A HISTORY OF THE ADMINISTRATION
OF THE ROYAL NAVY

VOLUME I

MDIX-MDCLX

A HISTORY OF THE ADMINISTRATION
OF THE ROYAL NAVY
AND OF MERCHANT SHIPPING
IN RELATION TO THE NAVY

BY M. OPPENHEIM

VOL I
MDIX-MDCLX

JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
LONDON AND NEW YORK
MDCCCXCVI

A HISTORY OF THE ADMINISTRATION
OF THE ROYAL NAVY
AND OF MERCHANT SHIPPING
IN RELATION TO THE NAVY
FROM MDIX TO MDCLX WITH
AN INTRODUCTION TREATING
OF THE PRECEDING PERIOD

BY M. OPPENHEIM

JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
LONDON AND NEW YORK
MDCCCXCVI

J. MILLER AND SON, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PREFACE

Of the following pages the Introduction and the portion dealing with the period 1509-1558 are entirely new. The remainder originally appeared in the English Historical Review, but the Elizabethan section has been rewritten and much enlarged in the light of fresh material found since it was first printed, and many additions and alterations have been made to the other papers. Of the four Appendices three are new.

Sixteen years ago the doyen of our English naval historians, Professor J. K. Laughton, wrote,

‘Every one knows that according to the Act of Parliament, it is on the Navy that “under the good providence of God, the wealth, safety, and strength of the kingdom chiefly depend,” but there are probably few who have realised the full meaning of that grave sentence.’[1]

Since those words were penned, a more widely diffused interest in naval matters has permeated all classes of society, and there is, happily, a vastly increased perception of what the Navy means for England and the Empire.[2] The greater interest taken in naval progress has caused a new attention to be bestowed on the early history of the Navy, and there is little apology required for the plan—however much may be needed for the execution—of a work dealing with the civil organisation under which the executive has toiled and fought. Whole libraries have been written about fleets and expeditions, but there has never yet been any systematic history of the organisation that rendered action on a large scale possible, or of the naval administration generally, and although its record does not appear to the writer to be a matter for national pride, it has its importance as a corollary of—and if only as a foil to—that of the Navy proper. This work as a whole, is therefore intended to be a history of the later Royal Navy, and of naval administration, from the accession of Henry VIII until the close of the Napoleonic wars, in all the details connected with the subject except those relating to actual warfare.

The historical evolution of many of the great administrative offices of the state, as they exist now, can be, in most cases, observed through the centuries and the course and causes of their growth traced with sufficient exactness. Originally a delegation of some one or more of the functions of the monarch, they have developed from small and obscure beginnings in the far off past and increased with the growth of the nation. The naval administration of to-day has no such dignity of antiquity. It will be for the readers of these volumes in their entirety to decide whether it has earned that higher honour which comes of loyal service performed with justice to the subordinates dependent on it, and with honesty to the British people who have entrusted it with such important duties.

The Board of Admiralty came into power subsequent to the period at which this volume ends. It dates, properly from 1689, or, at the utmost, reaches back to 1673, but its forerunner, the modern administration which is the subject of the present volume, sprang full grown into life in 1546 when the outgrown mediæval system ended. The Admiralty Board is in the place, and administers the duties, of the Lord Admiral, but that officer although the titular head of the Navy never had any very active or continuous part in administration, nor was the post itself a very ancient one. James, Duke of York, afterwards James II, was the first Lord Admiral who really took actual charge of domestic naval affairs and the Admiralty succeeded him, and to his powers, thus overshadowing the Navy Board. Between 1546 and 1618, the Navy was governed by the Principal Officers, controlling the various branches of naval work, who constituted the Navy Board; between 1618 and 1689 we have a transitional period when the Navy Officers, Commissioners of the Admiralty, Parliamentary Committees, Lord Admiral, and the King, were all at different times, and occasionally simultaneously, ruling and directing. The Admiralty now more nearly represents in function and composition the old Navy Board, abolished in ignominy in 1832, than the Board of the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries with which, except in the power still retained by the First Lord, it has little in common but name.

Our subject then in this volume, is the Navy Board as the predominant authority between 1546 and 1660. Although a history of the modern administration should in exactness, therefore, begin in 1546, an academic preciseness of date would be obtained at the expense of historical accuracy since Henry VIII remodelled the Navy, before he touched the administration. The year of his accession has therefore been chosen as the starting point. But it should be borne in mind that there is very much less difference between the great and complex administration of to-day, and the Navy Board or—as it was then sometimes called—the Admiralty, of 24th April 1546, than between the Board of 24th April and what existed the day before. Within the twenty-four hours the old system had been swept away and replaced; its successor has altered in form but not in principle.

The sources of information are sufficiently indicated by the references. The great majority of them being used for the first time, subsequent inquiry may modify or alter some of the conclusions here reached. Unless a date is given in a double form (e.g. 20th February 1558-9) it will be understood to be new or present style, so far as the year is concerned. Few attempts have been made to give the modern equivalents of the various sums of money mentioned during so many periods when values were continually fluctuating. With one exception all the MS. collections known to the writer, likely to be of value, have been fully examined, but there are also many papers not available for research in the possession of private owners. The one exception referred to is the collection of Pepys MSS., at Magdalene College, Cambridge. An application to examine these was refused on the ground that a member of the university was working at them. It is to be hoped that this ingenuous adaptation of the principles of Protection to historical investigation will duly stimulate production.

There remains the pleasant duty of thanking those from whom I have received assistance. To Mr S. R. Gardiner, and Professor J. K. Laughton, I am obliged for various suggestions on historical and naval questions; to Professor F. Elgar for information on the difficult subject of tonnage measurement. I have to thank Mr F. J. Simmons for assistance in the task of index compilation and proof-reading.

As this is the first opportunity I have had of publicly acknowledging my indebtedness to Mr E. Salisbury of the Record Office, I am glad to be now able to express my sincere gratitude to that gentleman for constant and cordially given help in many ways during the five years this book has been in preparation.

September 1896.

INTRODUCTION
THE NAVY BEFORE 1509

The Modern Navy.

The creation of the modern Royal Navy has been variously attributed to Henry VII, to Henry VIII, and to Elizabeth. Whichever sovereign may be considered entitled to the honour, the statement, as applied to either monarch, really means that modification of mediæval conditions, and adoption of improvements in construction and administration, which brought the Navy into the form familiar to us until the introduction of steam and iron. And in that sense no one sovereign can be accredited with its formation. The introduction of portholes in, or perhaps before the reign of Henry VII, differentiated the man-of-war, involved radical alterations in build and armament, and made the future line-of-battle ship possible; the establishment of the Navy Board by Henry VIII, made the organisation of fleets feasible and ensured a certain, if slow, progress because henceforward cumulative and, in the long run, independent of the energy and foresight of any one man under whom, as under Henry V, the Navy might largely advance, to sink back at his death into decay. Under Elizabeth the improvements in building and rigging constituted a step longer than had yet been taken towards the modern type, the Navy Board became an effectively working and flourishing institution, and the wars and voyages of her reign founded the school of successful seamanship of which was born the confidence, daring and self-reliance still prescriptive in the royal and merchant services.

The origin of the Navy:—William I.

It is not the purpose of this work to deal with the history, of the Navy previous to the accession of Henry VIII, but no real line of demarcation can be drawn in naval more than in other history, and it will be necessary to briefly sketch the conditions generally existing before 1509, and in somewhat more detail, those relating to the fifteenth century.[3] In the widest sense the first Saxon king who possessed galleys of his own may be said to have been the founder of the Royal Navy; in a narrower but truer sense, the Royal Navy as an appanage of imperial power, and an entity of steady growth, really dates from the Norman conquest. The Saxon navy although respectable by way of number, was essentially a coast defence force, mustered temporarily to answer momentary needs, and lacking continuity of existence and purpose. There is but one instance of a Saxon fleet being employed out of the four seas, that which Canute used in the conquest of Norway, and in it the Scandinavian element was probably larger than the Saxon. With the advent of William I, the channel, instead of remaining a boundary, became a means of communication between the divided dominions of one monarch, and a comparatively permanent and reliable naval force, both for military transport and for command of the passage between the insular and continental possessions of the Crown, became a necessity of royal policy. For nearly two centuries this duty was mainly performed by the men of the Cinque Ports who, in return for certain privileges and exemptions, were bound, at any moment, to place fifty-seven ships at the service of the Crown for fifteen days free of cost, and for as much longer time as the king required them at the customary rate of pay.[4] These claims, practically constituting the Cinque Ports fleet a standing force, were ceaselessly exercised by successive monarchs, and, at first sight, such demands might seem to be destructive of that commercial progress which is the primary basis of the growth or maintenance of shipping. But the methods of warfare in those ages were more profitable than commerce, and the decay of the Ports was not due to poverty caused by the calls made upon their shipping for military purposes. The existence of the Cinque Ports service was indirectly a hindrance to the growth of a crown navy, since it was obviously cheaper for the king to order the Ports to act than to man and equip his own vessels; it was not until ships of larger size and stronger build than those belonging to the Ports were required, that the royal ships came into frequent use.

Results of the Conquest:—Growth of Trade and Shipping.

As well as mobilising the Cinque Ports fleet, the sovereign was able to issue writs to arrest the ships of private owners throughout the kingdom, together with the necessary number of sailors, when rival fleets had to be fought or armies to be transported. The Normans, descendants of the Vikings, must have been better shipbuilders and better seamen than the Saxons, and the large number of nautical words that can be traced back to Norman French bear witness to improvements in rigging and handling due to them. The Crusades must have reacted on the English marine by bringing under the observation of our seamen the construction of ships belonging to the Mediterranean powers, then far in advance of the North in the art of shipbuilding. And during the century which followed the Conquest, the foreign trade, which is the nursery of shipping, was steadily growing. Under the Angevin kings the whole coast line of France, from Flanders to Bayonne, was, with the exception of Brittany, subject to English rule, and the inter-coast traffic that naturally followed was the greatest stimulus to maritime enterprise this country had yet experienced. The result was seen in the Crusade of 1190, when the fleet of Richard I for the Mediterranean was made up of vessels drawn from the ports of the empire, but many of them doubtless belonging to the continental possessions of the crown; and as John certainly possessed ships of his own, it may be inferred that Richard, and his predecessors also had some. When a general arrest was ordered, foreign ships were seized as well as English, and this practice continued as late as the first years of Elizabeth. Richard I issued, in 1190, regulations for the government of his fleet. These regulations doubtless only methodised customs already existing, and as they dealt with offences against life and property bear the mark of their commercial origin. Offences against discipline must have been punished by military law and military penalties, and required no new code.

John:—The Clerk of the Ships.

During the reign of John we meet the first sign of a naval administration in the official action of William of Wrotham, like many of his successors a cleric, and the first known ‘Keeper of the king’s ships.’ This office, possibly in its original form of very much earlier date and only reconstituted or enlarged in function by John, and now represented in descent by the Secretaryship of the Admiralty, is the oldest administrative employment in connection with the Navy. At first called ‘Keeper and Governor’ of the king’s ships, later, ‘Clerk of the king’s ships,’ this official held, sometimes really and sometimes nominally, the control of naval organisation until the formation of the Navy Board in 1546. His duties included all those now performed by a multitude of highly placed Admiralty officials. If a man of energy, experience, and capacity, his name stands foremost in the maintenance of the royal fleets during peace and their preparation for war; if, as frequently happened, a merchant or subordinate official with no especial knowledge, he might become a mere messenger riding from port to port, seeking runaway sailors, or bargaining for small parcels of naval stores. Occasionally, under such circumstances, his authority was further lessened by the appointment of other persons, usually such as held minor personal offices near the king, as keepers of particular ships. This was a method of giving a small pecuniary reward to such a one, together with the perquisites he might be able to procure from the supply of stores and provisions necessary for the vessel and her crew.

