Although he was hampered by the reluctance of his Parliament to vote him money, and by the growing unpopularity of the French alliance among Englishmen, the king made an effort in the following year to push the war against Holland. Six thousand soldiers were collected at Yarmouth, to form an invading army ready to be landed on the coast of Zeeland or North Holland, in order to attack the Republic from behind, while the French troops were pressing on it from the Rhine. Before it was safe to attempt to land these men on the Dutch coast, it was absolutely necessary to dispose of the fleet of De Ruyter. The crushing burden thrown upon them by the French invasion made it hard indeed for the Dutch to maintain an adequate force at sea. If they could have devoted the whole resources of the State to the naval war, they might perhaps have been able to meet the French and English on equal terms. But this was far from being the case. Their resources did not do more than enable them to fit out such a fleet as might, "by the help of God and a good admiral," prevent the enemy from landing an army on their coast. Happily for them, and for England also, since the success of King Charles's mean personal policy would have been the establishment of France in overwhelming strength in the Netherlands, the good admiral was not wanting to Holland. Michael de Ruyter was admirably fitted for the work he had now to do. He had to fight a defensive campaign. A rash man might have yielded to the strain, and have risked the existence of Holland by fighting an imprudent battle. But De Ruyter, though he was one of the few commanders who grew bolder as he grew old, was never rash. On the other hand, a timid man might have been oppressed by the responsibility of his position, and might have been reluctant to fight, even when a fair opportunity presented itself. De Ruyter had just the needful combination of cool, self-possessed caution which made him refrain from blindly rushing at a threatening danger, and of intrepidity which nerved him to strike hard when he saw that a blow could be successfully delivered. He was the last man in the world to endeavour to behave after the fashion recommended by our own Admiral Herbert some twenty years later—namely, to get behind a sandbank, and trust to the effect which the knowledge that the fleet was "in being" was likely to have on the mind of an enemy. Nor was it in his nature to attack feebly when the time for fighting had come. Therefore it was that he stood vigilantly on guard during the summer of 1673 amid the shallows of the Dutch coast, watching the operations of the superior allied fleet, leaving them unmolested when nothing was to be gained by attack, and striking, when the time for blows had come, with might and main. The success he achieved may be regarded by us not only with the admiration due to a valiant and skilful enemy, but with something not remote from patriotic approval. He won, it is true, against an English fleet, but his victory was gained in the real interest of England.

It was obviously the interest of the Dutch to cripple the naval force of England before it could be again united with that of France. Since it was impossible for them, with their then diminished resources, to do this by being beforehand with a powerful fleet, they resolved to make the attempt to effect the purpose indirectly. A scheme, of which De Ruyter himself can hardly have approved, was formed to block the approaches of the Thames by sinking heavily-laden ships in the Channel. With this purpose in view, De Ruyter came on our coast early in May, with a force of 31 ships of the line, 14 frigates, and 18 fireships. He came as far as the Gunfleet, but no attempt was made to put the plan into operation. The naval preparations of the English Government had been timely. It had a sufficient force lying outside the banks to oppose De Ruyter's squadron. When this was known to be the case, the Dutch admiral fell back to his own coast. The States General, with the approval of the Prince of Orange, decided on making no more attempts at offensive warfare for the present. The only fleet Holland could afford to equip was stationed at Schooneveldt, a good anchorage between shallows on the coast of Zeeland. Here it was ordered to lie, and keep watch on the movements of Prince Rupert.

Shortly after De Ruyter had returned to the coast of his country, the French squadron arrived in the Downs. It was still under the command of d'Estrées, and consisted of 27 ships of the line and some smaller vessels. The strength of the English fleet was 54 ships of the line, and it was divided into two squadrons—the Red, under the command of Rupert, and the Blue, of which Sir Edward Spragge was now admiral, in succession to Sandwich. The Dutch fleet had been raised to a strength of 55 ships of the line, 14 frigates, 25 fireships, 14 yachts, and 7 galliots—115 vessels in all. But more than half of these were small. De Ruyter had only 55 battleships to oppose to the 81 of the allies. The odds were very long. No English admiral has ever had to fight against such a superiority of real force. Although bad administration and the example of the Court had done much to injure the discipline of our fleet, it was still far from being as inferior in efficiency to the Dutch as the Spanish and French fleets of Nelson's time were to us. In the allied fleet the English were just equal to the Dutch, leaving the whole French squadron to give the allies a superiority of power. The French were still inexperienced, and for that, together with other reasons, they proved of little use in the campaign. Yet they were certainly not so inferior to the Dutch as the Spaniards of the Great War were to ourselves, and De Ruyter cannot have known that they would not exert themselves fully.

