The Commonwealth. page 7

The parliament of England had in good faith proposed their scheme of confederacy against their common enemies both by sea and land, but the states-general made so many objections and delays that the term fixed for the negotiation expired, and the English ambassadors took their leave in disgust. The battle of Worcester awoke the Dutch to their mistake, and they then sent in haste to propose terms of alliance on their part, but it was too late. St. John, strong in his feelings as he was deep in his intellect, had represented their conduct in such terms that the English parliament received them with a cool haughtiness the counterpart of their own in the late attempt at treaty. St. John had also employed himself in a measure of revenge on the Dutch which was in its effects most disastrous to them. Owing to the embarrassments of the other European states, the Dutch had grown not only to be the chief merchants of the nations, but the great carriers of all mercantile goods. St. John passed a navigation act, by which it was forbidden to introduce any of the products of Asia, Africa, or America into England, except in English bottoms, or any of the manufactures of Europe, except in English ships or the ships of the countries which produced them. This at one blow lopped off the greater part of the commerce of Holland, and the demands of the ambassador that this terrible act should be repealed, or at least suspended till the conclusion of a treaty, were totally disregarded. But this was not the only offensive weapon which St. John's resentment had found. Letters of marque had been issued against French vessels, and they were permitted to be used against Dutch ones, on pretence that they had French property on board. Still more, the massacre of the English at Amboyna, which had been slightly passed over, owing to the desire of the English court to maintain the alliance of Holland against Spain, had never been forgotten by the English people, and there were now loud demands, especially from the sailors, that all survivors of the Dutch concerned in that murder should be given up. In fact, a determined spirit of hostility had sprung up betwixt the two maritime nations. The Dutch, at the call of their merchants for protection, prepared a fleet, and placed at the head of it the three greatest admirals that their nation ever produced - Van Tromp, Do Ruyter, and De Witt. The English parliament, on its part, ordered its admirals to insist on the same homage being paid to their flair in the narrow seas as had been paid to that of the king. They also demanded indemnification for the losses sustained in the East Indies from the Dutch, and insisted on the stipulated contribution of the tenth herring from the Dutch fishermen in the British seas.

It was impossible, under such circumstances, that hostilities should be long deferred. Commodore Young was the first to call on the convoy of a fleet of Dutch merchantmen to in; but the next day, being the 19th of May, he encountered Blake off Dover, and that commander, though he had only twenty ships, demanded that Tromp should do homage to his flag. Van Tromp refused, and sailed right on till he came nearly opposite Blake, when the English admiral fired a gun three successive times at the Dutch admiral's flag. Van Tromp returned the compliment by salute the British flag. They refused, and Young attacked them so smartly, that in the end they complied. In a few days Van Tromp, who was a zealous partisan of Orange, and therefore of the house of Stuart, appeared in the Downs with two-and-forty sail. To the commodore Bourne, whom he found there, he disclaimed any hostile intentions, but pleaded the loss of several anchors and cables for putting firing a broadside into Blake's ship; and the two fleets were instantly engaged, and a desperate battle was fought from three in the afternoon till darkness separated them. The English had taken two ships, one of which, on account of the damage done it, was allowed to sink.

There was much dispute betwixt the two countries which was the aggressor; but it appears the most probable fact that Van Tromp sought an occasion to resist the demand of lowering the Dutch flag to the English one, and found an admiral as prepared to assert that superiority as he was to dispute it.

The English parliament immediately issued strict orders to all its commodores to pursue and destroy all the ships of the Dutch fleet that they could find on the seas; and in the space of a month they took or burnt seventy sail of merchantmen, besides several men-of-war. The Dutch, on their parts, protested that the battle had not been sought by them, and proposed inquiry, and the punishment of whichever of the commanders should be proved the aggressor; but the parliament replied that it was satisfied that the States were bent on usurping the rights of England on the seas, and to destroy the fleets, which were the walls and bulwarks of the nation, and therefore that it was necessary to stand on the defensive. The States sent De Pauw to reiterate the assurances of their peaceful intentions, and to urge the court of inquiry; but the parliament was now as high as the States had been before, and insisted on reparation and security. De Pauw demanded what these terms meant, and was answered, full compensation for all the expense that the commonwealth had been put to by the hostile preparations of the States, and a confederation for the mutual protection of the two nations. De Pauw knew that the first of these terms would be declined, and took his leave. On the 19th of July the parliament proclaimed war against the States.

