The Project Gutenberg eBook, Samuel Pepys and the Royal Navy, by J. R. (Joseph Robson) Tanner

SAMUEL PEPYSAND THE ROYAL NAVY 406i1p

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

C. F. CLAY, Manager

LONDON: FETTER LANE, E. C. 4

NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

TORONTO: J. M. DENT AND SONS, Ltd.

TOKYO: MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

SAMUEL PEPYS
AND THE
ROYAL NAVY

LEES KNOWLES LECTURES DELIVERED
AT TRINITY COLLEGE IN CAMBRIDGE,
6, 13, 20 and 27 NOVEMBER, 1919

BY
J. R. TANNER, Litt.D.
FELLOW OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE

CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1920

PREFACE 3j573h

In 1919 the writer was appointed by the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, Lees Knowles Lecturer in Military and Naval History for the academical year 1919-20, and the lectures are now printed almost exactly in the form in which they were delivered in November, 1919.

The object of the Lecturer was to present in a convenient form the general conclusions about the istration of the Royal Navy from the Restoration to the Revolution arrived at in the introductory volume of his Catalogue of Pepysian Manuscripts, published by the Navy Records Society in 1903 with a dedication, in the two hundredth year after his death, 'to the memory of Samuel Pepys, a great public servant.' The evidence there collected shews that Pepys, familiar to the last generation in the sphere of literature, was also a leading figure in an entirely different world, who rendered inestimable services to naval istration in spite of the peculiar difficulties under which he worked. These conclusions, with a part of the evidence on which they depend, are summarised in the present volume.

Thanks are due to the Master and Fellows of Trinity College for encouraging the enterprise; to the Council of the Navy Records Society for permission to use the material already published in the Society's series; to the Delegates of the Oxford Clarendon Press for allowing the author to use and quote from his Introduction to the reprint of Pepys's Memoires of the Royal Navy, 1679-88, issued in the Tudor and Stuart Library in 1906; and to Messrs Sidgwick and Jackson for a similar permission to use the Introduction to the section on 'Sea Manuscripts' in Bibliotheca Pepysiana.

J. R. T.

February, 1920.

CONTENTS 6g1f48

[1]

LECTURE IINTRODUCTORY 5u1u3h

The materials for the istrative history of the Royal Navy from the Restoration to the Revolution are largely contributed by Cambridge.

The section of the Pepysian Library at Magdalene which Samuel Pepys classified as 'Sea Manuscripts' contains 114 volumes, the contents of which cover a wide field of naval history. Pepys's leading motive in collecting these is probably to be found in his projected 'History of the Navy.' Early in his career he thought of writing a 'History of the Dutch War,' 'it being a thing I much desire, and sorts mightily with my genius.'[1] Later on the design expanded into a complete naval history, upon which, at the time of his death, he was supposed to have been engaged for many years. Evelyn writes in his Diary on 26 May, 1703: 'This day died Mr Samuel Pepys, a very worthy, industrious, and curious person, none in England exceeding him in knowledge of the navy.... He had for divers years under his hand the History of the Navy, or Navalia as he called it; but how far advanced, and what will follow of his, is left, I suppose, to his sister's son.' Pepys's correspondence with Evelyn and Sir William Dugdale suggests that it would have included in its scope the antiquities of the Navy and possibly the history of navigation, as well as istrative history; and this view is ed by his selection of 'sea' manuscripts for his Library.

[2]

These manuscripts may be roughly classified in three groups:

(i) Official documents of Pepys's own time, the presence of which in the Library may be explained by the predatory habits of retiring officials in his day. Among these are to be found collections of real importance for the istrative history of the navy during his time, such as (1) Naval and iralty Precedents from 1660 to 1688—described as 'a collection of naval forms and other papers, serving for information and precedents in most of the principal occasions of the iralty and Navy calling for the same'; (2) iralty Letters, 14 volumes containing the whole of the ordinary correspondence which ed out of Pepys's office during his two Secretaryships, 1673-1679 and 1684-1688[2]—the equivalent of the modern letter-copying books, but in those days transcribed afresh with laborious care by a staff of clerks; (3) the iralty Journal, the minute-book of the Commission of the iralty from 1674 to 1679; (4) Naval Minutes, a volume in which Pepys made miscellaneous memoranda, many of them notes for his projected History; and (5) the Navy White Book, in which he noted abuses in shorthand, and wrote down what he called 'matters for future reflection' arising out of the Second Dutch War.

(ii) A second group of papers consists of official and unofficial documents—many of them acquired or copied at some expense—brought together deliberately in order to serve as material for the projected 'History of the Navy.' These include (1) a copy of Sir William Monson's Naval Discourses; (2) copious extracts from naval authorities and historians carefully indexed; (3) Penn's Naval Collections, being 'a collection of several manuscripts, taken out of [3]Sir William Penn's closet, relating to the affairs of the Navy'; (4) various volumes relating to shipbuilding and navigation, including the curious and valuable work entitled Fragments of Ancient Shipwrightry and Sir Anthony Deane's Doctrine of Naval Architecture. This last contains delicate and elaborate drawings of a ship of each rate, and Evelyn records in his Diary under date 28 January, 1682, the remarkable impression which a sight of it made upon him: 'Mr Pepys, late Secretary to the iralty, showed me a large folio containing the whole mechanic part and art of building royal ships and men-of-war, made by Sir Anthony Deane, being so accurate a piece from the very keel to the lead block, rigging, guns, victualling, manning, and even to every individual pin and nail, in a method so astonishing and curious, with a draught, both geometrical and in perspective, and several sections, that I do not think the world can shew the like. I esteem this book as an extraordinary jewel.' There also falls into this group (5) the large and important collection in eleven volumes entitled by Pepys A Miscellany of Matters Historical, Political, and Naval. This contains copies of 1438 documents, transcribed from various sources, and ranging from a complete copy in 114 folio pages of Sir Philip Meadows's work on the Sovereignty of the Seas down to 'A true Copy of the Great Turke his Stile which he most commonly writeth in His great Affaires.' They include documents relating to naval abuses; papers concerning salutes and the history of the flag, shipbuilding, victualling, and finance; a number of patents, commissions, and lists of ships; transcripts from the Black Book of the iralty; and collections relating to the Shipwrights' Company and to the Corporation of Trinity House.

(iii) The third group consists of books and papers which specially appealed to Pepys's characteristic curiosity, and have no direct bearing upon naval history. The line between [4]this and the second group cannot, however, be sharply drawn, as few of the 'Sea Manuscripts' are merely curious, and irrelevant to the history of the navy as Pepys himself interpreted it. The contents of this group are not important for our present purpose, but one interesting fact may be noted. The inclusion in the Miscellanies of papers relating to Sir William Petty's calculations and experiments, and of a copy of 'A Discourse made by Sir Robert Southwell before the Royal Society, 8 April, 1675, touching Water,' suggests that Pepys's scientific interests were genuine, and were not due, as has been suggested, to a desire to commend himself to Charles II.

It is fortunate for the student of naval istration during the Restoration period that the 'Sea Manuscripts' in the Pepysian Library include two 'Discourses'[3] upon naval abuses written at the beginning of the period, which enable us to understand some of the difficulties with which Pepys and his colleagues had to contend. The Second Discourse by John Hollond, in succession Paymaster, Commissioner, and Surveyor of the Navy under the Commonwealth Government, following a First Discourse of 1638, is dated 1659; and the Discourse by Sir Robert Slyngesbie, a royalist naval commander, made Comptroller of the Navy on the King's return, is dated 1660. These give us the criticisms of a Parliamentarian of istrative experience and those of a royalist of experience at sea, made at the Restoration and supplying an excellent groundwork for the study of the period which followed it.

There is no time to traverse the whole field of the Discourses, but certain points may be considered by way of illustration.

