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A SHORT HISTORY
OF THE
ROYAL NAVY
1217 TO 1688

BY

DAVID HANNAY

METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.
LONDON
1898

PREFACE

It has been my endeavour in this book to give a popular, but clear and not inaccurate, account of the growth, and services, of the Royal Navy. I have not attempted a general maritime history of England. This, which would include the rise and extension of commerce, discovery, much scientific matter and much legislation, would be the life-work of a Gibbon or a Hume. Such a task would be far beyond my powers, even if circumstances, which need not be specified, did not refuse me command of the time needed for so great an undertaking.

I am not unconscious that a landsman deals with sea affairs at a certain risk. He has, in Southey's phrase, to walk among sea-terms "as a cat does in a china pantry." He is liable to discover, from the criticism of a sailor, that he has made a fleet sail within two points of the wind—a disaster which it was once my lot to undergo. Perhaps only long professional experience will save a writer from such errors. If, as is only too probable, there are some in this book, I can but beg for the favourable consideration of the friendly reader.

The present volume ends at that dividing line in our history, the Revolution of 1688. Another will give the history of the great struggle with France and her dependent allies, which began in 1689, and ended only when the time of great naval wars was over—for at any rate the larger part of a century, if not for ever. The main subject of the present volume, apart from the formation of the naval service, is the less known, but not less important, and assuredly not less arduous, struggle with Holland.

I have made it the rule to adopt the accepted spelling of names—to write Monk, not Monck; Raleigh, not Ralegh; Hawkins, not Hawkyns. Matthew Arnold once gave it as his reason for not adopting a reformed system of spelling classical names, that he would not pass his life in a wilderness of pedantry in order that his children might attain to an orthographical Canaan. That Hawkins used a "y" where we use "i" in his name, as in other words, therein following the custom of his time, does not seem to me to be any reason for departing from the practice of the language as it is to-day.

DAVID HANNAY.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
THE MEDIÆVAL NAVY

Authorities.—Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas has made an exhaustive collection of all the evidence as to the history of the Royal Navy in the Middle Ages, in the only two volumes published of his History of the Royal Navy from the Earliest Times to the Wars of the French Revolution. It is the basis of this Introduction. Captain Burrows' Cinque Ports, in the Historical Towns Series, supplements Sir H. Nicolas.

A glance at a globe turned so as to bring the British Isles directly under the eye will at once reveal the most effective of all the material causes which have made them the seat of the great naval power among nations. It is the unrivalled advantage of their position. They lie between the Old World and the New, with free access to the great ocean, surrounded by seas, which, though stormy, are not unmanageable. Their coasts are never blocked by ice. No long intervals of calm varied by mere puffs of wind reduce sailing ships to immobility, and limit their size by imposing on them the necessity of relying on the oar. Steam has freed maritime war and commerce from dependence on the wind, but the naval power of England was created during the ages of the sailing ship. Steam, too, has only made the benefit of free access to the ocean if possible more valuable. It is commonly said that an island is peculiarly fitted to be the seat of a naval power, and no doubt freedom from the perpetual risk of invasion by land is a material advantage. Immunity from that danger has saved us from the necessity for expending our resources on armies, which crippled Holland, exhausted Spain, and has hampered France. But it must be remembered that the great maritime powers of antiquity and the Middle Ages were on the mainland round the Mediterranean, not on the islands. Again, it is clear that if, in the place of Ireland, there lay to the immediate west of us any great bulk of territory too strong to be conquered, too alien to be absorbed, our insular position would not have saved us from being much confined, if not wholly shut in. But to the west of us lies the Atlantic Ocean, the beginning of the road which leads to wealth and empire all over the world. No power can block our way thither while we exercise even equal strength on water.

Before full advantage could be taken of our position, three conditions had to be fulfilled. These islands had to become the seat of an organised State, and to cease from being merely the field in which hostile races were fighting for the mastery. The weapon of sea-power, which is the seaworthy and sea-keeping ship, had to be created. The New World had to be opened to the enterprise of the Old, and the globe to be explored. Ages passed before these conditions were fulfilled.

The maritime history of the country divides itself into three periods. First, there are the ages during which the people was being formed and the weapon forged. This may be said to extend from the first beginnings to the accession of the House of Tudor. At that date, when, be it noted, the Portuguese were exploring the sea route round Africa to the east, and Columbus was leading Spain to America, there was still much to be done in the work of consolidation within, and in the perfecting of the ship; but a vessel had been made which could sail the world round, and in the British Isles it had come to this, that England was predominant, and that for her fellow-islanders the choice was between conquest at her hands, or union on honourable terms. The second period stretches from the accession of the House of Tudor to the close of the seventeenth century, when superiority of power at sea had been fully won. The third, beginning with the Revolution, lasts until our own time. It includes the two hundred years or so during which England, having now united to herself, or conquered, all rivals within these islands, has exercised the power she had won.

A complete history of the maritime power of England would be a vast subject, for it must include the whole story of the growth of her commerce, and her commercial or fiscal legislation. The object of this book is more modest. It is merely to describe in the main lines, and without professing to enter into detail, the growth and action of the Royal Navy—the armed force by which England has protected her commerce, has made her strength felt in the strife of nations, and has first secured, and then defended, her dominions beyond the sea.

The first of the three periods just spoken of may be passed over rapidly. In the earlier ages there was neither the organised State which could wield a navy, nor the ships for it to use. From the days of Julius Cæsar to those of William of Normandy, no invader found effectual resistance for long on water when he was about invading this country. Our own Teutonic fathers, who were raiding on the coast long before they began their permanent settlements, the generals of the Roman emperors who had rebellions to suppress, the "hornets," as Simeon of Durham called them, who swarmed out of Scandinavia, and the Conqueror himself, landed as they pleased, with rare and doubtful exceptions. There was no State so rich and so fully organised as to be able to maintain a permanent navy. How fully this was the case was shown in the fateful year 1066. Harold was undisputed king in England. The House of Godwin was familiar with the use of ships, and possessed not a few. Yet within a few months England was twice invaded from over sea. Harold must have known that the most effectual of all ways of protecting his crown was by preventing the landing of an enemy. But he was compelled to disband his land and sea forces on the Nativity of St. Mary, for want of provisions. No organisation capable of meeting the cost of a permanent navy existed. The ships, too, were but large open boats, seaworthy enough, and even capable of making long voyages, but, when full of fighting men, they could not be stored with provisions, and they could not give cover to their crews. So there could be no blockade, no long months of watching spent at sea, without which a navy can never be used except as a mere means of transport. Hence for centuries it is always the same story. The invader runs into an estuary, or on to an open beach, and marches inland, seizing horses. A battle on land decides whether he is or is not to succeed in his purpose, whether of mere plunder or settlement. The Conqueror himself made so little use of his ships, except to cross the Channel, that he could not prevent the Danish king from hanging on the eastern coast for months.

With the beginning of the thirteenth century there came a great change. The conflict of races was over, State and people were formed in England. On the throne there was a man nearly as able as he was wicked, and he had every motive to make use of his ships to forestall invasions. With King John begins, strictly speaking, the naval history of this country. His predecessors since the Conqueror were masters of both sides of the Channel, and had no need of their fleets except for transport. They might take English ships and seamen with them on their expeditions as far as Syria. Under their powerful rule commerce had increased, and a seafaring class had been formed. But John is the first king of England who effectually used his navy to stop invasion. By 1213 his Continental dominions had been torn from him. Philip Augustus, King of the French, was preparing an invasion, and John well knew that an invader would find friends among his vassals. Being richer and better armed, if not wiser, than Harold, he struck first. A fleet of English ships, under the command of John's half-brother, William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, crossed to Damme, where the ships of the French king were collected, and burned them. The scheme of invasion broke down completely for that time. John's reign ended in anarchy. His rebellious barons brought in a son of the French king, and set him up as sovereign. But the death of the wicked king removed the one valid excuse for the rebellion. The country rallied round his infant son and against the invader. Within four years the ships of England were again used with decisive effect to crush an invasion.

In 1217 Prince Louis and his allies, the barons, had been defeated at the battle of Lincoln, and, being now hemmed in between their enemies and the sea, were in urgent need of reinforcements from abroad. Stores and men were collected for them in Normandy. Eighty ships, besides smaller vessels, are said to have been brought together at Calais, under the command of Eustace the Monk. This man was one of the many mercenary fighters of the time, and had once been in the employment of King John. With this force he put to sea, running before a southerly wind. His intention was to round the North Foreland, and carry his convoy up the Thames to London, which was still held for the barons. If he had succeeded, he might have greatly prolonged the Civil War, but, happily for England, neither the man nor the means to avert the disaster were wanting. Hubert de Burgh, the King's Justiciary and Governor of Dover Castle, was at his post. He appealed to the men of the Cinque Ports, not in vain. "If these people land," he said, "England is lost; let us therefore boldly meet them, for God is with us, and they are excommunicate." Hubert de Burgh saw that the one effectual way of preventing Eustace from doing harm on shore was to beat him at sea before he could land. The man who reasoned like this had grasped the true principle of the defence of England. Sixteen large ships and some smaller vessels were lying in Dover harbour. They were at once got out by the shipmen and fishermen of the town, worthy ancestors of the men who, centuries later, volunteered to fill up the crews of Blake, when he was threatened by Tromp in these very waters. The knights, squires, and men-at-arms of Hubert de Burgh's following made up the fighting crews. Training the yards of the one great square sail which the vessels of that time carried on their single mast, fore and aft, the English squadron kept its luff (the word is used by Matthew Paris), and, standing out to the east, placed itself on the track of the Monk, and between him and Calais.

As Eustace saw the Dover ships apparently standing over to Calais, he came to the not wholly unnatural conclusion that their plan was to plunder the town in his absence. He laughed, for he knew that he had left it well protected. But the intention of Hubert de Burgh was incomparably more courageous and more effective. He had begun, as every English admiral in after time was wont to begin, by manœuvring to secure the windward position, which with sailing ships gives him who holds it the option of attack. As soon as the French vessels had been brought well to leeward, the English turned together before the wind, and, forming what in after times would have been called the line abreast, stood at their utmost speed in pursuit of the enemy. The Monk was completely out-manœuvred. His heavily-laden vessels could not escape pursuit by flight, while they must infallibly be thrown into confusion by the act of turning to face the pursuers. It was no small advantage to the English that their arrows would fly with the wind. So soon as they were within shot, Hubert de Burgh's archers let fly, and the clothyard shafts, or the bolts from the crossbows, came whistling down on the crowded benches of the French ships. All battles then by land or sea were settled at close quarters with cold steel. The English pressed on to board. Where the enemy's ships were caught in the act of turning, they drove into them with the stem, ramming and sinking them. When this more expeditious method could not be practised, the English laid the enemy aboard, throwing quicklime, which the wind blew in the Frenchmen's faces, into the air in the moment of impact. The boarders followed close on the blinding cloud, and the axes of the Cinque Ports men fell briskly to work.

"Whenas he fights and has the upper hand

By sea he sends them home to every land,"

wrote Chaucer of the shipman. The Cinque Ports men, who had had a cruel experience of the tender mercies of John's foreign mercenaries, were certainly in no humour to give quarter to the adventurers who were on their way to England to renew the worst excesses of the wicked king's followers. There was a great massacre. Taken at a disadvantage, and scattered at the moment of attack, the Monk's ships were overpowered in detail. So great was the fury of the English crews that it overcame even the love of ransom which commonly introduced some measure of mercy into mediæval battles. Eustace himself, who, we are told, offered a great price for his life, was beheaded by one blow of the sword by Richard, King John's bastard son. The whole fleet on which Louis and the barons had relied to save them from destruction, was annihilated. The neck of the opposition to the young king's government was effectually broken. Before the end of the year Louis had returned to France, and the barons had made their submission.

The trial stroke of the English Navy was a master-stroke. No more admirably planned, no more timely, no more fruitful battle has been fought by Englishmen on water. It settled for ever the question how best this country is to be defended. In after times, during the Armada year and later, there have been found men to talk of trusting to land defences; but the sagacity of Englishmen has taught them to rely on the navy first, and that protection has never wholly failed us in six hundred and eighty years. The battle is curiously similar to the long list of conflicts with the French which were to follow it. The enemy is found carrying out a scheme of attack on our territory, and so intent on his ultimate object that he neglects to attack our ships first. Hubert de Burgh, acting exactly as Hawke, Rodney, Hood, or Nelson would have done, manœuvres for the "weather-gage," the position to windward, falls upon the Frenchman on his way, and wrecks his carefully laid scheme at a blow.

The navy was now established in all essentials as it was to remain till the accession of the Tudor dynasty, at the close of the fifteenth century. The ship was indeed in process of development throughout all these ages. The stages of this growth are obscure, and belong rather to the domain of the archæologist than to that of the historian. We still possess an example of the original type in the Viking ship which was dug up from the burial mound at Gókkstad in Norway. She is a vessel of some size, nearly a hundred feet long, sharp at both ends, high in the bow and stern. Her breadth is about a third of her length, and she is low in the waist. The bottom is flat, as was natural in a vessel designed to be hauled up on the beach, and to take the ground without damage on a receding tide. Her hull is clinker-built, that is to say, with the planks overlapping one another, and not put edge to edge, as in the carvel-built ships of later times. One mast, shipped exactly in the middle, and carrying one great square sail, constituted all her rigging. There was no deck, though there may have been small covered spaces at the bow and stern. She was steered by an oar fixed on the right or starboard (i.e. steering) side, a little before the sternpost. In battle the mast and sail were lowered, and the vessel propelled by oars, of which the Gokkstad ship rowed sixteen on each side. By the thirteenth century this type had been already developed. The maritime States of the Mediterranean and the Basque ports of Spain had begun to build more elaborately constructed galleys and much heavier vessels. But, to judge by the illuminations in the manuscript of Matthew Paris, the ships of Hubert de Burgh did not differ in any essential particular of construction from those of Saint Olaf or Canute. Indeed, as late as the reign of Edward III., and later, our ships were small in comparison with the Basque. Still there was a steady though slow advance in mechanical skill. Decks were introduced, and the vessels were built higher. Fore and after castles began to be erected. The rudder gradually displaced the steering oar. Two masts, and finally three, replaced the one of the early ships. The introduction of cannon, which dates from the fourteenth century, compelled changes in form. In order to support the weight of the guns, and the shock of firing them, it was necessary to build ships higher and stronger. The height could have been obtained by merely continuing the curve of the bottom farther; but if this had been done, the vessel would have been weak, and the leverage of the weight of the guns would have tended to tear her to pieces. To obviate this risk, the sides were curved in above the water-line in what was called "a tumble home." The guns were at first fired over the top of the bulwarks. A French builder, Descharges of Brest, has the credit of first constructing a ship with portholes through which the cannon could be pointed. In one respect the mediæval ship was curiously like the modern war vessel. She carried a crow's nest on her masts, a military top, in fact, from which archers and crossbowmen could fire, or stones be thrown, on to an enemy's deck. It must not be supposed that these improvements were all strictly successive. Old and new types would be found existing side by side. The rudder and the steering oar, for instance, are found in use together, but gradually the better drove the less good out of use. The long low galleys of the Mediterranean, or at least craft of that description, are heard of as employed in the Middle Ages, but our seas are not friendly to that class of vessel. It appears, from the account of the battle with Eustace the Monk, that the practice of lowering masts and sails on going into action had fallen into disuse by the thirteenth century. This implies at least a greater weight of spars and solidity of rigging than had obtained earlier. It will be easily understood that then, as at all times, there were wide differences in the sizes of ships. They ranged from mere row-boats to the vessel of 250 or 300 tons, known as "cog," or by other names of which we only dimly appreciate the significance.

The King of England drew his fleets from three sources. To begin with, he had his own ships, which were his personal property, like his horses or the suits of armour he supplied to his own immediate following. These he used in war, or hired to the merchants in peace, according to circumstances. The purely administrative and financial management of these vessels was entrusted to some member of his household. In earlier ages it fell to one of the "king's clerks," the permanent civil servants of the time, who, when all learning was the province of the Church, were naturally ecclesiastics, and for whom the king provided by securing their nomination to benefices. William of Wrotham, Archdeacon of Taunton, was "keeper of the king's ships, galleys, and seaports" to King John. There is a mention, though not continuous record, of other "clerks" who had charge of the king's ships till the reign of Henry VIII. The number of these ships would vary according to the interest the king took in them, the need he had for them, and his merits as a husband of his money. In the troubled times of the Lancastrian line the king's ships were few, but it does not seem that at any period he was wholly without some of his own.

The second source from which the fleets were recruited was the trading craft of London and the outports. The kings of England claimed, and exercised from the beginning, the right of impressing all ships for the defence of the realm. Every port was assessed according to its supposed resources in so many vessels properly found. They were, however, maintained by the king on service. There was a certain difference in the method of manning these two classes. In the king's own ships all alike were his servants. When a merchant ship was impressed, her crew would, when possible, be taken with her. The king then put an officer of his own, with a body of soldiers, into her. In both there was a distinction between the military officer whose business it was to fight, and the shipman whose business it was to sail.

Thus arose that distinction between the captain and the master of an English man-of-war, which lasted far into this century. The practice was universal as late as the seventeenth century. Every Spanish ship had two captains—the "capitan de guerra" (of war) and the "capitan de mar" (sea captain). But whereas in the Spanish ships the two officers were co-ordinate, with us there was no question that the master was subordinate to the captain. The Kings of England, from the Conqueror downwards, have had no love for divided authority.

The third source from which the king drew his ships was the most picturesque of all. The towns, with their dependent townships, Hastings, Winchelsea, Rye, Romney, Hythe, Dover, and Sandwich, forming the ancient corporation of the Cinque Ports, were bound by the terms of their charters to supply the king in any one year with 57 ships, 1140 men, and 57 boys for fifteen days at their own charges, and after that for as long as he chose to retain them at his own expense. For this they were repaid by privileges and honours. Every ancient institution is respectable, and the Cinque Ports men won such immortal honour by the defeat of Eustace the Monk, that we are naturally tempted to treat them tenderly. Yet it may be doubted whether they have not enjoyed an historical reputation much in excess of their merits. It is the defect of every privileged body that it is apt to be jealous. The Cinque Ports men were no exception to the rule. Many instances might be quoted of their savage feuds with rival towns, notably with Yarmouth. Under so strong a king as Edward I. and in the midst of an expedition to Flanders they fell upon and destroyed a number of Yarmouth vessels. Under weak kings complaints of their piracies and excesses on the coast are incessant. Although they no doubt supplied some kings with stout shipmen and useful vessels, it may be doubted whether they did not on the whole do as much in the way of fighting and plundering their own countrymen as against the national enemy. In the later Middle Ages the ports had already begun to silt up. They sank into insignificance, and in their last stage were chiefly known as nests of smugglers and pirates.

The crews of war vessels were divided into mariners and soldiers in unequal proportions. There were always more of the second than of the first. Thirty seamen were considered the full complement even of a large vessel; and when it is remembered that two hundred or two hundred and fifty tons was the size of a "great ship," and that the rigging was simple, the number will appear amply sufficient. It must always, too, be kept in mind that, though the relative number of sailors and soldiers in ships has varied, this distinction between the two elements constituting the crews of fighting craft has prevailed to our own time. No man-of-war was ever manned entirely by seamen, nor was it necessary that she should be. The number of men required to fight or to do work only on the decks, or between the decks, was at all times much in excess of what was needed for the purpose of sailing the ship. The steersmen and mariners of the Middle Ages, and the prime seamen of the eighteenth century, were highly trained men, whom it would have been folly to employ on such work as could be sufficiently well done by less skilful hands. From the earliest time of which there is any record, the great and arbitrary power of impressment was used to find crews for the king's ships. In 1208 King John ordered the seamen of Wales to cease making trading voyages, and to repair to Ilfracombe for the purpose of transporting soldiers to Ireland. He bade them "know for certain that if you act contrary to this, we will cause you and the masters of your vessels to be hanged, and all your goods to be seized for our use." In later times this would have been called a "hot press." The forms used might vary, and the penalties grow more humane, but the king's ships continued to be supplied with crews, down to the end of the war with Napoleon, after exactly the fashion in which King John provided for the transport of his soldiers to Ireland in 1208.

All the elements of the crews of later times are found in the ships of the Middle Ages. The mariners and "grometes" are the able seamen and ordinary seamen. There were boys then also. The archers were the predecessors of the marines, and of those drafts from the line regiments which were frequently used to make up the complement of men-of-war. The modern officers, too, have their representatives in the vessels of the Plantagenet kings. The Rector, afterwards called in official Latin Magister, is the master, the constable is the ancestor of the gunner, there was a carpenter, a "clerk," who was renamed the purser later on, and the boatswain. The nature of the work to be done would dictate the formation of these different offices. So soon as regular ships' companies began to be formed, it would be found indispensable to have someone to conduct the navigation—the master; someone to supervise the arms—the constable; someone to serve out the stores—the clerk. As ships' companies grew larger and ships more complicated, it would be necessary to increase the number of officers, and little by little the staff of a modern warship was formed. The title of captain appears at first to have been given to an officer who held what we should call flag rank. In the fifteenth century it began to be applied to the commander of a single ship. He was primarily a military officer, who might or might not be a seaman, but who in either case had a master under his command whose function it was to navigate the ship.

The growth of what came afterwards to be called flag rank may easily be traced. At first the king appointed some knight or noble to command his sea forces, and the soldiers in his ships, for some definite service. Then we hear of officers commanding in a given district for a specified time. These were first known as "captains and governors," justices or constables. In the early years of the fourteenth century the title of "Admiral" began to come into use. Captain and Admiral is the rank of the officer who commands the North and the Western Fleets. The first included the coast and sea from Dover to Berwick; the second, from Dover to the duchy of Cornwall inclusive. There was occasionally a third officer, who commanded in the Isle of Man and the Irish Sea. Of him we hear little. His chief duty was to assist in the work of subduing the Scots, and he was once at least chosen from among those chiefs of the Isles and the Western Highlands who were the worst enemies of the King of the Scots in the Lowlands. These captains and admirals were at first simple knights. Some of them were seamen of the Cinque Ports. The Alards, a family of Winchelsea, produced more than one holder of the post. The first admiral for all the seas was Sir John Beauchamp, K.G.; he was appointed by Edward III. in 1360, for a year. But it was not till later that it became the rule to have one admiral superior to all the others. In the fourteenth century a considerable change began to appear in the character, though not in formal rank or power, of these officers. In 1345 it was found necessary to appoint the Earl of Arundel to command the Western Fleet, "for no one can chastise or rule them unless he be a great man," to quote the candid confession of the King's Council. The royal authority, in fact, was growing weaker. It fell to its lowest depths in the later times of the Lancastrian line. The inevitable consequence was, that the barons seized upon the command of the ships, and used them for their own purposes. Warwick the king-maker, who among his many other offices held that of Captain of Calais and Admiral, was practically master of the whole naval forces of the country. The office of Lord High Admiral, which dates from the Lancastrian dynasty, was, in fact, a result of the aggression of the baronage. The king's authority being no longer sure of obedience, it was necessary to call in the power of the nobles, with the inevitable result. Those who knew that they were indispensable made their own terms. By the end of the Middle Ages the office of Lord High Admiral had become permanent. The old captains and admirals of the Northern and Western Fleets had disappeared, or were represented by subordinate officials, who received their commission from the Lord High Admiral. When the great Royalist reaction of the later fifteenth century had restored the authority of the Crown, the office survived. On the military side of his office the Lord High Admiral was the king's lieutenant for the fleet, exercising immense delegated powers in complete subjection to the Crown. But during the anarchy of the Wars of the Roses, such a man as Warwick, who garrisoned Calais with his own followers, and had the command of the ships, of which many were his own property, was practically master of the Channel, and rendered as much obedience to the king—or as little—as he pleased.

While the King of England possessed dominions on the Continent, he drew part of his naval forces from them. There is occasional mention of the king's ships and galleys of Aquitaine. The great reputation of the Italian seamen of the Middle Ages led to their employment now and then, and one, Nicholas Ususmaris of Genoa, was for a time in the service of Edward III., though only to command the ships belonging to Aquitaine. The Mediterranean seamen were employed very largely by the King of France, who was driven to use them by the want of skilful men among his own subjects. In the Middle Ages the English king appears only to have had recourse to them when he wished to make use of that typical Mediterranean craft, the galley. Under Henry VIII. Italians were brought in largely to serve both as seamen and shipbuilders, but by that time a larger class of vessel and a more extensive art of seamanship had begun to prevail. The galley, as has been already said, has never been found to answer in the Channel, and its brief appearances there have been of little note. For the classes of vessels he mainly used, that is, ships which might take to the oar as a subsidiary resource, but relied chiefly on the sail, the king could find men in abundance among his own subjects.

The most brief sketch of our navy in the Middle Ages would be incomplete without some mention of the famous claim to the sovereignty of the seas. That the King of England did make this haughty profession of superiority is within the knowledge of everybody, and it was advanced, in form at least, till late in the reign of George III. Attempts have been made to carry it back to the reign of King John, and have been supported by the inveterate mediæval practice of forging documents to bolster up supposed rights. But the so-called ordinance of King John, issued at Hastings in 1200, has been long given up. It was unquestionably a mere forgery, concocted at a later time to give the authority of antiquity to a more recent pretension. Yet about a hundred years later we find the sovereignty of Edward II. over the seas fully recognised by the Flemish towns. Edward III. asserted his right to be sovereign of the four seas of Britain without qualification. It must be remembered that this claim, which later times found intolerably arrogant, had in the Middle Ages the justification that it was supported by effective power. Not only was the King of England by far the most powerful sovereign on the seas in the west, but the possession of Calais gave him the command of the Straits of Dover on both sides. At a time when trade was conducted by coasting voyages, this enabled him to throttle the maritime commerce of the south with the north at will. The Venetian and Basque ships which came up to Antwerp in the early summer and went south again before autumn, were not only liable to attack by English vessels coming out of Dover or Calais, but they had constant need to use the roadsteads of these ports. It was consistent with all the ideas and practice of the Middle Ages that this power to injure should have been held to imply a right to assert superiority, and compel the recognition of it. Sir Harris Nicolas states that the first admission of this right on the part of foreigners is found in 1320, when certain Flemish envoys appealed to Edward II. to put a stop to piracies committed on their vessels by English evil-doers, praying him "of his lordship and royal power to cause right to be done, and punishment awarded, as he is Lord of the Sea, and the robbery was committed on the sea within his power, as is above said." It may be pointed out that the offences complained of were committed upon the English coast, and that an astute diplomatist of a later date might have argued that this admission did not amount to a recognition of English sovereignty over the whole North Sea. No serious resistance was, however, made to this claim till the reign of Louis XIV., which we may account for by the fact that nobody was strong enough to resist. The Venetian and Basque traders submitted to the claim much as an African caravan might recognise the right of a chief to extort backsheesh. The kings of France were too weak and too much occupied elsewhere to fight on this point of honour. The Flemings were generally our allies, and the northern powers were not concerned. Our pretension was the more easily borne because the King of England did not insist upon levying dues on all who passed through the four seas, but only on a salute as a formal recognition of superiority. This outward sign of deference, the lowering of sails, and in later times the firing of guns, was insisted upon punctiliously till far into the seventeenth century, and there are isolated cases in which it was extorted even in the eighteenth. The space of sea over which the sovereignty of England was held to extend was counted to stretch from Finisterre to the coast of Norway.

When the words "sovereignty of the sea" are used as meaning the king's effective superiority to any force which could be brought against him, there can be no question as to its reality. Throughout the Middle Ages, a king of England who was master of his own dominions was rarely hampered by the naval force of any enemy. When he marched to subdue his kingdom of Scotland, his fleets kept pace with his army as it advanced through the Lothians. On the rare occasions on which he visited his lordship of Ireland, there was nobody to say him nay. He passed and repassed at will to and from his kingdom of France. Pirates, Scotch, Flemish, and Scandinavian, might infest the coast. Now and then an expedition met with disaster. French and Spanish adventurers sometimes harried the coast, and burned small towns. But these failures of our power were comparatively rare. They occurred only when the king was weak, and the country exhausted or disturbed. The rule was, that when the monarchy exerted its strength it could sweep the seas. If the king was careless, Parliament was at hand to exhort him to action. Englishmen were keenly alive to the importance of "guarding the narrow seas round about." Nor were our ancestors ever in doubt as to how best to employ their navy. Even in the bad times of Edward II., when wisdom did not preside in the Council, a threat of invasion from France was met by the preparation of a fleet which was to attack, so that the enemy might first feel the evil. Centuries of experience have taught no better way of using the sea power.

A detailed account of the naval enterprises of the Middle Ages would go altogether beyond the scale of this work. Nor is the story one which can be told without monotony. In spite of the many improvements in the construction of ships and the advance of seamanship, the means of conducting a regular naval campaign were wanting. Vessels were still unable to keep the sea during long periods of cruising and blockade. They were not strong enough to stand the strain, nor could they carry the water and provisions required for the large fighting crews crowded into vessels ranging from fifty to three hundred tons. It followed from this double disability that warfare on sea was conducted by expeditions of brief duration. A fleet was collected, and sailed to attack the enemy's ships or harry his coast. When successful, it gathered all the plunder it could find, and returned home to be laid up for repair, while its crews were disbanded. Thus it not infrequently happened that, immediately after a striking victory, a raiding expedition of the enemy was able to pounce on some part of our coast, and retaliate by murder and ravage for what he had just suffered at home. We had a prevailing superiority, due to the greater number and efficiency of English seamen, and the greater average faculty of the English kings; but we must not look for examples of coherent, orderly war conducted through months, or even years, of effort by permanent forces.

A few examples must suffice to illustrate the general character of these centuries of conflict. No better instance of the nature of mediæval sea warfare can be found than the story of the desperate feud between the English and Norman fishermen, in the reign of Edward I. In 1293 a dispute arose in some port of Normandy or Gascony—for the authorities differ—between the French and English sailors. The point at issue, it is said, was which was entitled to drink first. It came rapidly from words to blows, and a man was killed. The authorities again differ as to whether he was French or English. All agree that the English sailors were chased back to their ships by a mob. Their ship put to sea, pursued by French vessels, and escaped. But the passions of the Norman seamen being now thoroughly aroused, they were minded to pursue the feud. Meeting six English merchant ships, they fell upon them and captured two. They hanged the crews at the yardarm, together with some dogs by way of greater insult. Then they paraded the Channel, plundering all they met, making "no distinction between an Englishman and a dog." In the meantime, the four ships which had escaped took refuge in the Cinque Ports. Here they promptly found allies, and a foray was rapidly arranged to revenge the outrage. A squadron of English ships, mainly drawn from the Cinque Ports, started in pursuit of the French. Finding that the enemy had returned to port, the English adventurers entered the Seine, captured six vessels after a sharp burst of fighting, and carried them off, having previously despatched their crews. Hereupon followed raid and counter raid, with their inevitable accompaniment of "great slaughter on both sides, shipwreck and rapine—both thirsting for blood." At last by common consent it was agreed to set a day and fight it out. The feud had apparently extended to all the seamen who used the Channel. Not only did other Frenchmen join the Normans, but Flemings and Genoese also. The Dutch and the Irish, the men, that is, of the partly English partly Norse towns of the coast, allied themselves with us. On the appointed day, the 14th April or May,—for once more the authorities do not agree,—the fleets met in mid-Channel, and after a savage battle the French and their allies were overcome with great carnage. At this point, but not till now, the Kings of England and of the French took up the quarrel of their subjects, and the feud between the fishermen and seamen grew into a national war. As, however, it possessed no naval features of interest, we need not pursue further the consequences of this explosion of the violence and pugnacity of the mediæval seamen.

It must always be remembered that the conditions which made this private war possible endured throughout the Middle Ages. In the absence of strong organised fleets to patrol the sea, and when no police had yet been formed in any State capable of depriving the sea robber of a safe market for his booty, every sailor not only had to fear the pirate, but he generally was prepared, upon a favourable opportunity presenting itself, to become one. The men of the Cinque Ports, of Yarmouth, or of Poole, to say nothing of the fact that they were prompt to pillage one another for want of better, were ever ready to applaud their townsman who brought in a French or Basque prize. The Norman or Basque, again, would have been surprised indeed if he had been asked to blame the fellow-countryman who came home with English booty. In fact, the sea everywhere was much in the condition of the Scotch Border. There might be truce between the kings, but the Borderers never ceased in their raids on one another, or on the rival clans of their own side. Hence it was that merchant ships sailed in large fleets for mutual protection, and that the complaints of rulers that their subjects had been pillaged by the sailors of another prince were incessant. Nor were the kings by any means backward in encouraging their vassals by their example. Of the two sea fights with which the chivalrous memory of Edward III. is associated, Sluys, and the battle off Winchelsea, known as "Les Espagnols sur Mer," the second was an incident in this piratical warfare. King Edward did not indeed make an unprovoked attack on the Spaniards for mere purposes of plunder, but he retaliated for one piece of piracy by another. His act was not one of especial violence for his time, yet it would not have been possible except in an age when the relations of seafaring nations were habitually lawless, and when an act of robbery by one was left unpunished, except when it provoked retaliation in kind by the other.

The battle of Sluys was a great regular engagement fought in pursuit of a national war. Edward III. had openly assumed the title of King of France in January 1340, and was preparing to assert his right by conquest. Philippe de Valois made ready to defend his throne, and took the measure dictated by sound sense. He collected a great fleet, composed in part of ships belonging to his subjects, in part of vessels hired from the Genoese. But the wisdom of the King of the French stopped at this preliminary stage. Although it appears that his fleet was collected as early as March, when King Edward had only forty ships in the Orwell, the great French armament lay idle in the little Flemish river Eede, at the anchorage of Sluys. The calculation perhaps was that its mere presence would suffice to delay the English king from attempting to cross. King Edward was not to be frightened. In spite of the opposition of his Chancellor and the backwardness of some of his captains, he decided to attack. Vigorous use was made of the time allowed him by the sloth of the enemy. Ships were called in from the north, and about the middle of June the king stood over to Blankenberg on the coast of Flanders. His fleet was somewhat stronger than the French. He puts the force opposed to him at a hundred and ninety vessels, while his own, including small craft, was over two hundred. But the French acted as if it had been their intention to deprive themselves of the advantage of their numbers. They remained in the river, with their ships lashed side by side to one another in three divisions. At a time when all battles were finally decided by hand-to-hand fighting, this was a not uncommon device with fleets which decided, or were compelled, to accept the attack. Nor was it altogether unreasonable, for it seemed to possess this advantage, that it forced the assailant to come on bow to bow, where his beaks would act with least effect, and where his men must board along a narrow passage; while the defender had the advantage of being able to make a barrier across the fore part of his vessel with his yard and his oars. The fatal defect of the formation was that an enemy who could fall on one end of the line could roll it up. As the French were drawn up along the bank of an estuary, and the English fleet was coming in from the sea, there was nothing to force King Edward to make a front attack. This fatal weakness of the position is said to have been noted by Barbavera, the veteran admiral of the Genoese. He is credited with an effort to induce King Philip's officers, Kiriet and Bahuchet, to stand out to sea so soon as the English appeared on the coast, but they showed the timidity which has commonly been noted in the sea fighting of the French, and preferred to wait passively for the attack. As usual, the victory fell to the side which could and would fall on.

King Edward had landed knights, who, riding over the sandhills, had taken a leisurely view of the French fleet at anchor. The weakness of their position must have been patent even to a less skilful captain than the victor of Creçy, and he decided to attack without delay. The battle was fought on the 24th of June. In the early morning the tide was at ebb, and an advance up the river was impossible. The English ships stood out to sea on the starboard tack till they were well opposite the entrance to the river. Then, as the tide turned, they swept in with it, and fell on the nearest division of the French. The destruction which followed bears an interesting resemblance to the battle of the Nile. On that occasion an English fleet coming in from the sea attacked the French lying passively at anchor, and overwhelmed them in detail. The difference was, that the Nile was decided by broadsides, and the great fight at Sluys by sword-stroke and the edge of the axe. Ship after ship was carried by boarding and its crew slaughtered, for all sea fights were, as Froissart noted, "felon," merciless and without quarter. The French had put the Great Christopher, a ship of King Edward's own, of which they had formerly made prize, at the end of their line. She fell first, and her sister ships shared her fate. In the rear of the French, that is, at the end farthest from the sea, some ships did indeed escape. They were commanded by Barbavera. It is probable that the English had not reached them when the tide turned, and the expert Genoese mercenary took the opportunity to slip to sea, leaving the van and centre to be crushed. In this also there is a curious similarity to the battle of the Nile, when Villeneuve fled with the rear ships. Sluys was an incredibly murderous battle. Upwards of thirty thousand men are said to have perished in the French fleet. It entirely crushed the naval forces of the Valois king, and from that time forward for years Edward crossed the Channel with as little molestation from an enemy as he would have met on the Thames at Oxford. The English loss was comparatively slight, but it is said to have included four of the ladies whom the king was taking with him to join the queen at Ghent.

The sea fight which took place ten years later is mainly memorable as a picturesque example of the lawlessness of the times. Characteristically enough, we owe our best account of it to Froissart, and it was just such a battle as he loved—a fine example of high-born daring, love of adventure, and, it is to be added, of total absence of scruple. To understand this battle, it is necessary to remember that the sea-borne commerce between the North and South of Europe was conducted in fleets which came up in spring from the south, and, after unloading and reloading at the great marts of Flanders, returned towards the end of summer. For the reasons already stated, they were subject to plunder on the way, and they were apt to retaliate. The king had cause of complaint against the Spanish, that is to say, the Basque traders, who are known to have plundered ten English ships coming from France. So, without wasting time in diplomacy, which would indeed have brought him little save delays and counter claims, he resolved to do himself justice. A fleet was collected at Winchelsea, and there the king, accompanied by some of his most famous knights, and by his still youthful sons, the Black Prince and John of Gaunt, lay in wait for the traders who must pass on their way home. The Basques were warned of what was preparing for them, but, confident in the size of their ships and their own courage, they were resolved to force a passage. They hired at Antwerp one of those gangs of fighting men who were then to be found in every marketplace in Europe, ready to serve any master who would pay, and any cause which promised booty. Then they sailed, well provided with weapons, and ready for the fray.

