W.N.W., and Tromp had the weather-gage. The battle began very early in the morning, and surpassed any of the previous engagements of the war both in the fury of the contest and the decisive character of the results. Monk was determined to bring the matter to an issue, and he did not wait for Tromp to bear down upon him, but tacked upon his enemy, and broke through the Dutch line from leeward.

It was six o'clock in the morning when the battle began. Both fleets were heading to the W.S.W., the English somewhat ahead, the Dutch to the northward and windward. By tacking, Monk altered the relative positions of the fleets from parallel to intersecting lines. The bulk of the Dutch weathered the head of the English line, but their rear ships were cut off. We "went through their whole fleet," said Captain Cubitt, "leaving part on one side, and part on the other of us." Tromp was resolved not to lose the weather-gage, and he also tacked when he saw Monk's movement. So did Monk when he had passed through the Dutch line, and the manœuvre was repeated three times by each. On the second tack, all the Dutch appear to have weathered the English line. The two fleets passed very close, engaging with the utmost fury. From the heavy loss suffered in our ships, it may be concluded that in this battle the Dutch fired less to dismast than to kill. Six English captains were slain, one was mortally wounded, and the loss in the lower ranks must have been in proportion. It was counted one of the advantages of the windward position that it facilitated the despatch of fireships against the enemy to leeward. The Dutch did not fail to use a weapon, so terrible in theory, and so dreadfully destructive when it took effect. Experience, however, proved that as against well-handled ships under way, and under control of steady officers, it could rarely be employed successfully. The fireship could generally be avoided by moving vessels, and when that was difficult, or inconvenient to do, then it was taken in charge by the boats which the warship towed astern, and dragged away to leeward, where it burned out harmlessly. On this occasion little hurt was done by the "branders."

We cannot suppose that the movement of tacking in succession was performed by two fleets, each of over a hundred sail, with absolute uniformity. On this occasion, as in the great battle of the 12th of April 1783, when Rodney pierced the French from leeward, the main line may have broken into smaller ones. But the general course of the battle was in three great zig-zags, ranging along the coast of Holland, from near Egmont towards the mouth of the Maas, which are at a distance of about forty miles from one another. There was no shrinking on the part of the Dutch, and no failure of effort on the part of the English to push the attack home. In many points of the line ships were locked together in desperate attempts to board, or repel boarders. By three in the afternoon victory belonged to the English. A large proportion of the Dutch had been cut off from Tromp, and had fallen to leeward. Most of them were probably too damaged to be in case to do more than put before the wind, and escape as best they could. They fled into Goree and the Maas. The bulk of their fleet was debarred from that refuge by the English, who were still to leeward, and therefore on the line of retreat. It could only head northward and eastward to the Texel. Thither in the afternoon it fled, leaving behind miles of sea covered with the wreckage of the battle, and bearing with it the corpse of its great admiral, who fell by the death he had come to long for—shot mercifully dead by a musket bullet through the heart. He at least had nothing to reproach himself with. All that valour and skill could do to save Holland, he did. If he failed, it was because the mistaken policy of the soldier princes of the House of Nassau, and the unwisdom of the merchant oligarchy, had in false economy supplied him with inferior ships. An Englishman does not undervalue the heroes of his own race, when he acknowledges that not only their valour but skill enabled them to overcome the most famous of the Dutch seamen.

We had no prizes, for we burned or sank the ships taken, and our own damage in the battle had not been small, but the victory was decisive. Holland again sued for peace; and as Cromwell had come to recognise that he must not insist on too much, it was finally signed some months later.

While the main tide of war had been ebbing and flowing through the North Sea and the Channel, there had been minor conflicts at the entry to the Baltic and the Mediterranean. The first is of comparatively little importance in naval history, and is indeed hardly worth mentioning, except on the ground that it illustrates a chronic difficulty of the English Government in all naval wars. We drew a great part of our stores from the Baltic. Pitch and tar, hemp for cordage, and pine wood for spars and planking, as well as part of the oak used in our ships, were supplied by Scandinavia and Russia. At a later period the American plantations entered into competition with the Baltic trade, but in the middle of the seventeenth century these indispensable articles were obtained only in the North of Europe. If they were cut off by the hostility of the Northern Powers, the task of fitting a fleet for sea was rendered almost impossible. The sense that they had it in their power to inflict so heavy a blow upon us, rendered the kingdoms of the North occasionally somewhat exacting. In the first Dutch war, the King of Denmark acted with open hostility to the Commonwealth. He had strong political motives for remaining on good terms with the United Provinces, and it is very possible that he shared the common incredulity of Europe as to our power to overcome the first naval power in the world. If the Dutch proved victorious, they would certainly be obliged to him for any harm he might have done us. Acting under the influence of a desire to please the Dutch, the King of Denmark availed himself of a pretext to arrest an English convoy at Elsinore in the autumn of 1652. A squadron of eighteen ships was despatched under the command of Captain Ball to enforce their release. Ball's force was scattered by a gale, and he was compelled to return without the convoy. A long and angry negotiation followed between the Governments, but the Danish king learned that it was more dangerous to offend England than Holland, before we were compelled to teach him the lesson directly.