In the course of centuries the title changed its form. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the officer is called ‘clerk of marine causes,’ and ‘clerk of the navy;’ in the seventeenth century, ‘clerk of the acts.’ Although Pepys was not the last clerk of the acts, the functions associated with the office, which were the remains of the larger powers once belonging to the ‘Keeper and Governor,’ were carried up by him to the higher post of Secretary of the Admiralty.

Henry III.

With the reign of Henry III we find the royal ships large enough to become attractive to merchants, who hired them from the king for freight, perhaps at lower rates than could be afforded by private owners. There is hardly a reign, down to and including that of Elizabeth, in which men-of-war were not hired by merchants, and the earlier trading voyages to Italy and the Levant during the last quarter of the fifteenth century were nearly all performed by men-of-war let out for the voyage. The Navy was mainly made up of sailing vessels even before the reign of Henry III, and by that period many of them possessed two masts, each carrying a single sail. The conversion of a merchantman into a fighting-ship was accomplished by fitting it with temporary fore and after castles, which became later the permanent forecastle and poop, the addition of a ‘top castle’ or fighting top, and the provision of proper armament. Doubtless the king’s own ships were more strongly built, and better adapted by internal arrangements for their work, than the hired merchantmen. The supreme government of the Navy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was in the hands of the King’s Council, who ordered, equally, the preparation and fitting of ships and the action of the admirals commanding. These officers, known during the greater part of the thirteenth century as keepers or governors of the sea, were usually knights or nobles in command of the soldiers. While holding commission they appear to have had jurisdiction in the matter of discipline on board their fleets, but not of law suits or maritime causes until 1360; before that date such causes were dealt with at common law.[5] There were usually two, one having charge of the East, the other of the South Coast, but occasionally, an officer had a particular section placed under his care, such as the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk. Their period of service was commonly short and often only for a special employment. The maintenance of a fleet was a part of the King’s Household expenses; in the Wardrobe Accounts for 1299-1300 are the amounts paid for fifty-four vessels and their crews hired for the conveyance of stores for the Scotch war.

Galleys.

Galleys, although frequently mentioned, were at no time a chief portion of our fleets. Large fleets were mainly composed of impressed merchantmen, and galleys are expensive and useless for trading purposes compared with sailing ships; the natural home of the galley was the landlocked Mediterranean, and even there its utility was limited to the summer months, so that it was still less suitable for Northern latitudes. But the great difficulty was in manning them. Forced labour by captives taken in the continual warfare normal amongst the states on the Mediterranean littoral solved that problem for them, but here the cost of the free oarsman, to whom the drudgery was in any case distasteful, was prohibitive. We shall see that, down to the close of the sixteenth century, attempts were at various times made to form such a service, but always unsuccessfully, and the supreme moment of the galley service, so far as it ever existed here, was the reign of Edward I.[6] This king steadily increased the strength of the Navy. In 1294 and 1295 galleys were built by him at York, Southampton, Lynn, Newcastle and Ipswich, of which at least two pulled 120 oars apiece. Perhaps the experiment was conclusive for, neither as regards number or size do such ever occur again. Although Edward III had one or two built, most of those he employed were temporarily hired from the Genoese or from Aquitainean ports, and the total number bore a very small proportion to the sailing vessels in his fleets. The records of the first years of Edward II show that the crown possessed at least eleven vessels, all sailing ships, but the circumstances of the reign were not conducive to the growth of a Royal Navy, although there seem to have been ten ships in 1322.

Edward III:—Relative estimation of Army and Navy.

A far-seeing statesmanship in relation to the political value of sea-power has been attributed to Edward III on the strength of the victories of 1340 and 1350, and of two lines of a poem, written nearly a century later, referring to the gold noble of 1344.[7] This view assigns to Edward a knowledge, in the modern sense, of ‘the influence of sea-power on history’ greater than that possessed by such a statesman as Edward I, and a policy in connection with maritime matters of which the results, at anyrate, were directly the opposite of his intentions. The claim to be lord of the narrow seas was not a new one, and was as much and merely a title of dignity as any other of the sovereign’s verbal honours, not following the actual enforcement of ownership but consequent to the fact of the channel lying between England and Normandy.[8] And it was a title also claimed by France. There is no sign in the policy of the early kings of any perception of the value of a navy as a militant instrument like an army, or any sense of the importance of a real continuity in its maintenance and use. Society was based on a military organisation, but there was no place in that organisation for the Navy except as a subsidiary and dependent force. Fleets were called into being to transport soldiery abroad, to keep open communications, or to meet an enemy already at sea, but the real work of conquest was always held to be the duty of the knights and archers they carried from one country to another. There is no understanding shewn of the ceaseless pressure a navy is capable of exercising, and the disbandment of all, or the greater part, of the fleet was usually the first step which followed the disembarkation of troops or a successful fleet action. In an age when the land transit of goods was hampered by innumerable disadvantages, the position of England, dominating the natural way of communication between the prosperous cities of the north and their customers, was one of splendid command had its far-reaching political possibilities been realised. That they did not comprehend a function only understood many generations later cannot be made a subject of censure, but it has a distinct bearing on the question of Edward’s superiority in this matter to his predecessors and successors. In the same way as theirs the methods of Edward III were directed to conquests by land, and, once the troops were transported or an opposing fleet actually in existence was crushed, the Channel was left as bare of protection to merchantmen, and as destitute of any power capable of enforcing the reputed sovereignty of the narrow seas, as it remained down to the days of the Commonwealth. Beyond the fact that in 1340 and 1350 Edward commanded in person, where his predecessors had been represented by deputies, his action in relation to the Royal Navy differs in no respects from theirs. The gold noble of 1344, into which so much meaning has been read, was struck in combination with the people of Flanders for political and trading purposes, and in connection with Edward’s intrigues to obtain their financial and military support. It is noteworthy that in December 1339, six months before the battle of Sluys, Flanders, Brabant, and Hainault, agreed that a common coinage should be struck, and this, in all probability, marks the first inception of the noble when Edward realised the purposes to which a common coinage for England and the Low Countries might be made to work. In 1343 the Commons petitioned for a gold coin to run equally in England and Flanders and thus strengthened the king’s purpose. But the ship on this coin, the noble, was obviously an afterthought since the florin, the first issue of the same year, called in on account of its unpopularity, bore the royal leopard on the whole and half noble and the royal crest on the quarter one; if therefore the king meant all that is supposed to be implied by the device it occurred to him very suddenly and subsequent to the first, and deliberately thought out, issue.[9] All that the writer of the Libel of English Policie says is that, in 1436, the noble proves to him four things. Further reasons, in relation to other passages of the poem, will be adduced on a later page to show that his work is only one more instance among the many in which individual and unofficial thinkers have been in advance of the statesmanship of their age and whose views, ignored by their contemporaries have become the accepted opinions of a subsequent period.

Edward III:—Commercial policy in relation to shipping.

The commercial policy of Edward III was emphatically not one of protection to English shipping, being a nearer approach to free trade than existed for centuries after his death. During the greater part of his reign the needs in ships for his campaigns were supplied from the accumulations of the reigns of Edward I and Edward II, the second of which was not necessarily disastrous to commerce. But when these were exhausted it was found that a system which had aimed merely at obtaining a highest possible yearly revenue for the purpose of supporting armies had, whether or not in itself, fiscally praiseworthy resulted in the ruin of English shipping. In 1372 and 1373, the Commons complained of the destruction of shipping and the decay of the port towns, and it is collateral evidence of Edward’s real lack of insight into the value of a marine—its slow creation and its easy loss—that some of the causes to which they attributed these circumstances were directly due to a reckless indifference to, or ignorance of, the only conditions which could render a merchant marine, subject to conscription, possible.[10] Vessels, they said, were pressed long before they were really wanted, and until actually taken into the service of the crown, ships were idle and seamen had to be paid and supported at the expense of the owners; the effect of royal ordinances which had driven many shipowners to other occupations, and the decrease in the number of sailors due to these and other causes, formed further articles of remonstrance.[11]

The year which saw the decease of the ‘Lord of the Sea,’ was marked by the sack of Rye, Lewes, Hastings, Yarmouth, Dartmouth, Plymouth, Folkestone, Portsmouth, and the Isle of Wight, a sufficient commentary on the title, and an adequate illustration of the system which had left absolutely no navy, royal or mercantile, capable of protecting the coasts.

Payment of hired ships.

In 1378 the Commons again attributed the defenceless state of the kingdom not so much to the late king’s impressment of ships as to the losses and poverty caused by non-payment, or delay in payment for their use, and lack of compensation for waste of fittings and stores. Every meeting of Parliament was signalised by fresh representations, and that of 1380 obtained a promise that owners should receive 3s 4d a ‘ton-tight’ for every three months, commencing from the day of arrival at the port of meeting; in 1385 this allowance was reduced to two shillings, and remained at that rate, notwithstanding frequent petitions for a return to the older amount, for at least half a century.[12] It is not known when the payment of 3s 4d a ton was first introduced, nor on what principle it was calculated, but, in 1416, the Commons said that it ran ‘from beyond the time of memory.’ The following petition, undated, but probably belonging to one of the early years of Henry IV, shows that it was older than the Edwards, and, incidentally, yields some interesting information:

‘To the very noble and very wise lords of this present Parliament very humbly supplicate all owners of ships in this kingdom. That whereas in the time of the noble King Edward and his predecessors, whenever any ship was commanded for service that the owner of such a ship took 3s 4d per ton-tight in the three months by way of reward for repair of the ship and its gear, and the fourth part of any prize made at sea, by which reward the shipping of this kingdom was then well maintained and ruled so that at that time, 150 ships of the Tower were available in the kingdom;[13] and since the decease of the noble King Edward, in the time of Richard, late King of England, the said reward was reduced to two shillings the ton-tight, and this very badly paid, so that the owners of such ships show no desire to keep up and maintain their ships, but have them lying useless; and by this cause the shipping of this kingdom is so diminished and deteriorated that there be not in all the kingdom more than 25 ships of the Tower.’[14]

They then beg a return to the old rates. We may gather from this document that, at some time during the reign of Edward III there were one hundred and fifty large fighting ships available, and there is some reason to believe that, both in number and size, the fourteenth and fifteenth century navy has been too much underrated when compared with that of the sixteenth century. At least one merchantman of the time of Edward III was of three hundred tons, others were of two hundred, and it will be shown that, in the middle of the fifteenth century, the number and tonnage of merchant vessels will compare favourably with any subsequent period up to, and in fact later, than the accession of Elizabeth.

The close of the xiv century:—The French Navy.

While, under Richard II, the guard of the seas was maintained with chequered success by hired ships, the French, under the able rule of Charles V, not only possessed a navy but had founded a dockyard at Rouen completely equipped according to the ideas of the age.[15] Thirteen galleys and two barges are mentioned in this account, with all the tools, fittings, and armament necessary for building, repairing, and equipment, and constituting a complete establishment such as did not exist in England until more than a century later. The accession of Charles VI, and the internal dissensions which culminated in Azincourt, determined an essay not again attempted on the Northern or Western coasts until the ministry of Richelieu.

