Happy and Glorious E-Book

Michael I Wilson

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 336

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 is a story of intrigue, plot and counter-plot, religious rivalry and nationalist fervour. It tells of the stubborn and bigoted king, James II, in conflict with his subjects – a conflict in which he was finally forced to put aside his crown, making way for his daughter, Mary, and her husband William of Orange. Less than thirty years after Charles II had been restored to the throne, a king was once more deposed (although this time with rather less bloodshed),effectively creating the form of government that we have today. After the Revolution it was no longer possible for British monarchs to ride roughshod over the wishes of their people or to impose religion upon them. Yet, as well as creating a constitutional monarchy, the Revolution also led in time to such events as the Jacobite Rebellions in Scotland and the Orange Order marches in Northern Ireland. This book tells the story of those momentous days and sets them against the turbulent backdrop of seventeenth-century life.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Title

Foreword by Jack Straw

Preface and Acknowledgements

What’s in a Name?

Calendars Old and New

1 War on the High Seas

2 Plots and Popery

3 A Failed Rebellion

4 Turbulent Times

5 Dutch Courage – New Hope

6 Out with the Old, In with the New

7 Killiecrankie, Glencoe and the Boyne

8 Aftermath

Notes

Select Bibliography

Plates

Copyright

FOREWORD

After a promising start to his reign early in 1685 King James II turned out to be dictatorial, devious, and intent on getting his own way in everything. He believed firmly in his Divine Right to rule, and as a fanatical Catholic he wanted above all to reinstate his own faith as the official religion of the nation. As for Parliament, to him it was simply an irritation, little more than a supply depot to which he was obliged to go whenever he needed money. The Glorious Revolution of 1688/89 changed all this. It was a milestone in the progress towards Parliamentary democracy in Britain, and its outcome was far-reaching. The principle of the Divine Right of Kings, the cause of so much trouble under all the Stuart monarchs, was finally discredited. For the first time in the history of these islands the reigning monarch became answerable to Parliament over a wide spectrum of policies. No longer could he (or she) embark unchecked on expensive foreign adventures or wage unpopular wars. No longer could he try to impose religious beliefs on his people, or interfere with the work of the judiciary. No longer could he set up a standing army with personal allegiance to himself. Perhaps even more remarkably, all this and more was achieved without the widespread bloodshed and strife which at one time had seemed inevitable.

Michael Wilson guides us through this momentous period with clarity and precision. I feel sure that his highly readable account will help greatly towards making this somewhat neglected yet immensely significant episode in our island history better known to students and general readers alike.

Jack Straw, 2014

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Three hundred years ago the Stuart monarchy came to an end with the death of Queen Anne on 1 August 1714. Yet it could so easily have ended sooner, amidst the violence and bloodshed of a civil war. Instead events took a different course, culminating in the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688–89.

Over the years historians have produced many books and articles about the Revolution, yet to many people it remains something of a mystery. What started it, why was it ‘Glorious’, and what was it all about anyway? Who were the principal figures involved? In their spoof history book 1066and All That (1930), W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman manage in their own inimitable way to sum up the entire episode in a few words, telling us that because of James II’s behaviour, ‘the people lost control of themselves altogether and … declared that the answer was an Orange.’ The accompanying illustration shows an orange topped by a crown and labelled ‘Williamanmary’.

There is clearly much more to the Revolution than this – indeed so much more that one reason why the subject often seems so daunting may be the number and complexity of the issues involved, whether religious, political, social or personal. It is the aim of this book to try to simplify these issues and so to make plain both to students and to the general reader the main underlying causes of the Revolution – the seeds of which were sown in the previous reign – as well as charting its progress. It is not the intention either to take sides or to propose new theories, but simply to follow events as they unfolded. In the process it may be that not all the participants have received the attention due to them, and that some lesser events have been omitted. Nevertheless, if at the end of the journey the reader gains a clearer sense of what actually happened and why, the book will have served its purpose.

