by Uglow, Jenny
The country waited anxiously, clamouring for news. A new newspaper, the Oxford Gazette (soon to be the London Gazette) appeared on 22 November 1665, edited by Arlington’s right-hand man Joseph Williamson. It was ‘very pretty’, thought Pepys, ‘full of news, and no folly in it’ – a change from the rants of L’Estrange.21 Christmas was tense. At the end of January 1666, Louis announced formally that he would enter the war, supporting the Dutch against the English. This prompted immediate fears of an invasion, especially when General Turenne went ostentatiously to review the troops at Calais. Ten days later Charles wrote briskly to Minette: ‘we have had some kind of alarum, that the troopes which Monsieur de Turenne went to reviewe, were intended to make us a visite here, but we shall be very ready to bid them welcome, whether by sea or land.’22 Messengers were sent post-haste to the coastal counties. In Norfolk, the MP Sir John Holland wrote to a neighbour that he had received the King’s letter apprehending an invasion and calling out the militia, ‘each musketeer to bring half a pound powder and half a pound bullet, each a matchlock, 3 yards of match, and every soldier a knapsack’.23 With this impromptu home guard at the ready, on 10 February 1666, to loud cheering in the streets of London and across the nation, Charles declared war upon France.
26 The Long Hot Summer
…as when the sun new risen
Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon
In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs.
MILTON, Paradise Lost, Book I
THE YEAR 1666 possessed magical numbers, ‘666’ being the sign of the Beast in the Book of Revelation. For a long time almanacs had forecast doom. Some looked forward to the Second Coming, with titles like Sagrir, or Domesday drawing Nigh. Pamphlets were full of hints of apocalyptic omens, comets, eclipses and storms. In February Pepys bought an old work of prophecy, Francis Potter’s An Interpretation of the Number 666, of 1642, dipping into it as the months went by. He finished it in November, intrigued by its elaborate numerical arguments and deciding that ‘whether it be right or wrong’, it was certainly ‘mighty ingenious’.1 The millenarian spirit even hit London’s Jewish community, abuzz with Messianic fever. Reports arrived that ‘a barque with silken sails and cordage, manned by a crew speaking only Hebrew, had been sighted off Scotland’.2 The arrival of the prophet was believed so sincerely that Henry Oldenburg of the Royal Society wrote to Spinoza about it, and one man took a huge bet on the Exchange that the new arrival would be recognised by all the princes in the East.
Nine days before his declaration of war on France, on 1 February 1666, that very earthly prince, Charles II, returned to Whitehall, reassured that the plague was diminishing. A week later his court followed, including the pale queen who had, it was said, miscarried of a baby – a perfect boy – only a week before. Her grief was heightened by her rival’s triumph: on 28 December, in her lodgings at Merton College, Barbara Castlemaine had given birth to a son, George Fitzroy, later Duke of Northumberland. Barbara, the ‘witch’, was the most hated target among all the garish, loud-mouthed courtiers who outraged Oxford’s citizens. A note was pinned to her door in Latin, ‘Hanc Caesare pressam a fluctu defendit onus’, translated by some wag: ‘The reason why she is not ducked?/ Because by Caesar she is—’3 Charles offered £1,000 for information about the author. No one came forward.
The day after Charles’s return the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bludworth, arrived with speeches of welcome, and Charles knighted two sheriffs of the city. Tributes were paid to the officials, clergymen, doctors and others who had stayed through the plague. Charles employed all his charm on them, and on everyone who had endured the terrible months. The previous week, at Hampton Court, Albemarle had presented John Evelyn, who had stayed in London as a commissioner for prisoners of war. ‘He ran towards me,’ Evelyn said, ‘& in most gracious manner gave me his hand to kisse, with many thanks for my care, & faithfulness in his service, in a time of that greate danger, when every body fled their employments, & said he was severall times concern’d for me, & the peril I under-went.’4 Charles talked to him for an hour about his work, and the plague-stricken city.