The Mediterranean was the scene of a very much more lively and varied fragment of the great war. It has been said above that when Penn left the Mediterranean at the beginning of 1652 he was replaced by Captain Richard Badiley, who was despatched into those seas with a squadron appointed to protect the merchant ships against an attack by Prince Rupert and the French. The main centres of English trade in the Mediterranean were the Levant,—where the Turkey Company had factories at Smyrna and Scanderoon (Alexandretta),—Venice, and Leghorn. When the Dutch war broke out, there were six English warships in the Mediterranean, stretching widely over it for the purpose of collecting merchant ships at their different ports of departure, and bringing them together into one convoy before passing the Straits on the way home. Badiley himself was at Scanderoon with three ships. Captain Henry Appleton was at Leghorn with two. The sixth, the Constant Warwick, was at Genoa, where she had been sent to careen, because she was very foul and eaten by worms. Appleton had several English ships with him, and he would in the ordinary course of the service wait until he was joined by Badiley before sailing for England. The outbreak of the war with Holland entirely broke up the usual arrangement. The Dutch were represented in the Mediterranean by a force numerically stronger than ours, though the individual ships were smaller than our largest. This advantage they were certain to use for the destruction of our trade. The war began in June, and, as news travelled slowly then, was not known, even in Italy, till the end of that month or the beginning of the next. The Dutch ships in the western half of the Mediterranean were collected in the neighbourhood of Appleton, at Leghorn. They were fourteen in number, and were under the command of an officer named Catz. With such a disproportion of force against him, the English officer had no resource but to seek the protection of a neutral port. Leghorn belonged to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and to him Appleton appealed for protection. The Grand Duke was not very favourably inclined towards the English officer, who had cost him considerable annoyance by capturing a French vessel just outside his port and bringing her in as a prize. The position of a neutral in a great naval war is always more or less disagreeable. The combatants are generally either anxious to make use of its harbours as a refuge, or eager to follow up an enemy in its waters. The ingenuity of international lawyers has invented many pretty and plausible regulations for the guidance of all persons in such a case. But it is the misfortune of international law that nobody is bound to enforce its decrees unless he feels himself injured by the breach of them, while the party who really is injured, and therefore quotes them on his own behalf, is frequently the weaker, and so is unable to supply that sanction which is necessary for the validity of any law. Between the stronger who wishes to crush the weaker, and the weaker who does not wish to be crushed, the neutral is often in a dilemma of great delicacy, since the weaker is often quite strong enough to be able to punish him for inability to enforce respect for his own neutrality. Besides, it is particularly hard to judge from the local strength of belligerents which of them is likely to prove the more powerful on the whole. When, then, Captain Appleton brought the French prize into Leghorn, he caused the Grand Duke very intelligible annoyance. The English might have the upper hand at sea, and yet the French might be quite powerful enough by land to pay themselves for what England had taken on the water, by pillaging the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. A not dissimilar dilemma presented itself when Appleton appealed to the protection of the port against the fourteen ships of Catz. The Grand Duke could hardly tell which of the two was the most dangerous to offend. In spite of the offence given him by Appleton, he endeavoured to hold the balance even between the quarrelsome sea powers. He promised the English that he would not allow the Dutchmen to attack them if they came within the Mole of Leghorn. In regard to the waters beyond he could give no guarantee, since he had no naval force. To make assurance doubly sure, he allowed the English merchant ships to land their cargoes, and put them for safety in the Lazaretto or Quarantine House of Leghorn. Appleton might possibly have increased his force to a point which would have made it comparatively safe for him to give battle to the Dutch, if the merchant ships in the harbour had been willing to help him. They all carried guns, and the crews of that time were comparatively large. The merchant captains displayed the cowardice of the mere trader. They refused to give Appleton any help, alleging as their excuse that they had no orders from home to recognise his authority, and no security that they would be paid for any damage their vessels might suffer in action with the Dutch. During all the summer and autumn of 1652, Appleton and Charles Longland, the agent of the Commonwealth in Florence, were engaged in fruitless efforts to recruit the strength of the squadron from the merchant ships at Leghorn and Venice.