My thanks are due to the following for permission to quote from material within their copyright: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd (The Diary of Samuel Pepys ed. R.C. Latham and W. Matthews), and Batcheller Monkhouse on behalf of the Trustees of the Will of Major Peter Evelyn (The Diary of JohnEvelyn ed. E.S. de Beer). I also thank my publishers, and especially Mark Beynon, for the care they have taken with the production of this book. And I am grateful beyond measure to all those who between them, during the writing process, have freely given me generous portions of their time and patience, moral support and encouragement, and have shared with me much valuable technical expertise and historical knowledge.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

The political and constitutional upheaval which is the subject of this book is usually known as the Glorious Revolution. How it got this title is less certain, but one explanation has more credibility than most.

In 1689 the political activist John Hampden was summoned to appear before a committee of the House of Lords which was enquiring into the repercussions of the Rye House Plot. There are differing reports of the proceedings, and while one of these links Hampden with the phrase ‘this glorious Revolution’, the official account of the committee records it as ‘this most happy Revolution’. It is not entirely clear from these reports whether Hampden actually used the words himself. Although the first version has become the norm, the second clearly has an equally important claim to recognition and use. Both are therefore reflected in the title of this book, although ‘the Glorious Revolution’ is the term generally used in the text.

Sources: Journal of the House of Lords, vol. XIV, p. 379; H.C. Foxcroft (ed.), The Lifeand Letters of Sir George Savile, Bart., first Marquess of Halifax, 2 vols, 1898, vol. II, p. 95; information from Adrian Brown, House of Lords Library.

CALENDARS OLD AND NEW

Although the Gregorian or New Style calendar had been in use throughout most of Western Europe since 1584, the Julian or Old Style version continued to be used in Britain until 1752. In this mode the New Year officially began not on 1 January but on 25 March, the interim period forming the last three months of the previous year instead of the first three of the following year. However, in this book the New Style calendar is applied throughout and 1 January is indeed New Year’s Day.

To complicate matters further, British Old Style dates are eleven days behind those of the New Style. Where necessary, this discrepancy is indicated in the text by (OS) or (NS).

1

WAR ON THE HIGH SEAS

It was 6 February 1685. In his bedroom overlooking the Thames, in the rambling old Palace of Whitehall, King Charles II lay dying. In common with the other private apartments in the Palace, the room was not grand but quite small and dark; now it was also noticeably stuffy, owing to the crowd of churchmen, courtiers, officials and servants who had pressed their way in to witness their king’s last hours. With typical irony he begged their collective pardon for taking ‘such an unconscionable long time a-dying’, and faintly voiced a plea on behalf of his best-known mistress Nell Gwynn which today is no less poignant for being so familiar –‘don’t let poor Nelly starve!’

Four days earlier, on 2 February, Charles had been unexpectedly laid low by a stroke. He had already suffered one in 1681 which, while not incapacitating him, had certainly taken its toll. From then onwards he spent more time away from London, mainly at Newmarket or Windsor, enjoying hawking, racing and theatricals. His relationships with his various mistresses grew less tempestuous, and he became absorbed in new building projects at Whitehall, Greenwich and Winchester. However, at New Year 1685 there was no sign of any impending crisis. Indeed, on the evening of Sunday 25 January the diarist John Evelyn, on a visit to Whitehall, was scandalised to find the king publicly toying with no less than three of his mistresses (Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland, Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, and Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin), whilst around him his roistering courtiers gambled away huge sums of money.1

And now, for the pleasure-loving, politically devious Charles, such scenes of unashamed debauchery were over. As he lay patiently waiting for death whilst enduring the various drastic treatments prescribed by his doctors, his queen – the Portuguese Catherine of Braganza, originally a neglected and slightly pathetic figure – sent word that she was too upset to visit him and asking his forgiveness for anything she might have done in the past to distress or offend him. (If ever there was a case of the boot being on the other foot, this was surely it.) In contrast, his brother James, Duke of York and heir to the throne, scarcely left the bedside where he knelt weeping continuously. It could be said that his tears, though certainly genuine, were also prophetic, in view of the distress and misery that he was not only about to suffer himself, but would also inflict upon many of his subjects. Before setting out to trace the steps which led to this sad state of public affairs it may be rewarding, in these first chapters, to consider the main events of James’ earlier years, as a means of evaluating his developing character.

