CHAPTER XIII.
CHARLES II.—continued.
THE THIRD DUTCH WAR.
The “honour of the flag” and the sovereignty of the sea were now about to gain a shameful notoriety in connection with the third Dutch war, which Charles, from the basest personal motives and in the most treacherous manner, suddenly sprang upon the Republic. At that time, and for long afterwards, European policy turned upon the ambitious designs of Louis XIV. Laying claim to the Spanish dominions, he overran the Low Countries in 1667 with an army of 40,000 men. The rapidity of the conquest and the display of formidable military power filled Europe with alarm; and the United Provinces, which lay nearest the scene of danger, were thrown into apprehension as to their own safety. In England popular feeling was very hostile to France, and Charles, after some hesitation, despatched Sir William Temple to The Hague to conclude an alliance against France, which he succeeded in accomplishing in a few days—in January 1668,—and it was adhered to by Sweden. The Triple Alliance thus formed was hailed with enthusiasm in England, and it abruptly and effectually checked Louis in the execution of his plans. Deeply mortified, the French king bent his energies and talents to detach Charles from the League, in order to wreak his vengeance on the Dutch Republic, and he succeeded even better than he expected. Charles was deeply in debt, and the expenses of his Court were heavy. His relations with the Parliament were becoming strained and difficult. Mistrust was growing up between him and his subjects, and, mindful of the fate of his father, he thought it prudent to secure in secret a wealthy and powerful ally lest rebellion again broke out in England. Within a year of the signing of the Triple Alliance Charles was gained over by France, and the compact was sealed in the disgraceful secret treaty of Dover in May 1670. Under the treaty Charles was to receive a large yearly pension from Louis, and aid in case of insurrection; he was to avow and re-establish the Roman Catholic religion in England when it could be done with safety; and he was to begin hostilities against the Dutch Republic when Louis required him by furnishing 4000 men and fifty ships of war, for which he was to receive a subsidy of £120,000, and to gain as his share of the spoils of conquest Walcheren, Sluys, and Cadsand. Louis crowned the dishonourable compact with the appropriate gift of a new mistress to his royal ally—Mademoiselle de Kerouaille, afterwards the Duchess of Portsmouth, who well served the interests of France.[881]
In order to carry out his part of the iniquitous bargain, it was necessary for Charles, as the vassal of France, to deceive his subjects and his Parliament as well as his public ally, the Dutch Republic. He had first to get money for the armaments, for which the subsidy from France was insufficient, and he had then to discover some pretext for the war which would make it least objectionable to the English people. For the former purpose he resorted to a bold subterfuge. The sentiment of both the Parliament and the people was hostile to France, and advantage was taken of this circumstance to obtain a subsidy under false pretences. When Parliament met in October 1670 the Lord Keeper, by the king’s commands, made a speech on the state of public affairs, in which he enlarged on the king’s need of supply; pointed to the great strengthening of the French navy and the decay of our own; urged the necessity of fitting out in the ensuing year a fleet of fifty sail; and dwelt upon the obligations placed upon the king by several treaties to exert himself for the good of Christendom, mentioning among others the Triple Alliance and the League with the United Provinces. The trick succeeded. Parliament, uneasy at the recent journey of Louis to Flanders and the naval preparations in France, voted a sum of £800,000.[882]
It was also indispensable to foment ill-feeling against the Dutch, and to devise disputes with them so as to prepare the way for a rupture. Some time before this, at Genoa, a Dutch commander, Captain Braeckel, who had led the attack on the English ships at Chatham in 1667, had hoisted under the Dutch colours some English flags which he had taken on that occasion, in derision of the English in the port. Charles demanded reparation and the punishment of Braeckel; and the States-General ultimately ordered the trophies to be given up, and sent them to London.[883] Later, the king complained that the States-General had allowed him and the English people to be insulted by lampoons, medals, &c., commemorating the exploits of the Dutch fleet in the Thames in 1667, the king suing for peace at Breda, and so forth. The States-General, when the king continued to press these complaints, seized all copies of certain lampoons and destroyed the dies of several of the medals. Charles then boldly accused the Grand Pensionary De Witt of having carried on a confidential correspondence with France with the object of inducing that Power to take up arms against England. The accusation was meant to prejudice the Dutch in the eyes of the Parliament; and the States, to prove their sincerity, sent fresh proposals for an alliance, to which Charles replied that they should first have offered him subsidies. The apprehension of the States that the king was inclined to force a quarrel on them was not lessened by intelligence they received that he had abandoned the Triple Alliance, and especially by the recall of Sir William Temple from The Hague in 1670,—a step that followed the seizure of Lorraine by Louis.