The sickness did seem to be slackening. In his Essex parish Ralph Josselin wrote in his diary, ‘March 4. Plague through mercy abates at London, 42 pl[ague] total 237, but a great increase at Colchester to 55. Yarmouth cleare. Lord heale our land, and open our trade, in mercy.’5 As the weeks passed Josselin noted the weather, cold and dry and windy, and jotted down the fast days and the bountiful catches of sprats, but his page was still dotted with the weekly plague figures, rising, falling, rising again like mercury in a barometer. Gradually the sickness decreased, flaring slightly in the summer heat and dying away the following autumn.
The French entry into the war spelled the end of Orangist hopes in Holland. Prince William’s popularity had soared over the winter, and when he visited Rotterdam crowds carried him on their shoulders in triumph.6 But de Witt now struck back, purging William’s small court of key supporters. In England, the French declaration also had a dramatic effect. Arguments about Louis’s motives surfaced again: he had incited the war in the first place, he wanted France to grab all the trade, in the Mediterranean, the East and West Indies, the cold coasts of Newfoundland; he already held sway on the continent, blocking all British efforts to make treaties. He wanted, in short, to be master of all. Louis, they cried, was an absolute monarch, fighting in the Catholic cause. There was more reason to fear papists working for the French, than dissenters in league with the Dutch. A new witch hunt began.
Charles’s chief consolation at this point was the strength of his navy. Astoundingly, over the winter the boats had been repaired and made ready, despite a mutiny by workmen in Chatham dockyard, and angry complaints by skilled shipwrights about the money owed them. (In August Sir John Mennes estimated that £18,000 was owed to the men of the yard.7) Albemarle and Rupert left to take up their joint command on St George’s Day, 23 April.8 At the start of May the fleet gathered off the Nore, and Charles and James, sailing out from Chatham, visited it over three days, inspecting the ships and dining with the captains. Meanwhile the commissioners for the sick and for prisoners of war were commandeering every possible building in advance. Leeds Castle, in Kent, became a temporary prison, while Pepys and Evelyn pressed jointly for a new infirmary at Chatham. James, impressed, passed their plan on to Charles, and also recommended a second hospital be built at Harwich. But once again, there was no money. Before his trip to Chatham Charles wrote in weary tones to Minette, complaining of the terms of negotiation that Louis had offered:
however, I shall always be very ready to harken to peace, as a good Christian ought to do, which is all I can do to advance it, for I have long since had so ill lucke with the advances I made to that end, as I can now only wish for peace, and leave the rest to God.9
The ill luck continued. In mid-May faulty intelligence from Arlington’s spies suggested that the French admiral, the duc de Beaufort, was bringing a fleet from the Mediterranean to join the Dutch off Brest. At the same time, Ormond reported rumours of uprisings in Ireland, to be backed by French troops. Believing that Beaufort’s fleet was on its way from Gibraltar, and fearing that it was heading for landings in Ireland, the Privy Council decided to divide the British fleet in two, despite the weakening of its strength. Rupert was to lead a squadron of twenty ships to patrol off Plymouth, keeping an eye out for the French, and on 31 May, Albemarle sailed out with fifty-six ships to find the Dutch. Even as he sailed, news came that the intelligence about the French Mediterranean fleet was false. At once, James despatched an urgent message to Rupert, to sail north and join Albemarle. In another flurry of government incompetence, his message was fatally delayed in the sending.
About midday on Friday 1 June the Dutch fleet was sighted at anchor off Ostend, a great force of eighty-six ships, several carrying eighty or ni
nety guns. Albemarle ordered his fleet to strip for action, furling their extra topsails and keeping only their ‘fighting sails’ so that they could manoeuvre more easily. Instead of retreating into the mouth of the Thames to wait for reinforcements, he opened fire on the rear of the Dutch fleet. De Ruyter and Admiral Jan Evertsen, commanding the centre and van of the Dutch, turned their ships about to come to the aid of Cornelis Tromp in the rear, and fierce fighting began, ‘the most terrible, obstinate and bloodiest battle that ever was fought on the seas’, as one lieutenant remembered it.10 The battle raged all day, driving the ships near to the Flanders coast, and many British vessels were badly mauled. The Swiftsure, the flagship of the Blue squadron which was leading the attack, sailed too far into the Dutch lines and was cut off from the rest of the fleet, overtaken and boarded. Her captain, vice admiral of the Blue, was the twenty-seven-year-old Sir William Berkeley, the younger brother of Charles Berkeley. He had been accused of cowardice for leaving the fray at Lowestoft after his brother was killed, and was determined to prove himself. Although shot in the throat he refused to surrender. When they boarded, the Dutch found him dead in his cabin.
