The idea of Britain as an island nation with an intrinsically maritime character and history is well-established. It is generally accepted that Britain has, and always has had, a close relationship with the sea, and that its people have always been predisposed towards travelling across the waves, drawing wealth and sustenance from them, and ruling over them. This idea also has a long heritage. One of the most famous expressions of it is in the words that William Shakespeare gave to John of Gaunt in Richard II, probably written in the 1590s:

Like most popular ideas, however, this one begins to break down under a closer examination. Strictly speaking Britain is not an island, but an archipelago; and nor is it one nation but several, united relatively late in their existence. Shakespeare here writes exclusively of England because at that time there was no Britain in a political sense. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that the real John of Gaunt would have placed such faith in the sea as a ‘Moate defensive’, setting England apart in splendid isolation from ‘less happier Lands’. He operated in an essentially European political world and pursued serious designs on the Castilian throne, while a French invasion was a very real possibility throughout his rule of England during the infancy of his royal nephew.

Indeed, Shakespeare depicted the sea as a threat just as much as an asset, due both to its own hazardous and stormy nature and to the access it granted to invaders in those periods when travel by sea was generally easier and quicker than travel by land. Some hint of this can be found, perhaps, in a later passage of the same speech: ‘England, bound in with the triumphant sea, / Whose rocky shore beates backe the envious siedge / Of watery Neptune’.

Warfare at sea defined the relationship between the Dutch and English states during the second half of the seventeenth century. The ships of these two nations encountered one another again and again, in vast battles and in small skirmishes, in European waters and around the world. Many thousands fought in these conflicts, which had an impact upon the entire populations of both countries, as well as having significant consequences for global politics. Mobilising the naval forces that fought these wars was an enormous undertaking, and naval administration and operations occupied much government time and resources in England and the Dutch United Provinces throughout this period. Both countries can therefore be considered as fiscal-naval states, a concept which has emerged from debate around the existence of an early modern military revolution by land and by sea, and which draws on John Brewer’s description of England as a fiscal-military state in the eighteenth century. Fiscal-naval states were, as N.A.M. Rodger puts it, ‘distinguished by [their] commitment to a capital-intensive, high-technology mode of warfare demanding long-term state investment’, and both the Dutch and English states easily fit this definition.

As we will explore in this chapter, this commitment and this investment had profound implications for the shape of these two states as they developed across the seventeenth century, with consequences for domestic as well as foreign policies. The Dutch and English navies influenced government revenue, expenditure, and taxation, which affected a wide swathe of society; they directly employed large numbers of people; and they drew on extensive networks of suppliers and contractors. These navies held a key place not only in maritime warfare but also in national identity formation, even while such identities coexisted (sometimes uneasily) with local loyalties, which also featured heavily in naval ideology, especially in the Dutch case. While our purpose here is primarily to examine how these two fiscal-naval states developed over the seventeenth century, and to establish similarities and divergences, we also wish to offer some comments on the broader significance of these developments. We will pursue this comparison by exploring, in turn, the organisation of the two navies; the structures of revenue and expenditure which financed them; and the scope and scale of private involvement in and alongside state activities.

The execution of Charles I left parliament facing enemies at home and abroad in 1649. European monarchs, repulsed by the killing of the king, initially refused to recognise the new regime and some, such as the Tsar of Russia, broke off trade relations. Royalist forces opposed the Commonwealth in Ireland, Scotland, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, and in British colonies in the Americas such as Virginia and Barbados. This opposition posed a significant danger to the Commonwealth because of the considerable naval strength commanded by the late king's supporters, who now gave their allegiance to the prince of Wales, whom they proclaimed Charles II. Between 1649 and 1653 the navy became parliament's first line of defence in dealing with these overseas threats. As N. A. M. Rodger argued, it was ‘the fear and insecurity of a military dictatorship surrounded by enemies real and imagined which made England a first class naval power’. In order to understand how this came about, this chapter will examine the final years of the civil wars from a maritime perspective. In particular it will focus on the activities and pursuit of Prince Rupert's squadron, and the vital role the Commonwealth's navy played in supporting military campaigning in Ireland, Scotland, and further afield. The navy expanded and developed in this period because of the need to deal with the variety of threats faced by the Commonwealth. Its success ensured that as the civil wars ended the state possessed a substantial and capable naval force that could see off other maritime challenges.

