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The all-absorbing interest of the events of the last several unexampled years within the kingdom, has prevented our noticing the transactions of the Commonwealth with the other kingdoms of Europe. We must now recount these. Prince Rupert, by his cruising on the coasts of England and Ireland, had not only kept the nation in alarm, but had inflicted great injury on the coasts and commerce of the realm. In the spring of 1649 he lay in the harbour of Kinsale, keeping the way open for the landing of the foreign troops expected to accompany Charles II. to Ireland. But Vane, to whom was entrusted the naval affairs, commissioned Blake, Dean, and Monk, three army officers, who showed themselves as able at sea as on land, to look after him, and the victories of Cromwell in Ireland warned him in the autumn to remove. He found himself blockaded by the English fleet, but in his impetuous way he burst through the enclosing squadron with the loss of only three ships, and took refuge in the Tagus. In the following March Blake presented himself at that river, and demanded of the King of Portugal permission to attack the pirate, as he termed him, at his anchorage. The king refused; Blake attempted, notwithstanding, to force his way up the river to Rupert's fleet, but he was assailed by the batteries from both shores, and was compelled to retire. This was deemed a declaration of war by the Republic, and Blake was ordered to seize any Portuguese ships that fell in his way. Don John thereupon seized the English merchants in his dominions, and confiscated their goods. But the ravages committed by Blake on his subjects soon induced him to order Rupert to retire from the Tagus, who sailed thence into the Mediterranean, where he continued to practise open piracy, capturing ships of almost all nations. He afterwards sailed to the West Indies to escape the English admirals, and inflicted there great injuries both on the English and Spanish. His brother Maurice was there lost in a storm, and in 1652 Rupert, beset by the English captains, made his way again to Europe, and sold his two men-of-war to Cardinal Mazarin. The Portuguese, freed from the presence of Rupert, soon sent Don Guimaraes to London to treat for a pacification, but the treaty was not finally concluded till after Cromwell had attained to supreme power.

The King of Spain, who never forgave Charles I. the insult put upon his sister and the whole kingdom, acknowledged the Republic from the first moment of its establishment by continuing the presence of Cardenas, his ambassador. The King of Spain made use of his ambassador in London to excite the Commonwealth against Portugal and the United Provinces, but an unlucky accident threatened to disturb even this alliance, the only one between the Commonwealth and the Courts of the Continent. As Spain kept an ambassador in London, the Parliament resolved to send one to Madrid, and for this purpose they selected a gentleman of the name of Ascham. He did not understand Spanish, and therefore he employed three friars, who accompanied him and informed him of all that he wanted to know regarding Spain. But he was no sooner arrived than half a dozen Royalist English officers, who had served in the Spanish army against Portugal, and in Calabria, went to his inn, and finding him at dinner, exclaimed, "Welcome, gallants, welcome!" and ran him and Riba, one of the friars, through with their swords. This was precisely what some Royalists had done to Dorislaus, the Parliamentary ambassador to the Hague, in 1649; for these Cavaliers, with all their talk of honour, had no objection to an occasional piece of assassination. One of the servants of Charles II.'s ambassadors, Hyde and Cottington, was one of the assassins, which brought the ambassadors into suspicion; but they protested firmly against any participation in so base a business. The assassins fled to a church for sanctuary, except one who got to the Venetian ambassador's, and so escaped. The other five were brought from their asylum, tried, and condemned to die, but the courtiers sympathised so much with the Royalists, that they were returned again to their asylum, except a Protestant of the name of Sparkes, who, being taken a few miles from the city, was put to death. This matter blowing over, the peace with Spain continued. With Holland the case was different.

Holland, being itself a Republic, might have been expected to sympathise and fraternise with the English Commonwealth, but the circumstances of the Court prevented the spread of this feeling. The Stadtholder, William II., had married the Princess Royal of England, the daughter of Charles I., and sister of Charles II. From the first of the contest, therefore, Holland had supported the claims of both the Charleses. The second Charles had spent much of his exile at the Hague, not being at all cordially received in France, where his mother resided. His brother, the Duke of York, had long resided there, as Rupert and Maurice had done before. There was thus a great league between the family of the Stadtholder and the Stuart faction, and the Stadtholders themselves were gradually making themselves as despotic as any princes of Europe. All the money which enabled the Stuarts in England to make head and invade it from Scotland came from the Hague. On the other hand, the large Republican party in Holland, which was at strife with the Stadtholder on account of his regal and despotic doctrines, looked with favour on the proceedings of the English Parliament, and thus awoke a deep jealousy in the Stadtholder's Court of the English Parliament, which entertained ideas of coalescing with Holland into one great Republic.

From these causes no satisfaction could ever be obtained from the Stadtholder for the murder of Dr. Dorislaus, nor would he admit Strickland, the ambassador of the Parliament, to an audience. But on the 6th of November, 1650, William died of small-pox, and on the 14th of that month his widow gave birth to William III., who afterwards became King of England. The infancy of the Stadtholder now encouraged the Republican party to abolish that office, and to restore the more democratic form of government. On this, the Parliament of England, in the commencement of 1651, determined to send ambassadors to the States, and in addition to Strickland sent St. John, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. But no good was done. There were numbers of English Royalists still hanging about at the Hague, and the Dutch, through the internal wars of England, France, and Spain, had grown so prosperous that they were become proud and insolent, and had come to regard the English Parliament, through the misrepresentation of their enemies, as a power that they might treat with contempt. St. John found insurmountable difficulties in negotiating with the rude, haughty States-General. He was openly insulted in the streets of the Hague; the ignorant populace hooted and hissed him and his colleague, and the Royalists were suffered to annoy them with impunity.