Richard II and Henry IV.

The first Navigation Act,[16] ‘to increase the Navy of England which is now greatly diminished,’ by making it compulsory for English subjects to export and import goods in English ships, with a majority of the crews subjects of the English crown, can only be regarded as a suggestion of future legislation. In fact, it was practically annulled by a permissive amendment the following year. More disastrous to merchants than the losses due to warfare were the operations of the pirates who swarmed on the Northern Coasts of Europe during these centuries, and who appear to have become unbearably successful during the reign of Henry IV. This king appears to have cared little for his titular sovereignty of the seas, ignored every petition of Parliament for redress of the especial grievances affecting shipowners, and used such fleets as he got together, as his predecessors had used them, simply as a means of transporting troops to make weak and useless attacks at isolated points. Tunnage and poundage had been first levied by an order of Council in 1347, and year by year following, by agreement with the merchants; from 1373 it became a parliamentary grant of two shillings on the tun of wine, and sixpence in the pound on merchandise, for the protection of the narrow seas and the support of the Navy.[17] The tunnage and poundage now given was, if applied at all to naval purposes, not used with the least success. It was then, in May 1406, together with the fourth part of a subsidy on wools, handed over to a committee of merchants, who undertook the duty of clearing the seas for a period of sixteen months. The arrangement between the king and the committee was quite an amicable one, but in October of the same year Henry withdrew from the agreement, and it is doubtful whether the members of the committee ever received any portion of their outlay.

Growth of Trade and Shipping.

If the Norman Conquest gave the first great impulse to English over-sea trade, the events of the close of the fourteenth and first half of the fifteenth centuries may be held to mark the second important era in the development of merchant shipping by the opening up of fresh markets. Hitherto the products of the countries of the Baltic had been mainly obtained through the agency of the merchants of the Hansa, who had their chief factory in London, with branches at York, Lynn, and Boston. In the same way English exports found their way to the north only through Hansa merchants and in Hansa ships. For two centuries they had held a monopoly of the purchase and export of the products of the north, by virtue of treaties with, and payments made to, the northern powers, and an unlicensed, but very effective, warfare waged on all ships which ventured to trade through the Sound. But the war against Waldemar III of Denmark, the depredations of the organised pirate republic known as the Victual brothers, followed by the struggle with Eric XIII of Sweden, were times of disorder lasting through more than half a century, from which the Hansa emerged nominally victorious but with the loss of the prestige and vigour that had made its monopoly possible. While it was fighting to uphold its pretensions the Dutch and English had both seized the opportunity of forcing their way into the Baltic, and when, in 1435, the Hansa extorted from its antagonists a triumphant peace the real utility of the privileges thus obtained had passed away for ever.

Coincidently with these events economic changes were taking place at home which, by favouring the accumulation of capital, had also a direct influence on the demand for shipping. The temporary renewal of possession in the coast line of France was a spur to trade with it in English bottoms. The growth of the towns, the necessity the townsmen experienced for the profitable use of surplus capital, and the slow change, which commenced under Edward III, in the national industry from wool exportation to cloth manufacture, were all elements which found ultimate expression in increased export and import in native shipping.[18] Possibly the most important factor in the change was the commencing manufacture of English cloth, instead of selling the wool to foreign merchants and buying it back from them in the finished state.[19] During the reign of Henry V, English ships were stretching down to Lisbon and the coast of Morocco, and British fishermen were plying their industry off Iceland. Not long afterwards the first English trader entered the Mediterranean, and the numerous entries in the records relating to merchant vessels show the flourishing state of trade. By example, and doubtless by persuasion, Henry himself assisted in the renewal.

Henry V:—The Royal Ships.

Under Henry’s rule the crown navy was increased till in magnitude it exceeded the naval power of any previous reign; the character of the vessels, bought or built, shows that they were provided for seagoing purposes rather than the mere escort or transport of troops which had been the object of preceding kings, and which object would have been equally well served by the hired merchantmen that had contented them. The king himself hired at various times many foreign vessels, but purely for transport purposes.

The following, compiled from the accounts of Catton and Soper, successively keepers of the ships, is a more complete list of Henry’s navy than has yet been printed:—[20]

It will be noticed that there is no galley in this list; one is referred to in the accounts, but had apparently ceased to exist, her fittings being used for other ships. Oars occur among the equipments, but probably in most cases, for the ‘great boat’ which with a ‘cokk’ was attached to each vessel. Few cannon were carried—if the schedules represent the full armament—the Holigost six, the Thomas four, the George and Grace Dieu three each, the Katrine and Andrew two. The inventories of stores at this date show very little difference from the preceding century in the character of tackle and gear, nor is there any great alteration for some two centuries from 1350. English vessels were, on an average, smaller at this time than either Italian, Spanish, or German. The tomb of Simon of Utrecht, a Hansa admiral who died in 1437, has a sculpture of a three-masted vessel; if any of Henry’s were three-masted they were certainly the first of that class in our service. The statement of Stow, however, that the vessels captured in 1417 ‘were of marvellous greatnesse, yea, greater than ever were seen in those parts before that time,’ is, if patriotic, as absurdly incorrect as some other of his naval information. The payments for hired ships show that vessels of 400 and 450 tons, belonging to Dantzic and other ports, were taken up for the transport of troops and, putting aside the tonnage of some of the English ships, there is no reason to suppose that the North German traders were the largest of their kind. The prizes of 1416 were Spanish and Genoese carracks in French pay, captured by the Duke of Bedford in the action of 15th August off the mouth of the Seine;[22] those of 1417 by the Earl of Huntingdon in that of 25th July.

The tonnage of the English built ships shows that there was now a well marked tendency to increase in size, probably due to Henry’s initiative. The usual measurement, in the fifteenth century, of a barge was about sixty or eighty tons, and of a balinger[23] about forty. But a man-of-war balinger might be much larger as in the Nicholas of the Tower, the George, and the Ane. There is very little information as to the conditions under which Henry’s ships were built. The Trinity Royal, Grace Dieu, Holigost and Gabriel were certainly constructed at Southampton, the two last named under the supervision of William Soper, then merely a merchant of the town, who remained many years unpaid the money advanced by him for that purpose; in April 1417 he was given an annuity of twenty marks a year, doubtless by way of reward.[24] The Thomas of the Tower was rebuilt at Deptford in 1420; the Jesus, and the Gabriel Harfleur were rebuilt at Smalhithe, in Kent, but in years unknown. The hulls of several of the ships were sold or given away before the end of the reign.

At one time the king seems to have commenced building abroad. There is a letter of 25th April 1419 from John Alcetre, his agent at Bayonne, describing the slow progress of the work upon a ship there and the sharp practices of the mayor and his associates who appear to have undertaken the contract. Alcetre anticipated that four or five years would elapse before its completion, and it is quite certain that it was never included in the English navy. The most noteworthy points in the details given, are the lengths over all and of the keel—respectively 186 and 112 feet—so that the fore and aft rakes, together, were 74 feet, just about two-thirds of the keel length.

Henry V:—The Grace Dieu.

The only one of Henry’s ships of which the name is still remembered is the Grace Dieu, and she was, if not the largest, probably the best equipped ship yet built in England. She was not constructed under the superintendence of either Catton, the official head of the administration, or of Soper, and with two balingers, the Fawcon and the Valentine, and some other work cost £4917, 15s 3½d.[25] Besides other wood 2591 oaks and 1195 beeches were used among the three vessels and for the various details mentioned, and it is to be remarked that, although the Grace Dieu must have represented the latest improvements, she, like the others, appears to have had only one ‘great mast’ and one ‘mesan,’[26] but two bowsprits. These carried no sails and were probably more of the nature of ‘bumpkins’ than spars. She was supplied with six sails and eleven bonnets, but their position when in use is not described, and some of them were perhaps spare ones. The order to commence her was placed in Robert Berd’s hands in December 1416, when Catton was still keeper and Soper was engaged in naval administration. It would appear to be entirely subversive of discipline and responsibility to distribute the control among three men, each of whom possessed sufficient position and independence to ensure friction, and we can only guess that the motive was pecuniary.

The Administration.

The first keeper of the ships under Henry V was William Catton by Letters Patent of 18th July 1413, who from the third to the eighth year of the reign of Henry IV had been bailiff of Winchelsea, and who subsequently held the bailiffship of Rye conjointly with his naval office. He was succeeded from 3rd February 1420 by the before-mentioned William Soper. Berd’s name only occurs in connection with the Grace Dieu. The river Hamble, on Southampton water, was then, and down to the close of the century, the favourite roadstead for the royal ships lying up, and was defended at its entrance by a tower of wood which cost £40,[27] a storehouse with a workshop[28] was also built at Southampton, and one existed in London near the Tower. If the vessels were not built in royal yards or by royal workmen we may infer the control of a crown officer from the fact of a pension of fourpence a day having been granted, when broken down in health, to John Hoggekyns, ‘master-carpenter of the king’s ships,’ and builder of the Grace Dieu, the first known of the long line of master shipwrights reaching down to the present century.

The fittings of ships do not differ materially from those quoted by Sir N. H. Nicolas under Edward III; we find a ‘bitakyll’[29] covered with lead, and pumps were now in use. Cordage was chiefly from Bridport, but occasionally from Holland, and Oleron canvas was bought abroad. Flags were of St Marie, St Edward, Holy Trinity, St George, the Swan, Antelope, Ostrich Feathers, and the king’s arms. The Trinity Royal had a painted wooden leopard with a crown of copper gilt, perhaps as a figure head. The largest anchor of the Jesus weighed 2224lb. The balingers, besides being fully rigged, carried sometimes forty or fifty oars, twenty-four feet long apiece, for use in calms or to work to windward. But even a vessel like the Trinity Royal had forty oars and a large one called a ‘steering skull,’ to assist the rudder we may suppose. The fore and stern stages were now becoming permanent structures. Two ‘somerhuches’ were built on the Holigost and Trinity Royal. Somerhuche was the summer-castle or poop of the early sixteenth century, and the cost, £4, 11s 3d, equivalent now to some £70, seems too great for a mere timber staging.[30] Sails were sometimes decorated with the king’s arms or badges, but probably only in the chief ships and for holiday use.

Henry VI:—The Sale of the Navy.

After the death of Henry V one of the first orders of the Council was to direct the sale of the bulk of the Royal Navy.[31] Modern writers who hold that the spirit of the ‘Libel of English Policie’ was that representing the ideas of the time must explain this startling contrast between fact and theory. The truth is that the ‘Libel’ described, not existing conditions, but those that the writer desired should exist; the whole poem is a lament over past glories and an exhortation to retrieve the maritime position of the country, but the poet did not look at what lay behind a couple of victories at sea and the capture of Calais.[32] After the real triumphs of Henry V and the memories associated with Edward III, the state of things in the Channel doubtless appeared very evil, although they were hardly worse during the reign of Henry VI than was usual, and not nearly so bad as under James I and Charles I. The poem was really an attempt to obtain continuity in naval policy, a thing of which the meaning is, even now, scarcely understood, and which in 1436, when the man-at-arms was the ideal fighting unit, had as little chance of being accepted and carried out as though it had preached religious toleration.

Changed character of the Keeper’s appointment.