King Edward had taken up his quarters in an abbey near Winchelsea, with his queen and the ladies of his household. By day he visited his ships. By night there was feasting and dancing. When he knew that the Spaniards must be at hand, he went on board his flagship to be ready for them. It appears that no cruisers were stationed on the offing, and that the English fleet lay at anchor in the expectation that the Spaniards would seek them. If the southern traders had not been so unduly confident in their own strength, they might have passed in safety by keeping well out at sea. But, relying on the size of their vessels, and on "all kinds of artillery wonderful to think of," with which they were provided, they sought for battle, and therefore steered well in with the coast.

On the afternoon of the day of the fight, the 28th August 1350, the king was sitting on the deck of his vessel, the cog Thomas, wearing a black velvet overcoat over his armour and a black felt hat "which became him well." To pass the time, Sir John Chandos was singing the German dances he had learned on a visit to that country, and the minstrels played. While the knights and squires were amusing themselves with the gaiety of men who lived mainly for battle, the look-out in the top hailed the deck with "I see one, two, three, four—I see so many, so help me God, I cannot count them." Then the king called for his helmet, and for wine. His knights drank to the king, and to one another, and went to their stations. The fleet stood to sea. Its movements must have been seen by Queen Philippa, who remained in the abbey to pray for her husband and her two sons. The young John of Gaunt, then Earl of Richmond, and afterwards Duke of Lancaster, refused to leave his brother, the Prince of Wales. He was a boy of only ten, but King Edward and the Black Prince were the last men in the world to balk his very proper desire to be in a battle.

The Spaniards came sweeping along from east to west with a good breeze. They were fewer in number than the English, but heavier ships. "It was passing beautiful to see, or to think of," says Froissart, who loved the pomp and circumstance of war. Their tops were glittering with armed men, and "their streamers bearing their coats of arms, and marked with their bearings, danced and quivered and lept in the wind." Coming out from the anchorage of Winchelsea, King Edward's ships struck on the Spaniards, who were advancing in a line, at an angle. His own vessel was steered into one of the biggest of the enemy. The two met with such a crash that "it was as if a tempest had suddenly burst upon them." They recoiled from the shock, and then crashed together again. Their spars became entangled, and one of the Spaniard's tops was broken off. All in it were hurled into the water and drowned. If the king's ship had not been stout, she would have been broken to pieces against the bulk of her opponent. As it was, she had enough. Her seams gaped, and the water rushed in. The Spaniard, being the less injured of the two, gathered way and stood on. King Edward ordered his men to lay her aboard again, but was answered, "No, sir, you cannot have this one, but you shall have another." It would, as his shipmen knew, but probably had not the time to explain, have been impossible to overtake the enemy with a vessel already in danger of sinking. The only chance was to run into one of those coming up behind and carry her by boarding. We may presume that the shipmen did their best to pick a smaller one. It was done, and only just in time, for the king's ship sank almost immediately after he and his crew had forced their way on to the Spaniard's deck.

King Edward's adventure was an example of what happened all along the line. The Prince of Wales was in great peril beside a tall Spaniard, for his ship too began to sink, and he could not scale the high sides of the enemy. From this pass he was rescued by his cousin Henry, Earl of Derby. The two got possession of the Spaniard. Then the prince's vessel sank, so that "he and his knights could more perfectly consider the danger in which they had just been." The most extreme danger was run by Robert of Namur, a Flemish noble, and a partisan of King Edward's, who in after times was the patron of Froissart, and probably his main authority for the battle. The king had given him the command of the Salle du Roi, the vessel which carried those members of his household who could not find quarters with himself. Robert of Namur was grappled by a big enemy, who began to drag him along. His crew shouted, "Rescue for the Salle du Roi!" but to no purpose, for it was now getting dark, "and they were not heard, and if they had been heard, they would not have been rescued." The Fleming was saved by the desperate valour of his squire, Hanekin, who forced his way into the Spaniard and cut her halyards. Then Robert of Namur boarded, and the Spaniards "were all slain and thrown into the sea."

It was a desperate battle, for the English fought most valiantly, and the Spaniards "gave them plenty to do." The English archers had a great share in the victory. The enemy's crossbowmen, and others who were appointed to hurl bars of metal or heavy stones over the bulwarks of the tops and sides, were compelled to expose themselves to take aim, and were shot through the head or neck by the clothyard shafts, while thus uncovered. Seventeen Spaniards were taken in all. Against this we had to set off the loss of several of our smaller vessels and of many men. The booty must have been considerable. There was no pursuit, partly because the victors were eager to rifle the prizes, but partly also, no doubt, because they had suffered much rough usage. The king returned to Winchelsea Abbey to celebrate his victory by festivities.

The battle with the Spaniards off Winchelsea marks the culmination of King Edward's naval power. In the gloomy closing years of his reign all these glories hastened to decay. His navy, drawn from so many different sources, and composed at all times largely of hired or impressed vessels, was peculiarly liable to suffer from the general disorganisation of his government when the long war with France had begun to exhaust his resources, and his faculties were failing. Twenty years after his brilliant sea fight, he had to listen to the bitter complaints of the Commons, who told him boldly, and with too much truth, that the coast was unprotected, and trade ruined. So far had the strength of the "Sovereign of the Seas" sunk, that there was actual fear of invasion from France, while raids carried out by French and Spanish adventurers on the ports of the Channel were numerous. Scotch "pirates," in alliance with Flemings, Frenchmen, and Basques, harried the north and east. The Parliament of 1371 insisted angrily on the abuses by which the naval strength of the country was being destroyed. There is much intrinsic probability in their complaints. When it is remembered that the fleets were mainly formed by impressing merchant ships, it is easy to understand how the misconduct or want of judgment of subordinate agents under a weak government might give ample justification for such complaints as these.

"First, that arrests of shipping were often made long before vessels were wanted, during which interval the owners were at the expense of keeping the ships and crews, without making any profit, by which many of them became so impoverished as to be obliged to quit their business, and their ships were ruined. Secondly, that the merchants who supported the navy had been so impeded in their voyages and affairs by divers ordinances, that they had no employment for ships; that great part of the mariners had consequently abandoned their profession, and gained their livelihood in some other way; and that their ships were hauled up on the shore to rot. Thirdly, that, as soon as the masters of the king's ships were ordered on any voyage, they impressed the masters and ablest part of the men of other ships, and those vessels being left without persons to manage them, many of them perished, and their owners were ruined."

Part of this petition against grievances is concerned with the general policy of the king in matters of trade, as expressed in his "divers ordinances." But the greater part of it is directed against abuses which were hardly to be escaped at a time when navies were formed by impressing merchant ships. Corrupt or even only insolent and overbearing officers would abuse the power of impressment. Where those evil motives were not at work, there was still an all but irresistible temptation to "arrest" ships long before they were needed, since, if they were allowed to go on trading voyages, they would not be forthcoming later on. The king's officers were to be excused if they preferred to err on the safe side; but to the trader it was a grievous oppression, for he was deprived of the means of earning profits, while remaining liable to be taxed in order to provide the king with a revenue for the support of the war. In later ages the impossibility of combining the qualities of money-earning merchant ships and of fighting ships, which should be always available for war, had much to do with the formation of regular military fleets. In the seventeenth century the State took, first, to hiring vessels for long periods, and manning them itself; then, as the need of a special class of vessel grew with the development of artillery, to building for itself. In the Middle Ages no State was yet rich enough to maintain for long together a great and costly naval force. Thus it was necessary to rely on impressed vessels, which could only temporarily be withdrawn from commerce. Fleets formed in such a way bore an inevitable resemblance to armies composed of farmers, townsmen, or mountain clans collected for a single foray or battle, and always liable to dissolution on the approach of harvest, or even under the influence of the occasional soldier's not unnatural desire to put his booty in a safe place. In the great Civil War of the seventeenth century, the Parliament discovered that the London trainbands, though capable of good marching and hard fighting, as they proved during the relief of Gloucester and at the battle of Newbury, soon grew eager to be back to their shops, and mutinous if they were kept out for what seemed to them an undue period. So it must always be with a citizen force. Since the mediæval navy was largely of that description, it suffered from recurrent lapses of strength, and was peculiarly liable to total collapse when the country was overwrought by the strain of long war.

Edward's reign closed in failure and defeat. The last blow was given to his power in the south of France, when a fleet sent to the relief of Rochelle, under the command of John Hastings, Earl of Pembroke, was crushed by a superior force of Spanish vessels under Ambrosio Bocanegra, the Admiral of Castile, in 1372. The troubled reign of Richard II. saw no improvement. At one period in his minority, a Scotch pirate named Mercer harried the north-west unchecked, till he was defeated by the enterprise of a citizen of London, John Philipot. It is typical of the time, that Philipot was rebuked by some of the lords of the Council, with foolish insolence, for taking on himself to fight without their consent. A wealthy and important citizen of London, of Philipot's spirit, was not a man to stand bullying tamely. He answered that he had fought only to make good their failure to do their duty, and to that they had very naturally "not a word to answer."

Even the astute and capable Henry IV. was for long unable to bring about visible improvement. Amid the embarrassments of the first years of his reign, he had recourse to a very curious experiment. In order to deal with what may be called the ordinary work of the navy, the pursuit of pirates, and the repulse of mere raids on the coast, he entered into a contract with the citizens of London. They were to provide a force of ships and men, to be commanded by their own admirals, and were to be paid certain dues, and keep all their prizes. They did not undertake to deal with a great hostile fleet, but only to discharge the police duties. After a good deal of negotiation, the experiment was actually tried from May 1406 to September 1407. The merchants appointed two admirals, Richard Clytherow for the south and west, and Nicholas Blackburn for the north, who were endowed with large powers of impressment. This curious attempt to discharge the duty of the State by contract was not satisfactory, and the arrangement was not renewed. It is chiefly worth mentioning as showing to what shifts the Crown was driven in its times of weakness.

In an introduction which aims only at giving an outline account of the mediæval navy, further details of warlike operations, which were always of the same general character, are unnecessary. There was a revival of efficiency with Henry V., not, however, marked by any single events of the brilliancy of the battle of Sluys, or "Les Espagnols sur Mer." Then came another period of collapse in the dreary reign of Henry VI. With the close of the fifteenth century the mediæval period in the history came to an end. The establishment of the Tudor dynasty has been described as marking the beginning of the new monarchy. This is perhaps a somewhat arbitrary description, but it is certainly the case that the anarchy of the Wars of the Roses had converted Englishmen, or had brought them back, to a high conception of the need of a strong royal authority as the one effectual security for the safety of the subject against disorder. The administration was centralised in the king's hand. Increase of wealth in the nation supplied him with a larger revenue, and the formation of a Royal Navy in the modern sense became at last possible.

Before leaving the mediæval navy, the picture may be completed by one example of that brutal violence which has been mentioned as a feature of the sea life of the time. I have spoken of the feuds between the different towns, and of complaints of excesses committed on the coast by armed forces appointed to protect them. One concrete example is better than any amount of general statement. Here is an instance of sheer devilry taken from the unhappy years of the minority of Richard II., when the State was weak, and Englishmen had been brutalised by the savage wars of France.

In 1379 Sir John Arundel was appointed to the command of a force of archers and men-at-arms, which was to go to the help of the Duke of Brittany. It was to sail from Southampton. As the weather was unfavourable, there was some delay in starting, and Arundel quartered his soldiers in a nunnery. The house, according to a common practice of the time, contained, in addition to the nuns, many married women whose husbands were absent, widows, and unmarried girls, who were sent there for safety and education. Arundel's soldiers violated these women, and pillaged the chapel. Disregarding all complaints, he not only went to sea without punishing the offenders, but allowed them to bring their booty and several of the women with them. There were also, it appears, prostitutes in the ships. The ecclesiastical authorities fell back on the only revenge then within their power. They formally cursed Arundel and his thieves with bell, book, and candle as the ships sailed away.

To men accustomed to the licence of the French wars, this doubtless appeared a very impotent form of retaliation. But they soon had occasion to change their minds. A violent storm burst upon them, apparently, since it swept them out of the Channel, from the east or north-east. To lighten the ships, these savages threw overboard all the women they had carried to sea. The danger might have been avoided if Arundel had listened to the advice of his sailing-master, John Rust, a sailor of the now very much decayed little town of Blakeney in Norfolk, who warned him that a gale was coming on. But Arundel, though a good soldier, as he showed when defending Southampton in 1377, was neither a seaman himself, nor sufficiently a man of sense to listen to those who were. Having first incurred disaster by his obstinacy, Arundel sealed his own fate by persisting in again overriding the opinion of Rust. He had been driven to within sight of the coast of Ireland, and, in his frantic desire to escape the misery of his position on shipboard, insisted that an attempt should be made to land. It was in vain that the sailors pointed out to him that it was far safer to keep at sea. In an explosion of sheer fury, largely excited, we may presume, by fear, Arundel killed some of them. Then Rust and the others made the hopeless attempt to land the madman whom they had the misfortune to be compelled to obey. Seeing a small island near the coast, the sailing-master attempted to get under its lee, but found the water too broken. Then, as a last resource, he tried to beach the ship, but she struck on the rocks, and went to pieces. Arundel, to whom every opportunity seems to have been given by fate to display his folly, was one of those who contrived to reach the shore. He might have escaped if he had not stood within reach of the waves, shaking the water out of his clothes. Rust, who had also come through alive, seeing his peril, ran forward to drag him back, and both were beaten down and dragged under by the next wave. An uncertain number of other vessels, with many knights and men-at-arms, perished in the same disaster. This may stand as sufficient example of what was possible when the brutality of the Middle Ages coincided with the licence of the sea. We may hope that the details of the story were heightened in the telling, but there is no reasonable ground to doubt its substantial truth, and the mere fact that such a tale could be told shows what was believed to be possible.

CHAPTER I
THE NAVY OF THE TUDORS TILL THE ACCESSION OF ELIZABETH

Authorities.—Much information concerning the navy during the earlier Tudor period will be found in Charnock's Naval Architecture, vol. ii. cap. 2 and 3; but the chief authority now is Mr. Oppenheim's recently published Administration of the Navy, 1509-1660. This may be supported by numerous passages in the Calendar of State Papers for the reign of Henry VIII., prepared by Mr. Brewer. The details of the fighting in Conquet Bay are given in Echyngham's letters to Wolsey in the Calendar. The collection called "State Papers," edited by Mr. Haines, 1831-1852, contains Lisle's letters during the operations of 1545. The memoirs of Martin du Bellay and Blaise de Montluc give the French side. The early history of the Trinity House has been investigated by Mr. C. L. Barrett, The Trinity House of Deptford Strond, 1893.

The Tudor dynasty filled the throne of England for a hundred and eighteen years. A hundred and six years of that period belong to the reigns of Henry VII., Henry VIII., and Elizabeth, three rulers of consummate ability. No other reigning house has maintained so high a level of governing faculty during so large a proportion of its existence, and it is not the least part of the wonderful good fortune of England that her destinies should have been directed, at a time of change and growth, by sovereigns of eminent capacity. She passed in those years from an old world to a new, and, however high we may rank the faculty of the race, it is impossible to doubt that the transition must have been far less successful than it was if there had been weakness or folly in its rulers. The two Henrys and Elizabeth, it must be remembered, were, in the fullest sense of the word, rulers. They had to submit to necessity, to abstain from much, to accept much which was by no means pleasing to them, but it was because they could do this, and did not persist in endeavouring to drive the world where it would not go, in the fatal fashion of the Stuarts, that they succeeded. The great men who served them, and the qualities of the English people, were not made by the Tudors, but it was they who chose the servants, and used the qualities of their subjects.

The foundation of the modern navy was a great and vitally important part of their administrative work. It must not be supposed that there was any sharp-drawn line dividing the Middle Ages from the later times. The new monarchy itself cannot be said to have differed formally from the old. Henry VII. claimed to reign by the same right and authority as his predecessors. The difference was in the method and the spirit. From the end of the fifteenth century till the beginning of the seventeenth, Englishmen looked to the sovereign as the representative on earth of that law whose "voice" is "the harmony of the world." To the great mass of Englishmen, to all, in fact, except a few nobles, and the poor and martial northern counties, the king was the divinely appointed ruler who stood between them and anarchy. They expected him to govern by the law, but they also recognised his commission to pronounce and enforce it. In later times the authority of the Crown became an object of hostility, but from the day that Henry VII. put on the circle of gold which had fallen from the helmet of Richard III. on the field of Market Bosworth, till Elizabeth sank to rest, old, weary, and half broken-hearted, there were few Englishmen who would have drawn any distinction between the State and the King. On the Continent of Europe the same influence was at work, turning the mediæval king into the modern despot.

So, too, in regard to the navy, there is no deliberate break with the past, no express beginning of any new thing. The ships are still the king's, commanded by his captains, manned by his mariners, administered by his servants. Even in matters of detail the old usages lingered far into the seventeenth century. The captain continued for long to be more soldier than sailor, the man whose business it was to fight, not to sail the ship. In Boteler's "Dialogues," published in the reign of Charles II., though probably written in the reign of his father, it is proposed, as if there were some novelty in the suggestion, that no man should be appointed captain until he had been at least one voyage to sea. The attempt to form a regular corps of naval officers dates from the Restoration, and must be put to the credit of James II., then Duke of York and Lord High Admiral. The crews were still collected for each voyage, and disbanded at its end. This applies not only to the men, but to the officers, though the king might keep a certain number of captains about him, by putting them on the footing of gentlemen of his household. It was not until the time of the Commonwealth, and then through the exertions of the Council of State, that the navy was raised to a strength which made it possible to dispense with the service of pressed or hired merchant ships when a great fleet had to be fitted out. On the face of it, in fact, and if we look to the mere letter, there was no change at all. The admiral was still a great officer of State, who acted as king's lieutenant in sea affairs. There were king's ships managed by the king's servants, and in time of need the old calls were made on the ports to provide their quota for the defence of the country.

Yet for all that there was a change, and the beginning of something new. The same causes which were leading to the formation of professional standing armies on the Continent, were at work to induce the Tudors to pay attention to their navy. English kings had done so before them. When the Duke of Norfolk told Chapuys, the ambassador of Charles V., in 1535, that it was a good thing for a king of England to be provided with ships to inspire awe in those who wished to attack him, he was saying nothing which was not well known to John or Edward III. The difference lay in the continuity of attention paid to the navy by the Tudors, in the proportion of their revenue which they spent on it, and in the formation of a department expressly devoted to the work of maintaining the king's ships. In former times so much of the king's navy as was his personal property bore a close resemblance to those bands of mercenaries which he raised for a particular war, and disbanded when he had no further need for their services. From the time of the Tudors his ships became a permanent establishment. It is from them that the Royal Navy descends, not from the sea militia of the Cinque Ports. The British army began with the regiments of Charles II., not with the host which was called out on the summons of our ancient kings.

From the very necessity of the case, a permanent fighting force calls for the attention of a no less permanent civil administration. Throughout nearly the whole of the reign of Henry VIII. the work continued to be done under the supervision of the Clerk of the Ships, but by an increasing staff of subordinate clerks, called for by its growing needs and the establishment of a dockyard at Portsmouth. The office, in fact, grew, as has been commonly the case with our administrative machinery, by adaptations to meet needs. At last, in 1546, in the year before his death, the king formed the first regular Navy Board by letters patent dated April 24. It consisted of a Lieutenant of the Admiralty, a Treasurer, a Comptroller, a Surveyor, a Clerk of the Ships, and two officials who had no special title. A "Master of the Ordnance of the Ships" was created at the same time, but this was a separate office. This organisation was subject during its history to suspensions and modifications, as will be seen further on; but four of the officers here named, the Treasurer, Surveyor, Comptroller, and Clerk of the Ships, or of Acts, or of the Navy, continued with brief intervals to be the chiefs of the civil administration of the navy till 1832. Upon them fell the duties of buying stores, building and taking care of ships, managing the dockyard, distributing provisions, paying wages, and what we should now call the compassionate allowances given to wounded men. This body existed, with temporary suspensions, but little permanent modification, till 1832, when it was merged into a body from which it must always be carefully distinguished—namely, the Admiralty.

The Admiralty, which has now absorbed the whole administration of the navy, originally only exercised the higher military control. It was, in fact, the representative of the Lord High Admiral, and is still technically described as the commission named to discharge the duties of his office. This office descended to the Tudors from earlier times. The Lord High Admiral was, to repeat a phrase already used, the king's lieutenant for sea affairs. He exercised a large jurisdiction, gave commissions to the military officers of the navy, the lieutenants, that is to say, and captains, issued the orders, and commanded in war. The non-military officers, the masters and their mates, whose duty was the navigation of the ship, the doctors and pursers, fell under the Navy Office. This department was subordinate to the admiral, and bound to execute his orders, but he did not sit in it. In earlier times he discharged the duties of his office in his own house. Even at later periods, when there was an Admiralty Office at Whitehall, the Navy Office had its own quarters in Seething Lane, or, later on, in Somerset House, until the great reform of 1832 welded the departments together.

By the end of the reign of Henry VIII. the navy was, in so far as the main lines are concerned, organised pretty much as it was destined to remain for three centuries. The chief change introduced during this long period was the formation of the regular corps of naval officers, which dates from the Restoration. Until that time there was no organised body of fighting sea officers, as we may call them, in order to avoid the confusion which arises from the use of the word "military" as applied to the naval service. Individual men were habitually employed, and, when not on service, provided for by being put on the footing of gentlemen of the royal household, but they had no general commission as naval officers, and no claim to pension. The Lord High Admiral gave commissions when a fleet was fitted out, issued instructions, and commanded in person. The Navy Office, or Navy Board, did the civil work. On this side of the administration the necessity for taking care of ships and stores early led to the formation of a regular staff of pilots, boatswains, and gunners, who belonged to the navy, and were not merely attached to this or that ship for as long as she was in commission.

The growth of the ship itself had much to do with bringing about the formation of a permanent Royal Navy. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, it was no longer possible to rely on such resources as could be found in the Cinque Ports, even if they had not been silted up by the action of the currents of the Channel. Little vessels built for the coasting trade had neither the size, the strength, nor the armament which had now become necessary for the work of war. The larger merchant ships of the great ports were, indeed, better fitted for the purpose. In those times of insecurity at sea they generally went armed, even in peace. Accordingly, we find that until the middle of the seventeenth century pressed or hired merchant ships were always to be found in great fleets. But their inferiority to the vessel built for war was early recognised. Queen's officers were found to declare that the merchant ships were of little use, except to make a show, in the fight with the Armada. The special warship early became a necessity to a power which was bound to keep up its strength at sea. It could only be provided by the State, which at that time meant the king. Henry VII. saw that truth clearly, and so did his successors on the throne. If they did not build vessels enough to render them independent of all other sources of supply in war, it was because of the poverty of the Crown. From the time, indeed, when vessels of any size began to be required for purposes of war, the State was compelled to rely on those it built for itself. The great bulk of our trade was conducted in vessels of small size. Even at the end of the first quarter of this century, a merchant ship of 500 tons burden was thought large. The great majority ranged from 150 to about 250 tons for the most distant voyages. But as early as the reign of Henry VII. warships were built of 1000 tons. Such vessels could not be supplied by the trade. Neither were the trading craft, being built as economically as possible, equal in strength to those constructed for war.

The great ships of the early Tudors were an exaggeration of the cogs of the Middle Ages. They were longer, broader, and built much higher in the sides. But they had the same towering castles at bow and stern. The word forecastle preserves the memory of the species of fort which once cumbered the fore part of ships. These fortresses were shut off from the rest of the ship by barriers, called, in later times at least, cobridges, and defended even when the enemy was in possession of the waist. Small guns, called "murdering pieces," were mounted on them, to clear the deck on emergency. As parts of a castle they had their merits, but they were very dangerous top hamper for a ship. The fate of the Mary Rose, which will be mentioned later on, shows how easily vessels of the time were upset. Their instability was exaggerated by the nature of the rigging. In the largest vessel there were four masts—one at the prow, another at the stern, and two between. They were apparently complete spars, not divided, as in later times, into lower mast and topmast. Each carried a great square sail or course of excessive height, to which a topsail could be added. The strain thrown on the hull by these great sails must have been severe. It was aided by the castles, which had a constant tendency to tear away when the ship was rolling. As the structure was weak, and the caulking alone was trusted to keep the ships watertight, it is easy to understand that a very short cruise or a very moderate spell of bad weather was enough to reduce the noblest of them to the condition of a sieve. Indeed, the unfitness of the "capital ships" of the sixteenth century for winter cruising was recognised by everybody. Even a hundred years later, when many improvements had been introduced, naval officers were reluctant to keep large vessels at sea after summer was over. As late as the reign of William III., at the end of the seventeenth century, a council of officers declared that the heavier line-of-battle ships could not be safely kept out after the first days of autumn. In the earlier Tudor times they were of use only in fine-weather months. The smaller vessels, being less built upon, and not subject to the same amount of leverage tending to tear them to pieces, were more seaworthy. As they must also have sailed very badly, there is no apparent reason for the confidence inspired in our ancestors by the presence of one of these "capital ships." They must be supposed to have trusted it to bear down opposition by its mere weight, just as a very fine corps of mail-clad horsemen would sweep lighter opponents before them on the field of battle.

Their armament consisted of a multiplicity of guns, ranging from very small pieces mounted on the castles up to the "cannon royal," a 68-pounder, on the main deck. Guns of different sizes were mounted on the same deck. Experience gradually showed the unwisdom of this variegated armament. In the following generations the cannon royal was given up as too heavy, and the very small pieces as too light, while the batteries were made uniform.

The subsequent progress of the navy is better understood when we remember from what it was that it started. The early Tudor warship was absurdly over-hampered with superstructures, rigged in a fashion which was inefficient, and yet exposed the vessel to a dangerous leverage, and armed as if the aim had been to produce confusion. It was still so little fitted to struggle with the forces of the sea and wind, that it could not meet winter weather. From that point the Royal Navy advanced to the stage at which Nelson could keep his watch off Toulon for two years, and at the end of them be still ready for the pursuit of Villeneuve. The story is one of continual simplification and adaptation. The towering over-built castles were cut down, the long complete mast was subdivided into lower, top, and top-gallant. These two last named could be lowered in case of need to relieve the ship. The unwieldy course was reduced, and the topsails and top-gallant sails added to the power of the ship, while remaining themselves perfectly handy. The upright mast in the prow was lowered till through successive stages it became the bowsprit. The armament was brought into a comparatively few classes of guns.

The method in which the ships of the Tudors were manned and fought is better known than their construction. During his first war with France (1511-1514) Henry VIII. provided for the equipment of his fleet very much after the fashion which continued to be followed in the raising of regiments till the end of the eighteenth century. He entered into a contract with his admiral, Sir Edward Howard. The king, on his part, undertook to provide ships, guns, and a sum of money. The admiral, on the other hand, bound himself to do his sovereign service, and to give him one-half the prizes. The business of collecting the crews was apparently left to the admiral, who was armed with the power to press, and was entitled to command the service of local officials for the purpose. It shows how far a fleet was looked upon as a temporary force, that this contract was only to last for three months, and to be renewable for periods of the same length. If the desired purpose was effected, or peace was made, the whole force would be dissolved. Hired or pressed ships would be paid off, and allowed to go. The king's ships would be returned to his own docks, which were then in the Thames, there to remain under the care of his officials of the Navy Office (or, since we are speaking of 1512, it would be more accurate to say, the officials who in the course of the ensuing years were to be organised into the Navy Office) until they were again wanted. The men would be disbanded. There would be left the admiral, who was a great officer of State, ready to command when called upon, the civil officers, the caretakers of the ships and stores, and the ships themselves,—the materials, in short, out of which a fleet could be formed when required.

This was the method in its main lines. The details will be best understood by taking a single ship, and seeing how she was manned. For example, let us take the establishment of the Gabriel as she was in the month of March in the fourth year of the reign of Henry VIII. (1513). It gives the disposition of the crew, that is, the classes into which it was divided, and their rates of pay. The statement, which is taken from Charnock, does not agree with the list of the navy in 1513 as quoted in the Calendar of State Papers of Henry VIII., but it supplies us with an account of the crew of a great ship of the time which is substantially accurate as a model. How little confidence is to be placed in the details of the lists of "the king's army on the sea" which are preserved from this reign may be shown by a single fact. In one "book," or, as we should say, "return," corrected by Wolsey, the Gabriel is described as of 800 tons, having two captains, Cortney (Courtenay) and Cornwall, with 600 men, of whom 250 are mariners. In another she is said to be of 700 tons, with one captain, Sir Will. Pirton, and 500 men.

No lieutenant is named, and an officer of that name only appears later, but he probably had an ancestor in the gentleman who was captain of the retinue of Sir William Trevelyan. This gentleman was a soldier appointed to fight, and not to attend to the navigation and seamanship, which was the duty of the master. From the fact that the mariners are given as a separate class, we may confidently conclude that the retinue consisted of soldiers, whom the captain brought with him. It will be seen that they greatly exceeded the sailors in number, and this was for long the rule. There is, in truth, no greater mistake than to suppose that the crews of the great warships at any time contained a majority of real seamen, but in Henry's reign the proportion of soldiers was larger than was commonly the case in later times. The indenture made in 1512 with Sir Edward Howard provides that of the 3000 men to be raised over and above the crew of the Regent, which is mustered by itself, 1750 were to be soldiers, and 1233 sailors. It is probable, however, that under the name of soldiers were included many men who afterwards would have been entered as "waisters" and "landsmen," parts of the ship's company who were only expected to work on deck or below, and were not in the proper sense "sailormen." The gunners also were a separate class, and we may safely conclude in their case also that they were not—at least not necessarily—sailors, but rather marine artillerymen.

"Dead pays" is an odd expression, which, however, almost explains itself. They were imaginary men, whose pay was applied to the purpose of providing a sufficient salary for the warrant officers. In theory every member of the crew received the same allowance of 5s. pay and 5s. rations for a month of twenty-eight days. The captain, who drew eighteenpence a day, was the only exception. It was a manifestly insufficient salary, but a gentleman in his position was probably a man of means, who expected to serve at his own charges, and looked to prize and ransom money, or to the king's favour, for his reward, as also for the means of rewarding the volunteers of good family who followed his banner. The system was one which obviously lent itself to abuse. A poor or unscrupulous captain would be tempted to enrich himself by making false musters, that is, by misstating the number of men actually present in his ship, and pocketing the money paid for wages. He would always have the help of subordinates who were bribed, or were afraid to offend a great man when he wished to deceive the king. This absurdly roundabout way of remunerating the officers was finally given up, but it left a curious representative in the so-called "widows' men" of quite recent times. They also were imaginary sailors, and the pay allowed for them was handed over to Greenwich Hospital, to form a fund for the pensions of women whose husbands were killed in action. The twenty-five men of the town of Gloucester mentioned in the list of the Gabriel's crew may be supposed to have been contributed by the town to the king's navy as its quota of the levy. In the crews of other ships we find mention of the men of Exeter, or of the county of Devon, or the Earl of Arundel, or some other great noble, who were similarly mustered apart. These are traces of the mediæval organisation which survived into and overlapped the new time.

The manner of fighting of the time is sufficiently well known. Of strategy, in the proper sense of the word, the sea-captains of Henry VIII. knew the essential. They could harry an enemy's coast and commerce for the purpose of provoking him to fight, or lie in front of any port where his ships might be at anchor, and wait till he came out. The actual management of ships when engaged with the enemy was decidedly rough and ready. It does not appear that there was as yet any formation of a fleet. One great number of ships advanced in a swarm against another, and each individual vessel got into action as speedily as the seamanship of her master and the spirit of her captain allowed. In one of the letters of Sir Edward Echyngham to Wolsey we have a spirited account of the preparations made to meet some hostile French ships. He reports that on a certain day in April 1515 he spied three French men-of-war "that made unto usward; and then I comforted my folk and made them to harness, and because I had no rails upon my deck I coiled a cable round about the deck breast high, and likewise in the waist, and so hanged upon the cable mattresses, and dagswayns (a species of coarse, shaggy blanket used by the poor), and such bedding as I had within board, and setting out my marris pikes, and my fighting sails all ready to encounter these three French barks, with such poor ordnance as I had, and then they saw that I made unto them with so good a will, and would not shrink from them, then they put themselves to flight, and then I chased them till they came to the Abbey of Fécamp, which lies hard by the seaside, and so they gat them under the walls of the haven, and we followed them until they shot their ordnance into us." From Sir Edward Echyngham's despatch, it is clear that his ship had no bulwarks between the fore and after castles, and the protection for the men fighting on deck was secured by making a temporary barrier of bedding, blankets, and sails. It was here that the enemy would naturally attempt to enter, and the men stationed in this part of the ship, commonly called the waist, would be most exposed to the fire of the enemy's tops and castles. The practice of concealing this, the most vulnerable part of the deck, by hanging up what were called waist-cloths, continued until the next century. They were, however, a very poor substitute for bulwarks, being exceedingly inflammable. Well-painted wood will resist fire for a long time, but canvas sails, bedding, and blankets are much more easily set blazing. An accidental explosion in the ship herself, the wads from the guns on the cobridge heads, or, worst of all, the flames of a fireship alongside, would cause all the canvas and rigging to burn up like a bonfire. A frightful instance of the facility with which a disaster of this kind could be produced was given in the very first naval battle of Henry VIII.'s reign. The mention of pikes proves that Sir Edward Echyngham calculated that a considerable part of his fighting would consist in repelling boarders or in attempting to board. Indeed, until it got to hand-to-hand fighting, there was little decisive result to be expected from the sea battles of that time. The guns were, as has been said above, often heavy, but the artillery practice of the crews was very rough. The allowance for windage was absurdly large, and it was consequently a matter of chance in what direction a bullet would go. Besides, the use of cartridges had not yet been introduced, and the powder was ladled out of a barrel—a very slow and very dangerous practice. It seems to have been thought that a great fleet had maintained a fire of wonderful intensity if it discharged three hundred shot in one day's work. This is far less than the total amount of the fire of either the Victory or the Royal Sovereign at Trafalgar.

By firmly establishing the royal authority, and by filling his treasury, Henry VII. had prepared the way for his son's work as an organiser of the navy. He certainly left his son a navy of no contemptible strength, according to the standard of that time. The Statute-book of his reign contains several acts meant to encourage shipping. The comparative obscurity of his navy is probably mainly to be accounted for by the fact that he looked upon war with dislike, and never pushed a quarrel with his formidable neighbour, the King of France, beyond the point at which Louis XI. was prepared to offer him a bribe to keep quiet. But, however much Henry VIII. may have received from his father, he certainly exerted himself strenuously to increase his inheritance. He not only built ships, but he improved the naval architecture of his subjects by inviting workmen from the great Italian ports. He not only built and improved ships, but he took a very keen and intelligent interest in the organisation of his fleet and in the performances of his vessels. He extended his establishments on the Thames, and to him belongs the credit of setting up the dockyard at Portsmouth. And we know that in March 1513, in the fourth year of his reign, he issued a "Licence to found a Guild in honour of the Holy Trinity and St. Clement in the Church of Deptford Strond, for reformation of the navy, lately much decayed by admission of young men without experience, and of Scots, Flemings, and Frenchmen as loadsmen." Loadsmen were those who were considered capable to throw the lead, and were the skilled seamen from whom the masters and pilots, or, as we now say, mates, were chosen. This was the Trinity House, which still exists, and still continues to perform the duty assigned to it by Henry VIII. of examining those who wished to be accepted as fit to navigate or pilot a ship, besides taking care of the lights and buoys all round the coast. Its connection with the navy was much closer in Tudor times than it came to be later on; for not only did it supply the masters and pilots of the king's ships, but it was entrusted with the supply and transport of many kinds of stores.

A letter written by Sir Edward Howard on the 22nd of March 1513 gives a very pleasing instance of the minute personal interest which the king took in his ships. The document has been so damaged by time and accident that a large part of it is illegible, but from what can be deciphered we learn that Sir Edward gave the king a minute account of the performances of all the vessels in his squadron, during a cruise from the mouth of the river to the Channel. Fragments of sentences tell how the one sailed very well, and how "your good ship, the flower, I trow, of all ships that ever sailed," did something which the damaged state of the paper conceals, and then "came within three spear-lengths of the Kateryn and spake to John Fleming, Peter Seman, and to Freeman, master, to bear record that the Mary Rose did fetch her at the tail." "The flower of all ships that ever sailed" was apparently the Mary Rose herself, Howard's own flagship, the same which was destined to come to such a disastrous end in the Solent some thirty years later. Sir Edward tells how she "fet" the Mary George, and in all ways proved herself "the noblest ship of sail ... at this hower that I trow be in Christendom." When they came to anchor, the admiral noted down the order in which the vessels forming his squadron came up to the Road: "The first after the Mary Rose was the Sovereign, then the Nicholas, then the Leonard of Dartmouth, the Mary George, the Harry of Hampton, the Ann of Greenwich, the Nicholas Montrygo, called the Sancho de Garra, and the Katherine and the Mary." That the king's officers were encouraged to keep him so minutely informed of the performances of his ships is proof enough of the interest Henry took in his navy.

Although the new time had begun, the change from the Middle Ages was not yet very perceptible in so far as the general direction of a war was concerned. It was still a matter of raids and casual battles. The first naval action of Henry's reign was in pursuit of the old standing war against the pirates. A Scotchman named Andrew Barton had been robbed by the Portuguese, and had received letters of marque from his own sovereign, authorising him to indemnify himself for his loss out of any Portuguese property he could find upon the seas. In much later and more civilised times it was never difficult to turn a privateer into a pirate, and in the early sixteenth century the distinction between them was fine in the extreme. Barton betook himself to considering that everybody he came across on blue water was a Portuguese, or would serve the purpose very well. He plundered Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Flemings indiscriminately, and without the slightest regard to the embarrassments he cost his own sovereign. At last he became such a nuisance that ships had to be fitted out to pursue him. According to a story which is not very well founded, they were sent out at the expense of the Earl of Surrey, and were commanded by his sons, Sir Thomas and Sir Edward. The two vessels belonging to Barton, called the Lion and the Jenny Perwin or Bark of Scotland, were overtaken by Surrey's two cruisers, and captured after a fight of a most determined and picturesque character, for which, however, the chief authority is a spirited ballad of much later date. There is no doubt, however, as to the death of Barton, who was one of the numerous Scotch pirates of the time.