So soon as the whole allied force was collected in the Thames, it stood over to the Dutch coast. The conduct of the French at the battle of Solebay had filled the English seamen with suspicion, and it was decided to put them on this occasion where they could not go off on a tack by themselves. Prince Rupert took the van with the Red Squadron. The French, who still formed the White Squadron, were placed in the centre, with the Blue Squadron under Sir Edward Spragge in the rear. Our ally was thus sandwiched between two trustworthy English forces. De Ruyter was found at his anchorage at Schooneveldt. Relying, as he reasonably might, on his superior numbers, Prince Rupert decided to make an attempt to draw the enemy out to the open sea, where he could be crushed. A light squadron of thirty vessels, including eight French, was sent in with eight fireships to attack the Dutch at anchor. The wind was from the S.W., and the occasion appeared favourable. Rupert's effort to draw the enemy proved successful in a way he had not foreseen. De Ruyter was not the man to lie in a hole and to think that it was enough to preserve himself in being, in order to make himself felt by the enemy. He could rely on the zeal of his squadron. A vehement letter of appeal from the Prince of Orange to the officers and men on the fleet had been read on every ship. It called on them to remember that the very existence of their country was now at stake, to throw aside all selfish care for their own lives, and to sink all personal animosities for the sake of Holland, This appeal to the patriotic feeling which is profound in the Dutch heart had been becomingly answered. De Ruyter had set his fleet a good example by putting his personal grievances aside. The Stadtholder had appointed Cornelius van Tromp to succeed Van Ghent. Tromp was an ardent partisan of the House of Orange, and was very popular with the seamen, but he was no friend to Michael de Ruyter. His disobedience in the last battle of the previous war had almost caused a crushing disaster, and there had been an open quarrel between the two. When, however, Tromp was named by the Stadtholder as third in command of the fleet, the admiral promised to forgive what had passed. Tromp was ordered by the prince to obey his admiral, and the two were publicly reconciled. As no more is heard of the insubordination of Tromp, he must be supposed to have been sincere in the promises he gave, not to remember the stinging rebuke of De Ruyter in the former war.

When, on the 28th May, the allied light squadron was seen to be approaching, the Dutch prepared to meet the attack by a counter-blow. Their anchors were apeak, and they were ready to get under way at a moment's notice. They stood out on the port tack to the N.W., Tromp's division, which was the rear according to the formal division of the fleet, being the van in the action. De Ruyter was in the centre, and Bankert commanded in the rear. So prompt was the action of the Dutch that the allied light squadron had not time to run back to the protection of the fleet before the enemy was close on it. It fled in disorder and with loss. The allied commanders were no less completely surprised by the vigour of De Ruyter's counter-stroke. They had calculated that the enemy would be too frightened to take the offensive. They thought they had to deal with a terrified opponent, who would have to be slowly and with difficulty worried out of his lurking-places. Under this delusion they lay at anchor in some disorder. When, then, De Ruyter stood out to attack them, they had to get under way in a hurry, and their line was badly formed when the enemy was upon them. Both fleets stood out to sea on the port tack, heading to N.W. The Blue Division was hotly engaged by Tromp, and De Ruyter pressed hard on the French in the centre. Bankert was opposed to Rupert with the Red Squadron in the rear. The fight was hottest in the van and centre. The Red Division was comparatively little engaged. According to the French accounts, d'Estrées, seeing that Rupert was not pressing hard enough on the squadron of Bankert, ordered some of his own ships to bear down on the Dutch rear, and they succeeded in cutting it off from the centre. Then De Ruyter, seeing what had happened, tacked with his division, and, running through the French ships, rejoined Bankert. His next move, according to the same authority, was to turn again to the north and follow Tromp, who in the meantime had continued on the first course engaged with Sir Edward Spragge. It was the fortune of these two to be pitted against one another in all the battles of this campaign. The battle ended in the evening without decisive result. De Ruyter anchored near West Kappel, and the allied fleet stood over to the coast of England. This was but a lame and impotent conclusion after the vigorous movement with which the French credit themselves. One suspects that the Dutch version is nearer the truth—namely, that Bankert, finding himself not severely pressed by Rupert, stood on to assist De Ruyter against the White Squadron, and that the allies were timidly handled throughout. Certainly, with eighty-one ships and the weather-gage they might well have done more against fifty-five enemies to leeward.

The Dutch admiral may perhaps have hoped to do sufficient injury to a portion of his enemy's fleet to induce him to return home in order to refit. But the allies continued on the coast, and De Ruyter, who must by this time have seen clearly that he was not called upon to contend against great energy or faculty, decided not to wait to be attacked. Seven days after the battle of the 28th of May, on the 4th of June, he had a favourable wind from the N.E. The deputies of the States accompanied their fleets as well as their armies, but were apparently less timid when sea-fighting was concerned than they were often found to be on shore. Though the odds were long against him, the field deputies gave their consent when De Ruyter asked leave to attack. On the afternoon of the 4th he bore down from windward. As on the former occasion, the fleets engaged headed to the N.W., with the rear divisions in the van. The French were no longer in the centre of the allied fleet, but had resumed the van, the place they had held at the battle of Solebay, which, as the fleets engaged, was in fact in rear of the line. In this, as in all his battles, De Ruyter aimed intelligently at concentrating on a part of the enemy's line, in order to counterbalance a general inferiority in numbers. The brunt of the fighting fell on the two English divisions, the Red and the Blue. Our own historians of the war, who for slovenliness in the use of terms, vagueness of description, and mendacity of assertion are nearly unequalled, maintain that the advantage rested with the allies. Rupert, they say, artfully endeavoured to draw the Dutch off their own coast by slanting to leeward. The substantial facts covered by this plausible apology are that the Dutch and English cannonaded one another until dark; that the English suffered as severely as the enemy, that the French did nothing, and that on the following day the Red and Blue Squadrons were found to have suffered so much that the allies returned to the Thames to refit. Tromp went back to his own coast, having gained the fruits of victory. He had driven a fleet, more than half again as strong as his own, off the coast of the Low Countries, had stopped an invasion, and had cleared the road for trade.

The utter failure of Rupert and d'Estrées to sweep the Dutch fleet out of the road might have convinced the English Court that the time had not come for an invasion of Holland from the sea. Yet, unless something was done, the war would soon appear as ridiculous to Englishmen as it was already odious. The ships were refitted, 4000 soldiers were embarked in the men-of-war and 2000 others in transports. Then the whole force was sent back to the coast of Holland, in order, apparently, to try whether, since it had been found impossible to beat the Dutch fleet first and land the soldiers afterwards, it might not be possible to do both things at once.

