Chapter XVIII: Part III: The Administration (1)

[Sidenote: The Commissioners.]

The system, inaugurated in 1618, of governing the Navy by Commissioners, acting under the Lord Admiral, remained in force until February 1628, when the four Principal Officers resumed control under Buckingham. Although the Commissioners’ direction was of course, both in ability and honesty, immeasurably superior to that of Mansell, they cannot be said to have risen to any great excellence of administration. In October 1627 Charles, in writing to the Duke, apologised for the slowness with which supplies were furnished, ‘the cause whereof is ... the slow proceedings of the Commissioners of the Navy (which all Commissions are liable to).’[1183] If King and minister were both of this opinion, it would account for the supersession which so soon followed. After Buckingham’s murder the post of Lord Admiral was put into commission, and the new Lords of the Admiralty[1184] were even more reliant on the capacity of the Principal Officers than had been their predecessors; but they appear to have been also suspicious and distrustful of them.

[Sidenote: Buckingham.]

Of Buckingham it may be said that, had he possessed less power, he would have made a better chief. In the ten years he held office[1185] he practically doubled the effective of the Navy, for the Commissioners could have done little without his aid. So far as the emptiness of the treasury would allow he enlarged and repaired docks and storehouses, and, if he did not discover, he was one of the first to appreciate the true naval importance of Portsmouth. He provided for the home manufacture of cordage by inducing Dutchmen to settle here and teach Englishmen their art; and he increased in number, and made permanent, the ropehouses attached to English dockyards. He reintroduced lieutenants and corporals on board ship, and was the first administrator who began systematic naval and gunnery instruction in the service. It is difficult to apportion the credit for the reforms which followed 1618 between the Commissioners and Buckingham. Nicholas[1186] gives it to Buckingham; but Nicholas was his private secretary, and we know that the Duke had no grasp of detail. On the other hand he wrote in praise of Buckingham after the Duke’s death, when he had nothing more to hope from him, and it is certain that the Commissioners could not have stood for twenty-four hours against the vested interests they attacked without Buckingham’s consistent support. Unfortunately for his memory he must be judged, not as head of the Navy, but as the all-powerful minister, and in that sense history has pronounced its verdict.

[Sidenote: The Principal Officers.]

Since 1618 the duties of the Treasurer of the Navy had become, and remained in the future, almost entirely financial. His salary was increased, from 1630, by the grant of the poundage of threepence on all payments made by him, including wages, instead of, as before, only on those to merchants supplying stores; as well as a house at Deptford and other advantages, and in 1634 his fixed fee was raised from £270, 13s 4d to £645, 13s 4d.[1187] He even received the poundage on the salaries of the other three Officers, and they were continually petitioning for an advance in their rate of pay, which had remained unaltered since their posts were created by Henry VIII. It is suggestive to find that, among their reasons for the requested increase, they mention that before the reforms of 1618 they had an allowance of £60 a year from the Treasurer and Victualler for passing their accounts;[1188] and the Surveyor and Comptroller estimated the total annual value of their perquisites before that date at £384 and £430 respectively. This included the allowance from the Treasurer and Victualler, commissions given by officers on appointment, and dividends divided among them from the sale of old stores.[1189]

In 1637 they appear to have been promised that if they could obtain their augmentation without going to the royal coffers for it they were welcome to whatever they could get. Accordingly they point out that in this year they had prevented fraudulent overcharge on the part of owners of hired merchantmen to the extent of £1874, and they therefore desired to divide the whole of this sum.[1190] What advantage this would be to the crown they omitted to say. They were exceptionally unlucky, seeing that most officials had only to petition in order to receive. In one case £20 a year was taken off the salaries of the masters attendant, but, when these complained, they had each £40 a year added and with less work. Their ill fortune was, perhaps, due to the disfavour with which the Lords of the Admiralty seem to have usually viewed them, and it was not until the era of the Long Parliament, when, from motives of fear, all wages were raised, that they shared in the general increase.

None of these Officers was of any historic interest. For two and a half years, between 1627[1191] and 1629, Sir Sackville Crowe was Treasurer, but he, to put as favourable a construction as possible on what happened, got his accounts into confusion to the extent of £1500.[1192] Before and after Crowe, Sir Wm. Russell was sole Treasurer[1193] till 1639,[1194] then for two years with the younger Vane,[1195] and again in 1642 by himself till August, after which Vane alone was reappointed. Russell was a mere man of affairs, who confined himself to his accounts, and seems never to have ventured an opinion on anything outside them. Sir Thos. Aylesbury was the first Surveyor of the Navy in 1628, and he, when he resigned, was succeeded by Kenrick Edisbury,[1196] perhaps the most observant and energetic of the chief Officers, who held the post till his death in 1638, when he was succeeded by Wm. Batten,[1197] who was appointed ‘during pleasure,’ instead of by patent for life, as in preceding cases.[1198] Sir Guildford Slingsby had been Comptroller of the Navy under Mansell, and was again given the same office in February 1628 by Charles. The main incidents of his second tenure which have come down to us relate to his assaults on his inferiors, and his quarrels with his brother Officers. Immediately after his appointment, John Wells, the storekeeper of the Navy, petitioned that, although the other officers had allotted him lodgings in the Navy Office, Slingsby, to accommodate his family and servants, ‘hath violently taken his lodgings from him.’[1199] In 1629 his colleagues complained to the Lords Commissioners that he had felled with a pocket pistol, and otherwise maltreated, the man in charge of the Navy Office, and kept him out of the house, notwithstanding their wish to reinstate him.[1200] Slingsby died in 1632, and Sir H. Palmer succeeded him. The most notable event in Palmer’s official career was his excuse for selling government cordage and pocketing the proceeds—‘because his predecessors had done the like.’ He subsequently amended this defence by saying that he had spent the money on naval necessaries.[1201] Denis Fleming and Thos. Barlow[1202] were successively Clerks of the Navy; and Edward Nicholas, who had been Buckingham’s secretary, became secretary to the Commissioners of the Admiralty.

