The attempt to bring the Barbary pirates to order met with very indifferent success. Sandwich sailed to Algiers, with eighteen men-of-war and two fireships. He appeared before Algiers in July, and began negotiating through the English Consul, Mr. Brown. The negotiations came to very little, for the Algerines refused to relinquish their right of search, and the fleet was not strong enough to bombard the town. In this dilemma, Sandwich decided on dividing the fleet, and devoting each part of it to one of the missions he had to fulfil. Lawson was left with twelve ships to prosecute the war against the pirates, while the earl carried out the more diplomatic half of his mission. The station on the coast of Africa, ceded to England as part of the dowry of Catharine of Braganza, was the town of Tangier, which lies just outside of the Straits of Gibraltar, and then passed for a good port. The Government of Charles II. is open to severe criticism on many grounds, but it cannot be said to have habitually neglected what were then considered the commercial interests of the nation. One of these was held to be the possession of a useful seaport, either in, or close to, the mouth of the Mediterranean. As far back as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, some of her officers had lamented the evacuation of Cadiz, on the ground that it would have been of the greatest possible use to us if we had decided to keep it. Cromwell had directed his officers commanding his fleet on the coast of Spain to consider the possibility of seizing on Gibraltar. When the Government of the king asked for the possession of Tangier as part of the dowry of the Portuguese princess, it took the best possible means of reconciling Englishmen to a Roman Catholic marriage, and gave them something to set off against the subsequent surrender of Dunkirk to the French king. A less conspicuous gain, in the opinion of the time, was the transfer to England of the island of Bombay, which also formed part of the queen's dower. The occupation of these two posts marked another step forward in the development of the English Navy. Bombay was not destined to become a royal naval station for some time. It was taken possession of by the Earl of Marlborough, James Ley, for the king, but was soon after handed over to the East India Company. For that very reason it had a better chance of remaining a permanent part of the dominion of England. Tangier, which at the time seemed much the greater possession, was destined to be handed back to the Moors by the English king, by whom it had been received from the Portuguese. Yet the mere fact that these two posts over sea were accepted by the king, was a sign that he was prepared to employ his navy at all distances, and in all climates, in the general interests of the State. This, again, implied the maintenance of a permanent efficient force. It is possible that if Sandwich had delayed taking possession of Tangier a little longer, it might not have been in the power of the Portuguese to hand it over. When the English admiral reached the bay, the white garrison had just been wholly destroyed in an ambush by the Moors. Sandwich withdrew the survivors of the Portuguese garrison, and left an English force to hold the town, under command of the Earl of Peterborough. He then went on to Lisbon, for the purpose of embarking the queen and escorting her to England. His functions were as much diplomatic as naval, for he was charged with receiving the money of the young queen's dower and making the final arrangements with the Portuguese Government. This part of his work gave Sandwich more trouble than the Algerine pirates or the besiegers of Tangier. The Government at Lisbon had promised more than it could pay, and when it did at last produce a part of the queen's dower, the payment was made in goods and not in money. When he reached England with the queen, Sandwich fell into temporary disgrace, not because he had failed in his duty, but because the poor young queen did not bring as much money as her impecunious husband had hoped for, and then because she for a time rebelled against the necessity of receiving her husband's numerous mistresses; and all who had a hand in the marriage suffered from the king's irritation.

While Sandwich was taking possession of Tangier, and haggling with Portuguese ministers over the queen's dower, Lawson had been prosecuting the war against the Algerine pirates. He met on the whole with more success than might have been expected. The lesser pirate States of Tunis and Tripoli were comparatively easy to cow, but Algiers was a formidable opponent. There were two ways of dealing with it effectually, and Lawson was not able to use either to the full. One was to bombard it with a fleet capable of beating down the fortifications and firing the town. The other was to establish a blockade which could put an entire stop to piratical voyages. Lawson's fleet was not strong enough for the first, nor was it either numerous enough or well enough supplied for the second. Yet, by pertinacity and vigilance he brought the Government of the Dey so far to submission that he undertook to give up some hundred and fifty English and Scotch prisoners, who were then in slavery in the town. Some vessels also were returned—a concession to which the Algerines were no doubt more readily brought, because English-built craft were of little use for piratical purposes. When, however, Lawson went on to make a demand for the captured goods, he was refused peremptorily. He was not the man to endure the arrogance of the pirates while it was in his power to chastise them. An opportunity presented itself for teaching them a lesson. One of their vessels, a cruiser of thirty-four guns, allowed herself to be caught out of the protection of the fortifications. Lawson immediately seized her, and retaliated for the wrong done to English captives by selling all the Turks or Moors who formed part of her crew, as slaves to work in the galleys of the Duke of Beaufort, the French admiral, who was then cruising in the Mediterranean. This vigorous measure brought the Algerines to reason for the moment; but it was only for the moment, and several expeditions were required during the reign of Charles II. before this pirate State was made to understand that English ships must be left alone.

Lawson remained in the Mediterranean until 1663. During the latter part of his stay in that sea he co-operated for a time with the Dutch admiral, Michael de Ruyter, who also had been sent into the Mediterranean on the never-ending duty of cowing the Algerines. The causes which put a stop to the combined action of the Christian admirals go far to explain why what has been justly described as the disgrace of Christendom was allowed to endure until the present century. The Powers of Europe were, in fact, too bitterly divided by rivalries and quarrels of their own, either to combine for the purpose of suppressing Mohammedan piracy, or even to allow one another to act with energy. When De Ruyter met Lawson, he saluted the English flag with guns and lowered his own. Lawson returned the guns, but not the salute with the flag. The Dutch admiral not unnaturally considered this an insult. The pretension of the English to the sovereignty of the seas around Great Britain had been accepted by the Hollanders in 1653, but they did not suppose that they would be compelled to acknowledge themselves inferior to the English in all waters. De Ruyter considered himself aggrieved, and made a complaint to the Grand Pensionary John de Witt. His own determination was not to salute Lawson again if they met, but he was instructed from home to lower his flag whenever he came across the English admiral, taking care, however, to avoid him as much as he could. When a man has to keep out of the way of another for fear of being insulted by him, the two can hardly co-operate effectively against a common enemy.

John de Witt, who was keenly alive to the dignity of his country, would not have despatched such orders as these to De Ruyter if he had not been under the influence of a great fear. If he sacrificed the feelings of his seamen and the pride of Holland on a point of etiquette, it was because he was then endeavouring to avert the war which the English Court showed every sign of intending to force upon him. The causes of the second Dutch war were, to some extent, those which had led to the first. They were compendiously stated by Monk, now Duke of Albemarle, when he said that it was idle to dispute as to the rights and wrongs of the quarrels between the two nations, since they essentially amounted to this, that the English wanted a larger share of the trade enjoyed by the Dutch. The result of the first war had not been all that Englishmen expected. Oliver Cromwell's policy of hostility to Spain had thrown the whole trade with that country, formerly enjoyed by us, into the hands of Holland. Dutch commerce had revived very rapidly after the disasters of the naval war. The successful intervention of Holland in the war between Sweden and Denmark had restored the prestige of the Republic, while the administration of the Loevenstein Party, however unwise it might be in other respects, was very vigorous, intelligent, and economical in matters of commerce. Thus, when the return of the king brought peace abroad to England, we found the Dutch traders competing with us as successfully as ever. In the Far East, the powerful Dutch East India Company remained as jealous and exclusive as before. However willing the States General may have been to fulfil the promises they had made to Cromwell, they were unable to control the agents of the Dutch East India Company in the Spice Islands. English ships trading to the East complained that they were stopped and turned back by the Dutch. Whatever element of truth there was—and in the midst of much exaggeration there was a certain amount of truth—in these complaints, the English Government conducted negotiations with the obvious intention of making the most of their grievances. Our representative at the Hague was Sir George Downing, a man who had formerly served Oliver Cromwell and had then made his peace with the king. Downing, who appears to have been by nature an insolent, overbearing man, knew that he would please his new masters by taking a high tone with the Dutch, and he played his game heartily. He did not scruple to do, as indeed most ambassadors of the time would have done, namely, intrigue with those members of the States General whom he knew to be rivals of John de Witt.