On the 23rd of July the allies were again on the coasts of the Low Countries, about the mouth of the Maas. From this point they prowled along as far as the islands beyond North Holland and then back again. De Ruyter had been reinforced till he had under his command about seventy ships of the line. As the English and French had also been strengthened till the first numbered sixty and the second thirty battleships, the superiority of the allies was still considerable. True to his policy of not fighting rashly, De Ruyter followed the enemy as they sailed to and fro, keeping his own ships in the dangerous banks and shallows, where the sharper-keeled French and English vessels dared not follow. But he was still resolute to strike so soon as he had a fair opportunity. It came on the 11th of August, when both fleets were close to the Texel. On the 10th the wind was blowing from the sea, and Rupert pressed in as close as he dared. During the night De Ruyter slipped between the allies and the land and anchored near Camperdown. In the morning the wind had shifted to the S.E., giving the weather-gage to the Dutch. De Ruyter had the permission of the States to give battle, and he came down with his seventy against the ninety of the allies. Both fleets were heading to the south, on the port tack. The French were now actually in the van. The Red Division was in the centre, under the direct command of Rupert, with John Harman as vice-admiral and Chicheley as rear-admiral. Sir Edward Spragge commanded the rear, with Kempthorne as second, and the Earl of Ossory, the son of the Duke of Ormonde, who served as a rear-admiral not because he was a seaman, but because he was a gallant gentleman, for whom the king had a liking, and the son of a great noble. In the Dutch fleet Bankert led the first division, De Ruyter was at his place in the centre, and Tromp was once more opposed to his old foe Spragge in the rear. The plan of the Dutch admiral was identical with that which he had followed in the previous battles of the war. He decided to concentrate his efforts on the Blue and Red Squadrons. He did not do the French the honour to deal with them seriously. Ten vessels were told off under Bankert to watch them, and then De Ruyter fell with the sixty left to him on the sixty English. The battle broke into three separate engagements. Bankert engaged the French at some little distance. Being much more numerous than their opponents, it was in the power of the French to stretch ahead, to make the leading ships turn to windward, and so put Bankert between two fires. They made the attempt to carry out this obvious movement. The leading subdivision of the White Squadron, commanded by M. de Martel, turned to windward and gained a position from which it could have fallen on Bankert. But the intrepid and steady Dutchman was not minded to remain passive till he was taken between two fires. He put his helm up and ran through the French ships still to leeward of him. The French say that the fighting at this moment was hot, and that they almost succeeded in destroying Bankert's vessel with a fireship. It would have been unspeakably disgraceful to them if there had not been hot fighting; as it is, their inferiority to either the Dutch or English seamen in the contending fleets is demonstrated by Bankert's success in carrying out a movement which could never have succeeded against a skilful enemy. It is likely that the heat of the action was felt much more acutely by the French than the Dutch. Bankert's captains must have been very much wanting to themselves if they did not rake the French ships as they passed through with tremendous effect.

When Bankert broke through the French fleet, he found Rupert and De Ruyter to the northward and a little to the leeward of him. The English admiral had not waited quietly for the enemy to bear down upon him. He sheered off a little towards the sea, for the purpose of drawing the Dutch out. The intention was to entice them to such a distance from their own coasts, that they might not be able to run back speedily and take refuge among the shallows. It was a somewhat poor-spirited device, since the most effectual way of preventing the Dutch from returning to their sandbanks would have been to get between them and the land. Rupert's ships were the more weatherly, and, if he had kept his wind and had pressed harder on the Dutch, it is possible that he might have worked through them as Monk had done in the last of the Four Days' Battle. In any case, severely crippled Dutch vessels must have drifted down on his line, and if he had remained steady he might have taken them, whereas by edging away he made them a present of a margin of safety. Moreover, he laid himself open to a peril which he may be excused for not having foreseen. When Bankert had run through the French and found the two central divisions to leeward of him, it was in his power to join De Ruyter by simply putting himself before the wind and coming down. This he did, and his arrival enabled the whole of the Dutch centre and van to concentrate on the Red Squadron. This misfortune might have been averted by the French. The wind which carried Bankert to leeward would equally have carried them. But the French did nothing, and, in fact, took no further part in the action. They remained idle until late in the evening, when the battle was over and the victory had fallen to De Ruyter. As the Dutch admiral pressed closely on Rupert, he had broken through the Red Squadron towards the rear. When Bankert's squadron joined him, he was able to concentrate thirty of his ships upon twenty of ours. If the gunnery of the seventeenth century had not been very wild, these vessels must infallibly have been destroyed. If the Dutch fleet under the command of Admiral de Winter in 1797 had been able to bring a force proportionately superior to bear on the ships of Duncan, he would most certainly have ruined them. But in the earlier century the fire of ships' guns was still very ineffective, and therefore Rupert escaped destruction, though he did not escape defeat. The English squadron was compelled to fall away to leeward, and to look about for the help of the Blue Squadron in the rear.