Since there was no hope from this source, nothing remained but to wait for the arrival of Badiley, in the hope that when all the six English warships were together, they might prove more capable of dealing with the enemy. It was a desperate chance, since all the probabilities were that Badiley would sail into the middle of the Dutch blockading ships. In order to reduce this danger as far as possible, Appleton despatched Captain Owen Cox with the Constant Warwick to meet the ships coming from the Levant, and warn them of the danger. The usual course for an officer bringing a convoy from the Levant would be to touch at Zante, picking up other merchant ships, then to go on to Messina and Naples for the same purpose, to range the coast of Italy as high as Leghorn, and then sail for the Straits, where he would pick up the Spanish trade. The Constant Warwick found Badiley at Zante, the most southerly of the Ionian Islands, where he was waiting for ships still on their way from Smyrna and Cyprus. On receipt of the news of war and the danger of Appleton, he came straight on, without making the usual stoppages at Messina and Naples. His energy did not avert disaster. The Dutch blockading squadron had in the meantime passed from the command of Catz to that of Jan Van Galen, who came overland to supersede his predecessor. Galen was sufficiently alert to make himself aware of the approach of Badiley while the English ships were between the islands of Elba and Corsica. His own squadron had been so far reinforced that he was able to leave six ships to keep a watch on Appleton, while he sailed with eleven for the purpose of attacking Badiley. On the afternoon of the 27th of August, Galen attacked the English convoy. It consisted of eight vessels in all, but of these only three were warships; the other five were merchant vessels, sufficiently well armed to be able to beat off a small privateer or Algerine pirate, but hardly able to encounter a man-of-war of any size. Yet the Dutch were generally small; and as Badiley's own ship, the Paragon, was heavier than any of them, it may well be that if the Turkey Company's ships had shown a manlier spirit, they might have given a fairly good account of the enemy. As a matter of fact, not only the traders, but the two warships with Badiley supported him either not at all, or very little. The encounter on the afternoon of the 27th was confined to distant cannonading, but next morning the Dutch attacked with energy, and the Paragon had to make a desperate fight for the protection of her convoy. The whole weight of the action fell upon her. She was greatly shattered in her rigging, and the loss in killed and wounded amounted to no less than eighty-one, a very large proportion of a crew of about three hundred men. In the meantime the merchant ships did very little, and the Paragon's two consorts not very much. One of them did worse, for she fell into the hands of the enemy. This was the Phenix, which was destined to be the cause of some exciting events further on. If Captain Badiley told the truth, she was lost by blundering management and the misconduct of her men. Thirty of the crew got into the long-boat towing astern, and fled to the Paragon, where they spread so violent a panic that Captain Badiley considered his own ship in danger of being lost. Fortunately for him, it fell a dead calm, and when the wind rose he was able to carry the Paragon, her one remaining consort, and the five merchant vessels into Porto Longone, at the south-east end of the island of Elba.

Here the governor offered him protection, and even remained loyal to his promises, although offered a heavy bribe by the Dutch if he would allow them to plunder the English vessels. But though Badiley escaped destruction, both English squadrons were now blockaded. Jan Van Galen was further reinforced, and was able to watch both Appleton at Leghorn and Badiley at Porto Longone. The second of these officers had been appointed to the general command. In co-operation with Charles Longland, he kept making strenuous efforts, throughout the last months of this year and the early months of the next, to raise his own force so far that he could attack the Dutch with some hope of success, or at least reunite the two squadrons. He failed to do either one or the other. He and Longland were in want of money, the merchant captains were in want of courage, and the vigilance of the Dutch kept the English apart and impotent. The watch on Porto Longone was not so close but that Badiley was able to go to and fro between that port and Leghorn. The Constant Warwick, too, re-entered Leghorn, but no general movement was possible. So the year wore away. It was noted that when the news of Blake's defeat off Dungeness reached Italy, the Grand Duke showed himself even less friendly than before. There were many Royalist exiles at his court who spared no effort to injure the Parliament's officers. Dutch diplomacy was active, and an envoy from "the person called Charles II.," as Captain Badiley described his king, appeared in time to support their representations.