He was born on 14 October 1633, the second of Charles I’s three sons, and was created Duke of York immediately after baptism. Four years later he was painted by Van Dyck in a group portrait with his brother Charles and his sisters, a solemn child still in petticoats – for at this time boys were not ‘breeched’ until the age of 5 or 6. His childhood, which was passed mainly in the now vanished palace of Richmond, came to an abrupt end in 1642 with the onset of the Civil War. He accompanied his father Charles I in the early campaigning, and together with the younger Charles received an early baptism of fire at the indecisive Battle of Edgehill.

After Edgehill James went with his father to Oxford, which became the Royalist headquarters and centre of court life for the next four years. The king and his entourage took over Christchurch, whilst Merton was allotted to the queen, Henrietta Maria. Although James may well have benefited from instruction or tutoring from some of the resident academics, the atmosphere of Oxford at that time was hardly conducive to study. Never a large town, Oxford was now filled to bursting point with an influx of courtiers, soldiers, servants and associated hangers-on, supplemented by large numbers of horses and pack-animals in need of extra fodder and stabling. Inevitably such conditions bred disease. The situation was briefly but tellingly described by Lady Anne Fanshawe, then a girl of 18:

We had the perpetual discourse of losing and gaining towns and men; at the windows the sad spectacle of war, sometimes plague, sometimes sickness of other kinds, by reason of so many people being packed together, as I believe there never was before of that quality; always want; yet I must needs say that most bore it with a martyr-like cheerfulness.2

At first, to the young Duke of York life in Oxford no doubt had a frisson, an air of suppressed excitement welcome to an active 11-year-old, if less so to the adults around him. Four years later, when his father abandoned the cause and fled to Scotland in May 1646, things looked altogether bleaker to the adolescent James, who now found himself taken back in custody to St James’s Palace in London, in the care of the Earl of Northumberland. The conditions were not severe, and James was allowed on several occasions to visit his father at Hampton Court, where the king – having been handed over by the Scots – was now the prisoner of the army. At these meetings (which do not seem to have been very closely monitored), Charles urged James not only to support his brother the younger Charles – now safely in France – but also to do his utmost to try to escape, and to join his mother and brother there. In 1647 James did indeed plot an escape, but a coded letter which he had written was seized and the plot was foiled. No action was taken against him, but he had to promise not to make any other attempts to run away. This promise, like many another still to come, he did not keep.

At St James’s Palace he shared his quarters with his brother Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and his younger sister Elizabeth, aged 7 and 13 respectively. On 20 April 1648, whilst playing a game of hide-and-seek with them in the labyrinthine rooms of the Palace, lax security enabled James to make a pre-planned escape into nearby St James’s Park, where a Royalist soldier of fortune, Colonel Joseph Bampfield (acting under covert instructions from Charles I), was waiting to spirit him away to a safe house near London Bridge. From here, now convincingly disguised as a girl, James made it down the Thames to Tilbury and thence in a small Dutch ship to the Netherlands, where he was happily received by his elder sister Mary. At the age of 12 Mary had married Prince William of Orange on 2 May 1641 in London, and she had joined her husband at The Hague in the following year.

James was growing up to be a handsome young man. Although ominously obstinate and self-opinionated, he was also brave and resourceful, qualities which stood him in good stead after the execution of his father in January 1649. For four years he moved around Europe – to Paris and St Germain-en-Laye to be with his mother Queen Henrietta Maria, to his sister at The Hague, to Jersey with his brother Charles (who made him governor of the island, a post which he occupied for almost a year), to his aunt Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, at Rhenen near Arnhem. On the whole it was not a happy time. There was tension between the new King Charles and their mother Henrietta Maria, and James at first found it difficult to decide to which of them he owed his allegiance. The queen’s strong Catholicism was also an issue, although she does not seem to have put direct pressure on James to convert. A political turning point was reached with the defeat of Charles at the Battle of Worcester in the autumn of 1651, following his attempt to regain the English Crown with the help of the Scots, who had already crowned him their own king at Scone. For some time after the battle there was no news of him, but at last he reappeared in France, to the great joy of his family.