[5]

1. They bring into relief the remarkable durability of naval abuses. John Hollond was not the first writer to denounce abuses in the navy. This had been a fruitful topic for anonymous writers long before his day, and if the scattered papers on the subject were collected they would constitute a complete literature. The charges begin at least as early as the time of Hawkyns, and one writer[8] into the Victualling Department at Portsmouth revealed malpractices of a kind very [6]similar to those described by Hollond. The keys of the victualling storehouses had been entrusted to improper recipients, who had access to the stores at all hours; certain persons kept hogs in the King's storehouses, which were 'fed with the King's serviceable biscuit'; planks, spars, staves, and barrels were converted to private use; 'mops and brooms' from the store were appropriated by an official who 'kept a shop and dealt in those articles'; the King's wine was drawn off in large quantities 'in bottles in a clandestine manner'; certificates were granted for stores before they were actually received, and for articles received short, these being signed in blank by the clerk of the check beforehand; it was a 'common practice' to send in bags of bread deficient in weight; the s were imperfectly kept, and showed enormous deficiencies of stores; by collusion with the contractor stores were accepted that were 'of improper quality and not according to contract'; and the victualling board paid excessive prices to a bread contractor with whom they were in collusion and refused to allow others to tender.

2. Let me give you next a few illustrations of the kind of abuse which Hollond and his predecessors had pointed out, and with which Pepys and his colleagues had to deal.

(a) Hollond, like Pepys, appears to have had a genuine sympathy for the sorrows of the 'poor seaman,' and he complains bitterly of the long delays in paying wages; the 'intolerable abuse to poor seamen in their wages' by naval captains' who are of late turned merchants, and have and do lay magazines of clothes, ... tobacco, strong waters, and such like commodities into their ships upon pretence of relieving poor seamen in their wants, but indeed for no other reason than their private profit'[9]; the practice of discharging sick men without adequate funds to take them home; [7]and the payment of wages by tickets instead of cash, thus creating a depreciated paper currency.

(b) Hollond also speaks strongly against the practice of using the State's labour in the gardens or grounds of officials, and the State's materials in repairing private houses or sumptuously decorating official residences, 'by painting, paving, and other ornamental tricking.'[12]. It is true that Pett's acc is not above suspicion, for he begins his philippic with an artless exposition of his motives: 'In the last year of the Queen's reign, I, seeing some abuses by Phineas Pett, told him he had not done his duty. He strook me with his cudgel. I told him he had been better he had held his hand, for he should pay for it.' Pett was in some respects a calumniated man, but this particular kind of peculation is more easily justified to the official conscience than any other, and there is nothing inherently improbable in the accusation.

(c) The combination of captains and pursers to return false musters, or to present men to receive pay who never served, was another longstanding abuse. There was in the navy a recognised system of drawing pay for non-existent persons to which no discredit attached, for it was the regular way of giving the officers extra pay. Thus the captains were allowed a 'dead pay' apiece on the sea-books 'for their [8]retinues'; and in harbour no less than four varieties of dead pay were recognised, including wages and victuals paid to men for keeping ships 'which long since had no being.' We also hear of an allowance demanded in the Narrow Seas 'for a preacher and his man, though no such devotion be ever used on board.' The same principle appears in the 18th century in connexion with what were known as 'widows' men.' The captain was authorised to enter one or two fictitious persons in every hundred men of his ship's complement, and the wages drawn in their names and the value of the victuals to which they would have been entitled were applied to the relief of the widows of officers and seamen who had served in the navy[16]

[9]

(d) The danger of collusion among officials was one of the chief difficulties in the way of would-be reformers, and just as collusion between the captains and the pursers defrauded the King in the matter of pay, so collusion between the victuallers and the pursers defrauded the King over the provision of victuals. Sir William Monson, in his Naval Tracts, gives instances of such collusion, and shews how easily it can be managed. Thus the victualler and the purser would contract between themselves for the purser to be allowed to victual a certain number of men on board each ship, paying the victualler for the privilege but making his own profit on the victuals he supplied. 'Which,' says Monson, 'besides that it breeds a great inconvenience, for the purser's unreasonable griping the sailors of their victuals, and plucking it, as it were, out of their bellies, it makes them become weak, sick, and feeble, and then follows an infection and inability to do their labour, or else uproars, mutinies, and disorders ensue among the company.'[19]. This system of victualling 'upon ,' as it was called, was actually adopted from 1655 to the Restoration, and again after 1683; but the difficulties were not altogether met by the change, for the officials who victualled 'upon ' were liable to collusion with the vendors of victuals from whom they bought, and in this case the King's service suffered in a different way.

(e) The istrative defects of the victualling recurred on almost as serious a scale in the department of stores, and great complaints are made, both by John Hollond and the earlier writers, of the bad quality of cordage and timber and of the frauds connected with their purveyance. Cordage would be entered by the storekeeper as heavier than it weighed; old cordage would be sold at absurdly low prices to the minor officials of the dockyard; and materials still fit for service would be condemned as unserviceable by an official who himself acted as a contractor for purchasing unserviceable stores[22] in order to favour the monopolist or merchant with whom they were in profitable collusion.

The worst and most corrupt period of naval istration was the reign of James I, and by the Restoration the navy was on a higher plane of efficiency and honesty; but the criticisms of such writers as Hollond and Slyngesbie shew [11]how much remained for the reformer to do. It is remarkable that the period of the later Stuarts, so deeply sunk in political corruption, produced a great naval organizer and reformer in the person of Samuel Pepys.

There are 17 different ways of spelling the Diarist's name, but only three of pronouncing it. The descendants of his sister Paulina, now represented by the family of Pepys Cockerell, pronounce it Peeps; this is also the established tradition at Magdalene, and is probably the way in which Samuel himself pronounced it. The branch of the Pepys family which is now represented by the Earl of Cottenham, pronounce their name Peppis. The British public calls it Peps, and this is the only pronunciation in favour of which there is no family or other tradition. An epigram contributed to the Graphic in November, 1891, not only comes to a wrong conclusion about the pronunciation, but is also full of misleading statements about the man:

But is he nothing more than 'the talkative Samuel,' 'the delightful old Diarist,' 'the garrulous gossip'? Even 'old' is the wrong epithet unless it is restricted to historical antiquity, for Pepys was not 27 when he began the Diary[25] The maturity of his powers lies outside the period of the Diary, and it is his later life that makes good his claim to be regarded as one of the best public officials who ever served the State. In fact, Pepys's Diary is only a by-product of the life of Samuel Pepys.

Nevertheless the Diary, in spite of its infinite accumulations of unimportant detail, and its conscientious record of small vices, shews us the great official in the making. Let me give two illustrations, one on the lower levels of the Diary and the other where it reaches its highest plane.

30 May, 1660: 'All this morning making up my s, in which I counted that I had made myself now worth about £80, at which my heart was glad and blessed God.' 3 June, 1660: 'At sermon in the morning; after dinner into my cabin to cast my s up, and find myself to be worth near £100, for which I bless Almighty God, it being more than I hoped for so soon.' 5 September, 1660: 'In the evening, my wife being a little impatient, I went along with her to buy her a necklace of pearl, which will cost £4. 10s., which I am willing to comply with her in for her encouragement, and because I have lately got money, having now above £200 cash beforehand in the world. Home, and having in our way bought a rabbit and two little lobsters, my wife and I did sup late, and so to bed.' This methodical care in calculating ways and means and recording expenditure, when applied to the greater affairs of the navy, appears as a habit of method and order, and a remarkable instinct for business. Pepys introduced into a slipshod and rather chaotic organisation a high degree of system and method, and so vastly increased its efficiency in every direction.