In the meantime the English at Leghorn were subject to a perpetual blistering irritation. The Dutch brought the Phenix into the roadstead, and began ostentatiously to fit her as a man-of-war. When she was ready, the command was given to Cornelius van Tromp, the son of the famous admiral. The sight of this vessel was an eyesore to the English, and in particular to Captain Owen Cox, who had been transferred to the command of the Bonaventure on the death of her captain, Witheridge. Cox began to plot schemes for retaking the Phenix. Appleton, who was afraid of offending the Grand Duke, was very angry with his subordinate's excess of zeal, and even went so far as to put him under arrest, but Badiley restored him to his command. At the same time, he certainly gave his approval to schemes for retaking the prize. He justified this strong measure in the immediate neighbourhood of the Grand Duke's harbour by arguments which no doubt appeared convincing to himself, but are mainly remarkable for a rather childlike simplicity. "If two people," said Captain Badiley, "who are at enmity with one another, go into the house of a third on the promise that they will not make a disturbance, of course they ought to keep quiet, but if one of them filches the sword of the other, the gentleman robbed has surely a right to recover his stolen property. Now the Dutch have filched our ship the Phenix, and so the Grand Duke cannot reasonably object if we take her back again." The English captains were not so convinced of the unanswerable character of their interpretation of international law as to present it for the Grand Duke's consideration before they took the Phenix. The argument was pretty, but it was better to expound the law after the Phenix had changed hands. They also decided that the more quietly the thing was done the better. According to their exposition of the practice of nations, it was quite legitimate to take an enemy in neutral waters, provided that the ship were taken in the small hours, and that no pistols were fired to disturb the slumbers of the citizens.

The capture was effected in this way, but not until Cornelius van Tromp had given the English further intolerable provocation. About the middle of November he put to sea on a cruise, and returned a few days later with his prize. By way of insult and glorification over his enemy, Cornelius van Tromp had entered the roadstead trailing the English flag in the water under his stern. On the night of the 20th November he was punished for this piece of unmannerly brag. A cutting-out party was prepared in Appleton's flagship, the Leopard. It consisted of three boats. Captain Cox, who was very properly entrusted with the execution of his favourite enterprise, took the first, with fourteen men, Lieutenant Young of the Leopard had the second, with thirty-three, and Lieutenant Lynn of the Bonaventure the third, with the same number of men. The opportunity had been well chosen. It was St. Andrew's Eve, and the Dutch were carousing. Captain Badiley was informed that in order to ingratiate themselves with the Italians the Dutch captains heard a sermon from a friar before dinner. He preached upon the text, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men"; for which sin "nearly a hundred of their men were fished from them that night in the Phenix." The boats lost one another in the dark after leaving the Leopard, and it was not until "the appearing of the morning stars" that they were all alongside the prize. The capture was easily effected, for a large part of the Dutch crew was drinking on shore, and the other was more or less drunk on the ship. Young Tromp was finishing a carouse in the cabin when the English broke in. He escaped capture by diving from the stern-port and swimming to another Dutch ship, but, although he was very quick, he did not get off till one of the English sailors had given him a wipe with a cutlass, telling him that that was for trailing the English flag under his stern. From the moment he was in possession of the deck, Captain Cox cut cable and set sail. There was a good deal of scuffling and fighting between decks, in which Lieutenant Young was killed, but the English finally drove the Dutch into the hold, and would have quelled the resistance much sooner if they had not fulfilled their obligations to the Grand Duke by rigidly abstaining from the use of firearms. Several of the Dutch ships pursued, but they might as well have spared themselves the trouble. The Phenix easily out sailed them all, and Captain Cox carried her to Naples.

This incident filled the English both at Leghorn and Porto Longone with high gratification, but it was the beginning of new sorrows. The Grand Duke at first laughed at the trick, but the outcries of the Dutch forced him to take a more serious view of the outrage. An act of hasty ill-temper on the part of Captain Appleton gave him an excuse for putting the English captain into prison at Pisa. Later on, he handed him over to Badiley at Porto Longone. The English endeavoured to propitiate the Italian prince by the sentence of a court-martial which removed Appleton from his command. His offence had been that he took a runaway prisoner out of the hands of the duke's sentry on the Mole. But although the Grand Duke professed himself satisfied, and even asked that Appleton might be restored to his command, he was plainly annoyed with the English, and probably very tired of the trouble they were causing him. The urgent appeals of Longland and Badiley for reinforcements from England could not be answered at the very height of the great war. The Grand Duke may perhaps have thought that it was better to make friends of the Dutch. He began to press either for the surrender of the Phenix by the English, or for their departure from his port. At last, in March 1653, Badiley decided to wait no longer. Indeed the Grand Duke was showing a temper which made decisive action necessary. Badiley therefore sent orders to Appleton to get ready the two men-of-war, and the four merchant ships, lying within the Mole, to meet him. The Dutch had raised the blockade of Porto Longone, and were concentrated outside Leghorn. The plan of the English commander was that he should appear off the port, and that so soon as he was known to be in the neighbourhood, Captain Appleton was to take the opportunity to slip out by night. Badiley, in the course of a controversy which arose between the two, asserted that he gave strict orders to the effect that the ships within the Mole were not to come out by day unless they saw him engaged with the Dutch. He complained that the sloth of Appleton and his captains spoiled this plan. They did not make the necessary exertions to come out of cover by night. Then their rashness completed what their idleness had begun. They came out in broad daylight, when it was impossible to slip past the Dutch unseen. These two errors were, according to Badiley, the cause of the disaster which ensued. As the English ships came out with a leading wind, they had the Dutch between them and the English ships which had come over from Porto Longone. It was the manifest interest of the enemy to attack the English in detail. Badiley being at the greater distance and to leeward, they naturally attacked Appleton. If they had followed the reverse course, they would have presented the English with an opportunity of concentrating upon them, since Appleton would have had nothing to do but to run down from windward to the assistance of his colleague. The two men-of-war and four armed merchant ships which had come out from Leghorn were easily overpowered by the Dutch. Badiley says he was unable to render Appleton any effectual assistance, and the Council of State seems to have thought that he was telling the truth. The Leopard made a stout fight, but the other ships did not offer a prolonged resistance.

