There is also a peremptory re-enunciation of the duty of keeping the line and the order enforced by the penalty of death for firing 'over any of our own ships.' Here then we have apparently a return to the Duke of York's belief in formal tactics, and it is highly significant that, although the twenty-six original articles incorporate and codify all the other scattered additional orders of the last war, they entirely ignore those issued by Monck and Rupert during the Four Days' Battle.
We have pretty clear evidence of the existence at this period of two schools of tactical opinion, which after all is no more than experience would lead us to suspect, and which Pepys's remarks have already indicated.

As usual there was the school, represented by the Duke of York and Penn, which inclined to formality, and by pedantic insistence on well-meant principles tended inevitably to confuse the means with the end.

On the other hand we have the school of Monck and Rupert, which was inclined anarchically to submit all rules to the solvent of hard fighting, and to take tactical risks and unfetter individual initiative to almost any extent rather than miss a chance of overpowering the enemy by a sudden well-timed blow.

Knowing as we do the extent to which the principles of the Duke of York's school hampered the development of fleet tactics till men like Hawke and Nelson broke them down, we cannot but sympathise with their opponents.

Nor can we help noting as curiously significant that whereas it was the soldier-admirals who first introduced formal tactics, it was a seaman's school that forced them to pedantry in the face of the last of the soldier-school, who tried to preserve their flexibility, and keep the end clear in view above the means they had invented.
Still it would be wrong to claim that either school was right.