and talked of the late fight. I find him very plain, that the whole
conduct of the late fight was ill.... He says three things must be
remedied, or else we shall be undone by their fleet. 1. That we must
fight in line, whereas we fight promiscuously, to our utter
demonstrable ruin: the Dutch fighting otherwise, and we whenever we
beat them. 2. We must not desert ships of our own in distress, as we
did, for that makes a captain desperate, and he will fling away his
ship when there are no hopes left him of succour. 3. That ships when
they are a little shattered must not take the liberty to come in of
themselves, but refit themselves the best they can and stay out, many
of our ships coming in with very little disableness. He told me that
our very commanders, nay, our very flag officers, do stand in need of
exercising amongst themselves and discoursing the business of
commanding a fleet, he telling me that even one of our flag men in the
fleet did not know which tack lost the wind or kept it in the last
engagement.... He did talk very rationally to me, insomuch that I
took more pleasure this night in hearing him discourse than I ever did
in my life in anything that he said.'

Pepys's enjoyment is easily understood. He disliked Penn--thought him
a 'mean rogue,' a 'coxcomb,' and a 'false rascal,' but he was very
sore over the supersession of his patron, Sandwich, and so long as
Penn abused Monck, Pepys was glad enough to listen to him, and ready
to believe anything he said in disparagement of the late battle. Penn
was no less bitter against Monck, and when his chief, the Duke of
York, was retired he had sulkily refused to serve under the new
commander-in-chief. For this reason Penn had not been present at the
action, but he was as ready as Pepys to believe anything he was told
against Monck, and we may be sure the stories of grumbling officers
lost nothing when he repeated them into willing ears. That Penn
really told Pepys the English had not fought in line is quite
incredible, even if he was, as Sir George Carteret, treasurer of the
navy, called him, 'the falsest rascal that ever was in the world.'
The fleet orders and the French testimony make this practically
impossible. But he may well have expressed himself very hotly about
the new instruction issued by Monck and Rupert which modified his own,
and placed the destruction of the enemy above a pedantic adherence to
the line. Pepys must clearly have forgotten or misunders