Part 5 (1/2)
Dutton, and took up his residence with his pupil with the Oxenbridges
The following letter, addressed by Marvell to Oliver, will be read with interest:--
”May it please your Excellence,--It ive your Excellence thanks for myself But, indeed, the only civility which it is proper for me to practice with so eminent a person is to obey you, and to perform honestly the work that you have set me about Therefore I shall use the ti, onely for that purpose for which you have given me it; that is, to render you an account of Mr Dutton I have taken care to exae, as those eigh and tell over e of it; for I thought that there htness in the coyn, or errour in the telling, which hereafter I should be bound to e is the best to make your Excellency an impartial relation thereof: I shall only say, that I shall strive according toto those rules your Lordshi+p hath given me) to increase whatsoever talent he entle and waxen disposition; and God be praised, I cannot say he hath brought with hi into his spirit but what s that ed,--modesty, which is the bridle to vice; and emulation, which is the spur to virtue And the care which your Excellence is pleased to take of hiement and shall be so represented to him; but, above all, I shall labour to in to serve faithfully, e consider He is our master And in this, both he and I owe infinitely to your Lordshi+p, for having placed us in so Godly a fae, whose doctrine and exa the ear, but deht to travell; and Mrs Oxenbridge has looked so well to him, that he hath alreadyhis chaht to be in it as often as his studys require For the rest,ourselves with hiood company I shall, upon occasion, henceforward inform your Excellence of any particularities in our little affairs, for so I esteeive thanks to God for your Lordshi+p, and to beg grace of Him, that I may approve myself, Your Excellency's most humble and faithful servant, ANDREW MARVELL
”Windsor, _July 28, 1653_
”Mr Dutton[55:1] presents histhis period, 1652-1657 It was in 1653 that he began his stormy career as an anonymous political poet and satirist The Dutch were his first victih they were Marvell never liked the Dutch, and had he lived to see the Revolution one some qualms
In 1652 the Commonwealth was at ith the United Provinces Trade jealousy made the hat politicians call ”inevitable” This jealousy of the Dutch dates back to Elizabeth, and to the first stirring in the womb of time of the British navy This may be readily perceived if we read Dr John Dee's ”Petty Navy Royal,” 1577, and ”A Politic Plat (plan) for the Honour of the Prince,” 1580, and, soland's Way to Win Wealth,” 1614[56:1]
These short tracts et our share of the foreign fishi+ng trade, then wholly in the hands of the Dutch; and second, the recognition that England was a sea-ereat navyinhabitants of our coasts
The enor trade done in our oaters by the Dutch, the splendid fleet of fishi+ng craft with twenty thousand handy sailors on board, ready by every 1st of June to sail out of the Maas, the Texel, and the Vlie, to catch herring in the North Sea, excited adland and careless countrymen! look but on these fellows that we call the plu and our ence! Six hundred of these fishershi+ps and reat Busses, some six score tons, most of them be a hundred tons, and the rest three score tons and fifty tons; the biggest of thehteen or sixteen men apiece So there cannot be in this fleet of People no less than twenty thousand sailors No king upon the earth did ever see such a fleet of his own subjects at any time, and yet this fleet is there and then yearly to be seen A ht it were, if they were st them, to behold the neatness of their shi+ps and fisher ether[57:1]
”Now, in our sum of fishermen, let us see what vent have we for our fish in other countries, and what codom? And what shi+ps are set in work by them whereby mariners are best employed Not one It is pitiful!This last year at Yar to do, living very poor for lack of eone to sea in Pinks if there had been any for theo in And this last year the Hollanders did lade 12 sail of Holland shi+ps with red herrings at Yarhorn and Genoa and Marseilles and Toulon Most of these being laden by the English lish owners of shi+ps shall have but small employment for theht of How can a great navy necessary for our sea-e men, accustomed from their infancy to handle boats?
”Fourthly, how rees would be by these e and disturbance of sea, but also would be well practised and trained to great perfection of understanding all reat need that expert and hardy crew of some thousands of sea-soldiers would be to this realm a treasure inco well fed in fishi+ng affairs and stronger and lustier than the sailors who use the long Southern voyages, but these courageous, young, lusty, strong-fed younkers that shall be bred in the Busses, when His Majesty shall have occasion for their service in war against the eneth to an iron crow at a piece of great ordnance in training of a cannon, or culvining with the direction of the experimented master Gunner, then two or three of the forenarown sea and foul winter's weather, for flying forward to their labour, for pulling in a top-sail or a sprit-sail, or shaking off a bonnet in a dark night!
for wet or cold cannot make them shrink nor stain, that the North Seas and the Busses and Pinks have dyed in the grain for such purposes”[58:2]
The years, as they went by, only served to increase English jealousy of the Dutch, who not only fished our water but did the carrying trade of the world It was no rare sight to see Yar theoods
In the early days of the Commonwealth the painfulness of the situation was accentuated by the fact that some of our colonies or plantations, as they were then called--Virginia and the Barbadoes, for exaave a co their produce to all parts of the world exclusively in Dutch botto Parliaation Act, of which Ranke says: ”Of all the acts ever passed in Parliaht about the land and the world”[59:1]
The Navigation Act provided ”that all goods froland in English shi+ps only; and all European goods either in English shi+ps or in shi+ps belonging to the countries froinally cae indeed
Another perpetual source of irritation was the Right of Search, that is, the right of stopping neutral shi+ps and searching their cargoes for contraband England asserted this right as against the Dutch, who, as the world's carriers, were ht, and not unnaturally denied its existence
War was declared in 1652, and reat admirals, Blake and Van Tromp Oliver's spirit was felt on the seas, and before land had captured ht business to a standstill in Areat centre of commercial interests When six short years afterwards the news of Croreatly rejoiced, crowding the streets and crying ”the Devil is dead”
Andrew Marvell was ireat reader and converser with the best intellects of his tinificance of Bacon's illu in the fadoms and Estates_ (first printed in 1612), ”that he that coreat liberty and may take as h not the creator of our navy, was its strongest inspiration until Nelson, and no feature of his great administration so excited Marvell's patriotic ad andthe command of the sea
In Marvell's poem, first published as a broadsheet in 1655, entitled _The First Anniversary of the Governhness the Lord-Protector_, he describes foreign princes soundly rating their aies of the new Commonwealth:--
”'Is this,' saith one, 'the nation that we read Spent with both wars, under a Captain dead!
Yet rig a navy while we dress us late And ere we dine rase and rebuild a state?
What oaken forests, and what golden ns!
Needs must we all their tributaries be Whose navies hold the sluices of the sea!
_The ocean is the fountain of command_, But that once took, we captives are on land; And those that have the waters for their share Can quickly leave us neither earth nor air'”