While waiting the highest bid from one or the other, the king’s commands regarding the fleet were puzzling and contradictory. Smith, Northumberland’s secretary, who carried on a confidential correspondence with Pennington, wrote to him that the king, when the difficult situation of the English fleet was explained to him and he was asked for explicit instructions as to how the Admiral should act, “would not give any express declaration.” “I earnestly pressed his Lordship [the Earl of Northumberland] to prevail with his Majesty,” he said, “that you might have some justifiable instructions how you should demean yourself.... To all this he told me that he had often pressed his Majesty to declare his resolution, but never could get any.” Smith privately advised Pennington to make a show of assisting the Spaniards if there was a fight, but not to run himself or the king’s ships into danger where there was no hope of victory and “the only expectation was hard blows and hazard.”[598]
Desperate efforts were hurriedly made to strengthen the English fleet. Ten additional ships were being got ready, and Northumberland intended to take command himself as soon as they reached the Downs, but of the 3000 men which the Admiralty were “labouring” to procure for them, only 300 could be obtained; they did not join Pennington till some days after the battle. Pennington had been ordered to press into his service all English ships he could lay his hands on, and to employ them “in any warlike manner against any that shall presume to affront his Majesty, or derogate from his sovereignty in these parts.”[599] Ten vessels were thus pressed; but it was impossible to find seamen to man them properly, and by command of the king some of them were dispensed with. In presence of the powerful States’ fleet, to say nothing of the Spaniards, Pennington’s instructions to the masters of the merchantmen must have sounded somewhat ironical. If either of the “great fleets,” he said, should presume to attempt anything in the King’s Chambers “contrary to the laws and customs of nations and to the dishonour of our king and kingdom, you are to fall upon the assailants, and to do your best to take, sink, or destroy them.” Moreover, if any ships of the hostile fleets assembled, “or any others that may come,” should put out a flag, they were to cause them to be taken in; if refused, they were to do their best to sink the offending ship.[600] The “any others” meant the French, who were expected daily in the Downs, and whose arrival there was regarded with apprehension. The general opinion was that they would refuse to strike when they came, and, in that event, what would happen? “That,” said Smith, “will set us all in combustion, for then we must strike them, although peradventure to our own prejudice. But this punctilio of honour,” added the secretary to the Lord High Admiral, with prophetic instinct, “will one day cause more blood to be drawn than ere it will bring profit or honour to our king.”[601]
Meanwhile Tromp and his resolute men were getting impatient. Since they had cooped up the hated Spaniard in the English roadstead, they had been reinforced from Holland, so that the Dutch fleet was soon in the overwhelming strength of a hundred sail. Tromp also knew that Charles had arranged (for a substantial consideration) to supply the Spanish Admiral with gunpowder, of which he stood in dire need, and that thirty Dunkirk sloops had succeeded in joining Oquendo. Above all, he had in his pocket the express orders, just issued by the States-General, “to destroy the Spanish fleet, without paying any regard to the harbours, roads, or bays of the kingdom where it might be found.”[602] He promptly seized an opportunity to carry out his orders. Information reached London on 8th and 9th October that the Dutch were preparing to attack. Commands were at once sent to warn them to desist, and they were informed that the king was going to fix a short period for the departure of both fleets; and this message was conveyed to the Dutch Admiral. On the evening of the 10th, the gunpowder for the Spanish fleet came alongside, and the accidental discharge of a gun on one of the Spanish ships killed a Dutch sailor. This was enough. Before the fog lifted next morning Tromp’s fleet was under sail; the roar of cannon announced that the attack had begun; and within a few hours the Spanish galleons were driven ashore, burnt, sunk, or in flight for Flanders, with Tromp in hot pursuit. The English Admiral acted on the prudent advice which had been given to him by Smith. He made a show of resenting the violation of the King’s Chambers by firing at the Dutch. In Madrid it was afterwards said he had fired his guns into the air, but Pennington himself tells us that (although he affected to believe the Spaniards had begun the combat) he “chased and shot at the Hollanders” until they were all beyond the South Foreland; but the Hollanders took no notice of him. On the morning of the battle Tromp sent a letter to Pennington which was more than tinged with irony. Since the Spaniards, he said, had infringed the conditions fixed by firing at him first, the English Admiral should assist him in fighting them, “according to his Majesty’s orders.” At all events he—Tromp—was resolved, by instructions from his masters, to fall upon his enemies, and to defend themselves “against those that shall resist them.” The Dutch would rather die as soldiers, he said, “with his Majesty’s leave in clearing his Majesty’s Road,” than fail to carry out their orders; and he hoped that this would be “acceptable to his Majesty, but if his Majesty should take any distaste we hope he will graciously forgive us.”
After pursuing the remnant of the Spanish fleet to Dunkirk, the Dutch Admiral returned triumphant to the Downs, and saluted the English squadron by striking his flag and firing nineteen guns,—“as a token,” says an ironical observer, “that his Majesty was Sovereign of these his seas!”[603] Tromp indeed, in those years, was most punctiliously respectful to this symbol of the king’s sovereignty. Even during the height of the battle, when he was violating not merely the sovereignty claimed by Charles but the well-understood Law of Nations, he kept his flag down until he was a good way off from the Downs,—a circumstance which Pennington reported with satisfaction. Had the Dutch Admiral shown the same willingness to strike to the flag of the Commonwealth when he encountered Blake thirteen years later, the war that followed might, perhaps, have been averted, or at least postponed.
