Dutch their way home they might have made them desperat and so fight like Devils, and that it hes ever bein a good maxime to make a fleing ennemy a bridge of gold.  Whowever the Dutch concluded that they would have no mo Admirals that ware gentlemen (for Obdam was so) because they never fought fortunatly with their ennemies when they had such.  But certainly this is nought but a fiction made by a commonwealth to cast a blur upon nobility, seing thir same very states have fought most couragiously and advantagiously under the conduct of the Princes of Orange.

Upon his death De Ruyter was chosen admirall, and van Tromp the younger, upon a suspicion of being to affectionat to the intrest of the King of Britain, was disgraced.  The nixt (but rather should have bein made the first) was his Mai:s bad choyse of a false chirking willain, Mr. Douning,[635] to be his agent to negotiat affaires at the States Generall in the beginning of that war, who steid of composing things rancored them worse and made them almost uncurable, judging it good fisching in troubled waters, wheiras if a moderat and ane honest man had bein made use of in that business, things would never have come to the height they were at, since the offers of reparation then made by the Dutch to his Majesty ware by all indifferent spectators judged most fair and reasonable.  The 3^d is that in the engadgement the following summer, 1666, the King’s intelligence should have bein so bad as to have apprehended at that tyme the joining of the French fleet wt the Hollander (wheiras their was no such thing, but it was of purpose done to divide his majesties fleet), and theiron ordering Prince Rupert with his squade away to attend their uniting; and in his absence the Dutch taking the advantage, provocked the Duck of Albemarle (who was a better land sojer then a sea, and who died in 1669) with sixtein ships to fight their wholle fleit, who more hardily then wisely encountering them, had undoubtedly bein totally routed and defeat had not Prince Rupert upon notice come up and releived them.  By which conflict it at last appeared that it was possible for the English to be beat by the Hollander, which was never beleived before that.

    [635] Sir George Downing, 1623(?), 1684, long Resident at the Hague
        under the Commonwealth and Charles II.  See Nat.  Dict.  Biog.

The nixt error they committed was that the following summer, 1667, the King (for sparing of charges forsooth) was advysed not to set to sea that year, but to let his fleit lay up in the harbors, which gave cause to that mighty affront (then which since England was England it never received the like) given them at Chattan, and wheir the Scots regiment, brought over from France by the King’s order, making braver resistance then all England beside, ware many of them slain, dying in the bed of honour.  As for the Scots proclaiming war against France, and as for the more naturall way tane by our King in proclaiming the war then tane by France, I shall elsewheir speak more at large.