Till 1628 William Burrell was in charge of all shipbuilding and repairs, and in 1629 Burrell and Phineas Pett were made assistants to the Principal Officers. Burrell died in 1630, and from January 1631 Pett became himself a Principal Officer, being three months junior to Sir Kenelm Digby, who had been appointed in the previous October. Neither Digby nor Pett had any defined duties, and in Digby’s case the position seems to have been almost entirely honorary, although at one time he was treating with Mervyn for the latter’s command in the Channel. Mervyn asked £5000, his arrears of pay, to his rights in which Digby would presumably succeed, and the £3000 he had given for his admiralship of the narrow seas.[1203] It would be a matter of some interest to know to whom that £3000 was paid, but there had been obviously no secrecy in the transaction.

After Buckingham’s death the Lords Commissioners met twice a week, sometimes at Wallingford House and sometimes in the Council Chamber at Whitehall. In March 1638 the child Duke of York was made Lord Admiral for life,[1204] and Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland, his acting substitute during the King’s pleasure;[1205] the Navy therefore, ceased to be governed by commission from that date. In 1628 the Principal Officers met at St Martin’s Lane, but in March 1630 some rooms were taken for them in a house in Mincing Lane at a rental of £30 a year.[1206] Thenceforward expenses incurred in relation to that house appear in many of the accounts. It cost £150 for furnishing, twelve months’ beer there £13, 8s,[1207] yearly water rate £1, 6s 8d, but only 3s 6d for Christmas gratuities.

Although in 1628 the four Officers had been reinstated in a portion of their former authority, they by no means escaped the control of, and occasionally severe censure from, the Lords of the Admiralty. Sometimes my Lords considered that their sympathies ran rather with their subordinates than with the King’s interests, and, as most of them had been suspended for acts similar to those they were called upon to condemn in minor officials, the charge was not unfounded.[1208] In the fleet of 1637 embezzlement of stores by the boatswains had been very general. There was nothing unusual in this, but the resolve of the Lords Commissioners to punish the guilty persons appeared to strike the Principal Officers as both unusual and unfair. Their pleas on behalf of these men provoked the Commissioners to write, ‘We observe that you are more apt to intercede for those that are most faulty than to certify what you find against other boatswains ... it is time by due punishment to break up this custom of the boatswains’ exorbitant wasting of his majesty’s stores, the continuance whereof so long with impunity hath, it seems, made the Officers think it almost lawful.’[1209] On another occasion they were told, ‘If you were as careful of his majesty’s service as you are to cast all such unfitting troubles on us, you would gain much more reputation and esteem to yourselves’;[1210] and, once again, reference was made to their ‘supine negligence.’ While they were exposed to these snubs from their superiors, one of their inferiors certainly, and others probably, expressed opinions of them with the same frankness. They complained to the Lords that Francis Brooke, storekeeper at Portsmouth, ‘used many base words of ourselves, calling us loggerheads.’ Perhaps the Admiralty agreed with him; at any rate it is not found that Brooke was reprimanded, so that the only consolation left to them was their salaries.

Observers who acquitted the Principal Officers of intentional fraud accused them of incompetence. They were said not to know where their respective duties began or ended, but the conditions under which they worked were not favourable to success in management. Each one kept his books at his own residence, and neither sufficient time nor assistance was allowed for the various duties of inspection or bookkeeping which fell to him. Moreover they were compelled to purchase stores from persons holding patents for the sale of special articles such as iron, canvas, etc., a necessity sufficient to account for any depth of badness in the supply.

[Sidenote: Frauds and Thefts.]

Whether the confusion was due to neglect or overwork, the effect on the lower ranks of naval employés was the same. From the first year of the reign we have a continuous record of carelessness and fraud, which neither Commissioners nor Lords Commissioners seem to have been able to stamp out. In 1625, on board the ships at sea, pursers charged on the full number of men supposed to be mustered, and shared the profits made on those absent with their captains, while gunners and boatswains each kept from two to five servants who were rated as seamen, but who were boys and landsmen, and whose wages were retained by the officers. When the vessels were laid up the shipkeepers were usually drunk or absent. Captain Joshua Downing one night rowed down the Medway, and ‘might have gone on board all ships but three and done any mischief,’ and ‘in these twenty years last past all the navy hath not bred five able sailors nor two able gunners.’[1211] Of 330 shipkeepers, in 1634, only 42 were ‘the King’s own men’; the rest were hired servants or apprentices, their pay being received by the ship, or dockyard, officers who hired them.[1212] In 1638 matters were as bad. John Holland, then paymaster of the Navy, wrote that the shipkeepers and apprentice servants of the officers were coachmen, tailors, gardeners, etc., and that the apprentices were dismissed at the end of their term as ignorant as when they joined.[1213] Robberies were frequent. ‘Generally the watchman is the thief and the shipkeeper the cabin-breaker;’ but the ship and dockyard officers dared not prosecute, because such a course would have called attention to their own delinquencies.[1214] Downing’s experience did not evoke much attention, since, in the following year, it was reported from Chatham, ‘There are divers that are upon the king’s majesty’s charges both for victuals and wages, but give no attendance nor do no service; neither can we take any muster of any man but just at dinner time, for no longer than they are tied by the teeth are they to be kept on board,’[1215] this being in the full stress of war time.