The commercial rivalry of the nations was exasperated by political dislike between the Governments. John de Witt had been forced by Cromwell to pass the Perpetual Edict, a law of the States General, designed to exclude the House of Orange Nassau from the position it had held in the United Provinces. However unwilling the Grand Pensionary may have been to take this step under foreign dictation, the exclusion of the Princes of Orange from the place of Stadtholder, with command of the army and fleet, was so consistent with the interest of the Loevenstein Party that they could not repeal the Edict. But the young Prince of Orange was the nephew of the King of England. Family feeling has rarely induced any prince to abstain from indulging his ambition, but it is a useful pretext for doing what has already been resolved on for less avowable reasons. Charles II. had not forgiven the Dutch for excluding him from their territory at the instance of Oliver Cromwell. When he was recalled in 1660, they had, with some poorness of spirit, endeavoured to pacify him by profuse honours and by a loan of money. Even if Charles II. had been a less cynical man than his education had rendered him, he would hardly have put a high value on courtesies which were manifestly dictated by fear. His jesting remark on the ample table provided for him by the States General shows that he estimated their attentions at their true value. "Their High Mightinesses," he said, "no doubt provided a good dinner, but several of them always came to share it, and he thought that they might be said to entertain themselves at least as much as him." When the king returned, the interest he took in the commerce of his country served to make him share the jealousies of his subjects. The king and his brother became large shareholders in the Royal Guinea Company. This was a trading corporation established for the purpose of supplying slaves in the West Indies and America. It had its agents in our own possessions in the Antilles, and it cherished the hope of monopolising the whole trade in slaves. In the West Indies the local agents were busy in endeavouring to compel the Spaniards to buy their negroes from us. The reluctance of the Spanish authorities to take the business away from the Genoese Company, which already enjoyed the monopoly, and indeed to allow English trade in any form, had much to do with provoking the attacks on their possessions by the buccaneers who were commissioned and sent out by the king's governor in Jamaica. In this field of activity also we had to expect the rivalry of the Dutch, who held several stations on the West Coast of Africa, and were no less eager than ourselves to smuggle blacks into Spanish America. At the same time, they were very well disposed to carry on the trade with our possessions. The English planter, like the Spaniard, preferred to buy his negroes cheap, and, when a Dutchman would sell them for less than an Englishman, had not the slightest scruple in dealing with the foreign interloper. Thus the price of the Guinea Company's negroes was kept down. To get rid of this competition was a very essential object with the Company. It was by an effort to effect the purpose that the second Dutch war began.

The habit of conducting colonial ventures by great chartered companies lent itself very easily to the promotion of international quarrels. Rival traders who had the command of an armed force were particularly likely to come to blows, when they enjoyed a position of semi-sovereignty, and were divided from all control on the part of their Government by a distance of thousands of miles. The check which even the Company itself could keep on its agents, when news took from six months to a year to reach home, and eighteen months or two years might pass before the superior's comment on the subordinate's actions could reach its destination at the other side of the world, was weak. The control of the State was illusory. It was first informed of the real or imaginary excesses of its subjects in a complaint from a foreign ambassador. It could not act without further evidence, which was not to be obtained till after months of delay, and was then sure to be vitiated by the partiality of the witness. Thus wars on a considerable scale could be carried on by trading companies. The motive was hardly ever wanting, since there were sure to be disputes as to the respective rights, possessions, and, as we should now say, spheres of influence of the parties. Even in our own time it has required all the infinitely greater power of the central Government to prevent collisions between bodies of adventurers in remote regions. Sometimes the central Government has acted too late. In the seventeenth century the utmost good-will on the part of the States General and the Crown of England could hardly have availed to avert conflict between Englishmen and Dutchmen, on the West Coast of Africa and in the more remote Spice Islands. When national sentiment was loud in favour of the adventurers on one side, a collision was inevitable. There can be no question that sentiment in England was strongly hostile to the Dutch. If the king was disposed to promote a war with the United Provinces, he was certainly well supported by his subjects. The complaints of the merchants who considered themselves aggrieved by the Dutch were favourably listened to by the House of Commons. Both Houses joined in an address to the king, calling on him to take vengeance for the wrongs done by the Dutch to English traders. The amount of the injury was put at the certainly enormously exaggerated figure of seven or eight hundred thousand pounds.

When the State was disposed to allow a trading company to conduct wars on its own account, it was easy to take a further step. The next thing to do was to help the Company to fight, without going to the length of declaring war against the nation to which the Company's rivals belonged. We have seen, in the case of Oliver Cromwell's expedition to the West Indies, that the practice of the time allowed of what may be called partial war—that is to say, it was thought legitimate to conduct aggressive hostilities in one part of the world, without making a general war. The king and the Duke of York, when they found that war with the States would be popular, decided to follow Cromwell's example. A squadron was fitted out to attack the Dutch possessions on the West Coast of Africa, and was placed under the command of Sir Robert Holmes. Holmes has been mentioned already as one of the Royalist officers who had followed Prince Rupert. In the course of that cruise he had visited the West Coast of Africa, and had then been encouraged by the Dutch to attack his own countrymen. In the course of his operations, Holmes must have become well acquainted with the coast, and it was doubtless this knowledge that marked him out for the command. He sailed from England with a small squadron in October 1663. His instructions were to avoid fighting as far as possible.

We do the king and Duke of York no injustice in supposing that these orders were rather meant to be quoted for diplomatic purposes than to be strictly acted upon by the admiral. The whole history of Sir Robert Holmes's cruise shows clearly that he knew beforehand that he would not be blamed for fighting if he could find a plausible excuse for hostilities, and that, when once the fighting had begun, he would not be expected to confine himself to moderate reprisals. A plausible excuse could hardly be wanting. When Holmes reached the river Gambia, he found the English traders and the Portuguese, who were now our allies, full of bitter complaints of the excesses of the Dutch. On his way he had come across a Dutch ship, and, on searching her, found, as he alleged, orders to the Dutch governor, Valckenburg, to seize the English fort at Cape Cormantin. How Sir Robert Holmes reconciled the act of searching a Dutch ship in time of peace, and on the high seas, with his instructions to avoid hostilities, we are not told. From the Dutch point of view he acted on the principles of the wolf, and assailed the lamb for troubling the water. The rival accounts of Dutch governors and English naval officers are utterly irreconcilable, and perhaps not worth reconciling. When Englishmen had made their minds up, as they had, that they wanted more of the trade enjoyed by the Dutch, and when the Dutch were, as might have been expected, thoroughly resolved to keep all the trade they enjoyed, it was a matter of course either that aggressions would be committed, or that one of the two parties would believe that they had been committed. Sir Robert Holmes made a number of prizes in the neighbourhood of the Cape de Verd Islands, and then swept the coast as far down as Sierra Leone. An attack on the Dutch post at St. George da Mina was repulsed, but he took possession of some other minor posts. His next step supplies overwhelming evidence to show that he had not been sent out to avoid hostilities, and had not only been driven into fighting against his will. He stood across the Atlantic and attacked the Dutch on the mainland of America. He fell with his squadron on the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, and had no difficulty in mastering it. Then he returned to England, where he was thrown into the Tower on the demand of the Dutch ambassador—a step which proves that the Government was not ready to declare war on Holland, and would much have preferred that the declaration should come from the other side, but by no means establishes a presumption that Holmes had exceeded his confidential instructions.