But the rejoicings were tempered by gloom and a general sense that the outlook for the Stuarts was now bleak indeed. It seemed they were condemned to be losers, and impoverished ones at that. Prompted by the need to make some money, James sought the permission of his brother and their mother to turn soldier. They agreed, and in 1652 he embarked on a military career, serving first in France in the army of the celebrated Marshal Turenne until 1655. His was no carefully protected behind-the-lines staff post; on the contrary, he saw considerable action and was often in personal danger. His reward was the friendship and admiration of Turenne and promotion to the rank of lieutenant general at the age of 20, the youngest of eight of Turenne’s officers to hold that rank.

Political expediency now forced King Charles to move out of France and into Flanders, and to seek the support of the Spanish in helping him to regain his throne. He set up his court first in Bruges and later in Brussels, and in 1656 ordered the Duke of York to join him. James did so with reluctance, and there was further tension between the brothers. An argument over James’ choice of a secretary (Sir John Berkeley) was resolved when he was allowed to keep the secretary, provided he himself joined the Spanish army. He did so in 1657, though without much enthusiasm, as he correctly foresaw that this would bring him into actual conflict with his friend and mentor Turenne. This was indeed what happened, especially at the battle which was fought between the French and the Spanish on 14 June 1658 amongst the sand-dunes of Dunkirk. James personally led two cavalry charges, but both failed and he was forced to retreat. Just as before, when he had been with Turenne, he exposed himself recklessly to injury or even death, and it seems that on more than one occasion he was saved only by his stout and serviceable armour. Whatever his faults, he well deserved Sir William Coventry’s later description of him (relayed by Samuel Pepys in his Diary, 4 June 1664) as ‘a man naturally martial to the hottest degree’.

Oliver Cromwell died on 3 September 1658, and news of this event galvanised the exiled court at Brussels, to which James was now attached. Cromwell’s successor, his son Richard – known as ‘Tumbledown Dick’ – had no stomach for the job and resigned his office after a year. However, in the febrile atmosphere of Brussels, plots of invasions launched from France and uprisings encouraged at home came to nothing, and hope was replaced by despondency. Yet, as so often in the course of history, the darkest hour presaged the dawn, and in the later months of 1659 events in England began to move rapidly towards change. Antagonism between the army and the discredited Rump Parliament had reached a pitch that threatened to spill over into anarchy. In Scotland, the general commanding the Parliamentary forces there, George Monck – a strong believer in the supremacy of civil over military power – watched with concern as the Commonwealth unravelled, and decided to take matters into his own hands. On 1 January 1660, as Samuel Pepys sat down to make the first-ever entry in his famous Diary, Monck crossed the River Tweed into England at the head of his well-disciplined troops and made his way down to London, where he took immediate and decisive steps to restore the authority of Parliament and so stabilise the volatile situation. At the end of April an official invitation was sent to King Charles from the new Parliament, asking him to return to England and assume the Crown.

A flotilla of ships set out for The Hague to bring the new monarch home. It was headed by the flagship Naseby, which carried the admiral in charge of the whole operation. This was Sir Edward Mountagu – a former Cromwellian politician and seafarer who had now convincingly switched sides – and amongst his immediate entourage was his young cousin and confidential secretary Samuel Pepys, not long appointed (13 March) and now relishing his first experience of being at the very centre of important events. For his part in the king’s return Mountagu was created Earl of Sandwich and a Knight of the Garter, but although he is always respectfully identified as ‘my Lord’ in his kinsman’s Diary, the usage predates his ennoblement. In fact important figures in the Commonwealth were often given the title purely as a matter of courtesy, and Pepys was only following custom.

