In the earlier years of the reign of Charles II., comparatively little was heard of disputes about the flag, which afterwards became so frequent and important. One instance occurred in 1662, when a Dutch vessel that was in Yarmouth Roads without a commission was taken to the Downs for refusing to lower her sails to a king’s ship.[844] A case of much greater interest happened in the previous year, when Captain R. Holmes, in command of the Royal Charles, allowed the ship of the Swedish ambassador to pass him on the Thames without compelling it to strike. As the English Admiralty were always punctilious in enforcing the salute on state occasions, as when a foreign ambassador was concerned, Holmes for his remissness was deprived of his command.[845] The case of Holmes had some interesting consequences. It revealed once more the want of precise knowledge at the Admiralty as to the rules which should be followed in making foreign ships strike their flag. The Duke of York, who was the Lord High Admiral, was himself ignorant on the point, and he asked the principal officials about it—Sir George Carteret, the treasurer; Coventry, his own secretary; Sir William Batten and Sir William Penn, commissioners of the navy and experienced naval officers; and lastly Mr Pepys, who was the clerk to the navy. It appears, however, that though they all “did do as much as they could,” the information they possessed was of the scantiest kind. Pepys tells us that he knew nothing about it himself, and was forced “to study a lie” by fathering an improbable story on Selden, on the spur of the moment; but on the same evening the genial diarist bought a copy of Selden’s Mare Clausum and sat up at nights diligently studying it, with the view of writing a treatise “about the business of striking sail” to present to the Duke. After nearly six weeks’ inquiry and cogitation the Admiralty officials “agreed upon some things to answer to the Duke about the practice of striking of the flags,” which encouraged Pepys to persevere with his treatise, but it was never completed.[846]
A case of greater international importance occurred in the Mediterranean in the following year. Vice-Admiral Sir John Lawson was co-operating with De Ruyter against the Algerine pirates, and when the fleets met, the Dutch admiral saluted the English flag with guns and by lowering his own flag. Lawson returned the guns, but he did not strike his flag, as was the custom in distant seas, and De Ruyter, indignant at the slight, resolved not to strike his flag in future either, on the ground that he was not in British waters, and that he had verbal orders which authorised him in refusing. When De Witt heard of his intentions, he immediately sent instructions in the name of the States of Holland strictly to observe the treaty, and declaring that the lowering of the flag must not be confined to British waters, since that might be interpreted into subjection to English dominion of the seas. If the English admiral again declined to lower his flag in return, De Ruyter was merely to report the fact to the States.[847] The action of De Witt was not designed simply to avoid a quarrel. As will be seen later, it expressed his settled conviction and the fixed policy of the Republic on this thorny subject.
All such questions as to the flag and the fisheries were soon submerged in the second Dutch war. The causes which brought it about were at root the same as those which had led up to the first. Commercial jealousy was always a smouldering flame, ready to burst into a great conflagration. The English believed that the Dutch had juggled them out of their trade and trading rights in several quarters of the globe, and with some reason. But probably the real motive was succinctly stated by Monk, now Duke of Albemarle, when he said that the essential cause of the quarrels between the two nations was that the English wanted a larger share of the trade of the Dutch. Charles himself, like his great Minister, the Chancellor Clarendon, seems to have been disinclined to the war, which, however, was advocated strongly by the Duke of York, who supported the contention of the merchants that it would benefit English commerce. Accusations were levelled against the Dutch of having by fraud and stratagem driven English trade almost entirely from the East and West Indies, and greatly reduced it in the Mediterranean and in Africa. These complaints were echoed in Parliament, and in April 1664 a resolution was passed by the two Houses declaring that the wrongs and outrages committed by the Dutch on our merchants in India, Africa, and elsewhere were “the greatest obstruction of our foreign trade,” and that the king should be asked to “take some speedy course for redress.” John de Witt fruitlessly endeavoured by all honourable means to avert hostilities. The warlike and marauding expedition of Holmes (now restored to favour) against the Dutch settlements on the west coast of Africa and in America was followed, as it was bound to be, by the retaliatory expedition of De Ruyter, which gave the English the pretext for declaring war in the spring of 1665.[848]
The war was exceedingly popular in England, and large sums were willingly voted by the House of Commons. Pepys tells us that the Court were “mad” for it, and another contemporary writer says it was the universal wish of the people.[849] Thus no appeal to the national passion of Englishmen about the sovereignty of the sea was required on this occasion, and such references as were made to the subject were of a formal kind. One of the accusations which the Parliament flung at the Dutch was that they had “proclaimed themselves Lords of the South Sea; and, in contempt, shot at and use other indignities to our royall flag, thereby affronting his Majesty and this nation.” Then, in the preamble of the Act granting money for the equipment of a fleet, it was declared to be “for the preservation of his Majesty’s ancient and undoubted sovereignty and dominion in the seas”;[850] and in his instructions to the Duke of York as Lord High Admiral, the king said the great fleet he had prepared was “to assert his right to the dominion of the Narrow Seas,” and for the mastery of the sea and the security of navigation.[851] But these phrases were to be expected. For the same reason, popular literature on England’s dominion of the seas was on this occasion scanty, though some attempts were made to excite national animosity by the familiar arguments.[852]