The course taken by John de Witt, when he found that the English had committed an aggression on the West India Company, was to play them a return match at the same game. He did not use his influence to persuade the States General to declare war, though he must have known that war was now inevitable. The commercial oligarchy which formed the Loevenstein Party was very averse to war. It would infinitely have preferred to soothe the King of England by concessions, if it could have succeeded at any tolerable cost. If this could not be done, it preferred to confine war to the colonies as long as possible. Even this was difficult for it. The insolent and overbearing Downing maintained a vigilant watch on the actions of the States General. He would have been informed immediately if a squadron had been prepared in the Dutch harbours to follow Sir Robert Holmes, and in that case an instant declaration of war from England was to be feared. The fleet of Michael de Ruyter was at the disposal of the States. It was cruising in the Mediterranean, and ready to start at a moment's notice. But here the same difficulty presented itself. Downing was sure to be informed if orders were sent to the admiral. John de Witt escaped that risk by a piece of ingenious management. He contrived to get the question what ought to be done in consequence of Sir Robert Holmes's cruise referred to a select committee of his own partisans. The orders were drafted by them, and were then slipped through at a general meeting of the States without attracting attention. By the terms of these orders De Ruyter was directed to fill up a year's provisions on the coast of Spain, and to follow in the track of Holmes, retaking the places he had seized, and retaliating for the damage he had done to Dutch commerce. De Ruyter carried out his instructions to the letter. He re-established the Dutch on the West Coast of Africa, then he stood across to the West Indies. An attack made by his fleet on Barbadoes proved unsuccessful, but the damage done to English trade was considerable. Then De Ruyter stretched along the coast of North America as far as Newfoundland. He failed to retake New Amsterdam, which, under the name of New York, remained in our hands at the close of the war. From Newfoundland he returned home.

This counter-stroke provoked a furious outcry of anger in England, for it is perhaps more the custom of the English than any other nation to be seized with unaffected moral indignation when another does unto them the disagreeable thing which they have just been doing to someone else. Letters of marque and reprisal were now issued on both sides, and a privateering war of plunder preceded regular hostilities. The Dutch oligarchy would still have made peace if they could, but the English Court had at last found its pretext, and was resolved to force on the quarrel. The terms upon which it insisted were such as a people far less courageous and less powerful than the Dutch could not possibly have accepted. The formal declaration of war was delayed until March 1665.

No great change had taken place in the relative strength of the two navies since the conclusion of the first Dutch war. The English still had the superiority which they derived from unity of command and the greater strength of their ships. The Loevenstein Party had done nothing to remove the fatal defects of organisation in the fleets of the United Provinces. Indeed it could do nothing, since the only way in which unity of command could be given to the different squadrons of the Provinces was by again naming a Stadtholder, and allowing the office to carry with it the post of Admiral-General. But to ask the Loevenstein Party to do this was to ask them to commit suicide. So we find the same divisions of authority in the Dutch fleet in this as in the former war. The commercial government of the Republic had done nothing, and perhaps from its character could do nothing, to establish a higher standard of military spirit among its officers.

On the side of England the monarchy was still profiting by the work of the Council of State and Oliver Cromwell. The corruption which in the later years of King Charles's reign invaded every detail of the administration of the navy had not yet got the upper hand. Although the practice of giving the command of ships to young gentlemen who had absolutely no qualification beyond their interest at Court was already followed, still the bulk of the captains and all the flag-officers, with few exceptions, were the veterans of the first Dutch war. These men were already accustomed to act together; they had fought side by side in many battles, and had cruised in company for months. They had the tradition of the last war fresh in their minds. To this must be attributed the general good discipline and efficiency displayed in the coming struggle.

The fleet left by the Protector to the restored monarchy was estimated at 154 ships of 57,463 tons. The average size of vessels was therefore about 370 tons, and had not increased during the century. Some twenty or thirty of these vessels were foreign built—that is to say, were prizes taken from the Dutch, French, or Spanish. But the great majority were built by the Petts and their school. It is somewhat curious that although the reign of Charles II. was a time of great scientific curiosity and activity, and although the king took an intelligent interest in the forms and qualities of his vessels, yet the art of shipbuilding in England appears to have rather lost than gained ground. If we did not become positively worse, we allowed ourselves to be outstripped by the French. During this reign we constantly hear of English shipbuilders as imitating French models, and that not always with success. In the time of Charles I. Phineas Pett built the finest vessels in the world, on his own lines, and by his own calculations. In the reign of Charles II. this superiority had been lost. Even the Dutch, taught by experience, began to build their vessels much higher and stronger. Pepys, who is an unanswerable authority, noted that "in 1663 and 1664 the Dutch and French built ships with two decks, which carried from sixty to seventy guns, and so contrived that they carried their lower guns four feet from the water, and to stow four months' provisions, whereas our frigates from the Dunkirk-build, which were narrower and sharper, carried their guns but little more than three feet from the water, and for ten weeks' provisions. Observing this, Sir Anthony Deane built the Rupert and Resolution, Mr. Shish the Cambridge, Mr. Johnson the Warspight, and Mr. Castle the Defiance. The two latter were, by contract of the Commissioners of the Navy, bound to carry six months' provisions, and their guns to lie four and a half feet from the water. This was another great step and improvement to our navy put in practice by Sir Anthony Deane." Yet this stimulus seems to have exhausted itself very soon, for eight or nine years afterwards, in the third Dutch war, when a French squadron of thirty-five ships came to Spithead, several of them were found to excel ours of the same nominal rate in size and quality. It was once more seen to be the case that ours were narrower, could stow less provisions, and carried their guns nearer the water. Again, we took a French ship for a model; this time it was the Superbe, a 74-gun ship. The Harwich was built in imitation of her by Sir Anthony Deane. An attempt was made to improve the models of our navy in the thirty ships which were built by the special Parliamentary grant in those years. The corruption which had by this time overwhelmed the navy made these efforts of little avail. The vessels built out of the grant were so ill-constructed, so carelessly looked after, and put together of such very poor material, that they rotted at their moorings before they were used. Perhaps the desire to possess a great many vessels had a bad effect. When a definite sum of money has to be spent, when it is not sufficient to pay for both number and size, and when number is strongly desired, it will inevitably follow that vessels will be built of the smallest size required to carry the desired number of guns. It is certainly the case that during the latter part of the seventeenth century and nearly the whole of the eighteenth our ships were, rate for rate, smaller than the French. At one time in the eighteenth century we allowed ourselves to be outstripped so far that two English 74's were hardly more than a match in strength and tonnage for one Spanish ship of the same nominal strength. A French 80-gun ship was as large as an English man-of-war of 100 guns. This, however, was a later development. In the earlier part of the reign of Charles II. we were still superior on the whole to the Dutch in all but numbers, which in every generation and in every kind of war is the least valuable of the elements of strength. At the beginning of the second Dutch war the Duke of York wrote from Portsmouth to complain that the vessels then being built were designed on too small a scale. He argued that the Dutch could always excel us in point of number, and that it was desirable to possess a counterbalancing advantage in the size, and what followed from size, the broadside weight of fire of our individual ships. The duke's view did not prevail, but it is well worth quoting, if only to show how old is this conflict between the two schools of naval critics—those who rely on number and those who rely on individual strength.