When captains were turning their men-of-war into cargo boats, to enable merchants to defraud the customs,[1216] we need not be surprised that their inferior officers allowed themselves license in theft, and the references to carpenters, gunners, boatswains, and pursers, about the illicit sale of ships’ stores are innumerable. That fortunes were made from ‘chips’ taken out of the dock yards is well known. ‘The infinite abuse and prejudice the king has in all or most of his yards under colour of chips is intolerable;‘[1217] again, ‘a great quantity of wood is carried away by workmen when they go to breakfast, at dinner time, and at night under colour of chips; they cut up good timber and call it chips;‘[1218] and in some yards the shipwrights built huts in which to store their plunder. In one case a lighter containing 8000 tree-nails, said to be made from chips, but more probably stolen from Deptford yard, was seized, and the destined receiver was found to be one of the government shipwrights who also owned a private shipbuilding yard. Some of the dockyard workmen converted the storehouses into lodgings for themselves and their families, and this abuse continued until the parliamentary Navy Committee made a clean sweep of them.[1219]

Of all the subordinate officials, the pursers, as in later times, were the most acquisitive, having the greatest opportunities. Most places in the Navy were for sale, but theirs were considered so profitable that they were eagerly sought. In 1626 Nicholas was informed that a person, lately mayor of Rochester, would give him £100 for the appointment to the _Anne Royal_, or £60 for either of two others. As the ex-mayor could only sell again, the eventual holder must have anticipated a handsome income. One article on which he would make it was the beer; the brewer delivered this by beer measure, but the purser served it out by wine measure, pocketing the value of the difference.[1220] Sometimes he was a pluralist. One man was cook of the _Bear_ and purser of the _George_, and executed both places by deputy. Of course pursers like the others, sold their stores ashore. But one of their particular sources of profit was the men’s clothes. In 1623 wearing apparel was first ordered to be provided for the men, and to be sold to them at cost price, subject to a commission of one shilling in the pound for the purser. In 1628 it was being sold, when obtained, at £1, 7s a suit, to be deducted from the wages, but, as occurred with other naval requisites, the contractors frequently refused to furnish supplies without prepayment. By 1636 the commissions had increased. The merchant had to pay two shillings in the pound for entering the clothes on board; the paymaster and purser took each a further shilling on all articles sold, and of course the unfortunate sailor had to meet all these extra and illegal perquisites, the result being that ‘the men had rather starve than buy them.’ The original purpose of the supply was ‘to avoyde nastie beastlyness by contynuall wearinge of one suite of clothes, and therebie boddilie diseases and unwholesome ill smells in every ship.’ The whole of the clothes served out during the earlier years of the reign was not a quantity likely to have much improved the unpleasantly suggestive conditions of this passage.

In 1641 Northumberland, as Lord Admiral, took the business in hand, and issued stringent regulations which forbade the sailor to purchase more than fifty shillings’ worth of clothing a year, at fixed prices, and reduced the commission to sixpence in the pound, which was to be paid to the purser by the vendor.[1221] When, as rarely happened, a purser was honest, he seems to have been assaulted and persecuted by his captain, and his position on board rendered unbearable. Perhaps the key to the situation is to be found in their petition of 1639, when many of the pursers asked for increased pay, saying, ‘We know not how to subsist in our places without the continuance of what has ever been tolerated, or else the grant of a competent salary.’[1222] Corroborating this plea we have Holland’s opinion that wages were too low, ‘most of them being for want thereof necessitated ... either to live knaves or die beggars, and sometimes both.’ It was however a sign of the times that when in 1640, Thomas Smith, Northumberland’s secretary, took £40 for an appointment, he found himself exposed to the taunts of his equals and had to defend himself by asserting that he never bargained, but ‘what men voluntarily give me my conscience assures me that I may take as mere gratuities.’ It was still no crime but was reaching the stage which precedes legal condemnation. There is no trace of the sale of places during the Commonwealth, but the custom was reintroduced with the other fashions of the Restoration.

[Sidenote: Captains.]

Neither in their sense of honour nor in the extent of their professional knowledge did the Navy captains of this generation favourably impress their superiors. In August 1630 Mervyn, who was commanding in the Channel, wrote to Nicholas that he had captains who knew neither how to command nor how to obey; and a month later he requested that John Mennes should be given a ship, so that he might at least have one captain who had ‘passed his a b c.’ Men of such calibre usually owed their position to, and obtained other advantages from, court influence and family connections. Of one man who received £3000 as his 3 per cent. commission on carrying treasure to Dunkirk we read, ‘You may see what a brother or friend in the bedchamber doth.’ Another captain, his men said, was ‘fearful in oaths,’ plundered merchantmen, and threatened to kill any one who complained of him; his crew refused to sail, because ‘for his blasphemous swearing they feared the ship would sink under them.’ Others were questioned for beating officers and men, but in no case does any punishment appear to have followed. Another form of fraud which came into existence now, and lasted till the present century, was the forging and uttering of seamen’s tickets. The tickets were practically promises to pay wages due, and in the state of the royal treasury were only saleable at a heavy discount. Not only did the captains and pursers forge tickets in the names of men who had never existed, but civilians carried on a brisk trade in such articles, and, when Crowe was Navy Treasurer, they were ‘such good merchandise that a penniless wag made out a ticket for Ball, a dog ... and sold it with a letter of attorney to a man who lodged seamen.’[1223]

[Sidenote: Changes during the Civil War.]