After the capture of the ships at Leghorn, there was nothing to detain Badiley on the coast of Northern Italy, and he therefore betook himself first to Naples, and then to the Straits. He would, if he had had his own choice, have remained abroad to cruise, but his men were by this time sick of the service, and were clamouring to return home. He appears to have been afflicted by some very disorderly fellows in his ships' companies. It was in vain that Captain Badiley appealed to their patriotism, and threatened them with the terrors of No. 11 in the Parliament's recently issued Articles of War. They answered persuasions and threats alike with cries of "Home, home!" At last he sailed, and reached England unopposed. The riotous character of his men was not improved by the time they returned to Chatham. Their violence made the duty of paying them off very irksome to Mr. Commissioner Pett, but he had his revenge; for no sooner were they paid off on their return from the Straits than they were pressed again, and sent off to serve their country in the great decisive battles of the war in June and July.

Diplomatic difficulties arose between the Government of England and the Grand Duke of Tuscany in consequence of this episode of the war, but before this there had been a violent pamphlet controversy between the parties concerned. It was one of the earliest, though not the first, of the series of naval quarrels. Appleton, considering he had been left in the lurch by Badiley, openly accused his commander of treachery and cowardice, in a pamphlet dedicated to Cromwell and supported by the testimony of his captains. Badiley replied by a counter-pamphlet, retorting the charges of treachery and cowardice on Appleton, and adorning his defence of himself by charges of incapacity, impiety, and immorality against his critics. Both parties were very angry, very hot, and very abusive. They present the reader with the spectacle of heated seafaring men wrangling in an abusive manner, with much clumsy irony. On the whole, it does appear that if Appleton had been more alert and intelligent, he might have given more effectual help to Badiley. So Cromwell apparently thought, for Appleton was not employed again. Yet both were so furious, loud-mouthed, and brutal, that it is impossible to accept either as a wholly trustworthy witness.

CHAPTER IX
THE PROTECTORATE

The Government of Oliver Cromwell was that of a usurper and, in the strict sense of the word, a tyrant. He did not indeed use his power with wilful cruelty, but by the very nature of the case he ruled by the sword, and not by law. Still, usurper and tyrant as he was, his aim was not the indulgence of any mere passion of his own. He was not only the greatest man of his time, and one of the greatest of all time, but he was thoroughly English in his wishes, his aims, and even prejudices. The desire to give the nation, in return for the subversion of its regular Government, a compensation which would take the form of an extension of its national grandeur and the promotion of its interests, had possibly something to do in framing his foreign policy. Yet there was a wide difference between the course he followed and that which commended itself, first to the Jacobins, and then to Napoleon. He did not plunge England into a succession of wars in pursuit of glory and an unattainable universal dominion, in order to divert it from discontent with his own rule. He aimed at the things which the great majority of Englishmen, whether Royalist or Puritan, knew to be consistent with the true interests of England, and could approve. These were three. In the first place, he undertook to teach foreign nations once more that they must respect England—a lesson they had too much forgotten during the weak rule of the Stuarts and the confusion of the Civil War. The old rhyme has it, that

In so far, he was doing what every Royalist would have wished to see the king do. Then Oliver was resolved to obtain security for English commerce on the sea, and on that point there were no differences of opinion in the nation. Finally, he designed to obtain for England that extension of her trade and that expansion of her colonial empire after which the ambition of the nation was already straining. The criticism that his schemes were too great for his resources is perhaps well founded. Yet, had he lived to establish his Government firmly, it is probable that he would not have asked the nation for more than it could easily give. The sums spent by his Government on maritime expeditions were not greater than those pilfered and wasted during the reign of Charles II. But, however that may be, the fact remains that Oliver first pointed out to England the course she was to follow in the eighteenth century; and if he was wrong in practice, it was because the principles of his foreign policy were in advance of their time.

