In the short and troubled reign of James II. little was heard of the claims of England to the sovereignty of the sea. Bad king as James was, he rescued the navy from the deplorable condition into which it had sunk in the later years of Charles,—of which Pepys has left so graphic a picture,938—and the naval officers continued to enforce the routine duty of the flag; but the domestic troubles with which he was surrounded prevented him from turning it to account against any of his neighbours, even if he had been so inclined. And with the Revolution of 1688 the whole aspect of the question was changed. The English pretension, as we have seen, had been specially directed against the United Provinces, but when the Prince of Orange was called to the English throne as William III., and was thus the ruler in both countries, it was not to be expected that he would show much zeal in continuing the policy of the Stuarts against his own countrymen.

It is true that in the treaty which was concluded between England and the Dutch Republic in 1689, the article on the flag in the treaty of Westminster was repeated and confirmed. This, however, was very much a matter of routine and formality, though it must be said the Dutch ambassadors in London complained that William was as obstinate and punctilious about the question of the flag as any purely English sovereign could have been.939 But from this time until well on in the next century England and the United Provinces were united as 518 allies in the great wars with France. There was thus little room for serious disputes with them about the flag, the right to the herring fishery, or the sovereignty of the sea, even if the desire had existed. Against France, however, William made use of the customary language as to the English sovereignty of the sea. In the spring of 1689, after William had been proclaimed King of England, Louis XIV. foresaw the formidable coalition that would be formed against him, and he boldly issued what was virtually a challenge to England on the subject. He published an ordinance on 15th April in which he not only prohibited his officers from giving the first salute to ships of other nations carrying flags of equal rank to their own, but ordered them to demand the salute from foreign vessels on whatever seas or coasts they might encounter them, and to compel them by force if they refused.940 That this challenge of Louis to dispute the sovereignty of the sea was not too presumptuous was shown in the following year, when the combined fleets of England and Holland were defeated by the French off Beachy Head. In the declaration of war against France, in May 1689, the ordinance of Louis was made one of the reasons for hostilities. “The right of the flag,” said William, “inherent in the crown of England, has been disputed by his orders, in violation of our sovereignty of the Narrow Seas, which in all ages has been asserted by our predecessors, and which we are resolved to maintain, for the honour of our crown and of the English nation.”941 They were strange words to come from the mouth of one who was Prince of Orange as well as King of England, but the times were changing and such phrases were soon to become merely empty forms.

With respect to this ceremony of the flag, which the English professed to regard as an acknowledgment of their sovereignty on the sea, it may be said that from this time on it ceased to have much importance in international affairs. The instructions issued by the Admiralty to the naval officers continued to be explicit enough, and they indeed suffered but little change for another century. The commander of one of his Majesty’s ships, on meeting with any ship or ships belonging to any foreign prince or state within his Majesty’s seas (which, it was explained, 519 extended to Cape Finisterre, Van Staten not being mentioned), was to “expect” such ship or ships to strike their top-sail and take in their flag, “in acknowledgment of his Majesty’s sovereignty of those seas,” and if they refused or offered to resist, they were to be compelled to do so. Within his Majesty’s seas his Majesty’s ships were in no wise to strike to any; and in other parts only if the foreign ship struck first or at the same time, except in a foreign harbour or in a road within gunshot of a fort or castle, in which case a salute with guns was to be given if the commander of the fort agreed to answer gun for gun. If any British ship was so far forgetful of its duty as not to salute the king’s ship by striking the top-sail as it passed by, when it might be done without loss of the voyage, they were to be “brought to the Flag” to answer their contempt, or reported to the Admiralty for proceedings to be taken.942 Similar 520 instructions were issued in succeeding reigns, the injunction to compel by force those who refused to strike being limited to flag officers and commanders.943

Disputes as to striking appear to have been much less common in the latter part of the seventeenth and in the eighteenth century than they were previously, but they sometimes occurred; and the ceremony seems to have been enforced on Dutch ships, though they were allied with the English fleet at the time. At all events, the Lords of the Admiralty in 1694 wrote to the Duke of Shrewsbury saying that the instructions required the respect of the flag from all nations whatsoever, without any distinction, and that Sir Cloudesley Shovel had been advised to that effect.944 At this period, as indeed always, the Danes were very punctilious as to Kronberg Castle on the Sound being saluted with proper respect by foreign ships, and in 1694 Shrewsbury advised the Admiralty that the king had signified his pleasure that all ships of war sent to the Sound should salute Kronberg with three guns only, upon assurance that their salute would be returned by the castle with a like number of guns.945