When the civil war commenced most of the non-combatant servants of the Admiralty remained, like the officers and men, in the service of the Parliament, which took control by means of committees, whose members were constantly being changed. Subordinate to the Parliamentary Navy Committee was a board called the Commissioners of Navy and Customs, whose work was chiefly financial; and the functions of the Principal Officers, except the Treasurer’s, were performed by another body known as the Commissioners of the Navy. The Earl of Warwick was the parliamentary Lord Admiral, appointed in July 1642, in place of Northumberland; he resigned in April 1645, to be again appointed on 29th May 1648, when the news of the Rainsborow outbreak was received. The Navy Commissioners, during the earlier years of the war, were captains R. Cranley, John Norris, Roger Tweedy, Wm. Batten, and Phineas Pett. Batten is still styled Surveyor, but the old division of work was broken up, and the official papers do not show that a Commissioner was continuously confined to particular duties. In 1645 Batten was sent on active service, and, in 1646, Thomas Smith, probably Northumberland’s ex-secretary, and Peter Pett, were added to the other Commissioners. The two Petts were the Phineas Pett who built the _Sovereign of the Seas_ and Peter Pett his nephew.

In one matter the Parliament found itself better off than the previous administration, for the question of timber had for years been a difficulty, the royal forests having deteriorated from various causes. Now, in spite of increased requirements, it was obtained more easily by the process of seizing the timber on delinquents’ estates. In 1632 a report was made on the condition of the forests, when that of Dean was said to be ‘wasted and ruined,’ the New Forest was ‘so decayed’ that there were not 2000 serviceable trees in it; there were not more in Waltham Forest and hardly 400 in East Bere.[1224] Much of this wreck was due to lavish grants made by James and Charles to private individuals; a further cause was the open theft which went on, sufficient wood to build ships being sometimes taken away without any attempt at concealment. Still, in 1633, there were 166,000 trees left in the Forest of Dean of an average value of twenty shillings a tree.[1225]

[Sidenote: Ordnance Powder and Shot.]

John Browne, who held the appointment of ‘King’s gunfounder’ under James I, continued in that office during the whole of this reign. The price of ordnance in 1625 was from £13 to £14 a ton, and did not afterwards materially vary. Many complaints were made about the excessive solidity and weight of naval guns, which caused much of the straining and rolling at sea, and they were so unnecessarily strong that when sold abroad the new owners rebored them for larger shot. In 1626 Browne was granted a reward of £200 for casting lighter guns which had withstood a double proof; but, notwithstanding this encouragement, he, like every one else dealing with the crown, suffered in his purse. By June 1628 upwards of £11,000 was due to him; and Evelyn, the powder contractor, had £2400 owing to him, and had refused to furnish anything more for three months past. Coke thereupon suggested to Buckingham that Evelyn should be compelled to resume his supplies, ‘but till the ceasing of Parliament holds it best not to urge him too much,’ which throws an interesting side light on general history.[1226] Notwithstanding these straits, and the requirements of his fleets, Charles did not neglect his glorious heritage in the crown jewels which were pawned to the Dutch, and Burlamacchi was directed to sell 4000 tons of ordnance abroad and redeem the treasures. As an appropriate part of the transaction Browne found himself obliged to export in Dutch vessels, as they were provided with convoy.

In 1632 there were in store 81 brass and 147 iron pieces, presumably the reserve behind those in the ships and forts, and 207,000 round and 3000 cross-bar shot.[1227] Stone shot are no longer mentioned. The allowance for a second-rate was three lasts of powder, six cwt. of match, 970 round, 100 cross-bar, 70 double cross-bar shot, and 2000 rounds for small arms.[1228] The musket trade had been gained from us by Holland since the preceding reign, and now Sweden was underselling English founders of big guns; in 1634 Browne, in petitioning the King for payment, said that he had paid £1200 for a license to export ordnance, but that the Swedes were now selling at half-price. This Swedish manufacture was really worked by Dutch capitalists, and within twenty years the price of English ordnance in the Low Countries had fallen from £36 to £14 a ton. For the proper equipment of the fleet, exclusive of castles and forts, 96 lasts of powder were required in 1635, but in that year only 94 were in store for all purposes; between 1628 and 1635 there had been no powder in Southsea Castle, and doubtless many less important positions were equally ill-furnished. Perhaps the crown could not supply the forts, because too busy in private trade, the sale of gunpowder to merchants and others being a royal monopoly. A handsome profit was made on it, the cost being 7½d per lb. and the selling price 1s 6d. In 1637 the year’s gains on this article came to £14,786.[1229]

The Ordnance Office still retained that evil pre-eminence in sloth and incapacity it had already earned and has never since lost, and its situation in 1638 was that of

the surveyor sick, the clerk restrained of his liberty, one of
his clerks absent, the clerk of the deliveries out of town and
his clerk absent, the master gunner dead, the yeoman of the
ordnance never present, nor any of the gunners attendant, and
the stores for ordnance empty.[1230]

Outcries, such as we have been also used to hear in this generation, against their delays in serving the ships with guns and ammunition, were loud and continuous, and, in 1639, it was proposed to return to the original arrangement made by Henry VIII, and allow the naval authorities to supply themselves with these necessaries. It is an illustration of the meditative and weighty caution with which official wisdom can be trusted to move onward from change to change that it was not until a few years ago that the alteration suggested in 1639 was made. Finally we read that ‘the accountant nor other officers keep no books, and the ancient officers and clerks are adverse to all new propositions which meet their inveterate frauds and defects.’[1231] The parliamentary leaders seem at first to have doubted how far Browne was to be trusted, since on 30th Dec. 1645 it was ordered that his works, which had been managed by deputies, should be given back to him.

[Sidenote: Salutes.]