On 22 May the Duke of York arrived on board the Naseby for a visit of inspection, together with his younger brother Henry; they made a handsome and resplendent pair, ‘the Duke of York in yellow trimmings, the Duke of Gloucester in grey and red,’ reported Pepys. (Sadly, Henry was to die of smallpox only four months later, aged 20.) The Duke of York had already been confirmed in office as Lord High Admiral, a title which had been bestowed on him as a child – despite his tender years – by his father. He returned to England in another ship, the London, while the king himself sailed on the Naseby, now newly renamed the Royal Charles. Charles II landed at Dover on 25 May and entered London on 29 May – his 30th birthday. Samuel Pepys was not on hand to record the pageantry, being still at Dover with the fleet, but his fellow-diarist John Evelyn was there and caught something of the excitement; he saw the king ride into town:

with a Triumph of above 20,000 horse and foot, brandishing their swords and shouting with unexpressable joy; the ways straw’d with flowers, the bells ringing, the streets hung with tapestry, fountains running with wine … the windows and balconies all set with ladies, trumpets, music, and myriads of people flocking the streets and was as far as Rochester, so as they were 7 hours in passing the City … I stood in the Strand, and beheld it, and blessed God.

Riding near his brother in the procession, the Duke of York was probably no less elated. Conscious too of his position as Lord High Admiral, it was not long before he began to assert his authority in this new role. The navy which Charles II inherited from the failed Commonwealth experiment was large and well equipped, yet not so good that it could not be further improved, and the Lord High Admiral took a close interest in these developments.

By early July 1660 he had already set out his ideas on the shape of naval administration, in particular the setting up of a seven-man Navy Board, of whom the most active, efficient and energetic was the Clerk of the Acts (i.e. secretary), Samuel Pepys, now appointed at the strikingly youthful age of 27. The appointment was made at the suggestion of Lord Sandwich, and the duke soon realised that in Pepys he had got a bargain; he congratulated the earl, who passed on the good news: ‘He did tell me how much I was beholding to the Duke of York, who did yesterday of his own accord … thank him for one person brought into the Navy, naming myself, and much more to my commendation, which is the greatest comfort and encouragement that ever I had in my life’ (Diary, 8 October 1662).

James took his duties seriously, chairing the weekly meetings of the newly constituted Board and drawing up regulations for the fleet, including one which optimistically docked a day’s pay from any sailor heard cursing or swearing, and another ordering up to twelve lashes for anyone ‘who pisseth on the decks’.3 Pepys, who began by being somewhat in awe of him (‘till now [I] did ever fear to meet him’ – 4 March 1664), soon came to admire his powers of organisation, and was in turn obviously held high in the duke’s estimation, to the point at which James was even prepared to take advice from the Clerk of the Acts. On 24 July 1668 Pepys recorded a momentous meeting with his chief:

After the Duke of York was ready, he called me to his closet, and there I did long and largely show him the weakness of our office, and did give him advice … which he did take mighty well, and desired me to draw up what I would have him write to the office. I did lay open the whole failings of the office, and how it was his duty to find them and to find fault with them, as Admiral … which he agreed to – and seemed much to rely on what I said.

However, administrative matters, while important, were not enough to satisfy the soldierly instincts of the Lord High Admiral, and it was not long before James sought an opportunity to prove himself as a leader in naval as well as in land warfare. At that time little distinction was made between the conduct of battles on land or sea, or indeed those who directed them. The title of General-at-Sea was given to naval officers better known for their military prowess on land, such as Charles II’s nephew Prince Rupert or the Duke of Albemarle (the newly-ennobled General Monck).

THE WRITTEN WORD

Nowadays the names of the great Elizabethan writers are widely known, and their work is still generally appreciated, read and performed. Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser and their contemporaries need no introduction to today’s students, readers and theatre audiences. Identifying the literary figures of the later seventeenth century might seem at first sight less easy, but in fact three of them, though equally well known, tend to be passed over because they were not writing in the usual fields of drama or poetry. Two were diarists and another penned a powerful religious work whilst in a prison cell. They were Samuel Pepys, John Evelyn and John Bunyan.

