"Besides these, there are half-a-dozen on the other side, who are ordered to meet me at our rendezvous at Scheveling bay. Orders are also left in the Downs, for what ships come in there to follow us." On the 12th, the whole fleet weighed anchor, and stood out to sea. It consisted of the following ships, the names of many of which were changed by the king and Duke of York, on his majesty's coming on board on the 23d. A List of such Ships as were at Scheveling, in attending his Majesty at his return to England. Clarendon states, that Penn had a command under Mountagu in this fleet; which is altogether erroneous, as the preceding authentic list of the fleet shews. The noble and learned historian assumed this, from Penn's presence in the fleet; and on such grounds, rest many of his historical statements. Penn had no command, but went as a passenger on board Mountagu's ship, the Naseby, to pay his earliest duty to his sovereign.1 The author of Sir George Ascue's life, in the Biographia Britannica, contends that the king came over to England in the Prince. "The R. Prince," he affirms, " was the ship in which "the king came over from Holland at his resto In the Parliamentary History, vol. xxii. p. 295, are the two following entries: Sums of Money, by warrant from the Council of State, between February 25 and May 15, 1660. Charged on the Treasury of the Navy. ... For General Mountagu, advanced on his going to sea £500 0 0 100 0 0 "ration; a fact set down in none of our private "memoirs, though sufficiently known and talked of "at the time." The contrary, however, was so notorious, that we find it recorded at the time, both by Dryden and Andrew Marvel: by the former, in the well-known lines "The Nazeby, now no longer England's shame, But better to be lost in Charles's name, Receives her lord." And by the latter, in the less familiar lines —— "The Royal Charles That sacred keel, that had restored Its exiled sovereign on its happy board." And Pepys, Mountagu's secretary, thus records: -"24th May. I was called to write a pass for my "Lord Mandeville to take up horses to London, "which I wrote in the king's name, and carried it "to him to sign; which was the first and only one " which he signed in the ship Charles." This took place at sea, as the king was approaching Dover. Ascue's biographer took his erroneous notion from the Vie et Actions Mémorables du S. Michel de Ruyter, p. 346, where the author says, "De Ruyter donna "ordre de mettre le feu à ce bâtiment (le Royal Prince), qui étoit un des plus beaux de toute la "flotte ennemie, et sur lequel le roy fit son voyage "de la Haye en Angleterre, en l'an 1660." This, which was only a foreigner's error, the English biographer mistook for new and curious information. There was not, at the time, a ship named the Prince in the English navy; the ship that afterwards re ceived the name of the R. Prince, and in which Ascue was taken prisoner in 1666, was the old Resolution, which name she still retained in 1660: and we see, by the preceding list, that the Resolution was not in the fleet sent to Scheveling. May 25th.-His majesty landed at Dover from the Royal Charles, late the Naseby. 1 See above, vol. i. p. 492, note 3, CHAPTER VII. THE RESTORATION. 1660-1665. Admiralty, and Second Dutch War. 1660. WHOEVER has read Lord Clarendon's Life, and Continuation of his Life, written by himself, knows with what bitterness and aversion he always speaks of Sir William Coventry and Sir William Penn. As he was now returned to England, and was placed by his royal master at the head of his government; and, as those two persons were united in the closest bonds of friendship, and were jointly employed in offices of great trust during his administration, it will be necessary that the reader should be made well aware of that characteristic disposition of the noble auto-biographer, which Hume was constrained to acknowledge, though, at the same time, he strove to veil and extenuate it as ingeniously as he was able: "He is less partial," says Hume," in his relation of facts, than in his "account of characters: he was too honest a man to 66 falsify the former; his affections were easily capable, "unknown to himself, of disguising the latter." Chap. Ixii., end. |