The same year which saw the capture of these skimmers of the sea saw also the beginning of a much greater naval war. In 1511 Henry entered into the first of his wars with France. As he had then been only two years upon the throne, the fact that he was able to despatch a considerable naval force against the French coast at once, shows that he must have inherited a large force of ships from his father. Four-and-twenty vessels of his own, which he reinforced by ships hired from the Hanse Towns and of the Spaniards, represented the, for that time, very respectable naval power of the kingdom. The war was carried on in the barbarous mediæval style. In 1511 Sir Edward Howard, to whom the king gave the command as Lord High Admiral, ravaged the coasts of Brittany. The devastation of his dominions stung the King of France into making counter exertions, and a fleet was collected at Brest under the command of an officer of the name of Primauguet, which our historians, availing themselves of the licence of the age, corrupted into Sir Pierce Morgan. In 1512 King Henry's fleet was collected at Portsmouth, to be prepared to repel the French if they made any attack, or to fall upon them first if their coming was delayed. The king himself rode down to Portsmouth and reviewed the soldiers, who formed the larger part of his crews on the Downs. Then the fleet sailed, standing over to the coast of France. What exactly followed it is very difficult to say on the evidence we possess. The fleets certainly met somewhere in the neighbourhood of Brest. The historians on either side contradict one another flatly, both as to the respective strengths of the combatants and as to the result of the fight, each asserting that his own countrymen were outnumbered, and that the enemy ended by flying away in a scandalous state of panic. The one point on which all agree is, that somehow or other, and in consequence of manœuvres which are perfectly unintelligible as they are narrated, the great English ship the Regent, of which Sir Thomas Knevet, the King's Master of the Horse, was captain, and the still larger French ship named the Cordelier, fell on board one another, caught fire, and blew up. Knevet and the French admiral, Primauguet, whose flag was flying in the Cordelier, both perished, and from one thousand to fifteen hundred men with them. Whether, as the French assert, this disaster had such a terrifying effect on the English ships that they all ran away, or whether, as our authorities maintain, the French were completely cowed, and took refuge in Brest, the fact that the battle came to an end with no very decisive result is well established. The terrible circumstances of the loss of these two ships produced a profound impression. We notice in ensuing years a marked disinclination among French and English to come too close. It is a feeling easy to understand. There was little use in destroying your enemy if you perished with him; and when both were so inflammable, and the danger of fire was so great, it was always likely that flames would break out somewhere, and if they did, it was nearly certain that they would spread from one to the other. The substantial fruits of victory remained to the English, for their enemies attempted no retaliation. King Louis XII. was plainly convinced of the inferiority of his forces, for he prepared for the struggle of the ensuing year by sending for a reinforcement of galleys from the Mediterranean. They were brought round by a French Knight of Malta of the name of Pierre Jean le Bidoulx, which was abbreviated into Pregent by his countrymen, and corrupted by us into Perye John, and Preter John.

The winter months put a stop to the movements of ships between 1512 and 1513. In this year the operations began as before, that is to say, the English fleet sailed over to the coast of France for the purpose of making plundering raids, and then there was a fight between the two fleets. In this case, however, the end was disastrous to England. In spring Sir Edward Howard had his fleet collected at Plymouth. The total strength was of ships 24, of tons 8460, which gives an average of some 350 tons each. The statement as to the strength of the crews drawn up for Wolsey illustrates the superiority of the soldier to the sailor element in the fleets of the time. It is recorded that the captains were 26 in number, and the soldiers 4650, while of masters there were 24, and of mariners 2880. From this method of arranging the different elements of the crew, it is obvious that the captain and his soldiers were not looked upon as naval men in our sense of the word, but purely as fighting men, and were altogether considered as as much superior in dignity as they undoubtedly were in numbers to the sailors. It will be seen that these vessels must have been crowded to what would now be thought a dangerous extent. There were no less than two hundred men per ship. It was no doubt for this reason that the fleets of that time were attended by a swarm of small vessels called victuallers. There was, in fact, insufficient room to store the provisions required for such considerable bodies of men in such diminutive craft for any length of time. These victuallers were of course a serious hindrance to any fleet. They were slow, and, being only merchant ships, employed wholly as transports, were perfectly incapable of offering any resistance to an enemy. Thus the naval force which they were meant to feed was not only kept back from movements of any rapidity, but was constantly compelled to employ a large part of its strength in protecting its own food against attacks by even insignificant ships belonging to the other side. One short cruise out, an attack on some part of the enemy's coast, and a prompt return home, was all that could be expected from fleets pestered by so many obstructions.

It is said that Howard was so well pleased with the force under his command that he urged the king to come down and take part in the attack on France himself, for which he was soundly rebuked by the Council as having shown an insufficient regard for the safety of His Majesty's sacred person. Yet King Henry might have made this voyage with very little risk, and Howard himself might have returned from the coast of France in safety but for his own headlong courage. On reaching the neighbourhood of Brest, which he seems to have done on the 12th of April, the admiral found the enemy in no humour to give him a meeting. Their ships fled back into Brest on his approach, not, as it appears, into the actual harbour, which lies at the end of the very appropriately named Goulet or Gullet, but into Bertheaume Bay, which lies just outside on the north. Here they took refuge under the protection of forts, and refused to be enticed out. Howard had, in fact, made his appearance on the French coast at a very inconvenient time for the enemy. Pregent, who was on his way with the galleys from the Mediterranean, had not yet been able to join the French ships at Brest. The English were placed between the two divisions of the enemy, and, being apparently superior in force to either of them, could have crushed them in detail if once they could have been got out of the protection of their forts. But to come out was just what the French would not do; nor could Howard by any insults, or even by the damage he inflicted on the coast villages, sting them into giving him battle. Provoked by the shyness of his enemy, and perhaps sore from the rebuke inflicted on him by the Council, Howard made two successive, and, as the result shows, very rash attacks on the enemy. He first endeavoured to sail in and attack the French at anchor in Bertheaume Bay, but, being very ill supplied with pilots, he speedily came to grief. One of the largest of his vessels, commanded by Arthur Plantagenet, a natural son of Edward IV., ran on the rocks, and became a total wreck. It does not appear that Howard blamed "Master Arthur" for the loss of the ship. In a letter to the king on the 17th of April he praises him for his courage, and says that he had given him leave to go home. "For sir, when he was in extreme danger ... he called upon our Lady of Walsingham for help and comfort, and made a vow that, an it pleased God and her to deliver him out of the peril, he would never eat flesh nor fish till he had seen her." As Master Arthur Plantagenet would have been reduced by his hasty vow to the sad necessity of living upon dry bread, it was humane to let him get home as quickly as might be. The Middle Ages were not yet quite over, but the years were at hand when any officer of King Henry's who had pleaded a vow to our Lady of Walsingham as the excuse for retiring from the presence of the enemy would have soon found himself in another and even a worse form of peril than shipwreck.

After the failure in Bertheaume Bay, Howard turned to attack "Pery John," as he calls him. The Knight of Malta, finding himself cut off from Brest, had taken refuge in Conquet Bay, which lies just round the point San Mathieu, the extreme western end of the north side to the approach to Brest. Le Conquet is a little island, one of several which stretch south-east from Ushant, and the bay is just opposite on the mainland; the channel between them is called the Passage du Four. The French commander had drawn his galleys up on the beach. It was one of the advantages of these long, narrow, and in stormy waters unseaworthy craft, that they could be beached with ease, and so escape larger and heavier vessels which dared not follow them so near the shore. If Howard could have landed men and guns, he might very soon have made an end of the galleys. And it does appear that he had a scheme of the kind in contemplation, but, whether because he feared interruption by French ships coming out of Brest, or whether only because his buoyant courage ran away with him, he took another course. The story is told by Sir Edward Echyngham in a letter to Wolsey dated the 5th of May. "The news of these parts be so dolorous," he begins, "that unneith I can write them for sorrow;" and it was indeed a sorrowful story. Sir Edward Howard, so we make out, finding that the enemy would not give him a fair meeting, and that, while he was subject to interruption from Brest, he could not safely land his soldiers to attack Pregent, had at last despatched part of his fleet into what we then called the Trade, which is now known as the Passage de l'Iroise, and had decided to make a front attack on the enemy in Conquet Bay with the others. It was, in fact, a cutting-out expedition; and once more we note that the Middle Ages were lingering on, for the admiral led himself, as Sir John Chandos might have done, on a piece of work which in later times would have been more appropriately left to a subordinate officer. The object, as Sir Edward Echyngham reported, "was to win the French galleys with the help of boats, the water being too shallow for ships," and he goes on to describe what followed in words which it would be hardly possible to better.

"The galleys were protected on both sides by bulwarks, planted so thick with guns and cross-bows, that the quarrels and the gonstons (gunstones) came together as thick as hailstones. For all this the admiral boarded the galley that Preyer John was in and Charran the Spaniard with him and sixteen others. By advice of the admiral and Charran they had cast anchor into [word illegible] of the French galley, and fastened the cable to the capstan that if any of the galleys had been on fire they might have veered the cable, and fallen off; but the French hewed asunder the cable, or some of our mariners let it slip. And so they left this [word illegible] in the hands of his enemies. There was a mariner wounded in eighteen places who by adventure recovered unto the buoy of the galley so that the galley's boat took him up. He said he saw my Lord-Admiral thrust against the rails of the galley with marris pikes. Charran's boy tells a like tale, for when his master and the admiral had entered, Charran sent him for his hand gun which before he could deliver the one galley was gone off from the other, and he saw my Lord-Admiral waving his hands and crying to the galleys, 'Come aboard again, come aboard again,' which when my Lord saw they could not, he took his whistle from about his neck, wrapped it together and threw it into the sea."

So died Sir Edward Howard, deeply lamented. "For there was never nobleman so ill lost as he was, that was of so great courage, and had so many virtues, and that ruled so great an army so well as he did, and kept so good order and true justice." Sir Edward was the first of the short list of our admirals who died in battle, and it may be said that he was the last knight in the old sense of the word—that is to say, a valiant man of his person, thinking more of the point of honour than of beating an enemy by good management—who commanded an English fleet. Although it has been the custom to speak of the valour of this attempt as honourable to the whole force engaged, the truth seems to be that Sir Edward Howard was not well supported. This small English galley in which he boarded the Frenchman appears in sober fact, to have been seized with a panic. No sooner had the knights and gentlemen leapt on to the Frenchman's deck than their mariners left them to shift for themselves. Nor was it only the sailors who were somewhat deficient in spirit. Sir Edward Echyngham reports that "Sir Henry Shirborne and Sir William Sidney boarded Prior John's galley, but being left alone, and thinking the admiral safe, returned." These two, though brave men, satisfied themselves hastily of the safety of their leader, and it is not easy to understand how they could have failed to see his peril, considering that the whole body was crowded on the narrow space of a galley's deck.

The loss of Sir Edward Howard most certainly had the effect of depriving his command of all spirit. Within ten days they were back in England, and Echyngham's account of the repulse was written from Hampton. The excuses given for this hasty return were that the fleet did not know to whom the command ought to fall upon the death of the admiral, and the want of victuals. They are more plausible than convincing, and the fact probably is that the fleet was dispirited on finding that the French were too strongly posted to be attacked. The discipline, too, was probably not very good at a time when all forces were raised for temporary expeditions. The death of a leader whose rank and character secured the respect of his followers, was not infrequently followed by the disbanding of his whole force.

The short remainder of this war, which speedily came to an end, was filled by a mere repetition of the old raids by English ships on the French coast, and by French on the English. Pregent plundered the coast of Sussex, while the English ships were refitting, till he had an eye knocked out by an English arrow. English captains in revenge plundered the coast of France, and so it went on with much brutality and no decisive effect till the war died a natural death.

For thirty years there were no further events in the history of the navy which call for particular notice. Henry entered into several wars with Francis I., the successor of Louis XII., and his navy was used to good effect; but little would be gained by a barren recital of the number and strength of the fleets fitted out to transport our armies across the Channel, or harass the French coast. The superiority of Henry during all these years was very marked. He had, in fact, no serious enemy at sea, for Scotland was too poor to send out any naval armament above the level of a casual pirate or semi-pirate, while Charles V., whose dominions included both our rivals at sea in the coming generations, the Spaniards and the Hollanders, was generally at peace with the King of England. Francis I. might have been a most formidable enemy if he had applied himself to developing his navy. He did not indeed actually neglect it at any time, and towards the end of his reign he made one strenuous attempt to get the upper hand at sea. But he had too much to do elsewhere, not to be forced to sacrifice his fleet. His rivalry with Charles V., both in the contest for the empire and in the struggle to obtain possession of the duchy of Milan, made it absolutely necessary for him to devote his resources mainly to the maintenance of armies on land.

In this as in other cases England owed a great deal to the geographical position which saved her from the temptations and necessities besetting her rival. It is enough to say that from 1514 to 1544 the English fleet carried troops across the Channel or escorted the armies marching into Scotland, practically unresisted. This interval was, however, of great importance in the history of the navy. The establishment of the Navy Office was not completed till 1546, but the dockyards were more thoroughly organised, and were greatly extended. There was still very much to be done in the formation of a permanent service. A certain lingering confusion between the Navy Royal and the general shipping of the country probably accounts for the king's decision to leave the management of Deptford Dockyard in the hands of the Trinity House. But the tendency was always towards the formation of special services to be employed for definite ends. Although no regular naval service was as yet formed, the foundations were laid. Even when there was no expedition to be carried out against the French or the Scotch, the king took care never to leave the seas without their winter or their summer guard—small squadrons of vessels appointed to patrol the Straits and the Channel. This force was very small—in quiet times hardly exceeding six or seven little vessels, and the crews were hired only for the summer or winter commission. The fact that a man had commanded a ship in one or other guard did not give him any right to continued employment, but from the very nature of the case a certain continuity of service would arise. Officers who proved satisfactory, or had good friends at court, were employed again and again, and the king's captains began to be a recognised body; while it is safe to presume that there were some soldiers and mariners who found his service more acceptable than that of private employers, and who volunteered into it with regularity. It was during these years, too, that the first efforts to improve the construction of ships were made by the introduction of skilled shipwrights from the Italian ports. Of these Henry must have had a respectable staff in constant employment. When the Mary Rose was sunk at St. Helens, the efforts made to raise her were mainly directed by Italian workmen.

After neglecting, or if not actually neglecting, then subordinating, the naval strength of his kingdom to his armies, and to much less worthy purposes, for thirty years, Francis I. was at last driven into making a desperate effort at sea by the capture of Boulogne in 1544. When the King of England had appeared in France at the head of an army of 30,000 men, and had added another defensible position to the fortress he already possessed at Calais, the unwisdom of leaving him the command of the Channel was borne in upon Francis with a force which aroused him to efforts really worthy of the occasion. In the spring of 1545 (the operations of the previous year had merely been the transport of the army, and a few plundering expeditions) preparations were made on both sides for something deserving to be called war. The King of France built ships in batches, and brought from the Mediterranean not only his own galleys, but large numbers of vessels hired from the Ragusans, whom our ancestors called the Aragoozes. The superiority of the fleet which he was soon able to command might have taught a French ruler how very possible it was for his great monarchy, then certainly more than twice as populous and rich as England, to excel her in the number of her fleets. The English were outnumbered from the first, and knew it. In the spring of 1545, Lord Lisle, then Henry's admiral, and the famous or infamous Duke of Northumberland of the next reign, made his appearance on the coast of France with a scheme for attacking the French in the Seine; but he did not carry it into effect, and the explanation that he found his enemy too strong is at least the most plausible. When the French put to sea, the English certainly acted in a manner to be expected of men who felt themselves overmatched. They retired into Portsmouth harbour, and allowed the French admiral, D'Annebault, to advance to the anchorage of St. Helens, and establish himself there unopposed. The real strength of the French fleet was by no means in proportion to its numbers. A large part of the ships were galleys, which were of little or no use except in a dead calm. It seems, too, that the spirits of the French fleet had been a good deal damped by a disaster which happened before they left Havre. A great vessel, the Philippe, the most beautiful in the world according to the French writers, caught fire in the harbour of Havre, and burned to the water's edge. Blaise de Montluc, who saw the disaster, immediately formed the conclusion that no good would come of the enterprise; and if he, who was the most intrepid of mankind, had come to this gloomy conclusion, we may be sure that there were plenty more in the fleet who were not in a more confident spirit.

A much more trustworthy indication of the little result to be expected from the enterprise would have been the want of spirit of the officers chosen to command by the French king. They had, in reality, an immense superiority of strength. One hundred and fifty "great ships," and at least a hundred smaller vessels, were collected under the command of D'Annebault, and the troops amounted to eight or ten thousand men under the command of Marshal Biez. The force was amply sufficient to strike such a blow to England as would have very rapidly compelled Henry to restore Boulogne, if it had been used with any degree of resolution, but the French leaders were from the beginning on the outlook for difficulties. They left Havre on the 16th of July, and two days later made their appearance on the coast of Sussex, where they spent some time in plundering insignificant fishing villages. No attempt to molest them was made by the English fleet, which lay quiet in Portsmouth harbour. After doing just enough on the coast of Sussex to arouse the whole countryside, the French fleet came on to the Isle of Wight, and anchored at St. Helens. Here they remained, apparently for about ten days, neither attacking with determination, nor being attacked to any purpose. The fine July weather and the prevailing calms were wholly in favour of the French, whose fleet consisted largely of galleys. On the English side, a number of the smaller vessels had been fitted with sweeps, in order that they might act against the rowing vessels of the enemy. But neither did they show any particular zeal to attack. The king himself had come down to Portsmouth to survey the fortifications, and if courtly historians did not praise him too much, it was at his suggestion that the English vessels were provided with oars. Henry did not stay to witness the fighting (if it deserves that name) which ensued, but returned to London, leaving the command of the fleet to Lisle, and of the garrison to Suffolk. The operations were of a very monotonous description, and leave us under the impression that each side was reluctant to fight till it had the other at a hopeless disadvantage.

On the first day the French admiral sent forward sixteen galleys under the command of the Baron de la Garde, for the purpose of drawing the English admiral out to St. Helens, where he might be overpowered by numbers. Lisle was resolute not to be tempted to put himself at a disadvantage. Indeed, the plan was rather a futile one, which it hardly needed any great display of skill on the part of the English admiral to defeat. The galleys were not able to face the king's ships when any wind was blowing. They were very lightly built, and carried only one gun in the bow. If the English ships were able to manœuvre, they could either overpower their enemy by the fire of their broadsides, or, better still, run into them and sink them. Such a vessel as the Great Harry running before a good breeze would probably have gone over a galley without suffering any material damage herself. Therefore the vessels sent by D'Annebault could not, without extreme rashness, come within striking distance of the English fleet, except in a dead calm. When, however, the weather was of this kind, the English ships were unable to move, and could not sail into the French fleet even if they had been disposed to do so. The fight, then, between the two resolved itself into something like this. During the calm hours of the morning, the Baron de la Garde and his colleague Strozzi, the Prior of Capua (the same who afterwards took the castle of St. Andrews from the Scotch Reformers, and had John Knox for his prisoner), came near enough to Lisle's ships to open an exasperating fire. So long as the wind did not get up, the English vessels lay helpless, and could only reply to the fire of their enemy with the few guns they could bring to bear. In such a case, the galleys at all times took care, as far as possible, to station themselves right ahead or else astern of their opponent, in order to avoid the fire of the broadside, though this, considering the rude gunnery of the early sixteenth century, was almost an excessive precaution, since the narrow, low-lying galley, when end on, must have presented a mark much more likely to be missed than to be hit. When the breeze got up, the English ships stood toward the enemy, who thereupon incontinently fled, and was not followed for any considerable distance. This moment was dangerous for him, for if he did not turn quick enough and get away before the English were quite close, he was likely to suffer very severely, for the galleys carried no guns astern. La Garde and the Prior of Capua were expert officers, and when, after some hours of long bowls, the wind got up and the English ships began to bear down, they extricated themselves very smartly from danger.

The first day having thus passed in a species of fighting which might have been prolonged for weeks with little material damage to either side, the French went on for a second, but not apparently for a third day. Yet, on this occasion, they were encouraged by the conviction that they had really inflicted a severe loss on the English fleet. There had been a loss, but it was due, unless all contemporary Englishmen were in a conspiracy to conceal the truth, to something more discreditable to us than the enemy's cannon. The king's ship, the Mary Rose, had been thrown away by pure mismanagement. This was the vessel so ardently praised by Sir Edward Howard in the words quoted already. She capsized as she was coming out of Portsmouth harbour, owing, as it would seem, partly to defects in her construction, partly to neglect of precautions on the part of her crew. The lower-deck ports are said to have been only sixteen inches above the water-line, which is certainly dangerously low. As her crew were tacking her, or altering her course in some other way, she heeled over. If the ports had been shut and the guns made fast, no great harm might have followed, but the ports were open and the guns cast loose. When the water rushed in, the additional weight caused the vessel, overburdened as she was with the weight of her fore and after castles, to heel still further, and then the unfastened guns fell in a rush on the lee-side, probably breaking through wherever they fell against the planking. The Mary Rose filled and sank with such amazing rapidity, that of the 400 soldiers and 200 sailors, more or less, who formed her crew, not more than 40 were saved.

The pardonable conviction that they were entitled to credit themselves with the destruction of the Mary Rose had no very inspiriting influence on the French. M. d'Annebault even gave up making any further attacks to draw the English ships out by the use of his galleys, and adopted the alternative course of landing small parties of men in St. Helens Bay, at Shanklin, and the Blackgang Chine, for the purpose of plundering the country. None of these landing-parties seem to have been of any strength, and several of them were roughly handled by the militia of the island. D'Annebault has been severely criticised by his countrymen for want of energy, and on the whole with justice. He excused himself, partly by pleading that if he had landed a great number of men, he would have so weakened his fleet that the English at Portsmouth could have fallen upon him with every prospect of success, and partly by the opinion of a council of war. The first of these excuses is very lame, for at a later period D'Annebault could afford to put four thousand men on shore in France, and yet be strong enough to give battle to Lisle at Shoreham. He could certainly have landed three thousand in the Isle of Wight, and if he had done so he might have retaliated very severely for the damage done by the English in France, while the ships at Portsmouth must have incurred deep discredit if they had lain idle while the houses of their countrymen were being burned before their eyes. The council of war is only technically a better excuse. He did indeed call a council of all the pilots in his fleet, to ask them whether it was possible to attack the English at Portsmouth with success. The pilots, as might have been expected, magnified the dangers and the difficulties—the shoals, the narrowness of the entry, the currents, the tides, the risk that the first vessels entering would be overpowered, and block the way for those following, the chance that a ship anchoring in a tideway would swing stern-on to the English fire, and, in short, all the topics of dissuasion which are usually advanced by subordinates on such occasions. If the expert knowledge of pilots had been listened to by Nelson, he would never have fought the battle of the Baltic. Fortunately for King Henry VIII., D'Annebault does not seem to have reflected that you can hardly hope to inflict serious injury upon an enemy who possesses some effective strength, except at the very serious risk of being hurt yourself. He wanted, to judge by his actions, to win without running any serious risk; and as the enemy with whom he had to deal was not one likely to give him a victory upon these easy terms, he had finally to retire without delivering an effective stroke. His timidity and want of resource are strikingly illustrated by the fact that he made no use of his galleys for the purpose of towing his great ships into Spithead, which they could easily have done. On the other hand, it must be confessed that no very great enterprise was shown by the English in the use of their own row-boats. We neither hear of them as being employed to tow the big ships into action, nor of any really serious attack made by them upon the galleys. Perhaps the fate of Sir Edward Howard was too fresh in the recollections of our officers to allow of any repetition of his attempt in Conquet Bay.

Whether any considerable number of men were either killed or wounded in these very languid operations is doubtful, but both fleets certainly lost heavily from a cause which, throughout the whole of this and the following two centuries, was far more destructive than the sword. Hardly had King Henry VIII. left Portsmouth when his generals began to report to him the prevalence of sickness in his fleet; while the plague broke out amongst the French at St. Helens, even if it had not begun before they left Havre. Overcrowding, dirt, and salt food were universal in old fleets, and they produced their natural effects. We are probably well within the mark in supposing that for every man killed in action, or mortally wounded, fifty died of fever or the plague, and this continued to be the rule until well past the middle of the eighteenth century. What between disappointment at the obstinacy of the English in not fighting him on his own terms, the timidity of his pilots, and want of enterprise, D'Annebault, after spending several days in this futile manner, sailed away from St. Helens, coasting along Sussex, and making, as before, small plundering attacks, which even seem to have been very badly conducted, and could in any case serve no purpose except to embitter the already sufficiently savage hostility of the two countries. After a few days of this, he stood over to the coast of France, and near Boulogne landed not only four thousand soldiers, but three thousand pioneers, who had been supplied to him for the purpose of erecting the fortifications in the Isle of Wight. Even after this he still thought himself sufficiently strong to return to the English coast, and he reappeared accordingly in a few days.

On their return to the coast of England, the French made no attempt to renew the attack on the Isle of Wight. They prowled along the shores of Sussex and of Kent in what reads like a very aimless manner. If they had any definite object, it was to prevent the English from sending reinforcements to Boulogne. On the whole, it does appear likely that they had some such purpose, for the general direction of their cruise was towards the narrow seas. So soon as they were relieved from their fears at Portsmouth, the English ships were ordered out to observe the French. It appears, from a letter of Lisle's to Paget, that he had been instructed by the king to remain at Spithead.

"Havyng received your letters, this morninge, wherein I do perceyve the Kinges Majesties plesser, as concerninge the settinge forwardes of His Majesties navy towardes the Narro Sees, wher, as it aperith, the Frenche men doo tryhumphe, I truste ther shalbe no tyme forslowyde in the advauncement and settinge forth of His Majesties plesser in that behalfe; and I moste humbly thanke His Majestie, that it hath plesed the same to gyve me libertye to look towardes theyme, for I never thought my selfe in prisone tyll now, syns the tyme of our lyinge here, and doe no servis. I truste in God that we shall departe hense uppon Tusdaye, yf the wynde will serve us."

When they did depart hence, some time was spent in finding the exact whereabouts of the triumphing French. Lisle sent vessels to look into Havre, who reported that a great part, if not all, of the French fleet had returned. This, however, must have been a mistake, for D'Annebault had certainly come back to the north side of the Channel immediately after landing his men at Boulogne. Between the 9th of August, the date of the letter quoted, and the 15th, Lisle found the enemy somewhere in the neighbourhood of Shoreham. The orders he had taken in view of the expected battle are particularly interesting, not only for what they tell of the sea fighting of the time, but because they contain the first mention of much which appears continuously during the succeeding centuries of our naval history.

The fleet under Lisle's orders consisted in all of 104 vessels. He had divided them into three squadrons, respectively called the Vanwarde, the Battle, and the Wing. All three terms were taken from the military language of the time. The Battle was the usual name of the main or central division in the army, the Vanwarde needs no explanation, and we may suppose that the Wing was used to describe the third division, later called the Rear. This is the division into Red, White, and Blue squadrons, which became established in the naval wars of the seventeenth century. These titles were taken from the flags which finally came into use. In 1545 the only flags shown were the Royal Standard or "Banner of the King's Majesty's Arms," and the Cross of St. George or English Ensign. Lisle provided for distinguishing his own flagship from those of his subordinates by ordering that she should bear the Royal Standard at the main, and one flag of St. George's Cross at the fore. The ships of his division were to carry the St. George's Cross at the main. The admiral of the Vanwarde was to carry two flags of St. George—one at the main, and the other at the fore. The ships of his division were to carry their St. George's Cross at the foretopmasthead. The admiral of the Wing was to carry the English Ensign at the mizen, and every ship of his division was to do the same. It does not appear that the ships in this division were distinguished in any way from the flagship. By night the admiral carried three lights—one great lantern on the poop, and two smaller lights in the midst of the bonaventure mizen shrouds. The bonaventure mizen was a very small mast at the extreme end of the ship, where the smaller mast of a yawl is now placed. The admiral of the Vanwarde carried two lights, and the admiral of the Wing one light, on the bonaventure shrouds. The last articles of the sailing orders were, "The watch wourde in the night shalbe thus, 'God save King Henrye'; thother shall aunswer, 'And long to raign over us.'" This has been supposed to be the germ of the National Anthem.

In strength the fleet was divided as follows:—The Van consisted of 24 ships, carrying 3800 men, the Battle of 40, with 6846 men. Lisle himself was in this division, with the flag in the Henry Grace à Dieu. The Wing was of 40 smaller vessels, carrying only 2092 men. Perhaps the most interesting of the admiral's fighting orders is the third—

"Item, when we shall se a convenient tyme to fight with thenimies, our Vanward shall make with ther Vanwarde, if they have any; and if they be in one compenye, our Vanward (takyng thadvauntage of the wynde) shall set uppon ther foremost ranck, bryngyng them oute of order; and our Vice-Admirall shall seake to bourd their Vice-Admirall, and every capitaign shall chose his equall, as nere as he maye."

In the thirty years which had passed since the death of Sir Edward Howard, some progress had been made towards establishing a recognised order of battle. Practice, helped no doubt by speculation, had brought our admirals to see the necessity of a regular method. In this disposition to stretch all along an enemy, and engage him from end to end, we have the first indication of that line of battle of which so much will be heard. It was the natural formation of a fleet relying on its broadside as its means of offence. But the line of battle may be left to grow a little more clearly defined before we discuss it. What is for the present of interest is to point out that the principle upon which the great majority of our naval battles have been fought, was present, not in germ, but fully developed, in this third item of Lisle's orders. It contains, in fact, the whole of the famous Article XIX. of the Fighting Instructions. The van was to steer with the enemy's van, the centre with his centre, and the rear with his rear, and the captains were to take "every man his bird." In time this became a sheer pedantry, and a burden under which the ablest officers of the navy chafed for a generation, until a happy accident encouraged them to throw it off. But in 1545 it was a progress, since any kind of order was in advance of none at all, and there was no hope of finally attaining a good system except by a series of experiments,—in other words, by successively trying everything that was wrong, and rejecting it.

The correspondence of the Lord Admiral was otherwise interesting. There was, for instance, admirable sense in the reasons he gives for not appointing two captains to the vessels fitted as galleys.

"And wher as His Majesties plesser ys to have to capitaynes and leaders of His Highnes rowyng peces, I do think, yf it may so stande with His Highnes plesser, that one shall do His Majestie better servis then too. For if theyr be too rulers, one will have his mynde, thother wil have his; if any thinge frame a mys, thone will excuse him by thother; the resydue under theym will excuse theym by two comanders; 'he bed me do that, and tother this.' Yf theyr be butt one, having chardge, nether he that hath the chardge commytted only to him, nether thos which be under one, hath any soche excuse."

Lisle's correspondence contains also several incidental notices of the ships under his command, which are valuable as showing the unseaworthiness of even the best vessels of the time. Thus, for instance, he writes on the 20th of August to Lord St. John: "This shall be to advise you that the King's Majesty's new ship called The Mistress is in such case with labouring in this foul weather, that she is not able to keep the seas, without spoiling of her masts, and tackle overboard. Her mainstay is loose in the partners, and the cross-trestles both of her foremast, and also of her mainmast are broken." The foul weather of which Lisle complains must have been experienced between the middle of July and the latter half of August. At that season it would certainly have been thought extraordinary, in the eighteenth century, that a new ship should have been so strained by weather alone as to be under the necessity of returning immediately to port. It does not appear that Lisle made any complaint of the work done on the Mistress, or that he attached any blame to her officers. He rather accepted this instant disabling of this vessel, which, be it observed, was the flagship of the Wing, as a dispensation of Providence to be borne with patience. Nor was the Mistress by any means the only ship of his fleet which had broken down under the strain of a few weeks' cruising in summer.

On the 21st Lisle writes again to St. John—

"I trust your Lordshipp have advertised the Kinges Majestie of the state of the Mystres, and of the Gallye Subtill, and the foyste, which I suppose wooll be hable to do no more sarvice, until they be amended. And if the French armye shuld retourne agayne this yere to the sees, which verilly I rather thynck they wooll not, we shuld have no small mysse of those three peeces. There be allso in this armye dyvers shippes, which, after another storme, wooll be hable to loke no more abroode this yere. And I thynck our enimies be in as evill cace, or worse. For emonges such a nomber of shippes, as they have, and as we have, all cannot be strong, nor all cannot be well tackled."

If it appears, as on a bare narrative of the facts it must, that both fleets showed a singular languor during their movements in this summer campaign, it is only fair to take into account the quality of the instruments with which the admirals had to deal. It was not possible to do anything very rapid with clumsy, ill-balanced vessels, which were overstrained by a summer breeze. Moreover, both leaders were in reality hampered by what they no doubt considered an element of strength. The numbers of their fleets alone would have made any kind of combined action impossible. At a time when the vessels were incomparably better, and our seamen had a far larger experience, Nelson considered it impossible to manœuvre more than thirty ships in a line of battle. That is to say, he thought it beyond the power of the most skilful and practised body of captains ever collected under one command to combine the movements of more than thirty well-constructed ships in such a manner that they could be brought to bear upon an enemy all together. If this was impossible with so small a number of very superior vessels, we can imagine how hopeless must have been the attempt of D'Annebault or Lisle to direct the movements of a hundred and a hundred and fifty inferior vessels of all sorts and sizes. With the best will in the world, they could not but straggle in the variable summer breezes and the tides of the Channel. Besides, the system of signals was hardly yet in existence. There were, and indeed at all times must have been, a few arbitrary signals, to anchor or to get up anchor, to fight or leave off fighting, and so forth, but there were no means by which an admiral could communicate an order to make a particular movement, except by sending a boat with an officer. Of course this implies that the movements of fleets must have been very slow, or else a messenger who had to row could not have overtaken the captain to whom he was sent. Even so, to send orders to the ships ahead of the admiral must have required an amount of time which made any rapidity of movement impossible, besides leaving an interval for accidents which would render the order improper by altering the whole circumstances. In fact, no battle, in the sense the word had in even the seventeenth century, could well be expected to take place between these two fleets in 1545, even if there had been a more manifest desire on the part of the admirals to bring one on.

The truth is, that neither D'Annebault nor Lisle showed any such inclination. The Frenchman returned from his own coast to ours, and began to stretch along it from west to east. Lisle followed, with the intention of making a stroke at the enemy if a particularly tempting opportunity presented itself. On the 9th of August he wrote to Paget: "If we chance to meet with them, divided as it should seem they be, we shall have some sport with them." From the French account in the memoirs of Martin du Bellay, which is both full and fair, it is clear that D'Annebault was no more adventurous than Lisle. On the coast of Sussex he showed the same incapacity to understand that, in war more than in most enterprises, he who will nothing venture shall nothing have. The English fleet came in sight of the French near Shoreham on the 15th of August. D'Annebault had drawn his vessels as close to the beach as was safe, with his galleys to the west, under a small headland, and therefore between his great ships and the English, who were advancing from Portsmouth. The galleys had been hauled into very shallow water, where the larger of Lisle's ships could not reach them. D'Annebault's calculation was, that the English admiral would not care to run the risk of passing the galleys, for the purpose of attacking the great ships beyond, lest they should fall upon his rear, and so put him between two fires. According to Lisle's statement to the king of the plan on which he intended to fight, he would not have been deterred from attacking by the dispositions of the French admiral. He had made counter arrangements which were skilful in intention, and might have been effective. His plan was to fall upon the great ships of the French fleet, with the Vanwarde and the Battle, leaving the smaller craft which formed the Wing to stay behind, or to windward, and ward off the French galleys. A shift of the wind from the west to north-east rendered it impossible for him to carry out his intention. The change in the wind had transferred the weather-gage to D'Annebault, and if he had been as eager for battle as according to Martin du Bellay he asserted himself to be, he had now an admirable opportunity of fighting. But D'Annebault again found insuperable difficulties in the way of coming to close quarters. All the use he made of his chance was to fight a tardy, inconclusive battle. Martin du Bellay and Lord Lisle substantially agree, but we may give the preference to our own countryman.

"After my right hartie commendacions. Theis shalbe tadvertise you, that the Kinges Majesties navie ys arrived twhart of Beauchif; where, for lack of wynde, we be at this present comme to ancker, to stopp this ebbe, and with the nexte fludd, which wooll be aboute foure of the clock in the mornying, we entend (God willing) tapplye towards Dover. I had thought the French fleete wold have been here before me, to have stopped us at this place, for uppon Saturdaye night last, both they and we came to ancker within a leage togethurs; and all the same daye, frome noone untill night, they assailed us with ther gallyes, but ther hole fleete approached us not, untill it was after son settyng; before which tyme ther gallies were repulced, and then both they and we came to ancker, within a leage one of an other: and yarly in the mornyng they were dislodged; for by the tyme yt was daye, they were asfarre unto the wynde of us, as we might escrye them oute of my mayne topp, halyng into the seawarde, the wynde beyng somewhat fresshe; so that, if they had taried, ther gallyes could have doon them letill pleasour. And wheras, the daye before, they came togethurs, like an hole wood, they kepte now, in ther removing, noon order; for some of our small boates, which could lye best by a wynde, (whome I dyd purposely send to se what course they helde, and what order they kept) brought me wourde, that they lay est with the sailes, as though it shuld seame that they mynded to fetche the Narrow Sees before us. Ther was five myles in lenght (as they thought) between ther foremost and ther hyndermost shippes. And seyng that they be not here in this baye (which we have alredy seane) I cannot perceave, howe they can be before us in any part of the Narrow Sees. Wherefore I have thought good to desyer you to send me some of your intelligence, and allso that you wold gyve knowledge to Rye, that all the shippes, which be there with the Kinges Majesties victualles, may comme and mete with me to morowe at the Nasse (Dungeness), as I goe towardes Dover; where, (God willyng) if the wynde wooll suffer me, I wooll be with thole flete to morowe at night. Herof I requier you, with diligence, tadvertise the Kinges Majestie. And if ther armye, or any parte of them, remayne in any parte of the Narrowe Sees, whethur it be uppon ther owne quoast, or uppon oures, I doubt not but I wooll have some knowledge of them, ones ere to morowe night; wherof allso (God willyng) I wooll not faile to signifye unto His Highnes. And thus I byd you right hartilly well to fare. In the Harrye, under Beauchif, this Mondaye, the 17th of August, at 9 of the clock in the night."