CHAPTER XI
THE SECOND DUTCH WAR TO THE FOUR DAYS' BATTLE

If proof were wanted that the Dutch were not prepared for war, it might be found in the length of time they allowed to the English Government to get its fleet ready for sea. The cruise of Sir Robert Holmes would have been more than sufficient provocation to a Power really in search of a pretext for hostilities. Yet the Dutch let a year pass, and even then did not fight until they were attacked, for it must be remembered that the counter-cruise of De Ruyter was strictly limited to the ground already covered by Holmes, or to reprisals in the colonies. If John de Witt and his party had been really disposed for a new struggle with England, it would have been easy for them to attack her at home while unprepared. Unprepared she was until the early months of 1665. Happily, the Dutch were not in a better case. The commercial oligarchy had sacrificed everything to economy, and their fighting fleet was not ready. Therefore the English Government was allowed time to fit out its armaments.

It needed every hour which the delay of its enemy allowed. Even as late as November 1664 the total force of the English fleet ready, or being made ready, for sea was only this: On the coast of Ireland there were three vessels. Thirteen were stationed in the Straits of Gibraltar. One was on duty at Tangier. The convoy to the Newfoundland fishery employed two, which, with the three assigned to New England, and two at Jamaica, made seven vessels on the coast of America. There were three on the Guinea Coast of Africa, one was in the Medway, one on transport duty, one in the East Indies, fourteen with Prince Rupert in the North Sea, and twenty-four in the Channel. These ships, sixty-six in all, were ready, but a third of them were not available for service in Europe. Thirty-seven others were being fitted for sea. When it is remembered that this was the state of things a year after the Government of King Charles had made an attack on the Dutch which must almost certainly lead to war, it will be obvious that if England was unprepared it was because her rulers were wanting in foresight, and if the Dutch were not ready it was because they had not been casting about for an excuse for a quarrel.

It was, in truth, not easy to fit out a fleet on the scale required for a struggle with Holland. Parliament was indeed enthusiastic for the war, and could supply the money. The £243,000 and odd required to victual 20,000 men for a year were easily voted, and were not difficult to raise among the merchants of the city, but to get the men and to equip the ships required more than money. The difficulty of finding men was immense. The press, though no doubt a powerful instrument of coercion, did not work satisfactorily in the hands to which it was entrusted. Corruption had already made way so far that the officials entrusted with the duty of levying the sailors were vehemently suspected of taking bribes to allow all who could afford to pay them to escape. It was only the more miserable who were taken. Peter Pett, the Commissioner of the Dockyard at Chatham, wrote to complain at the end of the year of "those pitiful pressed creatures, who are fit for nothing but to fill the ships full of vermin." At about the same time, the Duke of York at Portsmouth was complaining that no men could be found there, and that, unless men could be sent down from the Thames, some of his vessels must be left behind, or all of them must go to sea short-handed. Even when the men had been obtained, it was difficult to keep them. The duke complained that upwards of two hundred men had deserted in a few days. Furious threats of punishment to be inflicted for desertion were issued by the Admiralty, and the seamen were told that they would be hanged as an example if they dared to desert. All this coercion appeared of very little use, and the Government of the king was reduced, like the Council of State of the Commonwealth, to pass Acts for the encouragement of seamen—in other words, to give them promises of security for prize-money. These produced some effect. At the same time, the king suspended the Navigation Acts which compelled a shipowner to man his vessels with Englishmen. This became in time the usual preliminary to a great war, for there were not enough seamen in England to man both the trading and the fighting fleet of the country when this latter was on a war-footing. The Government was so hard pressed that it made great efforts to secure Scotch sailors, but the measure did not prove wholly satisfactory. It was doubtful whether Scotch seamen could be lawfully pressed by the king in England. The war caused serious loss to the trade of the east coast of Scotland with the Continent, and as Scotchmen did not consider themselves concerned in the colonial quarrels of England, they were deeply aggrieved. Numbers of them undoubtedly fought in the Dutch fleets, where their pay was secure, which was far from being the case in the fleet of their own king. However, the Act for the encouragement of seamen produced a good effect, and by the spring of 1665 a really powerful fleet had been got together.

While the main fleets were getting ready at home, hostilities were being pursued abroad. The fleet in the Straits, meaning what we should now call the Mediterranean Squadron, was under the command of Captain Thomas Allen, an old Royalist seaman who had served with Prince Rupert. Allen had succeeded Lawson in command of the force appointed to protect our Levant trade against the Algerine pirates. In this work he had had some success, having on one occasion captured no less than five pirate cruisers. But the approach of war with Holland called him off from this duty. He withdrew from the centre of the Mediterranean and stationed himself in the Straits. Here he lay in wait for the Dutch. Allen's orders were as contradictory as was to be expected, considering that they were given by a Government which wanted to enjoy the incompatible advantages of making war on another, and yet of not declaring itself in open hostility. He was told that he might attack the Dutch men-of-war, or the Smyrna fleet, but not such of their vessels as came past in twos and threes. The meaning of the distinction is not very obvious. Allen also complained that he was not allowed to attack the Dutch in Spanish ports, which throws a light on the opinion entertained by naval officers of the time as to what constituted neutrality. His operations were not at first very successful. While pursuing what he calls a Dutch fleet, and what was no doubt a convoy of merchant ships, he ran several of his squadron of nine ships on shore, where two of them were totally lost. The others were got off, and on the 19th December 1664 Allen was consoled for this misfortune. He fell in with the Dutch Smyrna convoy proceeding home under protection of three men-of-war. It consisted of fourteen sail in all. Allen at once attacked with his remaining seven vessels, sunk two of the Dutch, and captured two of the others. One of the two prizes was a rich vessel from Smyrna. The Dutch vessels which escaped destruction or capture fled into Cadiz. This operation in the later stages of our history would have attracted little or no attention, but it passed at that time for a considerable achievement, and was even, for the greater glory of the nation, very much exaggerated. The fourteen Dutch vessels were swollen out to forty. We were not, in truth, so honestly persuaded of our superiority to the Dutch that we could afford to make light of any success gained against them, or to abstain, it may be added, from mere vulgar boasting.

When, partly by the press and partly by promises, the fleet had at last been manned, it was concentrated in the North Sea under the command of the Duke of York. The duke himself went as Lord High Admiral, having Penn in the flagship as his naval adviser, and Lawson as his second in command of the centre or Red Squadron. The White Squadron was commanded by Prince Rupert, with Myngs and Sansum as his second and third. The Blue Squadron was under the command of Sandwich, with Cuttins and Sir George Ayscue as his subordinates.

It would seem that our fleet was a little farther advanced than the enemy in readiness. In the early days of May the Duke of York sailed over to the coast of Holland, and stationed himself opposite the Texel, in hope of provoking the Dutch to come out to battle, or, if he failed in this purpose, of inflicting serious damage on their commerce. The Dutch did not, however, put to sea at once, and the duke was compelled to return to England by want of provisions. The complaint that the victuals provided would not be sufficient had been heard for months, and nothing gives a more vivid impression of the administrative inefficiency of the time than the fact that it had not produced a remedy. The English fleet returned to the coast of Suffolk to take in stores. While there, it was visited by Court ladies and joined by numbers of volunteers. In later times gentlemen of distinguished family who had offered to lumber the quarter-deck of a flagship in the Channel would probably have been answered in the spirit of the boatswain in The Tempest—"You mar our labour: keep your cabins: you do assist the storm." But in the seventeenth century it was not yet thoroughly understood that a spirited and willing gentleman may be a superfluity in a fight, if he has no training to the business. The fleet of the Duke of York was full of nobles and gentlemen who came to serve a campaign. The business of victualling the fleet was but slowly performed, and the difficulties as to men had not yet been conquered. Sir William Coventry, the Duke of York's secretary, complained that sailors were not to be got, and gave a very sensible reason for the deficiency, namely, that men who could earn £8 a month in a collier—for, under the stress of war, wages had risen to this height—could hardly be expected to be content with 23s. in a king's ship, for which, moreover, they had to wait a year. Small wages, ill-paid, were not made the more acceptable by short allowances of food, by want of beer, and in some cases by the want even of water. "The duchess and her beautiful maids," whose departure from the fleet was noted by Coventry in a serio-comic vein, must have been very glad to find themselves back in London, even though the plague had already made its appearance there.