By Letters Patent of 5th March 1423, William Soper, merchant of Southampton, a collector of customs and subsidies at that port, and mayor of the town in 1416 and 1424, was again appointed ‘Keeper and Governor’ of the King’s ships, under the control[33] of Nicholas Banastre, comptroller of the customs there; no such clause existed in the patent of 1420. For himself and a clerk Soper was allowed £40 a year, but Banastre was not given any salary. The appointment is noteworthy for more than one reason. It is the first, and apparently the only, instance in which a keeper of the ships acted under the supervision of another officer little his superior in the official hierarchy, and it, with the previous patent of 1420, marks the commencement of a custom frequent enough afterwards of naming well-to-do merchants to posts in the administrative service of the navy. Besides greater business capacity such a man was useful to the government in that he was expected to advance money, or purchase stores, on his own credit when the crown finance was temporarily strained. There is little doubt that Soper’s appointment was of this character, and that his salary, was really by way of interest on money advanced by him for the construction of the Holigost and Gabriel, and for other purposes, years before. The first named ship was built in 1414, the other perhaps later, but it was not until 1430 that he received the sum which represented the final instalment of their cost.[34] By the will of Henry V the whole of his personal possessions were ordered to be sold and the proceeds handed over to his executors to pay his debts. They received, in 1430, one thousand marks from the sale of the men-of-war, the remainder of the money obtained from this source being retained by Soper in settlement of his claims dating from 1414.

The Navy a personal possession of the King.

The transaction is interesting both as showing that the Council did not consider the men-of-war—if compulsorily put up to auction under the will—of sufficient importance to buy in, and as illustrating the fact that the royal ships were personal possessions of the sovereign in which the nation had no interest of ownership. Tunnage and poundage had been granted for ‘the safe keeping of the sea,’ but the application of the money was at the discretion of the king. He might use it to pay hired merchantmen or he might build ships of his own with it, or with the revenue of the crown estates to fulfil the same purpose; in neither case had Parliament any voice in the employment of the money. While calling upon the Cinque Ports to fulfil the conditions of their charters and impressing merchant ships throughout the country, he might keep his own navy idle; there was no national right to profit by its existence. The tunnage and poundage grant did not interfere with the king’s title to seize every ship in the kingdom, and was only an attempt to secure payment to owners, and the wages and victualling of the crews; it in no way placed upon him the responsibility of providing ships, the supply of which was ensured by the unrestricted exercise of the prerogative, and that prerogative was not used any less frequently because of the existence of the tunnage and poundage. As years passed on and the power of the trading classes increased, and the need for specialised fighting ships grew greater, they made their ethical right to the use of the navy for ordinary purposes felt in practice and implicitly recognised by the crown. Hence the distinction became less and less marked but the note of possessive separation between the ‘King’s Navy Royal’ and the trading navy which was, legally, also the king’s and is so referred to in sixteenth century papers, is to be traced to as late as 1649. Since that date the title ‘Royal Navy,’ although associated with our proudest national memories is, historically, a misnomer as applied to the navy of the state.

Piracy.

In 1425, Parliament raised tunnage and poundage to three shillings on the tun of wine and one shilling in the pound on merchandise, at which rate it continued. Probably very little of it was applied to the specific purpose for which it was given, the struggle for the crown of France absorbing every available item of revenue for the support of armies; in 1450 one of the articles against the Duke of Suffolk was that he had caused money given for the defence of the realm and safety of the sea to be otherwise employed. There still remains a sufficient number of complaints and petitions to show to what little purpose our maritime forces were used. In 1432, the Commons formally declared that Danish ships had plundered those of Hull, to the amount of £5000, and others to £20,000 in one year, and requested that letters of reprisal might be issued.[35] Such attempts to clear the Channel as the government recognised sometimes bore a suspicious resemblance to piracy legalised by success. In 1435, Wm. Morfote of Winchelsea petitioned for a pardon, having been, as he euphemistically put it, ‘in Dover Castle a long time and afterward come oute as wele as he myghte,’ and then, ‘of his gode hertly intente,’ had been at sea with 100 men to attack the king’s enemies. He found it difficult to obtain provisions which seems to have been his only motive in asking for a pardon. The answer to the petition, while granting the pardon for ‘an esy fyne,’ more plainly calls him an escaped prisoner.[36] He was member for Winchelsea in 1428.

Although Parliament was continually complaining of foreign piracy there can be no doubt that English seamen had nothing to learn, in that occupation, from their rivals. ‘Your shipping you employ to make war upon the poor merchants and to plunder and rob them of their merchandise, and you make yourselves plunderers and pirates,’ said a contemporary writer.[37] By a statute[38] of Henry V, the breaking of truce and safe conduct was made high treason, and a conservator of safe conducts, who was to be a person of position enjoying not less than £40 in land by the year, was to be appointed in every port. Under Henry VI, safe conducts were freely granted to neutrals to load goods in enemies’ ships, and protests were made by the Commons about their number and that they were not enrolled of record in the court of chancery and so led to loss and litigation.

Henry VI:—Merchant Shipping.

Notwithstanding the normal drawbacks of piracy and warfare, the over-sea trade of the kingdom seems to have been steadily expanding. A branch of traffic which employed many vessels, and must have been a valuable school of preparation for the longer voyages of the next generation, was what may be called, the pilgrim transport trade. The shrine of St James of Compostella was then the favourite objective of English external pilgrimage and there are innumerable licenses to shipowners to carry passengers out and home. In 1427-8 twenty-two licenses were granted, and in 1433-4 the number reached 65;[39] in 1445, 2100 persons were carried there and back.[40] Some of the licenses were granted to Soper, who was engaged in the business as well as in ordinary trade to Spain, and it is to be remarked that they were sometimes issued during the winter months—January, February, March,—showing that English seamanship was outgrowing the tradition of summer voyages. In 1449 we have the first sign of the bounty system on merchant ships of large size which, in the next century, systematised into five shillings a ton for those of 100 tons and upwards. John Taverner of Hull, had built the Grace Dieu, and in that year, was allowed certain privileges in connexion with lading the vessel in reward for his enterprise.[41] The document seems to imply that she was a new ship, but in 1444-5, she was exempted from the harbour dues at Calais because drawing too much water to enter the harbour,[42] and is probably referred to in 1442.[43]

There are two most valuable papers still existing which enable us to form some idea of the number and size of the merchantmen available for the service of the crown. The first of June 1439[44] is a list of payments for ships taken up for the transport of troops to Aquitaine, and is unfortunately mutilated in some places. Its contents may be thus classified:—

Twenty-two other vessels are of eighty tons, twenty of sixty, and six are under forty tons; in two cases the tonnage is not given, nine more are foreign including two from Bayonne, then an English possession, and ten entries are nearly altogether destroyed.

The next list, of 1451,[47] is also one of vessels impressed for an expedition to Aquitaine:—

One vessel of one hundred and forty, one of two hundred, and one of two hundred and twenty tons belong to places unnamed, and there are twenty-three ships of from fifty to ninety tons.

There are, then, at least thirty-six ships in the 1439, and fifty in the 1451, list of one hundred tons and upwards. It must be remembered that they are not schedules of the total available reserves drawn up during a naval war, with an enemy’s fleet at sea, or under the pressure of a threatened invasion, but merely represent the number of vessels required to transport a certain military force, and form only a proportion—whether large or small we know not—of the maritime strength of the country. Certainly the numbers for Bristol did not represent the total resources of that city, and Newcastle and Yarmouth, to name only two flourishing ports, do not occur in either list. Assuming the method of tonnage measurement to have been the same during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries we have here registers which will compare favourably, both in number and size of vessels, with those of the earlier twenty years of the reign of Elizabeth,[49] and imply a naval force superior in extent to anything existing during the greater part of the sixteenth century. There is contemporary evidence from a French author, one therefore not likely to be more than just to England, as to the flourishing condition of the merchant marine during the reign of Henry VI.[50] The author makes the English herald claim that his countrymen ‘are more richly and amply provided at sea, with fine and powerful ships than any other nation of Christendom, so that they are kings of the sea, since none can resist them; and they who are strongest on the sea may call themselves kings.’ The answer of the French herald, too long to quote, after admitting that ‘you have a great number of fine ships,’ is only devoted to showing that France possesses all the natural advantages which go to the formation of maritime power, and that the French king, ‘when he pleases,’ would become supreme at sea. Obviously down to the time of the loss of the English conquests in France, and the outbreak of the wars of the Roses, the wave of prosperity which commenced with the century had not altogether spent its force.

Great or small, the progress was, at anyrate, not a bounty-fed one, since shipowners were experiencing the usual difficulties in obtaining payment merely for the use of their vessels. The bill for ships provided in 1450, came to £13,000, nearly one fourth of the yearly revenue of the crown, but the Treasury, exhausted by the ceaseless demands made upon it by the garrisons in France could not pay.[51] The king, therefore, appealed to his creditors and has left it on record that as £13,000 was a sum

‘Wyche myght not esely be perveyed at that tyme wherefore we comauded oure trusty and welbelovid Richard Greyle of London and others to labour and entrete the seyd maistres, possessores, and maryners for agrement of a lasse sume, the wych maistres, possessores, and maryners by laboar and trete made with hem accordyng to our seid comaundement agreed hem to take and reseve the sume of £6,200 in and for ful contentacyon of their seid dutees; and bycause the seid £6,200 myght not at that tyme esely be ffurnysshed in redy mony we graunted to ye seid maistres and possessores by oure several letters patentes conteynyng diveise sumys of money amountyng to the sume of £2,884 that they, their deputees or attornies shold have to reseyve in theire owne handes almaner of custumes and subsidies of wolle, wollefell and other merchaundises comyng into dyverse portes.’[52]

This was perhaps all they obtained of the £13,000, and such incidents, of which this was doubtless only one, explain the discontent of the trading classes with the house of Lancaster. Shipowners and merchants might be trusted, in the long run, to take care of their own interests, but the seamen were more helpless, and it may be supposed that if employers had to accept less than a fourth of their dues the men did not fare better if as well. Their protests were sometimes neither tardy nor voiceless. The murder of Bishop Adam de Moleyns at Portsmouth on July 9, 1450, is directly attributed to an attempt to force sailors to accept a smaller amount than they had earned, and the bias towards the house of York, shown by the maritime population generally, may be ascribed to this cause.

Henry VI:—The Royal Ships hired out.

Henry V had not considered it beneath the dignity of the crown to hire out his ships to merchants for voyages to Bordeaux and elsewhere when they were not required for service; the Council of Regency, therefore did not hesitate to follow the same course. In 1423 the Holigost was lent to some Lombard merchants for a journey to Zealand and back for £20; and the Valentine from Southampton to Calais for £10.[53] As the Holigost was of 760 tons a rate of £300, in modern values, or about eight shillings a ton for a voyage probably occupying nearly two months, cannot be considered excessive, and does not imply any great fear of sea risks, whether from man or the elements.

And sold.

In the meantime, in virtue of the Council order of March 3, 1423, the destruction of a navy progressed merrily. During 1423 the following vessels were sold to merchants of London, Dartmouth, Bristol, Southampton, and Plymouth, and, from the prices, many of them must have been in good condition[54]:—

Anchors and other stores were sold and, in 1424, the storehouse and forge at Southampton went for £66, 13s 4d; if there were to be no ships there was certainly no reason to keep up any establishment for their repairs. In the same year eight other vessels, mostly described as worn out, followed their sisters. They were sold for very low prices and the description of their state may be exact, although two at least were nearly new, and what we know of administrative methods in later times does not warrant an implicit faith, especially under a Council of Regency. When a 550 ton ship, like the Marie Sandwich, brought only £13, it must be assumed that she was almost worthless even for breaking up, or that the proceedings were not devoid of collusion.