There were two ways by which the Protector could carry out his policy—by alliance with Spain or by alliance with France. The long war between these two nations was still in progress—with growing success and resources on the side of France, and daily increasing weakness on the side of Spain. There were reasons which might seem to make it the Protector's interest to ally himself with Spain. The growing strength of France at her very doors was a menace to England. The weakness of Spain would render her a dependent ally—that is to say, it would have that effect if Spain were capable of being influenced by ordinary considerations of policy. Then the close relationship between the families of Stuart and Bourbon must always give the French monarchy a leaning to the side of the opponents of the Protector's Government. But Spain was not to be influenced in the way desired by England. Before Cromwell could undertake to help the Spaniards against the French, there were two concessions he was bound to demand from them. The first was the exemption of Englishmen from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. The second was the admission of English trade to the Spanish possessions in the New World. Pride and the blind obstinacy with which the Spaniards, to their ruin, have always clung to their most extreme pretensions, made it impossible for the King and Council of Castile to yield what Oliver demanded. It is a well-known story that when the Protector made these two concessions the price of his alliance against France, the Spanish ambassador, Don Alonso de Cárdenas, answered, "My master has but two eyes, and you ask him for both of them." Spain, in fact, would rather fight on in hopeless, contumacious obstinacy than yield up her right to protect the purity of her faith and her pretension to retain the monopoly of the New World. Since, then, Cromwell could not obtain his ends by treaty, he prepared to extort them from Spain by force. He turned to the French alliance, and made ready for war.

The attack on Spain was to be conducted on three lines. One does not concern us, except in so far as it is necessary to remember that unless England had possessed a superiority of strength at sea, she could not have followed it. At a later period English troops were sent to co-operate in the conquest of the Spanish Netherlands. But before this, Spain had been attacked on the sea. Two expeditions were fitted out in England. The first, under the command of Robert Blake, was to sail for the Mediterranean, and, after disposing of certain preliminary duties, was to attack Spain at home. The second, under the combined commands of William Penn as general-at-sea, and of Robert Venables as general of the land forces, was to fall upon the Spaniards in the New World. This second expedition marks a notable epoch in our colonial history, and, at the cost of somewhat forestalling the order of time, may be told as an episode by itself.

According to all modern notions, the policy of Cromwell in fitting out this expedition was eminently immoral. A great fleet carrying a force of soldiers was sent out with orders to attack the Spaniards before a declaration of war. But in the middle of the seventeenth century, and in the circumstances, there was nothing even irregular in what the Protector did. It is necessary to understand in their main lines the relations of European States to Spain in the New World, and to do that we must look back for a moment. At the close of the fifteenth century, the almost simultaneous voyages of Columbus across the Atlantic and of Vasco da Gama round the Cape of Good Hope had appeared to give the Crowns of Spain and Portugal the rights of previous discovery over the trade routes to the East. It must not be forgotten that Columbus was believed to have reached the eastern extremity of Asia. He himself died in the belief that this was what he had done. It was not until Vasco Nuñez de Balboa had crossed the Isthmus of Darien, and Magellan had sailed through the straits named after him, and had found a vast expanse of ocean between him and Asia, that it came to be understood that there was a continent of America. In 1494 it was thought that Asia had been reached, and it appeared not improbable that Spain and Portugal would come to blows over the limits of what we should now call their respective spheres of influence. The two States appealed to the Pope, Alexander VI., and he drew a line between them running from pole to pole 100 miles to the west of the Cape de Verd Islands. The decision of the arbitrator did not appear satisfactory to the Portuguese, who would have been confined too closely to the coast of Africa. They protested, and their protest was listened to by the Catholic sovereigns, Isabel of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. In the year after the Pope had given his decision, a conference was held at the town of Tordesillas, and it was then settled that the line of demarcation should run 300 leagues to the west of the Azores and in the corresponding meridian on the other side of the globe. In the course of time, it was found that this decision had thrown by very much the greater part of the two American continents into the share of Spain. Other nations refused, indeed, to allow that the bull "Inter cætera" gave Spain any exclusive rights. But the Spanish Government was of another opinion. It abstained, indeed, from interfering with the English settlements in New England and the French in Canada, which were poor and distant. Its own weakness forced it so far to acquiesce in what it could not prevent, but it never recognised the legitimacy of foreign settlements; and whenever any of them approached those regions where the Spanish rule was strong, they were liable to attack, even when peace prevailed in Europe. The Spaniards, in fact, recognised no peace beyond the line—that is to say, the line of demarcation from north to south, and not, as is sometimes supposed, the equator.

