King Charles II | Letter signed, to the Duke of York, on removing troops from Dunkirk, 22 August 1662

King Charles II.

Letter signed, to his brother James, Duke of York (later James II) as High Admiral

ordering him to arrange transport for part of the garrison at Dunkirk (“Three Companies of Foote of Our Regiment of Guards”) to the Channel Islands (“…transport Captain Walter’s Company to Guernsey and Captaine Sydenhams & Captain Jeffrey’s Companies to Jersey...”), following the sale of the port to France, countersigned by Edward Nicholas as Secretary of State, 1 page, folio, Hampton Court, 22 August 1662, papered seal, integral blank, splitting at folds, remains of guard

KING CHARLES II DISMANTLES A FINAL ENGLISH FOOTHOLD ON THE CONTINENT. Dunkirk, then part of the Spanish Netherlands, had been captured by an Anglo-French army in June 1658 and was granted to Britain under the terms of the Anglo-French alliance. In 1662 Charles II sold the city to France for 5,000,000 livres. Some of the garrison were shipped to the Channel Islands but other troops were sent to Tangier, which had been granted to Britain by Portugal as part of the dowry of Charles’s wife Catherine of Braganza. The sale was unpopular in England, as Pepys records in his diary ("I am sorry that the news of the selling of Dunkirk is taken so generally ill, as I find it is among the merchants", 19 October 1662). 

Provenance:

Sotheby’s, London, 13 March 1979, lot 22