Royalist resurgence at sea, February–December 1649

In 1649 the most pressing danger came from the royalist coalition in Ireland (the confederates had also chosen to support Charles II), which possessed substantial military and naval resources. During the first and second civil wars, confederate privateers had lacked the strength to successfully take on English men-of-war, but the arrival of Prince Rupert's fleet at Kinsale on 21 January added a new dimension to the naval war. The royalists now possessed a large squadron of men-of-war and privateers who could undertake operations against the English navy, but in order to achieve success at sea the royalist leadership in Ireland needed to devise a strategy to make best use of their newly acquired naval strength.

Historians now largely agree that the events of the mid-seventeenth century were a truly ‘British’ crisis: that, in Conrad Russell's evocative phrase, the three Stuart kingdoms had a ‘billiard ball effect’ upon one another. Although each kingdom experienced a distinctive path to war that was contingent upon local as well as national circumstances, the collision of these circumstances resulted in conflict engulfing the whole of the British Isles and Ireland. In broad terms, Charles I's policies provoked resistance and then rebellion in Scotland and Ireland, which altered the political situation in England, sparking off issues there that were already potentially divisive.

The role and importance of naval warfare in this period of conflict is complex. In 1638, Charles I could set out a substantial fleet of state-owned men-of-war and hired merchantmen to deal with his disorderly Scottish subjects; yet by the time the king raised his standard at Nottingham in August 1642 the naval situation had altered radically. Parliament had taken control of most of the navy in which Charles had so lovingly invested during the 1630s, and the king was reduced to relying on his supporters to put ships into his service, while the rebels in Ireland had begun to acquire a force of privateers that threatened England's overseas trade. This chapter therefore seeks to examine how the opening stages of the civil wars developed from a maritime perspective. After briefly describing the tensions which emerged in Charles's reign, it will explore the navy's actions during the Bishops’ Wars in Scotland and rebellion in Ireland, how the king lost and parliament won the support of the main royal fleet, and how privateering came to be a major part of the naval strategies for all the protagonists.

The road to rebellion, 1625–38

Both political and religious problems emerged from policies undertaken by Charles's government during the 1620s and 1630s, although there has been a lively debate about just how unpopular royal governance was, provoked by a more sympathetic rendering of Charles by Kevin Sharpe and Mark Kishlansky. Few scholars have accepted their arguments entirely, and certainly some policies proved contentious, in particular financial ones. Ruling without parliament in England, Charles turned to questionable methods for raising money.

As they had in the first four years of conflict, private naval enterprise and siege operations came to characterise naval warfare between 1642 and 1646. Just as on land, the conflict at sea was largely regionalised, with the fortunes of each side ebbing and flowing as the war progressed. Each of the combatants made extensive use of ships with letters of marque and hired merchantmen to aid their cause at sea: even parliament, with their control of the navy, still relied on large numbers of privately owned vessels each year to bolster their maritime forces. Siege warfare, rather than large set-piece battles, dominated much of the military campaigning each year. Writing in the 1670s, but drawing heavily on his experiences during the 1640s, Roger Boyle, the earl of Orrery, wrote that ‘we make war more like foxes than lions and you will have twenty sieges for every battle’. Most of the key sieges that took place in these four years occurred along the coast, and the support that garrisons received by sea, or the prevention of seaborne relief from getting through, often determined the fate of beleaguered coastal outposts. In order to assess the conduct and wider significance of the war at sea between 1642 and 1646, this chapter will focus on the activities of privateers and the naval dimension of the key sieges that took place in this period.

Opening moves, September 1642–September 1643

The navy proved its worth and loyalty to parliament in the early months of fighting, by helping to ensure that key coastal outposts did not fall under royalist control. Important ports such as Bristol, Milford Haven, and Plymouth supported parliament at the outbreak of the war. The presence of men-of-war and the actions of energetic officers prevented the king's supporters from gaining footholds in a number of regions: for example, the ships sent to Sir John Hotham at Hull helped to drive royalist forces away from the town, and the naval blockade of Portsmouth proved to be effective, with the garrison surrendering to parliament in early September 1642. One daring officer even used some longboats at night to steal the Henrietta Maria pinnace from its anchorage under the guns of the city.