The Dutch also cut off the ship of the rear admiral, Sir John Harman, and attacked it with fireships, but Harman fought clear. At ten at night the English fleet sailed wearily westwards. Next day at seven, at the start of an unusually hot summer day, the guns boomed again. For many hours the ships tacked in their parallel lines, lurching and rolling as they trimmed their sails to turn and crash through the enemy line. Their billowing sails and fat-bellied hulls, rolling through the haze of smoke and fire, were brilliantly caught by the Dutch artist William van de Velde, who was with the Dutch fleet. Once again, as in the battles of the previous year, people on the outskirts of London could hear the guns, and Charles and James took their barge down to Greenwich and walked up into the park to listen. All they could hope was that Rupert’s squadron would join the fleet, and that two hundred extra sailors now embarking in yachts from the Thames would also reach the battle in time. ‘But Lord’, wrote Pepys, ‘to see how the poor fellows kissed their wifes and sweethearts in that simple manner at their going off, and shouted and let off their guns, was strange sport.’11
William van de Velde the elder was with the Dutch fleet as an official war artist. Here he shows the start of the Four Days Battle, with the English bearing down on the Dutch. The Swiftsure is on the left, the Royal Prince in the centre, and Monck’s Royal Charles in the middle distance on the right.
Many English ships had been so badly hit that next morning Albemarle placed sixteen heavy men-of-war between the Dutch and the damaged vessels.12 But just as the enemy came within range, Rupert’s squadron appeared on the horizon. His support stopped a rout, but could not halt the retreat completely, and as the English fled, the first-rate Royal Prince, with ninety guns, a veteran of many battles over fifty years, ran aground on the Galloper Sands. Although the tide floated her off, her rudder was broken and she was forced to surrender. De Ruyter ordered her crew of eight hundred men to be taken prisoner and then set her ablaze. ‘She was like a castle in the sea,’ wrote Clifford, ‘and I believe the best ship that was ever built in the world to endure battering, but she is gone.’13 On the final day the exhausted fleets clashed again. Low on gunpowder, the Dutch eventually turned for home, knowing that the English were too weak to pursue them. After Rupert’s flagship lost its mast the English too limped back to port. Evelyn saw the proud fleet a week later, ‘miserably shattered, hardly a vessel intire, but appearing rather so many wracks and hulls, so cruelly had the Dutch mangled us…none knowing for what reason we first ingagd in this ungratefull warr’.14
Reports reached those on land fitfully, through different messengers, with different messages. ‘Rumours of a great fight,’ wrote Josselin on 3 June; ‘wee prayd heartily for successe, & hope it, though some cry a losse.’15 Two young sailors, Lieutenant John Daniel of the Royal Charles and a companion, who had both been sent ashore wounded, rode post to London, arriving with their faces still blackened and covered with pitch and tar and powder. Hearing of their arrival from Pepys, Charles took his hand, talked anxiously of the battle and asked to see them. When the sailors told him, in the Vane Room at Whitehall, that Rupert had reached the fleet, his relief was so great that he pulled out gold from his pocket and gave it to them. There were many stories of unlikely heroes, including Rochester, who had joined Sir Edward Spragge’s flagship the Dreadnought on the eve of the battle, without telling anyone. At the fiercest point of the fighting, when Spragge could not find anyone willing to risk rowing through the fire to carry a message to his captains, Rochester volunteered, bobbing in his small boat while cannon balls and shot and burning spars whistled around him – no sober man, it was later said, would be brave enough to ‘venture into a crazy Cock-boat out of a sound Ship, when ’tis but barely possible he may be saved’.16
When the final ambivalent news arrived, in the middle of the monthly fast day for the plague, Charles decided to celebrate the Four Days Battle, as it became known, as a victory. An order was given for bonfires and bells. People played music in the streets in the fine moonlit night, firing muskets in exhilaration. But the following day, like a hangover following a feast, a different story arrived, suggesting that the British had lost many ships and taken none. The expressions of merchants at the Exchange turned from delight to apprehension. ‘The court gave out that it was a victory,’ wrote Burnet years later, and public thanksgivings were ordered, ‘which was a horrid mocking of God and a lying to the world.’17
For a few days the outcome was uncertain. Everyone rushed to find news: in the Gazette and the newsletters, in letters, in talk at the coffee-houses and taverns, at the Exchange or at the street corner. Newsletters, each with a different slant, were sold in markets and fairs. At court the gamblers judged the odds and laid bets on the Swiftsure and other ships being lost or saved. To outsiders, it seemed that the courtiers regarded the war as another game. And in fact, court life had continued much the same, if slightly subdued by plague, war and the death, in April, of Catherine’s mother in Portugal, which plunged Whitehall into mourning. The famous beauties wore their hair plain, and applied no beauty spots or patches. The whole colour scheme of the court had turned to black and white, and Charles quipped that it looked as if it were inhabited by magpies. But in early summer the women of the court went again to Tunbridge, sending for players to entertain them.
