great need that expert and hardy crew of some
thousands of sea-soldiers would be to this realm a treasure
incomparable.[58:1]

"We see the Hollanders being well fed in fishing 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 enemy, will be fellows for the nonce! and
will put more strength 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 forenamed
surfeited sailors. And in distress of wind-grown 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 Yarmouth full of Dutch bottoms,
and Dutch sailors loading them with English goods.

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 example--stuck to
the king and gave a commercial preference to the Dutch, shipping their
produce to all parts of the world exclusively in Dutch bottoms. This was
found intolerable, and in October 1651 the Long Parliament, nearing its
violent end, passed the first Navigation Act, of which Ranke says: "Of
all the acts ever passed in Parliament, it is perhaps the one which
brought about the most important results for England and the
world."[59:1]

The Navigation Act provided "that all goods from countries beyond Europe
should be imported into England in English ships only; and all European
goods either in English ships or in ships belonging to the countries
from which these articles originally came."

This was a challenge indeed.

Another perpetual source of irritation was the Right of Search, that is,
the right of stopping neutral ships and searching their cargoes for
contraband. England asserted this right as against the