66 dred thousand souls-the greatest havoc, it was said, that any plague had ever made in England. This," continues Burnet, "did dishearten all people; and, coming in the very time when so unjust a war was begun, it had a dreadful appearance. All the king's enemies, and the enemies of monarchy, said, here was a manifest character of God's heavy displeasure upon the nation; as, indeed, the ill life the king led, and the viciousness of the whole court, gave but a melancholy prospect." On the 3d of June, while this pestilence was raging, and half the houses in the city were marked with the ominous tabletThe Lord have mercy upon us!"-the Duke of York encountered the Dutch fleet, under the command of Admiral Opdam, off Lowestoffe. The battle was terrible: the Dutch lost Opdam, who was blown up with his ship and crew, three other admirals, an immense number of men (stated by the English at eight or ten thousand), and eighteen ships that were sunk or blown up; the English lost Rearadmiral Sansum, Vice-admiral Lawson, three captains, the Earl of Falmouth, Muskerry, and some other volunteers of rank who were serving on board the duke's fleet; but their loss in men was comparatively inconsiderable, and they decidedly had the advantage. Toward evening, the Dutch, crippled and disheartened, sheered off for the Texel, and the English stood after them under a press of sail; but the Duke of York went to bed, and Lord Brounker, a gentleman of his bedchamber, went upon deck and told Penn, the commanding officer," as if from the duke," that he must slacken sail. Penn, to the astonishment of the fleet, obeyed this order, and thereby all hope of overtaking the Dutch was lost. The duke, whose hereditary duplicity is at least as well proved as his courage, seemed amazed at this manœuver; but it was generally believed in the 1 See Pepys's Diary fleet that he had really given the order, and neither Brounker nor Penn ever met with that punishment which his severity would have awarded if either had acted on his own responsibility. According to Burnet, Penn told the duke that, if he meant to fight again, he must prepare for hotter work, as the courage of the Dutch would grow with their desperation. The historian adds, "The Earl of Montague, who was then a volunteer, and one of the duke's court, said to me, it was very visible that made an impression. And all the duke's domestics said he had got honor enough; why should he venture a second time? The duchess had also given a strict charge to all the duke's servants to do all they could to hinder him to engage too far. . . . . Lord Montague did believe that the duke was struck, seeing the Earl of Falmouth, the king's favorite, and two other persons of quality, killed very near him; and that he had no mind to engage again, and that Penn was privately with him." The Earl of Sandwich, who was in the action, and who had expected to have the chief command, was irritated at seeing that the printed relation published by government did not give him oue word of honor. He assured Pepys that though, by accident, the prince was in the van in the beginning of the fight, yet all the rest of the day he (Sandwich) was in the van, and bore the brunt; that, notwithstanding all the noise about the duke, he had hardly a shot in his side, or a man killed, whereas his own ship had above thirty shots in her hull, had not a mast or yard left whole, but was the most battered ship of the fleet, and lost the most men, saving the Mary, Captain Smith's ship; that the most the duke did was almost out of gun-shot; but that the duke did, indeed, come up to his rescue after he had fought a long time with four of the enemy.1 The duke and his courtiers 1 Pepys, Diary. 1 returned from sea, " all fat and lusty, and ruddy, by | resistance. Having gained this triumph, the highbeing in the sun;" and these gentlemen gave out church party brought a bill into the House of Comthat the victory was a great victory—that a greater mons for imposing the oath of non-resistance upon had never been known in the world; but the En- the whole nation; and, but for an accident, this glish people had not forgotten Blake; and they parliament at Oxford would have passed the bill. were very critical upon the whole affair. The "And the providence by which it was thrown out duke was rewarded by a grant of £120,000; yet it was very remarkable; for Mr. Peregrine Bertie, was thought expedient to remove him from the being newly chosen, was that morning introduced fleet, and to intrust the command to the Earl of into the House by his brother, the now Earl of Sandwich, a man whose courage and skill were not Lindsey, and Sir Thomas Osborne, now lord treasmore conspicuous than his want of all principle. urer (Danby), who all three gave their votes against Sandwich got scent of a Dutch fleet from the East that bill; and the numbers were so even upon the Indies very richly laden (the united cargoes being division, that their three votes carried the question estimated as worth millions) which had taken ref- against it." But though the bill was lost, the bishuge in the neutral port of Berghen, in Norway.ops and parsons acted and preached as if it had The King of Denmark, the sovereign of the