When the State was disposed to allow a trading company to conduct wars on its own account, it was easy to take a further step. The next thing to do was to help the Company to fight, without going to the length of declaring war against the nation to which the Company's rivals belonged. We have seen, in the case of Oliver Cromwell's expedition to the West Indies, that the practice of the time allowed of what may be called partial war--that is to say, it was thought legitimate to conduct aggressive hostilities in one part of the world, without making a general war. The king and the Duke of York, when they found that war with the States would be popular, decided to follow Cromwell's example. A squadron was fitted out to attack the Dutch possessions on the West Coast of Africa, and was placed under the command of Sir Robert Holmes. Holmes has been mentioned already as one of the Royalist officers who had followed Prince Rupert. In the course of that cruise he had visited the West Coast of Africa, and had then been encouraged by the Dutch to attack his own countrymen. In the course of his operations, Holmes must have become well acquainted with the coast, and it was doubtless this knowledge that marked him out for the command. He sailed from England with a small squadron in October 1663. His instructions were to avoid fighting as far as possible.
We do the king and Duke of York no injustice in supposing that these orders were rather meant to be quoted for diplomatic purposes than to be strictly acted upon by the admiral. The whole history of Sir Robert Holmes's cruise shows clearly that he knew beforehand that he would not be blamed for fighting if he could find a plausible excuse for hostilities, and that, when once the fighting had begun, he would not be expected to confine himself to moderate reprisals. A plausible excuse could hardly be wanting. When Holmes reached the river Gambia, he found the English traders and the Portuguese, who were now our allies, full of bitter complaints of the excesses of the Dutch. On his way he had come across a Dutch ship, and, on searching her, found, as he alleged, orders to the Dutch governor, Valckenburg, to seize the English fort at Cape Cormantin. How Sir Robert Holmes reconciled the act of searching a Dutch ship in time of peace, and on the high seas, with his instructions to avoid hostilities, we are not told. From the Dutch point of view he acted on the principles of the wolf, and assailed the lamb for troubling the water. The rival accounts of Dutch governors and English naval officers are utterly irreconcilable, and perhaps not worth reconciling. When Englishmen had made their minds up, as they had, that they wanted more of the trade enjoyed by the Dutch, and when the Dutch were, as might have been expected, thoroughly resolved to keep all the trade they enjoyed, it was a matter of course either that aggressions would be committed, or that one of the two parties would believe that they had been committed. Sir Robert Holmes made a number of prizes in the neighbourhood of the Cape de Verd Islands, and then swept the coast as far down as Sierra Leone. An attack on the Dutch post at St. George da Mina was repulsed, but he took possession of some other minor posts. His next step supplies overwhelming evidence to show that he had not been sent out to avoid hostilities, and had not only been driven into fighting against his will. He stood across the Atlantic and attacked the Dutch on the mainland of America. He fell with his squadron on the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, and had no difficulty in mastering it. Then he returned to England, where he was thrown into the Tower on the demand of the Dutch ambassador--a step which proves that the Government was not ready to declare war on Holland, and would much have preferred that the declaration should come from the other side, but by no means establishes a presumption that Holmes had exceeded his confidential instructions.