[Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 by Julian S. Corbett]@TWC D-Link bookFighting Instructions, 1530-1816 PART V 5/36
Commission it is stated that the position of the ships is shown in a diagram, but I have been unable to obtain access to the document. II MONCK, PRINCE RUPERT AND THE DUKE OF YORK INTRODUCTORY It has hitherto been universally supposed that the Dutch Wars of the Restoration were fought under the set of orders printed as an appendix to Granville Penn's _Memorials of Penn_.
Mr.Penn believed them to belong to the year 1665, but recent research shows conclusively that these often-quoted orders, which have been the source of so much misapprehension, are really much later and represent not the ideas under which those wars were fought, but the experience that was gained from them. This new light is mainly derived from a hitherto unknown collection of naval manuscripts belonging to the Earl of Dartmouth, which he has generously placed at the disposal of the Society.
The invaluable material they contain enables us to say with certainty that the orders which the Duke of York issued as lord high admiral and commander-in-chief at the outbreak of the war were nothing but a slight modification of those of 1654, with a few but not unimportant additions.
Amongst the manuscripts, most of which relate to the first Lord Dartmouth's cousin and first commander, Sir Edward Spragge, is a 'Sea Book' that must have once belonged to that admiral.
It is a kind of commonplace book, the greater part unused, in which Spragge appears to have begun to enter various important orders and other matter of naval interest with which he had been officially concerned, by way of forming a collection of precedents.[1] Amongst these is a copy of the orders set out below, dated from the Royal Charles, the Duke of York's flagship, 'the 10th of April, 1665,' by command of his royal highness, and signed 'Wm.
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