This new light is mainly derived from a hitherto unknown collection of naval manuscripts belonging to the Earl of Dartmouth, which he has generously placed at the disposal of the Society.  The invaluable material they contain enables us to say with certainty that the orders which the Duke of York issued as lord high admiral and commander-in-chief at the outbreak of the war were nothing but a slight modification of those of 1654, with a few but not unimportant additions.  Amongst the manuscripts, most of which relate to the first Lord Dartmouth’s cousin and first commander, Sir Edward Spragge, is a ‘Sea Book’ that must have once belonged to that admiral.  It is a kind of commonplace book, the greater part unused, in which Spragge appears to have begun to enter various important orders and other matter of naval interest with which he had been officially concerned, by way of forming a collection of precedents.[1] Amongst these is a copy of the orders set out below, dated from the Royal Charles, the Duke of York’s flagship, ‘the 10th of April, 1665,’ by command of his royal highness, and signed ‘Wm. Coventry.’  This was the well-known politician Sir William Coventry, the model, if not the author, of the Character of a Trimmer, who had been made private secretary to the duke on the eve of the Restoration, and was now a commissioner of the navy and acting as secretary on the duke’s staff.  So closely it will be seen do they follow the Commonwealth orders of 1653, as modified in the following year, that it would be scarcely worth while setting them out in full, but for the importance of finally establishing their true origin.  The scarcely concealed doubts which many writers have felt as to whether the new system of tactics can have been due to the Duke of York may now be laid at rest, and henceforth the great reform must be credited not to him, but to Cromwell’s ‘generals-at-sea.’

Nevertheless the credit of certain developments which were introduced at this time must still remain with the duke and his advisers:  Rupert, Sandwich, Lawson, and probably above all Penn, his flag captain.  For instance, differences will be found in Articles 2 and 3, where, instead of merely enjoining the line, the duke refers to a regular ‘order of battle,’ which has not come down to us, but which no doubt gave every ship her station in the line, like those which Sandwich had prepared for his squadron a few months earlier, and which Monck and Rupert certainly drew up in the following year.[2] Then again the truculent Article 10 of 1653 and 1654 ordering the immediate destruction of disabled ships of the enemy after saving the crews if possible, which contemporary authorities put down to Monck, is reversed.  At the end, moreover, two articles are added; one, numbered 15, embodying numbers 2 and 3 of Sandwich’s orders of the previous year, with such modifications as were necessary to adapt them to a large fleet, and another numbered 16 enjoining ‘close action.’  Nor is