coun- been passed, and as if the people of England were try, had some grounds of complaint against the slaves both by act of parliament and by the word Dutch government, and he was so tempted by the of God. Their pastoral charges and their sermons value of the fleet, that he agreed to allow Sand-rolled in louder thunder than that of Laud and wich to capture them in his port, upon condition Manwaring upon the divine right of kings, the duty that he should have half of the rich prize. But of passive obedience in subjects, and the eternal Sandwich wanted the whole of the spoil; and, in spite of the warning of the governor of Berghen, who said that he could not let him enter till he received further instructions from his court, the English admiral ordered Captain Teddiman to dash into the port with twenty-two ships, and cut out all the Dutchmen. Teddiman encountered a tremendous fire, not only from the Dutch ships, but also from the Danish castle and land-batteries; five of his commanders were killed, and he was obliged to retreat with disgrace and loss. Sandwich did not repeat the attack, but went in search of easier prey, taking care to appropriate a good portion of what he got for his own private use. damnation provided for those who should resist the Lord's anointed or the ministers of the only true church upon earth. Meanwhile the debauchery of the court continued on the increase, and Oxford became the scene of scandalous intrigues, drinking, and gaming. "The lady," though allowed to dietate to chancellors and secretaries of state, and to dispose of benefices and promotions in this loyal church, was obliged to share the king's affections with various other women; the Duke of York in these respects closely copied his elder brother; and at Oxford the duchess (Clarendon's daughter) began to retaliate in kind.3 Well might Clarendon exclaim, It was a time when all license in discourse and in As the plague still raged in London, the court actions was spread over the kingdom, to the hearthad removed to Oxford, and there parliament re-breaking of many good men, who had terrible apassembled on the 9th of October, to vote a fresh prehensions of the consequence of it!" supply of £1,250,000 for the carrying on of the A.D. 1666. The great plague which had converted a great part of London into a wilderness decreased 1 The oath already mentioned at p. 666, declaring it unlawful, en any pretense whatsoever, to take arms against the king or any commis sioned by him, and that the person taking it would not, at any time, endeavor to make any alteration in church or state. 2 Locke.-Ralph says, "Three voices had the merit of saving their country from the greatest ignominy that could have befallen it-that of riveting as well as forging its own chains."-Hist. Eng. 3 Burnet, who mentions no name, says, "At Oxford there was then a very graceful young man of quality that belonged to her court, whose services were so acceptable that she was thought to look at him in a particular manner: this was so represented to the duke, that he, being resolved to emancipate himself into more open practices, took up a jealousy, and put the person out of his court with so much precipitation, that the thing became very public by this means."-Own Times. But Pepys gives the name at length, and allots the duchess two lovers instead of one:-" As an infinite secret, my lord (Sandwich) telis me the factions are high between the king aud the duke, and all the court are in an uproar with their loose amours-the Duke of York being in love desperately with Mistress (Miss) Stewart. Nay, that the duchess herself is fallen in love with her new master of the horse, one Harry Sidney, and another, Harry Savill."-Diary. The Harry Sidney here mentioned was younger brother of the republican Algernon Sidney, who had remained abroad ever since the Restoration, and who was at this moment devising means for restoring the commonwealth. Harry Savill was one of the grooms of the bedchamber to the Duke of York and a brother to Sir George Savill, for whom the duke and his wife earnestly solicited a peerage, though, as Clarendon tells us, this Sir George was "a man of very ill reputation, and void of all sense of religion." In the case of Miss Stewart here mentioned, as in several others, the king and the duke both pursued the same woman, and were madly jealous of each other. THE BROAD STONE, EAST RETFORD, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE-on which Money, previously immersed in Vinegar, was placed in Exchange for Goods. From an Original Drawing. . during the winter months, and disappeared altogether in February, after a tremendous hurricane. The court ventured as far as Hampton Court, and at last, when all danger was over, the king returned to Whitehall, to insult the miseries of his people with fresh exhibitions of riot and licentiousness. During his absence the seamen of the royal navy, upon whose bravery and conduct the honor and safety of the nation depended, had been left to lie starving and moaning in the streets of London for lack of money to pay their arrears. And now the war threatened to be more formidable than it had been; for the French king, by a sudden turn in his politics, made