The tide was now turning, and Brackel retired some distance and anchored. Despairing of saving the Royal Oak, Great James, and Loyal London, which lay higher up, Monk scuttled them, and sank three ships in the fairway of the only channel by which, according to local information, the Dutch could approach. On the following day the Dutch came back with the tide and ran through another channel pointed out, no doubt, by their English comrades. Upnor Castle strove in vain to stop them. They passed its batteries in safety, and came on to the half-sunken ships which lay aground in the shallow stream. With hardly any resistance they fired and destroyed all three. Captain Douglas, of the Royal Oak, died on board his ship, and his gallant end was the one slight redeeming feature of the melancholy scene. Had they known the utter panic and lack of organized defence at Chatham, the Dutch might well have destroyed the dockyard. But they did not know; they had inflicted upon England the greatest humiliation that she has endured since the day of the Norse rovers, and so, well content, the small squadron that had done so much sailed triumphantly down the river, insulting their humbled enemies with thundering cheers and songs and victorious music.
For six weeks the victorious Dutch fleet dominated the English seas. So secure was De Ruijter that he left only Van Ghent’s squadron to guard the Thames, and sailed down the Channel as a conqueror, sweeping up English trade, and terrorizing the coasts. What he might have done had his fleet carried troops may be judged from the pages of Pepys. Panic, confusion, and self-seeking reigned supreme at Court, and among the seamen discontent was rife. Sir Edward Spragge did at last succeed in forming a squadron sufficient to hold the Thames against Van Ghent, but this was all. When the Peace of Breda was signed in July De Ruijter still victoriously ranged the English seas.
So ten years after Oliver Cromwell had made Britain’s name dreaded wherever her flag flew, Charles II., ‘the Lord’s anointed,’ degraded her to the dust. He was to wage another war with the Dutch, and to see the heroic De Ruijter successfully withstand the combined strength of France and her jackal—England. He left his realm the vassal of France, the national escutcheon bearing a stain that has never been forgotten, and the once invincible navy reduced to a mass of rotting hulks that could not venture out of port.
When James II. succeeded to the throne discontent was already rife among the people, and when his natural brother James, Duke of Monmouth, landed almost alone in Dorsetshire, the West country peasantry flocked to his standard. The hideous barbarity with which the premature and ill-conducted revolt was suppressed merely added fuel to the smouldering furnace. Had Monmouth been a stronger man, had he been better supplied with money, arms, and trained officers, matters might have been different. The navy could with difficulty mobilize a small squadron, which was at sea too late to prevent him from landing.
The fate of the Stuart dynasty was sealed when James alienated the sympathies of the hitherto thoroughly servile Anglican Church and the Court, or ‘Tory’ party, in Parliament. The result was a temporary, but for the time all-powerful, coalition against him. A nucleus of trained troops around which the discontented could rally was necessary; and the malcontents naturally turned to William, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, the husband of the King’s daughter Mary. Every motive of statesmanship, interest, and personal inclination, combined to induce William to respond to the appeal. The great object of his life was to curtail the overshadowing power of Louis XIV. Without the assistance of England, this was all but an impossibility. It can hardly be doubted that William looked forward to his own ultimate election as King of England. That the men who invited him had no clear conception of this part of the political situation seems certain; but William, with his sagacity and experience, must have been perfectly aware of the only possible satisfactory solution.
By October, 1688, William had gathered a fleet of some 500 transports and store-ships, with an escort of over 50 men-of-war, at Helvoetsluys. The danger in his path was that of France, and had James II. been less stupid and less proud at the wrong moment, there can be no doubt that William’s plans would have been brought to an abrupt end by a French invasion. The great European alliance against France was already formed, and war was about to break out. The French armies were already collecting at the frontier. But James rudely repelled the offers of his ally and practical overlord, and Louis turned his arms against Germany. William was therefore left free to sail.
His expedition cannot be described in any sense as a hostile invasion. It is mentioned in this work in order to draw a comparison between the foreign attacks successfully repelled by England, and this officially hostile but actually friendly expedition which landed and did its work, because it was deliberately allowed to pass unopposed.
The fleet which James possessed was fully equal to crippling that of William, had it been directed with energy and fidelity. This was not the case. The ships had been for the most part reconstructed by James, and materially the navy was strong. The commander, Lord Dartmouth, was faithful. But the majority of the officers were disloyal, and they persuaded Dartmouth to take up a position from which it was impossible to work out of the Thames in time to stop any passing fleet. The army, though it was three times as strong as that of William, was rotten to the very core with discontent and treachery. Those of the superior officers who were faithful were often the least capable—notably the Commander-in-Chief, the Frenchman Louis Duras, Lord Feversham. The ablest of them all, General Churchill, was the worst traitor. It was practically certain that William would meet little effective resistance from the fleet and army which were nominally opposed to him.
It must be admitted that England at this time presented to the world a very depressing spectacle. That the House of Stuart had proved poor and faithless guardians of the national honour was undoubted, and the Whigs, in endeavouring to oust them, could at least lay claim to political consistency. But the Church and the Tories were simply obeying the dictates of self-interest and injured pride. Open rebellion need not be dishonourable, but very many members, both of James’s civil and defensive services, were traitors.
So far as its events are concerned, the story of the expedition may be told in a few sentences. William had at first intended to land in the North, where his adherents—the Whig Earl of Devonshire, and the Tory Lord Danby—were ready to receive him. He sailed on October 19, but was driven back, and unable to start again until November 1. The wind was favourable, and rapidly rose. The vast fleet went past the mouth of the Thames, and Lord Dartmouth, owing to the faulty dispositions into which he had been persuaded, could not come out in time to oppose it. William passed down the Channel unmolested, and landed, ‘as every schoolboy knows,’ at Brixham on November 5. Dartmouth was following down the Channel, but the wind again changed, and he put into Portsmouth. Had the fleets met, the result cannot be doubted. The Dutch fleet was commanded by the refugee English Admiral Herbert, and his ships were full of English seamen. The crews of James’s fleet were thoroughly discontented, and half the ships would undoubtedly have been carried over by their captains. To discuss the events of 1688 as if they constituted a military campaign is a mistake. William’s design rested upon the known fact that England as a whole was not merely passive, but actively friendly.