While the French were demonstrating their entire worthlessness as allies, and while Rupert was being overpowered, the Blue Squadron and its immediate opponent, the Dutch division of Tromp, were carrying on a desperate battle by themselves. The story reads like a passage out of a mediæval chronicle. It has been pointed out already that Sir Edward Spragge had been pitted against Tromp in the two previous battles of the war. A species of personal rivalry had grown up between them. While the fleet was refitting in the Thames, Spragge had visited the Court, and there, perhaps provoked by some jest, or perhaps merely in ostentation, had promised the king that he would bring Tromp home prisoner from the next battle, or would lose his life in the attempt. Having given the promise, Spragge was the man to endeavour to keep it. When the battle began, he fixed his attention exclusively on his own conflict with Tromp. As the Dutch bore down, he did not continue his course in the wake of the Red Squadron as he should have done, but lay-to to wait for Tromp. Lying-to means that a ship braces some of her sails round so that the wind blows them against the mast, while the others are still kept in such a position that the wind blows behind them. The two kinds of pressure neutralise one another, and the ship, instead of forging ahead, begins to drift slowly to leeward. She does not remain stationary, because the wind is always pushing her sideways against the water, and, although she moves very slowly, yet she will drift some miles in the course of a few hours. The result of Spragge's action was to separate his squadron by a long distance from that of Rupert. The prince continued moving to the south, though with a slant towards the west. Spragge floated slowly away to the west. He did not go alone. Tromp, who was at all times ready enough to separate his squadron from that of his commanding officer, could not resist the temptation offered, and he accepted the challenge thrown out to him by the English admiral. He bore down, and the two squadrons engaged ship to ship. There was no manœuvring, no attempt on either side to gain an advantage by skilful fence. Each side laid on the other with might and main. Spragge and Tromp engaged ship to ship. Spragge's flag was flying in the Royal Prince and Tromp's in the Golden Lion. So well were the two matched that they had soon beaten one another to a standstill. Then Spragge transferred his flag to the St. George and Tromp his to the Comet. Then they renewed their duel. Before long the St. George was as complete a wreck as the Royal Prince. Once more Sir Edward Spragge prepared to shift his flag, but he was destined to fulfil the alternative promise he had made the king. He was not to bring Tromp back a prisoner, but to give his own life in the effort to take him. His boat had hardly gone ten times her length from the side of the St. George when it was struck by a cannon-shot, which took a great piece out of the bottom. The crew made a manful attempt to regain the St. George, baling the boat and rowing hard. But the damage done was too great The boat went down before they could again reach their ship. Sir Edward Spragge was drowned. Of the short list of English admirals who have died in battle, the majority have fallen in action with the Dutch.

The erratic valour of Sir Edward caused no small embarrassment to his chief. When he turned towards the Blue Division, Rupert found it miles to leeward of him and in no position to give him any support. The White Division showed no sign of coming to his assistance, but lay idle to windward, where it was in vain for the prince to endeavour to reach them. He made no attempt to reunite with his untrustworthy allies, but, turning off before the wind, bore down in the direction of the separate battle raging between the squadrons of Tromp and Spragge. De Ruyter accompanied him, and for a time the battle ceased between the two centre divisions. It may be that their powder was becoming exhausted. The two ran down side by side together, each aiming to regain touch with the rear division of his own fleet. This was effected towards evening, and, the fleets being together again, the action was resumed. The superiority of force was now with the Dutch, for the Blue Division had been very severely cut up in the action with Tromp, and De Ruyter, having been joined by Bankert's squadron, had the whole of his ships together, and excelled the English by some ten vessels. The renewed action lasted until about seven o'clock in the evening, when De Ruyter drew off. From the French accounts it appears that they joined Rupert about this time. Whether De Ruyter withdrew because he saw the French coming down, or whether the French plucked up heart of grace on seeing that the Dutch had retired, is uncertain.

This battle ended the war, and it also ended the possibility of a co-operation between the English and French fleets. It was the firm belief of every man in the navy, from Prince Rupert downwards, that our allies had betrayed us. The nation was convinced that the fleet was right, and it came to be taken for granted that the Count d'Estrées had deliberately allowed the English to be overpowered. It was said that he acted on express orders from his king, directing him to keep his squadron out of action and to leave the Dutch and the English to exhaust one another. No evidence that any such orders were given has been produced. If it is improbable that they ever were given, the reason is rather that they would have been thoroughly silly than that they would have been base. King Louis and his ministers were quite intelligent enough to see that if they allowed the Dutch to destroy the English, they would have to deal with them single-handed. There is no need to attribute so much unscrupulous, and withal silly, cunning to the French Government. The inexperience of d'Estrées, and the natural dislike of Englishmen and Frenchmen for one another, at least in that century, account quite sufficiently for the failure of the allies to co-operate with success. The French must have been perfectly well aware that the English king's alliance with their master was odious to his subjects. They knew that the English considered them the supporters of Popery, and they, for their part, looked upon the English as heretics. In this war the English wished success to their enemy and defeat to their friend. A coalition is seldom successful in war, and, when it is conducted under such conditions as these, is inevitably doomed to defeat.

The battle of the Texel was the end of the war in Europe. When the fleets drew off from one another on the evening of a long day's fighting, there was no list of prizes to show on either side. The loss of life in the English fleet was great, for the ships were crowded with the soldiers who were to have been landed on the coast of Holland, and the slaughter had been proportionately severe, but no vessels had been lost. Still, the victory was undoubtedly with De Ruyter. The allies retired, giving up even the pretence of an attempt to land men or maintain a blockade on the Dutch coast. He had, therefore, gained the main object for which he fought; and if that does not constitute victory, it is difficult to attach a definite meaning to the word. The terms on which the allies stood to one another made it certain that they would not act together again, and, if De Ruyter did not know that on the evening of the battle, he must have learned it before very long. The relations of the French and English were patent to all the world. There is a story that a Dutch sailor, whose comrade expressed some surprise at the inactivity of the French, explained it by saying, "Why, you see, they have hired the English to do their fighting for them, and have no business here except to see that their servants do their work." That sailor may not impossibly have been an invention of the Dutch press, which was able and active. But the opinion put into his mouth was not unlike what was being said in England. Englishmen felt that the king had sold himself and them, to do the work of Louis XIV., and the war was intensely unpopular. As was usual with Charles, he yielded immediately that the opposition of his Parliament and people began to be dangerous. The war was first allowed to die down, and then peace was made in the beginning of 1674.

