517 



CHAPTER XIV. 



JAMES II. AND AFTER. 



IN the short and troubled reign of James II. little was heard 

 of the claims of England to the sovereignty of the sea. Bad 

 king as James was, he rescued the navy from the deplorable 

 condition into which it had sunk in the later years of Charles, 

 of which Pepys has left so graphic a picture, 1 and the naval 

 officers continued to enforce the routine duty of the flag ; but 

 the domestic troubles with which he was surrounded prevented 

 him from turning it to account against any of his neighbours, 

 even if he had been so inclined. And with the Revolution of 

 1688 the whole aspect of the question was changed. The 

 English pretension, as we have seen, had been specially 

 directed against the United Provinces, but when the Prince of 

 Orange was called to the English throne as William III., and 

 was thus the ruler in both countries, it was not to be expected 

 that he would show much zeal in continuing the policy of the 

 Stuarts against his own countrymen. 



It is true that in the treaty which was concluded between 

 England and the Dutch Republic in 1689, the article on the 

 flag in the treaty of Westminster was repeated and confirmed. 

 This, however, was very much a matter of routine and formal- 

 ity, though it must be said the Dutch ambassadors in London 

 complained that William was as obstinate and punctilious about 

 the question of the flag as any purely English sovereign could 

 have been. 2 But from this time until well on in the next 

 century England and the United Provinces were united as 



1 Memoires relating to the State of the Royal Navy of England for Ten Years, 

 determin'd December 1688. London, 1690. 



2 Dumont, Corps Diplomatique, VII. ii. 236. Wagenaar, Vaderlandsche Historic, 

 c. Ixi. 