[13]

My other illustration is from the given in the Diary of the funeral of Sir Christopher Myngs, who had been mortally wounded in action on the last day of the great battle with the Dutch off the North Foreland, June 1-4, 1666. Pepys was present at the funeral in a coach with Sir William Coventry, at which, he tells us[26], 'there happened this extraordinary case—one of the most romantique that ever I heard of in my life, and could not have believed but that I did see it; which was this:—About a dozen able, lusty, proper men come to the coach-side with tears in their eyes, and one of them that spoke for the rest begun and says to Sir W. Coventry, "We are here a dozen of us that have long known and loved and served our dead commander, Sir Christopher Mings, and have now done the last office of laying him in the ground. We would be glad we had any other to offer after him, and in revenge of him. All we have is our lives; if you will please to get his Royal Highness to give us a fireship among us all, here is a dozen of us, out of all which choose you one to be commander, and the rest of us, whoever he is, will serve him; and, if possible, do that that shall show our memory of our dead commander, and our revenge." Sir W. Coventry was herewith much moved (as well as I, who could hardly abstain from weeping), and took their names, and so parted; telling me he would move his Royal Highness as in a thing very extraordinary, which was done.' No more touching tribute than this has ever been paid to the memory of a great seaman, nor better evidence given of the simple loyalty of sea-faring men which in their descendants has served us so well of late. 'The truth is,' continues Pepys, 'Sir Christopher Mings was a very stout man, and a man of great parts, and most excellent tongue among ordinary [14]men.... He had brought his family into a way of being great; but dying at this time, his memory and name ... will be quite forgot in a few months as if he had never been, nor any of his name be the better by it; he having not had time to will any estate, but is dead poor rather than rich.' A writer who could describe such a scene in a style which comes so near distinction, and could then reflect with dignity upon the swift ing of human greatness, is something more than a 'delightful old Diarist' or a 'garrulous gossip'; but it is characteristic of Pepys that he should thus conclude his entry for the day: 'In my way home I called on a fisherman and bought three eeles, which cost me three shillings.'

I have quoted this age about the funeral of Sir Christopher Myngs for another reason—it enables us to understand how Pepys developed later on so impressive an official style. He takes pleasure in long, labyrinthine sentences, in which the thread of thought winds deviously through an infinity of dependent clauses, but the thread is never lost, and the reader always arrives in the end at the destined goal. He has a discriminating taste in the selection of words, always choosing the more impressive, and leaving the reader with the sense of something dignified moving before him, like a procession, but never sacrificing clearness and precision to mere sound. Yet associated with all this pomp is a sense of humour, usually full-flavoured, but on occasion as subtle and delicate as need be[27], and finding its way even into the more dismal kinds of official correspondence.

To illustrate the point of complexity, let me read you a letter to the Navy Board of 2 June, 1677, which I came [15]across not long ago among the Pepysian papers[28]. It consists of a single colossal sentence, yet the meaning is perfectly clear. If you want a parallel, you should go to the Prayer Book, to the Exhortation which precedes the General Confession; for this, although punctuated as three sentences, is structurally only one.

The reputation of Samuel Pepys has suffered in two ways. Readers of the Diary under-estimate him because they conceive [16]of him as a diarist only, and do not realize the seriousness of his public responsibilities or the greatness of his official career. On the other hand, naval historians have often under-estimated him because they have failed to appreciate the difficulties with which he had to contend. If these difficulties are allowed for, the services rendered by Samuel Pepys to the navy are incomparable. He stood for a vigorous shipbuilding policy, for methodical organisation in every department, and for the restoration of a lost naval discipline. This was recognised by his immediate posterity, and in the century after his death a great tradition grew up about his name. A commission which reported in 1805 spoke of him as 'a man of extraordinary knowledge in all that related to the business' of the navy, 'of great talents, and the most indefatigable industry.' The respect paid to his authority by the generation of naval s which succeeded his own—comparable only perhaps to the weight which Lord Chief Justice Coke had carried among the lawyers of an earlier time—led to a number of transcripts being made from the Pepysian manuscripts and preserved in the iralty Library for the guidance of his successors. And this tradition has to be reconciled with the other and widely different tradition associated with the Pepys of the Diary.

It is not easy to realise that the two traditions belong to the same person. It is extraordinary that a man should have written the Diary, but it is much more extraordinary that the man who wrote the Diary should also have been 'the right hand of the navy.' From the Diary we learn that Pepys was a musician, a dandy, a collector of books and prints, an observer of boundless curiosity, and, as a critic has pointed out, one who possessed an 'amazing zest for life.' From the Pepysian manuscripts we learn that he was a man of sound judgment, of orderly and methodical business habits, of great istrative capacity and energy; [17]and that he possessed extraordinary shrewdness and tact in dealing with men. At certain points in the Diary we can see the great official maturing, but in the main the intimate self-revelation of a human being seems far removed from official life. It is the combination of qualities that is so astounding, and those who regard Pepys only as 'the most amusing and capable of our seventeenth century diarists'[29]—a mere literary performer making sport for us—do little justice to a great career.

[18]

LECTURE IIISTRATION 6h1x2g

The history of naval istration between the Restoration and the Revolution falls naturally into four periods: (1) 1660-73, from the appointment of the Duke of York to be Lord High iral, until his retirement after the ing of the Test Act; (2) 1673-79, the first Secretaryship of Samuel Pepys; (3) 1679-84, the period of istrative disorder which followed his resignation; and (4) 1684-88, from the return of the Duke of York to office until the Revolution—this period being also that of Pepys's second Secretaryship.

At the date of the King's Restoration the direction of the navy was in the hands of an iralty Commission of twenty-eight, appointed by the restored Rump Parliament in December, 1659[35].

The new Treasurer of the Navy was Sir George Carteret, who, entering the service as a boy, had risen to high command in the navy, and had served as Comptroller in the reign of Charles I. 'Besides his other parts of honesty and [20]discretion,' says Clarendon, he was 'undoubtedly as good, if not the best, seaman in England,'[38]

Sir Robert Slyngesbie, the new Comptroller, was himself the son of a Comptroller of the Navy, and had served as a sea-captain as early as 1633[40]

Sir William Batten, the Surveyor, was only returning to an office which he had already held, for he had been Surveyor of the Navy from 1638 to 1642, and afterwards an active naval commander. Pepys began by borrowing £40 of him[50]

The only one of the Principal Officers who knew nothing about the navy was the Clerk of the Acts, Samuel Pepys himself. He obtained the office by the influence of his patron, Edward Mountagu, the first Earl of Sandwich, a distinguished naval commander, who was first cousin to Pepys's father and recognised the claims of kinship after the fashion of his day. It was necessary first to buy out Thomas Barlow, who had been Clerk of the Acts under Charles I, and Pepys, observing that he was 'an old, consumptive man,'[52]

Besides the four Principal Officers, the new Navy Board also included three extra Commissioners of the Navy, Lord Berkeley, Sir William Penn, and Peter Pett. Lord Berkeley was a distinguished soldier, who had won great honour at Stratton, and had served under Turenne from 1652 to 1655[60]

It will be observed that on the Navy Board of the Restoration expert experience was overwhelmingly represented. Of its seven four were seamen; one a soldier—and it must be ed that at this time the line between the two services was not distinctly drawn, for Blake had been a lieutenant-colonel and Monck commander-in-chief of an army before they were appointed to command fleets as 'generals-at-sea'; one represented experience of shipbuilding and dockyard istration; and only the Clerk of the Acts knew nothing about the sea. Sir Walter Ralegh had remarked in his day: 'It were to be wished that the chief officers under the Lord iral ... should be men of the best experience in sea-service,' and had complained that sometimes 'by the special favour of princes' or 'the mediation of great men for the preferment of their servants,' or 'now and then by virtue of the purse,' persons 'very raw and ignorant' are 'very unworthily and unfitly nominated to those places.'[61] But such criticisms applied no longer. The King had made a good choice of fit persons duly qualified, and had established a naval istration which, if it failed, would not fail for lack of knowledge.

[24]

There were a good many subsequent changes, but the importance of istration by experts was not again lost sight of. The office of Treasurer of the Navy soon fell to the men of s, and in 1667 Sir George Carteret was succeeded by the Earl of Anglesey, a 'laborious, skilful, cautious, moderate' official, who had had seven years' experience of finance as Vice-Treasurer and Receiver-General for Ireland[71]. It should be noticed that whereas during the thirteen years of naval history from 1660 to 1673 the office of Treasurer of the Navy was held by four different persons, and the offices of Comptroller and Surveyor each by three, there was no change in the office of Clerk of the Acts. Pepys was the only one of the Principal Officers whose experience was continuous.

