After the battle of Solebay these supplementary articles were incorporated into the regular instructions as Articles 27 to 29.  This appears from a MS. book belonging to Lord Dartmouth entitled ’Copies of instructions and other papers relating to the fleets.  Anno 1672’ It contains a complete copy of both Sailing and Fighting Instructions, with a detailed ‘order of sailing’ for the combined Anglo-French fleet, dated July 2, 1672, and a corresponding ‘order of battle’ dated August 1672.  It also contains the flag officers’ reports made to the Duke of York after the battle.

Instructions for the ’Encouragement for the captains and companies of fireships, small frigates, and ketches,’ now appear for the first time, and were repeated in some form or other in all subsequent orders.

Finally, it has been thought well to reprint from Granville Penn’s Memorials of Penn the complete set of articles which he gives in Appendix L. No date is attached to them; Granville Penn merely says they were subsequent to 1665, and has thereby left an unfortunate impression, adopted by himself and almost every naval historian, both British and foreign, that followed him, that they were used in the campaign of 1666, that is, in the Second Dutch War.  From the fact however that they incorporate the ‘Further Instructions for Fighting’ countersigned by Wren, we know that they cannot have been earlier than 1667, while the newly discovered MS. of Lord Dartmouth makes it practically certain they must have been later than August 1672.  We may even go further.

For curiously enough there is no evidence that these orders, on which so much doubtful reasoning has been based, were ever in force at all as they stand.  No signed copy of them is known to exist.  The copy amongst the Penn papers in the British Museum which Granville Penn followed is a draft with no signature whatever.  It is possible therefore that they were never signed.  In all probability they were completed by James early in 1673 for the coming campaign, but had not actually been issued when, in March of that year, the Test Act deprived him of his office of lord high admiral, and brought his career as a seaman to an end.  What orders were used by his successor and rival Rupert is unknown.

Of even higher interest than this last known set of the Duke of York’s orders are certain additions and observations which were subsequently appended to them by an unknown hand.  As it has been found impossible to fix with certainty either their date or author, I have given them by way of notes to the text.  They are to be found in a beautifully written and richly bound manuscript in the Admiralty Library.  At the end of the volume, following the Instructions, are diagrammatic representations of certain actions in the Third Dutch War, finely executed in water-colour to illustrate the formation for attack, and to every plan are appended tactical notes relating to the actions represented, and to others which were fought in the