The general course of the war, in which France, and then Denmark, combined with the United Provinces against England, does not concern us here.[853] It did not add fresh laurels to the brow of Charles II. as Sovereign of the Sea. Three great sea-fights took place—off Lowestoft, on 13th June 1665; in the Straits of Dover, from 11th to 14th June 1666 (the Four Days’ Battle); and off the North Foreland, on 4th August in the same year. In the first and last the English were successful; in the Four Days’ Battle the advantage lay with the Dutch; but the war ended in naval disaster and national humiliation for England. In June 1667, when the plenipotentiaries were quietly sitting at Breda leisurely engaged in arranging terms of peace, De Ruyter, with Cornelius the brother of John de Witt, suddenly appeared in the mouth of the Thames, and sent up a squadron which seized Sheerness and Chatham, and might have gone to London Bridge for all the king could have done to prevent it. They burned the best ships of the great fleet which was to have “asserted England’s dominion of the sea”; London was paralysed with consternation and amazement,—Pepys locked his father and wife in a bedroom to save them from the perils of a sack,—and while Monk, the one stout heart among them, posted down to Gravesend “in his shirt,” the libertine monarch was engaged with his mistresses in pursuing “a poor moth” about the supper-room! For many weeks afterwards, until the peace of Breda, De Ruyter rode triumphant in the narrow seas, and England was in terror of a French invasion, not knowing of the ignoble intrigue in which Louis and Charles were now engaged.
Passing from these notorious blots on English history, and before considering the relevant business in the negotiations for peace, a word or two must be said of some of the minor events and consequences of the war. During its continuance the fisheries of England, and still more those of the United Provinces, suffered severely. In January 1665, before war was declared, but when it was obvious it might break out at any moment, the States-General laid an embargo on the fisheries and on all shipping,—a measure which, it was reported in England, furnished them with 30,000 men for their navy. The stoppage of the fishing was a heavy blow to those dependent on it, and advantage was taken of the fact by the English, who tempted the Dutch fishermen by offering licenses, for a nominal payment, which would enable them to fish notwithstanding the war. The States of Holland, however, forbade the acceptance of the obnoxious licenses, “considering that it might be of very dangerous consequence, as making the inhabitants of these countries indirectly tributary to the King of England”; and the treasurer of the herring fishery at Maassluis, who had purchased some of them, was severely censured and forbidden to make use of them. Notwithstanding this patriotic resolution, it appears that private cupidity in some cases prevailed, and a few licenses were accepted in the following year. One of these, dated 21st November 1666, was granted on the petition of one, Gisbert Petersen, of “Scheveling” (Scheveningen), the captain of the “sailing waggons” of the Prince of Orange, who “wafted” the king on board his fleet at the Restoration. It gave him authority, in his vessel, the Young Prince of Orange, “to fish in any part of our seas, not being within ... leagues of land,” and to carry the fish which were caught to Holland; and in certain circumstances he was to have the freedom of English ports. The Scandinavian name of the recipient, and the circumstances recited, throw doubt on the genuineness of the case. The license was renewed on 7th June 1667.[854]
A much more interesting concession for fishing in all parts of the British seas, irrespective of distance from shore, was granted by Charles in the same year, though not to subjects of the United Provinces. The citizens of Bruges, in Flanders, where the king had received friendly treatment when in exile, petitioned him to allow all the sworn burgers and citizens of that city to fish “freely and frankly” at all times, to the number of fifty busses or other vessels fit for fishing, on the seas and coasts of his kingdoms; to enter the ports and rivers to buy necessaries, for shelter, and to dry their nets, and to depart without molestation, on giving security not to sell fish to his enemies.[855] Charles granted them a charter under the great seals of England and Scotland, giving them liberty to fish with fifty vessels at a time for herrings or any kind of fish in the British seas, up to the coasts or shores, with the privilege of drying their nets on land, and using English or Scottish ports in security. The Duke of Lennox and Richmond, the High Admiral of Scotland, and others concerned were commanded to treat the vessels of Bruges with friendship, “in whatever part of the sea, whether near the shores, in rivers, or ports” they might be.[856] The fishermen of Bruges continued to fish near our shores, in terms of this charter, and even from our harbours, until 1850, and the charter was regarded by the English authorities as spurious.[857]