The Parliament of England had in good faith proposed their scheme of confederacy against their common enemies both by sea and land, but the States-General made so many objections and delays that the term fixed for the negotiation expired, and the English ambassadors took their leave in disgust. The battle of Worcester awoke the Dutch to their mistake, and they then sent in haste to propose terms of alliance on their part, but it was too late. St. John, strong in his feelings as he was deep in his intellect, had represented their conduct in such terms that the English Parliament received them with a cool haughtiness the counterpart of their own in the late attempt at treaty. St. John had also employed himself in a measure of revenge on the Dutch which was in its effects most disastrous to them. Owing to the embarrassments of the other European States, the Dutch had grown not only to be the chief merchants of the nations, but the great carriers of all mercantile goods. Parliament passed a Navigation Act, by which it was forbidden to introduce any of the products of Asia, Africa, or America into England, except in English vessels, or any of the manufactures of Europe, except in English ships or the ships of the countries which produced them. This at one blow lopped off the greater part of the commerce of Holland, and the demands of the ambassador that this terrible Act should be repealed, or at least suspended till the conclusion of a treaty, were totally disregarded. But this was not the only offensive weapon which St. John's resentment had found. Letters of marque had been issued against French vessels, and they were permitted to be used against Dutch ones, on pretence that they had French property on board. Still more, the massacre of the English at Amboyna, which had been lightly passed over, owing to the desire of the English Court to maintain the alliance of Holland against Spain, had never been forgotten by the English people, and there were now loud demands, especially from the sailors, that all survivors of the Dutch concerned in that murder should be given up. In fact, a determined spirit of hostility had sprung up between the two maritime nations. The Dutch, at the call of their merchants for protection, prepared a fleet, and placed at the head of it the three greatest admirals that their nation ever produced—Van Tromp, De Ruyter, and De Witt. The English Parliament, on their part, ordered their admirals to insist on the same homage being paid to their flag in the narrow seas as had been paid to that of the king. They also demanded indemnification for the losses sustained in the East Indies from the Dutch, and insisted on the stipulated contribution of the tenth herring from the Dutch fishermen in the British seas.

It was impossible, under such circumstances, that hostilities should be long deferred. Commodore Young was the first to call on the convoy of a fleet of Dutch merchantmen to salute the British flag. They refused, and Young attacked them so smartly that in the end they complied. In a few days Van Tromp, who was a zealous partisan of Orange, and therefore of the house of Stuart, appeared in the Downs with two-and-forty sail. To Commodore Bourne, whom he found there, he disclaimed any hostile intentions, but pleaded the loss of several anchors and cables for putting in; but the next day, being the 19th of May, he encountered Blake off Dover, and that commander, though he had only twenty ships, demanded that Van Tromp should do homage to his flag. Van Tromp refused, and sailed right on till he came nearly opposite Blake, when the English admiral fired a gun three successive times at the Dutch admiral's flag. Van Tromp returned the compliment by firing a broadside into Blake's ship; and the two fleets were instantly engaged, and a desperate battle was fought from three in the afternoon till darkness separated them. The English had taken two ships, one of which, on account of the damage done it, was allowed to sink.

There was much dispute between the two countries which was the aggressor; but it appears the most probable fact that Van Tromp sought an occasion to resist the demand of lowering the Dutch flag to the English one, and found an admiral as prepared to assert that superiority as he was to dispute it.

The English Parliament immediately issued strict orders to all its commodores to pursue and destroy all the ships of the Dutch fleet that they could find on the seas; and in the space of a month they took or burnt seventy sail of merchantmen, besides several men-of-war. The Dutch protested that the battle had not been sought by them, and proposed inquiry, and the punishment of whichever of the commanders should be proved the aggressor; but the Parliament replied that it was satisfied that the States were bent on usurping the rights of England on the seas, and on destroying the fleets, which were the walls and bulwarks of the nation, and therefore that it was necessary to stand on the defensive. The States sent De Pauw to reiterate the assurances of their peaceful intentions, and to urge the court of inquiry; but the Parliament was now as high as the States had been before, and insisted on reparation and security. De Pauw demanded what these terms meant, and was answered, full compensation for all the expense that the Commonwealth had been put to by the hostile preparations of the States, and a confederation for the mutual protection of the two nations. De Pauw knew that the first of these terms would be declined, and took his leave. On the 19th of July the Parliament proclaimed war against the States.

The Dutch were by no means afraid of the war, though they dreaded the destruction of their trade which it would occasion. They had acquired a great reputation as a naval people, and the sailors were eager to encounter the English, and revenge their defeat upon them. Van Tromp once more appeared with seventy sail of the line, and boasted that he would sweep the English from the face of the ocean. The Vice-Admiral Sir George Ayscough (or Ayscue), had just returned victorious from the reduction of Barbadoes, and was left in charge of the Channel whilst Blake went northward, in quest of the squadron which protected the Dutch fishermen. Van Tromp could not come up with Ayscough, owing to a change of wind; he, therefore, went northward after Blake, who had captured the Dutch squadron, and made the fishermen pay the tenth herring, but a storm dispersed Van Tromp's fleet, several of his ships falling into the hands of the English. When he again returned to port, he was received with great indignation by the people, who had expected wonders from him, and in his mortification he resigned.