476 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



at the recent journey of Louis to Flanders and the naval 

 preparations in France, voted a sum of 800,000. l 



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. 2 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 confiden- 

 tial correspondence with France with the object of inducing 

 that Power to take up arms against England. The accusa- 

 tion 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 sudsidies. The apprehen- 

 sion 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 



1 Part. Hist., iv. 456. Hume, op. cit. 



2 De Witt's Brieven, iv. 837. Pontalis, op. cit., ii. 122. 



