Holland, during the reigns of James I. and Charles I., had been carrying off all the commercial honours from England, and it was becoming evident that prohibitory laws were needed to stop their triumphant progress on the sea. In 1646, and again in 1650, two Acts were passed, both having the same tendency, to prevent foreign ships trading with England’s new plantations in Virginia, Bermuda, Barbadoes, “and other places in America.”(7) On the 9th of October, 1651, the celebrated Navigation Act of Cromwell came into operation. There were no half measures in that Act. It declared that no goods or commodities whatever of the growth, production, or manufacture of Asia, Africa, or America, should be imported either into Great Britain or Ireland, or any of the colonies, except in _British-built ships, owned by British subjects, and of which the master and three-fourths of the crew belonged to that country_. This, literally translated, meant that England wanted the carrying trade of everything that concerned her own well being. The next enactment went further. It provided that no goods of the growth, production, or manufacture of any country in Europe should be imported into Great Britain except in British ships, owned and navigated by British subjects, “_or in such ships as were the real property of the people of the country or place in which the goods were produced, or from which they could only be, or most usually were, exported_.” This provision was aimed at the Dutch; they had little to export. But unless one can understand the long-stifled animosity and jealousy felt in England regarding their commercial supremacy on the seas, and as regards the carrying trade, he can hardly understand why laws, which would nowadays be considered ridiculous and unjust, were so popular then. So strong had these feelings become, that when the Dutch despatched an embassy to England for the purpose of obtaining a revocation of the navigation laws, its members had to be guarded from the violence of the mob.
England had now unmistakably asserted her right to carry on her own over-sea trade in her own ships, and to enter the lists with any other nation as regards foreign trade. This action was a defiance hurled at Holland, and after a little manœuvring ended inevitably in war. A few facts only regarding that war may be permitted here. The Dutch were at first, and indeed for the most part, the sufferers. Within a month of its declaration, Blake captured 100 of their herring boats, and twelve of their frigates, sinking a thirteenth. In 1652-3 there were five actions. In the first Blake was successful; in the second he was thoroughly beaten by Martin Tromp (father of the Tromp best known in history). The third, early in 1653, resulted in a victory for the English, the Dutch losing 300 merchantmen they had captured not long before; the fourth was a decided victory for England, and the fifth was an indecisive action. The English, however, took possession of the Channel, and scarcely a day passed without Dutch prizes being brought into English ports. Many of the Dutch ships, returning from distant parts of the world, rounded Scotland, rather than pass up the Channel. On the fifth of April, 1654, a treaty of peace was concluded; Cromwell requiring, before it was signed, an admission of the English sovereignty of the seas, and the Dutch consenting to strike their flag to the ships of the Commonwealth.