ome importance. Toward the
end of 1666 both sides were tired of the war, which was doing great
harm to trade, and weakening both navies to the advantage of the
growing sea power of France. Negotiations looking toward peace were
opened; but Charles II., ill disposed to the United Provinces,
confident that the growing pretensions of Louis XIV. to the Spanish
Netherlands would break up the existing alliance between Holland and
France, and relying also upon the severe reverses suffered at sea by
the Dutch, was exacting and haughty in his demands. To justify and
maintain this line of conduct he should have kept up his fleet, the
prestige of which had been so advanced by its victories. Instead of
that, poverty, the result of extravagance and of his home policy, led
him to permit it to decline; ships in large numbers were laid up; and
he readily adopted an opinion which chimed in with his penury, and
which, as it has had advocates at all periods of sea history, should
be noted and condemned here. This opinion, warmly opposed by Monk,
was:--

"That as the Dutch were chiefly supported by trade, as the
supply of their navy depended upon trade, and, as experience
showed, nothing provoked the people so much as injuring their
trade, his Majesty should therefore apply himself to this, which
would effectually humble them, at the same time that it would
less exhaust the English than fitting out such mighty fleets as
had hitherto kept the sea every summer.... Upon these motives
the king took a fatal resolution of laying up his great ships
and keeping only a few frigates on the cruise."[38]

In consequence of this economical theory of carrying on a war, the
Grand Pensionary of Holland, De Witt, who had the year before caused
soundings of the Thames to be made, sent into the river, under De
Ruyter, a force of sixty or seventy ships-of-the-line, which on the
14th of June, 1667, went up as high as Gravesend, destroying ships at
Chatham and in the Medway, and taking possession of Sheerness. The
light of the fires could be seen from London, and the Dutch fleet
remained in possession of the mouth of the river until the end of the
month. Under this blow, following as it did upon the great plague and
the great fire of London, Charles consented to peace, which was signed
July 31, 1667, and is known as the Peace of Breda. The most lasting
result of the war was the transfer of New York and New Jersey to
Englan