The extra Commissionerships, when vacancies arose, did not all go to naval experts, but men of ability were selected for them, and sometimes men of distinction. When in 1662 another extra Commissioner was appointed, the choice fell on William Coventry, a civilian; but Coventry had already had two years' experience of naval istration as Secretary to the Lord High iral, and his ability soon made him one of the most valuable of the Navy Board. Burnet described him in 1665 as 'a man of great actions and eminent virtues'; Temple credits him with high political capacity; Evelyn calls him 'a wise and witty gentleman'[76]. One of the extra Commissioners, Sir Edward Seymour, was also Speaker of the House of Commons.

The Navy Board was by tradition the Lord High iral's council of advice for that part of his office which was concerned with the government of the navy, and Monson alludes to its as 'the conduit pipes to whom the Lord iral properly directs all his commands for his Majesty's service, and from whom it descends to all other inferior officers and ministers under them whatsoever.'[80].

It is evident that the istration of the navy after the Restoration was in the hands of able and experienced men, [27]and that they were acting under instructions which were good enough to survive without material alteration for another century and a half. Yet there is abundant evidence in the Pepysian manuscripts and elsewhere to shew that naval istration during the period 1660-1673 was in the main a disastrous failure. The reason why the collapse was so complete was the pressure of the Second Dutch War upon the resources of the naval istration, but the essential causes lay deeper than external events. First and foremost undoubtedly stands the problem of finance. The want of money was the root of all evil in the Stuart navy. I propose to deal fully with this problem in my next lecture, and will only ask you to note its existence now. But there was more than this. On 15 August, 1666, Pepys made a remarkable entry in the Diary which I think gives the key to the situation: 'Thence walked over the Park with Sir W. Coventry, in our way talking of the unhappy state of our Office; and I took an opportunity to let him know, that though the backwardnesses of all our matters of the Office may be well imputed to the known want of money, yet perhaps there might be personal and particular failings.' He then notes Coventry's reply, which indicates the way in which personal failings were themselves affected by want of money. 'Nor, indeed, says he, is there room now-a-days to find fault with any particular man, while we are in this condition for money.' The whole service was breathing the miasmas exhaled by a corrupt Court. Slackness was fashionable because the King was slack, and the higher naval istration had to contend with idleness and dishonesty in the lower ranks of the service due to a relaxation of the standards of public and private duty. In this conflict it was at a serious disadvantage, for it was impossible effectively to control subordinates whom there was no money to pay. The of the Navy Board were capable and experienced, [28]and their intentions were excellent, but the atmosphere was poisonous and the situation beyond control. 'Personal and particular failings' in combination with financial disorder ruined the Navy Office, as they would have ruined any public department in any country and at any time.

It would be idle to pretend that the Restoration officials conformed to modern standards of official purity; although they were very much better than the corrupt s of the reign of James I. Pepys is convicted on his own confession of a good deal that would be unthinkable to-day. During the period of the Diary his salary as Clerk of the Acts was £350 a year; while in 1665 he was appointed Treasurer of the Tangier Commission, and from 1665 to 1667 he was Surveyor-General of Victualling with an additional £300 a year[94] The inventor of such a phrase is on dangerous ground, but he is not yet utterly debased; and the high responsibility of his later life may very well have served as an antiseptic to arrest corruption before it had gone far. At any rate, this is as [30]much in advance of the cynical greed of the earlier s as it is behind the contempt for all forms of corruption which is natural to well-paid officials educated to modern standards.

In 1673 the Test Act drove the Duke of York from office, and brought about other important changes in the istration of the navy. The King retained in his own hands the Lord High iral's patronage and also the iralty dues, which were to be collected for his 'only use and behoof'; but the rest of his functions were placed in commission[96]. Pepys was succeeded in the office of Clerk of the Acts by his brother, John Pepys, and his clerk, Thomas Hayter, acting tly. There were also changes in the composition of the Navy Board, but these did not affect its character as a body of naval experts.

The chief business of the new s was to bring to a close the Third Dutch War, and then to repair, by an energetic shipbuilding policy, that depreciation of the navy which was the natural result of the war. In this work they were on the whole successful. The iralty Commissioners were sensible and vigilant, and they were remarkably well served by their Secretary; while the Navy Board was strong [31]on the technical side of its work, and fortunate in having as one of its an official so thoroughly capable in his own department as the great shipbuilder, Sir Anthony Deane. Moreover, although the financial difficulty continued to hamper and cripple the navy, a vigorous shipbuilding policy was made possible by the better which Parliament now gave to naval expansion. The idea of the importance of sea power had already acquired a considerable hold upon the political classes, and the wars with the Dutch had served to strengthen it. Charles II had read rightly the feeling of his subjects when he allowed his Chancellor to say to the Pension Parliament in the speech which opened its eleventh session: 'There is not so lawful or commendable a jealousy in the world as an Englishman's of the growing greatness of any Prince at sea.'[100].

The new programme was pushed forward with the utmost energy, but before it was completed the control of the navy again changed hands. In 1679 the excitement of the Popish Plot drove the Duke of York from England, and Pepys was involved in his disgrace. He was accused of conspiring with Sir Anthony Deane to send information about the navy to the French Government and to extirpate the Protestant religion; and was committed to the Tower on the Speaker's warrant[102].

On the withdrawal of the Duke of York and the resignation of Pepys, the higher istration of the navy ed to a new iralty Commission of seven, who claimed and enjoyed, in addition to the powers of the previous Commission, those other prerogatives which the King had hitherto reserved to himself[107] The last phrase brings before us vividly the King's characteristic way.

The result that followed was inevitable. The dockyards were disorganised; the effective force of the fleet was reduced; the reserve of stores was depleted. The Commissioners adopted a wasteful policy of retrenchment at all costs. Pepys writes of 'the effects of inexperience, daily discovering themselves' in the conduct of the Commission[111], is confirmed by a report from an expert of the French iralty, so it cannot be dismissed as mere denunciation inspired by a natural prejudice against the men who had displaced him.

Things were so bad that in 1684 the Commission was revoked, and from this date until his death the office of Lord High iral was once more executed by the King, with the advice and assistance of 'his royal brother the Duke of York'[112]; and on his accession James II became his own Lord High iral. The office of Secretary of the iralty was revived, and Pepys was appointed thereto; and the government of the navy remained in the same hands until the Revolution.

The important episode of the period 1684-1688 is the appointment of the Special Commission of 1686 for the regeneration of the navy—an experiment in organisation for which Pepys was largely responsible[114], and this was to be [35]istered by a body of experts, on which the two most important figures were Sir Anthony Deane, the great shipbuilder, and Sir John Narbrough, the hero of the war with Algiers. The Commission was intended to last for a term of three years, the time estimated to be necessary for putting the navy into a state of thorough repair, but its work was performed with such energy and efficiency that the Commission was dissolved in October, 1688, after only 2½ years tenure of office, and the system of government by Principal Officers and Commissioners of the Navy acting under the Lord High iral was restored.

The way in which Pepys manœuvred Sir Anthony Deane on to the Commission deserves a ing notice. It was not an easy matter, as Deane replied to a flattering overture by pointing out that his ordinary business as a shipwright was bringing in to him 'more than double the benefit ... the common wages of a Commissioner of the Navy amounts to,' and moreover he was fifteen in family, 'and not without expectation of more.'[119]

The circumstances in which the second Secretaryship of Samuel Pepys came to an end are part of the general history of England, and need no repetition here. On 21 December, 1688, Pepys mentions that the King was 'a second time withdrawn,'[122]. He was too intimately associated with the exiled James for the government of the Revolution to continue him in power.

