[5] The beginning of the First Anglo-Dutch War saw a shake-up of the naval organisation, after defeat at the Battle of Dungeness, and with Henry Vane and George Thomson, Salwey and his ally John Carew made up the group of four effectively overseeing the Navy for Parliament.
[6][7] Salwey was a supporter of Oliver Cromwell, but broke with him at the end of the Rump Parliament, together with Francis Allen.
[2][9] He clashed with Cromwell in April 1653; and he lost his Navy position at the end of the year in a general Admiralty change.
[11] Salwey was one of a number of radical puritans who had a house in Clapham, Surrey during the late 1640s and early 1650s.
The Committee sent him with Sir Henry Vane as heads of a delegation to John Lawson, a refractory republican Vice-Admiral, without success.