Some critics would argue that a diary cannot really qualify as literature. Pepys proves them wrong. For narrative flow, a cast of larger-than-life characters, keen observation of human nature, a wide range of emotions and a solid historical background, he has provided us with a work of genius, worthy to stand on a par with all the other great novels. Except, of course, that it is all true. Pepys left an invaluable record of his daily life and work in London covering the years 1660 until 1669, when he discontinued his famous Diary due to problems with his eyesight. Sadly, we therefore have no first-hand account from him of the events of 1688–89. Such a record would have been immensely valuable, especially in view of the fact that he himself was implicated in the Popish Plot. However, we do have many entries about James, Duke of York, which paint a word-picture of the duke in his days as Lord High Admiral – concerned for the Navy, conscientious and active, proud but approachable. He clearly held Pepys in high esteem, as indeed did his brother the king. It is astonishing that neither of them saw fit to give Pepys a knighthood.

Pepys came of comparatively humble stock (his father was a tailor), but it was family connections which eventually secured for him, as a young man, the appointment to the Navy Board which he was to fill with such distinction. The situation with John Evelyn was quite different. His father was a wealthy landowner and John, his second son, had no need to work. After Oxford and a period of European travel he settled down on his Deptford estate, Sayes Court, where he and his wife Mary brought up their children. Evelyn’s life of faithful domesticity contrasts strongly with Pepys’ rather rackety existence, which was punctuated on an almost daily basis by amorous adventures of varying intensity. Yet despite their contrasting characters they became firm friends; Evelyn, wrote Pepys, was ‘a very ingenious man and the more I know him, the more I love him’ (29 April 1666).

Like Pepys, Evelyn moved in Government circles and filled various official posts; unlike Pepys, he was able to record the events of the Revolution at first hand and so to reinforce our more detailed knowledge of them. His own Diary flows along in an easy, informative style, though he is much less concerned with the minutiae of daily life than Pepys and comes across as a more austere observer. In fact he cultivated a detached attitude which enabled him to accept the post of Commissioner of the Privy Council from King James whilst sympathising with the cause of William and Mary and supporting their eventual arrival, something which Pepys could never have brought himself to do.

While Pepys and Evelyn were caught up in the daily affairs of this life, John Bunyan was more interested in the next one. The son of a tinker, whose trade he himself originally followed, he received only an elementary education, but nevertheless was able to develop a powerful, Biblically-inspired style of writing. Holding strong Protestant beliefs, he became an Independent preacher, for which he was twice imprisoned in Bedford gaol. During the first period, which lasted from 1660 until 1672 (but was not especially rigorous), he wrote nine books on religious themes including the opening chapters of his masterpiece The Pilgrim’s Progress. During the second period, lasting for six months in 1676, he completed the work; it was published in 1678, and reappeared with a second part in 1684.

Although the narrative of Christian’s journey through life may today have lost some of its moral impact, Bunyan’s stately prose has become a treasured part of the national literary heritage. We can all recognise Vanity Fair, Doubting Castle, the Slough of Despond, as features in the landscapes of our own lives. Most of us have met Giant Despair at some point, and many may hope that their end will be like that of Mr Valiant-for-Truth: ‘So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.’

Bunyan’s work, despite its strong poetic element, is nevertheless prose. For the finest poetry of the age we turn to John Dryden, poet-laureate (1670), satirist and dramatist. Though he was not entirely without means, the need to make a living meant that he spent much of the first part of his career writing for the theatre, mostly heroic plays and comedies. His first great poem was Absalom and Achitophel (1681), a satirical commentary on the Popish Plot, but it did not appear until he was 50. The well-known A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day (1687) was set to music by the Italian Giovanni Battista Draghi, long resident in London. A greater composer than Draghi was commemorated by Dryden in 1696 with An Ode on theDeath of Mr. Henry Purcell, which was set by John Blow. The poem Alexander’s Feast (1697) would later be given a musical setting by Handel, as would A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day (Handel changed Song to An Ode).

After the accession of James II, Dryden converted to Catholicism; he refused to swear the oath of allegiance to William and Mary and so was deprived of his Laureateship and the pension which went with it. He made up the shortfall in his income by returning to playwriting and by translating the works of the Classical poets such as Virgil and Homer. He was a hugely prolific writer (he has been called ‘the founder of modern English literary criticism’), and while his measured verse and topical political satire may not be to modern taste, there is no denying the enduring quality of his work or his stature as the leading literary figure of the late seventeenth century.