While the English fleet was painfully filling up with provisions and water, the Dutch had at last got to sea. They were under the command of Baron Opdam de Wassanaer, who had with him Courtenaer, Evertsen, and Cornelius van Tromp. Opdam's first purpose was to cover the return home of Michael de Ruyter with a convoy, then he was to seek out and give battle to the English fleet. The Dutch admiral, though a man of undoubted courage, as he showed in the ensuing action, was not much disposed to engage the English except at an advantage. He was aware of the inferior size of his ships, and also that the military spirit of a number of his captains was not good. Therefore, though he discharged the first part of his duty with success, and even made a great many captures of English merchant vessels, he showed a certain reluctance to force on the battle. Although he was short of men, the Duke of York did not hang back, but stood to sea from Solebay on the 1st of June, when he heard of the approach of Opdam and his capture of some English merchant ships from Hamburg. He had an additional motive for acting with vigour, since the coaling fleet was then on its way south from the northern ports. The capture of this convoy by the Dutch would have caused immense inconvenience to London, and would, moreover, have been a serious misfortune to the duke himself, since it would have deprived him of his best chance of recruiting his fleet by pressing the colliers. The promptitude of our movements averted this misfortune. The coal fleet was met on the 1st of June, and the duke reinforced his ships by taking out the crews. The vessels were probably left at anchor near the coast under the charge of one or two watchmen. The wind was easterly, with a tendency to turn to the S.W. Opdam, distrusting the quality of his own command, was unwilling to engage, but his reluctance to fight was overcome by the emphatic orders of John de Witt. The Grand Pensionary, who was not a man of military training either on sea or land, may have underrated the difficulties which weighed on the mind of Opdam, but as a politician he understood that it is sometimes better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all, and his common-sense must have told him that if the Dutch fleet only fought hard enough, it would certainly make the English pay very dear for their victory. It may be, too, that John de Witt was secretly conscious of sufficient resolution of character to make use of those means of keeping the captains up to their duty which Cornelius de Witt had in vain threatened to set in motion in the previous war. There was much to be said for bringing on a battle in order to find who would do his duty and who would not, provided it was also decided to make a necessary example of such as showed the white feather.

The first great battle of the second Dutch war was fought on the 3rd June between thirty and forty miles S.E. of Lowestoft. On the 1st June the Duke of York had been at anchor at Solebay when he was informed of the appearance of the Dutch to the S.S.E. He at once weighed, and stood farther out, coming to an anchor at nightfall. The wind was easterly. During the whole of the 2nd June the English were working up towards the Dutch, who continued to decline battle; and as the wind, though drawing round to the south, was still more or less easterly, they had the weather-gage, and could not be forced to action. At dark we anchored again. During the night the wind shifted round to the S.S.W., and when the morning came the English were to windward. The duke at once gave the order to bear down on the enemy. Opdam, stimulated by the orders of John de Witt, did not decline battle. He would have done better for Holland if he had attacked while he had the wind in his favour and could have used his fireships. The battle began at half-past three in the morning. Rupert led the van. The duke was in the centre with the Red Squadron, and Sandwich commanded in the rear with the Blue Squadron. It appears that the Dutch now endeavoured to regain the windward position which they had held on the day before, but failed to weather the head of the English line. English and Dutch passed on opposite tacks, we heading to the north, they to the south. When the two fleets had passed, there was a pause in the fire. Then both tacked, which reversed the order of the squadrons so that at the second "charge" the rear or Blue Squadron under Sandwich led the English line. It was now six o'clock. The opponents passed one another again, heading in the reverse of their former direction, the English towards the south, the Dutch to the north, and once more there was a pause in the battle. As each fleet consisted of from eighty to a hundred ships, it must have covered from eight to ten miles of sea, measuring from the leading ship to the last. As the rate of speed was certainly slow, not more than three or three and a half miles, it is easy to understand that each of these passes, or, as they were called at the time, charges, would take two and a half or three hours to perform. Both fleets tacked together for the third pass, and the Dutch had some hope of weathering Rupert's squadron, which was again leading. But the duke with the Red Squadron was so well to windward that he would have weathered them, and they would have been placed between two fires. They therefore fell to leeward of Rupert. As they were passing, the duke tacked his fleet, beginning with the Blue Squadron, and thus brought the English fleet to head in the same direction as the Dutch. The English fleet now pressed on to the attack so fiercely that they baffled the attempt of the Dutch to tack. Opdam fought his own ship bravely till she blew up by the side of the English flagship. Then some of the Dutch ships in the centre flinched from the attack of the duke and his vice-admiral, Lawson. They fairly ran to leeward, thus leaving a gap in the line, through which he broke. The battle now became a furious mêlée, in which the Dutch were completely beaten and fled towards their own coast. Their loss would have been more serious than it was if their retreat had not been covered by Cornelius van Tromp with a seamanship and indomitable courage worthy of his father.

The escape of the enemy was assisted by a mysterious incident in the English flagship. Night fell while the Dutch were still struggling to escape with the English in pursuit. The duke led his fleet in the Royal Charles of eighty guns, and the orders were that the other ships were to follow his light. The battle had cost us less than a thousand men in killed and wounded, but it had been extraordinarily fatal to men of high position, and to those immediately around the duke. Admiral Sansum had been killed. Sir John Lawson was disabled by a musket-shot which shattered the bone of his leg above the knee, inflicting a mortal wound. The Earl of Marlborough, who had been sent out to take possession of Bombay for the king, had also fallen, so had the Earl of Portland. In the flagship the Earl of Falmouth, Lord Muskerry, and Mr. Boyle, gentlemen serving with the duke, were all killed together, by a chain-shot, close to his side. He was drenched in their blood, and wounded in the hand by a fragment of Mr. Boyle's skull. The courage of the Duke of York has been praised even by his enemies, and, although Swift recorded the cruel sneer that he made a cowardly popish king, we are not entitled to doubt his bravery. Yet, the horror of such a scene as this, coming on the top of the fatigues of the battle and the anxiety of the preceding weeks, may pardonably have been something too much for a man who was not hardened by experience to scenes of blood and conflict. It is certain that he left the deck on the persuasion of the officers of his household. It is no less certain that, shortly afterwards, one of his gentlemen, Brouncker by name, came up from the cabin to John Harman, captain of the flagship, who remained on the quarter-deck, with the order to shorten sail. After more or less hesitation, Harman obeyed. Sail was shortened in the flagship, and, as the other vessels were strictly ordered not to pass the admiral's light, the English fleet fell behind, and the Dutch escaped into the Texel. The truth of this incident was afterwards wrapped up in a cloud of contradictions, and of what we are justified in asserting must in part have been lies. The duke denied that he gave Brouncker the order, and finally dismissed him from his service. Brouncker, who was of infamous character, was capable of misusing the duke's name, but it is strange that if he did he was not sooner punished. The explanation that he was valuable to his master for services it is not well to record, is as nearly discreditable to the duke's character as want of firmness could have been in the reaction natural after such a terrible experience. The truth about the Duke of York is perhaps that his courage was of the kind defined by Marryat as negative. He had the nerve to face a foreseen danger when it came in his way, but not that "springing valour" which can attack and adventure.