Your assured loving Frende,
(Signed) John Lisle.

To this lame and impotent conclusion came the great attempt of Francis I. to punish Henry for the capture of Boulogne. When every allowance is made for the insufficiency of the tools with which the French admiral had to work, it is impossible to acquit him of having shown a remarkable want of spirit. It would appear, if we are to trust Blaise de Montluc, that his countrymen did not expect much. "Our business is rather on the land than on the water, where I do not know that our nation has ever gained any great battles," is the sentence in which he dismisses the expedition. Montluc, for his part, did nothing that was worthy to be written about. But it was perhaps because the French did not expect much, then or at later periods, that their admirals have so commonly shown the timidity of D'Annebault.

The war contained no further naval operations of any importance. Both fleets were worn out by operations which for the time were lengthy and trying. The Governments, too, were exhausted, and all but bankrupt. Both Francis and Henry VIII. were at the end of their lives; and although peace was not actually made till after the death of both of them, the war was not pushed seriously. Only a very detailed history of the navy could find place for an account of the reigns of Edward VI. and Mary Tudor. Much could not be said, however anxious the historian might be to pass over absolutely nothing. The only achievement of Edward VI.'s Government with regard to the navy was to employ it for the purpose of assisting the Protector Somerset's invasion of Scotland. This effort appears to have exhausted the energies of King Edward's Council, as far as the navy was concerned. In fact, all the members of that body were far too busy intriguing against one another, to attend to the defences of the realm. The resources of the country had been taxed to the utmost during the reign of Henry VIII. A sum of over £3,600,000 was calculated to have been spent on wars during the reign of father and son, and to get the equivalent of that outlay in our generation we must not only multiply the sum spent by 20, but divide the existing wealth of the nation by some much larger figure. During the few years of confusion which make up the reign of Edward VI., the navy was reduced to half the numbers attained by Henry VIII. Seventy-one vessels, of which thirty were of respectable size, was the strength of Henry's navy. Queen Elizabeth never had quite so many ships; and although those of James and Charles I. were on an average larger, they were never more numerous. Mary Tudor inherited the diminished navy of her brother, and she could do little to bring it back to the former standard. Her marriage with the King of Spain established a firm alliance, for the time being, with what was then the most considerable naval power in Europe, while the entire exhaustion of France in the reign of Henry II. made the possession of a powerful fleet less necessary. But though little was demanded of the navy at that period, it was allowed to become too weak to do even that little. When Calais was attacked by the Duke of Guise in the winter of 1559, Mary's navy was so unprepared that it could not be got ready in time to give the least assistance to the garrison. A few of our ships, which had been fitted out too late to be of any service at Calais, did make their appearance on the flank of the French troops, which were defeated on the sands at Gravelines, by the Count of Egmont, and that was about the sum of the service they rendered during Mary's reign. There was indeed something stirring among the seamen of the west of England, which was to have great consequences in the next reign, but it will come to be dealt with more appropriately in our account of the navy of Queen Elizabeth.

CHAPTER II
REIGN OF ELIZABETH TO THE DEFEAT OF THE ARMADA

Authorities.—Charnock continues to be of value for this reign, and indeed for the history of the navy till the end of the eighteenth century. Derrick's Rise and progress of the Royal Navy gives useful official lists. Mr. Whateley gives the substance of the rules established for the Navy Office by Elizabeth in 1560, at pp. 131-134 of his Samuel Pepys, and the World he lived in. The original is in the S. P. Dom. Elizabeth, vol. xv. The Calendars of State Papers of the reign contain much information as to the navy. More is in the great collection of Hakluyt. The Navy Record Society has published the papers referring to the Armada, while the Spanish side of the story is told in La Armada Invencible of Don Cesareo Duro—so admirably extracted and combined by Mr. Froude in his Spanish Story of the Armada. Drake's first notable cruise to the West Indies is told in the Drake Redivivus.

When Elizabeth ascended the throne, in 1559, she found the navy in the same state of weakness and confusion as all other parts of the administration. Its downward progress from the high level at which it had been left by Henry VIII. was rapid. In 1548, at the beginning of the reign of Edward VI., it had consisted of 53 vessels of 11,268 tons, carrying 237 brass guns and 1848 of iron. The crews were then estimated at 7731 men. In the sixth year of Elizabeth's reign, even after her government had begun its efforts to restore the naval forces of the country, the number of vessels was only 29. From that point it gradually returned to something more like the position it had occupied under Henry VIII. In one respect, indeed, it may be said to have remained permanently inferior to his. It never reached the same number, but numbers afford only one, and not necessarily the surest, test of strength. The size and armament of the ships are often far more trustworthy indications of power than the number of vessels. During the queen's reign the average size of ships was much greater than it had been in her father's. In 1578 the navy contained 24 ships of 10,506 tons, manned by 3760 mariners, 630 gunners, and 1900 soldiers. The total force is put in Derrick's list at 6570 officers and men. If these figures are accurate, or even only approximately correct, it would appear that the staff of the navy, that is, the officers and their immediate personal attendants, must have numbered 280. Ten years later the navy had increased to 34 ships of 12,590 tons, with 6279 men. At the death of the queen the number of ships was 42, the tonnage 17,055, while the crews amounted to 8346 men, divided into 5534 mariners, 804 gunners, and 2008 soldiers. On comparing these figures with those of the navy as it stood in 1548, it will be seen that the ships of Elizabeth were on an average rather more than twice as large as those her brother had inherited from their father. The changes which had taken place in the constitution of the crews are somewhat different. The little vessels of King Edward carried nearly as many men as the much larger ships of Queen Elizabeth. No doubt, where there were more ships to man, many men were necessary, but, scattered among small vessels averaging 212 tons or thereabouts, they cannot have exerted the same power as they would have done in the better and heavier warships of Elizabeth. It is interesting to see the great change which had come over the constitution of the crews in the course of the century. In Henry's reign the soldiers were always more numerous than the sailors. During Elizabeth's the proportion was entirely reversed, and at the date of her death the mariners were almost twice as numerous as the soldiers in her sea service. In fact, the navy was becoming necessarily a more seamanlike force. The development of the ship had been steady. The mere barges of King Henry's reign had given place to vessels which were already approximating to a modern standard. Seamanship itself had grown far beyond the humble standard of the early sixteenth century. Then the seaman, at least the English seaman, was a mere coaster. When the great queen died, he was already accustomed to far-ranging voyages, and the navy was no longer expected only to carry soldiers across the Channel, and fight a force no more expert than itself, but to invade the West Indies, and at need to circumnavigate the globe. It followed that the sailor became relatively more important, and as his skill grew to be the most essential element of strength, his numbers had to be increased. Sir Walter Raleigh in the following reign summed up the changes which had taken place in his time.

"Whoever were the inventors, we find that every age has added somewhat to ships; and in my time the shape of our English ships has been greatly bettered. It is not long since the striking of the topmasts, a wonderful ease to great ships, both at sea and in the harbour, hath been devised, together with the chain-pump, which taketh up twice as much water as the ordinary one did. We have lately added the bonnet, and the drabler, to the courses; we have added studding-sails, the weighing anchor by the capstern. We have fallen into consideration of the length of cables, and by it we resist the malice of the greatest winds that can blow. Witness the Hollanders, that were wont to ride before Dunkirk with the wind at north-east, making a lee shore in all weathers; for true it is, that the length of the cable is the life of the ship in all extremities; and the reason is, that it makes so many bendings and waves, as the ship riding at that length is not able to stretch it, and nothing breaks that is not stretched."

When we speak of the greater size of Elizabeth's vessels, it must be remembered that the increase of tonnage had been among the smaller, not the greater warships. Some of King Henry's had been as large as, if not larger than, any of Queen Elizabeth's, but then she did not have the same swarm of mere cockboats. The navy was, in fact, tending to become a more uniform as well as a more seaworthy force.

The armament of these ships was still very heterogeneous, and the names of the pieces curiously fantastic. The following list gives the mere denominations of the guns:—

• Cannon
• Demi-cannon
• Culverins
• Demi-culverins
• Sakers
• Mynions
• Falcons
• Falconets
• Port-pece Halls
• Port-pece Chambers
• Fowler Halls
• Fowler Chambers and
• Curtalls.

There is some uncertainty as to the weight of the shot fired by these various pieces, and the following list must be taken with some reserve, but it no doubt gives the calibres of the guns with substantial accuracy.

The quality of these guns was good. Down to the middle of the sixteenth century they were made by welding together bars of wrought iron little inferior in tensile strength to that used in very recent times for Armstrong guns. About 1550 the use of cast iron, which made it possible to turn out large numbers of guns, came in. All the changes which have taken place in the construction of weapons of war have not been in the direction of what we should consider progress. When in our own time the guns which had been sunk at Spithead, in the wreck of the Mary Rose, were dredged up, it was found that they were breech-loaders, and there is evidence that experiments in the rifling of cannon were made very early. The difficulty of making a trustworthy breech-piece accounts for the triumph of the muzzle-loader, which drove its rival out of the field for centuries. The distribution of the guns in the ships remained very much what it had been during the reign of Henry VIII.; that is to say, cannon of the most various sizes were mounted side by side on the same deck. A few specimens taken from a list attested by the auditors of the Prest and the officers of the Ordnance in 1599, printed by Derrick, will show how far this practice was carried.

A large proportion of the pieces named here were very small, and it is doubtful what is to be understood by some of the terms. They apply doubtless often to small "murdering pieces," of about the size of a duck-gun, mounted on the cobridge heads and bulwarks, for the purpose of repelling or driving out boarders. Therefore we must not suppose that the 68 guns of the Triumph represented anything like what that figure would have meant two hundred years later. It must not be forgotten that if Elizabeth did less to increase the strength of the navy than her father, she did not inherit a treasure as he did, and neither had she the spending of the plunder of the Church. He spent his capital. She had to confine herself to income.

No administrative changes in essentials were made by Elizabeth in the organisation of the navy. The function of the officers of the Navy Office, which had not as yet been strictly defined, were settled by instructions issued by the queen in 1560. What her Government did do was to attend to the navy with enlightened care, and to select the officials with judgment. It is known that for years the business of building, refitting, and taking care of the ships of the navy, and of superintending the purchase of stores, was carried on by Sir John Hawkins, who held the posts of Treasurer and Comptroller of the Navy. Hawkins was the successor of his father-in-law, Benjamin Gonson, in the office of Treasurer. It appears that he held his post under an agreement with the queen, by which he undertook to discharge the ordinary duties of caretaking for £5714 a year, he meeting all the common charges and supplying part of the stores, while heavier and exceptional expenses, whether for building new ships or for fitting out the fleet for sea, fell to the Crown. His remuneration for the work was apparently to be derived, in addition to the fees of his offices of Treasurer and Comptroller, from what remained over and above after paying for the work, and from the privilege of disposing of condemned ships and stores. The openings for fraud in such a system are many and obvious. If his enemies are to be believed, Hawkins did not miss the opportunities afforded him. It is said that he robbed the queen directly, and that, being partner in a shipbuilding yard on the Thames, he made use of his official position to forward his private interests. But Lord Howard of Effingham bears witness that Hawkins had the ships of the queen's navy in admirable order in the Armada year, and he is undoubtedly entitled to the credit of having done much to introduce into the navy the improvements in construction and rigging detailed by Sir Walter Raleigh.

Such in its main outlines was the instrument of which the great queen, her ministers, and her captains made magnificent use. It was but modest and even weak in itself; but in truth the Royal Navy was only part of the naval force at the disposal of Elizabeth. During the forty-four years of her reign, we constantly find that the vanguard in all actions, and a great part of the main body of the queen's sea power, was formed of adventurers. In the following century, and from the time of the first Dutch war, it is possible to tell the history of the navy with rare references to the action of those volunteers who fought for their own hand as privateers. But this was by no means the case with the navy of Queen Elizabeth. The most famous of her captains gained their reputation by privateering voyages, and were only taken into her service when they were already known leaders. To the end of her long war with Spain the private ship is found fighting alongside the queen's. The most successful of her expeditions against the Spaniard, whether in Europe or in the New World, were carried out by what, according to modern practice, would be a very strange partnership between the Crown and speculators, who, no doubt, had patriotic motives, but who had also very direct interest in the pecuniary results of the campaign. In fact, the word adventurer in the language of Elizabeth's time was commonly applied, not to the sea-captains, mariners, and soldiers who assailed the Spaniard in the West Indies, but to the shipowners and capitalists who found the money for fitting out the expedition, and who claimed two-thirds of the prize as their reward.

The privateer may be said to have made his first appearance during the last naval war of the reign of Henry VIII. The king had issued what were called letters of marque, that is, a species of commission authorising anybody who could fit out an armed ship to plunder the French and to keep a large share of the booty. His invitation to this form of private enterprise was eagerly accepted, especially by the seamen and country gentlemen of the West of England. They fitted out ships in large numbers, and cruised with profitable results against the French trade. The experience of 1545-46 seems to have thoroughly established the taste for privateering in the western counties, and it endured without any visible sign of abatement for generations. During the reigns of Edward and Mary and the early years of Elizabeth the western sea rovers continued as busy as ever, even when the country was at peace. They had an excellent pretext in the religious dissensions which were now beginning to swallow up, or at least to colour, the political conflicts of the European powers. In Mary's reign, Devonshire gentlemen of strong Protestant sympathies betook themselves to the pious work of plundering Spaniards and the other subjects of the queen's husband. The considerable traffic between Flanders and the Basque Ports of Spain supplied them with an irresistible motive for embracing the cause of pure religion. When the Low Countries revolted against the persecuting despotism of Philip II., the Protestants, who had been for a time crushed on land, appeared on blue water under the well-known name of "The Beggars of the Sea." These landless and desperate men found sympathy and help in the west country. For many years no small part of the duty of every Spanish ambassador consisted in making unavailing protests against the outrageous piracy of the queen's subjects. In this school were trained the men who manned the ships of Hawkins and Drake.

At the same time, another influence was at work to turn the energy of Englishmen to the sea. Until the death of Mary Tudor put an end to the Burgundian alliance, that is, the close community of interests which had for long united England with the House of Hapsburg, there had been few signs of distant commercial enterprise in England. The trade to the Levant had indeed been extended, and attempts had been made to open a route by the north-east to the Spice Islands, but England seemed to be reluctant to break in upon the Portuguese monopoly of the route by the Cape and the Spanish tenure of the route by the West, until she had clearly learned by experiment that there was no third way of access she could acquire for herself. France, which was at open war with the sovereign of Spain and the Low Countries, had sent out swarms of adventurers to attack the Spaniards in the New World, but we had, when Elizabeth ascended the throne, taken no part in this warfare. No sooner was Elizabeth well settled on the throne than a great change took place.

The persecutions of Mary's reign, if they had not made England Protestant, had at least made it bitterly anti-Roman Catholic; and this, at a time when the King of Spain was the recognised protector of the Pope, meant anti-Spanish. This served to remove any disinclination to attack our old ally. At the same time, Englishmen began to be much more effectively desirous of sharing in the wealth to be obtained by trade with the New World They were impatient at the thought that they were to be for ever shut out from the commerce of the East and the West Indies by a decision of a Pope of the previous century, who had given the Spaniards everything to the west of the famous line drawn from north to south, a hundred leagues to the west of the Azores, and had left the Portuguese the exclusive right to everything in the East. We did not recognise the Pope's right to dispose of what did not belong to him, and were minded to have our share of the good things lying beyond the line. The Spaniards would hear of no such pretension, and, though they were ready enough to trade with us in Europe, insisted upon treating all seamen of other nations whom they found in America as pirates. According even to the principles of some of their own thinkers, this refusal to trade was a fair justification for a war. Elizabeth was, however, by no means prepared for open hostilities with Spain. All she would do was to refuse to recognise the right of the Spaniards to exclude her subjects from trading with the Indians. Therefore they were free in her opinion to go to the New World, and if the Spaniards refused to recognise their trade as legitimate, Elizabeth for her part was not inclined to forbid her subjects to defend themselves against what she considered unfair interference. The causes of dispute between the queen and King Philip, apart from this, were many and various. Thus it got to be known among enterprising Englishmen that if they could make their hand keep their head from the blow of the Spaniard, they had nothing to fear from the queen when they came home from poaching expeditions on his preserves. For men who had, or who only affected to have, religious motives, and who had the most genuine desire to gain riches, this hint was enough, and so the third year of the queen's reign saw the first voyage of Hawkins to the West Indies.

In 1562, Hawkins, who was the son of a prosperous Plymouth merchant and shipowner, and had been bred to the sea in his father's ships in voyages to the Canaries, made the first recorded slaving venture carried through by an Englishman. He had learned enough in the Canaries to know that slaves were valuable in the West Indies, and that the Spanish planters, who were very ill supplied under the system of monopoly which prevailed in Spain, would be ready to buy negroes smuggled among them by an English trader. With the help of his father-in-law Gonson, Sir William Duckett, Sir Thomas Lodge, and Sir William Winter, all merchants and seafaring men, and some of them very directly connected with the queen's Government, he fitted out three little vessels and made a most profitable all-round voyage. First he went to the coast of Africa, where he kidnapped slaves, then he went to the Antilles and smuggled them. The second voyage, carried out in the last months of 1563 and the first of 1564, was a repetition of this on a much larger scale. Hawkins had now done so well that every confidence was felt in his capacity. Lord Robert Dudley, better known as the Earl of Leicester, became his patron. He was allowed to hire a queen's ship, the Jesus of Lubeck, an old vessel built in Germany. With a larger force Hawkins visited the coasts of Africa once more, after touching at Teneriffe, probably to make arrangements with the Spaniards associated with him in his smuggling speculations. On the coast of Senegambia he plundered Portuguese slavers who had already secured a full cargo, and then he burned, murdered, and kidnapped among the native villages until his hold was full of what in the cant of later times was called "ebony." With this cargo he made his way to the mainland of South America, after a trying voyage, in which both the kidnapped blacks and their captors suffered severely. Hawkins was borne up by a conviction that the "Lord would not suffer His elect to perish." At Borburata and Rio de la Hacha he sold the greater part of his cargo, partly by the help of the planters, who were glad enough to get the slaves, and partly by threatening to do them a displeasure if his trade was forbidden. From Rio de la Hacha, Hawkins sailed northward across the Caribbean Sea. The force of the westerly current, which is permanent in those waters, was not then known, and the smugglers were carried to the westward of the island of San Domingo. Owing to the mistake of a Spaniard whom they had among them, either as a prisoner, or, as is at least equally probable, as the agent of their associates among the Spanish planters, they fell to leeward, which in the West Indies means to westward both of San Domingo and of Jamaica. As the season was far advanced, and his vessels foul from being long at sea, Hawkins decided to make no further attempt to touch at the Spanish Antilles, which he could only have reached by beating to windward against the trade winds. He returned home by the Straits of Florida and the Banks of Newfoundland. On his way he relieved the French colony established in Florida by Ribault. It is one of the best-known events in the history of the time that this colony was not long afterwards exterminated by the Spaniard Pedro Menendes de Aviles, by methods which have, in the opinion of Protestant writers, covered his name with the infamy of extreme cruelty.

Although there had been no actual fighting in Hawkins's two expeditions, they were considered by the Spaniards as hostile. That they should have taken this view is not unreasonable, for the English rover had undoubtedly forced an entrance into their ports by threats. He himself must undoubtedly have been aware that his occupation was illegal, for on his own showing he excused his presence in Spanish ports by a tissue of lies. It was his regular practice to assert that he was sailing with a squadron of the queen's ships, and had been driven into harbour by bad weather or the want of stores. It is easy to understand that the manifest falsity of this excuse was not so obvious to the Spanish Government as it is to us. King Philip would not unnaturally believe that although the queen disavowed the actions of Hawkins publicly, she was encouraging him in private. In a sense this was true; for if the queen did not actually send Hawkins to the West Indies, she not only refused to punish him for going there, but allowed him to enjoy the fruits of his voyage, and shared in them largely herself as owner of the Jesus of Lubeck. If the sovereigns had been disposed to go to war, the excuse for hostilities was ready to their hands. But Philip was entangled in heavy expenses by the revolt in the Netherlands and his wars with the Turks, who were then at the height of their power. So he preferred to remain patient under the provocations inflicted on him by Elizabeth; and she, who had abundant troubles of her own, was equally little disposed to incur a war if it could be avoided. The struggle was left to be carried on by the subjects of both rulers in unavowed warfare, and from the nature of the case very soon took the form of piracy on one side and of savage repression on the other. Hawkins had been exasperated on his return from his second voyage by what he considered a private wrong. Ships which he had sent to Spain from the West Indies laden with colonial produce had been confiscated by the Spanish Government. At a later period he succeeded in getting back a part at least of the value of his forfeited goods by pretending to betray the queen. But between 1564 and 1567, when he sailed on his third voyage, he had other schemes for righting himself. He would have sailed sooner than he did if the queen, who was in danger from the intrigues of Mary Stuart, had not had particular reason to refrain from offending Philip too far. But in 1567 Mary had ruined her own cause by the murder of her husband, and her marriage with his murderer. The need for Philip's neutrality was not what it had been, and so Hawkins was allowed to sail, and was again permitted to hire the queen's ships. That his expedition was of the nature of an act of hostility to Spain was a matter of public notoriety. The Spanish ambassador protested against it as against other acts of piracy, but to no kind of purpose. So little was Hawkins restrained, that he was allowed to combine with some of the "Beggars of the Sea" for the purpose of plundering some Spanish ships which took refuge in Plymouth Sound while he was lying there with his squadron. In high hopes, and with the sense that, however the queen might refuse to justify his actions in form, she would certainly afford him effectual protection, Hawkins sailed on his third voyage, which ended so disastrously, in October 1567. The earlier part of the voyage was spent in the usual round of kidnapping on the coast of Africa and smuggling in the Spanish ports of the West Indies and the Main. When only a remnant of his cargo of slaves remained, Hawkins departed from his previous course and steered for the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico to the little island of St. Juan de Ulloa, which forms the harbour of La Vera Cruz, then, and now, the port of Mexico. He excused himself for sailing into this harbour by his customary fiction, alleging that his ships had been injured by bad weather, and must be refitted before he could venture to return to Europe. But this story can hardly have been told with the slightest expectation that it would be believed. Indeed, Hawkins was so thoroughly well aware that the Spaniards would see through his very transparent defence, that on his way across the Gulf of Mexico he captured a Spanish vessel, and held her crew and passengers as hostages. This was an act of undeniable piracy, and would have been so considered at any period of the world's history. In truth, it can only have been for form's sake that Hawkins put himself to the trouble of repeating his stock invention. It had come to this, that if the Spaniards were to make good their claim to keep the English from trading with their American possessions, they must show themselves strong enough to do it. For the present, Hawkins believed that the strength was on his side, and, but for an event which he cannot be blamed for not foreseeing, he might very well have turned out to be in the right.

The squadron Hawkins took to La Vera Cruz on the 16th of September 1568 consisted of some ten or a dozen vessels, for he had been joined in the West Indies by French rovers. With this force it would have been easy for him to overpower any resistance the Spaniards could offer. There was at that time no fortress on the island of St. Juan de Ulloa, and the town of La Vera Cruz was not yet built. A few sheds, used only during the time that the yearly convoy of merchant ships from Spain was in the harbour, was all that stood upon the beach. When Hawkins made his appearance outside the harbour, he had no difficulty in frightening the local officials into letting him anchor. But in the course of negotiations with them he learned a piece of news which caused him well-grounded anxiety. On his first appearance off the harbour, the Spaniards had mistaken him for a convoy expected from Spain, bringing the new Viceroy, Don Martin Henriquez: of course, if this appeared, the position would be disagreeably complicated. But it was now too late for Hawkins to go back, so he took up his place in the harbour. In a few days the fleet from Spain made its appearance. It consisted almost wholly of merchant ships, but there was one heavy galleon of war which served as the flagship of the Spanish admiral, Francisco de Lujan. Hawkins could probably have kept the Spaniards out of the harbour easily enough, but in the autumn months the coast of Mexico is liable to furious gales of the nature of hurricanes, called Northers. If one of these had burst while the Spaniards were outside the island of St. Juan de Ulloa, the whole Spanish squadron must have perished. As it was estimated to be worth £1,850,000, and carried hundreds of his subjects, including so great an officer as the Viceroy of Mexico, this would have been an outrage King Philip could not possibly have endured. Hawkins must have been very well aware that if the queen did not happen to wish for a war with Spain at the moment when he returned to England after such an exploit, she would hang him without the slightest scruple for causing her the trouble. On the other hand, if he once allowed the Spaniards to get inside the harbour, there was every probability that they would cut his throat with the least possible delay. In the dreadful fix in which he now found himself, Hawkins hit upon a middle course. He allowed the Spaniards to come in, after exacting from them a promise that they would suffer him to trade in safety and depart in peace. It is hardly credible that the Englishman can have supposed that a promise extorted in such a fashion would have been observed. If he did, his confidence did not last long, for, in his own narrative of what our ancestors called "the treachery of the Spaniards," he confesses that he was extremely nervous. From the day after Don Francisco de Lujan had moored his ships beside the English on the island of St. Juan de Ulloa, he was in constant expectation of a sudden attack, and on the third day it came. The English had insisted upon keeping possession of the island, but the men who had been appointed to stand on guard broke into a panic and fled, leaving the guns mounted for the protection of the English ships to be turned upon them by the Spaniards. The panic spread to the ships. The crews cast off their moorings and endeavoured to fly, but, attacked as they were by the battery on the island and by the Spanish ships, they were all destroyed except two—the Minion, in which Hawkins made his own escape, and the Judith, commanded by his cousin, Francis Drake.

This, the treachery of the Spaniards, makes a great epoch in the history of the naval adventures of Elizabeth's reign. It killed for ever the hope of establishing a peaceful trade with the Spanish possessions in the West Indies. It showed our men that if they were to have their share of the wealth of the New World, it must be got sword in hand. Hawkins, in whom there seems to have been very much more of the fox than the lion, did not again appear in the West Indies, till he came there to die in the disastrous failure of 1594. But the work was taken up by other hands. The strongest and the most famous were Francis Drake's. After two small voyages, probably smuggling ventures with slaves, in 1570 and 1571, Drake boldly entered the West Indies to plunder in 1572 with two very small vessels, the Pasha of Plymouth, of 72 tons, and the Swan, of 25. This was a pure-and-simple buccaneering venture, conducted with spirit and skill, and finally with success. He was, indeed, beaten off at Nombre de Dios, which the historian of his voyage mendaciously asserts to have been a town as big as Plymouth. It was, in fact, a mere temporary trading station, consisting of a storehouse and twenty or thirty wood huts in a very unhealthy position, and was afterwards given up by the Spaniards in favour of Porto Bello. But after this check, and some months of cruising on the coast, made melancholy by the loss of a brother and nearly half his crews in scuffles with the Spaniards or by fever, Drake had the good fortune to capture a recua, the Spanish name for a string of pack mules laden with gold. The profits of the voyage were immense, and the audacity of it, not unnaturally somewhat exaggerated by his countrymen, gained Drake great renown. But the real fruits of his invasion of the West Indies were seen in the voyage of circumnavigation which followed in 1577 and 1578. A detailed history of this famous enterprise would be out of place here. It belongs, properly speaking, to discovery, and such feats as the capture of Spanish merchant ships and of the galleon Cacafuego hardly entitle it to rank among the exploits of the navy. The importance of the voyage lies mainly in the immense stimulus it gave to the enterprise of the whole nation, and in this, that it was an unmistakable proclamation to the whole world that England had both the will and the power to set at nought the pretensions of the Spaniards and the Portuguese to debar all rivals from the free use of the ocean.

After Drake's return from ploughing a furrow round the world, we need not treat the actions of the adventurers as standing apart. Although open war with Spain did not come for several years, it was known to be inevitable by both countries. The most famous leaders among the western seamen were retained for the queen's service. Throughout the years in which the maritime strength of England had been growing by its own intrinsic strength, and her seamen had been gaining both in skill and confidence, the Royal Navy, in the strict sense of the word, had played a subordinate part. It was not yet expected to afford protection to English traders beyond the four seas of Britain. Of what was its proper work, it had had little to do.

In 1560 Sir William Winter had been despatched to the coast of Scotland to aid the Lords of the Congregation in their struggle against the French regent, Mary of Guise. In 1562-3 another English squadron had been employed to help the French Huguenots by conveying the detachment of English soldiers who were sent under command of Ambrose Dudley to Havre. In 1573 it was found necessary to employ the queen's ships against our late allies, the Huguenots, Sea Rovers, and the Beggars of the Sea, who, having pretty effectually destroyed Spanish commerce in the Channel, were driven to plunder their Protestant friends as an alternative to starvation. But as the struggle with Spain grew nearer open national war, the navy found more perilous work than this. In 1579 a squadron of the queen's vessels did good service by capturing the Spanish ships which had landed the soldiers of the Pope at Smerwick in Ireland. Even yet the queen shrank from making a direct attack on Spain, and preferred to injure her enemy by assisting his rebellious subjects in the Low Countries. At last, when, under the sting of multiplying provocations, Philip was known to be making ready in his own slow way for a decisive attempt to crush England for good, Elizabeth and her Council decided upon delivering a direct blow.

The manner of the doing of the thing was a curious example of the partnership between the queen and her subjects. In 1585 an expedition was organised to sweep the West Indies. The calculation was, that an invasion of this part of his dominions would cause the King of Spain more harm than a direct attack at home, since he drew by far the best part of his revenue from the American mines. The English seamen were not yet sufficiently acquainted with the details of the Spanish establishments in America to deliver their stroke in the most effectual manner. For one thing, they altogether over-estimated the importance of the towns in the West Indian Islands. Yet, in principle, the policy of the expedition was perfectly sound. To cripple the King of Spain before his invading fleet was under way, was a far more effectual course than to wait for him in the Channel; and there is no doubt that the five-and-twenty ships put under the command of Drake in the autumn of 1585, to attack the island of San Domingo and Carthagena, did delay the sailing of the Armada, besides inflicting great discredit on the King of Spain.

In this fleet only a minority of the ships actually belonged to the queen, the others being the property of men in business, who entered into this warlike operation as a speculation. Unity of command was provided for by the appointment of Drake, both as the queen's admiral and as the privateer admiral, if such an expression is to be admitted. Martin Frobisher, chiefly known hitherto as an explorer who had attempted to discover a North-West Passage, was appointed vice-admiral. The command of the troops was given to Christopher Carleill, an officer of much experience both at sea and in the wars of the Low Countries. The fleet sailed from Plymouth on the 14th of September, and touched on the coast of Spain on the way out. It was characteristic of the time that we did not profess to be at war with the King of Spain in Spain, but only in America. Therefore there was a good deal of rather polite negotiation between the English leaders and the Marquis of Zerralbo, the King of Spain's governor of Galicia. This did not prevent our seamen from plundering a Spanish ship in which they discovered a tempting consignment of church plate; but casual acts of piracy of this kind were too much in the habits of the time to be counted an unpardonable infraction of the peace. From Vigo the English fleet sailed to the Canaries, and from thence to Santiago in the Cape de Verd Islands. At this place it made a too prolonged stay, in the hope of extorting a ransom, but the Spanish authorities took refuge in the hills of the centre of the island, and could neither be threatened nor cajoled into giving themselves up. This was no doubt a serious disappointment to Drake in his character of agent for the adventurers, and it was not the last; for though the political results of the cruise were great, as a financial speculation it proved to be a failure. From Santiago the fleet stretched across the Atlantic to the island of San Domingo, and captured the city of the same name with very little difficulty. The Spanish towns had not hitherto been subject to any attack more formidable than that of native Indians, and were not seriously fortified. They fell easily before the assault of the 1200 well-appointed soldiers Carleill could land from the ships.

San Domingo proved a great disappointment to the captors. It had at one time been the seat of a considerable export trade of bullion from the mines of the island. But, though our men did not know it, these had been long exhausted or deserted in favour of the far richer mines of Mexico and Peru.

The well-to-do inhabitants of San Domingo were planters who had little ready money, or the lawyers of the Court of Appeal. After several weeks spent in haggling, and in burning part of the town, the English were constrained to accept of 25,000 ducats of 5s. 6d. each as ransom for the town, a much smaller sum than they had hoped to obtain. From San Domingo they went on to Carthagena on the mainland of South America, at that time a small unfortified town of a few hundred inhabitants. Entering the land-locked harbour by the Boca Grande, the English made themselves masters of Carthagena, after storming its only defence—a wooden stockade. Here their experience at San Domingo was repeated. The Spaniards had received warning of the approach of a hostile expedition, and had had time to remove their bullion into the country. After a good deal more haggling, 110,000 ducats were extorted as the ransom of the town. The results of the expedition had been disappointing, but the fleet had nothing for it but to return home without further delay. A fever had broken out at Santiago, and the health of the crews had suffered still more severely from the tropical malaria of the coast. Including those who fell in action, it was calculated that more than half of the men forming the expedition lost their lives. The total product of the cruise was £60,000. Of this, £40,000 was due to the adventurers, and the remaining third was to be divided between the soldiers and sailors who manned the ships. This can have given only about £6 a head to those who had risked their lives and had survived the fevers and the weapons of the Spaniards. The adventurers cannot have done much more than cover the expenses of fitting out their ships.

We are now approaching perhaps the most famous passage, and certainly the most picturesque, in the naval history of England. From the beginning of 1586 England was threatened by invasion from Spain, throughout 1587 she was taking measures to avert the danger, and in 1588 the great Armada, which has been baptized in sarcasm with the name of Invincible, actually approached our shores, and then passed away to destruction without having as much as burned one sheepcote in this island.

It was the habit of Philip II. to be very slow in his preparations. His flatterers, knowing the kind of praise that would give him pleasure, described him as thorough and prudent. In point of fact, the course he followed was singularly inefficient and practically rather rash. It would have cost Philip less, and would have redounded much more to his glory, if he had armed three or four well-appointed squadrons of active ships to protect his galleons on their way across the Atlantic, and to keep the West Indies clear of invaders. It must be obvious that if fifteen or twenty Spanish warships had made their appearance in the neighbourhood of San Domingo while the English soldiers were disembarked for the purpose of attacking the town, the squadron could hardly have escaped destruction, and in that case the soldiers must sooner or later have shared the fate of those members of Hawkins's crew who were left behind in Mexico in 1567, to the "little mercy" of the Spaniards. But when a small active squadron would have been of immense service to Philip, he had nothing but the first beginnings of the raw material of the great fleet with which he intended one day to exterminate the power of Elizabeth. His admiral, Don Álvaro de Bazan, the Marquis of Santa Cruz, told him, when the news of the sailing of the expedition of 1585 came, that there was nothing to prevent Drake from sweeping the West Indies, or from entering the Pacific, and there doing as he pleased with the ill-armed and unprepared Spanish settlements. King Philip had ships and guns and men enough among his subjects, but when they were wanted, the guns were not in the ships and the crews were not collected. Thus the "potent" King of Spain, as he was called, and as he might have been with better management, had to sit helpless while a privateering fleet ranged at will through his possessions and plundered his subjects. As it was in 1585, so it was in 1586 and 1587: Philip was toiling laboriously to collect his armament, but as he would not put the various parts together till he had collected all he wanted, no portion of his inchoate fighting forces was ready on a sudden call.

There are few more ludicrous passages in history than the cruise of Drake in 1587. Queen Elizabeth and her ministers were aware that preparations were being made for an invasion of England. Although the queen's passion for intrigue induced her to keep up a laborious show of friendly negotiations with the Prince of Parma, Philip's viceroy in the Low Countries, she did not in practice forget that she was at war. In the spring of 1587 she decided to despatch Sir Francis Drake for the purpose of looking into the preparations reported to be making in the Spanish ports. As in 1585, the queen bore only a part of the expenses. Of the thirty ships despatched, four, the Bonaventure, the Lion, the Dreadnought, and the Rainbow, with two pinnaces attached as tenders, belonged to the Royal Navy; the others were "tall ships" of London, not hired by the queen, but joined in partnership with her for the purpose of making what profit they could by plundering the Spaniards.

Drake sailed from Plymouth early in April, and in the 40th degree of latitude he learned from two German merchant ships that great quantities of naval stores were being collected at Cadiz to be transported to Lisbon, where the King of Spain's "Admiral of the Ocean Sea," Don Álvaro de Bazan, had his headquarters. Portugal, it may not be superfluous to remind the reader, had been annexed a few years before by Philip II., who claimed to be the heir of Dom Sebastian, slain at the battle of Alcázar el Kebir, and it continued to be joined to the many other crowns of the King of Spain till 1640. Drake immediately made for Cadiz, where he found the outer harbour crowded with ships. These were the vessels which were designed to take part in the invasion of England. But, by a piece of ineptitude of a kind not at all rare in Philip's reign, they were for the most part unmanned. It was easy work for the thirty efficient ships to capture, burn, sink, or drive on shore such of these vessels as were not able to make a timely escape into the inner harbour. The work was done thoroughly, and to the no small profit of the adventurers. Enormous quantities of booty were transferred from the Spanish to the English ships; and although they were subject to an irritating fire from the distant Spanish batteries, and to attack by the galleys, the English sailors met with little difficulty in the discharge of their task. The work was hard, and the men are said to have been really glad when the Spaniards set fire to the vessels which had not yet fallen into our hands, and thereby put a stop to the toil of collecting more plunder. Nothing more disgraceful to the management of Philip II., nothing which more fully revealed the essential weakness of his power, could well have happened. From Cadiz Drake stretched along the coast to Lisbon, landing as he pleased, and plundering as he thought fit. At the mouth of the Tagus he anchored and sent in a challenge to the Marquis of Santa Cruz. But the king's admiral, though he was a man of great natural courage and of an enterprising character, could not accept it, for his vessels were in no condition to take the sea without the stores burned at Cadiz. From Cascaes Drake stood across to the Azores, and lay there undisturbed on the track of the carracks, the great merchant ships employed by the Portuguese at that time in the trade with the East Indies. One of these, named the St. Philip, fell into his hands. She was the first of these ships ever taken by us, and the sight of her cargo must have had a good deal to do with arousing the desire of English merchants to share in the trade of the East. This capture, added to the plunder taken at Cadiz, secured the profits of the voyage, and therefore Drake made sail for England with his fleet and the prize, where they all arrived "to their own profit and due commendation, and the great admiration of the whole kingdom."