The Anglo-Dutch Wars of the seventeenth century were not primarily about politics, religion, or territory. They were about trade. Ever since the early 1600s, and even before, England had rightly perceived a threat to her commercial interests posed by the Dutch. This took the form of an aggressive Dutch policy supported by naval power on the high seas, most notably on the coast of West Africa, in the East Indies, and in the fledgling colonies of the New World. In addition the Dutch resented English claims to the right to control what were then called the Narrow Seas, i.e. the English Channel and the Irish Sea. English merchant ships were harassed, English merchants in their onshore settlements obstructed – sometimes violently – by the Dutch. The great spice-laden vessels of the London-based East India Company (founded in 1601) faced stiff competition from their opposite numbers of the Dutch East India Company based in Java. Meanwhile the English watched with mounting dismay and envy as the Dutch grew richer and their merchant fleets larger. ‘The trade of the world is too little for us two, therefore one must down’, later remarked the merchant seaman Captain George Cocke to his friend Samuel Pepys. What the Duke of York himself was later to call ‘the several complaints of our Merchants of the injuries they received from the Dutch’ could no longer be ignored.4 It was clear that some action would have to be taken.

Failure on the part of a Dutch admiral to salute some English warships as they sailed past his squadron in the Channel afforded the pretext which triggered the First Anglo-Dutch War in 1652, during the Cromwellian Interregnum. The war lasted until 1654 and reached a decisive point at the Battle of Scheveningen in July 1653, at which the famous Admiral Tromp was killed and the Dutch heavily defeated. But this was a pyrrhic victory which solved nothing, and the old rivalries continued unabated, developing over the years into a sequence of tit-for-tat attacks on the trading fleets of both countries. Potent ingredients in this seething brew were the strongly protectionist if short-lived Navigation Acts of 1660 and 1663 which (updating an earlier Act of 1651) effectively closed English markets to foreign traders. The Acts also made things difficult by insisting that English goods had to be carried in English-built ships with mainly English crews.

To the Duke of York and his circle the situation amounted to unfinished business which could only be settled by preparing for all-out war. In the summer of 1664 James, aboard the warship Swiftsure, led the fleet for several days on exercises in the English Channel; this was in fact his first experience of actual command at sea. By the end of the event he had convinced himself that in any forthcoming war evidence of English naval superiority would force the Dutch to sue for peace.

And so the Second Anglo-Dutch War began in February 1665. The fleet that headed proudly out to sea a few weeks later, led by the duke on his flagship the Royal Charles, was the largest ever to have set sail from England. On 3 June it met up with the Dutch near Lowestoft and a fierce battle took place, ending with the rout of the Dutch fleet which lost seventeen ships in the engagement as against a single English vessel. The Duke of York displayed his usual cool courage in battle, although he was forcibly and unpleasantly reminded of his dangerous situation when a chain-shot ploughed through a group of three companions standing beside him. ‘The Earl of Falmouth, [Lord] Muskery, and Mr R[ichard] Boyle [were] killed on board the Duke’s ship the Royall Charles, with one shot. Their blood and brains flying in the Duke’s face; and the head of Mr. Boyle striking down the Duke, as some say’, wrote Pepys with gusto (8 June). This stark account is a reminder that naval battles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, no less than those on land, were messy, brutal and bloody, far removed from the carefully choreographed events popularised by Hollywood in its vintage ‘historical’ epics.

It was perhaps this incident more than any other which temporarily alerted King Charles and his ministers to the folly of exposing the heir to the throne to such peril. Once the fleet had returned to port the Lord High Admiral was summoned back to London and command at sea was transferred to Pepys’ patron the Earl of Sandwich. After a series of unfortunate misjudgements Sandwich was replaced by the Duke of Albemarle and Prince Rupert as joint commanders; their most memorable action was an inconclusive fight known as the Four Days’ Battle, which took place in June 1666 off the North Foreland. Inconclusive it may have been, but the English nevertheless lost seventeen ships and some eight thousand men, the gunfire being clearly heard in the streets of London.