Besides producing dangerous international friction, the matter of saluting was a cover for theft and an excuse for waste at home. The Lord Admiral seems to have been the only person whose reception was according to distinct forms, and for him the royal standard was to fly at the main, yards to be manned, and on his approach within musket shot of the ship the trumpets were to cease, and ‘all who carry whistles are to whistle his welcome three times, and in the intervals the crew to cheer.’[1232] Butler notices the fondness of the English for making a noise as a mark of deference, and the expenditure of powder in this way was described as the ‘main excuse of gunners’ frauds,’ and as causing the waste of at least a thousand barrels of powder a year. Every one stood closely on his honour in the matter of salutes, and in 1631 Pennington was fired on from Pendennis Castle for not striking his flag. No occurrence was of too little consequence to be thus signalised. In one gunner’s accounts we find: One faucon when the master’s wife went ashore.... One minion the master commanded to be shot off to a ship his father was in.... We shot two faucons in healths and three when Master Newton went ashore.’ Of another gunner it was remarked: ‘He cannot write, yet presents the account here enclosed, in which you see the King’s powder spent in salutations of ketches and oyster boats.... I shall shortly send far greater and fouler examples of powder purloined by the last.’[1233]

The hired merchantmen in the royal pay had as much self-respect on this question as men-of-war, and saluted towns on entering and leaving harbour, the captain’s brother, and ‘the captain’s friends for their farewell’ in orthodox service fashion. The large ones had, in some respects, the advantage of the smaller men-of-war, since the captain of one of the latter, in accounting for his consumption of ammunition, said that ordinary traders ‘scorned to strike to a whelp,’ and he had to force them to their duty. The result of all this firing was that in the two and a half years, ending on 30th June 1627, out of 653 lasts of powder issued to the various forts, there had been 300 used in saluting.[1234] Nor were these proceedings devoid of danger, since the repeated orders that guns should be fired with blank charges were still disregarded, and there are several instances mentioned of persons on shore being struck from vessels saluting at sea. The admirals were equally sensitive about their dignity, and when Lindsey commanded the fleet of 1635, the question of his flags appeared to weigh most on his mind. On 1st May he complained that he had not enough flags and was not furnished with a standard; the next day he repeats his wants, adding that he would like a kitchen ship, and a week afterwards he thinks himself ‘a little maimed,’ still lacking the standard. In April 1647 the Navy Committee called attention to the great expense caused by the constant saluting, and ordered that it should entirely cease among men-of-war except at their first meeting with each other, or with an admiral. A merchantman’s salute might be answered in the proportion of one for every three, or three for every five, shots fired by the trader. If these regulations were obeyed it was only temporarily.

Among foreign powers the Dutch were the chief victims to the requirements of maritime decorum, here complicated by the dispute about the dominion of the narrow seas. In July 1626 the captain of Deal Castle fired at a Dutchman which came into the roads with colours flying, and made the master pay ten shillings, the cost of the shot. In his report of the affair he says, ‘The rather did I it because I have heard it imputed that we have lost the jurisdiction of the narrow seas.’ Six years later a man-of-war having been sent to Calais to fetch the body of Sir Isaac Wake, her captain had the audacity to force the French to strike their colours to him.[1235]

When Lindsey went to sea in 1635, his instructions ran that his ‘principal care’ was to make foreign fleets perform their ‘duty and homage,’ and if they refused, to make them answer for their ‘high contempt.’[1236] Remembering the state of Lindsey’s fleet, not only in the absence of the standard that he deplored so sadly, but in more urgent essentials, such as men, provisions and stores, it was perhaps fortunate that Richelieu evaded the trial, and that the Dutch were content—for the time—to salute all day long if Charles so pleased. Northumberland, the next year, was told to insist on foreign ships yielding homage in Calais and other harbours, if out of range of the forts.[1237] Wiser than his master, if he did more than look into the French ports, he did nothing to provoke a collision. Moreover Northumberland may have felt that he was hardly in a situation to enforce compliance. Lindsey mentioned in his journal that, in two days, eleven ships lost masts and topmasts, with only ‘strong winds’ blowing, but had not thought the circumstance deserved comment, although his vice-admiral, the old Elizabethan seaman, Sir William Monson, was not so reticent. Northumberland’s fleet was equally ill found, and on his return he charged the Principal Officers with giving him ships leaky and out of repair, fitted with defective masts and yards and bad cordage. Some, he said, were too old to be worth repairing, and the new ones required girdling to make them fit for sea.[1238] What the Earl thought of his men and stores has been already related.

However, English captains continued to carry matters with a high hand, and in 1637, Stradling meeting a Dutch squadron which did not salute with sufficient promptness, reported: ‘The captain of the rear-admiral I have taken out of his ship and sent to Plymouth.’ As time wore on the Dutch, seeing that Charles had enough to occupy his attention at home, became more independent, and in 1639 they were searching English ships and taking Spaniards out of them, a change from their former submissive attitude. Parliament, however, carried on the claim to the salute. In 1647 a fleet of Swedes, 15 in number, passing down Channel refused to lower their topsails to Captain Owen in the _Henrietta Maria_. Owen kept up a running fight until Batten came up, and the Swedish fleet was taken into Portsmouth.

[Sidenote: Prize Money.]