This check did not make Philip any wiser than before, but neither did it in any way damp his determination to collect such a fleet as should make an end of the English pirates. He began the work of getting his stores together again with imperturbable patient industry. Drake described his feat in the outer harbour of Cadiz as the singeing of the King of Spain's beard, and the phrase was accurate as well as humorous. He had insulted the enemy, and had done him as much injury as would compel him to abstain from action for the time being, but he had not seriously crippled his power. By the spring of the following year the Spanish fleet was ready for service, and if Don Álvaro de Bazan had lived, it might have sailed sooner than it actually did. The old man's own plan, communicated to the king some years before, had been to embark a sufficient army in Spain, and sail direct to the coast of England, but the resources of King Philip were not adequate to a scheme of the scale proposed by his admiral. He had to maintain an army under the Prince of Parma in Flanders, and could not meet the expense of organising another. He had therefore decided to make the fleet he was collecting in Spain co-operate with the army he already had in the Low Countries. It was indeed to carry reinforcements to the Prince of Parma, but it was on him that the task of providing an army for the invasion of England was to be laid. The Spaniards have always counted it fortunate for England that the Marquis de Santa Cruz died on the 9th February 1588. Perhaps it was, though it may be doubted whether the very complicated task set by the king could have been successfully performed even by him. To bring a fleet from Spain into the Channel, to carry it to the Low Countries, to embark an army there and transport it to the coast of England, would have made a long and complicated operation, to be conducted in difficult seas, of which the Spaniards had little knowledge, and in the face of the most determined opposition from Dutch and English seamen. However that may be, the Spaniards were deprived of such chance of victory as they might have had under the command of the "Iron Marquis" by his death; and then the king, acting on motives which are not a little mysterious, selected from among his subjects as leader of this great enterprise perhaps the gentleman who was more fitted than any other then living to lead it to ruin. This was Don Alonso Perez de Guzman, Duke of Medina Sidonia. He was a youngish man, small, of a swarthy complexion, and somewhat bandy-legged, who, according to his own candid and somewhat pitiful confession to the king, knew nothing of war by land or sea, was always sea-sick when he went in a vessel, and never failed to catch cold. What qualification he had, beyond his illustrious lineage and his great estates, for a high command nobody has ever been able to discover. These were no doubt to be taken into account at a time when obedience was more readily rendered to a gentleman of great social position than to others; but there were men of the duke's own rank among Philip's subjects who had served, and were at least not manifestly unfit for the post. But the king chose the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and, overcoming his manifest reluctance to take the command, sent him to succeed the Marquis de Santa Cruz. It was in reality consistent enough with the duke's first unwillingness to take the post, that, once in it, he had not the smallest hesitation in contradicting the advice and overruling the decisions of his veteran predecessor. He declared that what had seemed enough for Santa Cruz was not enough; he wanted more ships, more men, more stores; and thus the fleet, which ought to have started in February, did not leave the Tagus till May. During all this time the stores already collected began to go rotten and had to be replaced. The pressed-men ran, and others had to be found; and so delay bred delay, and the months passed in mere waste alike of time and material.

On our own side there were also defects of management, not, however, attributable to the officers in command, but partly to the poverty of the queen's Government, and partly to the vacillations of the queen. Elizabeth, it must not be forgotten, was a very poor sovereign, and the maintenance of a great fleet was a heavy drain upon her resources. Moreover, she had an artistic love of tricks. She could not be thoroughly persuaded that it was hopeless to expect to avert the Spanish invasion by artful diplomacy. Therefore, between her impatience under the expenses of the fleet and her profound belief in her own cleverness, she vacillated all through the spring of that eventful year. Her ships had been brought into excellent order by John Hawkins. Her subjects were full of zeal; and although the smaller ports met the demand for ships with loud complaints of poverty and of the ruin of their trade by war, yet London freely offered twice as many vessels and men as the Crown asked for, while the nobles and those adventurers of the stamp of Drake and Hawkins, who had grown rich at the expense of the Spaniards, were active in fitting out vessels and collecting crews. The queen's Lord High Admiral, Charles Howard, Lord Effingham, was as fit a man for the place as could have been found. He had, it is true, no experience in war; and it does not appear, from anything recorded of him, that he was a man of much ability. But he had character and tact, and the happy faculty of allowing himself to be guided by his abler and more experienced subordinates, without suffering his authority to be diminished.

By the mouth of Howard, Elizabeth's captains implored her for leave to repeat the cruise for 1587. They pointed out that, if we must fight the Spaniard, it was better to fight him on his own coast than ours, and, moreover, it was safer, since, even if we were to be beaten, defeat would be less dangerous a long way off than at home. But Elizabeth would not part with the hope that her diplomacy, which had stood her in such admirable stead during the twenty-eight years of her reign, would serve her again, and she would not allow her fleet to sail for an attack upon Spain, which must necessarily have broken off the negotiations of peace. Still, the preparations for war were not neglected. The Admiral of England, Lord Howard, with Drake as Vice and Hawkins as Rear Admiral, had his headquarters at Plymouth, while Lord Henry Seymour commanded the ships of London and the East Coast, in the Thames. On the approach of the enemy, his station was to be in the Downs, where he was to watch the Duke of Parma, who was collecting the army of invasion in the Flemish ports. In this work Seymour had the help of a squadron of Dutch vessels, commanded by Justinus of Nassau, a natural son of William the Silent.

At the end of May the Duke of Medina Sidonia did at last sail. All his demands had been supplied by the king. His banners had been solemnly blessed by the Cardinal Albert—the cardinal who was Viceroy of Portugal; all his officers and men had taken the Communion and confessed their sins; and at last the Armada was on the way, with assurances from the king that "it must succeed, since God would not fail to help it on an enterprise so much for His service as this was." When Cromwell told his soldiers to trust in God, he also added the order to keep their powder dry; in other words, not to allow their reliance on divine assistance to tempt them into neglecting ordinary human precautions. King Philip was lavish in good advice and intelligent direction, but he was neither so practical as Oliver Cromwell, nor would he take equally good care that what he directed his men to do should be within their power. It was worthy of a king who, throughout the whole of his life, was endeavouring to achieve vast ends with very insufficient means, that Philip sent his fleet out with the knowledge that it suffered from a great cause of inferiority, but without making the slightest effort to remove the defect. He knew that the gunnery of his crews was altogether inferior to the English, and that his guns were not so good. Therefore, as he warned the Duke of Medina Sidonia, it was to be expected that the English ships would endeavour to engage at a distance, and would avoid coming so close that the Spaniards would have a chance of boarding them. It was also not unknown to Philip that the English ships sailed better than his own, and that therefore it would be in their power to choose the distance at which they would engage. Yet, instead of providing quicker ships and better guns, and of training more skilful gunners, he could only advise his admiral to come to close quarters with the English fleet without telling him how the feat was to be achieved. The very first experience of his fleet after leaving Lisbon ought to have shown him how little hope there was that the unlucky Duke of Medina Sidonia would have it in his power to engage the English except on their own terms. By a curious coincidence, Lord Howard and the duke left port at about the same time; the Lord Admiral sailing from Plymouth to the south and west in order to meet the coming Spaniards, and Medina Sidonia sailing from Lisbon towards England. Had no accident intervened, they would probably have met in the neighbourhood of the Scilly Isles. A few days after the duke had left Lisbon, a gale broke out from the south-west. It affected both fleets,—the Spaniards, who had just rounded Cape Finisterre, and the English, who were at the mouth of the Channel. But whereas these latter were only hindered, the Invincible Armada was completely scattered. The duke had given his fleet only one rendezvous in case of an accident of this kind, and that was the neighbourhood of the Scilly Isles. The squadron of urcas, or storeships, which accompanied his fleet held on to the appointed place, and there remained. But the heavy galleons were so maltreated by the wind that they were scattered along the coast. The duke himself anchored at Corunna, and there collected his ships after some days of confusion. A whole month passed before he was ready to go to sea again. He himself was so dispirited that he actually proposed to advise the king to give the enterprise up altogether, and was only restrained from writing to that effect by the strenuous efforts of a council of war. Meanwhile, Lord Howard, after being driven back by the gale, had taken to the sea again, and had despatched a squadron to reconnoitre towards the coast of Spain, while the bulk of his fleet was stretched across the mouth of the Channel, in order to be the better able to catch sight of the enemy if he endeavoured to pass. Nothing was seen of the Spaniards, and Lord Howard returned to Plymouth. Although undoubtedly better fitted than the Invincible Armada, the English ships were not without wants of their own. In the hope of diminishing expenses, or perhaps rather from the difficulty found in collecting provisions, it was thought necessary to put the men "six on four," that is to say, that each set of six men received the rations of four. It is doubtful whether the gaol fever, which broke out later on, had already appeared, but the health of the fleet was not good. From Cecil there came incessant appeals to keep down "charges," and complaints that, no matter how much money was sent, he was worried out of his life by appeals for more, to the no small aggravation of the gout, from which he suffered cruelly. This idle hope to diminish expense, at a moment when England had need to spend every man and every penny, led the Treasurer, and perhaps Elizabeth, to propose a measure of enormous practical folly. It was actually proposed to the Lord Admiral to pay off four or five of his biggest ships on his return to Plymouth. Howard, with patriotic indignation, professed that he would rather pay the expenses out of his own pocket. The proposal was never carried out, for the Spanish fleet appeared off the Lizard.

Medina Sidonia sailed from Corunna on the 12th of July. This date and all the others must be understood to be in the old style used by us, and not in the new or Gregorian employed by the Spaniards. The strength of the Spanish fleet is put at 132 ships of 59,120 tons, carrying 29,287 men, of whom 21,621 were soldiers and 8066 were sailors. It is doubtful whether all these vessels were actually present after the various disasters the Armada had already experienced. The four galleys must be deducted from its strength. They proved perfectly incapable of facing the winds and currents of the Channel, and were compelled to take refuge in French ports. Nearly a third of the others were urcas, and of no use for fighting purposes. The whole was divided into ten squadrons. The first in dignity—for it included the flagship of Medina Sidonia—was the squadron of Portugal, consisting of ten galleons. Then followed the squadron of Castile, of fourteen sail, under the direct command of Diego Flores de Valdes. This officer had commanded the yearly flota, or convoy, which went to and fro between Spain and its American possession, carrying the trade; on account of his experience as a seaman, Diego Flores had been especially recommended to Medina Sidonia as his adviser, and sailed with him in the flagship. His character seems to have been envious, and, whatever he may have done to supply the duke's deficiencies as a seaman, he proved an indifferent military adviser. Pedro de Valdes commanded the squadron of Andalusia, of ten ships. The squadron of Biscay was of the same strength, and the flag officer in command was Juan Martinez de Recalde, who was also senior admiral of the whole fleet, by which we may perhaps understand that he was the officer responsible for the navigation, subject to the directions of Medina Sidonia. Miguel de Oquendo led the ten ships forming the squadron of Guipuzcoa. The squadron of Italy, under Martin de Bertendona, was of the same force. Twenty-three urcas or storeships were under the command of Juan Gomez de Medina, while a miscellaneous swarm of other small craft were under Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza. Four galleasses, great overgrown galleys, formed a squadron apart, under Hugo de Moncada. The four galleys under Diego de Medrado proved, as has been said above, useless from the first, and never took any share in the fighting in the Channel. They were driven by the weather to seek refuge in French ports, and were able, later on, to return in safety to Spain. Although the names of the various kinds of ships forming the Armada are strange, the vessels themselves, with the exception of the galleasse, described above, were not essentially different from our own. The "galleon" was, for instance, only our "capital ship." Although it has been customary to speak of the Spanish ships as exceeding ours in bulk, it does not appear that any of them were larger than the best of the queen's—the White Bear, for instance, or the Triumph, or the Ark. Some twenty or twenty-five of our largest were equal to eighty or ninety of the Spaniards in average size, and far superior in seaworthiness. The smaller ships were equal to their smaller in size, and vastly superior in number.

In the number of guns, also, the superiority of the Spaniards was much more apparent than real. There is a doubt as to the actual excess in the number of the Spanish cannon over the English. On the other hand, modern Spanish writers have endeavoured to show that the English had the advantage in the point of weight. It is, however, easy to make too much of this. The number of cannons royal, and even of demi-cannon, in the English navy was not great. The large majority of our guns were culverins and demi-culverins of about the same calibre as the guns carried by the Spaniards. For practical purposes, however, the English had really a greater number of cannon, for it is beyond doubt that the fire of our gunners was both more rapid and better directed. The Spaniards themselves confessed that we fired three to one. It is self-evident that a gun which is fired three times in five minutes is, for the purpose of doing damage, quite as effectual as three guns which are fired once each in the same space of time. The Spaniards, indeed, looked down upon the use of artillery as being somewhat ignoble. The management of the guns was left entirely to the sailors, who were a despised and subordinate element in the crews of their ships. It does not seem that they had any class of gunners. When, then, we remember that the Spanish ships were ill fitted for the navigation of the Channel, and that their seamen had no knowledge of its waters, it will be seen that even with good leadership they would have been at a disadvantage.

When we turn to our own fleet, the conditions are completely reversed. In mere material force, that is to say, in the number of capital ships and of guns, we were inferior, but in every other respect we had the superiority. We had experience, familiarity with the waters in which the fighting was to take place, and a far higher level of skill in gunnery. The value of the fleet, the fighting instrument, must depend on the skill of the men by whom it is used, that is to say, of the seamen. Now, whereas the Spanish sailor was, as has been said above, subordinate and despised, the English seaman had conquered his due place of superiority in the fleet. But, after all, the greatest element of superiority on our side was to be found in the quality of the leaders. Lord Howard of Effingham, without being a man of extraordinary ability, had a valuable mixture of intellectual docility and vigour of character. And his subordinates, Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher, were all in various degrees capable men. The subordinate leaders among the Spaniards were not unworthy to compete with our own. Pedro de Valdes, Martinez de Recalde, and Miguel de Oquendo, not to mention many others, were able officers, but they were not listened to by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, whose conduct presented a familiar combination of vacillation and obstinacy. He alternately allowed himself to be earwigged by his official adviser, Diego Flores, or insisted upon having his way when the advice of any seaman would have saved him from committing a blunder. The number of ships with Lord Howard at Plymouth was about a hundred, including all the best of the queen's. The other vessels, which altogether amounted to nearly another hundred, were either still in the ports along the Channel, or were collecting, under the command of Lord Henry Seymour and Sir William Winter, in the Thames and the Downs.

The orders the Duke of Medina Sidonia had received from his king were both intelligent and explicit. He had been told that his first duty was to cripple or destroy, if he could, the English fleet, and that the transport of Parma's army was only to be a secondary object. A large discretion was very properly left him in the carrying out of his duties, while the general principles upon which he was to act were made quite clear. How the duke contrived to disobey at once the letter and the spirit of his orders will be seen from the following narrative.

On the 20th of July his fleet reached the Lizard, after eight days of easy navigation from Corunna, which he had left upon the 12th. As not infrequently happens in the case of a long-expected danger, the actual crisis was a surprise. When the Spaniards were reported to be in the neighbourhood of the Lizard, Lord Howard was lying with the whole of his fleet in Plymouth Sound. As the Spaniards came up with a good south-westerly breeze, they had, if they had known how to use it, a great opportunity to strike with advantage. The same breeze which brought them up made it extremely difficult for the English to get out, since the wind was blowing across the Sound. If, then, the duke had kept straight on and had steered boldly into Plymouth Sound, he might have forced the English to battle under circumstances highly favourable to himself, for in a confined anchorage the English ships could not have manœuvred, nor would it have been within their power to choose their distance. The heavy Spanish galleons could have run them aboard, and then the fight must have been conducted in conditions which it was the interest of the Spaniards to seek. From the report of one Captain Vanegas, a military officer serving in the flagship, it appears that the proposal to sail in and attack the English in Plymouth Sound was actually made to Medina Sidonia by Alonso de Leiva, but it was rejected with the advice of a council of war, on the ground that the Spanish fleet could not attack in a line abreast, because of the shoals at the mouth of the Sound (those upon which the breakwater now stands); while if they entered in line ahead, that is to say, one ship following another through the channels on either side of the shoal, they would be destroyed in detail by the fire of the English ships and forts. This was a line of reasoning, and these were dangers, which, fortunately for us, were destined to have a powerful influence with our enemies, both French and Spanish, for centuries. In reality, the perils of an attack in line ahead were greatly exaggerated, and, even if it had been necessary for the Duke of Medina Sidonia to sacrifice a few ships, the results would have repaid the cost. But the Spanish leader, who could over-ride his professional advisers roughly enough when he pleased, was on this occasion slavishly obedient to the advice of the mere seamen, when it would have been better for him to have listened to the bolder council of the military officer. He stood on past Plymouth, and by that action he decided the fate of the Armada.

From the moment that his approach had been reported, the most strenuous efforts had been made on the part of the English fleet to get to sea. Working all through the night of the 20th and the morning of the 21st, they had warped out a large part of the ships. While they were carrying out this movement, undeterred by the Spaniards, Medina Sidonia was rolling slowly up Channel. On the 21st July, so soon, in fact, as he was out of harbour, Howard stood after the Spaniards and sent them in the old chivalrous fashion a solemn defiance to battle. He despatched a pinnace appropriately named the Defiance, with orders to fire a gun at the Spaniard as a symbolical announcement that it was open war. Then a confused action began between the two fleets. The Spaniards were advancing along the Channel in a long half-moon, or concave line abreast, stretching seven miles from north to south. This formation, which was copied from the galleys, was absurdly ill fitted for vessels carrying a broadside of guns, since it is clear that he who is between two ships of his own side can fire neither to right nor to left without injuring his own friends. Such a blundering arrangement almost dictated to Lord Howard the course it was most convenient for him to adopt. He attacked the two extremities of the Spanish line. It is probable that the English ships more or less roughly carried out the method of attack which has been described as "concentration by defiling"; that is to say, they ran down from windward till within easy gunshot, then they fired into the stern and quarter of the galleons at the extremity of the Spanish wing, and hauled to windward so soon as there was any danger of coming too near, or of heading, and therefore falling to leeward of, their enemy. Under the pressure of such an attack as this, the extremities of the Spanish half-moon would naturally flinch inwards, and the danger of collision between the ships thus thrown out of their order of sailing would be very serious. We know as a matter of fact that the ships at the extremity of the Spanish line did suffer very severely. One, the Sta Catalina, was very much cut up. Oquendo's flagship was crippled by an explosion of gunpowder, said to have been caused by a Flemish gunner in revenge for some ill usage. But the most serious loss to the Spaniards, both materially and in honour, occurred in the squadron of Andalusia. The Nuestra Señora del Rosario was the flagship of Pedro de Valdes, one of the best and ablest officers in King Philip's service. In the confusion produced throughout the Spanish fleet by the English attack, the Rosario had been run into and crippled by another ship of the squadron. Her bowsprit was carried away and the foremast brought down. In this state Valdes was incapable of keeping up with the fleet unless he was towed. But no help was afforded him. At sundown, apparently immediately after the accident had happened, the duke signalled to the fleet to hold on its course, and stood up Channel before the westerly wind. Pedro de Valdes was left to his fate, which not only might have been, but was, foreseen by every ship in the Armada. There is a general agreement among the witnesses on the Spanish side, who are many and circumstantial, that the desertion of the flagship of the squadron of Andalusia spread a profound discouragement. There was not a man in the fleet who did not say to himself, "If so good an officer as Pedro de Valdes is deserted, what can the rest of us expect if we are disabled?" During the night Lord Howard followed the Spaniards close, but was not himself accompanied by the rest of the fleet. Drake had been ordered to carry the guiding light for the night, but, tempted by the sight of some vessels passing him to the westward, he had turned back, thinking, or professing to think, that they formed a part of the Spanish fleet endeavouring to escape out of the Channel. Lord Howard mistook the light of the Spaniards for that of his own vice-admiral. Meanwhile the rest of the English fleet, having lost the guiding light, lay to. Thus when day broke we were all scattered, though fortunately all to windward, and the different parts of our force were most characteristically placed. The gallant and disinterested Lord Howard was in dangerous proximity to the enemy, the bulk of the English fleet was lying off some distance in safety, but Drake, the ex-slaver and buccaneer, was close to the crippled Spaniard—a prize which he could seize at no great cost of danger or trouble to himself. Pedro de Valdes, being surrounded on all sides, had no resource but to surrender at discretion, and the Rosario was sent into Weymouth. The remainder of the 22nd passed without any incident of note. By the following day the Spaniards had rolled slowly along to Portland. Here they seemed about to enjoy a change of fortune. By this time, indeed, they had begun to understand that it was upon fortune they must depend for a chance of bringing the English to battle on terms fairly favourable to themselves. The operations of the 21st had convinced them of the great superiority of the English fleet in weatherliness. When, then, on the morning of the 23rd the wind shifted to the N.E. and thereby gave the Spaniards an opportunity of securing the weather-gage, they were flattered by a prospect of taking their revenge. A part of the English were between them and the shore. The Spaniards turned in the confident hope of catching their slippery enemy between the "sword and the wall," to use their own expressive idiom. But they were not to enjoy any favour of fortune on this campaign. Just when a close engagement seemed to be inevitable, the wind again swept round to the west, transferring the weather-gage once more to the English. The duke resumed his course to the east, and the English fell back a short space, and then again followed their lumbering enemy, looking keenly for every chance to strike him with advantage.

Nothing of note is recorded to have happened on the 24th, unless it be that complaints were heard of want of powder in the fleet. In the meantime the country had become thoroughly aroused. The Spaniards had seen the beacon fires blazing on the hills of Devon on the night of the 20th, and before daylight those flames had leapt from hill-top to hill-top—

"From Eddystone to Berwick bounds, from Lynn to Milford Bay."

Volunteers swarmed down to the fleet. As English and Spaniards rolled heavily along the Channel, ships slipped out from the different ports to reinforce Howard. To the eastward, Lord Henry Seymour and Sir William Winter were concentrating their squadrons in the Downs, while the squadrons of Holland and Zeeland, united under the command of Justinus of Nassau, were blocking every port in Spanish Flanders. It was one of the most fatal of the misconceptions of the Spaniard that he had hoped to draw help from those very harbours which the son of William the Silent was blockading. On the 25th of July, Medina Sidonia despatched a quick-sailing ship in advance to the Duke of Parma, informing him of his own approach, and begging him to come out, in order that they might combine their forces. The Spanish fleet was then off the Isle of Wight. It was the day of St. Dominic, founder of the Dominican order, and a member of the house of Guzman. The Duke of Medina Sidonia, as was only natural in a Roman Catholic, and a gentleman of a family which had produced so eminent a saint, was in expectation that the anniversary would be marked by some signal manifestation of divine assistance. But none came. Lord Howard was so little disturbed by his enemy, and, we may add, was so little anxious to force on a battle with him, that he spent some part of the day in conferring the honour of knighthood on Lord Thomas Howard, Lord Sheffield, Roger Townsend, Hawkins, and Frobisher. There was indeed some fighting, but the day was calm, with very light breezes from the west, and the engagement was a mere artillery duel, which in times of rude gunnery meant a great waste of powder and shot. On the 26th there was no action, and next day the Spaniards anchored in the Roads of Calais.

In his own belief and in that of most of his contemporaries, the Duke of Medina Sidonia had now carried out one main purpose of his expedition. He had come to a place at which, if distance and their own relative position were alone to be considered, he could effect his meeting with the Duke of Parma. From Calais, therefore, he sent another officer, urging the prince to come out at once with his seventeen thousand soldiers. As a matter of fact, however, the Duke of Parma was unable to move. The vessels he had been building to serve as transports were in no state to go to sea, and if they had been they could not have moved, for the prince had few sailors, and the Dutch squadron, numerous and well appointed, was waiting for him outside. Alexander Farnese, who does not seem ever to have had any effective belief in the advisability of invading England, made a show of embarking his men, but until the Dutch blockading squadrons were cleared away this was a mere parade, and there was no naval force at hand to drive them off. As on a famous occasion in our own later history, the Duke of Medina Sidonia waited for the Duke of Parma, while the Duke of Parma, for his part, stood waiting for the Duke of Medina Sidonia. So the 27th and the 28th of July wore away.

Meanwhile, Howard had been joined by Lord Henry Seymour and Sir William Winter, and a council of war was held on the flagship, the Ark Royal. At this council it was decided to do some service against the Spaniards at anchor by fireships. Seven vessels were filled with combustibles and primed with powder. These preparations did not pass unperceived by the enemy, and it was at least suggested to the Duke of Medina Sidonia to prepare pinnaces with grappling irons for the purpose of towing off any fireships the English might send among them. Ever since a weapon of this kind had been used against them at the siege of Antwerp, the Spaniards had regarded the fireship with considerable fear. But measures of precaution were either not taken at all, or were taken very ill. After dark, and when the tide was flowing strongly, the fireships were sent in before the westerly wind. An instantaneous panic broke out in the Spanish fleet. The whole swarm of ships hurried to escape their assailants by getting up anchor and running away to leeward. The better disciplined ships, in which the officers of experience and volunteers of noble birth were numerous, weighed anchor, and moved off in some order. The others cut their cables, and ran for it in great confusion. Collisions were common. One great galleasse, the flagship of Don Hugo de Moncada, had her rudder unshipped, and was stranded while endeavouring to get into Calais harbour. Here the greater part of her crew deserted her. The remainder, under the command of Don Hugo, made a gallant fight for it against the swarm of English boats, till Moncada fell shot through the head with a harquebus bullet, when the others surrendered. Wild confusion prevailed throughout the rest of the now beaten fleet. The vessels which had cut their cables drifted away to leeward, for, as the Spaniards at that time carried no anchors on deck except those at the catheads, they could not hoist others out in time from the hold, and had no means of bringing themselves up. Thus, when the day broke, such of Medina Sidonia's vessels as were in a position to anchor were separated by miles from the great majority, which the tide had carried far to leeward. The duke got under way, and ought to have run down to leeward. But, having been yielding when he ought to have been firm, he was, after the not uncommon habit of timid men, obstinate when he might very well have yielded. He stood out to sea with the galleons immediately about him, and signalled for the rest of his fleet to join him. As they had to tack against the wind, this movement could not be executed by most of them in less than many hours. The isolated position of the Spanish commander was at once obvious to the English admirals, and their whole force fell upon the part of the Spanish fleet nearest them. This was the hottest day's fighting of the whole campaign. The English were confident, and threw aside some of the caution they had hitherto displayed. They came to close quarters, and their artillery did heavy damage to their enemies. No Spanish ship was actually taken, but one was seen to sink, and others were so crippled that they drifted out of action and sought refuge in the Flemish ports held by the Duke of Parma. These, with few exceptions, became prizes to the Dutch.

When the battle of Gravelines was over, the Armada was beaten. It had not suffered very severe loss in numbers, but it had become convinced both of its own inferiority in manœuvring power to its opponents, and of the utter incapacity of its chief. He, for his part, was thoroughly sick of his command, and was already in a humour to tell the king, as he did on his arrival in Spain, that he would rather have his head cut off than meddle with the command of fleets again.

In truth, neither fleet was in a condition to continue the action. The English had exhausted their gunpowder, and the gaol fever was extending with dreadful rapidity. There was also a want of provisions, for which the queen's Government has been severely, and perhaps not altogether justly, blamed by historians. If the queen and Lord Burleigh were eager to keep down expenses, it must be remembered that the Crown was very poor. The resources required to keep a great fleet on foot for any length of time could only be obtained by an appeal to Parliament. The political difficulties of her position made Elizabeth at all times unwilling to put herself in the position of having to make a bargain with the House of Commons, which was certain to exact concessions in return for supplies of money. At such a time, indeed, nothing ought to have been allowed to stand in the way of the defence of the country, or to prevent the fair treatment of the officers and men serving in the fleet. Yet there is no reason to suppose that Elizabeth and her Lord Treasurer were careless of their duty; but the Government of the time had very little experience in the maintenance of great military forces. The naval administration was in a rudimentary condition, and it may very well be that the want of powder and provisions and the very irregular payment of wages were due rather to awkwardness and ignorance, helped perhaps by dishonesty on the part of subordinates, than to meanness in Elizabeth. The fleet which in the following year was sent to the coast of Spain to retaliate for the Spanish invasion suffered much from the want of food and from pestilence. Yet it was organised not by the queen, but by a committee of adventurers, who had every motive to fit it out well, since they must needs rely upon its efficiency to repay them by the capture of Spanish prizes. However the blame must be divided, the fact remains that within a few days after the battle of Gravelines the English fleet was in danger of being paralysed by the want of necessary stores, and by the unmanning of the ships through sickness and desertion.

The English fleet had the resource of retiring to its own harbours, but there was no such escape for the Spaniards. There was no port of their own available for the heavy ships nearer than the Bay of Biscay. Parma did indeed advise the duke to betake himself to the free city of Hamburg, where, as he was well provided with money, he would have no difficulty in finding stores, and from whence he could issue later on for the purpose either of renewing the attack on England, or of co-operating in a serious effort to reduce Holland and Zeeland. Whatever the worth of the advice may have been, and whether it was physically practicable or not, the Duke of Medina Sidonia was in no condition to act upon it. He had become completely cowed. Indeed, he had just had a demonstration of the utter unfitness of his fleet for the work his master the king had sent him to perform. The battle of Gravelines was followed by strong breezes, for they do not seem to have attained to the dignity of a storm, from the S. and S.W. Under the impulse of these winds, the heavier ships of the Armada began to drift on the shallows of the coast of Zeeland. By the confession of the Spaniards, their vessels were wholly at the mercy of the wind and the currents. They drifted along quite unable to help themselves, and only a lucky shift of the wind saved them from going ashore. When the wind did turn to a point more favourable to them, the Spanish ships, still very little diminished in number, but entirely broken in spirit, straggled out into the North Sea, and then, by the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, all stood to the northward for the purpose of making their way back to Spain by the west of the British Isles.

When the Armada was seen to be in retreat, Howard told off Lord Henry Seymour to remain in the Downs for the purpose of operating with Justinus of Nassau in the blockade of Parma's ports. He himself followed the Spaniards as far north as the Firth of Forth. That he made no attack upon them, shows either that his own vessels were wholly destitute of stores, or that the enemy still inspired him with an amount of respect not justified by their real condition. At the Firth of Forth, Howard left the enemy and returned to the mouth of the Thames. For a time there was a belief that the Duke of Parma might still sally out, and there was even in the opinion of some of our leaders a fear that the Armada might return. It was not, indeed, until months afterwards that the world began to know what had been the fate of the King of Spain's great fleet. It had stood to the north until the pilots, by whose advice the Duke of Medina Sidonia acted, thought it safe to turn to the west, and up to this period it had apparently not suffered much. Nine vessels had in all been lost by capture or abandonment to the enemy. But on the way home fifty-four perished by shipwreck. Almost from the very day in which the galleons and urcas of the King of Spain turned the north of Scotland on their way home, they were subjected to a succession of storms of extraordinary violence for the season of the year. Being ill provided with pilots and charts, as well as essentially unseaworthy, they were quite unable to struggle with the violence of the weather. Nineteen vessels were wrecked on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Those of the Spaniards who were wrecked within the dominions of Queen Elizabeth were massacred by orders of her officers, many of them being put to death in cold blood, after they had been received to quarter. About one-half of the King of Spain's ships were lost. Those which reached his ports were almost unmanned, for the scurvy broke out during the miseries of the return home, and, as the provisions were exhausted, the crews died from actual starvation. Few of the leaders lived to return home. Alonso de Leiva perished in the wreck of the Rata. Oquendo and Martinez de Recalde did indeed live to cast anchor in Spanish waters, but they died almost immediately afterwards from the effect of the sufferings they had endured, and the shame of the great disaster. The Duke of Medina Sidonia spent his time, while returning to Spain, sitting in his cabin with his face buried in his hands, in complete prostration and stupor, while Diego Flores and Don Francisco de Bobadilla carried on the duties of commander. The duke had left Spain a very prosperous gentleman; he returned a white-haired old man.

The failure of the Armada was naturally a very conspicuous event in the opinion of that and succeeding generations. It was the visible deliverance of England, and with her of the Protestants of Europe. The piety of the time accounted for the failure of the mighty armament by saying that God had blown upon it, and it had been scattered. This verdict has not always been accepted by the rationalism or the patriotism of modern times, and yet it may be said to be essentially true. The Armada failed through its own weakness and the incapacity of its chief. With the single exception of their use of the fireships in Calais Roads, the English leaders did nothing to force the Duke of Medina Sidonia into a disadvantageous position. He put himself into the worst position by his own acts. When he did decide to retreat, the material strength of his fleet was hardly impaired. It was the moral strength that was gone, and that partly through the discovery that the ships were very ill fitted for their work, and partly because the Spaniards had discovered the hopeless incapacity of their leader. Even at the last moment, when the Spaniards had been saved by a mere shift in the wind from destruction on the banks of Zeeland, Lord Howard showed no wish to come to close quarters with them. The supposition that he left them at the Firth of Forth because he foresaw they would perish on their way home, is inadmissible. Lord Howard cannot have known that the latter part of the month of August would be beyond precedent stormy. If the weather had been what it might have been expected to be, the loss of the Spaniards would probably not have gone beyond a very few more vessels than those which had already been taken or driven on shore, or had fallen into the hands of the enemy in the Channel. In that case, they would indeed have failed to effect an invasion of England; but the ships might have been refitted, and the Armada would not have been considered to have suffered severely. Thousands of men would no doubt have died from scurvy and want of food, but that was usual even with the successful naval expeditions of the time. As the English were then not familiar with the seas north of the Firth of Forth, it is possible that if Lord Howard had pursued the Spaniards, his own ships would have suffered much, if not quite as much as the enemy. The storms did not cause the failure of the Armada in the Channel or the North Sea, but they did produce its destruction.

CHAPTER III
FROM THE ARMADA TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN

Authorities.—In addition to the books quoted at the head of the last chapters, Sir William Monson's Naval Tracts, to be found in vol. iii. of Churchill's Voyages, are of great value for the later part of the great queen's reign. Sir Richard Hawkins's account of his own voyage to the South Seas contains much most valuable information as to the naval life of the time. It has been published by the Hakluyt Society. Linschoten, printed in English by the same Society, is valuable for the loss of the Revenge, and for the picture it gives of the Spanish and Portuguese methods of conducting trade, and of their disasters. The accessible evidence for the voyages of the Earl of Cumberland is in Purchas. Southey took the cream off the narratives of Elizabethan sea adventure in the Lives of the Admirals, written for the Cabinet Cyclopædia.

Being now delivered from all fear of an attack by Spain, and at the same time persuaded that there was no hope of peace with Philip till he was thoroughly broken, Elizabeth's Government retaliated for the Armada by a vigorous raid on the coast of Spain. In theory, the expedition was intended to do much more than merely harass the King of Spain's coasts. There was an avowed intention to help the Prior of Ocrato, who claimed the throne of Portugal, to recover the kingdom out of the hands of King Philip. But the forces provided were quite insufficient for such a serious undertaking as the reconquest of Portugal, although they were very large in proportion to the resources of England and her Dutch allies. The Dutch, in fact, who were threatened by a serious attack at home, were compelled to withhold a great part of the forces which they had promised to contribute. Still, the expedition contained 11,000 troops and 1500 seamen. The command at sea was given to Sir Francis Drake, and the command of the troops to the officer who had then the greatest military reputation in England, Sir John Norris. It did not, on the whole, prove successful. The withholding of the old English troops in the Low Countries made it necessary to rely wholly on new levies. They, as usual, proved untrustworthy. Upwards of one-third of the men are said to have deserted before the expedition sailed at all. Finding that if they delayed much longer they would probably be weakened to a much more dangerous extent, Drake and Norris put to sea on the 15th of April, and five days later landed in the neighbourhood of Corunna, with the intention of taking the town. They had no difficulty in burning the suburbs, and in scattering a body of country militia brought down by the king's governor to attack them. But the upper town beat off all their attacks; and in the meantime the soldiers had broken into the stores of wine collected for export, and had drunk so freely that illness began to infest the squadron. Corunna having beaten it off, the fleet now went on to the coast of Portugal. Her partners' desire for booty had once more hampered the execution of the queen's political purposes. Every day wasted on the road to Portugal gave King Philip more time to prepare for defending his conquest, but the adventurers had need of the plunder of the town in order to cover their expenses, and therefore time was wasted in futile attempts to take a strongly fortified place without a battering-train. After the failure at Corunna, Drake and Norris anchored at Peniche, and there landed the troops who were still in a condition to render service. According to the plan, they were to march overland to Lisbon, while Drake promised to enter the Tagus and meet them at the town. But the scheme broke down entirely. Norris did indeed march to the gates of Lisbon, but he found it far too strongly held to be attacked by him. The profuse promises made by Dom Antonio, the pretender, were completely falsified by experience. The crowds of partisans on whom he relied for help did not appear. Drake found it impossible even to enter the Tagus, a river with a very swift current, heavily fortified at the mouth. At last, Norris, finding that he was in danger of attack by the troops collecting in the interior of the country, re-embarked his men, and the expedition returned home. It hung about on the coast for a time in the hope of picking up a few prizes, and it had a brush or two with the King of Spain's galleys at the mouth of the Tagus. In one of these, the galleys, aided by a dead calm, succeeded in cutting off and setting on fire one English vessel which carried a company of soldiers. But the Spanish trade had been so completely frightened that it had no longer any ships at sea. The provisions began to run out. Disease had made so much progress in the squadron that barely two thousand men were left fit for service. It finally returned home in the midst of very bad weather, having failed of its main purposes, but having also shown how entirely the destruction of the Armada had prostrated the naval strength of the King of Spain.