Life had not long returned to those same streets after the devastation of the Great Plague in the previous year. Against the background of the war a general nervousness now prevailed; this increased after the Four Days’ Battle and was not helped by rumours, by the inevitable inaccurate reporting, or by the activities of the press gangs which – as later, in the eighteenth century – were empowered to seize fit men (many of them with families to support) when and where they could, to make up the crew numbers for the fleet. Pepys deplored the forcible abduction of these unwilling recruits ‘that they have these two last nights pressed in the City out of houses – the persons wholly unfit for sea, and many of them people of very good fashion – which is a shame to think of … It is a great tyranny’ (30 June, 1 July 1666). Nevertheless he reluctantly condoned the practice and made the necessary arrangements to ship the men (on this occasion numbering about 300) out to the fleet at sea.

It is safe to say that the Lord High Admiral did not share Pepys’ concern for individuals; his interest was in the Navy at large, and he must have found the absence of firm information as frustrating as anybody else. When the news was good he was glad to pass it on: ‘To St. James’s … Here … before us all, the Duke of York did say that now at length he is come to a sure knowledge that the Dutch did lose in the late engagements 29 captains and 13 ships’ (18 July). Other matters, which would have been contrary to his ideas of order and discipline, were no doubt kept from him. On 21 July Commissioner Peter Pett, in charge of Chatham naval dockyard, told Pepys ‘how infinite the disorders are among the commanders and all officers of the fleet – no discipline – nothing but swearing and cursing, and everybody doing what they please’. This lax state of affairs was to some extent the fault of the duke himself, for many of the captains whom he had appointed were his personal friends, or had friends at court; they had no experience of the sea, or even of warfare, and in effect were answerable to nobody except the duke. As it happened, his own courage and powers of decisive leadership were about to be tested again in a unique and unexpected event.

On 2 September 1666, at about three o’clock in the morning, a small fire broke out on the premises of a baker in Pudding Lane, not far from St Paul’s Cathedral. Fires were a constant hazard in most old cities at that time, but were usually brought under control before doing much more than localised damage. This one was different. Aided by the lethal combination of a strong wind and tinder-dry conditions after months of drought, it ignored all the puny efforts made to check it and began to race like a demon through the narrow alleyways and streets of the city (which were closely packed with timber-built houses), devouring everything in its path. Alerted by Samuel Pepys, whose vivid account of the Great Fire still ranks as one of the greatest-ever pieces of verbal on-the-spot reporting, King Charles and the Duke of York together soon realised that the city authorities, headed by a weak and ineffectual Lord Mayor, were quite unable to cope with the situation. The royal brothers surveyed the progress of the fire from their barge on the river, and gave orders for the wholesale blowing-up of large swathes of buildings to create fire-breaks. But the duke also imposed his personal authority on the ground, by riding around the threatened areas at the head of a detachment of soldiers, both to exercise crowd-control and also to give help to the distressed citizens. This was just the kind of emergency in which James excelled, and he worked actively at the head of his men to try to save buildings and to rescue victims – ‘even labouring in person, & being present, to command, order, reward, and encourage Workemen’, as Evelyn put it.5 The crackling of flames, the crash of falling timbers, the cries of anguish – these, after all, were to him a familiar background of sound reminding him of the heat of battle and his role as a commander both on land and at sea.

Gradually the Great Fire died down, leaving many acres of smoking, ruined buildings – a sad jumble of homes, shops, livery halls, churches, even the great Gothic cathedral of St Paul itself – and many more wrecked lives. Against the background of this devastation the war dragged on, with advantage to neither side. However, things took a far more serious turn in June 1667 with the sudden, unexpected and most unwelcome appearance of the Dutch fleet in the Medway. The invaders sailed up the river with impunity, took Sheerness, broke through a huge defensive iron chain which stretched from bank to bank, and arrived at Chatham where they burnt eight men-of-war before sailing back out to sea unchallenged. Most humiliating of all, they boarded the unguarded Royal Charles and towed it away, changing its name (again) and converting it to their own use. This action effectively ended the war and on the following 31 July at Breda a peace treaty was signed in which, in a cynical volte-face