The Dutch were by no means afraid of the war, though they dreaded the destruction of their trade which it would occasion. They had acquired a great reputation as a naval people, and the sailors were eager to encounter the English, and revenge their defeat upon them. Van Tromp once more appeared with seventy sail of the line, and boasted that he would sweep the English from the face of the ocean. The vice-admiral Sir George Ayscough had just returned victorious from the reduction of Barbadoes, and was left in charge of the channel whilst Blake went northward, in quest of the squadron which protected the Dutch fishermen. Tromp could not come up with Ayscough, owing to a change of wind; he, therefore, went northward after Blake, who had captured the Dutch squadron, and made the fishermen pay the tenth herring, but a storm dispersed Tromp's fleet, several of his ships falling into the hands of the English. When he again returned to port, he was received with great indignation by the people, who had expected wonders from him, and in his mortification he resigned.

De Ruyter was advanced into his post, and put to sea in charge of a merchant fleet, and in return fell in with Ayscough off Plymouth, who broke through his line, but was not followed up vigorously by the captains of the other vessels, and the Dutch ships escaped. Ayscough was superseded, the parliament suspecting him of a royal tendency.

De Ruyter joined De Witt, and attacked Blake, who had under him admirals Bourne and Penn, and a fierce engagement took place, which lasted the whole of the 28th of September. The next morning the Dutch were seen bearing away for their own coasts, several of their vessels having gone down, and one of them being taken. Blake gave chase as far as Goree, but could not pursue them amongst the shoals and sandbanks, whither the small vessels of the Dutch took refuge. Wherever English and Dutch ships now met, there was battle. There was an affray betwixt them in the Mediterranean, where Van Galen, with a greatly superior force, attacked and defeated captain Baily, but was himself slain; the king of Denmark also joined the Dutch with five ships, laid an embargo on English merchandise in the Baltic, and closed the Sound against them. There were, moreover, numerous' vessels under the French flag cruising about in quest of merchantmen.

As winter, however, approached, Blake, supposing the campaign would cease till spring, dispersed a number of- his vessels to different ports, and was lying in the Downs with only thirty-seven sail, when he was surprised by a fleet of eighty men-of-war, and ten fire-ships. It was Van Tromp, whom the States had again prevailed on to take the command, and who came vehement for the recovery of his tarnished reputation. Blake's stout heart refused to shrink from even so unequal a contest; some say the wind failed him, had he wished it; but, be that as it may, he fought the whole Dutch fleet with true English bulldogism, from ten in the morning till six in the evening, when darkness compelled a pause. Blake took advantage of the darkness to get up the river as far as Leigh. He had managed to blow up a Dutch ship, disabled two others, and to do much damage generally to the Dutch fleet; but he had lost five ships himself. Tromp and De Ruyter sailed to and fro at the mouth of the river, and along the coast from the North Foreland to the Isle of Wight, in triumph, and then convoyed home the Dutch and French fleets; and there was a wonderful rejoicing over the great English admiral, which, considering the immense inequality of the fleets, was really an honour to Blake, for it showed how they esteemed his genius and courage. The whole of Holland was full of bravado of blocking up the Thames, and forcing the English to an ignominious peace. Van Tromp was so elated, that he stuck a besom at his masthead, intimating that he would sweep the seas of the English.

The English parliament, during the winter, made strenuous efforts to wipe out this disgrace. They refitted and put in order all their ships, ordered two regiments of infantry to be ready to embark as marines, raised the wages of the seamen, ordered their families to be maintained during their absence in service, and increased the rate of prize money. They sent for Monk from Scotland, and joined him and Dean in command with Blake.

