“This morning being off Gravelines in chase of a small ship and a ketch belonging to Newport, as they pretend, whom I have sent into the Downs to your Grace, I mett with a Swede who came from Amsterdam on Sunday last in his ballast, bound for Bordeaux, who relates that 75 sayle of the Flemish Fleet sett sayle out of the Texel the 21st present, and 28 more from Zealand, leaving 6 ships behind them, whose men they tooke out to man the rest of the Fleet, & stoode away to the Northwest, which as my duty binds me I have thought fit to acquaint yr Grace with: & humbly kissing your hands I remain “Yr Grace’s most humble servant to be commanded, “THOS. EWENS. “From aboard his Matⁱᵉˢ shipp _Kent_: this 30th May, 1666.” The captain of the _Kent’s_ letter was considered so important that Albemarle at once sent it off by express to the Admiralty. It is still in existence; a stained sheet of yellowish paper with the writing crabbed and not easily decipherable, and brown with age and faded. The letter, with Albemarle’s covering note, was found many years afterwards among some correspondence that had belonged to King James the Second, just as the letter had been filed on its receipt at the Admiralty in 1666, when James, Duke of York, was Lord High Admiral. It is endorsed:— “For his Grace the Duke of Albemarle, aboard the _Royall Charles_ this ⸺ d.dd. In the Downes.” Albemarle’s covering letter to the Admiralty bears the curiously scrawled endorsements of the various postmasters on the Dover Road as they passed the courier along on his hurried journey up to London:—“Received ye packett at Canterbury, att past 5 in ye Morneing, by Mee, Edw Wheiston”; “Sittingborne, past 8 in ye morning, by mee Wm Webb”; “Rochester, past ten Before noon, Wm Brooker”; “Gravesend at nowne, Hen White.” Albemarle was roughly handled and had to beat a retreat for the mouth of the Thames—fighting a rear-guard action, skilfully conducted and gallantly contested. Rupert joined him just in time to avert disaster, but one of the English flagships, the _Prince_, grounded at the last moment on the Galloper Shoal, and was taken by the Dutch and burned as she lay. This was just as the _Kent_ rejoined the flag, in time for the last day’s battle.