[37]

LECTURE IIIFINANCE 731b5h

It is scarcely a matter for surprise that those historians who were the first to appreciate the great Puritan movement, so long under a cloud, should have yielded to the temptation of over-emphasizing the contrast between the vigour and comparative purity of government during the Interregnum and its nervelessness and corruption under the Younger Stuarts. That some such contrast exists it is impossible to deny. The Commonwealth navy was on the whole well managed, and every reader of Pepys's Diary knows that he was disposed to regret in private the istrative successes of the treasonable times. 3 June, 1667: 'To Spring Garden, and there eat and drank a little, and then to walk up and down the garden, reflecting upon the bad management of things now, compared with what it was in the late rebellious times, when men, some for fear and some for religion, minded their business, which none now do, by being void of both.' Or again, 4 September, 1668: 'The business of abusing the Puritans begins to grow stale and of no use, they being the people that at last will be found the wisest.' But it is possible, while dwelling upon a moral contrast, to ignore the difference in the financial situation. The virtuous Puritan colonels who controlled the navy under the Commonwealth had command of large financial resources, for confiscations and Royalist compositions were very productive, and the governments of the Interregnum could apply to the raising of taxes irresistible military force. As far as the compositions went, they were, however, living upon capital, and when this was exhausted, the pressure of financial difficulties [38]soon began to be felt. The maintenance of the great professional army came to be a burden too heavy for the resources of the country as they stood in that day, and the navy suffered from the competition of the army for the available funds. The disease usually assigned to the Restoration period declared itself before the Restoration took place, and when the King came back he found the navy already deep in debt. In 1659 nearly half a million was due on of wages alone, and the total debt must have been over three-quarters of a million[124] It must be ed that with 17th century money values these figures are very much larger than they look, and as the State had not yet invented funding debt, and so charging it on posterity, its position was that of an extravagant private person. Thus the naval s of the Restoration were succeeding to a bankrupt estate, and in the Diary Pepys strikes a note of despair. 31 July, 1660: the navy 'is in very sad condition, and money must be raised for it.' 11 June, 1661: 'now the credit of the Office is brought so low, that none will sell us anything without our personal security given for the same.' 31 August, 1661: 'we are at our Office quiet, only for lack of money all things go to rack.' 30 September, 1661: 'the want of money puts all things, and above all the Navy, out of order.' 28 June, 1662: 'God knows, the King is not able to set out five ships at this present without great difficulty, we neither having money, credit, nor stores.'

The same difficulties were felt before, during, and after the Second Dutch War. In September, 1664, when war was impending, Commissioner Pett tried to buy tallow and candles for the navy at Maidstone, but found the country 'so shy' [39]that they refused to deal[133].

The total annual charge of the navy in time of peace is not easy to calculate. On 18 February, 1663[138], and was to lay the foundation of Parliamentary enquiry into the proceedings of the executive.

As soon as the war came to an end, the higher authorities began to consider schemes of retrenchment in the navy. A committee appointed 29 July, 1667, by Order in Council, to consider the King's expenses called for a report upon the cost of the navy, and the Duke of York put forward some preliminary suggestions[142].

As soon as the Third Dutch War came to an end in February, 1674, another period of feverish retrenchment set in, and an attempt was made 'to lessen the growing charge in the navy, towards which no one particular seems more to conduce than that of reducing the number of the persons employed therein, both at sea and in the yards.'[148]

In spite of the frequent references to want of funds scattered up and down the official correspondence, the financial position of the navy greatly improved in the later years of the Restoration period. At Lady Day, 1686, the debts of the Navy Office were reckoned at £171,836. 2s. 9d.—a remarkable reduction on the enormous totals of 1666[150], so it is not surprising to find that, [44]both in the closing years of Charles II and the earlier years of James II, money was still difficult to get, and the old complaints recur although in a less aggravated form.

Bearing in mind these facts about finance, let us on to consider some of their practical results.

During the period from 1660 to 1688 the operations of the navy were grievously hampered by the deficiency of men, both in the dockyards and at sea; and this deficiency was mainly, if not entirely, due to the want of pay.

The state of things during the Second Dutch War was appalling. The Diary contains pitiable stories of poor seamen starving in the streets because there was no money to pay their wages. 7 October, 1665: 'Did business, though not much, at the Office; because of the horrible crowd and lamentable moan of the poor seamen that lie starving in the streets for lack of money, which do trouble and perplex me to the heart; and more at noon when we were to go through them, for then a whole hundred of them followed us; some cursing, some swearing, and some praying to us.'[158].

Naturally enough, this state of things affected discipline. The crews of the Little Victory and the Pearl at Hull mutinied for want of pay, and refused to weigh anchor[166]

In view of these facts about pay, it is not surprising that it was found difficult to obtain men. In order to man the fleets for service against the Dutch it was necessary to employ the press, and this produced very poor material. Pepys notes in 1666 that men were pressed in London that 'were not liable to it,' 'poor patient labouring men and housekeepers,'[169]

On the outbreak of the Third Dutch War in 1672 the same difficulties recurred, but the complaints are less frequent and less serious, and the condition of things had evidently improved. But ships had still to be manned by pressing, and the quality of the pressed men left much to be desired. For instance, two watermen, pressed in 1673, are described as 'little children, and never at sea before,' who could not be suffered 'to pester the ship.'[170]

'It can never be well in the navy,' wrote Pepys on 5 September, 1680, 'till the poor seamen can be paid once in a year at furthest, and tickets answered like bills of exchange; whereas at this very day ... ships are kept out two or three years, and four of them just now ordered forth again only for want of money, after being brought in to be paid off.'[175]

In connexion with the seamen something should be said about the organisation for the care of the sick and wounded. The credit of being the first English Government to recognise the obligation of providing for the sick and wounded belongs to the Commonwealth. The principle that the State should provide for those who had suffered in its service was laid down by the Long Parliament in 1642, and an attempt was made to apply it to the case of soldiers wounded in the Civil War[178]. The Commissioners were to distribute the sick and wounded among the hospitals of England, 'thereby to ease his Majesty's charge'; and as soon as this accommodation was exhausted, they were to billet them upon private persons at the King's expense. London, Yarmouth, Ipswich, Southwold, Aldeburgh, Harwich, Chatham, Gravesend, Deal, Dover, Gosport, Southampton, Weymouth, Dartmouth, and Plymouth were specially assigned for the reception of sick and wounded men set ashore from their ships. At these 'places of reception' as they were called, the Commissioners were to appoint an agent, and to provide 'a physician (if need be) and chirurgeon, and nurses, fire, candle, linen, medicaments, and all things necessary,' but in 'as husbandly and thrifty a manner' as might be. The Commission was also charged with the care of prisoners of war, and was instructed to provide for their maintenance on a scale 'not exceeding 5d. per diem for every common seaman and inferior officer, and 12d. per diem for every commission officer.' For a time also it was concerned with awarding gratuities to the 'widows, children, and impotent parents of such as shall be slain in his Majesty's service at sea'; but in 1673 these duties were taken over by another commission, for Widows and Orphans, and a regular scale was established on which gratuities were to be given. Widows of men slain in the service were to receive a gratuity equal to eleven months of their husband's pay, an additional third being allowed to each orphan except those who were married at the time of the father's death. If the deceased left no widow, his mother was to receive the [50]bounty, provided that she was herself a widow, indigent, and over 50 years of age. The bounty to a child was to be allowed to accumulate until it was of an age to be apprenticed. This Commission terminated at the end of the war, and by an order of 21 December, 1674, its functions devolved on the Navy Board.

These arrangements were all irable upon paper, and the of the Commissions displayed indefatigable industry, but in this department of affairs as in others the best of schemes were wrecked on the rock of finance. On 30 September, 1665, Evelyn wrote that he had 5000 sick, wounded, and prisoners dying for want of bread and shelter. 'His Majesty's subjects,' he adds, 'die in our sight and at our thresholds without our being able to relieve them, which, with our barbarous exposure of the prisoners to the utmost of sufferings, must needs redound to his Majesty's great dishonour, and to the consequence of losing the hearts of our own people, who are ready to execrate and stone us as we .'[181]

When the war came to an end the temporary Commission was withdrawn, and by a warrant from the Lords of the iralty dated 28 March, 1674, its duties were handed over to James Pearse, 'chirurgeon-general of his Majesty's navy.'[183]

'Mariners and soldiers maimed in his Majesty's service at sea' were entitled to relief out of the Chest at Chatham, a fund provided by deducting 6d. a month from each man's pay. Fourpence a month was also deducted for the maintenance of a chaplain, and Pepys explains how the Chest benefited from an arrangement by which all moneys were also assigned to it 'arising out of the seamen's contributions for a chaplain upon ships where (by the remissness or impiety of the commander) no chaplain is provided.'[185], gives the scale of this relief:

One more question remains for our consideration to-day—that of the rates of pay in the navy during the period 1660-88.