Early in the reign of Anne, in 1704, a sanguinary encounter took place with reference to the striking of the flag that equalled if it did not surpass in brutality any case that happened under Charles. An English squadron under the command of Admiral Whestone fell in with a Swedish man-of-war convoying some merchant vessels. The Swedish commander refused to strike to the English admiral, on the ground that he had received strict injunctions not to do so to any flag whatever, even in the Channel, and thereupon the English proceeded to compel him by force. After about 150 Swedes had been killed or wounded, as well as many English, the unlucky man-of-war, with all the merchantmen, was brought into Yarmouth Roads.946 Another case of a different kind happened in 1728, early in the reign of George II. A French man-of-war, the Gironde, under the command of Mons. de Joyeux, on going 521 into Plymouth Sound on 23rd November, was hailed by an English frigate, which demanded that he should salute the fortress and the frigate. The Frenchman replied that the bad weather had prevented his sending an officer to the governor to agree about a salute, but that he owed none to the frigate, which carried a pennant only, it being usual to salute none but flags; and he passed quickly into the port, where the captain of another frigate sent to ask him if he would not salute the commodore, who carried a bare pendant, and he returned the same answer. On coming out again on the 29th the frigate called upon him to strike his pennant, and on his refusal threatened to fire upon him. M. de Joyeux, feeling that it was by no means proper to hazard his ship under the cannon of the castle and the batteries, then complied, and also saluted the fort with eleven guns, as previously arranged. This “insult” was made the subject of complaint by France, and when all the papers had been submitted to the king he instructed that the officer responsible, Lieutenant Thomas Smith of the Gosport, should be forthwith dismissed the service as having in this particular exceeded his instructions.947

In the writings of the naval historians of last century one may find expressed the views which were then prevalent in naval circles as to the striking of the flag and the sovereignty of the sea generally. They claimed for the crown of England an exclusive propriety and dominion in the British seas, both as to the right of passage and the right of fishing, and the widest limits were assigned to those seas. Thus Burchett, who was Secretary to the Admiralty, defined them as follows in 1720: On the east they extended to the shores of Norway, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands, so as to include the North Sea; on the south they were bounded by the shores of France and Spain to Cape Finisterre, and by a line from that Cape westwards to meet the western boundary, thus comprising the Channel, the Bay of Biscay, and part of the Atlantic Ocean; on the west they extended to an imaginary line in the Atlantic in longitude 23 degrees west from London, 522 passing from the southern boundary to latitude 63 degrees north; and on the north they were bounded by this parallel to the middle point of Van Staten. These were declared to be the British seas proper, in which the crown had the most absolute dominion and the right to the honour of the flag from all other nations; but in addition, it was stated that on the north and west as far as America and Greenland the crown had also “most ample rights” in virtue of first discovery and occupation.948

No doubt much of the claim put forward by these writers on behalf of the maritime dominion of England was stereotyped, and had more form than substance. Entick, indeed, in 1757, although asserting the right of Great Britain to an absolute sovereignty of the sea, and to the striking of the flag as an acknowledgment of it, himself described this duty as “but an indifferent honorary ceremony.” The changed point of view in which the matter was regarded was shown also in the declaration of war by Great Britain against the United Provinces in 1780, because they had joined the Armed Neutrality. It contained nothing referring either to the flag or to the sovereignty of the sea; and it was doubtless as a mere matter of form and precedent that a brief article relating to the striking of the flag was inserted among the preliminary articles of peace, drawn up at Paris in 1783, and in the definitive treaty of peace concluded with the United Provinces in the next year.949 The time was approaching when this ceremony was to pass away altogether as a symbol of our maritime sovereignty, even in the eyes of Englishmen. There was little need of 523 claiming it as an acknowledgment of our actual naval supremacy during the greater part of the eighteenth century, for it was obvious to all the world that British sea-power was supreme. From the reign of Anne onwards the naval force of Great Britain was overwhelming, and formed a determining factor in the history of Europe. This country was undisputed mistress of the seas,—or tyrant of the seas, as our enemies preferred to put it,—and our old rival, the Netherlands, was left far behind in the race for naval power as well as in commerce.950 Nor was it longer necessary to insist on the honour of the flag in order to stimulate the valour of our seamen, to keep alive the spirit of maritime glory in the nation, or to evoke the reverence of foreign peoples. The forcing of all foreign ships to strike in the British seas became a political encumbrance unsuited to the times. It was allowed to fall into disuse when its inconvenience had long outgrown any utility it had possessed, and the battle of Trafalgar, in 1805, gave the opportunity of departing from the ancient claim. The naval power of France and Spain having been humbled, it was thought a convenient time spontaneously to abandon a pretension which “could not probably have been maintained much longer except at the cannon’s mouth.”951 The Admiralty, with the approbation of the Government, accordingly omitted the arbitrary article from their instructions for the fleet.952