An equally convincing proof of Spanish weakness was given in the following year. A squadron of ten ships, all belonging to the queen, were sent out to the "Isles," that is to say, to the Azores and Canaries, under the command of Sir John Hawkins and Sir Martin Frobisher. This was a regular military expedition designed to interrupt the trade of Spain with America, and if possible to cripple King Philip by capturing his treasure-ships on their way home. So far as interrupting Spanish trade was concerned, Hawkins and Frobisher were completely successful. So feeble was the great King of Spain at sea, that he forbade his flota to return home this year lest it should fall into the hands of the English cruisers. The loss to him was immense, as also to his subjects, but to us the stoppage of the Spanish treasure-ships was a disappointment. It was not enough for Elizabeth, who had great expenses to meet, to prevent the King of Spain from receiving his silver. She had cherished the hope that at least some portion of it would fall into the hands of her officers. When, therefore, they cruised for seven long months without taking a single prize, great or small, the queen was in a very bad temper. It was on this occasion that Sir John Hawkins, when giving an account of his ill success, attempted to justify himself by use of his favourite biblical language. "Paul," said the old sea-rover, "planteth and Apollos watereth, but it is God who giveth the increase." This attempt to console her for the loss of her money, in the style of the Puritans, whom she loathed with a peculiar detestation, was more than enough to provoke an explosion from the great queen. It is said that she broke out with "God's death! this fool went out a soldier, and is come home a divine."

Although Queen Elizabeth consoled herself for her disappointment by snubbing the unctuous piety of Hawkins, she did not cease sending out these expeditions to the "Isles." They were indeed the main course of the naval war of the rest of her reign. The object was to reduce Philip to impotence by cutting off his supplies of treasure. As the ships which carried out the trade from Spain and returned with the cargoes and bullion from the New World were under the necessity of stopping at the "Isles" to water and refit, it was good policy to wait for them where they might be expected to be met with tolerable certainty. In order to make doubly sure, it was much the practice for the English ships to divide, some of them taking their station off Cadiz, and others cruising near the Azores. Thus, if the Spaniards missed the ships at the "Isles," they might fall into the hands of the others at the mouth of the Straits. The squadrons employed on this work did not consist wholly of the queen's ships. A large part of them belonged to private adventurers—either men of business who fitted out vessels as a commercial speculation, or gallant gentlemen of the stamp of the Earl of Cumberland, whose voyages are among the most brilliant made in the great queen's reign. None of these voyages to the "Isles" proved as fully successful as the queen could have wished, but they did do enormous damage to the King of Spain, and indirectly they had important permanent consequences for England.

The voyage of 1591 was rendered extremely memorable by the famous last fight of the Revenge. In this year the queen sent out her squadron under the command of Lord Thomas Howard. It consisted of six ships, and it took up the cruising ground occupied to so little purpose by Hawkins and Frobisher in the previous year. By this time it had become impossible for the King of Spain to delay his flota again. Orders had therefore been sent to come on at all hazards. Foreseeing that his vessels would be in danger from the English at the Azores, King Philip had prepared another armament which was to sail from Cadiz to meet the flota in mid-voyage and escort it home. While Howard was cruising at the Azores, the Earl of Cumberland was on a private venture on the coast of Spain. He sighted the Spanish fleet on its way out from Cadiz, and despatched a quick-sailing pinnace called the Moonshine with a warning to Howard. The Moonshine found the English admiral at anchor in Flores Bay, with a great part of his men on shore watering, and some sick with the scurvy. The warning had barely been delivered to Howard before the Spanish fleet under the command of Alonso de Bazan, the brother of Don Álvaro, was almost upon him. The roadstead of Flores opens to the N.W., and the Spanish fleet came round the western side of the island, tacking against the westerly wind. It would have been extremely rash in Lord Thomas Howard to allow himself to be caught with his little handful of ships by so superior a force of the enemy in a position where he could not avoid attack. He therefore very properly prepared to stand out to sea without delay.

It was of course impossible to desert the men on shore. They were provided for by leaving the Revenge, the flagship of Sir Richard Grenville, the second in command, which was esteemed the best sailer of the queen's ships, to pick them up and then to join the flag outside. Before the men were collected, the Spanish fleet was opposite the roadstead. Apparently Lord Thomas Howard had stood out to sea, so that the fleet of Don Alonso de Bazan was between him and the Revenge. When Sir Richard Grenville stood out from the anchorage, he had an easy means of rejoining his admiral. All he had to do was to put before the wind, to run to leeward of the Spaniards, and join Lord Thomas on the other side. As a matter of fact, this course was actually followed by a small transport, or victualler, left behind with the Revenge. But although this was the safe and sensible course, it had about it an air of flight. Flight in the circumstances would not have appeared discreditable to an ordinary officer, but Sir Richard Grenville was not an ordinary officer. He was a man of a passionate nature, with a large share of what we may with all due reverence describe as the swaggering courage of the Elizabethans. We must not judge him as a man of to-day, but as a gentleman of Devon, with a mediæval spirit on the point of honour and a superb valour, who had probably been fed upon tales of chivalry, and was very capable of acting after the manner of a knight-errant. It was, in fact, exactly as a knight-errant that he behaved. His sailing-master advised him to put before the wind and trust to the speed of his ship, but Grenville refused. To understand what exactly was the point of honour upon which he fought, it is necessary to remember that at sea the windward position is the place of honour. He who makes way for another, and passes to leeward of him, acknowledges the superiority of the ship for which he makes way. If, then, Grenville had put before the wind, and had run to leeward of the Spaniards, he would in his own opinion have confessed that they were his betters. Now this he would not do, and he therefore decided that at whatever hazard to himself, his ship, and his crew, "he would pass through the two squadrons in spite of them, and enforce that of Seville to give him way." This, it seems, if the English version of the story is to be believed, "he performed upon divers of the foremost who sprang and fell under the lee of the Revenge"; that is to say, in the modern phrase, they bore up and made way for the Revenge. It is probable that these were small vessels, perhaps urcas, for a large proportion of the fifty-three ships under the command of Don Alonso de Bazan were certainly transports employed to carry soldiers, and not provided with a battery of guns. However that may be, the St. Philip, the first of the great Spanish galleons in a position to bar his way, did not bear up for Grenville. On the contrary, she ran into him to windward, and, being much the bigger and higher ship of the two, took the wind out of his sails and immediately stopped his way. From that moment the fate of the Revenge was settled. Other vessels joined the St. Philip, and the Revenge was shut in. In that position she maintained a defence so long and so desperate, that it is only to be accounted for by the very bad gunnery of the Spaniards, and by the fact that the action began shortly before dark, and was prolonged through the night. The want of light had unquestionably a great deal to do with preventing the Spaniards from overpowering the crew of the Revenge by mere numbers. Lord Thomas Howard did not desert his fiery second in command. He did, on the contrary, all that was possible for him with a handful of undermanned ships. He attacked the Spaniards from windward as closely as he could without allowing himself to be entangled in the midst of their superior numbers. More he could not have done without manifest folly; and it is even said that when he did show a disposition to sail into the midst of the Spaniards, his master threatened to throw himself overboard rather than have any share in the destruction of the queen's ships. It was probably during the night that Lord Thomas Howard left his knightly colleague to his fate, and sailed away. At daybreak the Revenge was completely battered to pieces, forty of her men were killed and a number wounded. Grenville himself was mortally hurt. If he could still have had his way, he would rather have blown his ship up than allow her to fall into the hands of the enemy, but his crew were not disposed to be sacrificed any further. They insisted on being allowed to surrender, and the Spaniards gave them quarter. Grenville himself was carried still living onto the flagship of Don Alonso de Bazan. He declared in his last breath, in Spanish, if Linschoten is to be believed: "Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful heart and a quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a good soldier ought to do, who has fought for his country, queen, religion, and honour. Wherefore my soul joyfully departeth out of this body, and shall always leave behind it an everlasting fame of a true soldier, who hath done his duty as he was bound to do. But the others of my company have done as traitors and dogs, for which they shall be reproached all their lives, and leave a shameful name for ever."

Linschoten was at that time a resident in the Islands, and may very well have had at least the substance of this speech from the Spaniards who actually heard it. It is too consistent not only with the character of the man, but of that of the type to which he belonged, to be wholly false. There was in the action as well as in the literature of the Elizabethan time a strain of rodomontade. The death of Sir Richard Grenville was emphatically what the sixteenth century described as a rodomontade in act. The capture of the Revenge was much boasted of by the Spaniards, and is still remembered by them with some complacence. Even, however, if we allow for a large element of exaggeration in our own accounts of the battle, it was not a feat which redounded much to their glory. Nor was the end of this effort to protect the return home of the trade from America fortunate. Lord Thomas Howard was indeed driven off, and two days after the action the galleons on their way home from America joined Don Alonso. They represented only the remains of the convoys which had sailed from the ports of New Spain. The ships stopped by Philip's orders in the preceding year had suffered much from the teredo or boring worm, and numbers went down before reaching the Islands. Of the remainder few ever lived to see Spain. Shortly after they had joined Don Alonso, a violent gale, which lasted for seven days and blew in succession from different quarters, burst on the hundred and forty ships now collected under the command of the Spanish admiral. More than a hundred went down or were wrecked on the Islands. The loss was greater than that of the Armada, and the blow sustained by the naval power of Spain even more irreparable.

The next two years saw a repetition of these voyages to the Isles, distinguished by the usual features of active enterprise and seamanship on the part of the English, and of helpless adherence to routine on the part of the Spaniards. In 1594, however, the queen's policy was changed. Although these voyages to the Islands were sound in policy, and had done immense mischief to the Spaniards, they had not proved profitable to the queen. In 1594 she listened to the advice of Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins, and decided to revert to an older method of striking at the wealth of the King of Spain. "These two generals," says Sir William Monson, "presuming much upon their own experience and knowledge, used many persuasions to the queen to undertake a voyage to the West Indies, giving much assurance to perform great services, and promising to engage themselves very deeply therein with the adventure of both substance and life." The plan was, in fact, a repetition of the scheme partially executed in 1585. It was to sail to the West Indies and there seize the King of Spain's treasure at its port of departure. The plunder of the Islands and of Spanish ships would, it was calculated, at any rate cover the expenses of the expedition. It was late in sailing, owing to fear of an invasion by the Spaniards from the Low Countries.

The Cardinal Archduke Albert, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands since Parma's death in 1592, had made himself master of the great part of Brittany, and one small expedition did actually come out of the little port of Blavet and burn the town of Penzance. So soon, however, as it was known that the invasion would be limited to this trumpery raid, Drake and Hawkins were allowed to sail. As was usual in the case, the squadron consisted only in part of ships belonging to the queen. Of these there were six—the Defiance, in which Sir Francis Drake had his flag, and the Garland, the flagship of Sir John Hawkins, the Hope, the Bonaventure, the Foresight, and the Adventurer. There were, besides these, twenty vessels belonging to private adventurers. Two thousand six hundred soldiers were embarked to serve on shore in the proposed capture of Panama. They were under the command of Sir Thomas Baskerville, a gentleman of Devon.

The old kinsmen and fellow-adventurers, who had begun the brilliant epoch of Elizabethan naval achievement, sailed, on what was destined to be their last voyage, from Hawkins's native town of Plymouth on the 28th of August 1594. They began by following the usual route to the West Indies by the Grand Canary. Here, according to precedent, they spent time in attempting to plunder. Hawkins is said to have been in favour of pushing on at once to the West Indies in obedience to the queen's orders. Information had been received in England to the effect that a Spanish treasure-ship had put into Puerto Rico disabled. It was obvious that the sooner the English squadron appeared before the port, the better would be its chance of finding the treasure-ship still there, and of taking the town unprepared. But although Hawkins's advice was unquestionably sound, it was overruled by Drake and Baskerville, who had the support of public opinion in the squadron. The sailors, under pretence of seeking provisions, were in fact eager for plunder. It was therefore decided to land and pillage, but the fleet had overshot its mark. The town of Gran Canaria could not be attacked before the Spaniards had time to put it into a defensible position. Finding La Gran Canaria too strong to be taken, the English commanders were constrained to be satisfied with landing a few men at an out-of-the-way place for fresh water. Even this did not in the end succeed with them. Some stragglers from the watering parties were attacked by the native herdsmen, who killed most of them, and took the others prisoners. From one of the men taken the Spanish governor learned the destination of the fleet, and immediately despatched a quick-sailing vessel to put the towns of the West Indies upon their guard. They had, however, been already warned by the King of Spain, who was well supplied with information from England. Finding that there was nothing to be done at the Canaries, Drake and Hawkins stood on to the Leeward Islands, and stopped to water at Dominica and Guadaloupe. On entering the West Indies they were scattered by a storm. While they were rejoining one another and trading with the natives of the islands for food and water, the Spaniards were actively at work to defeat the purpose of the expedition. King Philip had not been careless of the safety of his treasure-ship. He had despatched from Spain a squadron of eight zabras, under the command of Don Pedro Tello, with orders to bring the bullion home. By a piece of extraordinary bad fortune for us, five of the vessels under Tello's command captured a little bark of thirty-five tons belonging to Hawkins's squadron. This misfortune happened in the sight of a larger English ship, which escaped and brought the bad news to Hawkins, who is reported to have sickened at once as foreseeing the inevitable consequences. Don Pedro Tello did what any English commander of the time would have done without scruple. He put his prisoners to the torture, and compelled them to tell him where the expedition was bound. Then he hurried on to Puerto Rico. The English commanders delayed for some days longer at Guadaloupe, and then continued their route in what seems to have been a very leisurely fashion. Dissensions are said to have broken out between Drake and Hawkins, and there is certainly in the whole history of their proceedings a want of the promptitude and resolution they had shown when younger men. Before they reached Puerto Rico, Hawkins died, and was buried at sea.

Though released from a colleague with whom he had not worked happily hitherto, Sir Francis Drake was not more successful when left to himself. He attacked Puerto Rico in vain. The Spaniards had had time to land the treasure and to put the port into a state of defence. The English lost upwards of a hundred men in the repulse. This experience seems to have convinced the surviving leaders that it was hopeless to waste more time at Puerto Rico. They therefore proceeded to carry out the remainder of their instructions. But for once we were doomed to failure and to find fortune everywhere against us. As is so often the case, bad fortune meant mistaken calculation. Drake and Hawkins had not realised that a great change had come over the West Indies within the last ten years. The smaller Spanish posts had been harried out of existence, and the larger had been fortified by the King of Spain's engineers. Thus there was no such opportunity for plunder as had been presented a few years before to forces incapable of undertaking a regular siege. After one or two unsuccessful attempts to extort ransom from towns along the coast, which were deserted at their approach, Drake and Baskerville decided to make the long-delayed attack on Panama. Drake himself remained with the ships at Nombre de Dios, while Baskerville with seven hundred and fifty men attempted that overland march which in after times was triumphantly executed by the buccaneers of Sir Henry Morgan. But in 1594 the Spanish Government was far stronger than it was in the later seventeenth century. Baskerville met with very serious resistance. He was harassed while marching through the bush, and repulsed with heavy loss in attacking a stockade erected by the Spaniards across the road. Finding his enterprise hopeless, even if he and his comrades were prepared to "cloy the jaws of death," he returned to Nombre de Dios. The Indians, who had been friendly when Drake was formerly on the coast, were now hostile, perhaps because of the excesses of the meaner adventurers who had followed Sir Francis. A detachment of English were cut off by them in an ambuscade. It began to be borne in upon the mind of Sir Francis Drake that his life of daring and success was to end in failure. "Sir Francis Drake, who was wont to rule fortune, now finding his error, and the difference between the present state of the Indies and what it was when he first knew it, grew melancholy upon this disappointment, and suddenly, and I hope naturally, died at Porto Bello, not far from the place where he got his first reputation." So says Sir William Monson; but there is no reason to suppose that the death of Drake was due to any other cause than the action of disappointment and the evil climate of the coast on a constitution tried by long and hard service. After the deaths of the two seamen leaders, Sir Thomas Baskerville brought home whatever fever and the sword had spared in the most unsuccessful of all the fleets of Elizabeth's reign. He returned by the Straits of Florida, fighting an indecisive action with the squadron of the King of Spain's ships at the west end of Cuba on his way.

Neither of the voyages to the "Isles" nor this attempt to revert to the attacks on the West Indies had answered the expectations of Elizabeth and her Council. In spite of his many failures and disasters, Philip was indefatigable in refitting his fleet and in organising constant renewed attempts to invade England. By land, the excellence of his troops, and the capacity of his military officers in Flanders, gave him some compensation for his disasters at sea. The Spaniards had established themselves on the coast of Brittany, and even succeeded in capturing Calais. In 1596, then, the queen seemed in almost as much danger as she had been in 1588. This time, however, Elizabeth took the course which had then been pressed upon her by her captains. She decided to make a formidable attack on the King of Spain at home. Acting on the earnest advice of Lord Howard, and of the Earl of Essex, who was now at the height of his favour, she took part in a great combined expedition to Cadiz. A fleet of 150 sail was got together. The queen contributed 17 ships of the Royal Navy, a very large proportion of the whole at that time, and the sum of no less than £50,000, which was about one-eighth of her regular revenue; her Dutch allies contributed 18 ships of war and 6 storeships; the others were vessels either levied in the seaports by the Crown, or belonging to adventurers. This fleet carried 1000 gentlemen volunteers, 6368 troops, and 6772 seamen, exclusive of the Dutch. It was most carefully organised, and sailed with precise instructions to do the utmost possible amount of damage to the King of Spain's men-of-war in his havens, to his magazines of victuals and munitions for arming his navy, without hazarding men or ships on merely foolish or rash undertakings. In sharp contrast to the campaign of 1594, this was extraordinarily successful. The fleet sailed on the 1st of June, and swept down to Cadiz in twenty days, capturing everything it met on the way. So thoroughly was this work done that not a single one of the caravels which the Spaniards had at sea for the purpose of scouting was able to escape into harbour with information of the approach of the allied fleet. Its appearance before Cadiz on the 20th of June was a complete surprise to the enemy.

The town rises out of the sea from a mass of rock joined to the mainland by a long narrow spit and a bridge. This isthmus, natural and artificial, runs from S.E. to N.W. Between it and the land to the east lies the harbour of Cadiz, which is divided into outer and inner by a tongue of land thrust out from the island of Cadiz itself, towards the mainland, called Puntal, or the Point. It has a fort at the extremity. The inner harbour stretches eastward into the mainland of Spain. Puerto Real and the great arsenal called the Carraca lie respectively on the northern and southern sides of the eastern end of this harbour.

When the allied fleet was seen outside, the outer harbour of Cadiz contained a number of richly-laden galleons and a squadron of the King of Spain's galleys. The galleons were drawn up across the mouth of the harbour, while the galleys were stationed on either side, with their prows turned inwards for the purpose of flanking any attack. The appearance of resolution which this disposition of their forces was calculated to give was not borne out by the steadiness of the Spaniards under attack. The allied fleet had no difficulty in forcing its way into the inner harbour, and then the galleons, except two which were taken, and two burned by the Spaniards, fled up to Puerto Real, while the galleys escaped to sea, through an opening in the spit connecting the town of Cadiz with the mainland. It was the belief of some of the officers present, that if the allies had contented themselves with merely cutting Cadiz off from the mainland by occupying some point on the connecting road, they might have followed the galleons and merchant ships which took refuge at Puerto Real with the certainty of securing an enormous booty, and with every probability that the town of Cadiz would fall whenever they returned to attack it. This judicious plan was rendered impossible of application by the headlong zeal of the Earl of Essex. Having attacked, and silenced, the fort at the end of Puntal, he landed and marched on to storm the town itself. His example aroused the emulation of Lord Howard, of Lord Thomas Howard, and of Sir Walter Raleigh. They hastened to land and join in the assault upon the town. Cadiz, being destitute of a regular garrison and ill-fortified, fell without much difficulty before the attack of the allies, though not without sharp fighting in the streets and marketplace, in which one distinguished English officer, Sir John Winkfield, was shot dead. Cadiz remained in the possession of the allies for a fortnight. To the honour of their commanders be it said, they behaved with a moderation very seldom shown at that time after the storm of a city. Strict order was maintained, and the allies were content to levy a moderate ransom on the city, though they might easily have sacked it as brutally as the Spanish armies of the time had sacked the cities of the Low Countries.

On the Spanish side nothing more effectual was performed than the burning of the ships which had taken refuge at Puerto Real. This was done by the orders of the same Duke of Medina Sidonia who had commanded the Armada. He was still Captain-General of Andalusia, by the undeserved favour of his king, and he once more had an opportunity of covering himself with ridicule. After retaining possession of Cadiz for as long as they pleased, the allies set it on fire, and retreated with less booty than they had hoped to obtain, but certainly with immense honour, and after dealing the heaviest blow to the dignity of the King of Spain it had as yet had to endure. On the way home the fleet plundered the little Portuguese town of Faro in Algarve, when they carried off the library of Bishop Osorio, "which library," says Monson, "was brought into England by us and many of the books bestowed upon the newly erected library at Oxford." It was counted the most remarkable proof of the good fortune and good management of this armament that it returned in health.

Successful though the expedition had been, it had not satisfied the queen. Honour had been gained in abundance, but the material results were not what Her Majesty and her Council had been led to expect. No sooner had the Lord Admiral and his colleague, the Earl of Essex, reached home than they were importuning the queen for money to pay the wages of their men. Now this was not what the queen had looked for. She had been induced to advance so great a sum of money as £50,000 by the eager assurances of Howard and Essex that an attack on the King of Spain's harbours, made with sufficient force, must needs be extremely lucrative. It was commonly reported that many of those who took part in the "Cadiz Voyage" had returned with a comfortable sum of plunder. Yet there was nothing due to Her Majesty capable of covering the expenses of the campaign, still less of leaving her a margin of profit on her £50,000. Therefore the generals were subjected to very searching inquiries why they had nothing more to produce, and were compelled to justify themselves as well as they could. The real explanation was that they had been in such a hurry to seize the town that they had neglected to take possession of the ships before the Spaniards had time to burn them. For this postponement of the more profitable to the less there were two reasons. Of these, one is to be found in the difference between the meaning of the words "prize" and "plunder." Prize meant whatever had to be thrown into a common stock and divided pro rata. It included an enemy's ships, with their cargoes and ordnance, and the ransom of towns, or whatever was paid for the release of goods afloat from capture. In this the common sailor and soldier only took his share when the whole was divided on the return home. Plunder meant whatever the men were entitled to take possession of at once. It included small arms, cabin furniture, the personal ransom paid for prisoners, whatever loose cash they had in their pockets when they were taken, their clothes and jewellery. A civilised enemy was accustomed to exercise a certain decency in the exercise of this right of war. It was thought more becoming not to strip the prisoners actually naked, and, in some cases at least, it was made a rule that the women were not to be deprived of their earrings. At Cadiz the chiefs protected "the better sort of merchants' wives." They were allowed to go off unmolested to the number of two hundred or so, under an escort provided by the Earl of Essex. They availed themselves of his courtesy to put on all their best dresses at once, together with all their rings and necklaces. But although Essex and Howard kept the pillage of Cadiz within exceptionally close limits, it is certain that the town must have afforded a great deal of miscellaneous plunder. The women who did not have the good fortune to be included among "the better sort of merchants' wives" were probably left with little enough of whatever finery they may have possessed. As for the men, nobody would stand on much ceremony with them. Such portable property as plate, or the goods in the shops, would be taken as a matter of course, every man seizing for himself whatever came in his way.

On the ships there was much less of this promiscuous plunder than in the town, and the men, whether soldiers or sailors, were perfectly well aware of the fact. Essex excused himself for not seeing that the ships were taken possession of, by saying that he had instructed the sailors to follow up the galleons to Puerto Real, while the soldiers of the expedition were engaged in occupying the town. But the sailors were extremely unlikely to accept a division of labour which would have thrown a good deal of work, with a prospect of remote reward, on them, while it left the soldiers the exclusive enjoyment of the plunder of Cadiz. They were the less likely to do so, because experience had shown them that when the final division of the prize came to be made in England, Her Majesty would take very good care that the lion's share of it should fall to the Crown. Therefore, when once the example of attacking Cadiz was set by the Earl of Essex, the whole combined force, military and naval, hastened to the place where lay the largest and the most immediate share of profit.

Another explanation of the failure to make a thoroughly successful commercial speculation of the capture of Cadiz, is to be found in the rivalry between the chiefs. To this there was a chivalrous side. The eagerness with which Howard and Essex, Raleigh and Lord Thomas Howard, strove to outstrip one another for the foremost place in driving back the King of Spain's galleons, and storming his city, makes a very gallant story. They behaved much after the manner to be expected of spirited sixth-form boys. In that there was nothing dangerous to the interests of the service. But this emulation had another side, which is only to be accurately described by the less honourable name of rivalry. Essex and Raleigh were both courtiers who were endeavouring to excel one another in the favour of the queen by outdoing one another in the flatteries Elizabeth loved. They had come to open hostility already, and having been reconciled, they of course hated one another mortally. At Cadiz the evil consequences of their hostility were hardly apparent. But there was enough of it to prevent the campaign of 1596 from being as fully successful as it might have been. There was in the greater Elizabethan enterprises unity of sentiment and a vigour of energy which produced success in the main, but there was hardly what in the full sense of the word is called discipline. In addition to the rivalry between the leaders, there was a rivalry between the different types of men. The sailor and the sailor officer were opposed to the soldier. The latter grew impatient when the former endeavoured to overbear him by appeals to seamanship, and the conditions of war at sea which the military man only vaguely understood, while the sailor was apt to think himself sacrificed to the soldier.

Each of these forms of rivalry had a share in producing the failure of the next considerable naval effort of Elizabeth's reign. In 1597 Philip was still threatening England with attack, this time from the Basque Ports. After the loss of so much money in the previous year, Elizabeth was by no means disposed to renew the voyage to Cadiz. Indeed it is doubtful whether she could have repeated that attack without straining her popularity to a dangerous extent. Not she only, but London and the smaller ports, had been put to heavy expenses for small profit. If the queen had attempted to press ships from London and the out-ports, there would certainly have been a considerable outcry, and it was never her policy to give her subjects any excuse for being discontented, when it was in her power to avoid it. She therefore fitted out a moderate squadron of fifteen ships. It was put under the command of the Earl of Essex, and despatched to sea, with orders to look into the King of Spain's harbours. It was driven back by bad weather, but discovered enough to show that Philip's threats were not serious. Although the year was far advanced, it was decided to make another attempt to get possession of the Spanish plate-ships by one of the usual voyages to the "Isles." The greater part of the soldiers, recruited earlier in the year, were disbanded. A thousand seasoned men belonging to the old Low Country regiments were retained, and the squadron sailed a second time. It touched the Spanish coast near Ferrol, in the hope of drawing out the King of Spain's ships to action. But they did not stir. Essex then continued his voyage to the Azores, but the whole campaign was a failure. The ships separated; they either did not sight the Spaniards at all, or if they did, were unable to catch them. Ill luck was as usual pleaded as an excuse, but the true explanation of the failure of the expedition is to be sought elsewhere. Sir Walter Raleigh accompanied the expedition. He had taken to adventure at sea ever since he had deeply offended the queen's vanity, which expected all her courtiers to fall in love with herself alone, and had more reasonably offended her dignity by seducing her maid of honour, Miss Throgmorton. But he did not renounce the hope of regaining her favour, and was bitterly angered at finding himself supplanted in the queen's good graces by the Earl of Essex. Essex, for his part, had no love for Raleigh, and had already accused him of spoiling the full success of the Cadiz voyage for his own ends. Consciously or unconsciously, the two men were engaged in counteracting one another throughout the whole cruise. In such circumstances nothing effectual was likely to be done. The squadron finally returned without prizes. During its absence, a Spanish squadron had sailed against England, but had been driven back by storms from the neighbourhood of the Scilly Isles.

After 1597 the war began to die down. In 1598 the Royal Navy was idle, and in 1599 it did little beyond show how rapidly a squadron could be fitted for sea by the Navy Office when the queen called upon it to exert itself. A squadron of twenty vessels was "rigged, victualled, and furnished to sea in twelve days." Sir William Monson records that the feat excited the surprise and admiration of foreigners. In 1600, again, nothing was done. Spain and England were, in fact, both becoming exhausted. War had put a stop to what was then our most lucrative branch of commerce, and it had been found by experience that privateering did not compensate for the want of peaceful industry. Negotiations for peace were begun, and continued throughout the years 1599 and 1600. In the latter year three ships were sent to the Isles under the command of Sir Richard Levison, but the King of Spain took care to provide the flota with a powerful escort, and Sir Richard returned home without so much as a single prize. The negotiations for peace ended for the time in failure, but the naval war did not revive with any energy. In 1601 a Spanish squadron landed three thousand five hundred soldiers in Ireland for the purpose of co-operating with the Earl of Tyrone, who was then in full rebellion against Queen Elizabeth. This invasion of her dominions roused the queen to fresh exertions. She despatched a squadron under the command of Sir Richard Levison to the coast of Ireland, to prevent the Spaniards from reinforcing the detachment they had already landed. He had with him only five ships, but they proved sufficient for the work. The Spanish fleet had returned home after disembarking Don Juan del Aguila with his three thousand five hundred men, but a squadron which had followed with a reinforcement of seven hundred men was attacked in Kinsale harbour with success; and although the failure of the Spanish invasion was mainly due to the want of co-operation on the part of Tyrone, and the energy of the Lord Deputy Mountjoy, the navy rendered material assistance by cutting the communications with Spain.

The exhaustion of both parties now began to be shown by the small scale of the armaments on either side. The three thousand five hundred soldiers of Don Juan del Aguila, and the fleet that carried them to Ireland, were a great fall from the standard of the Spanish expeditions of earlier years. The squadron Queen Elizabeth sent in revenge to the coast of Spain was trifling. It consisted only of nine vessels under the command of Sir Richard Levison as admiral, with Sir William Monson as his second in command. Sir William in his Naval Tracts, which are the best authority for the history of the navy in Elizabeth's reign, has given a very prominent place to the cruise of this year, and in particular to his own very remarkable display of courage, energy, and sagacity. Sir William was no doubt an excellent officer, and the capture or destruction of the Portuguese carracks in the roadstead of Zizembre was a creditable bit of service, but it is hardly entitled to be told at length in a general history of the navy. In the following year the same two officers commanded the squadron in the Narrow Seas, but the war was over. Queen Elizabeth herself died in this year, and was succeeded by the peace-loving James I. Philip II. had been dead for four years, and his successor was a feeble prince, under whom the power of Spain went rapidly to decay. In France, Henry IV. had established his right to the throne at the point of the sword. Everywhere, except in Holland, which would not make peace unless its independence was secured, and except in the minds of the men of the stamp of Sir Walter Raleigh, to whom war was a source of income, there was a longing for the end of hostilities. The great Elizabethan epoch was over, and when England was next to be engaged in serious warfare at sea, it was with a very different enemy, and in quite another cause.

In telling the naval history of the great queen's reign from the Armada year forward, I have thought it better to leave aside the action of the adventurers except where they are found combined with those of the Royal Navy. But from 1588 to the end of the century these champions of our power on the sea were numerous, and in some cases brilliantly successful. There were, indeed, far more of them than are recorded. In the general suspension of trade, privateering voyages became a very important resource of merchants and seafaring men. Commerce with Spain did not indeed altogether come to an end. Although we did not, like the Dutch, keep up an open trade with the enemy, English merchant ships were not infrequently to be found in Spanish ports both in Europe and in the islands of the Atlantic. The West Indian harbours were indeed jealously closed to foreigners. But English merchant ships which adopted the simple precaution of flying the Scotch flag seem to have found little difficulty in trading with the Spaniards. Yet this resource had its dangers, and the temptations to seek a profit by pillaging the Spaniard were very great. Thus there were always swarms of now forgotten English privateers at sea. Sir William Monson assures us that the great majority of these adventures proved disastrous, or at least barren, and we can well believe it. Small privateers, measuring often no more than forty or fifty tons, were incapable of attacking not only the large and well-protected Spanish flotas, but even of dealing with a single fairly-armed galleon. They had not only their want of material strength against them, but also their want of discipline, and the fact that they were frequently fitted out by owners who were too poor to equip them properly. Their crews were largely composed of men who fled to them to escape the stricter discipline, and more limited opportunities of plunder afforded by the queen's ships. Such vessels, so equipped and so manned, would, in the ordinary course, come frequently to grief, and it is not likely that Sir William Monson was exaggerating when he said that a large proportion of them either perished unheard of at sea, or returned without so much as seeing a Spaniard.

Among these obscure men there were, however, a few whose achievements are memorable. Of these, by far the most brilliant was George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland. He has not in modern times had that measure of reputation which is his due. In truth, no man more fully illustrated what was most brilliant in the adventures of the Elizabethan epoch. Of some of the others—Drake, Hawkins, or Raleigh, for instance—we may doubt whether the hope of gain was not their main inducement. But the earl was a great noble, who did not indeed deny that he hoped to take prizes from the Spaniards, and make his profit by them, but who certainly was mainly influenced by a chivalrous love of adventure, and the feeling that it became a man of his rank to set an example. Certainly, his ten voyages undertaken between 1586 and 1597 will compare with the deeds of any of the seamen of his time. It is true that he did not sail in all the expeditions fitted out at his expense, but he did in many of them. Three are particularly interesting. In 1592 the earl's ships were at the taking of the great carrack Madre de Dios, which fell into the hands of a squadron of English privateers belonging, some to Cumberland, some to the Hawkins family, and some to Sir Walter Raleigh. It was a misfortune of the adventurers that one of the queen's ships was present at the capture. It was a very small vessel, and had very little share in the merits of the enterprise. In fact, but for the strenuous exertions of the privateers, she would have been carried off by the carrack. Her captain, Sir Robert Cross, ran the big Portuguese on board, who thereupon "lashed his ship fast by the shrouds and sailed away with her by her side." Hereupon Captain Norton, Cumberland's commander, boarded the carrack to save the queen's ship, and, being well supported by the others, carried her after a prolonged struggle. The Madre de Dios was brought to England, and her capture proved a fruitful event. She had come from the Portuguese possessions in the East Indies, and carried a cargo of "spices, drugs, silks, calicoes, quilts, carpets, and colours." The sight of it is said to have stimulated strongly the desire of the merchants of London to share in the trade of the East, and to have had a direct influence in the formation of the East India Company. The earl's profit was not in proportion to his hopes; for the queen, taking advantage of the fact that one of the least of her ships had had the smallest possible share in the capture, contrived, by a very characteristic mixture of force and fraud, to secure the lion's share for herself. She indeed was robbed by her own agents, but she forced Cumberland to put up with £36,000 as a free gift from her, in place of the greater sum he had expected to receive. The eighth voyage, which took place in 1594, was marked by two actions of extraordinary ferocity with Portuguese carracks. One, the Cinco Chagas, was burnt in action, after a scene of great horror. Another beat off the attack of the privateers. But the most memorable of the earl's enterprises, and indeed the most brilliant achievement of any subject in the queen's reign, was the earl's voyage to the West Indies in 1597, the year in which Essex and Raleigh were wrangling and failing at the Azores. His experience in 1592 had shown Cumberland the disadvantage of sailing with the queen's ships. Elizabeth was known to be very tender of her vessels, so that whoever sailed with them had to be in continual anxiety lest they should come to grief, while the queen was most apt to take advantage of their presence to deprive her partners of a fair share of the booty. The unsuccessful attack on the carracks in 1594 had also shown Cumberland the need for large vessels of considerable strength. He therefore built one for himself at Deptford. She was of 800 tons, at that time the burden of a ship of the first rank, and was named by the queen, who christened her at the launching the Scourge of Malice. In 1597 the earl raised a force of eighteen sail, and took the command in person. He sailed on the 6th of March, intending, if possible, to capture the Portuguese East India ships on their way out, but, failing that, to proceed to the West Indies, and there capture some island or town "that would yield him wealth and riches, being the chief end of his undertaking." The first part of his plan failed. After cruising for a time on the coast of Portugal to very little purpose, he sailed to the Canaries. Here, also, no booty was to be found, and the earl then told his men that he intended to go on to the West Indies, hoping to make profit, "by first the sacking of Margarita, which they knew was rich, then Puerto Rico, after that, San Domingo, then in July the outward-bound fleet would be in the Acoa, where we could not miss them, and if these gave us not content, in the end of July or August we should meet the fleet at Cape St. Antonio."

The earl did not seriously intend to attempt the execution of all parts of this extensive plan. In the fragment of a history of the voyage written by himself he confesses very candidly that he spoke "more to carry the men with good liking thither, than for any thought he had of them himself." But at that time it was never necessary to spend much pains in persuading Englishmen to sail to the West Indies. Cumberland's crews entered with "greedy desire and hopeful expectation" into his schemes. He therefore stretched over from Lanzarote, one of the Canaries, to Dominica in the Leeward Isles, where he cast anchor on the 23rd of May. A week was spent in recruiting the health of his men. The English traded with the Caribs, and bathed in the hot springs. They found the Caribs friendly, and the tropical luxuriance of the vegetation filled at least the more educated of them with delight. Cumberland would have wished to make use of the time for the purpose of drilling his men, who were still very raw. But the hillsides of Dominica are so steep, and the tropical forests were then so dense, that no convenient drill ground could be discovered. After a week's rest they went on, refreshed by food and hot baths, and reached the Virgin Islands in the course of three days of sailing to the north-west. Here at last Cumberland was able to set about turning the men he had collected into something approaching soldiers. A large proportion of them had no doubt served before, but as yet there were many who had no practice, and the whole body was still undivided into companies. What little could be done in the course of a few days was done, and the earl took occasion to make his men a speech. The burden of it was that the play was over, and the work going to begin. Hitherto he had borne with the many "gross faults committed among you, suffering every man to do what he would, and urging no man further than he listed." For this leniency the earl had several reasons, but now all were to understand that discipline must be maintained, and that no man should be allowed to infringe it. Having delivered this harangue "standing under a great cliff of a rock, his prospect to the seaward, stepped upon one of the greater stones, which, added to his natural stature, gave him a pretty height above the other company," Cumberland sent his men back to their ships, and prepared to carry out his attack on Puerto Rico. His social rank and his power to pay wages out of his ample revenue combined to give him a "pretty height above the other company," and he was able to introduce a degree of good order among his followers, which few plebeian adventurers could have attained. Therefore his capture of San Juan de Puerto Rico was a fine orderly operation of war, conducted with no less humanity than gallantry.