The fighting which took place outside the North Sea was not important in this war. Some colonial posts were taken and retaken between the English and the Dutch in the West Indies. Sir Tobias Bridge, who commanded for us, and Evertszoon, who led for Holland, however, did not come to an engagement. A more interesting passage of warfare took place far to the south in the Atlantic. The island of St. Helena had been early occupied as a watering station and storehouse by the East India Company. It had once before been taken by the Dutch, and retaken by us. The Dutch were then, and for long afterwards, in possession of the Cape of Good Hope, and it was an obvious object of policy with them to secure possession of all those places on the road to Asia which could be used for the purpose of refreshing a fleet. They were always ready to endeavour to correct the oversight by which they had allowed the island to fall into our hands. In 1672, when the news of the outbreak of the war reached the settlement at the Cape, an expedition was at once despatched against St. Helena. It was beaten off in the first attempt to land, but one of the English planters turned traitor. A convenient landing-place was pointed out by this man. The Dutch were able to reach the higher ground, and once there they soon made themselves masters of the East India Company's little fort. The governor, whose name was Beale, took refuge in a ship then at the anchorage, and fled to Brazil. On the coast of Brazil he fell in with a squadron consisting partly of the king's ships, the Assistance and the Levant and the Castle fireship, and partly of two vessels belonging to the East India Company. It was under the command of Sir Richard Munden. At that time, and indeed to the very close of the eighteenth century, the voyage to the East Indies was expected to last six months. Vessels on their way out, or on their way home, always put in to the Portuguese ports in search of fresh vegetables and water. Sir Richard Munden had been despatched to protect the home-coming East India trade from capture by the Dutch "Capers" or privateers, which were sure to lie in wait for them at the approaches to the Channel. He would naturally go down to meet them where they could be expected. The arrival of the fugitives at once showed Munden that he had an even more pressing duty to perform. If St. Helena was not recovered from the Dutch, the home-coming trade would almost certainly sail into their hands and be lost altogether. He was an officer of great spirit, a Tarpaulin seaman of the best stamp, whose tombstone in Bromley Church records, that though he died at the early age of forty, he had "what upon public duty and what upon merchants' accounts, successfully engaged in fourteen sea fights." Munden prepared to retake the island. Among the fugitives who had reached Brazil with Governor Beale was a negro named Black Oliver. Black Oliver was known to possess an exact knowledge of the landing-places and interior of the island. He had been sold by his master to a Portuguese, but Munden redeemed him and took him as guide. The English squadron reached the island of St. Helena on the afternoon of the 14th of May 1673. It was not observed by the Dutch. By the advice of Black Oliver, it was decided to land at a spot, afterwards named Prosperous Bay to record the success of the enterprise. The command of the landing-party was given to Richard Keigwen, a Cornishman, who was first lieutenant of the Assistance, and who afterwards had a curious and varied career in the service of the East India Company. The plan was to climb up the cliffs surrounding the bay, and then go on to the high ground on the side of James's Valley, where they would be in a position to dominate the settlement at the only convenient anchorage in the island. It was no easy work to get up the cliffs. There was no path, and, in order to effect the ascent, it was necessary to send one of the party on in advance, who climbed up the precipice with a ball of twine in his pocket. As the climber made his way up, his comrades below called out to him, "Hold fast, Tom!" and the name has remained attached to the cliff. Tom made his way to the top, and then, by use of the twine, hauled up a rope. The rest of the party now scrambled up after him. If the Dutch had been on the alert, the enterprise would have been physically impossible, but they were quite unaware that the English were in the island. The party marched past Longwood, destined in after times to be the prison of Napoleon, and then seized the summit of Rupert's Hill on the east side of James's Valley. At the same time, Richard Munden brought his ships round to the anchorage, and the Dutch, attacked both by sea and land, were compelled to surrender.

The success of the English did not end here. News of the taking of St. Helena in the previous year had been forwarded to Holland. A ship was sent out bringing a Dutch governor. She sailed into the anchorage, where Munden lay with the Dutch flag flying, and was taken. By use of the same stratagem he all but made a further capture of much greater value. A home-coming squadron of six Dutch East Indiamen came to the island, under the impression that it was in the possession of their countrymen. Two of them laden with rich cargoes fell into our hands. The other four escaped through the over-haste of the English ships, which gave them the alarm. Still, the success of Munden was fairly complete. He returned to England, having achieved a most useful piece of service, and having fairly earned his knighthood. Keigwen was left behind as governor, and it is satisfactory to be able to add that Black Oliver was handsomely rewarded for his services by his freedom and the gift of a little piece of land.

The third war with the Dutch ended in deserved failure, and was followed by a period of decadence. Yet the years between 1660 and 1673 were, on the whole, a time of growth. The long and generally successful series of operations against the Barbary pirates, the victorious campaign of Harman in the West Indies, the timely intervention of Munden so far south in the Atlantic as St. Helena, the presence of the king's ships at Bombay, were proofs that the Royal Navy was already growing to its full stature. It was putting out its arm round the world, not indeed to take hold as yet, but to feel its way and measure. The advance in organisation was real. Though the captain was still only captain while in commission, and the Admiral of the Red, White, or Blue held rank only while the fleet was collected, the foundation of the corps of officers was laid by the list of 1668. The principle was recognised, and a very slight extension of the practical application was all that was required to form a complete establishment. What had been gained was to be held for good. The decline of the navy at the close of King Charles's reign was due to the personal and temporary vices of his government. When the reins were again in stronger hands the lost ground could be rapidly recovered, and it would be found that the work of the earlier and better years was a permanent possession.