Hence there arose a permanent condition of lawless violence in the West Indies. By far the greater part of the islands, composing the Greater and the Lesser Antilles, were not occupied by the Spaniards at all. European adventurers were not to be debarred from settling in unoccupied lands, by a mere decision of the Pope which they did not recognise as valid. During the first half of the seventeenth century, English, French, and Dutch had swarmed in to dispute these islands with the Spaniard. The weakness of Spain made it impossible for her to keep them out altogether. The early history of these settlements is obscure. One very curious colony, founded by a Puritan company, of which Pym was one of the directors, in the island of Old Providence on the coast of Honduras, has left no trace except a few letter-books. Barbadoes was peacefully occupied by Englishmen, and became rapidly prosperous. Other English adventurers, some of them holding patents from the king and others without, had settled in Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis, and part of St. Kitts. The other part of St. Kitts was held by the French. The Dutch also were in the West Indies, less as settlers than as traders with the French and English. Yet, though these settlements had increased and prospered, they were never quite safe from Spanish attack. One great Spanish armament, under Don Fadrique de Toledo, had swept the West Indies in 1629; other and minor attacks had been common. The settlement in Old Providence, after many alarms and adventures, had been finally exterminated at some time in the earlier stages of our Civil War. It will be seen, then, that if the Spaniards were assailed by Cromwell without formal declaration of hostilities in the New World, the act was abundantly justified by Spanish precedents.

In 1654 the newly established Government was being urgently pressed to send out just such an armament as was finally despatched. An Englishman, of the name of Thomas Gage, the son of a family of English Roman Catholics and strong Royalists, had published an exhortation to his countrymen to fall upon Spanish America, and had revealed the real weakness of the land in a book called the New Survey of the West Indies, published in 1648, and very popular in the seventeenth century. Gage, who had been a priest, and who then became converted, and preached as a Puritan divine in England, was one of the very few Englishmen for whom it had been possible to visit the Spanish possessions. At the same time, some at least among the planters of Barbadoes were urging the English Government to adopt an aggressive policy, and were promising effectual support.

Under the stimulus of all these motives, the Protector's Government organised this expedition in the summer and autumn of 1654. It was to consist of 38 warships, carrying 1134 guns and 4380 seamen. A land force of 3000 soldiers, divided into five regiments of 600 each, was to be raised. The whole, when ready, was to sail for the West Indies, and to begin hostilities with the Spaniards from the day it crossed the tropic of Cancer. The orders given to the expedition, as was commonly the case with the Council of State and Cromwell, were perfect examples of what such things should be—at once absolutely precise in prescribing the aim, and wisely large in defining the means to be adopted. "We shall not," said the Protector, "tie you up to a method by any particular instructions." The generals, in fact, were deprived of every excuse for failure by being left free to choose the fittest means. As for the object of the cruise, on that point there was no doubt. They were to go over to the West Indies, firstly, to chastise the French, who had been guilty of excesses against English trade; secondly, to enforce the Navigation Laws against the Dutch, who had been carrying on an interloping commerce with the English islands; thirdly, and this was the main purpose of the armament, they were to effect a settlement among the Spanish possessions. Where it was to be made, they were themselves to judge on the spot, and according to circumstances. They might land on the islands, taking Hispaniola by preference, or, failing that, St. John, that is, San Juan de Puerto Rico. Or, again, they might pass the islands and fall upon the mainland somewhere between the mouth of the Orinoco and Porto Bello, that part of South America commonly called the Spanish Main. A third course was to attack both the islands and the mainland, but it was made abundantly clear that the hands of those who were to be responsible for doing the work were not to be tied by too precise instructions.

This was as it should have been, but all was not equally well with the expedition. The leaders selected by Cromwell did not do honour to his choice. Venables, the commander of the troops, must have done something to make the Protector think him fit for the place, but on this expedition he showed himself a feeble, pottering, uxorious man. He took his wife with him, and appears to have been miserable when separated from her company. Penn was undoubtedly a brave and skilful seaman, but he wanted the intellectual resources and strength of character required to make good the deficiencies of his colleague. The weakness of the usurping Government is revealed by the action which these two men, seemingly without any agreement with one another, took during the summer. They both wrote to the exiled king, offering him their services. At such a time, men who have not honour enough to stand aside from a usurping Government, and who cannot serve it with enthusiasm, are very likely to be found looking over their shoulders for a safe retreat, and making friends with the enemy of the Government of to-day, who may possibly be the ruler of to-morrow. Penn and Venables offered to bring the whole armament over to King Charles if he could find a port for them abroad. The king, who was totally unable to comply with the condition, declined the offer. It throws an unpleasant light on the character of Penn, that, immediately after he had been making this offer to betray the master who trusted in him, he was found appealing to the Protector for a grant of land in Ireland, which land, as a matter of fact, was the confiscated property of the supporters of the king. He and Venables did not work harmoniously together. They had a squabble in England before they sailed, which was made up by the exertions of friends, but probably left them on not very confidential terms with one another. It was not only the inferiority of, and want of harmony between, the leaders which was likely to militate against the efficiency of the expedition. The victualling was ill done, probably because of the poverty of the Government. A good part of the stores was not ready in time, and had to be sent on later. A large portion of the soldiers raised were of an inferior quality. Cromwell could not spare the choice troops who were the support of his rule. The five regiments were specially raised for the service, and they consisted mainly of discharged soldiers of the king as well as of the Parliament. These men had lost, or in many cases had never possessed, a true military character. The number of 3000 provided for by the scheme was never attained. The expedition did not carry more than 2500 men, of whom perhaps half were more likely to be a hindrance than a help where discipline was required.

