but the original copy of the orders amongst the Penn Tracts (_Sloane
MSS._ 1709, f. 55) is marked as having been delivered on May 2,
1648, to 'Captain William Penn, captain of the Assurance frigate and
rear-admiral of the Irish Squadron.' They are clearly based on the
later precedents of Charles I, but it must be noted that Penn is told
'to expect more particular instructions' in regard to the fighting
article. We may assume therefore that the admiralty authorities
already recognised the inadequacy of the established fighting
instructions, and so soon as the pressure of that critical time
permitted intended to amplify them.

Amongst those responsible for the orders however there is no name that
can be credited with advanced views. They were signed by five members
of the Navy Committee, and at their head is Colonel Edward Mountagu,
afterwards Earl of Sandwich, but then only twenty-two years old.[1]
Whether anything further was done is uncertain. No supplementary
orders have been found bearing date previous to the outbreak of the
Dutch war. But there exists an undated set which it seems impossible
not to attribute to this period. It exists in the _Harleian
MSS._ (1247, ff. 43b), amongst a number of others which appear to
have been used by the Duke of York as precedents in drawing up his
famous instructions of 1665. To begin with it is clearly later than
the orders of 1648, upon which it is an obvious advance. Then the use
of the word 'general' for admiral, and of the word 'sign' for 'signal'
fixes it to the Commonwealth or very early Restoration. Finally,
internal evidence shows it is previous to the orders of 1653, for
those orders will be seen to be an expansion of the undated set so far
as they go, and further, while these undated orders have no mention of
the line, those of 1653 enjoin it. They must therefore lie between
1648 and 1653, and it seems worth while to give them here