The island of Puerto Rico lies directly to the west of the Virgin Islands. The town of San Juan is on the northern side, about thirty miles to the west of the headland of San Juan, which is the easterly limit of the land. The coast runs almost due east and west. The town stands upon a little island of some two and a half miles long by a quarter wide, which itself lies parallel to the coast. At the eastern extremity of this little island it is connected with the mainland of Puerto Rico by a spit on which a bridge has now been built. At the south-east corner, the space between the lesser and the greater island is very trifling, and at this point there is a ferry. The town of San Juan de Puerto Rico lies at the western end of the little island, some slight distance away from the spit and the ferry. The small island is very rocky, particularly towards the sea front. The place is naturally strong, and only three years before had beaten off an attack by Drake. But at that time it was occupied by a strong detachment of soldiers sent to protect the treasure. At the time of the Earl of Cumberland's attack, it was left to its own resources, which, however, were not contemptible.

Standing over from the Virgin Islands, the earl sailed past the precipitous northern coast of Puerto Rico, till he came to the place where the hills turn inland, and the coast begins to afford landing-places. Here he sent forward two pinnaces under the command of one Captain Knotsford, an old seaman trained in Hawkins's service, with orders to choose a landing-place. Knotsford, being apparently in fear lest he should be carried to leeward of San Juan, lay-to too soon, and waited for the earl, who joined him by night. The choice of a landing-place was thus thrown upon Cumberland himself. He pitched on one, which seamen who had been there with Sir Francis Drake declared to be unmanageable, because the surf was at all times beating on the beach. They had probably judged too hastily from a single experience. The earl found the sea calm, and landed his men without the least difficulty. They were in number "not so few as a thousand." A day's march "through most unpassable rocks and cliffs" brought them to within sight of the island of San Juan at the east end. Their march had been observed by a handful of Spanish horsemen, who did not offer any effectual resistance, and who disappeared into the forest as the English approached the end of St. Juan.

When they saw the place they had come to attack in front of them, the earl and his companions learned for the first time that they could not get across without boats, and, as the Spaniards had a fort at that point, there would have been great danger in attempting the use of that method. It seemed then, as the earl's chaplain puts it, that "we were at a flat bay; even at our wits' end." Cumberland, however, was not so soon at the end of his wits as the chaplain. He argued very justly that the Spanish horsemen whom they had just seen ride off into the woods must have some means of getting into the island, and he fairly concluded that where the Spaniards could cross, so could the English. The difficulty was to find the passage. On their march, Cumberland's soldiers had captured a negro, by whom they had been guided so far. The man spoke little Spanish, or, as we can well believe, English either, and was moreover in extreme terror between the probability that the English would kill him if he refused to guide them, and the prospect that the Spaniards would hang him for acting as guide. At last he was made to understand that the English were in search of some ford at which they could walk into the island. He led them to a point where there was a causeway, probably that where the bridge now stands. It was now late, and the whole force was very tired, so Cumberland gave his men a few hours' rest before making an attack. They all slept in their armour on the bare ground, the earl among them with his target for a pillow. Two hours before daybreak they were called quietly under arms, and prepared to rush the causeway. The earl would have led himself, but was persuaded to leave the command of the van to his lieutenant, Sir John Berkeley. The attempted surprise was a failure, though well planned and gallantly executed. The Spaniards had a stockade at the end of the causeway, and, being on the look-out, they opened a hot fire at the English as they came on. Cumberland, though he had left the leading of the storm to Berkeley, would not keep out of the fight, and his zeal led him into danger in a fashion which, to us, is not without a certain absurdity. As he was cheering his men on along the causeway in the dark, his shield-bearer stumbled and fell against him. Cumberland was thrown off his feet and pushed into the water, falling on his back, so that, being encumbered by the weight of his armour, he could not get up, and would infallibly have been drowned if two of his followers had not fished him out after several unsuccessful dives. When rescued, it was found that he had swallowed so much salt water as to be very sick. He spent the rest of the action sitting in complete prostration by the side of the causeway. When the first signs of daylight were visible, the English were called off, and retired with the loss of some fifty men.

It was obvious that there was no getting into the island by that entry, and therefore the earl went back to the point at which he had first touched St. Juan; and, bringing round one of his ships, battered down the fort at the landing. His vessel was stranded and became a wreck, but an entry was made into the island. A march of a mile through wood and rocky ground brought the invaders to the town, which is described, probably with great exaggeration, as being of the same circuit as Oxford. It had been deserted by all except the women, children, and old men. The men capable of bearing arms had shut themselves up in the fort called the Morra, which it was necessary to reduce by a regular siege. As very frequently happened in the ventures of that time, there was more honour than material profit made at San Juan de Puerto Rico; but in this case the leader aimed chiefly at honour, or at least something altogether beyond the mere ransom. It was Cumberland's intention to retain possession of San Juan de Puerto Rico for the Crown of England, and he actually remained there far longer than was wise, if he had considered only his immediate interests. His intention to antedate the establishment of the English in the West Indies by more than half a century was altogether premature. His force, already weakened by sickness and inaction, was not strong enough for the undertaking. After losing nearly four hundred men by fevers, the earl took to his ships and returned to England.

I have told the history of the Earl of Cumberland's capture of San Juan de Puerto Rico at what may appear undue length if it is judged by the intrinsic importance of the feat; but it stands here as the representative of a score of others which could not be told without swelling this book to irrational proportions. The naval war of Elizabeth's reign was, above all, a war of adventurers. Cumberland was only the richest, the best born, and, it is not unjust to add, the most high-minded, of a large class which included Cavendish, Grenville, Preston, Sommers, Dudley, Shirley, Lancaster, and a score of others whose names meet us here and there as commanding ships in fights and captures, but who came out of and returned to obscurity. The regular naval war did not differ materially from the enterprises of these sea-rovers. The capture of Cadiz was only the taking of San Juan de Puerto Rico on a great scale, and the cruises to the Isles were very much like the earl's cruises to the Canaries. It is this adventurous quality, the touch of romance and knight-errantry, which gives its peculiar charm to the Elizabethan time. There is a youthfulness about the epoch which is lost by the next generation. England was "mewing her mighty youth," springing from a small power to a great, and from a little trading nation to one whose sails were on every sea. When Elizabeth ascended the throne, the English flag had only once or twice gone farther than to Archangel in the north and Scanderoon in the Levant. Before her death, ships bearing her flag and manned by her subjects had "prowled with hostile keel" in all the seas of the world; and her merchants were preparing to open a permanent trade with the East Indies, while English colonists had established a footing on the continent of North America. In this great work the Royal Navy was not the only instrument. It is seldom that we find it acting alone, and never when a great display of power was required. Yet the Royal Navy was the steel of the lance, the model of discipline and warlike efficiency. The city of London, or so great a subject as the Earl of Cumberland, might show a few ships not inferior to the queen's, but that was quite the exception. The Royal Navy was already as distinctly marked from the other shipping of the country as it was in later generations.

CHAPTER IV
JAMES I. AND CHARLES I.

Authorities.—Sir W. Monson's Naval Tracts continue to be the leading authority for the early years of King James. The narratives which illustrate the adventures of our seamen with the Algerine pirates and the expeditions of 1620 have been collected by Lediard in his Naval History. The report of the Commission of 1618 is given in substance in Charnock's Naval Architecture. The original is in the Record Office. The Navy Record Society has printed Holland's and Ilyonsbie's Discourses on the Navy, edited by Mr. Tanner. For the later years included in this chapter and for the whole time of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, the collection of documents miscalled the Life of Sir W. Penn, by Granville Penn, is of great value.

In the summer of 1604 Sir William Monson was appointed to command the squadron in the Narrow Seas. In the course of his duty he had occasion to speak with the officer commanding the Dutch ships then engaged in the blockade of Dunkirk. "At my coming thither," he writes, "I went on board the Admiral of Holland, who had been my old and familiar acquaintance by reason of many actions and services we had been in together. I told him that after twenty years spent in the wars, I was now become a watchman with a bill in my hand to see peace kept and no disorder committed in the Narrow Seas." The image which Monson applied to himself might, with equal justice, have been used of the Government he served. After a long and stormy reign, divided into nearly equal periods of conflict without open war and then of undisguised hostilities, England had settled down under a sovereign whose dearest wish it was to see peace kept and no disorders committed in the Narrow Seas or elsewhere. It could hardly be said that King James was a watchman with a bill in his hands. This king would, in fact, have been a more effectual guardian of the peace, if he had taken better care to have his weapon ready, and shown a greater faculty for using it. Yet he chose the part of the peacemaker, and his decision inevitably had its effect on the navy.

With the exception of one deplorably ill-managed expedition against the pirates of Algiers in 1620, the king's reign was barren of warlike enterprises at sea; but it is not, on that account, without great interest in naval history. In the first place, it is during the reign of King James that we first get a good opportunity of seeing the navy engaged in its regular work of keeper of the peace, or protector as the Church Service words it, of all those who go upon the sea upon their lawful occasions. Then it was a time of great advance in shipbuilding and of great experiments in naval administration.

The same Sir William Monson, whose name has appeared so often already, has left an account of his services as admiral in the Narrow Seas, written for his own justification at a time when he was accused by the Dutch of showing partiality in the discharge of his office. The exact merits of this accusation are hardly to be settled now, nor does it very much matter whether Monson leant too much to one side or the other, in the chronic disputes between Dutchmen and Spaniards which were then disturbing the Channel. It would have been beyond the power of any officer to convince both parties that he was fair, and we have his word for it that he cordially disliked the Dutch. Even if he had felt more kindly towards them, it would have been difficult for him not to come into collision with their officers. There were pretensions on both sides which it was clearly impossible to reconcile. The King of England not only claimed the absolute sovereignty of the Four Seas, but made claims to a general superiority on the ocean which were irksome to the rising naval power of Holland. The stolid good sense of the Dutch, who always thought more of substance than of form, and the sagacity which showed them the folly of quarrelling with England while their conflict with Spain was not yet ended, could alone have availed to keep them from resenting pretensions which almost seemed to have been designed to provoke our neighbours into war. The officers of the King of England not only claimed the right to exact the salute within the Four Seas, but they absolutely insisted that no flag was to be shown in the presence of their own, even far beyond the limits of the jurisdiction claimed for England. Sir William Monson recalls with pride how he once rebuked the insolence of a Dutch officer who, after making the salute, had rehoisted his own flag in Irish waters, by telling him that it was only out of the condescending politeness of Lord Howard that the Dutch admiral had been allowed to display his colours in the expedition to Cadiz.

The Dutch, though they bore the lordly arrogance of England tamely enough, when all that was at stake was the matter of the salute, were pertinacious in insisting on their own way on points of material advantage. Thus, for instance, they insisted upon prohibiting all trade by English vessels to the ports of Flanders held by the Spaniards, though they themselves never suspended their lucrative commerce with Spain at any period during the war. In pursuit of their belligerent rights, they did not hesitate to attack Spanish vessels, or those belonging to the Spanish Netherlands, even in English waters. Sir William Monson recounts the difficulty he found in preventing two Dutch cruisers from attacking a vessel belonging to Dunkirk, in the very roadstead of Sandwich. His task was made harder by the fact that the men of the English seaports sympathised openly with the Dutch. The hostility to Spain had grown strong during the great queen's reign, and had not yet given place to the hatred of the Hollander. The great change produced by the accession of the House of Stuart is forcibly illustrated by the fact that one of Monson's first duties, during the reign of King James, was to contrive the smuggling over from Dover to Flanders of some thousands of Spanish soldiers, who were driven to take refuge in our ports. They had come up Channel with eight war galleons, the largest force which by the terms of the new treaty was allowed free entry to an English harbour. It seems difficult to believe that the Spaniards would have risked so small a squadron in the Channel in face of the naval power of Holland, unless they had assurances that it would not only be protected, but helped to make its way into Flemish ports. Sir William Monson has not told by what artful management he contrived to pass the Spaniards, who had taken refuge at Dover, across the Channel. The story might have cost him some ill-will, and he thought it better to keep silent. But if the Dutch learned, as they not improbably did, that he had been giving so much zealous assistance to an enemy who was endeavouring to conquer their country, it is not wonderful that they doubted his impartiality. Not the least important part of his duty consisted in escorting "such princes, ambassadors, and others, as were entitled to the honour." Of these he convoyed no less than thirty-two in eleven years, with all their servants and followers, who, on some occasions, reached the figure of three hundred, all of whom Sir William had to feed. One of these guests, the Count of Villa Mediana, was confined for five days by foul weather in Monson's ship, having with him a train of two hundred persons, who consumed, in all, ten meals each. The honour of discharging such a dignified function as that of protector of princes and ambassadors was embittered for Monson, and indeed for naval officers, as late as Nelson's time, and later, by the meanness of the Government, which left them to bear the expense of entertaining these guests of the State. Monson has left it on record that at the end of his service he was "as yet unsatisfied" for no less a sum than fifteen hundred pounds spent in this way. Five or six thousand pounds would probably be the modern equivalent. But Monson, who took a pension from Spain, had ways of making the loss good. These, varied by an occasional raid on foreign fishermen engaged in poaching on our waters, represented the usual duties of the officer commanding the Channel squadron, or, to use the language of the time, the Winter and the Summer Guard, in the early seventeenth century.

Sir William Monson had a piece of work to do at the very end of his active service of a much more lively character than any of these, and one too characteristic of the time, and the conditions of sea life, to be passed over.

In 1614 the king's Scotch subjects petitioned him for help against the pirates who were infesting the coasts. The call was pressing, and was favourably received by the king. Sir William Monson and Sir Francis Howard were despatched at once with four ships in such haste that the "victuals and other things" they needed were to be sent after them. The little squadron left Margate on the 14th of May, and reached Leith on the 23rd of the same month. Here Monson applied to the "Lords of that Realme," for information concerning the pirates, desiring "to be furnished with able pilots, for His Majesty's ships were of greater burden and value than usually had been employed on these coasts, and besides, that the navigation to the northward of that place (Leith) was not frequented by our nation, and therefore unknown to us." Able pilots were duly supplied, and information was forthcoming. From the Frith of Forth Monson sailed to the north, to Sinclair Castle, the house of the Earl of Caithness, by whom he was informed that the number and powers of the pirates had been much exaggerated in the petition to His Majesty. Instead of twenty, there were but two, and they men of "base condition." From the expression it appears likely that Monson would have not been much surprised to learn that his pirates were gentlemen of good birth, and indeed there would have been nothing wonderful in it at a time when a member of the distinguished Buckinghamshire family of Verney was a noted leader among the Algerines. Monson's pirates were very small deer. One of them hardly deserved the name, being only a trader who had been terrified into joining his captors. This man had seized the first chance to escape, and had just rendered up himself and one of the two vessels to the Earl of Caithness. The other pirate turned out to be one Clarke, who had formerly been a boatswain's mate with Monson in the Channel. From Caithness the English officer sailed to the Orkneys in pursuit of Clarke. Here "he found more civil, kind, and friendly usage than could be expected from such kind of creatures in show." Leaving Sir Francis Howard to guard the coast, he sailed in pursuit of the runaway Clarke to Shetland. From Shetland he went on to the Hebrides, where he intended that his consort should join him. "The brutishness and uncivility of those people of the Hebrides exceeds the savages of America," is the rude description given of the islanders by Sir William Monson. Clarke was not to be found in the Hebrides, but Monson obtained information of a certain gentleman, Cormat by name, living in Ireland near Broadhaven, who was known as a favourer and protector of pirates. To Broadhaven, then, Monson sailed, meeting on the way with such weather as is "fit only for a poet to describe." In the great storm and ground seas the squadron was scattered. Of the four ships Monson had with him, one went down, and the three others were separated, "and saw one another no more till they met in England." On the 28th June Monson reached Broadhaven, a place which would have been unknown to him, if he had not had with him a pirate whom he had taken out of the hands of the Earl of Caithness. This man guided him into the haven, and then was of material assistance in carrying out a stratagem which Monson had devised for the more effectual discovery and punishment of Cormat (whose real name was probably Cormac) and his lawless associates.

So fine was the distinction between the lawless and the law-abiding on the seas at that time, that Monson had no difficulty in picking out from his crew a number of men who had formerly been pirates. "These men he sent in his boat to the gentlemen of that place, and took upon him to be a pirate and the name of Captain Manwaring." The ex-pirate, whom Monson trusted, acted so as to prove the truth of the adage touching the wisdom of employing a thief to catch a thief. He entered into the plot with almost scandalous zest. Mr. Cormac had three daughters, all of whom, it appears, had pirate sweethearts. "These silly women" were cruelly deluded with stories to the effect that Captain Manwaring was very rich with plunder, and very generous, also that he was acquainted with all their sweethearts. Misled by this fiction, Mr. Cormac and his belongings were at once consumed with a desire to make the acquaintance of Captain Manwaring. He put cattle at a convenient place on the coast with their ears slit, in order that the supposed pirates might take them in a "warlike manner, that it might appear their cattle were taken by violence." Next day Monson sent for the cattle, sending fifty armed men under Captain Chester in a "disorderly manner like pirates." Captain Chester was civilly received by the Misses Cormac, "whose desire was to hear of their sweethearts, but all in general coveted to see Captain Manwaring, who they confidently believed would enrich them all." In the course of the day Mr. Cormac sent two "ambassadors," who "delivered a friendly (though in a rude manner like their country) message of their love." It was an invitation to a dinner and dance.

Monson now began to put his stratagem in force. He laid the two messengers by the heels in the hold of his ship, after cruelly asking them whether they thought she looked like a pirate. Then he landed himself with more men in a disorderly manner. He was received on the beach by a large crowd with an effusive welcome. One of the crowd was an English trader, another was a merchant from Galway. Both of these made a trade of buying plunder from pirates. A third noted character in the hospitable mob was Cormac's schoolmaster; for an Irish gentleman, however lax he might be in the matter of piracy, was never indifferent to learning. Surrounded by cheers and enthusiasm, the imaginary Captain Manwaring made triumphant progress to Mr. Cormac's house. A royal entertainment had been prepared. The harper, a recognised member of every Irish household, played to welcome him, and the Misses Cormac proposed a dance. Monson would not himself dance, but he allowed his followers to amuse themselves. In the meantime he talked with Cormac and his daughters, "laughing and jeering at their two messengers aboard who they did not suspect were detained prisoners, but drinking and frolicking in the ship, as the use was upon the arrival of pirates." Then he had some talk with the trader, of whom he draws a most engaging picture. Believing that he had in truth to deal with a pirate, the man was completely candid. He explained how he treated the sheriffs, showing "a pass procured upon false pretences from the Sheriff of that county, authorising him to travel from place to place to make inquisition of his goods, which he falsely pretended he was robbed of at sea; he laughed at the cheat he had put upon the Sheriff in getting his pass, and urged the advantage that might be made of it in sending to and fro in the country without suspicion.... His antic behaviour was enough to put the melancholist man in good humour, sometimes he played the part of a Commanding Sheriff; then he acted his own with many witty passages as to how he deceived the Sheriff." Sir William Monson pumped this clever fellow, of whom he was making a dupe, and in particular got a letter from him to certain mariners in the county who were the regular associates of pirates.

So soon as he had this useful document in his pocket, Sir William sprang his mine on this innocent Irish family. He told them who he was, and that they were all prisoners. "Here was seen the mutability of the world; their mirth was turned into mourning and their dancing into lamenting, each bewailing and repenting as is the custom of offenders." The inexorable Sir William returned on board, leaving them all under guard, and his carpenter busy in setting up the gallows, but the end was not tragic for the family of Cormac and their guests. After giving them "four-and-twenty hours' fright" in irons, and receiving a solemn promise that they would never connive at pirates again, Monson pardoned them. He was perhaps the more readily induced to be merciful by the fact that in the meantime another vessel had turned up outside Broadhaven, and had at once stood off to sea on finding the anchorage occupied. Rightly judging that the new-comer was a pirate, Monson compelled Cormac to give help in bringing him to justice. The old rogue was perfectly prepared to save his own neck, and wrote letters which induced the new-comer to remain on the coast and send a large part of his crew ashore for cattle. Monson, who watched his compulsory allies with sleepless vigilance, seized the opportunity to board the pirate while a large part of his crew were on shore. Hauling his boats over a strip of land between Broadhaven and the place where the pirates were, he dropped during the night on the deceived malefactors and captured them without difficulty. His new prisoners were treated with less tenderness than the Cormacs. "Examining the behaviour of all the pirates, of many he picked out the worst, who had tasted twice before of His Majesty's gracious pardon." This time they tasted of His Majesty's justice, being duly hanged as a terror to evil-doers. If Monson is to be believed, this severe example cleared the Irish coast of pirates, but he undoubtedly overrated the efficacy of the remedy. Years afterwards, when Strafford came to Ireland as Lord Deputy, the coast was still infested with pirates, and very stringent measures had been taken to re-establish security for trade.

This story, though it may seem somewhat out of place when told at such length in a history of the Royal Navy, has appeared to me to be worth repeating. One concrete example will do more than any number of general statements to show what the condition of a country was. All through the reign of Elizabeth and the first two Stuarts piracy was common on the coast of Great Britain and Ireland. Sir William Monson's experiences show why it could flourish. The number of ships kept in regular commission by the king was small, and much of their time was taken up in carrying princes and ambassadors between England and the Continent. In outlying districts there were always persons of the stamp of Mr. Cormac and his "hackney daughters," who were prepared to give the pirates a friendly welcome in consideration of a share of the booty. Traders were ready to buy their stolen goods. And it is even obvious, from Monson's casual mention of members of his crew who had been pirates, that nobody thought very much the worse of a man for having followed the trade once in a way. The sea was still very lawless, and the Royal Navy had hardly yet taken its police duties firmly in hand.

The improvement in shipbuilding which took place in this reign was mainly the work of the most able member of a remarkable family of shipwrights, sea-captains, and navy officials who are found engaged in and about the royal dockyards from the reign of Edward VI. to close on the end of the reign of Charles II. Phineas Pett, who was born in 1570 and died in 1647, was the son of Peter Pett, master shipwright at Deptford in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He received a better education than had probably been given to any previous member of his family. After preliminary schooling at Rochester and Greenwich, he entered the famous Puritan college, the "House of Pure Emanuel," at Cambridge in 1586. The death of his father, in 1589, left him destitute, and Phineas was for some years compelled to pick up a precarious livelihood in the dockyards or in sea voyages. In 1597 he entered the service of Lord Howard, which no doubt means his service as Lord High Admiral, but not in any domestic capacity. His foot being now well down, Pett kept his place, and very considerably bettered it before long. Having been employed by Howard to build a miniature ship for Henry, eldest son of James I., he attracted the favourable notice of the prince, who in his short life certainly proved that he possessed a remarkable eye for men of brains and character. Pett's favour drew upon him a great deal of jealousy in the dockyard, and he was at last openly accused by his rivals of incompetence. But he stood his ground stoutly, and finally justified himself in an inquiry held before the king at Woolwich. James, like all the house of Stuart, had a taste for clever scientific men. He was mainly a scholar and a theologian, as his son Charles I. was a judge of pictures and of literature, and as his grandson Charles II. had a taste for natural science and chemical experiments. But he could understand the merits of such a question as was debated before him at Woolwich, and his inclination would be to support an educated man against the merely practical men who were accusing him of bungling because he departed from their familiar old rules of thumb. The whole house of Stuart, indeed, had a liking for ships and sea affairs, which they showed even before they became kings of England. Under royal protection, Pett was able to bring about great improvements in construction by reducing the amount of timber used and relying on better proportion for strength. The great ship called the Prince Royal, designed by him, and launched in 1610, was the finest yet built for the Crown, and he surpassed her in the Sovereign of the Seas, launched in 1637, during the reign of Charles I. He established his family so firmly in the dockyards, that they overran all the offices in them by the middle of the century.

The labours of this skilful shipbuilder would have been of little avail but for the exertions of others among the king's servants who in 1618 prevailed over the interested opposition of the Lord High Admiral to the appointment of a Committee to inquire into the state of the navy. Even in the great queen's reign all had not been perfect in the dockyards. During her later years, when they had lost the vigilant supervision of Hawkins, a good deal of corruption had begun to creep in. Under the lax government of James I., and when there was no longer a permanent state of war to brace the energies of the admirals and captains, and to apply a perpetual check on the execution of work, the naval administration fell rapidly into an inefficient condition. As early as 1608 there had been talk of an inquiry. But Lord Howard of Effingham, or, to give him his later title, the Earl of Nottingham, used his influence to put a stop to the proposal. He no doubt considered that he was personally insulted when the conduct of the department under his command was called in question. Yet inquiry was certainly needed. We cannot believe that the hero who led the English fleets against the Armada, and was joint commander with Essex in the triumphant expedition to Cadiz, was himself guilty of corruption. The truth is, that he looked upon the minute examination of accounts as work beneath his dignity, and fit only for subordinate officials, whom he regarded as his servants. He managed the navy, in fact, very much as a profuse, easy-going noble would have conducted the affairs of his own house. Of course he was robbed by his servants, and, when they were accused of misconduct, he resented the interference as implying a reflection on his judgment. So fraud and peculation flourished under the protection of his honourable name.

The corruption at the Admiralty was so flagrant that another attempt to set going an inquiry was made in 1613. It went so far that a Commission was actually drafted, but Nottingham, thoroughly aroused at this second insult, consulted lawyers as to the legality of the document, and threatened a constitutional opposition. Again he succeeded in staving off inquiry. Four years later, however, a third, and this time a successful, effort was made to overhaul the Admiralty. The Howard family were in conflict with the rising favour of George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham, and the admiral suffered with the rest. In this case there can be no question that the interests of the nation were on the side of Buckingham. The Commission which took the work in hand contained some excellent men of business. Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, was one, and another was Sir John Coke, a model public servant, though a somewhat mean-spirited man, who continued in the service of the Crown far into the reign of Charles I.

The report issued by this body in September 1618 gives a sufficiently lamentable account of the condition into which the navy had fallen during the fifteen years since the death of Queen Elizabeth. It was to little use that Pett was building finer ships, when they were allowed to go to decay, through mismanagement in the dockyards, from the very day they were built. As to the scandalous defects which had been steadily increasing under the lax supervision of Nottingham, there can be no sort of question. The Commissioners, to begin with, found that no accounts had been prepared for the last four years, and they were driven to discover what the expenditure of the navy had been by the laborious process of going over all the warrants issued during that period. After what appears to have been a very fair and careful examination, they came to a decision that the money spent yearly on an average during the last four years had been £53,004, 7s. 11d. It was far more than Elizabeth had spent to maintain an efficient sea force in war-time, and yet it could not keep the navy from decay. Out of a nominal force of forty-three ships, sixteen were either non-existent or absolutely rotten. The others, though they were capable of being repaired, were in so bad a condition as to need a thorough refit, and this although the cost of the navy had been increasing rapidly. The report of the Commissioners is a model of good order and explicit convincing statement. It leaves no doubt on the mind why it was that the strength of the navy decreased as its expenses grew. The Commissioners give an account of the administration, which is now of great historical interest.

First, they draw up a list of the officers to whom the government of the navy was entrusted, showing us the whole establishment as it stood in 1618, distinguishing between the old order created by Henry VIII. and the recent additions:—

The new erections since His Majesty's reign—

A captain-general of the Narrow Seas for his fee at 20s. per diem, one clerk at 8d. and sixteen servants at 10d. per mensem—£481, 3s. 4d. Besides £663, 18s. 8d. paid to him by the Treasurer and victualler of the navy.

A vice-admiral of the Narrow Seas for his owne fee at 10s. per diem, and eight servants at 10s. per mensem, the later by Privy Seal only, £234, 12s. 8d., besides £182, 10s. paid by the Treasurer of the navy.

Another for service at the Narrow Seas at the like rate of 10s. per diem, £182, 10s. 0d., besides 10s. per diem when he serveth at sea.

A surveyor of tonnage, £18, 5s. 0d. The charge that groweth hereby is per medium, £1888, 1s. 5d.

A storekeeper at Woolwich, £54, 8s. 4d. The store not worth 40s.

Clearer of the roads, £30. Besides £182, 1s. 8d. paid by the Treasurer of the navy.

A captain and twenty soldiers in Upnor, £243, 6s.

Total, £1244, 6s. 0d.

Other new patents granted by His Majesty and paid by the Treasurer of the navy.

A keeper of the outstores at Deptford, a new office, £66, 13s. 4d.

Clerk of the check at Deptford }
Clerk of the check at Woolwich} Old offices and fees.
Clerk of the check at Chatham }

The Commissioners, after pointing out in general and in particular that the condition of His Majesty's ships was very bad, give nine "causes" why it was no better. Eight of these are chiefly of the nature of illustrations of the ninth and last, which in itself is a masterly summary of the causes and consequences of bad administration.

"We find the chief and inward causes of all disorder to be the multitude of officers, and poverty of wages, and the chief officers commit all the trust and business to their inferiors and clerks, whereof some have part of their maintenance from the merchants that deliver in the provisions which they are trusted to receive, and these men are also governed by the chief officers' verbal directions, which the directors will not give under their hands when it is required; and which of all is the most inconvenient, they are the warrants and vouchers for the issuing of all His Majesty's moneys and stores, who are most interested in the greatness of his expence.

"And therefore the business ever was and is still so carried, that neither due survey is taken of ought that cometh in, nor orderly warrant given for most that goeth out, nor any particular account made, nor now possible to be made, of any one main worke or service that is done."

The officials could not live on their pay, and were driven to cheat; and as this was nearly as much the case with the seniors as with the juniors, there was no supervision. Some of the cheating took the form of downright lying; thus, of the forty-three ships on the list of the navy, three were not in existence, even in a rotten condition. The Bonaventure was broken up seven years before the Commission was formed, and yet the king had continued to pay £63 a year for her keep. £100, 4s. 5d. was still charged for the Advantage, burnt five years before, and £60, 10s. 10d. for the Charles. Small pilferings were the rule, and the system upon which the men were paid almost invited fraud. Thus the boatswains, whose regular allowance was £10, 17s. 3d., when engaged as caretakers of the king's ships in harbour, were allowed to make a profit by buying what were known as "old mucks" and "brown paper stuff" at a cheap rate. These striking names were applied to cables, moorings, and cordage generally, which were supposed to be too worn out for the king's service. Of this refuse the officials were allowed to make what profit they could. The reader will perceive at once with what delightful facility this system could be worked at the king's expense. Much larger quantities of cable were used than were necessary, and so soon as any part was slightly damaged, the boatswains were allowed to take the whole as "old mucks" and "brown paper stuff." Then they resold it at a very handsome profit. If the little men behaved in this way, it was because their chiefs not only condoned, but shared their malpractices. The king was charged too dear even for the stores he did receive, and he was made to pay for articles never purchased and for work not done for him. As might have been expected, his establishments swarmed with useless servants, the hangers-on of his higher officials. A pathetic interest attaches to the names of some of the useless officials who were detected by the Commissioners. We read, for instance, of John Austin, master, aged and blind, of John Avale, boatswain, aged and blind, of Thomas Butler, gunner, aged and heretofore a man of great service, and may still be an instructor of others, and of John Causton, gunner, maimed in service. These, we may safely believe, were aged men, worn out in the wars of Queen Elizabeth, who were suffered by charity to retain offices for which they were no longer fit. The Commissioners recommend them for reasonable pensions. Though such cases as these were pardonable, yet the system was bad. The fact that one aged seaman or soldier who well deserved a pension had been suffered to retain a post long after he had become unable to perform the duties, was sure to be made an excuse for putting in incompetent persons who had never seen any service at all.

Having drawn this picture of the navy as it was, the Commissioners went on to draft a scheme by which it could again be put on a more creditable footing. They undertook to meet the ordinary and extraordinary expenses for £30,000 a year, to refit the ships which were still capable of being made serviceable, to build new ones, and to do the whole work of re-establishing the navy within five years. Their method was one adopted at all times by administrators who have had to deal with such a state of affairs as is described above. They dismissed superfluous officials and raised the salaries of those that were retained. They set themselves a definite scheme to carry out, and made a careful calculation of the sums of money required to execute it. The establishment of the navy, according to the plan of the Commissioners, was to consist of no more than thirty vessels, but then they were to be, taken together, larger by three thousand and fifty tons than the navy of Queen Elizabeth "when it was greatest and flourished most." The average size of the ships was therefore very much increased. Taking one with another, they measured a little over five hundred and seventy tons. By 1624 this scheme had been fully carried out.

The execution of the reform was accompanied, and indeed we may say was secured, by a change in the administration. It had become impossible that Nottingham should remain any longer Lord High Admiral. His retirement in 1619 was soothed by pensions, and he received the sum of £3000 from his successor as the price of his office. One of the evils of which the Commissioners had to complain was the sale of offices, but the practice continued long, especially in the case of the great men. Nottingham's successor was the showy Duke of Buckingham, one of the best abused personages in English history. It is, however, to his credit that under his administration a great deal was done in the interests of the navy. If he did not do it himself, he at least did not interfere with Sir John Coke and other hard-working subordinates. Nor was the change of Lord High Admiral all. A complete organic change was carried out. The old offices of Treasurer, Comptroller, Surveyor, and Clerk of the Acts were suppressed, and the members of the committee were entrusted with the whole administration of the navy, under the title of Commissioners.

In spite of this vigorous cleansing of the dockyards and the Navy Office, maladministration was by no means at an end with the navy. During the reign of Charles some at least of these evils reappeared. King Charles took a keen interest in his navy, and did much to increase its strength, but there were permanent conditions during all the existence of the Stuart dynasty which militated against efficiency. These kings were always aiming at more than they had the resources to execute. They were at all times on bad terms with their Parliament, and so could not raise a great revenue. Thus they were for ever short of money, and were compelled to connive at malpractices on the part of servants whom they could not pay. Dishonest men were not satisfied with robbing the king of just so much as would make good their own arrears of salary. They repaid themselves with interest, and very often by defrauding the soldiers and sailors of their food and poor wages. There was also a defect in the character of the Stuarts which Lord Dartmouth defined to Pepys very forcibly as they were talking together before dinner on their way home from Tangier. "He," Pepys writes, "besides observed something Spragg had said that our masters the King and Duke of York were good at giving good orders and encouragement to their servants in office to be strict in keeping good order, but were never found stable enough to support officers in the performance of their orders. By which no man was safe in doing them service." This was not less true of the first James and Charles than of the second, and therefore it was that in spite of cleverness, of a distinct understanding of the conditions which made for efficiency, and of the best intentions, their navy was for ever ill supplied, ill fitted, and manned by discontented men. The sailor who starved in the king's service, and saw those who robbed him in the enjoyment of the royal favour, ended by laying the blame on the king.

If all the promises made to them had been kept, neither men nor officers would have had reason to complain. The sailors' wages had risen steadily from the 5s. a month at which they stood at the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII. They rose to 6s. 8d. under King Edward, and in 1585 they were increased to 10s. Fourteen shillings were given to the crews of the ships sent against Algiers in 1620, and Charles I. fixed 15s. as the regular wage of a sailor. At a time when the purchasing power of money was greater than it is now, this was fair pay. The old system of compensating the officers by "dead pays" disappeared in the reign of Elizabeth. In the reign of Charles I. the captain received from £4, 6s. 8d. to £14 a month, according to the size of his ship; the lieutenant, who was only carried in vessels above the third rate, from £2, 16s. to £3, 10s., and the master from £2, 6s. 8d. to £4, 13s. 9d. Warrant officers were paid from £1, 3s. 4d. to £2, 4s. The allowance of provisions was ample in quantity. Seven lbs. of biscuits, four lbs. of beef, two lbs. of pork, one quart of peas, three pints of oatmeal, six oz. of butter, and twelve oz. of cheese, besides all the fresh fish which was caught, without any deduction for it, were supposed to be served out to the men every week. They were also entitled to an ample allowance of beer. But when a large force was collected for service during any length of time, it was the common rule to divide four men's food among six. At all times, too, the quality of the provisions was liable to be bad. Complaints were particularly common in regard to the beer. The badness of the stores was often largely due to the difficulty of keeping them sweet during prolonged cruises in small wooden vessels, ballasted with sand, into which all the leakage of the beer-barrels drained, and which was soaked in bilge water; but the stores were often bad to begin with.

During this reign we first hear of the division of the king's ships into classes, called rates. At a later period they were classified by armament, but in the reign of Charles I. the division was made by the number of the crews. First rates carried 500 and 400 men, second rates 300 and 250, third rates 200 and 160, fourth rates 120 and 100, fifth rates 70 and 60, and sixth rates 50 and 40.

The long peace which began with the accession of James I. had the effect of throwing back the development of the navy for some time. During the later years of Queen Elizabeth, a separate class of sea officers was beginning to be formed. Sir William Monson, for instance, was as much a naval officer as Lord Hawke. He went to sea young, he passed through all grades of the service, he was a trained seaman, and yet a gentleman who had received the education of his class. Constant war had begun to teach Englishmen that the business of commanding a fighting ship at sea required something more than a knowledge of military discipline and the habit of carrying arms. If King James had pursued the policy of constant hostility with Spain advocated by the small party whose best-known representative was Sir Walter Raleigh, it is probable that a corps of naval officers would soon have been formed by the mere necessities of the case. But when peace was signed with Spain, the necessity for maintaining a great naval force came to an end. The ships were laid up, the crews were disbanded, the officers either retired into private life, or were employed by the king in other ways. The seamen among them betook themselves to the service of the East India Company, to trade, or to colonising ventures in America. Thus, when the time came again to fit out great fleets, no progress had been made in the formation of a body of sea officers. In the reign of James I. and his son, it was not much less the rule than it had been with Henry VIII., that the captain of a king's ship was a gentleman with little or no knowledge of sea affairs, and that the seaman was confined to the inferior position of master. There were exceptions to this rule. Sir John Pennington, who was much employed by Charles as admiral in the Narrow Seas, was a seaman bred, but even he was commonly superseded by some noble whenever the king made a serious effort to fit out a great fleet.

