THE SECOND DUTCH WAR 459 



though some attempts were made to excite national animosity 

 by the familiar arguments. 1 



The general course of the war, in which France, and then 

 Denmark, combined with the United Provinces against England, 

 does not concern us here. 2 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 llth 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 domin- 

 ion of the sea " ; London was paralysed with consternation 

 and amazement, Pepys locked his father and wife in a bed- 

 room 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 



1 The author of The Dutch Draion to the Life expatiated on the inestimable 

 benefit the Dutch derived from the British seas by encroaching on our fisheries, and 

 asserted that the only way to keep them under was " by commanding the narrow 

 sea, their coast and ours," the narrow sea, according to this writer's view, or at 

 least the "right and dominion of England," extending as far as the Mediterranean 

 (p. 75). 



- See Mahan, The Influence of Sea, Power upon History ; Colomb, Naval Warfare ; 

 Pontalis, op. cit. ; Clarendon's Memoirs, ii. 111. 