The Dutch navy was estimated at this period at a hundred and fifty sail, and was flushed with success; but Blake was resolved to take down their pride, and lay ready for the first opportunity. This occurred on the 18th of February, 1653. Van Tromp appeared sailing up the channel with seventy-two ships of war and thirty armed traders, convoying a homeward-bound merchant fleet of three hundred sail. His orders were, having seen the merchantmen safe home, to return and blockade the Thames. Blake saved him the trouble, by issuing from port with eighty men of war, and posting himself across the channel. Van Tromp signalled the merchant fleet under his convoy to take care of themselves, and the battle betwixt him and Blake commenced with fury. The action took place not far from Cape La Hogue, on the coast of France. Blake and Dean, who were both on board the Triumph, led the way, and their ship received seven hundred shots in her hull. The battle lasted the whole day, in which the Dutch had six ships taken or sunk, the English losing none, but Blake was severely wounded.

The next day the fight was renewed off Weymouth as fiercely as before, and was continued all day, and at intervals through the night; and on the third day the conflict still raged till four o'clock in the afternoon, when the wind carrying the contending fleets towards the shallow waters betwixt Bologne and Calais, Tromp, with his lesser ships, escaped from the English, and pursued his course homewards, carrying the merchant fleet, for the most part, safely there. In the three days' fight the Dutch, according to their own account, had lost nine men-of-war and twenty-four merchantmen; according to the English account, eleven men-of-war and thirty merchantmen. They had two thousand men killed, and fifteen hundred taken prisoners. The English had only one ship sunk, though many of their vessels were greatly damaged; and their loss of killed and wounded was very severe. But they had decidedly beaten the enemy, and the excitement in Holland, on the return of the crest-fallen though valiant boaster Van Tromp, was universal. It was now the turn of the English sailors to boast, who declared that they had paid off the Dutch for Amboyna. But the defeat of their navy was nothing in comparison to the general mischief done to their trade and merchant shipping. Their fisheries employed one hundred thousand persons: these were entirely stopped; the channel was now closed to their fleet, and in the Baltic the English committed continual ravages on their traders. Altogether, they had now lost sixteen hundred ships, and they once more condescended to seek for accommodation with the English parliament, which, however, treated them with haughty indifference; and it was, therefore, with great satisfaction, that they now beheld the change which took place in England.

The reformers of various shades and creeds had at first been combined by the one great feeling of rescuing the country from the absolute principles of the Stuarts. They had fought bravely side by side for this great object; but in proportion as they succeeded, the differences betwixt themselves became more apparent. The presbyterians, Scotch and English, were bent on fixing their religious opinions on the country as despotically as the catholics and episcopalians had done before them. But here they found themselves opposed by the independents, who had notions of religious freedom far beyond the presbyterians, and were not inclined to yield their freedom to any other party whatever. Their religious notions naturally disposed them towards the same equalising system in the state, and as the chiefs of the army were of this denomination, they soon found themselves in a condition to dictate to the parliament. Pride's Purge left parliament almost purely independent, and it and the army worked harmoniously till the sweeping victories of Cromwell created a jealousy of his power. This power was the more supreme because circumstances had dispersed the other leading generals into distant scenes of action. Monk and Lambert were in Scotland till Monk was called to the fleet, Fleetwood was in Ireland, Ireton was dead. The long parliament, or the remnant of it, called the Rump, ably as it had conducted affairs, was daily decreasing in numbers, and dreaded to renew itself by election, because it felt certain that anything like a free election would return an overwhelming number of presbyterians, and that they would thus commit an act of felo de se.

In no period did what is called the commonwealth of England present any of the elements of what we conceive by a republic, that is, by a government of the free representatives of the people. Had the people been allowed to send their representatives, there would have been a considerable number of catholics, a much greater number of episcopalians, and both of these sections royalists. There would have been an overwhelming number of presbyterians, and a very moderate one of independents. The government was, therefore, speedily converted into an oligarchy, at the head of which were the generals of the army, and some few of the leaders of parliament. The army, by Pride's Purge, reduced the parliament to a junto, by turning out forcibly the majority of the representatives of the people, and the time was now fast approaching when it must resolve itself into a military dictatorship.