Henry VI:—Subsequent Naval Administration.

We have no record of the expenditure for the first years of Henry’s reign but, from 31st August 1427 to 31st August 1433, the sum of £809, 10s 2d was spent by Soper for naval purposes, being an average of £134, 18s 4d a year.[55] The Trinity Royal, Holigost, Grace Dieu, and Jesus were still in existence, but dismantled and unrigged at Bursledon. Apparently there were no officers attached to them, or at Southampton, of sufficient experience to assume responsibility, since Peter Johnson, master mariner of Sandwich, was paid for coming to superintend the removal of the masts of the Grace Dieu. The Trinity Royal was so far unseaworthy and useless as to be imbedded in the mud of the river Hamble, and fifteen Genoese and other foreign master mariners were employed about dismasting her. There seems at this time to have been some purpose of rebuilding the Jesus, because she was taken to a dock lately prepared at Southampton, and, of the whole amount before mentioned, £165, 6s 10d was laid out in unrigging her, towing to Southampton, expenses of dock, etc. As the sails and stores of the vessels sold in 1423-4 were still under Soper’s care, a new storehouse, 160 feet long and 14 feet broad, was built at Southampton. That at London had not been closed in 1423, possibly because it may have been within the precincts of the Tower, and much of the equipment of the four great ships still remaining was kept in it.

During the four years ending with the 31st August 1437, £96, 0s 2½d was received from the Exchequer and £72, 1s 6d from the sale of cordage, etc., belonging to the ships;[56] the expenditure was £143, 6s 5¾d. For the two years ending 31st August 1439, the outlay on the Royal Navy was £8, 9s 7d. The ‘Libel of English Policie,’ which is now held to have represented the views of the governing statesmen was therefore given to the world when the estimates for the crown navy averaged £4, 4s 6½d a year.

Economy had been further exercised by the discharge of the shipkeepers as superfluous, and possibly one of the results of this careful thrift was the destruction of the Grace Dieu by fire, while lying on the mud at Bursledon, during the night of the 7th January 1439.[57] Some loose fittings were saved and 15,400lbs. of iron recovered from the burnt wreck. Soper’s next account, from 31st August 1439, ends on 7th April 1442, during which time he received £3, 10s from the Exchequer and £3, 0s 11¾d for 1222lbs. of lead from the ships. The disbursements were £4, 16s 4d, chiefly incurred in breaking up the cabins[58] on the Trinity Royal and Holigost and taking away the timber; the Jesus appears to have been too far perished to experience even this fate.[59]

From 7th April 1442, Soper was succeeded by Richard Clyvedon, a yeoman of the crown[60] by Letters Patent, dated 26th March 1442, but at the smaller fee of one shilling a day which had been received by Soper’s predecessors. In all probability Soper’s salary was very irregularly, if at all paid, and an official outlay which averaged some £1, 10s a year, offered few opportunities in the way of perquisites to a prosperous merchant. For five years and ninety days, from 7th April 1442 until 6th July 1447, the receipts were £61, 2s 7d, all from the sale of stores originally belonging to the vessels sold in 1423-4; no expenses of any sort had to be met since the bare hulks of the Jesus, Trinity, and Holigost, still existing were left to take care of themselves.[61] The next and last accounts continue for the following four years and nine months to the 7th April 1452, when they cease. The amount received was £73, 11s 4½d, again altogether from the sale of stores; the expenditure was £16, 12s 10d, mostly referable to the cost of a chain fixed across the Hamble.[62] As only the rotting hulls of the Trinity and Holigost now remained, it is difficult to estimate its value so far as they were concerned, but for the first time for nearly forty years, there were now fears of French reprisals.

Henry VI:—The Substitutes of the Navy.

It must not, however, be supposed that because the Royal Navy was not kept up, no measures were taken to protect maritime interests. The predecessors of Henry V had employed a combination of royal and impressed ships; Henry V apparently intended to increase the crown navy until it was powerful enough to enable him to rely on it for every purpose but that of transport. Rightly or wrongly the Protector and Council adopted a different system and one which was continued through all the political changes of the reign. Instead of keeping up a royal force, or of pressing ships and placing them under the crown officers, indentures were entered into now and again with certain persons supposed to be competent to provide under their own command an agreed number of ships and men to keep the sea for a specified time. In favour of this plan it was perhaps argued that it was cheaper than any other, and that it should prove sufficiently effective as the coast of France was either in English occupation or belonged to a neutral or ally in the Duke of Brittany, and that an expensive Royal Navy was unnecessary when a French navy was impossible and only the ordinary rovers of the sea had to be met and destroyed. Against it might be urged that, besides the delay inevitable to the process of collecting merchantmen at a given rendezvous, it was the object of the persons undertaking the work to make a profit on the bargain and that they would probably minimise effort, time, and expense, as much as practicable. So far as the scanty evidence enables us to judge it is possible that, until the loss of the French coastline, the plan, had it been carried on under the authoritative supervision of an able and honest crown official, might have worked successfully. Doubtless the economy promised was the final argument because, once the Royal Navy had been suffered to perish, there was never throughout the reign any financial possibility of restoring it. By 1433 the royal expenses were nearly double the revenue; and the Lord Treasurer, Cromwell, told the King, ‘nowe daily many warrantis come to me of paiementes ... of moche more than all youre revenus wold come to thowe they wer not assigned afore; whereas hit aperith by your bokes of record which have been showed that they have been assigned nygh for this eleven yeere next folowyng.’[63]

As many of the debts of Henry V for hire of ships and men’s wages were still unpaid, the conditions were evidently not favourable to the direct action of the crown either in replacing its own navy or taking ships into pay. An intermediary of recognised position to whom a payment was usually at once made on account, doubtless inspired more confidence in owners and men. Although not the first in point of time, the commission of Sir John Speke by an agreement of 2nd May 1440, is noticeable in that the service was apparently the first in which the men were paid and victualled at a weekly rate, one and sixpence a week wages and the same for victuals.[64] For at least two centuries the rate had been threepence a day, with usually an additional sixpence a week ‘reward,’ and this reduction of pay seems to imply that there were plenty of men to be obtained. In 1442 the Commons themselves arranged the period—2nd February to 11th November—during which a fleet was to be at sea, and even designated the ships which were to serve, together with the allowances to officers and men.[65] There were to be eight ships, all merchantmen, manned by 1200 men, and each of the eight was to be attended by a barge and balinger having respectively 80 and 40 men apiece. There were also four pinnaces. One of the ships is the Nicholas of the Tower of Bristol. ‘Of the Tower’ was the man-of-war mark, and this is the only one found in the lists of merchantmen of the century. The Nicholas of the Tower of Henry V was sold to some purchasers belonging to Dartmouth, but may have passed into Bristol ownership. It was the crew of this vessel, usually described as a man-of-war, who seized and executed the Duke of Suffolk on his passage to Flanders when exiled in 1450.

The seamen’s pay, two shillings a month, if not an error of entry, can only be explained by the expectation of a liberal division of prize-money, one half of which was to be shared among masters, quartermasters, soldiers and sailors. The other half was divided into thirds, of which two went to the owners and one to the captains and under-captains. The victualling was now one and twopence a week. The captains and under-captains were military officers; there was no ship-captain in the modern sense although the master, whose pay was sixpence a day, was his nearest equivalent. The conditions were beginning to slowly change during this century, but hitherto the fighting had been done on board ship by the soldiers embarked for the purpose. The duty of the sailors, whether officers or men, was only to handle the vessel at sea or in action. The fleet does not appear to have put to sea till August, although the undertakers, Sir William Ewe, Miles Stapylton, and John Heron, were receiving money for its preparation in June.[66] In 1445 the charges for the passage of Margaret of Anjou when she came to share the crown do not show the same tendency to lower wages; masters were still paid sixpence a day, but the men received one and ninepence a week and their sixpence ‘reward,’ and pages (boys) one and three halfpence a week.[67] During the winter of 1444-5 a Cinque Ports squadron was in commission from September to the following April, and this must be almost the last instance of the performance of the ancient service of the ports in a complete manner. Twenty-six vessels were provided—four from Hastings, seven from Winchelsea, four from Rye, Lydd, and Romney, two from Hythe, three from Dover, five from Sandwich, and one from Faversham, numbers which perhaps indicate the relative importance of the towns at this time. The whole cost of the fleet was only £672, 9s 1½d, while Margaret’s journey was considered worth £1810, 9s 7½d.[68] The tonnage of the Cinque Ports vessels is not given, but that they were of no great size may be inferred from the small number of men in each.

In 1449 Alexander Eden and Gervays Clifton, afterwards Treasurer of Calais, were entrusted with the care of the Channel and, although their deeds have left no mark in history, they were considered so satisfactory at the time that, in the following year, Clifton was granted a special reward of four hundred marks for his good service. In 1450 Clifton and Eden were again performing the same duty and, in 1452, Clifton and Sir Edward Hull. Certainly there was now every reason for redoubled vigilance. Between 1449 and 1451 the English Conquests in France had gone like a dream; only Calais was left, and that was considered to be imminently threatened. Notwithstanding loans, mortgages of revenues, and money obtained by pawning the crown jewels, the government owed £372,000, while the receipts from the crown estates were not more than £5000 a year, and the yearly charge of the household alone was £23,000. If we add to these facts a saintly king, and an inefficient government, the first mutterings of the storm of civil war, and a foe, exhausted it is true, but eager for vengeance, we are able to partly picture the extent of the losses in honour and prosperity which made one of the first acts of the Duke of York, when created Protector on 27th March 1454, the appointment of a fresh commission to guard the seas. On the following 3rd April, the tunnage and poundage for three years was assigned to the Earls of Salisbury, Shrewsbury, Wiltshire, Worcester, and Oxford, the Lords Stourton and Fitzwalter, and Sir Robert Vere, for that purpose.[69] That immediate action might be taken a loan of £1000 was raised in the proportions of London £300, Bristol £150, Southampton £100, Norwich and Yarmouth £100, Ipswich, Colchester and Malden £100, York and Hull £100, New Sarum, Poole and Weymouth £50, Lynn £50, Boston £30, and Newcastle £20, to be repaid out of the tunnage and poundage.[70]

Henry VI:—The Civil War.

In 1455, the first battle of St Albans was fought and there was no further question of naval matters until Edward IV was on the throne. Naval power appears to have had but little influence on the result of the wars of the Roses, nor, except at one moment, is the command of the sea shown to be a factor of any great importance in the struggle. Such as it was the Yorkists possessed it, as owners and seamen both affected the white Rose, but the Lancastrians seem never to have experienced any difficulty in obtaining necessary shipping, when in power on land, during the years of war. In 1459, however, when York fled to Ireland, and Warwick to Calais, the attachment the seamen generally felt for the latter enabled him to hold his own there and in the Channel, which perhaps had no inconsiderable influence on the final issue. The naval weakness of the Lancastrians compelled them, instead of protecting the English coasts off the French ports, to issue commissions to array the posse comitatus in the maritime counties to repel invasion, and the sack of Sandwich in 1457, by the Seneschal de Brézé was an outcome of the changed conditions. But Warwick’s fight on 29th May 1458, with a fleet of Spanish ships of more than double his strength, and his capture of six of them, though little better than open piracy, was a sharp reminder that English seamen had not lost the spirit which animated their fathers, and, under the right conditions could still emulate their deeds.[71]

Unless the merchant marine had degenerated very rapidly there must have still been plenty of seagoing ships available in English ports, but the subjoined Treasury warrant perhaps indicates the difficulty the Lancastrians experienced in chartering ships and obtaining men. On 5th April 1460, Henry was once more king and his adversaries in exile, and an order of that date directs the officials of the Exchequer that ‘of suche money as is lent unto us by oure trewe subgittes for keping of the see and othire causes ye do paye to Julyan Cope capitaigne of a carake of Venise nowe beinge in the Tamyse £100 for a moneth, and to Julyan Ffeso capitayne of a nother carrake of Jeane[72] being at Sandwich £105 for a moneth the which two carrakes be entretid to doo us service.’ This is of course not conclusive because foreign vessels were at times hired by all our kings although English ships were available. But in June 1460 the Lancastrian Duke of Exeter, with a superior force, met Warwick at sea, but did not venture to attack him, being unable to trust his men. If, therefore, the men were not reliable there was good reason for the employment of foreigners.