On the 20th of December 1654 Rear-Admiral Dakins was sent on with fourteen ships in advance. The bulk of the expedition sailed on Christmas Day, which was probably chosen at least partly from a Puritan desire to show disrespect for the feast. In mid-ocean the heavier ships, which hampered the speed of the fleet, were left behind. Penn and Venables pressed on with the better sailers. By the 29th January 1655 the whole armament was assembled in Carlisle Bay in Barbadoes.

The disappointments of the expedition began at once. It was found that those planters who had been urging the Government to send a force into the West Indies, and had promised effectual help, had spoken without authority. The planters of Barbadoes were by no means generally pleased at the appearance of an expedition from England. The generals were authorised to raise a regiment in the island, and the planters were afraid that if the freemen enlisted in large numbers, their "servants" would revolt so soon as the armed force was gone. By servants must be understood both the black slaves and those white men, criminals and prisoners of war, who were bound to a term of service. Much pressure had to be exercised before this opposition was overcome. It was at last surmounted, and the regiment was raised. In the meantime the news spread through the English islands. The swarm of loose adventurers who filled them, the runaway "servants," sailors who had deserted from their ships,—all the raw material, in fact, out of which the formidable buccaneering body called the "Brethren of the Coast" was afterwards formed,—began to collect in regiments, and were burning to take part in the service, which seemed to promise plunder. Such men as these, the floating population of the frontier, valiant in pothouses, but feeble in battle, were of no real value for military purposes. Yet they were accepted to the number of several thousands. The expedition had unfortunately been put under the command of a committee. In this Cromwell followed the practice of the Parliament, and was perhaps influenced by the fear of putting too much power into the hands of a single man. Not only Penn and Venables, but Goodson the vice-admiral, Dakins the rear-admiral, two special Commissioners, Winslow and Gregory Butler, together with some others, were joined in the general command, and nothing was to be done without the consent of three of them. The opinion of the wiser few, who would willingly have dispensed with the riff-raff of the islands, was overborne, and the expedition was hampered by an ill-armed, worse-disciplined, and thoroughly untrustworthy mob. It is to be noted also that this distant and unhealthy service in the West Indies was not popular with the sailors. While at Carlisle Bay, the sea officers came in a body to Penn and represented to him their hope that the hardships of their service would be allowed for in their pay and prize-money. One good measure that had been decided upon in England was here perfected. A regiment of sailors was formed. It was put under the command of Admiral Goodson as colonel, with naval officers to lead the companies.

Two months were spent at Barbadoes, which might have incomparably better been employed in assailing the Spaniards before they were ready. At last, on the 31st of March, the expedition got under way. It proceeded by Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis, and St. Kitts to the south-eastern end of Hispaniola, and appeared before the town of San Domingo on the 13th of April. San Domingo stands on the western side of a little river called the Ozama. It is in the middle of a large bay, some twenty-eight miles broad and some ten miles deep. The coast is low, rocky, and beaten by a formidable surf. Looked at from the sea, the spray thrown up from the waves was like the smoke of cannon fringing the beach. Close to the town on the west side was a fort. To the west of the fort, and at a distance of some five miles from the town, another river, called by the Spaniards Jaina, and by us Hina, falls into the sea. When there is a dead calm, or a land breeze from the north, it is possible to land here, but at other times the surf is too dangerous for boats. These conditions made it necessary to disembark the soldiers to westward and leeward of the town at some distance. In the West Indies the trade wind, or true breeze, always blows from the east. Beyond Cape Nisao, the western extremity of San Domingo Bay, there are a few landing-places in the surf-beaten coast. At one of these, perhaps Catalina Bay, Venables disembarked with the bulk of the expedition on the 14th of April. In the meantime Penn remained, with the greater part of the fleet and two regiments of soldiers, in front of San Domingo. The object of retaining these two corps was to land them at the mouth of the Jaina, to co-operate with Venables when he had got so far. They had with them stores and scaling ladders for the purpose of attacking the town.

The story of what came of these imposing preparations is happily all but unparalleled in English history. Venables began his march on the day after landing, in circumstances of the most lamentable kind, if he is to be believed.