Clarendon's enemy, Lord Arlington, becomes the favorite of the king in 1664 and begins to cooperate with the king's brother James, Duke of York, the Lord High Admiral, in order to bring about war with the Dutch, from which both expect great personal gain.

James heads the Royal African Company and hopes to seize the possessions of the Dutch West India Company.

The two are supported by the English ambassador in The Hague, George Downing, who despises the Dutch, and reports that the Republic is politically divided between Orangists, who gladly would collaborate with an English enemy in case of war, and a States faction consisting of wealthy merchants that would give in to any English demand in order to protect their trade interests.

As enthusiasm for war rises among the English populace, privateers begin to attack Dutch ships, capturing about two hundred of them.

Dutch ships are obligated by the new treaty to salute the English flag first.

English ships begin in 1664 to provoke the Dutch by not saluting in return.

Many Dutch commanders. though ordered by the Dutch government to continue saluting first, cannot bear the insult.

Still, these flag incidents are not the causus belli, as in the previous war.

John Evelyn, a member of the group that had founded the Royal Society in 1660, in the following year had written the Fumifugium (or The Inconveniencie of the Aer and Smoak of London Dissipated), the first book written on the growing air pollution problem in London.

Known for his knowledge of trees, Evelyn’s his treatise Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest Trees (1664) is written as an encouragement to landowners to plant trees to provide timber for England's burgeoning navy.

First written in 1662 as a pamphlet for the Royal Society, this is widely recognized as the first published text on forestry.

Evelyn serves during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, beginning October 28, 1664, as one of four Commissioners for taking Care of Sick and Wounded Seamen and for the Care and Treatment of Prisoners of War.

Michiel de Ruyter, Vice-Admiral of the admiralty of Amsterdam, clashes with the English in late 1664 off the West African coast, where both the English and Dutch have significant slave stations, retaking the Dutch possessions occupied by Robert Holmes and then crossing the Atlantic to raid the English colonies in America.

Dutch admiral Michiel de Ruyter, arriving off Barbados at the end of April 1665 aboard his flagship Spiegel, leads his fleet of thirteen vessels into Carlisle Bay, exchanging fire with the English batteries and destroying many of the vessels anchored there.

Unable to silence the English guns and having sustained considerable damage to his own vessels, ...

...de Ruyter retires to French Martinique for repairs.

Admiral de Rutyer had decided against an assault on New York to retake New Netherland, given the damage he had sustained in the Caribbean, instead sailing to Newfoundland, capturing several English fishing boats and temporarily taking St. John's before proceeding to Europe.

Sailing north from Martinique, de Ruyter captures several English vessels and delivers supplies to the Dutch colony at Sint Eustatius, then heads north along the Atlantic coast.