CHAPTER XIV
THE LAST YEARS OF THE STUART DYNASTY

The fourteen years between the conclusion of the third Dutch war and the Revolution of 1688 saw no new war. The operations against the pirates of the Barbary coast have already been described. The events of this interval were first the fall of the navy to a disgraceful pitch of weakness through pure corruption and mismanagement; then its restoration to a sounder condition through the efforts of King James II.; and lastly, those intrigues which deprived the king of his fleet when the country rose upon him in the autumn of the year of the Revolution. There was, it is true, an alarm of war in 1678, and some show of preparation for hostilities was made. It was directed against France. The country would have been willing enough to see itself engaged in a war with France. It feared the ambition of the French king, and would, moreover, have considered hostilities directed against him as a guarantee against Roman Catholic intrigues at home. Commercial disputes also embittered the relations of the two countries. The third Dutch war had been very disastrous to English shipping. The Dutch, having been compelled to suspend regular commerce, had taken to privateering on a large scale, and in the general inefficiency of our management little had been done to check them. Thus our trade had suffered severely. At the close of the war the Government had allowed English shipowners to buy foreign-built vessels, contrary to the provisions of the Navigation Act. As the war between France and Holland went on for years after England had made peace, it is probable that many Dutch owners took the opportunity to make collusive sales. They, in fact, pretended to sell the vessels when they were only transferring them to an English name, in order to secure protection against French privateers. The French, at anyrate, insisted in treating the transfer of Dutch-built vessels as a mere manœuvre, and in considering them lawful prize. These captures caused great irritation in England, and went to strengthen the general desire for war. But the king would not quarrel with his cousin—at least he would not go further than was necessary to induce the King of France to continue his allowance. The war scare passed over, and the navy was left to rot to within a measurable distance of complete destruction.

It would indeed have been wonderful if a service requiring at once the regular expenditure of money and a constant vigilant administrative control had not fallen into a thoroughly bad condition during the last years of the reign of Charles II. The king never had enough money, and he grew daily less capable of controlling his own Government. His health was worn out for some years before his death, and he could no longer give constant attention to the affairs of the State, even if he had been willing to make the effort. It is true that the king was not left wholly without pecuniary assistance from Parliament. He obtained one grant by consenting to pass the Test Act, and in 1677 Parliament gave him £700,000 to pay for the construction of thirty men-of-war. But these aids were entirely insufficient. The Dutch war, adding to the burdens already upon him, had swollen the king's debt to no less a sum than four millions sterling. The closing of the Exchequer had made it certain that the king could expect no assistance from the commercial class. Thus he suffered from continual penury. It may be allowed that it was his own fault he was not better supplied. It cannot be denied that even what he had, the fixed revenue of the Crown and the pensions doled out to him irregularly by the King of France, was wasted. At a time when he was compelled to reduce the salaries of the servants of his household, and when his troops and his fleet were being starved for want of money, the Duchess of Portsmouth, and other less favoured instruments of his pleasures, drew a very large sum of money. It is a matter of record that they received among them not much less than half of the sum—namely, £400,000 a year—estimated as necessary for the support of the navy in peace. It would be rash indeed to affirm that their gains were limited to the sums of money entered into the accounts. When a treasury is made a prey to harpies of both sexes of this order, there is hardly any limit to be placed to their rapacity. Subordinate officers will profess to have received money for their departments, when, in point of fact, it has really passed into the hands of some courtier who has secured their compliance by a bribe. Pepys, indeed, in his Memoirs relating to the State of the Royal Navy of England for Ten Years determined December 1688, asserts that, during the worst time of King Charles's reign, the Lord High Treasurer did annually pay out £400,000 for the service of the navy. But Pepys was a strong Royalist, and was writing in 1690, at a time when all partisans of the House of Stuart had the most powerful motive for making out a case for the dethroned royal family; and then Pepys could only know that the money was formally paid for that service, and not whether it ever reached the hand of the naval officers for any other purpose than to be immediately returned, in part, if not in whole, to the courtiers and the favourites and their agents.

Pepys' evidence is, at anyrate, conclusive as to this, that whoever stole the money, or whatever sums were set apart for the service of the navy, the king's ships did, during the last years of his reign, sink into abject weakness. Between 1672 and 1679 the king took the administration of the navy into his own hands. In practice, this meant that he was keeping the office of Lord High Admiral open for his brother, if ever the anti-papal excitement of the time made it safe to restore the duke to his office. The king himself could not, even if he would, give his navy the constant attention required from the chief of an administration. What the king could not do was not done at all. The Duke of York, though excluded from office by the Test Act, appears to have exercised a species of informal control over the navy until 1679, but by that year the country had been worked into a paroxysm of madness by the supposed discovery of the Popish Plot in 1678, and the duke was believed to be in so much danger that the king persuaded him to retire to the Netherlands. In the same year, Pepys, who had continued to hold his post on the Navy Board, was imprisoned in the Tower, on a charge of being a convert to Popery and a favourite with the Papists. He lost his office, and had no further connection with the navy for five years. The king, who lived in terror while the Popish Plot was still believed to be a real danger, and whose health began to fail about this time, rid himself of even the appearance of trouble in connection with his navy. He appointed a Commission to discharge the whole office of the Lord High Admiral; in other words, he suspended both the office of Lord High Admiral and the Navy Office, and gave the whole of the administration of the service to such a Board as had ruled the navy for Charles I. between the death of the Duke of Buckingham and the nomination of the Earl of Northumberland.