As far as the rates themselves were concerned the story is one of steady improvement. In 1653 the pay of a general or iral of the fleet had been £3 a day during his employment; of a vice-iral, £2; and of a rear-iral, £1[190] made a few minor changes, but the pay of the seamen was not affected thereby.

The misfortune of the 'poor seaman' was not that his rate of pay was insufficient, but that he could not get his money, or if he got it at all it was in the depreciated paper currency known as the 'ticket.' A ticket was a certificate from the officers of his ship, issued to each seaman, specifying the term and quality of his service. This, when countersigned by the Navy Board, was the seaman's warrant for demanding his wages from the Treasurer of the Navy on shore. The original purpose of tickets was to save the necessity of transporting large sums of money on board ship, but the want of funds in the navy soon made it the regular practice to treat tickets as inconvertible paper, and to discharge all seamen with tickets instead of money—or with money for part of their time and a ticket for the rest. Theoretically, the ticket should have supplied the seaman with credit almost up to the full amount of his wages, but in practice the long waiting and uncertainty of payment caused a great depreciation of tickets. We hear of women brokers standing about the Navy Office, offering to help seamen who might have tickets to ready money—but always upon . They took them to Mrs Salesbury in Carpenter's Yard, near Aldgate, who bought them for cash at a discount of at least 5s. in the £, and sometimes more[194]

Apart from the disastrous results of the practice of issuing tickets without money to pay them, the actual machinery of the system was better under Charles II than it had hitherto been. Printed tickets with counterfoils had been invented under the Commonwealth, and were in use as early as August, 1654[198]. This was particularly easy in time of war, when the pressure of [55]business was too great to allow of the tickets being properly examined.

A new and important principle in connexion with the pay of naval officers was established in 1668. Deane had urged in 1653 that seamen should be entered for continuous service and kept on continuous pay like soldiers[204].

In 1672[206] the principle of superannuation was extended from cases of old age to officers wounded in service at sea. Such officers were to receive one year's wages, 'and the continuance of them in pay during the whole time they shall by good proof appear to have lain under cure.'

[57]

LECTURE IVVICTUALLING; DISCIPLINE; SHIPS; GUNS 4u5r4a

The arrangements for victualling had always had an important bearing upon the contentment and efficiency of the seamen. 'However the pay of the mariners, both for sea and harbour, may be wanting for some time,' wrote one of the Victuallers, 'yet they must have continual supplies of victuals, otherwise they will be apt to fall into very great disorders.'[208], makes the same point. 'Englishmen,' he says, 'and more especially seamen, love their bellies above anything else, and therefore it must always be ed, in the management of the victualling of the navy, that to make any abatement from them in the quantity or agreeableness of the victuals, is to discourage and provoke them in the tenderest point, and will sooner render them disgusted with the King's service than any one other hardship that can be put upon them.' But in this department also the want of money had fatal effects, and contributed more than any other cause to the comparative failure of the istration to provide victuals of good quality, sufficient quantity, and promptly delivered where they were required.

Before the Restoration the victualling was being managed by Victualling Commissioners 'upon ,' the State keeping the business in its own hands[217].

The practical breakdown of the victualling system during the spring and summer of 1665 led to the establishment, at Pepys's suggestion, of new machinery for keeping the Victualler up to the mark—a Surveyor of Victuals appointed at the King's charge in each port, with power to examine the Victualler's books; and a central officer in London to whom they were to report weekly[223], he managed to do well out of the war.

The experience of the war had shewn the weak points of the one-man system, and in subsequent contracts several Victuallers were associated in a kind of partnership[229].

It is, on the whole, to the credit of the Victuallers that the complaints as to quality are not more numerous than they are during this period of large demands and scanty payment. If you would care for illustrations, on 15 March, 1671, on board the Reserve 'there was a general complaint amongst the seamen, both of the badness of the meat and want of weight.'[233].

The victualling contract of which we possess the fullest details was that of 31 December, 1677[236]. 'Haberdine' is salt or sun-dried cod, and 'Poor John' is salted or dried hake.

[62]

In the case of vessels sailing 'to the southward of the latitude of 39 degrees N.' it was allowable for the contractors to vary the diet—'In lieu of a pound of biscuit, a pound of rusk of equal fineness; in lieu of a gallon of beer, a wine quart of beverage wine or half a wine pint of brandy ... in lieu of a piece of beef or pork with pease, three pounds of flour and a pound of raisins (not worse than Malaga), or in lieu of raisins, half a pound of currants or half a pound of beef suet pickled; in lieu of a sized fish, four pounds of Milan rice or two stockfishes of at least 16 inches long; in lieu of a pound of butter or two pounds of Suffolk cheese, a wine pint of sweet olive oil.' The separate victualling contract for the Mediterranean[238].

Pepys expected much from the new contract of 1677[243]

One of the earlier acts of the Restoration Government was the ing of a statute to incorporate into the system of English law the ordinances already in force during the Interregnum for regulating the discipline of the navy. Before 1652 such crimes as murder and manslaughter on board ship had been punishable by the ordinary law, and lesser offences by the 'known orders and customs of the seas';[246] were founded. By this commanders at sea were empowered to try a great variety of offences by court-martial, and for many of these the maximum penalty was death. This Act continued to govern the navy until the reign of George II.

Another Act, of 1664,[249] The riots also had been a serious matter. The preamble of the Act gives as the ground of legislation 'diverse fightings, quarrellings, and disturbances ... in and about his Majesty's offices, yards, and stores,' and 'frequent differences and disorders' which had occurred on pay-days through 'the unreasonable turbulency of seamen.' To meet this state of things the Act invests the Navy Board with some of the powers of magistrates, and authorises them to punish riots and embezzlements with fine and imprisonment.

The Act was useful, but it did not entirely stop embezzlement. In September, 1666, a prize worth £300 was plundered of her lading, and 'will soon,' we are told, 'be dismantled of all her rigging, till she will not have a rope's end left to hang herself, or the thievish seamen that go in her.'[253], when the Act of 1664 was in full operation, 'After dinner I to the Office and there late, and much troubled to have a hundred seamen all the afternoon there, swearing below and cursing us, and breaking the glass windows, and swear they will pull the house down on Tuesday next. I sent word of this to Court, but nothing will help it but money and a rope.'

The period of Pepys's first Secretaryship witnessed several attempts to effect an improvement in naval discipline. Abuses connected with the unlimited number of cabins built on the King's ships, leading to 'the pestering of the ship,' 'contracting of sickness,' temptation to officers 'to neglect their duties and mis-spend their time in drinking and debauchery,' and 'the danger of fire,' led to the adoption, on 16 October, 1673, of a regular establishment of cabins for ships of each rate[254].

Another abuse of long standing had been the taking of merchants' goods in the King's ships. Sir Robert Slyngesbie had observed in his Discourse[257].

The absence of commanders from their ships without leave gave a good deal of trouble during the period 1673-9. On 1 October, 1673, the Commissioners of the iralty ordered that the commanders should be 'pricked out of pay' for such absences[262]

The official correspondence of 1673-9, although it reveals a grievous laxity of discipline[263], exhibits Pepys himself in a favourable light. He had a high sense of the honour of the service, and shewed himself both firm and humane in his dealings with his official inferiors. He was at great pains to keep himself informed of the proceedings of the commanders, and when breaches of discipline were reported to him, he took infinite trouble to arrive at the facts. His onitions to the offenders, though sometimes a little unctuous, are as a rule in the best Pepysian style.

