hese remarkable orders as resulting
from the experience of the Second War, and as having been first put in
force during the Third one.

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'