common cause with the Dutch. De Ruyter came out of the Texel with a splendid fleet of eighty-four sail, and Louis promised to join him with a small fleet-all that he as yet possessed which was in the Mediterranean. The English fleet, commanded by Monk and Prince Rupert, had been divided. It was not expected that the Dutch could get to sea so soon, and Rupert had steered westward with the white squadron, consisting of thirty sail, to look after the French, who were expected from the Mediterranean. Early the next morning, the 1st of June, Monk, to his great surprise, discovered De Ruyter and his fleet lying at anchor half-channel over. He called a council of war: Sir John Harman, a brave officer, and "most His absence in the time of danger and his long delay in returning were much noticed. "Matters," says Pepys, "must needs go bad, while all the town, and every boy in the street, openly cries, 'The king can not go away till my Lady Castlemaine be ready to come along with him,' she being lately put to bed; and that he visits her and Mrs. Stewart every morning before he eats his breakfast." sober man there," urged that it would be rash to begin the fight then, with such an inferior force, and with a wind and sea that would prevent the use of their lower tier of guns; but his grace of Albemarle, who had taken to drinking to excess, and who was probably then drunk, resolved to wait neither for weather nor Prince Rupert, and he gave the signal for attack. This order was obeyed with great spirit; the English had the weather-gage, and the wind at southwest blowing a stiff gale carried them so rapidly upon the Dutch that they had not time to weigh anchor, but they cut their cables and away for their own coast. Monk followed them, though he had only sixty ships, which were so laid down by the gale that they could not open their lower portals to leeward, while the Dutch, facing them with their broadsides to windward, had the free use of all their tiers of guns. Sir William Berkley led the van. When they got off the coast of Dunkirk, Monk, to avoid running on a sand-bank, made a sudden tack, which brought his topmast by the board; this forced him to lie-to for a long time; meanwhile Berkley kept his course, knowing nothing of what had happened to Monk, got engaged in the thick of the enemy, and was killed on his quarter-deck. His ship, after a gallant fight, was taken, and so was the Essex frigate. Sir John Harman fell among nine ships of the Zealand squadron, and was grappled by two fire-ships, but he fought himself free, killed a vice-admiral, and, when all his masts were shot away by chain-shot, and himself badly wounded, he escaped under jury-masts. In this day's mad fight" the English suffered severely, and nearly all their ships that came into action' were ruined in their masts and rigging by the chain-shot-a new invention attributed to the great De Witt. In the night the Dutch received some reinforcement; yet on the morrow Monk renewed the combat, and all that day the English mariners vindicated their old reputation, fighting most bravely against a far superior force. Night again separated the combatants; and again the dawn of day-the third day of carnage-saw the fight renewed. But now Monk fought retreating, and, after taking out the men, he burned several of his most disabled ships. Toward evening he espied the white squadron under Prince Rupert making toward him. Rupert, who ought not to have gone at all, had not gone farther westward than to St. Helen's, where he was stopped by intelligence that the Dutch fleet was at sea. He put about for Dover, but he did not reach that point till late on the night of the 1st of June (the first day of the battle); and when he got into the Downs he neither heard any sound of battle nor could obtain any information. He then made for the Gun-Fleet, an important anchorage near Harwich, previously appointed by Monk for their meeting; but now the wind was against him. While beating about on the 3d of June, he heard a heavy cannonading, "spread his flying canvas to the sound," and came up just in time to save Monk from destruction. That evening the Prince Royal-esteemed the best man-ofwar in the world, and the best gunned-stuck on a sand-bank and was taken by the Dutch. Next day the fight was renewed, both sides fighting more desperately than ever, until a thick fog interrupted 1 Roger Coke, who gives a very particular account of this battle, which he says he had from Sir John Harman himself, says that Sir Thomas Teddiman, now rear-admiral of the red refused to engage. 