Amid the tensions of the war, Charles’s spats with Barbara were increasing, in number and ferocity, sparking from minor incidents into full-scale rows. A week after the Four Days Battle, Catherine provoked Barbara by saying slyly that she feared the King would catch cold by staying so late at her house. Oh no, Barbara replied before the whole court, he always left early, and if he did not appear before the small hours, he must be staying somewhere else. Charles, overhearing this public hint that he had other mistresses, took her aside, whispering furiously, and dismissed her from court. After three days with friends in Pall Mall, she asked if she should collect her things. She must first come and see them, said Charles, ‘and so she came, and the King went to her and all friends again’.18
Charles was in no mood for such rows, or for his courtiers’ bets on the battle. In the end the bleak figures spoke for themselves. In the Four Days Battle eight English ships had been sunk, compared to four Dutch, and nine had been captured. Five thousand English sailors and two thousand Dutch were dead or wounded. Three thousand more English sailors were prisoners. The loss of life was terrifying, the wounds appalling. The dead included admirals and officers, seamen, cooks and carpenters and cabin boys as young as twelve. Thousands of families the length and breadth of England lost men and boys they loved.
In the shipyards of both sides, another round of repairing and refitting began. The hospitals were full, and a hunt to find and impress new seamen was underway, rousing furious resentment. The sailors who had fought were still unpaid, and the families of prisoners were no
t compensated. On 10 July Pepys left for his office:
the yard being very full of women (I believe above three hundred) coming to get money for their husbands and friends that are prisoners in Holland; and they lay clamouring and swearing, and cursing us, that my wife and I were afeared to send a venison pasty that we have for supper tonight to the cook’s to be baked, for fear of their offering violence to it – but it went, and no hurt done.19
The women got into the garden and crowded round his window, crying for money, lamenting the state of their families, shouting that their husbands had done so much for the king and were so badly treated, while the Dutch prisoners received allowances, and were also offering to take on the English seamen with good pay. ‘I do most heartily pity them,’ wrote the harassed Pepys, ‘and was ready to cry to hear them – but cannot help them.’ All he could do was give some of his own money to one woman, ‘who blessed me and went away’.
The distress in the streets of London was matched by similar scenes in all the ports. The Privy Council discussed further censorship of the press and even closing down the coffee-houses. Meanwhile the ships of the Levant and East India Companies were stuck in port for fear of attacks: early in July the Dutch again sailed up boldly to the mouth of the Thames, to mount a blockade. Bad news also came from the colonies. On 18 July the West Indies Governor Willoughby sent a report to Clarendon saying that he was sailing to Barbados with his best ships, having heard that the Dutch had taken Surinam, and that the French were heading for Nevis. He set out with five ships and a thousand men but his fleet was caught in a hurricane off Guadeloupe: nothing was heard of his fate. It was rumoured, too, that twelve Dutch ships were on their way from Amsterdam to retake New York.20