Affairs were ripening to the wished-for crisis, and Charles now sought for a decisive pretext, which, while making war inevitable, would lessen its unpopularity in England. Such a pretext was to be found in the “honour of the flag.” No cry was more likely to rouse resentment in the people than that the flag had been insulted and the sovereignty of the sea threatened. To insult the flag was to insult the nation. The king was well aware from the repeated declarations of the States-General that they would never willingly acknowledge England’s sovereignty of the sea: they had said they would “rather die first.” He was also doubtless fully acquainted with the fixed opinion of the Grand Pensionary that to claim that the whole Dutch fleet should strike to a single frigate or a ketch was “intolerable.” He contrived his measures accordingly, and decided to send one of his yachts to pass through the States’ fleet, on their own coast, and to fire upon them if they did not strike their flags in the accustomed manner. The matter was deliberately considered. The clause in the treaty of Breda was not very clear as to whether a yacht, or even a man-of-war, could compel the whole Dutch fleet to strike, and on the Dutch coast. Just about the time Temple returned from The Hague, Sir Leoline Jenkins, Judge of the High Court of Admiralty, wrote a confidential letter to Sir Thomas Allin, the commander of the Blue, asking him to find out secretly, “as if for his own satisfaction,” whether there were any “ancient seamen” at Trinity House or elsewhere who were on board the Happy Entrance when it carried the Earl of Arundel to Holland in 1636, and if so, whether they remembered that on entering the road of Goeree, in Holland, Admiral Tromp, who was at anchor there, struck his flag to it; and similar information was asked in regard to other cases of like import in 1637 and later. The question was also put to Sir Thomas, “How far the British Sea, or British Ocean, does in common reputation extend itself; and whether all that which washes the coasts of the Low Countries, as well as that which runs upon the French coast, has been anciently deemed and reputed to be British Sea?” Jenkins explained that he had been desired by the king to obtain proof of the striking of the flag as secretly as possible; and the two chief points were, (1) “Had not the French and the Dutch always struck to the king’s flag even on their own coasts? and (2) that a single ship of ours, if commissioned for war, though never so inconsiderable in its strength, did make whole squadrons and fleets of the neighbouring nations to strike, and particularly the Spaniards near the Spanish Netherlands and the subjects of the United Provinces near their coasts?”[884]
The reference to the French and Spaniards was no doubt meant to conceal the real significance of the inquiry. The reply of the admiral seems not to have been preserved, but a later memorandum of Jenkins answers the questions as to the striking of the flag at Goeree, and in the other cases, in the affirmative. The Trinity House, whose opinion was also asked, said that it had been commonly received by them from their predecessors that the British seas “extend to Cape Finisterre, or the North Cape” (sic), and that the sea which washes the coast of the Low Countries and France had been always reputed part of the British seas. “To know how far it does extend northwards,” they ingenuously added, “we desire you will please to consult those authors who have treated on that subject, it not being known to a certain by us.”[885] They had been unable to meet with any persons who knew about the alleged cases of striking, so that Jenkins must have obtained the information about them from other sources.
There can be no doubt that Charles was advised by the authorities he consulted on the ambiguous points in the article of Breda that (1) any king’s ship, however small, commissioned for war, was a “man-of-war” in the sense of the treaty, and could call upon the whole Dutch fleet to strike; (2) that the British seas included those washing the coasts of the United Provinces; and (3) with respect to the previous custom referred to in the treaty, that the Dutch had struck on their own coasts.
Thus fortified in law and precedent, the way was clear for Charles to pick a quarrel with the States about the striking of the flag, and he despatched, not a man-of-war, nor even a frigate, but his yacht, the Merlin, for the purpose. Ostensibly it was sent to bring over Lady Temple, who had, by his wish, remained in Holland since her husband’s departure, but with orders to pass through the Dutch fleet then cruising in the Channel, and to fire at them until they struck their flags or fired back at the Merlin. As the French ambassador, who was in the secret, tersely put it to his Court, “the captain is to use all his powder, so as to give good cause for a quarrel.” The Merlin on her way to Holland passed through the Dutch fleet, but owing to a heavy gale she could not get near enough to execute the king’s commands. She appears, however, to have met two Dutch men-of-war convoying the herring-busses, who exchanged guns with her but did not strike their flag.[886] But in returning, early in August, with Lady Temple on board, the Merlin, with the royal standard flying, came upon the States’ fleet lying at anchor beyond the Goodwins, six leagues from the coast of Zealand and sixteen leagues from England. The little yacht, while still at a distance, began to fire at the Dutch flagship. De Ruyter did not reply at once, but the Lieutenant-Admiral, Van Ghent, thinking that it was merely a question of the salute, returned the guns in the usual manner, and was not a little surprised to receive for his pains a discharge of cannon-balls. He sent an officer on board the yacht for an explanation, and Captain Crow, the commander of the Merlin, informed him that he had been sent to bring the English ambassadress with her family from Holland, and had orders to make the Dutch fleet lower their colours wherever he met with it. On hearing this, Van Ghent, on the pretext of paying a compliment to Lady Temple, whom he had frequently met at The Hague, went himself on board the Merlin. He told Captain Crow that the point he had raised was one on which he had received no orders from the States, and that he could not concede the claim without express commands. He declared his willingness to pay due respect to the English flag according to the former practice, but he thought it could scarcely be contended that the admiral and the whole fleet should strike on their own coast to a single vessel, and that vessel a yacht, which was only a pleasure-boat, or at least served only for a passage, and could not pass for a man-of-war. It was at all events, he said, a question which should first be submitted to inquiry by the two Governments.
Captain Crow was puzzled and perplexed, and on Van Ghent’s departure he appealed to Lady Temple as to what he should do. She, seeing he did not relish his job and would be glad to get out of it by her help, shrewdly told him that he knew his orders best and what he ought to do, and begged him not to mind her or her children. After firing another gun, the Merlin continued her voyage to England, leaving the Dutch fleet with their flags displayed, and without having fired a single angry shot in reply. Very naturally, Charles was irritated at the miscarriage of his plan. He had hoped for a sharp and unequal contest about the flag, the news of which would have rung from end to end of England and enabled him to drag the country into war to resent the affront. Crow was thrown into the Tower, “for refusing to do his duty towards the Dutch men-of-war who refused to strike to the king’s flag.” The Privy Council debated whether a frigate, the other class of vessel to whose status De Witt had objected, should not be hastily despatched to the Dutch fleet to draw the spark which the Merlin had failed to elicit, by firing on every ship that refused to take in her flag. Probably the device was deemed to be too transparent; but it was rumoured that the captain of the Reserve, which left Deal a few days later for Portsmouth, had received instructions to fight the Dutch fleet if he met them and they did not strike,—a rumour which, it was reported, “deads the hearts of people lest we should have war with Holland.”