The loss inflicted upon the Dutch in this first great battle of the war was much exaggerated in the excitement of the victory. It was said that almost all the Dutch officers had been killed, and the number of vessels taken or burnt was greatly over-estimated. In truth, the loss of the Dutch in principal officers was less than our own. The total number of prizes brought into Harwich was fifteen, and it is doubtful if, when we add the vessels sunk and burnt, their total loss much exceeded twenty. Their historians put it far lower. It was more painful to the feelings of a patriotic Dutchman than any mere material loss could have been, that the defeat was undeniably due at least as much to the palpable misconduct of some among the captains as to the superiority of the English in the quality of their ships and the skill of their leaders. It had been noticed in the previous war that some of the Dutch captains employed in their fleet, though no doubt good seamen, were wanting in military ardour. This experience was repeated in the battle of the 3rd of June. It provoked John de Witt to take very stern measures. Four of the captains who had deserted their posts in the line of battle were shot for cowardice. Others whose guilt was less flagrant were cashiered. Unfriendly critics of the Dutch have represented that these measures were taken merely for the purpose of throwing the responsibility of defeat on individual officers, but the misconduct of some of the captains in the battle of the 3rd of June is undeniable, and it was of the kind which by the customs of all nations deserves death. John de Witt obtained for himself a commission from the States General to join the fleet as deputy. His numerous enemies have founded on this an accusation of foolish vanity. Professional judges, both seamen and soldiers, are naturally impatient of the presence of a civilian in the midst of warlike operations, but there are times when the interference of a representative of the State is of immense value. If he comes to hamper the admiral or general he is no doubt a mere nuisance, but if his purpose is to assist the commander to enforce discipline, and to stimulate him to vigorous exertions, then the deputy may supply an element of much-needed vigour. If John de Witt had been a prince, his conduct would have been thought heroic, and it did instil a spirit of decision into the handling of the Dutch fleet, which had hitherto been wanting. It is possible that the Grand Pensionary might have been less successful if he had not found a commander-in-chief for the fleet who gave him effectual assistance. This was Michael de Ruyter. Cornelius van Tromp considered himself entitled to the place. The disappointment he felt at the nomination of De Ruyter deepened his hatred of the Loevenstein Party. He conceived a peculiar animosity to De Witt, which he afterwards showed in a manner highly dishonourable to himself, by publicly gloating over the corpses of the Grand Pensionary and his brother Cornelius, when they had been horribly murdered by a mob. He did not, however, refuse to serve, and the Government, though well aware of his feelings, did not venture to remove him from command.

The attention given to the war on the part of the English Government was not so energetic as to interfere with the measures taken by John de Witt to improve the discipline of the Dutch fleet. The Duke of York did not stay long on the coast of Holland. His fleet, in truth, had suffered so severely in the spars and rigging as to be in great need of a refit. When it was found that the Dutch had contrived to take refuge in the Texel, the English made no effort to establish a blockade, but returned immediately to their own coasts. The ships were brought back to the ports between Lowestoft and Harwich, and refitted without bringing them into the Thames. Within a month they were again ready for sea, but did not sail under the command of the Duke of York. It is to be noted that, in spite of the reputation he has retained as an admiral, the Duke of York's services at sea during war were scanty and erratic. In this case, for instance, after commanding in a successful battle, he was suddenly removed from the command. It is difficult to believe that this was done wholly against his own wish. He and his brother the king were not always on the best terms, but it is not to be believed that Charles would have compelled his brother to come on shore if the Duke of York had been really anxious to stay at sea. Much was made of the fact that he was heir to the crown, and it is said that the duchess laid strict injunctions on the duke's servants not to let him engage too far, and that it was her influence with the king that prevented her husband from going to sea again; but the world has generally thought lightly of the courage of a fighting man who is kept out of danger by his wife. If his relationship to the king made his life too valuable to be risked, he ought never to have gone to sea at all. He was succeeded in the command of the fleet by the Earl of Sandwich, who was to have been associated with Prince Rupert, but the prince was reluctant to share authority, and the sole command was left in the hands of the earl.

Sandwich stood over to the coast of Holland, but found the Dutch not yet ready to put to sea. The States General had put an embargo upon commerce, partly to facilitate the manning of their fleet, but partly also to diminish the risk of loss by capture. A blockade of the Texel was therefore far from lucrative; and as Charles's Government was, as usual, in great straits for money, Sandwich was inclined to entertain any suggestion for making a more profitable use of his force. The Court was equally well inclined to approve of arty enterprise which was likely to produce plunder. At this moment a considerable temptation was thrown in its way. Although the Dutch had put an embargo on the outward-bound trade, they had naturally not attempted to stop the return home of their convoys from the East Indies and the Levant. The vessels belonging to these two fleets had only been instructed to avoid the dangerous route up Channel, and to return home by the north of Scotland. Twenty vessels engaged in these two lucrative branches of the Dutch trade were reported to be lying in the harbour of Bergen in Norway. They had taken refuge in this port probably in obedience to a warning from Holland. Norway was then a part of the dominions of the Crown of Denmark, which was in alliance with Holland, and had indeed owed its escape from destruction by the Swedes, to Dutch intervention, only a few years before this time. Gratitude is proverbially a motive of little or no power with politicians. The then King of Denmark did not consider that his debt to the Dutch made it obligatory upon him to abstain from endeavouring to profit by their misfortunes. A scheme for plundering the ships at Bergen was drawn up. Whether it was suggested by the English envoy, Sir Gilbert Talbot, to the king, or by the king to Sir Gilbert, is not quite certain, and it is not perhaps a matter of much importance. The essential fact is, that a scheme was made for plundering the Dutch, and that the host with whom they had taken refuge was a party to it. Sandwich sailed north. He seems to have wished to be quite sure of the co-operation of the King of Denmark. Indeed, if it was intended that he was to sail into Bergen and attack vessels under the protection of Danish batteries, it was obviously desirable to be sure beforehand of the co-operation of the King of Denmark's officers. But the king, though perfectly ready to share in the plunder of the Dutch, had a gentlemanly disinclination to write himself down a rogue. He refused to allow a written agreement to be made, and insisted that the scheme should be carried out on an honourable but vague understanding. Sandwich can hardly have liked his work, for it was too probable that if the plan failed, the King of Denmark would deny his own responsibility; and if he also found it useful to vindicate himself to the Dutch by professing to quarrel with England, the whole blame would be thrown on the English admiral. It was also within the knowledge of Sandwich that the Dutch would make a resolute effort to bring their fleet off safe, and that De Ruyter had been appointed to the command. The English admiral must have been perfectly well aware that his Dutch opponent would not fail through want of faculty or energy. If the Dutch ships at Bergen were to be seized, the work must be done at once.