2 Dryden, Annus Mirabilis. the slaughter. When the fog dispersed the Dutch were seen in retreat, but the English were in no condition to follow them. The court," says Burnet, " gave out that it was a victory; and public thanksgivings were ordered, which was a horrid mocking of God and a lying to the world: though we had in one respect reason to thank God that we had not lost our whole fleet." By the month of July De Ruyter was again at sea with a stronger fleet than ever; but Monk and Rupert gave him a decided defeat, drove him back in rage and despair to the Texel, and detached Sir Thomas Holmes with a considerable force, which scoured the coast and burned two ships of war, one hundred and fifty merchantmen and fishing craft, and one or two defenseless villages. But a mightier conflagration was at hand. The summer had been the hottest and driest that had been known for many years, and London, being then for the most part built of timber filled up with plaster, was as dry and combustible as firewood; 1 In this tremendous action innumerable professional mistakes were committed by the English officers, who, for the greater part, were young men, very ignorant of sea affairs. The old officers who had served under the great Blake had been nearly all dismissed on account of their republicanism or their non-conformity; and the Duke of York Pepys, whose situation as secretary to the admiralty afforded him had filled up their places with a set of lordlings, pages, and courtiers ample means of knowing the real state of the fleet, is full of lamentations upon this head. Among many other things, he says, "The truth is, that the gentlemen-captains will undo us, for they are not to be kept in order; their friends about the king and duke, and their own houses, are so free that it is not for any person but the duke himself to have any command over them.... We did begin to discourse of the young genteel captains, which he (Admiral Penn) was very free with me in speaking his mind of the unruliness of them, and what a loss the king hath of his old men. . . . He told me that our very commanders, nay, our very flag-officers, do stand in need of exercising among themselves, and discoursing the business of commanding a fleet: he telling me that even one of our flagmen in the fleet did not know which tack lost the wind or kept it in the last engagement."-Diary. LONDON, as it appeared from Bankside, Southwark, during the Great Fire. From a Print of the period by Visscher. and in the middle of the night between the 2d and 3d of September, a fire broke out that raged for three days, as if it had a commission to devour every thing that was in its way. It began at a baker's house near London Bridge, on the spot where the obelisk called the Monument now stands, and it was not stopped until it had reduced nearly the whole of the city, from the Tower to Temple Bar, to a sightless heap of cinders and ashes." In 1 Clarendon says, "The fire and the wind continued in the same excess all Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, till afternoon, and flung and scattered brands burning into all quarters; the nights more terrible than the days, and the light the same, the light of the fire supplying that of the sun. . . . Let the cause be what it would, the effect was very terrible; for above two parts of three of that great city were burned to ashes, and those the most rich and wealthy parts of the city, the midst of this terrible conflagration a report was raised and spread that it was the effect of a conspiracy of the French and Dutch with the papists; and the people believed that all the Frenchmen in the city were drawn together to destroy with the sword such as escaped the fire. A stupefied and desperate mob ran up and down seizing upon all the foreigners and English Catholics they could find; where the greatest warehouses and the best shops stood. The Royal Exchange, with all the streets about it-Lombard-street, Cheapside, Paternoster-row, St. Paul's Church, and almost all the other churches in the city, with the Old Bailey, Ludgate, all Paul's churchyard, even to the Thames, and the greatest part of Fleet-street, all which were places the best inhabited, were all burned without one house remaining. The value, or estimate of what that devouring fire consumed, over and above the houses, could never be computed in any degree."Life. MONUMENT ON FISH-STREET HILL-to commemorate the Fire of London. From an old Print. but, to the lasting honor of the London populace, | one man to prosecute or accuse him. According to desperate and bewildered as they were, and mad with excitement, they shed no blood, leaving such iniquities to be perpetrated by the fabricators of popish plots, the parliament, and the judges. A mad Frenchman, of the name of Hubert, who was taken and thrown into Newgate by the mob, and who had been for many years looked upon as insane, accused himself of having been in a plot with two other poor Frenchmen, and of having set fire to the first house. His evidence or confession plainly indicated the state of his intellect, and the chief justice told the king that all his discourse was so disjointed that he could not believe him guilty. Nor was there Clarendon, neither the judges nor any person present at his trial believed his story, but all saw that he was a poor distracted wretch, weary of his life, and anxious to part with it in this way. Yet the jury found him guilty, and the king and the judges, notwithstanding their conviction of Hubert's insanity, allowed him to be executed. "Certain it is," adds Clarendon, whose account is confirmed on all hands, that, upon the strictest examination that could be afterward made by the king's command, and then by the diligence of the House, that, upon the general jealousy and rumor, made a committee, that was very diligent and solicitous to make that |