Dutch, who, as
the world's carriers, were most subject to the right, and not
unnaturally denied its existence.

War was declared in 1652, and made the fame of two great admirals, Blake
and Van Tromp. Oliver's spirit was felt on the seas, and before many
months were over England had captured more than a thousand Dutch trading
vessels, and brought business to a standstill in Amsterdam--then the
great centre of commercial interests. When six short years afterwards
the news of Cromwell's death reached that city, its inhabitants greatly
rejoiced, crowding the streets and crying "the Devil is dead."

Andrew Marvell was impregnated with the new ideas about sea-power. A
great reader and converser with the best intellects of his time, and a
Hull man, he had probably early grasped the significance of Bacon's
illuminating saying in the famous essay on the _True Greatness of
Kingdoms and Estates_ (first printed in 1612), "that he that commands
the sea is at great liberty and may take as much and as little of the
war as he will." Cromwell, though not the creator of our navy, was its
strongest inspiration until Nelson, and no feature of his great
administration so excited Marvell's patriotic admiration as the
Lord-Protector's sleepless energy in securing and maintaining the
command of the sea.

In Marvell's poem, first published as a broadsheet in 1655, entitled
_The First Anniversary of the Government under His Highness the
Lord-Protector_, he describes foreign princes soundly rating their
ambassadors for having misinformed them as to the energies 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 mines,
What mints of men--what union of designs!
...
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.'"

Marvell's aversion to the Dutch was first displayed in the rough lines
called _The Character of Holland_, published in 1653 during the first
Dutch War. As poetry the lines have no great merit; they do not even
jingle agreeably--but they are full of the spirit of the time, and
breathe forth