Under the control of these men the navy was all but destroyed. It would be perhaps unjust to lay the blame entirely on their deficiencies. The king had not the money required to pay the expenses of his Government, and what he had was pilfered on all hands by servants of all ranks and both sexes. But if they cannot be made to bear the blame alone, they certainly must share it. It is significant that during the years this Commission lasted no accounts were kept, nor could any afterwards be obtained. Where no accounts were kept, it was doubtless because nobody concerned ventured to say what had really been done with the money: that it was not spent in maintaining the fleet is certain. When Pepys was committed to prison in 1679, the king had in commission seventy-six ships, carrying 12,040 men. Those of the king's ships that were not in commission could, it was estimated, be put to sea at an expense of £50,000 sterling. The dockyards contained stores to the value of £60,000 over and above the six months' provisions of war served out to the ships in commission. The thirty ships designed to be built out of the money granted by Parliament in 1677 were all in course of construction, and eleven of them had just been launched.

This picture of the state of the navy in 1679 is possibly much flattered. Pepys asserts that it must be accepted as trustworthy, because in 1679 a report was made to the House of Commons which shows the condition of the navy at the time, and is identical with his account of it. He does not add that the report to the Commons was made by the navy officers, and was not checked. It is probable that there were a great many suppressions in Pepys' account. He had made out a plausible case for the Navy Office in 1668, when it was found necessary to throw dust in the eyes of the House of Commons. Yet at that very time he was drawing up a confidential statement for the benefit of the Duke of York, in which he shows that the members of the Board neglected their duty, that the Lord High Admiral's instructions of 1661-62 were disregarded, and that the department was in need of a thorough overhaul if it was to escape falling into total inefficiency. There was exactly the same reverse to the fine portrait which Pepys drew of the navy in 1679. Yet, though it was wastefully maintained and suffered from many defects, there at least was a navy in that year. Five years later there was hardly any navy in existence. Twenty-four ships only were in commission. They were all small, and carried among them only 3070 men. The ships not in commission were so out of repair, not through service, but through pure neglect, that £120,000 would have been required to fit them for sea; while the whole of the stores in the magazines hardly amounted in value to £5000. The state of the thirty new ships in hand when Mr. Pepys was imprisoned was worse even than that of the old vessels. Most of them had never even been in commission, and yet they were ready to sink at their moorings from pure rottenness.

The breeming or, according to modern spelling, breaming of a ship was the act of cleaning the bottom by burning off the ooze, sedge, shells, or seaweed which adhered to it during a long stay in harbour. When vessels were not coppered, they easily became foul. The fire, applied by faggots of wood or reed, melted the ship's coating of pitch, and whatever adhered to it could easily be scraped off, and the ship covered with a new coating of tar or tallow. Of course, if the ship had been allowed to rot until she was in the condition of tinder, this could not possibly be done without danger. This was the return for £670,000 of money voted by the Parliament and actually paid into the hands of the Treasurer of the Navy. "The strict provision made by Parliament, the repeated injunctions of His Majesty, the orders of the then Lord Treasurer and ampleness of the helps purposely allowed (to the full of their own demands and undertakings) for securing a satisfactory account of the charge and build of the said ships," were all useless. Such was the state of the navy when the king, just before his death, in February 1685, resumed the administration into his own hands, and decided to govern it once more by the advice of his brother, the Duke of York. The duke brought back Pepys, who was living in retirement at Windsor. Nothing could be done during the brief remainder of the life of Charles II., and not much was effected during the first year of King James's reign. In the January of 1686 the condition of the fleet, if not worse, was as bad as ever. Ninety thousand pounds had been spent on the repair of ships, and yet the navy officers were demanding as much more before they could undertake to put the ships in a state of repair. Not a quarter of the ships were graved, that is, docked and cleaned so as to be fit for service. During Monmouth's rebellion the navy could hardly contrive to fit out a squadron; nothing had been done to the thirty new ships, and the magazines of stores were empty. It was clear that, unless strong measures were taken, the navy would perish utterly. King James was certainly not a great commander, and he was a very bad king. Still he had so far a genuine interest in the navy, and the feelings becoming an English king, that he was willing to save the fleet. To say that he did the work himself would be going too far, but he did decide that it should be done. He chose the men who could do it, and he supported them in the discharge of their duty.

Following the precedent set by his grandfather, James I., after the report of the Commission in 1618, the king decided to appoint a special Commission. He did not entirely dismiss the members of the existing naval administration, but he added four to their number. These four were Sir Anthony Deane, the well-known shipbuilder, Sir John Berry, the naval officer who has been mentioned already as serving against the French and Dutch in the West Indies, Mr. Hewer, and Mr. St. Michael. All four, if we may believe his word, were chosen on the recommendation of Pepys. The real power was in the hands of the new members. The old officers, Lord Falkland, Sir J. Tippets, Sir Richard Haddock, and Mr. Southerne, were set apart to endeavour to reduce the accounts for the past five years into some sort of order. They appear to have had no other share in the administration. Lord Falkland, indeed, remained Treasurer of the Navy, but in that capacity he would have little to do except receive money from the Lord High Treasurer, and pass it on to the other departments. Sir P. Pett and Sir R. Beach, who were on the old Commission, were employed only at Chatham and Portsmouth. Sir John Narbrough and Sir J. Godwin, also members of the old Commission, served on the Board with Deane, Berry, and Hewer. St. Michael was commissioner only at Deptford and Woolwich. Pepys did not resume his seat on the Navy Board, but was appointed Secretary to the Admiralty, which, as the king kept the office of Lord High Admiral to himself, meant that for all practical purposes the government of the navy was in his hands. The Commission was appointed in April 1686, and was determined on the 12th of October 1688. During these two years the Commissioners brought the navy into the condition which enabled it to be used as an effective instrument after the Revolution. They did not succeed, and they did not pretend to have succeeded, in removing all the defects caused by so many previous years of corruption and mismanagement.