A precarious source of crown revenue was that obtained from the prize tenths. In the two years ending with May 1626, seventy-three vessels had been taken and proceeded against in the Admiralty Court, and Bristol paid £7604 between 1628 and 1631. It was not until the civil war that the crew of a ship belonging to the state had any fixed proportion of the proceeds, but by a Council order of October 1626 ‘a competent reward’ was to be given to the captors. On the other side seventy-seven vessels, of 100 tons and upwards, were taken by the enemy between 1625 and 1628, so that the balance of profit was hardly with us. In another paper we are told, the, presumably net, proceeds from Spanish prizes between July 1626 and August 1639 came to £38,158, 8s.[1239]

In October 1642 the Parliament announced that henceforth one-third of the value of a prize was to be divided among officers and crew, in addition to wages. Its effect was undoubted since from February 1643 to April 1649 prize goods were sold for £123,200, and this must represent an enormously higher original value.[1240] But out of this sum officers and men only got £14,465, while the two collectors, Thomas Smith and John Hall took £4989, Warwick £5985, and the expenses of storage, lading and unlading, etc., were £17,000. The delay and deductions in the payment of the thirds were among the chief causes of the trouble the Commonwealth experienced with the seamen in its earlier years, and in this account we see quite extraneous charges borne upon it. The Treasurer of the Navy took £30,000 from it, Augier, the parliamentary agent in Paris, £610, the secretary and usher of the committee of foreign affairs their salaries, and it had to meet various other items which would now go under the head of secret service money. The Dutch system of rewards for captures was in working order long before ours, and was liberal enough in amount. Privateers were allowed, beyond the value of the ship and goods taken, a state reward of from 8000 to 30,000 guilders, the latter sum being given for any vessel of more than 100 lasts burden.[1241] If the enemy was sunk at sea instead of being brought into port, only half these sums were paid.

[Sidenote: Naval Expenditure.]

The following table, compiled from the _Audit Office Declared Accounts_ for the several years, gives the ordinary and extraordinary expenditure in round figures, as well as that of ship money, of which £1,028,702 was demanded by writ, and £716,528 was paid over to the Navy Treasurer.[1242] The estimates for the ordinary and extraordinary are for routine, naval, and dockyard work and the Channel squadron, and do not include the cost of the expeditions of the first three years or of any of the later fleets. The amounts in the last column but one are those actually paid by Sir William Russell out of tunnage and poundage, anticipated revenue, and other sources. For instance, in 1625 he spent £170,000, of which he received £119,000 from the exchequer, £40,000 from tenths, fifteenths, and subsidies, and ‘from the French king’s agent’ towards fitting out of _Vanguard_ £4800.[1243] The last column gives the sums paid out of the ship-money receipts for the corresponding fleets; no doubt much of the balance went to clear off old debts, to pay for ship building, as in the case of the _Sovereign_, and other purposes:—

+----------------+-------------+------------------------------------+
| |Estimates for| |
| |ordinary and | Dockyard expenditure, ordinary |
| |extraordinary| and extraordinary |
| |navy and +-------+--------+--------+----------+
| |victualling |Chatham|Woolwich|Deptford|Portsmouth|
+----------------+-------------+-------+--------+--------+----------+
| | £ | £ | £ | £ | £ |
| 1625 | 28,000 | | | | |
| 1626 | 28,700 | | | | |
| 1627[1244] | 40,500 | 8445 | 1522 | 1714 | 370 |
| 1628 | 40,800 | 5860 | 704 | 3171 | 359 |
| 1629 | 47,000 | | | | |
| 1630 | 34,700 | 4977 | 185 | 2141 | 1460 |
| 1631 | 34,200 | | | | |
| 1632 | 27,900 | 6700 | 97 | 1025 | 1591 |
| 1633 | 28,600 | 7453 | 100 | 1233 | 1834 |
| 1634 | 31,300 | | | | |
| 1635 | 31,200 | | | | |
| 1636 | 15,500 | 5050 | 625 | 3029 | 3000 |
| 1637 | 14,200 | | | | |
| 1638 | 20,300 | | | | |
| 1639 | 38,100 | | | | |
| 1640 | 38,800 | | | | |
| 1641 | 38,500 | | | | |
| 1642 | 28,700 | | | | |
|13th May 1645 to|} | | | | |
| 31st Dec. 1646 |} | | | | |
| 1647 | | | | | |
|1st Jan 1648 to |} |22,000 | 3414 | 2247 | 5189 |
| 12th May 1649 |} | | | | |
+----------------+-------------+------------------------------------+

+----------------+-------+---------+----------+
| | | | |
| | |Actually |Paid out |
| |Cordage|expended |of |
| | | by |ship-money|
| | |Treasurer| |
+----------------+-------+---------+----------+
| | £ | £ | £ |
| 1625 | | 170,000 | |
| 1626 | | 117,000 | |
| 1627[1244] | | 63,000 | |
| 1628 | | 110,000 | |
| 1629 | | 57,000 | |
| 1630 | 4805 | 102,000 | |
| 1631 | | 46,000 | |
| 1632 | 4455 | 21,000 | |
| 1633 | 4145 | 69,000 | |
| 1634 | | 48,000 | |
| 1635 | | 85,000 | 88,000 |
| 1636 | 3265 | 58,000 | 136,000 |
| 1637 | | 12,500 | 122,000 |
| 1638 | | 22,000 | 109,000 |
| 1639 | | 58,000 | 47,500 |
| 1640 | | 78,000 | 44,500 |
| 1641 | | 88,000 | |
| 1642 | | 66,000 | |
|13th May 1645 to|} | 392,000 | |
| 31st Dec. 1646 |} | | |
| 647 | | 178,000 | |
|1st Jan 1648 to |} | 336,000 | |
| 12th May 1649 |} | | |
+----------------+-------+---------+----------+

The disbursements during the civil war years by no means represented the whole of the naval expenses, there being always hundreds of thousands of pounds owing. The authorities, however, took care that the executive branches should be comparatively punctually paid, owners of hired ships and purveyors of stores being the principal sufferers by delay. There is another paper[1245] which gives the amounts for the years wanting in the official returns, and is perhaps more reliable than them in that it includes the total expenses, both in money paid and liabilities incurred. In view of the general belief that this country was vastly weaker in ships than Holland at the outbreak of the first Dutch war of 1652, the strength of the parliamentary fleets deserves especial notice:—