Henry VI:—Results of the Contract System.

Administering the navy by contract had been tried and found wanting; it had never been resorted to before and was never used again. It had proved expensive and ineffective. There can be little doubt that had one half the money wasted in spasmodic efforts been devoted to the maintenance of a small but efficient royal force, always ready for action, the results, if less profitable to the intermediaries, would have been better for the nation. But before all and above all, whatever plan was adopted, there was necessary the hand to control and the brain to govern. The military organisation had been systematised for centuries and would go on working more or less easily whatever the personal qualities of the ruler. The Navy was not yet to the same extent an organised and permanent force, and its strength in any reign was still dependent on the initiative of the sovereign. Henry obtained canonisation at the expense of the lives and prosperity of his subjects, of his followers, and of his son. It had been better for them if he had possessed more of the sinful strength of a man and less of the flaccid virtue of a saint.

Henry VI:—Docks, etc.

There is nothing known positively of any improvements in the form or equipments of ships during this reign. There are no inventories in detail between the time of Henry V and the first years of Henry VII. But while in the first quarter of the fifteenth century we find that men-of-war possess, at the most, two masts and two sails, carry three or four guns, and one or two rudimentary bowsprits, at the close of the same century they are three or four masters with topmasts and topsails, bowsprit and spritsail, and conforming to the characteristics and type which remained generally constant for more than two centuries. It is quite certain that no sudden transition occurred; the changes came slowly with the passing years, but they have left no traces in the records. Whether docks were used in England before the fifteenth century may be doubtful, but the word is in common use in the reign of Henry V, although it did not denote what we now understand by such a structure. Its derivation from the Low Latin Diga a ditch, more exactly indicates its character, but the word was employed in more than one sense, and even after the construction of the first dry dock at Portsmouth in 1496, we find in the sixteenth century an arrangement of timber round a ship in the Thames, to protect her from the ice, called a dock. The Nomenclator Navalis of 1625 describes a wet dock as ‘any creek or place where we may cast in a ship out of the tideway in the ooze, and then when a ship hath made herself (as it were) a place to lie in we say the ship hath docked herself,’ a description which much more nearly portrays the dock of the fifteenth century than the dry dock of to-day. The following details of a dock for the Grace Dieu in July 1434 are perhaps the fullest to be found, and are taken from Soper’s accounts for that year:—[73]

‘And in money paid Thomas at Hythe, and 29 men labourers, for working about, making and constructing anew[74] of a fence called a hedge,[75] by the advice and ordinance of discreet and wise mariners, that is to say on the Wose,[76] near Brisselden aforesaid for the safe keeping and government of the King’s ship, and to the putting out and drying up of the sea water strongly running from the said King’s ship because the same is weak: and also that the said King’s ship may be kept more safely and easily in its said bed[77] called dok within the said enclosure; taking for this work made and built by the said ——[78] by agreement with him made in gross for the King’s advantage the said month of July 12th year xxviiiˢ viᵈ. And in money paid John Osmond, mariner, working about towing and bringing timber and branches with his two boats for the service of the same fence called an hegge[79] and there about the same employed iiˢ. And in money paid to the said Thomas at Hythe and to 29 other men his fellows for labouring and watching in the said ship of the King’s about towing and conducting the same from the same Brisselden where first she was in mooring and in rode to the said enclosure called Dok, and there to the placing, directing and guarding of the said ship of the King’s within its bed called Dok, and to the attending on the safe custody and superintendence of the same for three days, working day and night, besides expenses of victualling, taking for this work and occupation for the time aforesaid by agreement with him in that cause made in the King’s service in gross the month and year aforesaid xˢ.’

It may be inferred from this that the ship was brought to a suitable spot at a spring tide, possibly hauled still further aground by mechanical means, and when she had bedded herself, surrounded by timber and brushwood, perhaps puddled with clay. It will be seen[80] that in 1496 a drydock, the first known to have been made in England was constructed at Portsmouth, but we are without knowledge of the intermediate steps, or whether there were no intervening improvements, and the dock at Portsmouth copied in its completeness from one already existing abroad.

Measurement of Tonnage.

It has been pointed out that the value of the comparison between fifteenth and sixteenth century ships depends greatly on the method of measuring tonnage, and on that subject we have unfortunately but little information. The Bordeaux wine trade was the earliest, and for two centuries one of the most important branches of English maritime traffic; ships were therefore measured by their carrying capacity in Bordeaux cask. The first arithmetical rule for calculating a ship’s tonnage was devised in 1582, and that rule made the net or cask tonnage nearly the same as the average cargo. The unit of measurement was therefore the tun of wine in two butts of 252 gallons which in 1626 were estimated to occupy 60 cubic feet of space. The ancient wine gallon occupies 231 cubic inches and a tun measures strictly therefore only 33¹¹⁄₁₆ cubic feet, but the reckoning is by butts, and much waste of space must be allowed for in view of the usual shape of a cask. In 1626 certain experiments described on a later page were carried out on the Adventure of Ipswich, and it was found that while her burden in Bordeaux cask was 207 tons net, and 276 gross,[81] her tonnage by the Elizabethan rule was again almost exactly the same. If, in the fifteenth century, the shipper allowed 60 cubic feet for two butts of wine, and the allowance of 1626 was doubtless the outcome of long experience, there could have been but little difference between the ship of Henry VI, and indeed of earlier reigns, and that of the period of Elizabeth.

Edward IV:—General Policy.

There is even less material for the naval history of the reigns of Edward IV and Richard III than for that of Henry VI; if, as is probable, a naval administration existed, no records have come down to us. Edward seized the crown on 4th March 1461, but it was not until after the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471 that he could consider himself really and indubitably king. The uncertainty of his position during the intervening ten years must have prevented the systematic organisation of a naval department, but he was not remiss in, so far as was possible, holding the command of the Channel. Doubtless his experience with Warwick at Calais in 1459 had taught him its importance. Not long after Towton, an English fleet under the command of the Earls of Essex and Kent ravaged the coast of Brittany in revenge for the sympathy shown to Margaret by the reigning Duke. In 1462 another fleet was at sea, but we have no details of its action, although it was no doubt fitted for service to anticipate or deal with Margaret’s landing at Bamborough in October. An agreement dated 1st February 1462, placed naval affairs under the control of the Earl of Warwick for three years, the Earl’s salary being £1000 a year.[82] If Edward’s experience in 1459 had instructed him in the significance of the command of Calais and the fleet, he may not have willingly appointed his powerful subject to a position which made the latter practically independent of the crown; it may be, however, that he had little choice, and that Warwick’s power in the country, and his popularity with the seamen made his nomination almost a matter of necessity.

Notwithstanding this indenture made with Warwick we find that in July 1463 the Earl of Worcester was in charge of naval matters, and, in August, that nobleman is described as ‘captain and keeper of the sea.’[83] Warwick may have resigned or may have constituted Worcester his deputy. A later paper[84] tells us that Worcester acted by Letters Patent of 30th June 1463. This would not clear Warwick’s term of office but in any case these appointments of Warwick, or of Worcester, or of both, appear to have been the last survivals of the custom of putting the safeguard of the seas out to contract. And the survival was more due to political conditions than to any intention or desire of renewing the old system. The name of Richard Clyvedon, who succeeded Soper as clerk of the ships in 1442, disappears after a few years; as no payments were made even for his salary, it may be assumed that he either died, resigned, or was dismissed, and the post was not filled up. Under the circumstances there was no use for a clerk of the ships as the contractors who engaged to provide ships and men would prefer to employ their own servants to manage the details. In 1465 Piers Bowman is referred to as ‘clerk of our shippes,’ but his patent is not to be found nor any payments by way of salary, and the document in question[85] is the only one in which his occupancy of the office is mentioned. Three years later, in 1468, Sir John Howard, afterwards Duke of Norfolk, was entrusted with the payments due for the passage of Edward’s sister Margaret on her marriage with Charles of Burgundy. Howard possessed ships of his own, and on 27th August 1470, received twenty marks on account of the victualling of two ships which he had equipped ‘to take certaine rovers that lie in the Tamyse mouth or there aboute, and robbe bothe the kinges subgittes and frendes.’ This was little more than a fortnight before Warwick landed at Dartmouth and shows how little Edward feared the Earl, for he made no preparation to intercept his passage, and his care, even in his uncertain position, of the commercial interests of his subjects.[86] All through the second civil war, Warwick retained the command of the Channel, nor does Edward, whether from indifference or inability, appear to have made any attempt to wrest it from him. He relied for assistance chiefly on the Burgundian navy, of which Philip de Comines says that it was so powerful that ‘no man durst stir in the narrow seas for fear of it.’ By a navy, however, De Comines must be understood as meaning the general shipping strength of the state. Even after Tewkesbury Edward was once more reminded that supremacy on land was only possible to the ruler who controlled the sea. The bastard of Fauconberg,[87] Warwick’s subordinate and in command of his fleet, seized the Thames and raised Kent and Essex; had there been any Lancastrian power able to support him Edward’s newly regained crown would have been once more in jeopardy.

Edward IV:—The Keeper of the Ships.

By Letters Patent of 12th December 1480, the office of clerk of the ships was once more reconstituted in the person of Thomas Rogers, with a salary of one shilling and sixpence a day for himself and a clerk, and two shillings a day for travelling expenses, when employed on the king’s service. In later patents Rogers is described as a citizen and fishmonger, and as a merchant of London, and as having been purser of a king’s ship. He so successfully trimmed his opinions to the varying political currents, as to retain his office during the reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, until his death in 1488.

The Royal Ships.

The re-appointment of a keeper of the ships was the natural corollary of the new formation of a crown navy which was going on slowly throughout the reign. As early as July 1461 the Margaret of Orwell, or of Ipswich, is spoken of as ‘our great ship,’ and was doubtless a merchantman bought by the crown. Without collateral evidence, however, the expression ‘our ship’ does not always prove crown ownership; the phrase seems to have been often used in writing of ships pressed for special service. The Margaret’s equipment included 200 bows at eighteenpence apiece, 600 sheaves of arrows at eighteenpence the sheaf, bow strings at five shillings a gross, 200 spears at sixteenpence each and 1000 darts £5. As it also comprised 600 ‘gunstones’[88] at ten shillings the hundred and 1000 lbs. of powder at fivepence a lb., she must have carried cannon as well as the more primitive weapons.[89] In 1463, a caravel of Salcombe was bought for £80, and the shares of the John Evangelist of Dartmouth purchased from the joint owners in that and the following year.[90] In 1468 the Mary of Grace was bought from Sir Henry Waver[91] and in July 1470 250 marks were given for a Portuguese ship, the Garse, obtained from John de Poinct of Portingale.[92] An order on the Exchequer did not however necessarily mean prompt payment unless money was plentiful, and just a year later another warrant was made out for John de Poinct as he was still unpaid; not long after there is mention made of the St Peter, a Spanish ship bought for £50 which sum had also long been owing.