By granting this charter, it is not unlikely that Charles also hoped to strike a blow at the fisheries of the Dutch Republic. While refusing to allow their subjects to accept any compromising English license or concession for fishing, the States-General tried to bring about a mutual and equitable arrangement. Early in 1665 they issued instructions that English fishermen should not be attacked till further orders; and in October of the same year—that is, when, in peaceful times, Dutch fishermen would have been taking part in the profitable fishing at Yarmouth—one of their naval officers delivered an official letter to the Bailiffs of that town, intimating that orders had been given to all their admirals, commanders, and captains at sea that no English fisherman was to be molested, and expressing a hope that a similar Christian forbearance (medelijdentheyt) might be shown to Dutch fishermen on the part of England. No answer was returned, but an emphatic response was made a week or two later when the Sapphire seized several Dutch fishing vessels and brought them into port,—a circumstance which also shows that the embargo had not been strictly observed.[858] In the following year the embargo was officially continued, the “small” or fresh-herring fishery carried on along the coast being excepted;[859] but after the defeat of the English fleet in the beginning of June, the deep-sea fishing appears to have been partially resumed. Early in August reports reached London from Yarmouth and Whitby that the Holland busses and doggers were fishing off the land, and had been seen by our fishermen. They were said to number 400 and to be guarded by eight convoyers, and it was rumoured the English fleet had gone in pursuit and sunk eighty busses; and a few doggers were in reality brought in. It was again reported later that a fleet of busses was fishing off the coast of Suffolk, attended by seventeen ships of war.[860] If the retaliation of the Dutch was less effective, it was because the English fishermen carried on their industry close to their own ports; to which, moreover, they were often confined by fear of the Dutch privateers, which boldly hovered about the coast, and the sight of a sail was enough to frighten them back.[861] After Van Ghent had burned the English ships in the Thames and the Dutch were supreme at sea, the States of Holland withdrew the embargo on the Great Fishery, and when peace was proclaimed the schuyts again took part in the autumn fishing at Yarmouth.[862]
It has been already mentioned that France, which had bound itself by the recent treaty to aid the United Provinces, declared war against England in January 1666, but Louis showed great reluctance to begin actual hostilities; and one of the diplomatic obstacles which served to delay the junction of the French and Dutch fleets referred to the striking of the flag. A French squadron of thirty sail had been equipped under the Duke de Beaufort, and Louis required that the Dutch admiral should salute not only the Admiral of France, but the vice- and rear-admirals; and further, that the French admiral should not be required to lower his flag in returning the salute of the Dutch. The States-General were willing that their admiral should strike to De Beaufort first, but they demanded that the latter should return the salute in a similar manner. The French, who were apparently anxious to be placed in the same position as England with respect to this ceremony, argued that the English did not re-salute the Dutch fleet by striking the flag, but only returned the guns, citing the treaty of 1662 and the actual practice; and they proudly boasted that the flag of the Admiral of France had never at any time been lowered to that of any nation. To this De Witt replied that they were willing to give the same respect to the French as they did to the English; that the re-salute was not expressly mentioned in the treaty because it was a well-understood custom on their own coast; and that in point of fact the English did return the salute, as had been done by Admiral Montague (the Earl of Sandwich) in 1661 and by Vice-Admiral Lawson on meeting De Ruyter. If on some occasions it was omitted by the English, it was on the seas they called “British,” and was to be attributed to the claim they pretended to the dominion of the seas—a claim which France and the Republic had solemnly agreed by treaty to resist. If a similar claim was now advanced by France, it would argue a like pretension to maritime sovereignty by a nation which had engaged itself to preserve the liberty of the sea. Moreover, the salute at sea between the fleets of two sovereign states was not an act of submission of an inferior to a superior, but one of civility, honour, and respect, and should therefore be mutual and equal. They, as a republic, offered to strike first, and to keep their flag lowered until the French admiral had struck and re-hoisted his flag. This discussion about the re-salute was prolonged, extending from June 1666 to July 1667, for De Witt was not a man lightly to agree to diminish the dignity of his country; and after the peace conference met at Breda, and De Ruyter was master of the sea, the Dutch roundly declared they would not strike to the French admiral at all, unless he agreed to return the salute by dipping his flag, but would only salute him with guns.[863]
At the conferences at Breda Charles had little right to expect that he would gain much, in view of the inglorious events at the end of the war. He retained New Amsterdam (re-named New York), which Holmes had taken in 1664, but he lost Poleroon and Surinam, and relinquished the claims which had been put forward to justify the war. An important concession was made to the Dutch by a modification of the Navigation Act, for a repeal of which they pressed, by a stipulation, in separate articles, that they might import into England in Dutch vessels all commodities produced or manufactured in Germany or Flanders, for which, it was claimed, the United Provinces were the natural outlet to the sea; and all the essential articles of the commercial treaty of 1662 were confirmed.[864] All pretensions to exclusive fishing off the British coasts were withdrawn; the old stipulations of the Burgundy treaties were not, however, renewed.