During Marvell’s absence war had been declared with the Dutch.  It was never difficult to go to war with the Dutch.  The king was always in want of money, and as no proper check existed over war supplies, he took what he wanted out of them.  The merchants on ’Change desired war, saying that the trade of the world was too little for both England and Holland, and that one or the other “must down.”  The English manufacturers, who felt the sting of their Dutch competitors, were always in favour of war.  Then the growing insolence of the Dutch in the Indies was not to be borne.  Stories were circulated how the Hollanders had proclaimed themselves “Lords of the Southern Seas,” and meant to deny English ships the right of entry in that quarter of the globe.  A baronet called on Pepys and pulled out of his pocket letters from the East Indies, full of sad tales of Englishmen having been actually thrashed inside their own factory at Surat by swaggering Dutchmen, who had insulted the flag of St. George, and swore they were going to be the masters “out there.”  Pepys, who knew a little about the state of the royal navy, listened sorrowfully and was content to hope that the war would not come until “we are more ready for it.”

In the House of Commons the prudent men were against the war, and were at once accused of being in the pay of the Dutch.  The king’s friends were all for the war, and nobody doubted that some of the money voted for it would find its way into their pockets, or at all events that pensions would reward their fidelity.  A third group who favoured the war were supposed to do so because their disloyalty and fanaticism always disposed them to trouble the waters in which they wished to fish.

The war began in November 1664, and on the 24th of that month the king opened Parliament and demanded money.  He got it.  Clarendon describes how Sir Robert Paston from Norfolk, a back-bench man, “who was no frequent speaker, but delivered what he had a mind to say very clearly,” stood up and proposed a grant of two and a half million pounds, to be spread over three years.  So huge a sum took the House by surprise.  Nobody spoke; “they sat in amazement.”  Somebody at last found his voice and moved a much smaller sum, but no one seconded him.  Sir Robert Paston ultimately found supporters, “no man who had any relation to the Court speaking a word.”  The Speaker put Sir Robert Paston’s motion as the question, “and the affirmative made a good sound, and very few gave their negative aloud.”  But Clarendon adds, “it was notorious very many sat silent.”

The war was not in its early stages unpopular, being for the control of the sea, for the right of search, for the fishing trade, for mastery of the “gorgeous East.”  The Admiralty had been busy, and a hundred frigates, well gunned, were ready for the blue water by February 1665.  The Duke of York, who took the command, was a keen sailor, though his unhappy notions as to patronage, and its exercise,