In 1473 the Grace Dieu once more occurs among the names of men-of-war. Marcus Symonson of Causere was paid £62, 8s 2d for pitch, tar, masts, and other necessaries supplied by him for the ‘new making of our shippe called the Grace Dieu.’[93] Unless she was one of the vessels previously bought rebuilt and renamed, she must have been a new ship but there are no other particulars concerning her. In 1472 there is a grant of an annuity of £20 a year to this Mark Symonson, owner of the Antony of Causere,[94] for the good services he had done and would do; this large reward, equal to at least £200 a year now, points to the possibility of his having been captain and owner of the vessel which brought Edward over to Ravenspurn in 1471. Another Spanish ship, the Carycon was purchased in 1478 for £100 and in the same year William Combresale, who afterwards succeeded Rogers as clerk of the ships, is referred to as master of the king’s ship Trinity, another new name. Carycon or Carraquon was simply old French for a large carrack, and the ship, shortly afterwards, became the Mary of the Tower.[95] With the Carycon and the Trinity there is found, ‘the king’s ship called the Fawcon,’ and in 1483 Rogers was ordered ‘to repaire and make of the newe our shippe the Mary Ashe,’ possibly the older Mary of Grace. The last purchase is at the close of the reign in January 1483, when 100 marks was paid to Roger Kelsale, collector of customs at Southampton for his share in a bark of Southampton lately bought.

Edward IV:—Naval and Commercial Policy.

It is obvious from this list that Edward had set himself to reverse the practice of the preceding forty years, and had determined to restore the Navy. He must have taken a certain pride in it and in the appearance of the men, since, for the first time, we find a payment on one occasion for ‘jackettes’ for the sailors.[96] His interest in the men did not extend, however, to arresting the tendency to lower wages which were now one shilling and threepence a week, while the victualling was reckoned at one shilling and a halfpenny.[97] He had been granted in 1465, tunnage and poundage for life and therefore always had at command money to be devoted to naval purposes. Nor was he indifferent to the commercial interests of the kingdom. In 1464 a navigation act, the first consented to by the Crown since the reign of Richard II came into force, and although it was allowed to lapse at the end of three years was an earnest of future and more effective legislation. He is said to have himself engaged in trade, and the commercial treaties with Burgundy, Brittany and Castile, show that he understood the sources of national wealth. Some of Edward’s business transactions were with the Italian cities, and that the field of trade was generally enlarging is shown by the appointment in 1484 of a consul at Florence, because ‘certain merchants and others from England intend to frequent foreign parts, and chiefly Italy with their ships and merchandise.’ The old custom of hiring out men-of-war for trading voyages was soon revived and, shortly before Bosworth field, the Grace Dieu was lent to two London merchants for a Mediterranean journey but was finally kept back for the protection of the coasts.

The short and troubled reign of Richard III did not allow that monarch much time for naval development, but the crown service was not allowed to retrogress and some fresh ships were purchased. In January 1485 the Nicholas of London was bought from Thos. Grafton, a London merchant, for 100 marks, and the Governor from Thos. Grafton and two others for £600.[98] There seems to have been no attempt during the reigns of Richard and his brother, to form any centre for naval equipment and for stores, such as had existed at Southampton and Bursledon under Henry V, and at other places in the preceding centuries. Ships were fitted at Erith, or in the Orwell, or wherever they happened to be lying when required for service.

Henry VII:—The Royal Ships.

In popular belief Henry VII shares with his son and grand-daughter, the credit of founding the modern navy. This view is so far unfounded, that, although its strength did not recede during his reign, and he prepared the way for further progress, he did not increase the force and reorganise the administration as did Henry VIII, nor use it with effect as did Elizabeth. Henry VII still relied on hired merchantmen to form the bulk of his fleets, an assistance his son almost succeeded in renouncing for squadrons of the same strength. In 1590 out of eighteen vessels at sea only two were men-of-war. There are no accounts extant for the whole reign of the expenditure on the navy, but the amount for the first three years was £1077,[99] and for 1495-8 £2060[100] exclusive of the cost of the two large ships, the Regent and Sovereign, built by his orders. At any rate these sums represent a much more acute appreciation of the necessity for sea power than that shown by his immediate predecessors.

The following is an attempt, perhaps imperfect, at the navy list of this reign:

• Grace Dieu
• Mary of the Tower
• Governor
• Martin Garsya
• Sovereign
• Regent
• Le Prise or Margaret of Dieppe
• Bonaventure
• Fawcon
• Trinity
• Sweepstake
• Mary Fortune
• Carvel of Ewe

Of these the Grace Dieu, Mary of the Tower, Governor, Martin Garsya, Fawcon, and Trinity were obtained with the crown, the Margaret was captured in 1490. Only the Regent, Sovereign, Carvel of Ewe, Sweepstake and Mary Fortune were new, the two latter being small vessels built at a charge of £231.[101] The Carvel of Ewe,[102] after having been in the royal service by hire, was bought at some period of the reign. The name of the Bonaventure only occurs once as ‘our ship called the Bonaventure ... William Nashe, yeoman of our crown hath in his rule and governance,’[103] a reference which appears to point unmistakeably to a royal ship; she may have been the bark of Southampton bought by Edward IV, or one of Richard’s purchases. The Martin Garsya was given to Sir Richard Guldeford in December 1485, the Governor disappears after 1488, and the Mary of the Tower after 1496; the Fawcon, Trinity, and Margaret, after 1503. In 1486 Henry commissioned a trusted officer, Sir Richard Guldeford, Master of the Ordnance, to superintend the construction of a large ship, afterwards called the Regent, at Reding on the river Rother, in Kent.[104] An Exchequer warrant of 15th April 1487 directs the Treasurer to pay the money necessary ‘for the building of a ship of which he[105] has the oversight in the county of Kent of 600 tons, like unto a ship called the Columbe of France.’ Nothing is now known of the Columbe, which Henry had perhaps seen when at Rouen, and which had evidently impressed him. Payments on account of the Regent to the amount of £951, 7s 10d can still be traced, but this sum doubtless does not represent the whole cost. While the Regent was on the stocks the Grace Dieu was delivered to Sir Reginald Bray to be broken up and the material employed in building a new vessel, the Sovereign.[106] In neither instance had Rogers, the official head of the administration, anything to do with the construction of these ships. Both Guldeford and Bray were men of rank and credit near the king’s person, and the work may have been assigned to them as a mark of confidence and as a cheap way of conferring some pecuniary advantages on them.

The chronicler Stow says, under the year 1503, ‘the same King Henry made a ship named the Great Harry, which ship with the furniture cost him much.’ Naval historians have successively accepted this statement, but all that can be said is that there is no trace of such a ship in the State Papers. Stow’s naval details are frequently more than doubtful. Under 1512 he writes of ‘the Regent or Sovereign’ of England; the Regent was never called the Sovereign which has an individual existence down to 1525, but he may have meant the sovereign, or greatest ship.

Henry VII:—The Clerk of the Ships.

When Rogers died in 1488, he was a man of substance and a landed proprietor in Hertfordshire. He was succeeded by William Comersall or Cumbresale, of whom we know nothing except that he had held executive rank at sea during the reign of Edward IV, as master of the Trinity. He appears to have been content with a position of minor importance, and during his term of office payments in connection with the Regent and the Sovereign were frequently made through other persons. From 19th May 1495, Robert Brygandine was appointed, and while held by this man, practically, although not nominally the last of the mediæval clerks or keepers, the post regained some of its former dignity. Brygandine was a ‘yeoman of the crown,’ that is to say in the personal service of the sovereign, and, on one occasion, mentions that he had received certain orders from the king vivâ voce. In 1490 he had been granted an annuity of £10 a year, besides other favours, and altogether seems to have belonged to a higher class socially than his predecessors, and was therefore better able to maintain the independence of his office.

General Policy—The Bounty.

Although Henry VII, during a reign of twenty-four years, added only five or six vessels to the navy, it cannot be said that he was indifferent to the maritime strength of the country, or to that of the navy proper. The political conditions did not require fleets at sea as they had done in the fourteenth, and again did in the succeeding century. The objects sought by Louis XI, Charles VIII, and Louis XII did not necessitate strength at sea, at anyrate in the Channel, and when Henry VII did act abroad English ships were only engaged in the unopposed transport of troops. The existence, however, of a Royal Navy did not prevent Perkin Warbeck’s attempted landing in Kent, nor impede his sailing about the narrow seas, subsequently, unmolested and apparently at his own pleasure. Nevertheless Henry recognised that, as fleets were then constituted, the naval strength of the crown was, in the end, dependent on that of the country generally, and acted upon that view in a way that was new in English history. He commenced giving the bounty on the construction of large ships which remained customary for a century and a half, and which did much to encourage the production of vessels fit for war service. Perhaps some similar reward may have been given by earlier kings although the instance of Taverner’s Grace Dieu, previously noticed, is the only one which supports that view. If such rewards had been given they could have been only occasional but Henry made the encouragement much more frequent and a part of his policy. On the other hand the plan may have been copied from the usage of a foreign power, and if so that power was Spain. We know the reverential admiration Henry felt for the Spanish monarchs and their methods; in 1494, 1495, and 1498 Ferdinand and Isabella issued ordinances which promised large rewards of 60,000 to 100,000 maravedis, to the builders of ships of from 600 to 1000 tons.[107] These were probably not the first of such regulations, and the service they did may well have been forced on Henry’s notice when an exile. Certainly the Spanish marine at this time was in a flourishing condition. The fleet of 1496, which carried Dona Juana to Middleburgh consisted of 120 seagoing vessels, and in the same year a royal order directed the preparation of two ships each of 1000 tons, two of 500, two of 400, six of 300, four of 200, and four caravels.[108]

The first warrant for the payment of a bounty is dated in 1488,[109] and orders £26, 13s 4d to be allowed to Nicholas Browne of Bristol on the customs of the first voyage, made by a new ship of 140 tons built by him. This is nearly three shillings and tenpence a ton. The next of 16th May 1491,[110] is again in favour of three Bristol men who have built a 400 ton ship, and, ‘we calling to our remembrance the great cost and charge they have sustained about the same ... to encourage them and such others,’ allow five shillings a ton on the customs. Although 400 tons was not an unknown tonnage in the merchant marine, it was as yet exceptional, and when the bounty, a century later, was most vigorously worked, its tendency was to induce the construction of medium ships, somewhat over or under 200 tons, rather than especially large ones. Sir William Fenkyll, an alderman of London, had 100 marks conceded him in the same way as the others, ‘for the encoragyng of othr our true subgetts the rather to apply themself to the makyng of shippes.’[111] By a warrant of 7th January 1502, Robert and William Thorne and Hugh Elyot of Bristol, having bought a French ship of 120 tons and as ‘with the same ship the said merchants offre to doo unto us service at all tymes at our commaundement,’ had £20 allowed them. The sovereign by whose directions these expressions were used was neither ignorant of the importance, nor indifferent to the growth, of the merchant marine although he may have seen no reason for departing from his native prudence in matters of action.