The sum for which the Commission undertook to do this work was £400,000 a year. It received the money for two years and a half, from the 25th March 1686 till the 12th of October 1688. The total sum received was £1,015,384, 12s. The money actually spent on the navy was not more than £310,000 a year, leaving a balance of £307,570, 9s. 4d. to the credit of the Commissioners. Pepys records, not without a certain wistful regret, that if the work had been done by contract, the Commissioners would have put all this money into their own pockets, while as a matter of fact they got nothing but their modest salaries. It would be pedantic to demand a too minute accuracy from Pepys or any Englishman of his generation on such a point. Yet it does seem to be the case that the work was thoroughly done. When the Commission was determined in October 1688, amid the fall of the Stuart dynasty, there were 92 ships of the navy in commission, carrying 15,038 men. Its total force was 173 vessels, of which 9 were of the first rate, 11 of the second, 39 of the third, 41 of the fourth, 2 of the fifth, and 6 of the sixth. The fireships were 26 in number, and there were 14 yachts; a few bombs hoys, hulks, ketches, and smacks made up the remainder. It was estimated that 42,003 men were required to man these ships, and that they carried 6930 guns. It is the boast of Pepys that at this date all the officers and men of the navy were paid, nothing was owing to the contractors, and the magazines were full to overflowing of stores. There is a curious similarity between the fortunes of James II. and his father. Both took a keen interest in their navy, both did much to strengthen it, and it was the instrument which mainly served in the ruin of both. Northumberland threw the navy of Charles I. into the hands of Parliament, and thereby gave it the means of cutting the king off from his friends over the sea. The navy went over to the side of the Revolution in 1688, and was henceforth successfully engaged in preventing the return of King James to England.

Great part of the work of the Commission consisted in reducing administrative anarchy to order. The accounts were brought into a proper condition mainly by Hewer. But there was another part of its work, or of the work done through it by the king, which was designed to effect a much-needed reform in the conduct of the naval officer. It has been said already that the king's captains had from old been in the habit of adding to their salaries by carrying cargoes for money. They also seem to have taken money for carrying English merchants abroad. The Parliament had endeavoured to check these practices, which lent themselves to obvious abuses, by its orders in 1652. Under the Council of State and the Protectorate they were kept down by vigilant administrative control. But during the progressive degradation of the reign of Charles II. they had revived till they became a crying abuse. During the later years of the king they reached an intolerable point. Whether they were worse among the ships appointed to protect the trade in the Mediterranean than elsewhere is perhaps doubtful. But for this squadron we have again the testimony of Pepys. In 1683 the king, being now absolutely at the end of his resources, decided to withdraw the costly garrison of Tangier. A squadron was sent out under the command of George Legge, Lord Dartmouth, with orders to bring back the troops and "destroy them all." Pepys accompanied Dartmouth, and the journal of his voyage has been preserved. It contains an astonishing picture of the condition of the squadron then serving in the Straits. This force was commanded by Arthur Herbert, who had been left in command in the Mediterranean by Narbrough. There is a general consensus of opinion among all who knew him, that this man, though personally very brave, was self-indulgent, debauched, and unscrupulous. Under his fostering care the vices of the naval life of the time reached their height. Though he had gone to sea young, he ranks among the gentlemen captains and not among the Tarpaulins. The character of a gentleman captain was this, that he exercised his command for his own pleasure and profit. The Tarpaulin captain or admiral was often more of a gentleman by birth than has commonly been supposed. Yet he was of humbler birth than such a man as Herbert, and the tradition of his class was more wholesome. The difference between them was, that the gentleman captain came of that class of Cavaliers who after the Restoration consoled themselves for the misfortunes of the Civil War by settling like a swarm of bloodsuckers on the Treasury; or, if his family were not Cavaliers, he at least endeavoured to obtain that distinction by assuming what the satirist Butler, himself a Cavalier of the Cavaliers, called the hypocrisy of vice of the time. The Tarpaulin captains were those men whom Pepys had once seen, from Penn downwards, sober, valiant, and loyal to their duty, and whom he saw at Tangier and Cadiz imitating the excesses of the prevailing class.

It is impossible to dismiss the picture drawn by Pepys as a mere exaggeration. It is too consistent with everything else we know. From his account, then, we learn that the squadron at Cadiz was managed for the personal profit of Herbert and his friends. A great part of our trade at Cadiz consisted in the bullion imported by the Spaniards from their silver mines in South America. According to Spanish law, this ought not to have been exported, but as a matter of fact it was generally transferred at sea to Dutch and English vessels. Merchants naturally desired to send home cargoes of such value in armed ships as a security against pirates. They were glad to find a king's ship that would take it, and were ready to pay the captain a percentage. As no captain could sail without leave of the commander of the squadron, it will be seen what opportunities this system placed in Herbert's way. No officer could get a cargo except by sharing the profits with him. The captain who would toady and pay, who would attend the admiral "at his rising and going to bed, combing his periwig, putting on his coat as the king is served," got a cargo. The captain who would not, did not. Herbert in the meantime lived on shore, keeping a harem, "his mistresses visited and attended one after another as the king's are." Drunkenness seems to have been, if Pepys is to be believed, one of the least vices of the squadron.

It is probable that the report Pepys brought back from Tangier had much to do with persuading the king to make an effort to cleanse the navy of these excesses by so improving the pay of his captains as to raise them above the temptation of seeking dishonourable profit. Bad pay is certainly no excuse for the conduct described by Pepys, but an officer who could not live on his salary was strongly tempted to make the deficiency good by irregular means. The king decided to make an allowance to his captains calculated on a very liberal scale. This is the list as given by Pepys.

A Table of the Annual Allowance of a Sea-Commander of each Rate.