The one important naval expedition of King James's reign was directed against the pirates of Algiers in 1620. The despatch of this force was of the nature of an innovation on the usual policy of James's Government. It had not hitherto been the custom even to try to afford English traders effective protection beyond the Narrow Seas. There was no such permanent naval force as could have done the work, even if the Government had been disposed to make the attempt. According to the establishment drafted by the Commission of 1618, the guard to be maintained at home was to consist of only four vessels, of which the largest was 120 tons. This trifling squadron was not to be expected to do more than cope with such pirates "of base condition" as the ex-boatswain's mate Clarke, whom Sir William Monson hunted in the Shetlands and the Hebrides. It was utterly unable to afford protection to English traders beyond the Narrow Seas, nor indeed did they expect to be protected. Trade to the East and the Levant was conducted by great privileged companies, who sent their ships out well armed, and maintained agents at foreign courts. As regards the East Indies, it was long before a king's ship made its appearance in the waters frequented by the Company's squadrons. But the Turkish Company, which traded to the Levant, was less strong, and was also subject to attack by more formidable enemies. The Algerine pirates were then, in even a greater degree than was the case later, a standing menace to all ships trading in the Mediterranean, and even in the more accessible parts of the Atlantic. On one occasion they carried off a great part of the population of the Canary Islands, on another they sacked Baltimore in the south of Ireland. The vessels of the Turkey Company were to a certain extent able to protect themselves, and on several occasions they beat off the attacks of the pirates. But the smaller traders fell easy victims. To the disgrace of Europe, a large proportion of the pirates were renegades; one of them was an Englishman of the name of Ward, formerly a boatswain in the navy. The seaports of the time were full of stories of Englishmen who had been carried off by these rovers, and had in the majority of cases remained in slavery, unless they were ransomed by their relations. Now and then some English sailors who had been taken would escape by turning the tables on their captors. Thus, for instance, the Jacob of Bristol, a ship of 120 tons, was recaptured by four of her men who had been left on board with the prize-crew. They took the opportunity of a storm, when they were called upon to help the Moslem pirates, who were clumsy sailors. As the prize-master was lending a hand to strike the sails, the four Englishmen deftly gave him "a toss overboard." As he tried to clamber up again by the help of a rope which was trailing alongside, he was knocked down "by the handle of a pump." The prize-crew were then overpowered in detail, and the vessel carried into San Lucar in Spain, where the captive Mohammedans were themselves promptly sold for slaves. A somewhat similar story is told of one John Rawlings, skipper of a small vessel of forty tons, named the Nicholas of Plymouth. He was taken prisoner outside the Straits of Gibraltar and carried to Algiers, where he was sold as a slave to an English renegade of the name of John Goodall. Goodall employed him in the crew of one of the various pirate craft he owned, and Rawlings had the good fortune and dexterity to organise and carry through a conspiracy among the Christian slaves, who overpowered the Mohammedan masters and carried the ship into Plymouth. These, however, were exceptional cases, and of those who fell into the hands of these pirates there were few who ever saw an end to their captivity, unless they had friends to ransom them or were prepared to become renegades.

In 1620 a fleet was at last fitted out against these enemies of the human race. King James acted at least as much under the influence of the Spaniards, to whom Algiers was a perpetual menace, as in the interest of his own subjects. Neither the Spaniard nor the English trader profited by this solitary example of King James's naval enterprise. The expedition was too futile to deserve detailed notice in the history of the English Navy, when so many and such very different events lie close ahead of us. Yet the constitution of the squadron is interesting, as showing within a moderate space how the fleets of that time were composed.

The command of the squadron was given to Sir Robert Mansel, an old officer of the Elizabethan time, who had fought against the Armada, and had seen much service. He was a cousin of Lord Howard of Effingham, had been a greedy if not corrupt official, and had taken an active share in supporting the Lord Admiral in his opposition to the Commission of 1613. The second in command, Sir Richard Hawkins, was the son of the more famous Sir John. He had in the former reign been taken prisoner by the Spaniards in the South Seas after a gallant fight. During his captivity he had been converted to Roman Catholicism. His account of his voyage to the South Seas is, next to the Naval Tracts of Sir William Monson, the best contemporary account of the sea life in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Captain John Pennington who appears among the commanders of the merchant ships, is the Sir John Pennington of later years. Although not a man of great ability or considerable achievements, he is interesting as a type. He belonged to a family of Puritan tradesmen, who came originally from Henham in Essex, but were settled in London. The seaman did not share the politics of his family, but was, in the fullest sense of the word, a king's servant, making it his boast that it was his one rule to obey his master's orders. He began life as a merchant's skipper, and sailed in the employment of Raleigh in the last voyage to Guiana. He had endeavoured to enter the service of the East India Company, without success, although (if it ought not to be because) he had the patronage of Buckingham. The same patron probably obtained for him the command of the Zouch Phenix on this voyage. From this time forward he was regularly in the employment of the Crown, and generally in command of the Narrow Seas. The qualities which made his fortune lie on the surface. He was, as has already been said, the king's servant and nothing more, ready to fight or to run away, to tell the truth or to lie, even to tell manifestly incompatible lies, upon the order of anybody whom the king told him to obey. Such a man was invaluable. The combination of perfect loyalty with a total absence of scruple is never very common. Charles appreciated Pennington's qualities to the full, and, when the Civil War was about to break out, even inclined to give him the great office of Lord High Admiral.

The expedition against the Algerine pirates left England on the 12th October 1620. In June of the following year it turned homeward, having done nothing in the interval except make one futile attempt to defraud the Dey of Algiers, by sending a sham consul, who was, in fact, a common sailor dressed up for the occasion, and another no less feeble effort to burn the pirate ships in the harbour. It spent a great part of its time at Alicante, or in the Balearic Islands. It went aimlessly to and fro between these places and Algiers. It was in harbour when it ought to have been cruising against the pirates, and was at sea when the pirates were safe back in Algiers. It finally returned, having done much more harm than good by encouraging the Algerines in their belief of their own strength.

King James died on the 27th of March 1625. The navy which he left his son was still at the strength fixed by the Commissioners of 1618. As compared with the navy of Queen Elizabeth, it shows a decrease of either nine or eleven, for there is some doubt as to the exact number of the king's ships, and an increase of about 2350 in tonnage. The work before the navy in the new reign was, to judge by appearances, very serious. The failure of the negotiations for a Spanish marriage, and the wounds inflicted on the vanity, both of Charles and of Buckingham, during their journey to Madrid, had provoked a war. It was not long before the management of the new favourite added a war with France to the existing struggle with Spain. Formidable as the task looks, there is no reason to doubt that the Royal Navy, aided by the levies of merchant ships always made when a great fleet was fitted out for sea at that period, would have been amply sufficient. Spain was already exhausted, and was only too happy to be able to repel attack, while France had, as yet, no navy at all. But in order that the strength of England on the sea could be fully exerted, there was need for good management, a full treasury, and hearty zeal on the part of the nation. All these three conditions were wanted. Therefore the enterprises of one kind or other which went on from 1625 to 1629 were little less languid, and were even more disgraceful, than Mansel's useless demonstration against Algiers. Their political history is of immense interest, but it is unnecessary to be told here. The miserable business of the surrender of the seven English ships to the King of France, to be used against Rochelle in 1625, tells us much about the character of Charles, of Buckingham, and of Pennington, who executed his part of a discreditable transaction stolidly, though not without reluctance; but it is of no interest in the history of the navy proper.

The expedition to Cadiz in 1625, the despatch of the Earl of Denbigh with a fleet to cruise in the Channel in 1626, the attack on the Ile de Rhé in 1627, then the two equally useless cruises of Denbigh in April and May and of Lindsey in September and October of 1629, were indeed all either in whole or in part naval undertakings. But they were so languid, so barren of incident worthy to be remembered, and so wholly without result, that to do more than mention them very briefly would be to rob passages of our naval history, which really deserve to be recorded at length, of their due space. The expedition to Cadiz was a mere parody of the great foray of Queen Elizabeth's reign. The fleet was raised in the same way, consisting partly of ships of the Royal Navy, and partly of vessels levied on the maritime counties. The command, too, was in the hands of men of the same classes, that is to say, nobles and soldiers, with their subordinate council of seamen. But the men and the times and the spirit were very different. The commander, Sir Edward Cecil, Lord Wimbledon, was a commonplace officer of the English regiments of the Low Countries, and he had no associate of marked authority or experience. The young Earl of Essex, son of Elizabeth's unhappy favourite, and later on the Lord General of the Parliament in the Civil War, repeated his father's gallantry in the attack on the fort of Puntal. The rest of the history of the voyage to Cadiz is made up of divided councils, vacillation, drunkenness, and failure. The share of the fleet was confined, apart from the attack on the Puntal fort, to carrying the troops there and bringing them back. In 1626, when war had broken out with France, we had some success in capturing French prizes in the Channel, but there was no enemy to fight, which, as the fleet were very badly equipped, was fortunate. The expedition to the Ile de Rhé in 1627 was the Cadiz voyage over again, but worse. Here the fleet had little more to do than to carry the soldiers out at the end of June, and bring back all that remained of them at the end of October. In 1629 two fleets were sent to succour Rochelle, where the Huguenots were making their last stand against Richelieu. They went out, they came back, and they did nothing.

A large part of the discredit of this four years of failure must be thrown on the flighty incapacity of Buckingham, but some share of it is due to the conditions in which the King's Government was working. Charles I. disagreed with his Parliament from the beginning. Therefore he never had enough money, and his armaments, fitted out by makeshifts, were maintained from hand to mouth. Efficiency was hardly to be expected in such circumstances. The unpopularity of the wars reacted on the king's forces. The navy was still in a state of transition, being neither altogether a regular force nor altogether sea militia, but a combination of the two. A regular navy, properly officered, well disciplined and paid, will always fight well. A sea militia will, in favourable circumstances, do very fairly. When there is a great national enthusiasm, a sense of the need for exertion, the hope of booty, and capable leaders, it will render good service, as was shown both in the fighting against the Armada, and at Cadiz in 1597. But in the early years of Charles I. all these conditions were wanting. The merchant ships, when pressed for the service, came unwillingly. Their owners and crews were uncertain of getting their pay from the Crown. The spirits of the men were damped when they saw the destitution of the king's soldiers. Their wish was to get through as soon as they could, to suffer as little damage as might be, and to return at the earliest possible day to their ordinary peaceful and profitable avocations. At Cadiz they behaved with actual cowardice, and at the Ile de Rhé they certainly showed no zeal, whereas the royal ships did the trifling fighting which had to be done very creditably. The deduction that the Crown must make itself independent of their feeble aid was obvious, and, when next England was engaged in a serious naval war, measures were taken to arm a force solely belonging to the State.

This was not, however, to be done by the Government of Charles I. The king never had the revenue needed for the maintenance of a really great navy. His efforts to obtain one were among the causes of the disasters which finally overwhelmed him. Charles was very conscious of the need for a fleet. Indeed, a less intelligent man must have seen the necessity. The naval power of Holland was increasing with great rapidity, while Richelieu was supplying France with an effective navy. The relations of England with her neighbours were always uneasy, and at one time the French and the Dutch were talking of an alliance, which was to end in dividing the Spanish Netherlands and the sea between them. In the presence of this danger Charles I. made serious efforts to raise the strength of the navy. He built no less than 19 vessels. Ten of these were of about 120 tons each, and were known by the odd name of the Whelps, numbered consecutively from one to ten. The great Sovereign of the Seas was one of the ships built to bring the navy to its proper strength. In 1633 the navy had reached the figure of 50 ships of 23,695 or 23,995 tons, carrying in all 1430 guns. When the Civil War broke out, it numbered 42 ships of 22,411 tons, of which 5 were first rates, measuring on an average 1060 tons each. The difference was due to the shedding of small ships.

The means which the king took to find money for all this building are famous in English history. The constitutional aspects of the writs of ship-money do not concern our subject. It is of course obvious that if the king could tax the whole country for the support of the fleet, if he alone was to be the judge of the amount demanded and of the use to be made of it, he could raise any revenue he pleased. In view of the constant attempts made by Charles I. to escape from the control of his Parliament, it is not wonderful that the Country Party, as the Opposition was called, suspected him of some such scheme. Yet, as a matter of fact, it appears that when the king took to calling in peace on the service of the coast counties, which had as yet only been demanded in war, when he commuted the actual service of men and ships for money payments, when he extended the assessments to the inland counties, he was unaffectedly resolved to spend the fund thus raised on his fleet. The administrative defects of his reign are undeniable, and have been pointed out already. Yet, when the Civil War began, the ships and the guns were there. The service they rendered to his domestic enemies throughout the Civil War may be taken as satisfactory evidence that both were good. We possess an elaborate description of the most famous of the ships built by Phineas Pett for King Charles, written by Thomas Heywood.

"This famous vessel was built at Woolwich in 1637. She was in length by the keel 128 feet or thereabout, within some few inches; her main breadth 48 feet; in length, from the fore-end of the beak-head to the after-end of the stern, a prora ad puppim, 232 feet; and in height, from the bottom of her keel to the top of her lanthorn, 76 feet; bore five lanthorns, the biggest of which would hold ten persons upright; had three flush decks, a forecastle, half-deck, quarter-deck, and round-house. Her lower tier had ... 30 ports for Cannon and Demi-Cannon,

and two half-decks have 13 or 14 ports more within-board, for murdering pieces, besides 10 pieces of chace-ordnance forward, and 10 right aft, and many loopholes in the cabins for musquet-shot. She had eleven anchors, one of 4400 pounds weight. She was of the burthen of 1637 tons. She was built by Peter Pett, Esq., under the direction of his father, Captain Phineas Pett, one of the principal officers of the navy. She hath two galleries besides, and all of most curious carved work, and all the sides of the ship carved with trophies of artillery and types of honour, as well belonging to sea as land, with symbols appertaining to navigation; also their two sacred majesties badges of honour; arms with several angels holding their letters in compartments, all which works are gilded over, and no other colour but gold and black. One tree, or oak, made four of the principal beams, which was 44 feet of strong serviceable timber in length, 3 feet diameter at the top, and 10 feet at the stub or bottom.

"Upon the stem-head a cupid, or child bridling a lion; upon the bulk-head, right forward, stand six statues in sundry postures; these figures represent Concilium, Cura, Conamen, Vis, Virtus, Victoria. Upon the hamers of the water are four figures, Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, Eolus; on the stern, Victory, in the midst of a frontispiece; upon the beak-head sitteth King Edgar on horseback, trampling on seven kings."

According to an ancient custom which at last, when it had outlived its time, became a nuisance, the Sovereign of the Seas was profusely ornamented. Yet she was a strong ship, and under a variety of names, dictated by the principles of her successive masters, took part in all the naval wars of England until she was accidentally burnt at Chatham in 1696.

The method of administering the navy underwent successive modifications during the reign of King Charles. When he ascended the throne, Buckingham held the post of Lord High Admiral, and the work of administering the navy was done in his name by the members of the Commission of 1618. When Buckingham was stabbed in the passage of the little house in the High Street of Portsmouth, which he occupied as his headquarters in 1628, the king had recourse to a method of governing his navy curiously similar to the system now in use. He put the office of Lord High Admiral in Commission. The persons entrusted with the duty seem to have also discharged the work of the Navy Office. The military and the civil functions of the navy were, in fact, joined in the hands of the same body of persons, very much as is the case now. There was, however, one important difference. The Commissioners appointed by Charles also held other great offices. They were Jackson, Bishop of London, who was also Lord High Treasurer; the Earl of Lindsey, the Great Chamberlain; the Earl of Dorset, Chamberlain to the Queen; Lord Cottington, Chancellor of the Exchequer; the elder Sir Henry Vane, Comptroller of the King's Household; and the two Secretaries of State, Sir John Coke and Sir Francis Windebanke. This Commission, with certain changes in the persons, held office until 1638.

Under this interregnum it was that the two naval demonstrations known as the Ship-money Fleets were fitted out in 1636 and 1637. The object was to make an effective assertion of the King of England's right to the sovereignty of the seas of Britain. They were to put a stop to all warlike operations on the part of Spaniards, Dutch, or French, to compel all fishermen to pay for a licence from the King of England, and in a general way to produce an effect both imposing and terrifying on the minds of all foreign rulers. The fleet of 1636 was perhaps in real power the greatest sent forth by a ruler of England. The command was given to Algernon Percy, tenth Earl of Northumberland, who succeeded the Earl of Lindsey on the Commission of the Navy. Northumberland was a magnificent specimen of a great noble. According to Clarendon, if he had thought the king as much above him as he thought himself above all other considerable men, he would have been a good subject. As it was, he was mainly a great noble who held himself apart, and who lived through a very stormy time without incurring any serious misfortune—a feat, perhaps, partly to be accounted for by the fact that at times of crises he was a little apt to follow the example of the young man who went away sorrowful because he had great possessions. As admiral commanding the Ship-money Fleets, Northumberland had little opportunity to render service. The utmost he could do was to extort the price of a licence from a few unlucky Dutch herring fishermen. The abuses of the navy attracted his attention, and he proposed a scheme for their reform. When it met with no attention, the pride of the noble got the better of the zeal of the reformer. Northumberland declined to put himself again in the way of being snubbed, declaring that he would make no more suggestions till his opinion was asked for. In fact, the abuses of which he complained arose from the very nature of the king's government. Charles, by the help of ship-money and the other devices elaborated by his lawyers, was able to raise money enough to build ships and equip an occasional fleet, but he had not the revenue required to maintain a permanent force. His efforts were necessarily sporadic. His fleets were equipped by fits and starts, and there was no order or coherence in the efforts. In the confusion, the pilferers of the dockyards saw their opportunity, and did not fail to take advantage of it.

In 1638 the king made the second change of his reign in naval administration. In the March of that year he appointed Northumberland Lord High Admiral. It had been intended to keep the office vacant for the little Duke of York, now a boy of five years old. But in 1638 the difficulties of his position induced Charles, who was anxious to please a man so powerful in the North of England, to name Northumberland Lord High Admiral. The commission was, however, only during the good pleasure of the king, and not for life, as in the case of Nottingham and Buckingham. The navy now reverted to the old system of government by an Admiral and the officers of the Navy Board, the Treasurer, the Comptroller, the Surveyor, and the Clerk of the Navy, with their subordinate officers.

The administration of Northumberland, which lasted till June 1642, when he was dismissed by the king in bitter wrath, is of great importance in the history of England. It contains nearly, if not quite, the most discreditable incident in naval history. In the September of 1639 the Spaniards sent out a great fleet with reinforcements for their garrisons in Flanders. It arrived at the mouth of the Channel on the 7th of the month, and was at once attacked by the Dutch. A running fight took place along the Channel, in which the Dutch, who were constantly reinforced, soon gained the advantage. The Spanish admiral, Don Antonio de Oquendo, the son of the Don Miguel de Oquendo who had served in the Armada, took refuge in the Downs. His Government was acting by arrangement with the king's, and he had reason to believe that he would be helped, or would at least be protected from attack, in English waters. As a matter of fact, King Charles made an effort, which no Englishman can think of without shame, to turn the necessities of the Spaniards into ready money, by alternately offering to let the Dutch destroy them, or to afford them protection, according to which of the courses he happened to think would prove most profitable. Northumberland, in London, could not make out what the king would be at, and said so to Pennington, who was at Dover with a squadron far too weak to inspire any respect in the Dutch. They, again, were encouraged by the great French Minister Richelieu, who was now triumphantly carrying out his anti-Spanish policy, and were commanded by a man for whose courage no risk was too great, the indomitable Martin Harpertz (Herbertson) Tromp. The peddling vacillations of the unlucky English king were all cut short, and his hopes of profit blown to the four winds of heaven, when Tromp on the 11th of October fell upon the Spaniards, and destroyed at least three-fourths of them, with the most absolute and insolent disregard of Pennington's squadron. The great Ship-money Fleet, for the sake of which the poor king had strained his prerogative and had forfeited so much of the confidence of his subjects, had proved totally incapable of defending the honour of England when it was seriously attacked, though no doubt it had been able to extort a few fees from the skippers of Dutch herring busses.

Whether the anger which Northumberland undoubtedly felt at being made to play the poor figure he had cut in this shameful transaction had anything to do with the course he followed four years later, must necessarily be a mere matter of guess-work. Certainly, if he meant to be revenged on his master, he could not well have taken a course more effectual than that which he actually adopted. It was this representative of the great feudal house of Percy who did more than any other single man to seal the king's fate by putting the fleet into the hands of his domestic enemy. In the Long Parliament, Northumberland sided with the Opposition. He had been loaded with favours by the king, and was always profuse in declarations of loyalty. Yet he put the fleet into the hands of the king's enemies, by an act which no sophistry can show to have been one of other than deliberate hostility to his master. When Parliament made its demand on the king for the control of the "militia," that is to say, of the whole armed force of the nation, it naturally included the fleet. The command of the sea was vital to it. If the king could have obtained help from abroad, his position would have been far stronger than it was. For this very reason, the king was eager to retain possession of his ships. While they were at the orders of Northumberland, the king could hope to make little use of them. The obvious course would have been to dismiss the earl and put the fleet into trustworthy hands. But in the summer of 1642, on the very eve of the Civil War, and when the last despairing efforts were being made to arrange a compromise, this would have been an act of open hostility against the Parliament. The king shrank from it, and adopted an alternative which seemed to offer him some reasonable prospect of obtaining the same practical result without provoking an immediate conflict. The Lord High Admiral was not necessarily what we should call the executive officer in command of the fleet. The direct command of a squadron might be given, and pretty commonly was given, to a vice-admiral, acting on the commission of the Lord High Admiral. A devoted vice-admiral would have served the purposes of Charles very well. There was some talk of selecting the veteran Sir Robert Mansel for the post, but the king rejected him as too old. The officer whom he finally decided to direct Northumberland to appoint, was Sir John Pennington. Parliament in the meantime had called upon the earl to appoint Robert Rich, the Earl of Warwick. Northumberland referred to Parliament to ask whether he should obey the king's orders, and was immediately instructed to appoint the Earl of Warwick. He obeyed, and the nominee of Parliament was duly accepted by the fleet as its admiral. The care the king had taken to provide England with a naval force turned against himself. The loss of the fleet was one of the main causes of the final defeat of the Crown in the approaching struggle with Parliament.

There can, of course, be no doubt that this revolutionary measure—for it was no less—could never have been carried out if the sympathies of the seafaring classes had not been largely with the Parliament. There is no question that they were. The bulk of the seamen belonged to the southern and eastern counties, where the Puritans were strong. They shared the opinions of their neighbours. The sailors had been conspicuous in the excited mobs which collected to protect the privileges of Parliament after the king's futile attempt to arrest the five members. London was very Puritan, while the baseness of Goring, who spent his life in disgracing or betraying both sides, had thrown Portsmouth into the hands of the Parliament. It therefore held actual possession of the dockyards both in the Thames and Channel. Yet, in spite of the advantages of its position and the sympathy of the population, it is very doubtful whether Parliament could have obtained such complete command of the naval resources of the kingdom if it had not had the assistance of Northumberland. The evil fortune of King Charles spared him nothing. He had formed a strong fleet to maintain his power, and it was made a principal instrument of his ruin. He had, in his own bitter words, courted Northumberland like a mistress, and that haughtiest of nobles repaid him by striking him a cruel blow. When it was too late, the king dismissed Northumberland from his post. It would have been better for the king if he had thought less of what Northumberland might do if he chose, and more of what Sir John Pennington would certainly do when he was ordered, and had named him Lord High Admiral in 1638.

CHAPTER V
THE NAVY IN THE CIVIL WAR

Authorities.—The general history of this time has been exhaustively told by Mr. Gardiner in his history of the Civil War. Mr. Granville Penn has collected the Parliamentary orders, pamphlets, and proclamations relating to naval affairs in his Life of Sir William Penn. The Royalist side is told by Clarendon, and in the papers printed by Mr. Warburton in his Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers.

In so far as his control over the navy was concerned, the reign of Charles I. came to an end with the appointment of the Earl of Warwick as vice-admiral by the authority of the Parliament in defiance of his wishes. From that time forward the fleet became a docile instrument in the hands of his enemies, and so remained throughout the whole of the first Civil War. The king did indeed dismiss Northumberland from his post as Lord High Admiral, and the order was obeyed. It may very well be that the Parliament was not sorry to be rid of an officer whose powers were so great. Even in the midst of armed rebellion the Englishmen of the seventeenth century were great sticklers for the letter of the law, and the Lord High Admiral, the legality of whose appointment could not be questioned, might have caused the Houses at Westminster considerable trouble if he had thought fit to act against them, or even only to abstain from acting energetically on their behalf. With the minor officers there was not the same probability of trouble. The king did order them to render no obedience to Parliament, and a few acted on his command. Others, however, had no scruple in accepting the doctrine that the order of the king meant his order as expressed by Parliament—a convenient sophistry by which many men at that period contrived to reconcile the reality of rebellion with the profession of loyalty.

Among those who actively assisted Parliament to obtain possession of the fleet was William Batten, the Surveyor of the Navy. He is described by Clarendon as an "obscure fellow," who obtained his post by dint of a bribe. This account of him has been somewhat heatedly contradicted by modern writers. But it agrees very well with the rather off-hand account of his appointment given by Northumberland. If Batten belonged to the Somersetshire family of that name, he was a man of strong Puritan connections. However that may be, he had passed his life as a merchant skipper, trading on his own account, or as master in the navy, till he became Surveyor in 1638, when the Commission of 1628 was dissolved and Northumberland was appointed Lord High Admiral. There is a pretty general agreement of authorities that he paid for his post, which at that time does not necessarily mean that there was anything corrupt about his nomination. His assistance had a good deal to do with Warwick's success in bringing the fleet to obedience in July 1642.

Parliament had taken measures to arm a considerable naval force in the very first days of March, on the plea that the Lords and Commons had "received advertisement of extraordinary preparations made by the neighbouring princes both by land and sea; the intentions whereof have been so represented as to raise an apprehension in both Houses that the public honour, peace, and safety of His Majesty and his kingdom cannot be secured unless a timely course be taken for the putting of this kingdom into a condition of defence at sea as well as land." Orders were issued that "all and every the ships belonging to His Majesty's navy which are fit for service, and not already abroad, nor designed for this summer's fleet, be with all speed rigged and put in such a readiness as that they may soon be ready for sea." At the same time Northumberland was requested "to make known to all masters and owners of such ships as now are in or about any the harbours of this kingdom, and may be of use to the public defence thereof, that it will be an acceptable service to the King and Parliament if they likewise will cause their ships to be rigged, and so far put in readiness, as they may at a short warning set forth to sea upon any emergent occasion, which will be a means of great security to His Majesty and his dominions."

The king had left London, and was either at Royston or at Newmarket when he heard of this order for the "speedy rigging of the navy." Northumberland was suffering from an accident which befell him more than once at a critical moment. He was ill, and could not take the command in person. It was now that the king endeavoured to secure the appointment of Sir John Pennington as Northumberland's deputy in actual command. But Parliament, in pursuit of its policy of laying hands on the militia, insisted on seeing a list of the officers in command. It was presented on the 10th of March. Parliament confirmed most of the names, but expressly voted "that the Lord Admiral shall be desired by this House that the commander-in-chief of this summer's fleet under his lordship may be the Earl of Warwick." At the same time Sir Harry Vane was instructed to "carry unto the Lord Admiral the list of those commanders that are not allowed of by this House, and desire his lordship to supply others in the place of those, and to send the names of them to the House with all convenient speed."

The anger of the king was unavailing, except to deprive Northumberland of his official rank. The ships in the Downs submitted themselves with little or no opposition to Warwick's orders. It is possible that if Sir John Pennington had been a man of more energy, he might have caused the Parliament considerable trouble. But his virtues were those of a docile, trustworthy servant. When called upon to act for himself, he could do nothing effectual. When the king forbade his servants to submit to the orders of the officers appointed by Parliament, Warwick boldly put his authority to the test by calling upon the ships in the Downs to accept his commission. A few only of the captains hesitated, and of these no more than two made any serious appearance of resistance. Even they were ill supported by their men, for the unarmed boats' crews of other ships were allowed to board and take possession of their vessels. The sympathies of the navy were plainly with the Parliament. It has been said recently that the navy was mainly neutral between the king and his enemies in this great struggle. I do not clearly understand what meaning is attached to the word neutral when it is used to describe the actions of men who give the most effective armed help to one party in a Civil War. From 1642 until a part of the fleet revolted in 1648, the navy never failed to do the king all the harm in its power. It attacked the garrisons held for him, and helped to defend the coast towns which his troops were besieging. It captured ships sailing on his service, and it fired on his wife. It is difficult to conceive what less neutral line of conduct it could possibly have followed. A more simple explanation of the action of the navy is, I think, that which has been given above. It supported the Parliament because it was Puritan, and this it was partly by choice, and partly of necessity. The seafaring population came from the more Puritan parts of England. The same causes which made the other inhabitants Puritan acted on the sailor. Then, until Prince Rupert took Bristol, every considerable seaport was in the hands of the Puritans, and a sailor who would not serve the Parliament would have found some difficulty in following his trade at all. Writers who have been very anxious to make out that the navy played an important independent part have been at some pains to show that it held some weighty constitutional doctrines, and in particular that it combined a disinterested love of liberty with an enlightened loyalty to the king's person. It is, however, possible to feel admiration and respect for the seamen of the seventeenth century without going so far as to credit them with what there is no reason to believe they possessed. Like many other Englishmen at that period the sailors may have thought it possible to coerce the king, to take the command of the militia out of his hands, to beat his soldiers, to kill his friends, to make him a prisoner, and, at the end of all this, to establish his authority. In other words, they entered upon a revolution without seeing more clearly than the average Presbyterian member of Parliament what its inevitable consequences must be. They had been brought up to have an awful reverence for the "Lord's anointed," and were glad to have a good legal-looking excuse before laying unhallowed hands upon him. Therefore, with the most loyal intentions in the world, they applied themselves with much courage and zeal to the work of bringing His Majesty to the mercy of the root-and-branch men.

The administration of the navy was put into the hands of a Parliamentary Committee of both Houses, under which it worked with more energy than had ever been shown during the reign of the king. The Houses could pay, if not with unfailing regularity, at least much better than the king; moreover, Parliament, with its power of naming committees of its own body, was able to exercise an amount of supervision which had not been possible for the Crown. The work which the navy had to do was partly on the coasts of England and partly on those of Ireland, but it was everywhere the same. In both cases the object was to prevent help coming from abroad to the enemies of Parliament. This was to be done partly by capturing ships coming in with stores, and partly by getting, or keeping, possession of the coast towns. It was a kind of duty which required rather vigilant cruising than much actual fighting. Although mention of the action of the fleet is common, the number of achievements performed by it of which memory remains is small. The majority of them are of the nature of the relief given to the town of Lyme when besieged by Prince Maurice. The ships brought reinforcements of men and stores when the need for them was great. In this way, and on all parts of the coast, they helped the cause of the Parliament. One of the feats the navy did, it is true, made no inconsiderable noise in the world, and has been the subject of much heated rhetoric. The Queen Henrietta Maria, who had left England just when the Civil War was beginning, had been busy abroad purchasing military stores for her husband. The Parliament learned early in 1643 that these military provisions were about to be sent over to Bridlington on the coast of Yorkshire, where the army of the Marquis of Newcastle would be ready to receive them. Whether it was also known that the queen was coming with the stores is not certain. If it had been, the principal effect of the knowledge would have been to induce Parliament to strengthen Batten, who was cruising in the North Sea. The capture of the queen would have been an immense advantage, and her death by a cannon ball a satisfaction. The Parliamentary officer had with him a small squadron of four ships. He missed the queen. The weather was stormy, and Henrietta Maria had to go through the unpleasant ordeal of nine days' tossing about in the North Sea. At last she reached Bridlington, and was able to land. Here a new danger, and a worse, assailed her. Batten discovered that the transports had reached harbour, and were landing their stores. He immediately took measures to prevent these from reaching the king. Bringing his ships close in, he opened fire on the transport and the houses on the quay, and continued to discharge cross-bar and other shot for some hours. The Royalists raised a great outcry over this "obscure fellow's" barbarous want of respect for Her Majesty's royal person. It is certain that she was in considerable peril. Batten's shot crashed into the house in which she was sleeping, and the queen with her ladies had to take refuge in a ditch, where they lay under the shelter of the bank for some time. It was reported, to the no small glee of the Parliament's partisans in London, that the queen had fled out of the house "barelegged" and almost undressed, so sudden had been her flight. However that may be, the daughter of Henry IV. had gone through the perils of storm and battle with cheerful courage. She comforted her terrified ladies-in-waiting on board the transport by telling them that queens of England were never drowned. As she fled from the house at Bridlington, she remembered that her favourite lap-dog had been left behind, and, in spite of the terrors of her attendants, she went back to bring it out. The Cavalier writers were more indignant for the queen than she was for herself. Both then and since they have denounced Batten in no measured terms for the unheard-of brutality and want of chivalry in his behaviour. Yet it is very hard to see what the Parliamentary commander could well have done except what he did do. The king's officers could not have expected to be allowed to march into London only because they put the queen at their head, and yet that would have been almost as rational as to ask that they should be allowed to transport and land munitions of war unmolested because a great Royalist lady travelled in company with them.

These years of the first Civil War, though they would be tedious to tell in detail, are of great importance in the history of the navy. They formed the first period in which a considerable naval force was continuously maintained. Even during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the larger fleets had been armed only for particular expeditions, while during the reign of James there had been but one large armament, and, though the considerable displays of naval force had been comparatively numerous during the first fifteen years of Charles I., still they were intermittent. But the Parliament kept continually on foot what would in former times have been called a Royal Fleet. In 1642 there were 18 men-of-war and 24 hired merchant ships in commission. In 1643 this force was raised to 28 warships, 23 merchant ships, and 8 colliers for service on the coast of England, besides 8 men-of-war and 13 hired merchant ships for service on the coast of Ireland. This makes a total of 80 vessels; and when we consider the average tonnage and weight of broadside, it represents a much greater force than was ever under the command of the officers of the great queen. The mere habit of continual cruising together in fleets must have had an instructive effect, of which the English Navy was to reap the benefit in the approaching struggle with Holland. Regular men-of-war crews must have been gradually formed, and the Parliament secured the services of a trained body of officers.

Before the value of this practice was to be put to the test, the nation, and the navy with it, were destined to pass through the sharpest convulsion in the whole course of our history. The first Civil War came to an end, having practically settled nothing except that the Parliament had proved itself strong enough to beat down the king's partisans. King Charles did not, however, consider himself completely defeated. Indeed he was incapable of understanding that utter overthrow was possible for the king who held his place by Divine Right. Wicked rebels might prove too strong for him for a time, but it was his firm conviction that in the long-run no party could do without him. Thus, even before he was delivered by the Scots into the hands of his Parliament, he began the desperate game of playing off one party of his conquerors against the other. The Presbyterians remained of the opinion, as when they had begun the war, that they could beat the king utterly, and yet leave him not only king, but prepared to co-operate with them. One of the purposes for which they expected his aid was the suppression of the Independents, who were fully as offensive to the Presbyterians as the Presbyterians were to the Church of England. But the Independents were the commanding element in the New Model Army, which represented the whole armed force of the Parliament, since its other troops had been disbanded on the conclusion of the war. The Independents were thoroughly resolved that, after fighting to be free from the Church of England, they would not submit to dictation by the Presbyterians. The king began trying to set them by the ears; and out of these rivalries and intrigues, with the help of a Presbyterian army from Scotland, there arose the second Civil War.

In this struggle the navy was more visibly affected by the divisions of the nation. Its leaders had begun to discover that it was not so simple a business as they had thought, to beat the king and yet leave him uninjured. Moreover, professional rivalry affected them to no small extent. The sea officers were offended when they saw the whole effective power of the nation in the hands of the New Model Army. Their loyalty to the king was vigorously revived when they found that not only the Crown, but they themselves, were at the orders of a committee of successful soldiers. So, during 1647 and 1648, the navy was agitated by dissensions. In the spring of 1648 the party which was now, by the help of the soldiers, supreme in Parliament began to be very uneasy about the spirit of the fleet. There was a great deal of dangerous talk as to the necessity for a personal treaty with the king; while ship's companies took to imitating the "agitators" who had organised the pronunciamiento of the soldiers at Triploe Heath and elsewhere. They also had their ideas as to the settlement of the nation. In view of this untrustworthiness of their naval force, Parliament decided to put the command of the fleet into other hands. Batten was removed from his place as second in command to Warwick, and Penn, who had served throughout the war on the coast of Ireland, and had finally been in actual command of the station, was put under arrest. A military officer, Colonel Rainsborough, was sent to take command of the squadron in the Downs and the river. This measure provoked a partial revolt in May 1648. The officers and men of the ships which were to have been under the command of Rainsborough refused to obey his orders, and put him on shore. This action was justified by a declaration of principles on the part of "the commanders and officers of the ship Constant Reformation with the rest of the fleet." These politicians stated their view of the best way for providing a settlement for the nation. They were in agreement with the Kentish petitioners, and their demands were grouped under four heads.

"First,—That the King's Majesty, with all expedition, be admitted in safety and honour to treat with both Houses of Parliament.

"Secondly,—That the army now under the command of the Lord Fairfax be forthwith disbanded, their arrears being paid them.

"Thirdly,—That the known laws of the kingdom may be established and continued, whereby we ought to be governed and judged.

"Fourthly,—That the privileges of Parliament and liberty of the subject be preserved."

In the following month this declaration was amended by the complaints that the Parliament had taken to issuing commissions without the name of the king; that several landsmen had been made sea-commanders, and that "the insufferable pride, ignorance, and insolency of Colonel Rainsborough, the late Vice-Admiral, alienated the hearts of the seamen." The political side of these pronouncements need not detain us long. If these were the aims of the seamen, they were trying, as the Presbyterian party in Parliament also were, to bring things back to the point at which they had been before 1638, with this difference, that the king was to show himself converted to their way of thinking by ten years of failure, defeat, and bitter indignity. Like the Presbyterians, they forgot to secure the co-operation of the king. The complaint that Parliament had taken to issuing commissions without the royal name shows that the sailors, or at least those who spoke for them, were immensely surprised at the result of their own efforts. When they made it a grievance that several landsmen had been made sea-commanders, they were inventing an entirely new grievance. Landsmen always had been sea-commanders, and were to be so again in the coming years.

It is hard to say how far the discontent of the seamen had anything to do with the revolt, if that can be called a revolt which was, in fact, a refusal to obey revolutionary authority. It was probably mainly the work of a few officers, and the men were carried away by the example of their commanders and by the contagious example of the Royalists in the county of Kent. The officers did in some cases belong to the Presbyterian Parliamentary party, which was now becoming Royalist under the stimulus of rivalry with the Independents.