The purpose of this paper is to show that, as the result of twenty-two years of intermittent warfare between England and the Netherlands, the English navy became established as the primary naval power of Europe. Also, I intend to illustrate that, as a by-product of this naval warfare, Dutch trade was seriously hurt, with the·major benefactors of this Dutch loss of trade being the English. This paper grew out of a seminar paper on the first Anglo-Dutch war for a Tudor and Stuart English History graduate seminar class taught in the fall of 1966 by Dr. John R. Rilling of the University or Richmond. Because in the present paper I attempt to cover such a large topic, all other aspects of English history of this period will be covered only insofar as they affected the Dutch wars.