heir
real source in the inveterate jealousies and unbounded ambition
of both countries, reciprocally convinced that a joint supremacy
at sea was incompatible with their interests and their honor, and
each resolved to risk everything for their mutual pretensions--to
perish rather than yield. The United Provinces were assuredly
not the aggressors in this quarrel. They had made sure of their
capability to meet it, by the settlement of all questions of
internal government, and the solid peace which secured them against
any attack on the part of their old and inveterate enemy; but they
did not seek a rupture. They at first endeavored to ward off the
threatened danger by every effort of conciliation; and they met,
with temperate management, even the advances made by Cromwell, at
the instigation of St. John, the chief justice, for a proposed,
yet impracticable coalition between the two republics, which was
to make them one and indivisible. An embassy to The Hague, with
St. John and Strickland at its head, was received with all public
honors; but the partisans of the families of Orange and Stuart,
and the populace generally, openly insulted the ambassadors.
About the same time Dorislas, a Dutchman naturalized in England,
and sent on a mission from the parliament, was murdered at The
Hague by some Scotch officers, friends of the banished king;
the massacre of Amboyna, thirty years before, was made a cause of
revived complaint; and altogether a sum of injuries was easily
made up to turn the proposed fantastic coalition into a fierce
and bloody war.

The parliament of England soon found a pretext in an outrageous
measure, under pretence of providing for the interests of commerce.
They passed the celebrated act of navigation, which prohibited all
nations from importing into England in their ships any commodity
which was not the growth and manufacture of their own country.
This law, though worded generally, was aimed directly at the
Dutch, who were the general factors and carriers of Europe. Ships
were seized, reprisals made, the mockery of negotiation carried
on, fleets equipped, and at length the war broke out.

In the month of May, 1652, the Dutch admiral, Tromp, commanding
forty-two ships of war, met with the English fleet under Blake
in the Straits of Dover; the latter, though much inferior in
number, gave a signal to the Dutch admiral to strike, the usual
salutation of honor accorded to the English during the monarchy.
To