+--------------+-------+--------+-------------+------------+------------+
| |Men-of-|Armed |Cost of |Cost of |Total[1246] |
| |war |Merchant|Men-of-war |Merchantmen | |
| | |-men | | | |
+--------------+-------+--------+-------------+------------+------------+
| | | | £ s d| £ s d | £ s d|
|1642 | 19 | 23 |122,988 16 3|74,342 8 0 |204,810 16 3|
| | [1247]| | | | |
| | | | | | |
|1643, S.[1248]| 36 | 32 |133,760 3 0|74,881 11 6}| |
|1643, W.[1249]| 20 | | | }|332,869 15 3|
| | | | | | |
|1644, S. | 36 | 23 |106,349 10 4|49,088 15 0}|246,970 16 4|
|1644, W. | 18 | | | }| |
| | | | | | |
|1645, S. | 34 | 25 | 93,161 3 9|43,947 4 6}| |
|1645, W. | 29 | | | }|256,495 5 0|
| | | | | |[1250] |
|1646, S. | 45 | 20 |138,194 6 4|42,931 8 0}| |
|1646, W. | 26 | | | }|300,356 18 0|
| | | | | |[1250] |
|1647, S. | 43 | 16 |124,395 12 0|44,743 8 0}| |
|1647, W. | 29 | | | }|244,655 0 0|
| | | | | |[1251] |
+--------------+-------+--------+-------------+------------+------------+

Vane acted under an ‘ordinance of both houses of 8th August 1642, concerning subsidy of tunnage and poundage,’ and simply continued the forms and system used by his predecessors.[1252]

[Sidenote: Dockyards:—Portsmouth.]

Among the dockyards the most noticeable change is the steady increase in the use made of Portsmouth, while Woolwich was almost discarded, part of it being leased in 1633 to the East India Company at £100 a year.[1253] The rent was to be expended in building a wall round the yard, and in the repair of buildings.[1254] It had long been pointed out that it frequently cost a fleet as much time and trouble to get round from the Thames to Portsmouth as from that place to the Mediterranean, and under Buckingham’s administration it came into favour as a rendezvous for the ships prepared for service. Very soon after the destruction of the old dock the advisability of replacing it, came under discussion, and in 1627 the Duke caused estimates to be prepared for the construction of a double dock, but his death deferred the question.[1255] In 1630 Pett, Sir Thos. Aylesbury and others were sent down to report on its capabilities, and they recommended that the men-of-war should ride in Fareham creek, at the head of the harbour, about a mile and a half from Porchester, and two miles from the then dockyard, a proposal which was adopted. They did not advise the making of a dry dock, thinking the rise and fall of the tide too little, and ‘there is no use of any there;‘[1256] but personal interests were also in the way, the comfort and pecuniary advantages of the shipwrights being bound up with the Thames and Medway yards.

From this date, however, a few ships were always stationed at Portsmouth, but it was not until January 1638 that a master shipwright was ordered to reside there permanently; before that time the shipwrights had taken the duty in turns, and the absence of a dry dock, although several times intended to have been commenced, was still causing inconvenience and expense. Russell complained that ‘his Majesty cannot have a pennyworth of work there done under twopence, in respect the King’s yard and the ships be so far asunder for transporting materials.’ The dockyard consisted chiefly of storehouses, and orders had been given that all private houses near them were to be tiled instead of thatched, the former having been once already burnt down during the reign of Elizabeth.[1257] It is difficult to say what extent of ground belonged to the crown at this time. No additions are known to have been made to the land since the purchases of Henry VIII but between 1630 and 1640 various new buildings were erected.

Another cause of hesitation in the adoption of Portsmouth as a permanent naval station was the diverse opinions expressed as to the existence of the _Teredo navalis_ in the harbour. This maritime pest, which begins to be especially noticed during Elizabeth’s reign, played havoc with ships mostly unsheathed, and whose sheathing, when it did exist, was ill adapted to resist its ravages. In 1630 the chief shipwrights reported that ‘no worm destructive to ships is bred in Portsmouth harbour;’ five years later some of the same men turned round with, ‘We positively conclude that there is a worm in that harbour.’ The decision was still postponed till, in September 1645, a number of shipwrights were sent down, and it thenceforward rapidly grew in naval importance, although the dry dock, so often ordered, was not commenced till 1656.

[Sidenote: Dockyards:—Chatham.]

Chatham was now the first of English dockyards, and in 1634 contained the seventy or eighty acres, held on the lease of 1618, which was now lost. In March 1627 Coke, at the request of the King of Denmark, sent a Dane named Andersen there with a letter of recommendation to the officials, desiring them to explain to him their methods of work. The request was complimentary, but Andersen could hardly have been very favourably impressed by all he saw and heard. The dockyard service was as much disorganised as the rest of the administration; the _Assurance_ had recently been repaired only by the expedient of selling fifty-four guns to pay the expenses,[1258] and £7740 was owing to the shipwrights and shipkeepers there, nearly eighteen months’ wages being over-due.[1259] They had of course freely petitioned, but ‘a letter to persuade the workmen to go on cheerfully’ had quieted them for the time. One explanation of their patience may be found in the existence of a rule under which persons in the naval departments could not be proceeded against legally until permission was given by the authorities. Just before Andersen’s visit work had been at a standstill for want of materials to the value of £400, which the government could not obtain on credit, and in April the workmen still had fifteen months’ pay due. Both the Commissioners and Principal Officers confessed their inability in face of these difficulties, since, if the men were discharged, they came clamouring and threatening daily for their wages, and if kept on there were not sufficient stores for them to work with.[1260] Matters did not improve, and in 1629 Edisbury pointed out that, in addition to all this, great waste and theft existed, many families living in the dockyards, and cabins and other parts of the ships being daily ransacked, and the materials stolen or used for fire wood, ‘every one almost being director of his own work for want of some able, understanding man to regulate the inferiors, as it was while the Commissioners had the government.’[1261] This handsome testimonial to the merits of the Commissioners, lately relieved, may be considered impartial, for the interests of Edisbury, then paymaster, but shortly to be himself a Principal Officer, were bound up with those of the Officers.