The decay of discipline in the Restoration period has been associated by some writers with the practice of appointing 'gentlemen captains' without experience to important [69]commands at sea. The matter is discussed by Macaulay, picturesquely but with exaggeration[268]; they have habitually delayed in port when they should have been at sea; a gentleman captain will bring 'near twenty landmen into the ship as his footmen, tailor, barber, fiddlers, decayed kindred, volunteer gentlemen or acquaintance, as companions,' and these 'are of Bishop Williams's opinion, that Providence made man to live ashore, and it is necessity that drives him to sea.' The writer concludes that 'the Crown will at all times be better able to secure trade, prevent the growth of the naval strength of our enemy, with £100,000 under a natural sea iralty and seamen captains ... than with three times that sum under land irals and gentlemen captains not bred tarpaulins.'

[70]

With some qualifications this is the view of Pepys. He disclaims hostility to gentlemen captains as such; but he quotes from a speech delivered by Colonel Birch in the House of Commons, in which he had urged that one of the 'present miscarriages' of the navy is that 'employment and favour are now bestowed wholly upon gentlemen, to the great discouragement of tarpaulins of Wapping and Blackwall, from whence ... the good commanders of old were all used to be chosen.'[271].

It is in a way remarkable that during the period of complaints against gentlemen captains we come upon the first establishment of an examination for lieutenants. Towards the end of 1677 complaints reached the iralty from Sir John Narbrough, commanding in the Mediterranean, of the 'defectiveness' of his lieutenants 'in their seamanship.'[277], 'we have not half the throng of those of the bastard breed pressing for employments which we heretofore used to be troubled with, they being conscious of their inability to this examination, and know it to be to no purpose now to solicit for employments till they have done it.'

To about the same time as the examination for lieutenants belongs another minor reform—an establishment for the better provision of naval chaplains. In April or May, 1677, the King and Lords of the iralty resolved 'that no persons shall be entertained as chaplains on board his Majesty's ships but such as shall be approved of by the Lord Bishop of London.'[280].

An important measure which had an indirect bearing upon discipline was James II's 'establishment about plate carriage and allowance for captains' tables,'[281] dated 15 July, 1686. The title of the establishment gives little indication of its real scope; it was designed to give the iralty a better control over ships on foreign service, and at the same time so to improve the position of the commanders as to put them beyond the reach of temptations to neglect their public duty for private gain. The preamble refers to the 'general disorder' into which the discipline of the navy has 'of late years' fallen, and especially to the particular evil arising from 'the liberty taken by commanders of our ships (upon all opportunities of private profit) of converting the service of our said ships to their own use, and the total neglect of the public ends for which they, at our great charge, are set forth and maintained, namely, the annoying of our enemies, the protecting the estates of our trading subjects, and the of our honour with foreign princes.' Commanders are accordingly forbidden to convey money, jewels, merchandise, or engers without the King's warrant; and copies of orders given by irals or commanders-in-chief are to be sent to the Secretary of the iralty, as also interim reports of proceedings, and a complete journal at [73]the end of the voyage. In consideration of these requirements, commanders are to receive substantial additional allowances 'for the of their tables,' ranging from £83 a year to £250 according to the ship's rate.

The reign of James II was in a peculiar degree a period of the framing and revising of 'establishments,' and on 13 April, 1686, a new establishment was made concerning 'volunteers and midshipmen extraordinary.'[283].

During the earlier part of Pepys's second Secretaryship, drunkenness gave a good deal of trouble. For instance, in 1685 the commander of the Diamond complained that his officers were 'sottish, and unfit to serve the King,' particularly the gunner, who was 'dead drunk in his cabin when the powder was to be taken out.'[287]

In connexion with discipline it may be mentioned that even as early as the Restoration there were labour troubles in the dockyards. In 1663 a separate room was applied for in the new storehouse at Portsmouth for use as a workroom, 'as seamen and carpenters will never agree to work together.'[291].

The two great shipbuilding years of our period were 1666 and 1679—the first ed for by the Second Dutch War, and the latter by the Act of 1677 for thirty new ships to which I have already referred[295]. In 1660 the tonnage was 62,594; in 1688, 101,032. In 1660 the number of men borne on the sea establishment was 19,551; in 1688,41,940. In 1660 the total number of guns was 4,642; in 1688, 6,954.

[76]

In connexion with guns, the important achievement of the period was the systematising, under the methodical hand of Pepys, of the arrangements for determining the number and type of the armament of each rate, and the number of men required to work it. In 1677 he drew up a 'general establishment' of men and guns[297].'

Let me now sum up briefly our general conclusions.

In the light of the facts which I have endeavoured to set out in these lectures, the old notion that the naval istration of the Interregnum was pious and efficient and that of the Restoration immoral and slack appears crude and unsatisfying. But there is this element of truth in it—that vigorous efforts for the regeneration of the navy were to a certain extent rendered abortive by the corruption of the Court and the lowness of the prevailing political tone. Able and energetic reformers were baffled by want of money, and this was due partly to royal extravagance and partly to unsatisfactory relations with Parliament, which suspected peculation and waste. Discipline also was undermined by the introduction into the service of unfit persons, who obtained ission and were protected from the adequate punishment of their delinquencies by the interest of persons of quality at Court. Further, an atmosphere was created which enervated some of the reformers themselves. It is remarkable that in spite of these drawbacks so much should have been accomplished. The facts and figures contained in the naval manuscripts in the Pepysian Library go a long [77]way to justify the claims made by Pepys on behalf of the istrations with which he himself was connected, and particularly on behalf of the Special Commission of 1686, which, as he says, 'raised the Navy of England from the lowest state of impotence to the most advanced step towards a lasting and solid prosperity that (all circumstances considered) this nation had ever seen it at.'[304].

It is not surprising that a man so observant, so experienced, and so absorbed in the navy should have drawn the moral of the naval history of his own time. In his Memoires of the Royal Navy[306], Pepys states the essential 'truths' of the 'sea œconomy' of England, which are as valid to-day as when he wrote them down—'that integrity and general (but unpractised) knowledge are not alone sufficient to conduct and a Navy [79]so as to prevent its declension into a state little less unhappy than the worst that can befall it under the want of both'; 'that not much more (neither) is to be depended on even from experience alone and integrity, unaccompanied with vigour of application, assiduity, affection, strictness of discipline, and method'; but that what is really needed is 'a strenuous conjunction of all these.' For himself he claims due credit, for it was 'a strenuous conjunction of all these (and that conjunction only)' that redeemed the navy in 1686.

An anonymous irer[308] to apply business principles to naval istration.

