‘Of speedy victory let no man doubt, Our worst work’s past, now we have found them out. Behold their navy does at anchor lie, And they are ours, for now they cannot fly.’ (Marvell’s _Works_, ed. Aitken, i. 119; ii. 14.) A greater poet, and more renowned than Marvell, Edmund Waller, celebrated Stayner’s capture of the Spanish galleons off Cadiz in his verses, _Of a war with Spain and a Fight at Sea_. That poem contains the famous lines, ‘Others may use the ocean as their road, Only the English make it their abode, Our oaks secure, as if they there took root, We tread on billows with a steady foot.’ These lines, inspired by Blake’s long blockade of the Spanish coasts during 1656 and 1657, helped in their turn to inspire a line in Campbell’s _Mariners of England_. Waller’s _Panegyric to my Lord Protector_, written in 1655, strikes the same note. ‘The present greatness of this nation’ he attributes in part to the wise head and strong hand of the Protector himself, in part to the ‘winged navy’ which makes the English ‘Lords of the world’s great waste, the ocean.’ This dominion, which Charles I. had claimed, the victories of the Protector’s admirals had re-established, and its outward sign was the honour paid to the red-cross flag. ‘The sea’s our own! and _now_ all nations greet With bending sails, each vessel of our fleet. Your power extends as far as winds can blow Or swelling sails upon the globe may go.’ The pride in the English navy which found its highest expression in these poems of Waller’s was sadly humiliated by the incidents of the second Dutch war. The first of the naval ballads of the new reign is called _The Valiant Seaman’s Congratulations to his Sacred Majesty King Charles the Second_ (p. 53). It is an expression of loyalty and devotion, protesting a willingness to go anywhere and fight anybody in the King’s cause. At the moment it was written, which was probably in 1662, France rather than Holland seemed the most likely adversary, for Louis XIV. was disputing the ceremonial honours due to the British flag. ‘If you will give commission to war with France we’ll go,’ say the seamen to Charles, promising ‘we will make their topsails unto our fleet shall bow.’ A couple of years later it became clear that the Dutch were to be the enemy, not the French. The next ballad in the series is _England’s Valour and Holland’s Terror_. It refers to Allin’s attack on the Smyrna fleet, which took place on December 19, 1664, and to De Ruyter’s proceedings in Guinea during the same year. ‘We’ll teach you better manners yet than ever did old Noll,’ it threatens. This ballad was probably published about January 1665, before war was actually declared. Much about the same date appeared Dorset’s famous song, _To all you ladies now at land_. A tradition handed down by Prior represents it as written ‘the night before the engagement with the