Another writer tells us that the master shipwrights rated their subordinates according to favour, and that they themselves were sometimes absent for one or two months at the time at their own private yards.[1262] In thirteen years’ experience he had never known any inferior suffer for delinquency, ‘although he had been convicted of divers stealths.’ At the most they were suspended, and then restored, and the entries in the State Papers bear out Holland’s assertions. He also tells us that Fridays, being the Rochester market days, were kept as a general holiday in the dockyard; the expenditure on ornamental carving and painting had become four times as great as formerly, because the amount was left to the master shipwrights who refused to be outdone by each other; if work was done by contract, a bill was usually sent in for ‘overworkes’ which exceeded the original contract amount, and, as result, the shipwrights’ houses were ‘fitter for knights than men of their quality,’ These houses had back doors opening into the dockyard—for obvious purposes, the writer hints.

The almost incredible financial straits of the treasury may be measured by the fact that some storehouses in Chatham yard having been damaged by a storm in January 1630 the money necessary for the repairs—only £20—had to be obtained by selling old cordage.[1263] Large sums, however, were at various times expended on maintaining, improving, and enlarging the yards. In 1629 there was spent £2197 on Portsmouth, Deptford, and Chatham;[1264] and in 1634 there was a further estimate of £2445, for the same places for additions subsequently carried out, one of them being a brick wall round part of the yard at Chatham. The barricade across the Medway at Upnor, although it had been allowed to become almost useless, was still nominally maintained. It must have been an expensive defence, since the estimate in 1635 for another, made like the earlier ones of masts, came to £2305, besides involving a yearly outlay of £624 to keep it in good order. An iron chain weighing twenty-eight tons, and held by eleven anchors, was recommended in its place, as costing only £1500.[1265] It is not known whether either plan was carried out. The Long Parliament further enlarged the dockyards, and cared for the shipwrights spiritually as well as physically. In 1644 they ordered that a lecture should be delivered at Deptford every Wednesday morning on ‘saving truths,’ and the time thus occupied was not to be deducted from the men’s pay.

[Sidenote: Stores.]

In 1637 the stores at Woolwich, Deptford, Chatham, Portsmouth, and on board the ships in harbour comprised 1446 tons of cables and cordage, 221 tons of anchors, 79 lasts of tar, sails made up to the value of £4500, canvas not made up to £5000, 167 compasses, 2236 hammocks, 520 masts, 1200 spars, 3694 loads of timber, and 332,000 tree-nails.[1266] This was in the full flush of the ship-money receipts, yet both cordage and timber are far below the minimum considered necessary by either Principal Officers or Commissioners. As in later years ships lying up were dismantled, and in 1631 the Lords of the Admiralty ordered that, instead of sails and rigging being kept in a confused heap at Chatham, a room, with the ship’s name painted on the door, should be provided for the belongings of each vessel. In 1637 Hildebrand Pruson died, he and his father having been sailmakers to the Navy for sixty years. Edisbury then tried, but in vain, to persuade the Lords Commissioners to have the sails made at Chatham and save a fifth of their cost. So far from undertaking fresh responsibilities they desired to transfer some of those they already bore. They were at the time negotiating with Russell about an offer he had made to provide the squadron for the narrow seas by contract at £3 a man per month, that rate to cover all expenses except those of repairs to the vessels.[1267] They were to be nine months out of the twelve at sea, and doubtless Russell saw his way to a profit, but the proposal was not carried into effect. There were few naval improvements introduced under Charles. Deck ring-bolts for the lashing of ordnance were first supplied in 1628;[1268] staysails came into use early in the reign, one of the whelps having two in 1633, and in 1639 there were forty in store at Portsmouth, but they seem to have been only fitted to the smaller classes of ships. In 1633 studding sails are included among the stores at Chatham.

[Sidenote: Flags.]

However badly off fleets might be in material necessaries, they should have been well furnished with the æsthetic refreshment of flags, judging from the number in store. In 1626 £1280 was spent in providing them, and in January 1627 there were 415 of various kinds to be had at Chatham alone, and however low in the future might fall the reserves of powder every care was taken that the men should not lack this solace. A proclamation was issued on 5th May 1634 commanding that English and Scotch merchantmen were no longer to fly the Union flag of St George’s and St Andrew’s crosses, but to each keep to its own national cross, men-of-war alone flying the Union.[1269] The parliamentary committees were just as fond of flags, for in the sixteen months ending with November 1646 they spent £1178 on these articles, while sailors’ hammocks for the same period cost of £777. For 1647 their bill for flags was £567, and for hammocks £307. In February 1649 the parliament ordered that men-of-war should carry a St George’s cross on a white ground, similar to the present admiral’s flag, which, although the St George’s cross had been in general use for many centuries, may be considered to be the beginning of the present naval ensign in its special form.[1270]

[Sidenote: Prices.]

The following prices were paid for naval necessaries at various dates:—