War with the Dutch
169
Mere powder, guns, and bullets,
We scarce can get at all,
Their price was spent in merriment
And revel at Whitehall,
While we in tattered doublets
From ship to ship must row,
Beseeching friends for odds and ends—
And this the Dutchmen know!
We scarce can get at all,
Their price was spent in merriment
And revel at Whitehall,
While we in tattered doublets
From ship to ship must row,
Beseeching friends for odds and ends—
And this the Dutchmen know!
No King will heed our warnings,
No Court will pay our claims—
Our King and Court for their disport
Do sell the very Thames!
For, now De Ruyter’s topsails,
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet—
And this the Dutchmen know!
No Court will pay our claims—
Our King and Court for their disport
Do sell the very Thames!
For, now De Ruyter’s topsails,
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet—
And this the Dutchmen know!
There were some fearful drawn battles, both in the North Sea and the Channel. Once the Dutch sailed into the Thames and the Medway and burned a lot of our ships at Chatham. But the main result of these wars was that the Dutch gave up to us their colony in North America, which was henceforth to be called New York. New York.In the same reign ‘North and South Carolina’ were added to our American list of states; they lie south of Virginia, are hot and swampy, and produce mainly rice and tobacco.
Other colonies.Besides these colonies we possessed several valuable West Indian islands, notably Jamaica, which grew sugar; we had a whale-fishing and fur-trading station in Hudson Bay, northwards from the French settlements in Canada; we had several little dots of land protected by forts on the west coast of Africa, whence we exported black slaves to our own and the Spanish colonies; and, in India, we had Bombay and Madras.