The result might have been more profitable to the English if Sandwich had resolved to attack immediately, and had directed the enterprise himself. Whether because he thought that the arrival of De Ruyter was the greater danger, or because he also was anxious to provide himself with a scapegoat in case of failure, he entrusted the direction of operations to his subordinate, Sir Thomas Teddiman. Teddiman sailed into Bergen, accompanied by a Mr. Clifford, who had been sent from Copenhagen by Talbot with the assurances that the King of Denmark was friendly to the venture, though he did not care to take an open part in it. This agent was landed to inform the Danish governor at Bergen that the English were ready to perform their part in the act of brigandage approved by his august master. The governor was aware of what was expected of him, but had not yet received sufficiently definite instructions from his superior, the Danish viceroy at Christiania. He asked the English to wait for a little. Teddiman was not disposed to wait; perhaps he had very small confidence in persons who showed such a manifest disposition to roguery as the Danish officials, and perhaps he was afraid of the arrival of Michael de Ruyter. He decided to attack the Dutch the next day. In the meantime the convoy had taken vigorous measures for its own safety. Great part of its goods had been landed on the guarantee of the Danish governor. As the water of the harbour at Bergen is very deep, the Dutch had been able to draw their ships up close to the shore, and it was the more difficult to attack them because the port is broken by masses of rock. If the Danes had co-operated actively, the Dutch would have been at the mercy of the associates, but the governor did not render any assistance to Teddiman. Among persons engaged in carrying out a piece of brigandage, it is not unreasonable to suspect the presence of the mutual distrust common among thieves. It may well be that when the Danish governor found Teddiman attacking in such haste, he may have thought that the English meant to act without his consent, in order to have an excuse for carrying off all the booty; and it would indeed be rash to assert that he was wrong. The upshot of it all was, that when the English fell on, they were received with a hot and damaging fire, not only from the Dutch ships, but from the Danish batteries. In the end the English were driven out to sea. Edward Montagu, a cousin of the Earl of Sandwich, and several captains were killed in the fight.

On the following day the viceroy arrived from Christiania. This official appeared to regret what had happened, and endeavoured to persuade Sandwich to renew the attack, promising that on this occasion he should not want for effective assistance. At the same time, however, he suggested that before the English carried off their plunder they should make a fair division with the Danes. Now the first scheme had been that the whole was to be carried off by the English, and that the King of Denmark was to receive his share from the King of England. Reflection had brought the Danes to the judicious conclusion that it was much safer to get the plunder into their own hands directly. But Sandwich had no orders to make this arrangement, and may have perhaps begun to doubt whether the Danes really meant to help him. He sailed from the coast of Norway, and so that episode of the second Dutch war came to an end.

As Sandwich stood to the south on his way back to England, where he anchored at Solebay, he crossed the Dutch fleet steering to the coast of Norway to bring off the ships at Bergen. De Ruyter was in command, and John de Witt accompanied him. They arrived off Bergen at an exceedingly convenient moment for their countrymen. The Danish governor had come to the conclusion that there was no reason why he should not do for himself what he had been told to do with the co-operation of the English. He attempted to extort a hundred thousand crowns from the Dutch by threats to sink them with his cannon unless they paid him this amount of blackmail. The arrival of De Ruyter, and the presence in the fleet of the greatest statesman in Holland, brought this greedy ruffian to his senses. The convoy was allowed to go out, and the Danish governor was left to console himself by seizing a few of the guns which the Dutch had landed on the shore for their protection. De Witt turned homeward to Holland with his convoy. In the early days of September the weather became stormy, the fleets were scattered, a portion of the Dutch convoy fell into our hands, but the bulk got safe back to Holland.

It was now September, and the time was approaching when, according to the practice of the seventeenth century, it was no longer safe to keep the great ships at sea. The fleet then must shortly be laid up, and could no longer serve to take Dutch convoys, even if any had been coming home so late in the year. On the whole, the result of the summer's fighting had not been satisfactory. It is true that we had gained an undoubted victory over the enemy, but his fleet had not been destroyed. Amid the ringing of bells and public rejoicings, the more sagacious men in the employment of the English Government were well aware that the Dutch would soon be at sea again. The prizes taken from the enemy had fallen much short of the expectations of the Court. In spite of large grants from Parliament, the king was greatly embarrassed. He had hoped that the war would support itself, but this expectation, which has seldom been realised, was disappointed in this case also. Sandwich was not well received on his return, and among the courtiers there was a general inclination to accuse him of want of energy. Sir William Coventry, who, as the Duke of York's secretary and a Commissioner of the Navy, had many means of securing a hearing, was one of the most severe of the earl's critics. A mistake made by Sandwich on his return home laid him open to the attacks of his enemies. His flag-officers made him a petition that "in regard of their having continued all the summer upon the seas with great fatigue, and been engaged in many actions of danger, that he would distribute amongst them some reward out of the Indian ships."

The Indian ships were that part of the convoy from Bergen which had fallen into his hands in consequence of the storm. Sandwich thought the request reasonable, and wrote a letter to the king, asking for his approbation. With his usual good-nature, Charles consented. But before his approval reached Sandwich, the admiral had distributed as much of the coarser goods as were theoretically valued at £1000 for each flag-officer, and had taken £2000 worth for himself. Whatever the motives of Sandwich may have been, his action was undeniably illegal, and was not less ill-advised. It was a standing and well-known rule that no prize taken from the enemy was to be touched until it had been condemned by the Admiralty, and that a distribution of the shares was to be made on a regular system. Even the king's personal consent would not have justified Sandwich in breaking the law. But the way in which he acted was sure not only to embroil him with the Admiralty, but to arouse a very natural indignation among the captains and the seamen. They said that the prizes were being plundered for the exclusive benefit of the admiral and flag-officers, and it cannot be denied that on the face of it they were right. The merchants interested in the East India Company were no less indignant than the captains and seamen. They complained that the Indian goods distributed to the flag-officers would be thrown on the market at a cheap rate, and would spoil the sale of those that they themselves had brought from India. The outcry on all hands was loud, and the king was beset with complaints. According to the regular practice of all his family, he threw over the servant of whose action he had just approved so soon as it seemed likely to cause him any personal inconvenience. The goods distributed to the flag-officers were seized at the ports by orders of Albemarle, who, partly by virtue of his office as Lord General, and partly on the ground of the immense services he had rendered at the Restoration, exercised a vast irregular influence during the early years of King Charles's reign. The Duke of York, who, as Lord High Admiral, had good ground for considering himself personally insulted by an insolent intrusion on the rights of his office, was furious. Sandwich was dismissed from his command, and had no further employment in this war, though he retained sufficient influence with the king to be appointed to diplomatic missions abroad.

This is the most favourable version of the story for Sandwich, and is, even so, an ugly symptom of the dry-rot beginning to spread throughout every branch of the public service. The sailors of the fleet were months in arrear of their pay. The victualling service was thoroughly bad. Even when food was supplied, it was of most inferior quality, and there were loud complaints that, such as it was, it was not always forthcoming. When Sandwich returned from the coast of Norway to Solebay, his provisions were exhausted, although he had only been a few weeks at sea. At such a time a zealous commander-in-chief would surely not have seized the opportunity to enrich himself irregularly. Sandwich, judged by the standard of the time, was not a dishonourable man, yet we see that he went out of his way to grasp at a little money. His recorded conversations with Pepys leave no doubt that Sandwich was distinctly influenced by a desire to fill his own pocket. He told his kinsman that it was better to take the money, and then get the king's consent to keep it, than to trust to obtaining what the king had promised he should have. Another remark of his throws a curious light on the morality of the time. He told Pepys that the King of Denmark was "a blockhead," for not seizing the opportunity of plundering the Dutch fleet at Bergen, since he owed the States a great sum of money. These were the principles of a swindler, and a man who took such a very lax view with regard to the conduct of others was not likely to be severe to himself. As a matter of fact, we learn again from Pepys that the £2000 worth of goods the earl had adjudged to himself were sold to a London merchant for £5000. When, then, Pepys observed, as he did about this time, that, however poor the king might be, his principal officers always took care to provide money for themselves, he was making a very accurate remark on the morality of the time. It is not wonderful, when we consider the example that was set them, that the captains and seamen, who had raised such an outcry over the favours shown to the flag-officers, were themselves accused of plundering the prizes. Plunder, in fact, was the general rule of the service. It raged from top to bottom. The men at the head enriched themselves by misapplications of money on a large scale. The subordinates pilfered and wasted. It follows, as a matter of course, that the money voted by Parliament for the war, which in the hands of the Commonwealth's Council of State or of Cromwell would have been more than sufficient, failed entirely to meet the expenses of the second Dutch war. Neither need we doubt that Pepys was very well informed when he said that the Court looked forward to another meeting of Parliament with reluctance, and stood in some awe of the wrath that members were likely to feel upon discovering what had become of their money.

