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.