For we know that Spragge sailed in Rupert's squadron, and on the fourth day of the famous June battle was raised to the rank here given him in place of Sir William Berkley, who had been killed in the first day's action.[6] What share Monck had in the orders we cannot tell, but Rupert, being only joint admiral with him, could hardly have taken the step without his concurrence, and the probability is that Rupert, who had been detached on special service, was issuing a general fleet order to his own squadron which may have been communicated to the rest of the fleet before he rejoined.

It must at any rate have been after he rejoined, for it was not till then that Spragge received his promotion.

Both Monck and Rupert must therefore receive the credit of foreseeing the danger that lay in the new system, the danger of tactical pedantry that was destined to hamper the action of our fleets for the next half century, and of being the first to declare, long before Anson or Hawke, and longer still before Nelson, that line or no line, signals or no signals, 'the destruction of the enemy is always to be made the chiefest care.' In the light of this discovery we can at last explain the curious conversation recorded by Pepys, which, wrongly interpreted, has done so much to distort the early history of tactics.

The circumstances of Monck's great action must first be recalled.

At the end of May, he and Rupert, with a fleet of about eighty sail, had put to sea to seek the Dutch, when a sudden order reached them from the court that the French Mediterranean fleet was coming up channel to join hands with the enemy, and that Rupert with his squadron of twenty sail was to go westward to stop it.