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INDEX 1u5b6e

• Absence of commanders, 67
• Abuses in the navy, 10
• istration, 36
• iralty commissions:
• 1659-60, 18;
• 1673-79, 30;
• 1679-84, 32;
• special commission of 1686, 48
• Aldeburgh, 49
• Algiers, 35
• Allin, Sir Thomas, comptroller of the navy 67
• Anglesey, Earl of, treasurer of the navy, 24
• Bagwell, Mr, 46
• Barber Surgeons, Company of, 39
• Barlow, Thomas, clerk of the acts, 21
• Batten, Lady, 20
• —— Sir William, surveyor of the navy, 24
• Berkeley, Lord, commissioner of the navy, 22
• Billingsgate, 45
• Birch, Colonel, 70
• Black Book of the iralty, 3
• Blackwall, 70
• Blake, Robert, 78
• Boatswains' stores, establishment for (1686), 73
• Boteler, Captain, 62
• Bowles, Phineas, secretary of the iralty, 36
• Bristol, 39
• Brouncker, Lord, commissioner of the navy, 33
• Cabins, establishment for (1673), 66
• 'Calentures,' 63
• Capel, Sir Henry, commissioner of the iralty, 32
• Captains' tables, establishment for (1686), 72
• Carpenters' stores, establishment for (1686), 73
• Carteret, Sir George, treasurer of the navy, 24
• Chaplains, establishment for (1677), 71
• Charles I, 21
• —— II, 54;
• his interest in the sea, 77
• Chatham, 74
• —— Chest, 67
• Civil War, 48
• Clerk of the Acts, 18
• Cocke, Captain, hemp contractor, 29
• Cockerell, Pepys, 11
• Coke, Lord Chief Justice, 16
• Commissions:
• of 1608, 8;
• of 1618, 5;
• of 1626, 5;
• for sick and wounded (1664 and 1672), 49;
• for widows and orphans (1673), 49;
• see also iralty Commissions
• Commons, House of, 70
• Commonwealth, 48
• Comptroller of the Navy, 18
• Cordage, abuses in, 10
• Cottenham, Earl of, 11
• Covent Garden, 67
• Coventry, Sir William, commissioner of the navy, 69;
• his financial scheme (1667), 41
• Cox, John, 74
• Dartmouth, 49
• 'Dead pays,' 54
• Deal, 49
• Deane, Sir Anthony, commissioner of the navy, 32;
• his appointment on the Special Commission of 1686, 36;
• his Doctrine of Naval Architecture, 3
• —— Richard, 55
• Deptford, 74
• Devonshire, 46
• Discipline of the navy, 75;
• Act of 1661, 64
• Dockyards, troubles in, 74
• Dover, 49
• [81] Drunkenness in the navy, 73
• Dugdale, Sir William, 1
• Dutch Wars:
• first, 78;
• second, 75;
• third, 60
• Edward VI, 22
• Embezzlement, Act against (1664), 64
• Evelyn, John, 25;
• commissioner for sick and wounded (1664 and 1672), 50
• Finance, 56
• Finch, Daniel (afterwards Earl of Nottingham), commissioner of the iralty, 32
• Fireships, 75
• , 43
• French iralty, report from, 34
• Galleys, 75 n.
• Gauden, Sir Denis, victualler of the navy, 59
• Gentlemen captains, 68
• Gosport, 49
• Gravesend, 50
• 'Gromets', 52
• Grove, Captain, 29
• Guardboats at Chatham and Portsmouth, instructions for (1685), 72 n.
• Gunfleet, 63
• Guns, 75;
• establishment for (1677), 76
• 'Haberdine,' 61
• Half-pay, 56
• Harbour wages, 52
• Harwich, 49
• Hawkyns, Sir John, 5
• Hayter, Thomas, clerk of the acts, 79 n.
• Hollond, John:
• his Discourses of the Navy, 4;
• Pepys's opinion of them, 5
• Hull, 45
• Ipswich, 49
• Jamaica, 22
• James I, 28
• James, Duke of York (James II), 77;
• appointed lord high iral (1660), 18;
• his knowledge of naval affairs, 19;
• his instructions of 1662, 26;
• resigned (1673), 30;
• went abroad (1679), 32;
• his own lord high iral (1685) 34;
• withdraws from the kingdom (1688), 36
• Kent, 51
• Kneller's portrait of Pepys, 78
• Labour troubles in the dockyards, 74
• Lawrence, Mr, master shipwright at Woolwich, 36
• Lee, Sir Thomas, commissioner of the iralty, 33
• Lely's portrait of Pepys, 78
• Lieutenants, examination for (1677), 70
• London, 49
• —— Bishop of, 71
• Long Parliament, 48
• Lord High iral:
• Duke of York appointed (1660), 18;
• in the hands of the King and an iralty commission (1673), 30;
• entirely in commission (1679), 32;
• restored to Charles II (1684), 34;
• James II (1685), 34;
• lord high iral's instructions (1662), 26
• Lord Treasurer, 36
• Lowestoft, 24
• Maidstone, 38
• Manuscripts in the Pepysian Library, 2
• Meadows, Sir Philip, 3
• Mediterranean, 70;
• victualling contract in, 62
• Mennes, Sir John, comptroller of the navy, 45
• Merchants' goods in the King's ships, 66
• Middleton, Colonel Thomas, commissioner and surveyor of the navy, 58
• Midshipmen, establishments for (1676 and 1686), 73
• Monck, George, 23
• Monson, Sir William, 24
• Myngs, Sir Christopher, 14
• Narbrough, Sir John, 70;
• on special commission of 1686, 35
• Naval Discipline Act (1661), 64
• Naval stores, embezzlement of, 64
• Navy Board:
• in 1659, 18;
• in 1660, 22;
• in 1673, 30;
• in 1679, 33;
• in 1688, 35;
• a body of experts, 33;
• its functions, 50
• [82] North Foreland, 13
• Northumberland, Earl of, 5
• Nottingham, Earl of;
• see Finch
• Orange, Prince of, 36
• Ordnance Office, 76 n.
• Parliament, 76;
• vote of 1665, 40;
• of 1666, 41;
• of 1677, 32;
• of 1678, 43
• Pay, rates of, 52;
• continuous pay for naval officers, 55;
• see also Wages
• Pearse, James, chirurgeon-general of the navy, 51
• Penn, Sir William, commissioner of the navy, 25;
• his Naval Collections, 2
• Pension Parliament, 31
• Pensions, 56
• Pepys, John, clerk of the acts, 30
• —— Mrs, 20
• —— Paulina, 11
• Pepys, Samuel:
• clerk of the acts (1660), 21;
• treasurer of Tangier commission (1665), 28;
• surveyor-general of victualling (1665), 59;
• secretary of the iralty (1673), 30;
• his speech in Parliament (1677), 31;
• involved in the Popish Plot and resigned (1679), 32;
• second secretaryship (1684), 34;
• deprived (1689), 36.
• His projected history of the navy, 2;
• pronunciation of his name, 11;
• the Diary, 11;
• his official style, 14;
• services to the navy, 77;
• question of his corruption, 28;
• a disciplinarian, 66;
• his views on gentlemen captains, 70;
• on drunkenness in the navy, 73;
• a framer of 'establishments,' 71
• Pepysian Library, 76
• Pett, Peter, commissioner of the navy, 38
• —— Phineas, 7
• —— Sir Phineas, 35
• Petty, Sir William, 22
• Plate carriage, establishment for (1686), 72
• Plymouth, 49
• 'Poor John,' 61
• Popish Plot, 32
• Portsmouth, 74
• Principal Officers, 41;
• see also Navy Board
• Prisoners of war, care of, 49
• Public s, commission of, 54
• Puritans, 37
• Pyend, Captain Stephen, 61 n.
• Riot, Act against (1664), 64
• Rochester, 50
• Royal Society, 25
• Rump Parliament, 18
• Rupert, Prince, commissioner of the iralty, 60
• Sandwich, Earl of, 58
• Scurvy, 63
• Seymour, Sir Edward, commissioner of the navy, 26
• Shipbuilding, 75;
• Act of 1677, 75
• Ships:
• Augustine, 60
• Centurion, 43
• Coventry, 58
• Diamond, 73
• Gloucester, 60
• James, 9
• Lark, 67
• Little Victory, 45
• Pearl, 45
• Reserve, 60
• Rupert, 43
• Swan, 43
• Shipwrights' Company, 3
• Shish, Jonas, 46
• Sick and wounded seamen, 48
• Slyngesbie, Sir Robert, comptroller of the navy, 24;
• his Discourse of the Navy, 4
• Southampton, 49
• Southwell, Sir Robert, 4
• Southwold, 49
• Special Commission of 1686, 48
• Spithead, 47 n.
• Stratton, 22
• Surveyor of the Navy, 18
• Tangier, 29
• Test Act (1673), 30
• Tickets, wages paid by, 53
• Tilbury Hope, 9
• Timber, abuses in, 10
• Tippetts, Sir John, commissioner and surveyor of the navy, 35
• Tower, Pepys sent to the, 32
• Treasurer of the Navy, 18
• Treasury Chamber, 36
• [83] Trinity House, 3
• Turenne, 22
• Victualling, 64;
• abuses in, 9;
• victualling 'upon ,' 63;
• contract of 1677, 61;
• contract for the Mediterranean, 62
• Volunteers, establishments for (1676 and 1686), 73
• Wages, abuses in, 6;
• tickets for, 53;
• 'dead pays,' 54
• Wapping, 70
• Warren, Sir William, timber contractor, 28
• Warwick, Sir Philip, 40
• Watermen's Hall, 47
• Weymouth, 49
• Wounded seamen, scale of relief for (1685), 51;
• see also Sick and Wounded
• Yachts, 75
• Yarmouth, 49

CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY J. B. PEACE, M.A., AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.