The difficulties which the Government had created for itself by mismanagement were materially increased by the plague, which raged all through the year 1665. It reached not only the dockyards on the Thames, but the ports on the east coast, the Channel, and even the fleet. Between the disorganisation produced by the great pest and the vices of its own administration, the Crown was all but within reach of bankruptcy by the close of the year. At harvest-time the workmen in the dockyards had been so long left without pay that numbers of them went into the fields to work for the farmers in order to escape starvation.

The winter months suspended the operations of the war, but with the return of spring efforts were made to get the fleet to sea. As Sandwich had been discredited, and since the Duke of York was so ready to co-operate with those who were so concerned about his personal safety, it was necessary to find another leader. The king must have been allowed to have made the best choice he could when he put his fleet into the hands of Monk. The Lord General had a reputation and an influence which made it certain that he would be obeyed by all. He had much experience of war at sea, and he had the energy of a great commander. By desperate efforts a fleet of seventy-seven sail was collected in the Downs in the course of May. Rupert was joined in command with Monk. The prince had shown a decided reluctance to serve with Sandwich, but he could not refuse to act with the Lord General.

The Dutch had exerted themselves strenuously to meet the English on equal terms, and a fleet of from eighty to a hundred ships was collected and ready for sea under Michael de Ruyter. Our enemy had some faint prospect of assistance from France in this campaign. In 1662 John de Witt had succeeded in making a convention with France, by which the two countries agreed to help one another in case either of them was attacked by a third Power. The case contemplated by the treaty had arisen when England declared war on Holland in 1665. The States General called on Louis XIV. to fulfil his obligations. The French king shuffled and hung back. He hated the Dutch, partly because they were Republicans, and partly because he knew them to be the most formidable obstacle in the way of the realisation of his plans for the conquest of the Spanish Netherlands. At last he could no longer evade making at least a show of fulfilling his promises without absolute disgrace, and he therefore promised to send a squadron to co-operate with the Dutch against the English.

When, therefore, Monk began to collect his command in May, he had to face the possibility that he would be called upon to deal with the united Dutch and French fleets. The movements of Michael de Ruyter were consistent with the supposition that he was manœuvring to join the French. He stood across to the coast of England, and kept in the neighbourhood of the Straits of Dover. A rumour that the French fleet was coming up Channel worked so strongly on the fears of the Court, that it was induced to take a measure which might well have proved fatal to the English fleet. Rupert was despatched into the Channel with twenty ships selected from the other squadrons, to look for the French, and Monk's force was thus reduced to fifty-seven vessels.

Some changes in the commands were made necessary by this separation. Sir Christopher Myngs, who had been vice-admiral of the Red Squadron, accompanied Rupert as second in command. The ships which remained with Monk were still divided into three squadrons. Sir Joseph Jordan succeeded Myngs as vice-admiral of the Red, and his rear-admiral was Sir Robert Holmes. The Blue Squadron was commanded by Sir George Ayscue as admiral, with Sir William Berkeley as vice, and John Harman as rear. Sir Jeremiah Smith was admiral, Sir Thomas Teddiman vice-admiral, and Captain Utber rear-admiral of the White.

This division of the English fleet seems to have taken place just before a spell of thick weather and heavy wind from the S.W., which forced the Dutch off the coast. Being afraid that the wind would sweep him back too far into the North Sea, De Ruyter anchored on the shallows of the Flemish coast somewhere between Ostend and Dunkirk. This was at the very end of May. On the last day of the month Monk was at sea, on his way from the Downs to the Gunfleet, when his look-out frigates brought him the news that the Dutch were at anchor in his neighbourhood. Monk, with the instinct of a general, saw at once that, being superior to him in number, and in his immediate neighbourhood, the Dutch might force on a battle to his disadvantage if they once got the weather-gage. The then direction of the wind from the S.W. gave the weather-gage to him, and, with a boldness which would have horrified the admirals of the next two generations, he decided to fall on while it was still in his power to select his point of attack, and thus to compensate for his general inferiority of numbers by concentrating a superior force at a given place.

The battles which followed make up among them the so-called "Four Days' Battle" of the Annus Mirabilis, 1666. The first encounter took place somewhere between the Flemish coast from Ostend to Dunkirk on one side, and the northern end of the Downs on the other. The Dutch had anchored in three divisions some little distance at sea. They lay stretching from S.W. to N.E. The south-westerly squadron was that of Van Tromp; next to him, towards the N.E., was the division of De Ruyter; and farther still to the N.E., the squadron of Jan Evertszoon. As the wind was in the S.W., De Ruyter and Evertszoon were to the leeward of Tromp. This disposition afforded Monk exactly the opportunity he sought. Coming down from the W. or N.W., on Friday the 1st June, he directed his attack on the squadron of Van Tromp. The English fleet was on the starboard tack—that is to say, it had the wind on the right side, and was heading to the S.E. It passed well clear of the centre of the Dutch line, and therefore at a greater distance from the squadron of Evertszoon, in order to fall with all its strength on the ships of Tromp. The English line was in beautiful order, but, as was commonly the case, the ships in the rear had a tendency to straggle. The distance between them and the leading vessel was so great, that when the ships at the head of Monk's line were abreast of Tromp, those at the rear were barely visible to observers on the decks of the Dutch. Tromp, on being attacked, immediately cut his cables and stood to the south. The battle began at about three o'clock in the afternoon, and for some time the two fleets ran on cannonading one another. But their course, if followed far enough, would have stranded both of them near Dunkirk. Both Tromp and Monk therefore reversed their course almost simultaneously, and, instead of standing to the S., turned towards the N. or N.N.E. In the course of these movements the lines had come very close together, and the English, acting on their usual rule of pressing an attack home, had stood down on the Dutch. Several English ships broke through the Dutch line, and among them were the two admirals, Sir William Berkeley and Harman of the Blue Division. Berkeley was the brother of the Lord Falmouth killed in the battle of the 3rd of June in the previous year. His vessel, the Swiftsure, being cut off for a time from all English support, was attacked by several Dutch ships at once and overpowered. She surrendered, but not until she was completely cut to pieces and the admiral had fallen. He had been struck in the heat of the action by a musket bullet in the throat, and, staggering into the captain's cabin, fell dead on the table, where he was discovered lifeless and covered by his blood when the Dutch took possession of his ship. Harman, who had been in equal danger, fought his way through. His vessel caught fire, and a panic spread among the crew. Harman, who looks in his portrait by Lely a man of a singularly fierce type, restored order by his example and a vigorous use of his sword. The fire was got under, but the fall of a topsail yard broke the admiral's leg. He did not leave the deck, and, when hailed by a Dutch officer to surrender, only answered, "No, no; it has not come to that yet." The fire of his broadside was severe enough to make the Dutchmen sheer off, and Harman rejoined his fleet. As the English fleet stood back, De Ruyter had worked sufficiently far to windward to bring his ships into action. Joining with Van Tromp, he made an attack with superior numbers on the end of Monk's line. It was here that the fight was hottest, and the loss most severe. The last of the twilight had come before fire ceased, but as the darkness fell the Dutch could see Monk leading his line, little diminished in number, and still in excellent order, seaward to the west.