e centre of the Dutch line.

[6] Charnock, _Biographia Navalis_, i. 65.

[7] Pepys, it must be said, persuaded himself that this order was
suggested and approved by the admirals. He traced it to Spragge's desire
to get away with his chief on a separate command. Pepys however was
clearly not sure about it, and he almost certainly would have been if
the Duke of York was really innocent of the blunder. The truth probably
can never be known.

[8] Vice-Admiral Jordan to Penn, June 5, _Memorials of Penn_, II. 389.
This is the first known instance of the use of the term 'line abreast.'
In the published account a different term is used. 'By 3 or 4 in the
morning,' it says, 'a small breeze sprang up at N.E. and at a council of
flag officers, his grace the lord general resolved to draw the fleet
into a "rear line of battle" and make a fair retreat of it.' (_Brit.
Museum_, 816, m. 23(13), p. 5, and _S.P. Dom. Car. II_, vol. 158.) The
French and Dutch called it the 'crescent' formation. See note, p. 94.

[9] See _post_, pp. 136-7.

[10] _Memoires d'Armand de Gramont, Comte de Guiche, concernant les
Provinces Unis des Pays-Bas servant de supplement et de confirmation a
ceux d'Aubrey du Maurier et du Comte d'Estrades_. Londres, chez Philippe
Changuion, 1744. (The italics are not in the original.) _Cf._ the
similar French account quoted by Mahan, _Sea Power_, 117 _et seq._

[11] _Cf._ a similar conversation that Pepys had on October 28 with a
certain Captain Guy, who had been in command of a small fourth-rate of
thirty-eight guns in Holmes's attack on the shipping at Vlie and
Shelling after the 'St. James's Fight' and of a company of the force
that landed to destroy Bandaris. The prejudice of both Pepys and Penn
comes out still more strongly in their remarks on Monck's and Rupert's
great victory of July 25, and their efforts to make out it was no
victory at all. The somewhat meagre accounts we have of this action all
point as before to the superiority of the English manoeuvring, and to
the inability or unwillingness of the Dutch, and especially of Tromp, to
preserve the line.

_THE DUKE OF YORK, April_ 10, 1665.

[+Sir Edward Spragge's Sea Book. The Earl of Dartmouth MSS.+]

_James, Duke of York and Albany, Earl of Ulster, Lord High Admiral
of England and Ireland, &c, Constable of Dover Castle, Lord Warden of
the Cinque Ports, and Governor of Portsmouth.

Instructions for the better ordering his majesty's fleet in time