Charles was very naturally highly incensed at this open flouting of his authority. It was an ugly blot on the lustre of his ancient prerogative, and a painful proof of the contempt in which his much-vaunted naval power was held by the Dutch Republic, and—what perhaps he felt quite as much at the time—it robbed him of all chance of blackmailing Spain. When that Power was asked to pay the great sum above mentioned, the Cardinal Infant put the proposal aside, considering that it was the king’s own interest to protect the Spanish fleet; and when Tromp’s precipitation broke in on the negotiations, it was decided to withhold any payment at all until it was seen how Charles would resent the injury done to Spain.[604] At first he resolved to punish the affront. Pennington was ordered to cause the Dutch fleet, which had returned to the Downs, and was suspected of meditating further “insolency” by falling upon the stranded galleons, to immediately quit the road. The king, he was told, had made up his mind not to allow them the liberty of his ports or roads “until he shall have received satisfaction for the insolency already committed.” If they refused to leave, Pennington, immediately the other ten ships had reinforced him, was to drive them out with all his power and strength, or answer the contrary at his uttermost peril. Before these orders could be executed, Tromp voluntarily departed.[605] Copies of the letter to Pennington were sent to Brussels and Madrid to show the Spaniards that the king was full of resolution. They were told he was very sensible of the affront and insolence of the Hollanders, and “would make such demonstration of it, and demand and expect such reparation as in honour he is obliged.” But he was quite unable to carry out his good intention. It was in vain that he was urged from Madrid to take strong measures against the Dutch; to seize their property; even to invade Normandy as a punishment to their ally.[606] He had no fleet and no money to enable him to cope with the Dutch Republic, even if the condition of home affairs had permitted the attempt. On the contrary, to such a level had he fallen by his stubborn ineptitude that the English Minister at The Hague was ordered to avoid even a remonstrance about Tromp’s high-handed action in the Downs. If the States-General mentioned the matter to him, he was to say that he had received no instructions, “and so to refuse any conference on that particular.”[607]
The Dutch Government had expected that Charles would raise loud complaints, and they decided to take a bold attitude. On the day that they received news of Tromp’s victory the proposal was made to send over an ambassador, and Aerssen Van Sommelsdijck, who was chosen for the mission, reached London early in November. There was to be no attempt made on this occasion to appease the king with soft phrases and show of submission. Aerssen was to complain of the action which England had for a long time taken in favouring the Spaniards. The violation of the King’s Chamber was to be passed over, and the battle in the Downs represented as having been merely a continuation of the first fight in the Channel, which forced the Spaniards to take refuge in the English roadstead. But the pains taken by the States-General were hardly necessary. Charles in his perplexity did not know to which side to lean. He received the Dutch ambassador in a very friendly way, and began to speak again of an alliance with the Republic.[608] In another direction he was flouted by the Dutch. On the 1st October, while the belligerent fleets were at anchor in the Downs, his representative at the conference at Hamburg proposed that if the Republic joined the projected alliance with France, Charles would grant them liberty to carry on their herring fishery in the narrow seas. At the very time that Tromp was battering the Spanish galleons in the King’s Chamber, the States-General were engaged in passing the resolution “that they did not intend to ask for the right of fishing in the North Sea from any one.”[609]
A year later, the Long Parliament began its sittings at Westminster, and Charles was rapidly stripped of sovereign power within his own kingdom. The Dutch, conscious that they and not the King of England were the real masters of the sea, became overbearing in their conduct. More than ever their fishermen indulged in the bad treatment of British subjects, which this country was unable to prevent. But their triumph was short-lived. A decade later they were smitten by the heavy hand of Cromwell, who resumed the sovereignty of the sea. It is to the period beginning about this time that the Dutch trace the decadence which set in in their great fisheries as well as the decline of their trade. It is, however, a satisfaction to think that the part played by this country in causing the misfortunes of Holland—a country to which civilisation is indebted for immense advances, both material and intellectual—was comparatively small. From about the middle of the seventeenth century to the peace of Utrecht, in 1713, the Dutch Republic was involved in almost constant wars with its Continental neighbours, and the herring-fishery and the trade in general suffered severely, and never afterwards regained the prosperity they formerly enjoyed.
CHAPTER IX.
THE JURIDICAL CONTROVERSIES.
The great juridical controversies respecting mare liberum and mare clausum—the sea open to all, or that under the dominion of a particular Power—which enlivened the international politics of the seventeenth century, reached their highest pitch in the reign of Charles I., and may be conveniently considered here. The writers who touched upon the question in the previous century took it for granted that the seas were capable of appropriation, and that they were almost wholly under the dominion of one Power or another. It is true that now and again a slender voice was raised in protest, on abstract legal grounds, against the exclusive maritime sovereignty arrogated by Venice, Portugal, or Spain. Queen Elizabeth too, as we have seen, not only protested against these claims in certain cases, but actively opposed them. Her action, however, pertained rather to the sphere of diplomacy and politics than to legal controversy; and the protests of the few jurists alluded to were too feeble to have practical effect on the course of events or on the prevalent opinion.