In the closing years of the seventeenth century and the earlier part of the next there were many signs that the era of claiming an exclusive sovereignty over extensive regions of the sea was passing away; and that, on the other hand, the policy of fixing exact boundaries for special purposes, either by international treaties or national laws, was taking its place. Such signs may be observed in the writings of public men, as in the letter of recantation which Evelyn indited to Pepys in 524 1682 (see p. 514), which included a long reasoned argument against the English pretensions. Still more to the point was the appearance of an extremely able work by Sir Philip Meadows in 1689, immediately after the Revolution, in which these pretensions were subjected to the most destructive criticism.953 Meadows had considerable experience of public affairs. As Latin Secretary to Cromwell’s Council—an office to which he was appointed in 1653 in order to relieve the poet Milton, whose blindness interfered with his duties—he was conversant with the negotiations then proceeding with the Dutch; and later, as ambassador to Denmark and then to Sweden, he had opportunities of acquainting himself with the claims to maritime sovereignty put forward by those countries. The keynote of Meadows’ work was, that as the dominion of the seas was apt to become a specious pretence to a war between England and Holland, while the real causes of such a war were hidden and remote, nothing would conduce more effectually to preserve a lasting peace than a true knowledge and right understanding of the matter. If the claim of England as expounded by Selden was to be considered the proper standard of right and wrong between us and other nations, “if what was well written must be fought for too, not being to be gained but by a longer tool than a pen,” then the King of England would be cast upon this hard dilemma—either of being involved in endless and dangerous quarrels with all his neighbours abroad, or of having his honour and reputation prostituted at home, as tamely suffering “the best jewel of his crown to be ravished from it.” The English pretension, he pointed out, differed from that of Venice, inasmuch as it related not to a bay or gulf, but to a sea open on both sides which formed the passage of communication 525 for the northern and southern nations of Europe. Persistence in the pretension would therefore result in war between the island and the Continent, as to whether the island should have the sea to herself, or whether the Continent should have a share of it with her. No nation had ever acknowledged the claim of England, which, moreover, was not enforced, because if one foreigner did violence to another, outside the King’s Chambers, but in the Channel or any part of the so-called British sea, he did not come under the jurisdiction of the King of England but under that of his own state.

While strenuously opposing the pretensions to the sovereignty of the sea, Meadows agreed with all other authors in holding that every country had an exclusive right to certain parts of the sea adjoining its coasts: the difficulty was to fix the bounds. “If there is no certain standard in nature,” he says, “whereby to ascertain the precise boundaries of that peculiar Marine Territory I am now speaking to, which belongs to every prince in right of his land, yet, by treaty and agreement, they may easily be reduced to certainty. For, as to the judgment and opinion of private persons, we cannot fetch from thence any true measure; for though they all agree unanimously that there is something due of right, yet they vary in the quantum, or how much. Therefore the surest way is to prescribe the limits of fishing betwixt neighbouring nations by contract, and not by the less certain measure of territory. For, if no bounds be fixed, how many inconveniencies, and what a licentious extravagance, may such a liberty run into?” The Dutch, he said, unless boundaries were fixed, might dredge for oysters on the coast of Essex, as they did formerly; or fish within the mouth of the Thames, or in our creeks, havens, and rivers; and it was unreasonable not to draw a distinction as to fishing between natives and aliens. Meadows therefore, foreshadowing modern practice, urged that the boundaries of exclusive fishing should be determined by treaty, and he prepared a draft article for the consideration of those concerned.954 526 In a later unpublished treatise he advocated much the same method of mutual agreement with France, with respect to the striking of the flag, as had been formerly proposed by Richelieu—that in our half of the Channel they should strike to us, and that in the half next France we should strike to them.955

Whether or not the writings of Meadows had any influence upon the practice, or, what is more likely, merely reflected the change in opinion that had begun, it is from about this time that we find instances of definite boundaries being fixed, usually in connection with the rights of fishery, instead of the vague claims that commonly prevailed. The first case of the kind happened indeed a few years earlier. In a treaty between James II. and Louis XIV., which was concluded in 1686, concerning the rights of trading and fishing in the Briti............