Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/293

 1920 REVIEW 8 OF BOOKS 285 Charles II. The documents are admirably selected, edited, and arranged, and also very well indexed. In short they do great credit both to the series and to Dr. Colenbrander. The collection was originally made to serve as materials for a life of Admiral de Kuyter. It therefore contains, in addition to documents relating to the wars between Holland and England, two short sections illustrating de Ruyter's actions in the northern war of 1656-60 (i. 95-120) and in the Mediterranean in 1676 (ii. 365-420). The bulk of the documents relate to the Dutch wars of Charles II, but about 100 pages are concerned with the first Dutch war. The five volumes of Dutch and English documents edited by Dr. S. R. Gardiner and Mr. C. T. Atkinson for the Navy Records Society (1899-1912) made it unnecessary for Dr. Colenbrander to include in the present collection any English papers except three or four which had been overlooked by his predecessors. The other documents relating to this war, which he prints in full, consist of a series of newsletters sent from The Hague by Abraham de Wicquefort to the queen of Sweden and from Harald Appelboom, the Swedish resident in Holland, to Charles Gustavus, prince of Sweden, and to Axel Oxenstjerna. Wicquefort fortunately writes in French. There is also a short series of letters from Bordeaux and Gentillot to the French government. The documents relating to the second Dutch war fill about 450 pages and include a large number of English letters or narratives printed at length, while in the introduction there is an eight-page list of documents in the Calendar of State Papers to which reference seemed sufficient (i. xii-xix). There are more letters from Wicquefort and Appelboom to the Swedish government and also a series of instructions from Louis XIV to the duke of Beaufort, who commanded the French squadron co- operating with the Dutch in 1666 and 1667. But more than half the documents are English. Many letters of Sir George Downing, our minister in Holland, to Lord Arlington are printed, which supplement his letters to Clarendon (printed in Lister's Life of Clarendon) and the earlier letters printed by Japikse in his narrative of the negotiations which preceded the war {De Verwihkelingen tusschen de RejmblieTc en Engeland van 1660-5, pp. xxi-xxxiv). There are many letters from the intelligencers of the English government in Holland before and during the war, of whom an account is given in the introduction (pp. xx-xxii). One som-ce Dr. Colenbrander utilizes which previous historians have unaccountably neglected : the collection of Pepys papers amongst the Rawlinson MSS. in the Bodleian. From it he derives the journal of Lord Sandwich during his command of the fleet (11 June-12 October 1665), together with accounts of the burning of the English ships in the Medway in 1667 and other inci- dents in the war. A plan of the battle of 4-5 August 16-66, which is given in facsimile, comes from the same source (p. 421). There is even a poem entitled ' Some Thoughts upon the Dutch Navies Demurr ', that is, its delay to come out, written by an Oxford poet about a month before the battle off Lowestoft took place (p. 169). There are narratives not only of this first battle but also of the three great sea-fights which took place in the summer of 1666. The volume closes with the statements of the duke of Albemarle and Prince Rupert ' on the miscarriages in the late Dutch war ', laid before the house of commons in 1667. Of these one if not both