Henry VII:—Hire of English and Foreign Ships.

Henry’s caution seems to have calculated on the possibility of his future dependence on a foreign fleet, and he was anxious to make a good impression among shipowners abroad. There is a curiously worded order in 1486[112] for the payment of three hired Spanish vessels ‘withoute any part deteyning or abbrigging as that they may have cause to make goode reporte of our deling with them in these parties and as they may be encouraged and welewilled to serve us semblably hereafter.’ As a matter of fact the king frequently hired Spaniards while the royal ships were unemployed, and when the services demanded certainly threw no strain on native resources; he may have seen in such a course a minor way of knitting more closely the mercantile and other ties which were connecting Spain and England. These Spanish ships were hired at two shillings a ton per month, a rate which was double that obtained by English owners. Sometimes Henry tried to buy a Spanish vessel, but with little success, for Ferdinand and Isabella were making stringent regulations against the sale abroad of vessels owned by their subjects.

One reason explaining Henry’s propensity for foreign ships may perhaps be found in a hint we have of difficulties about the rate of hire of English ones. In 1487 special sums were granted to some English owners, ‘to the entent that noe president shall be taken by us for the waging of the same aftre the portage of every tonne.’[113] According to this they desired to be paid a fixed sum and not hired by the ton, perhaps because the crown estimate of a ship’s tonnage may have differed considerably from the owner’s. If this were so it is the only suggestion we have of dissatisfaction with the normal way of payment, and it was a contention in which the crown soon and finally gained the victory.

Henry VII:—Portsmouth Dock.

If Henry VII built few ships he laid the foundation of a permanent establishment for building and repairs in a way hitherto unknown. We have seen that Henry V had storehouses at London and Southampton, and a workshop in the last named town, and that a dock in the fifteenth century meant only a temporary arrangement by which a ship was laid ashore at a suitable place. Such primitive appliances were the completest yet attained. Henry proceeded much further, and in June 1495, Brygandine was ordered to superintend the construction of a dry dock at Portsmouth, the first known to have been built in England. If one existed previously no reference to it has survived, and we may suppose that the new departure was the result of foreign superiority in such matters rather than of native enterprise. No foreigner however was employed in the work, and Brygandine, so far as we know, had had no training as an engineer. The undertaking was completed without accident and without any delay caused by unforeseen difficulties. The total cost was £193, 0s 6¾d; it was built of wood except the dockhead, which was ‘fortifyed’ with stone and gravel, of which 664 tons were used, and although it is not so stated, it may be assumed that the timber walls were backed with stone. During 1495-7 forty-six weeks were spent in the work, operations being suspended between November 1495 and February 1496, and between April of the latter year and July 1497. When the Sovereign came out of this dock twenty men were at work for twenty-nine days ‘at every tide both day and night weying up of the piles and shorys and digging of ye clay and other rubbish between the gates.’ From this it may be conjectured that the gates did not meet in closing, but that the structure was of this form

an arrangement doubtless due to fear of the pressure of the water outside when the one ‘ingyn’ employed for the purpose had succeeded in emptying the dock. The expression ‘as well for ye inner as ye uttermost gate,’ also bears out this view. The dock itself occupied twenty-four weeks, the gates and dockhead twenty-two weeks, the number of men paid each week varying between twenty-eight and sixty. Carpenters received from fourpence to sixpence a day, sawyers fourpence and labourers threepence. Four tons of iron at £3 14s and £4 a ton were used, besides large quantities of nails, spikes and other iron work.[114]

From 1485 a storehouse was hired at Greenwich for the use of the ships lying in the river, at a yearly rental of £5, but down to 1550-60 Portsmouth, in virtue of its dock and the subsidiary establishments which grew up round it, remained the predominant naval port. Few of the townspeople, however, seem to have been able to supply any necessaries, stores having to be sent from London or bought at Southampton; wood was the only thing obtained plentifully in the neighbourhood. When Deptford, Woolwich, and Chatham were founded its one advantage of lying in the Channel did not serve it against the greater facilities they offered in other respects.

Henry VII:—Character of Shipping.

The ships of Henry VII are found to resemble in equipment and fittings those of his successors rather than the mediæval type, but that may be because we have no inventories of the time of Edward IV and the later years of Henry VI. Improvement must have been continuous although there is no trace of the successive steps. The Regent and the Sovereign were respectively four- and three-masters, with fore and main topmasts; although the topmasts were separate spars it is probable that they were fixed and that a method of striking them had not yet been introduced. These two ships must have differed much less in appearance from a sailing ship of 1785 than from one of 1385 or even of 1425. They were fitted with a forecastle, poop, and poop royal, with a bowsprit and spritsail, and the fixed and running gear were, generally, much the same as now. As a detailed inventory of the Henry Grace à Dieu of not many years later, and varying but little in type, is given in this volume it is not necessary to describe them in detail.[115]

The introduction of portholes is usually attributed to Decharges, a French inventor of Brest and the date given is 1501. They were certainly known long before[116] but their adaptation to the purpose of broadside fire was doubtless one of the improvements of the sixteenth century. Still the date of their general acceptation must be before 1501 and earlier than is generally supposed, since the Regent and Sovereign have their poops and forecastles pierced for broadsides, and there is no suggestion that there was anything novel in such a plan. It need hardly be pointed out that the presence of a large number of guns along the sides brought about a complete alteration in shipbuilding. Not only had vessels to be more strongly built to meet the greater weight and strain, but the ‘tumble home’ tendency of the topsides was increased to bring the ordnance nearer the keel line.

The Mary Fortune and the Sweepstake were much smaller vessels but were also three-masters, with a main topmast and sixty and eighty oars respectively for use on board. Vessels of this type, which were frequently called galleys by those who used them, have been erroneously supposed by later writers to denote the real galley, to which they bore not the least resemblance, or to represent a modified type peculiar to the English service. They were ordinary ships differing in no respect but size from their larger sisters, but small enough to permit the use of sweeps when necessary. The serpentine weighing, without any carriage, about 250 lbs. was the usual ship gun, and the Regent carried 151 of these in iron and 29 in brass in 1501.[117] Of course bows and arrows and all the older armament were still carried. The ships’ sides were lined with pavesses or wooden shields painted in various colours and glittering with coats of arms and devices. For painting the Regent and Mary Fortune, and doubtless other ships, vermillion, fine gold, russet, bice,[118] red lead, white lead, brown, Spanish white, verdigris, and aneral[119] were employed.[120] The favourite Tudor colours, white and green, with the cross of St George, flew out in the standards and streamers which were of ‘linen cloth’ or of say.[121]

Henry VII:—Officers and Men.

The pay of the men was one shilling a week as shipkeeper in harbour, and one shilling and threepence when on active service. Victualling at first cost one shilling and a halfpenny a week, but subsequently rose to one shilling and twopence, and shipwrights, sawyers, labourers, and all others employed about the ships received food as well as pay. The jackets noticed under Edward IV, which perhaps signified some sort of uniform, were still provided. One hundred, at one shilling and fourpence apiece, were bought for the same number of men sent from Cornwall to Berwick to join the fleet acting in conjunction with Surrey’s army against Scotland in 1497.[122] The sea captain was still non-existent, that rank being confined to the leadership of the soldiers on board; the master, the highest executive naval officer, received three shillings and fourpence a week, the purser and boatswain one shilling and eightpence, quartermasters one shilling and sixpence, the steward and cook one shilling and threepence.[123] These were harbour rates; at sea the pay appears to have been much higher. When the Sovereign was brought from the Thames to Portsmouth, a voyage which occupied thirty-one days, the master obtained £2 10s, the purser 14s 8d, the quartermasters 10s each, the boatswain 16s 8d, the steward 8s, and the cook 10s.[124]

Of the condition, habits, and manner of thought among the men we know nothing. Ferdinand’s ambassador, De Puebla wrote to him that, ‘the English sailors are generally savages,’ but he was not the last envoy whose delicate diplomatic sense they have outraged by plain speaking. This sensitive gentleman lodged, however, in a house of ill-fame in London from motives of economy.

Henry VII:—Commercial Policy.

In commercial matters Henry followed those methods dictated by the political economy of his age, which seemed likely to increase the trade and shipping of the country. A navigation act of the first year of his reign, and this time meant seriously, forbade the importation of foreign wines in any but English, Irish, or Welsh owned ships. Three years later it was enacted[125]

‘That where great minishing and decay hath been of late time of the navy of this realme of England and idleness of the mariners within the same, by the which this noble realm within short space of time, without reformation be had therein shall not be of ability, nor of strength and power to defend itself.’

No wines or Toulouse woad were to be imported except in ships owned by English subjects and, ‘most part’ manned by native crews. The punishment for disobedience was the forfeiture of one half the cargo to the king, and one half to the informer; under the same penalty exportation of goods in foreign vessels was forbidden if English ships could be obtained. Yet notwithstanding the desponding tone of this preamble, trade was now travelling far afield. The consul at Florence of 1484 had now an associate at Pisa, and a treaty of commerce in 1490 with Denmark shows that we possessed establishments there and in Norway and Sweden, and that the trade was carried on in English bottoms. The king frequently let out his men-of-war on hire for distant voyages, and if merchants found it profitable to take a ship of the size of the Sovereign for a voyage to the Levant the Mediterranean trade must have been already of some importance.

Edward IV, by a commercial treaty of 1467 with Burgundy, granted free fishing round the English coasts to the subjects of that power. This was confirmed by the treaties of 1496 and 1499 but withdrawn by that of 1506, called therefore by the Flemish the Intercursus Malus. It is possible that Henry recognised the value of the fishing industry as a nursery of seamen, but more probable that he was impelled by purely political motives.

The New Discoveries.

The discovery of America and the passage round the Cape of Good Hope must have impressed the king intellectually even though his imagination was untouched by the wonders daily opened to the old world, but there is little evidence that he wished England to join directly in the search for new sources of wealth. The half-hearted assistance given to the Cabots, and the licences without assistance granted to Elliot, Ashurst, and others of Bristol, were not aids of a nature to win success in new and doubtful undertakings. This course of action is usually ascribed to Henry’s parsimony, but it may well be that he feared to be brought into political antagonism with Spain and Portugal, and that he was dubious of the ability of his subjects to keep up profitable communication between countries separated by vast distances of sea. England possessed comparatively little floating capital, and capital is as essential to colonisation as to smaller businesses. We know that intercourse with the West completely changed the character of the Spanish marine in causing it to be replaced by ships of a larger and more commodious type, a change which alone postulates the waste and subsequent investment of a relatively enormous sum. But Spain, even before the voyage of Columbus, was a much wealthier country than England, and it seems that if any profitable discoveries had been due at this time to English explorers they would soon have been found to have been made for the benefit of stronger and wealthier powers. Moreover the political risk was not an imaginary one and might have induced the condition of things existing under Elizabeth when the country was much less able to hold its own. There is an illustration of this in the orders given by the Spanish monarchs in 1501 to Alonso de Hojeda to impede the progress of English discoveries on the transatlantic coast.[126]

That Henry had not forgotten the traditions of the past and realised the value of a national marine is shown by his maintenance of the navy, by the formation of a royal dockyard, by his navigation acts, and, above all, by the inauguration of the bounty system on ocean-going ships. In this, as in other things, he moved slowly, but the progress in the end was none the less complete because in the beginning it had not been unduly stimulated by encouragements not warranted by either the needs or capabilities of the country. The crown, instead of being controlled by nobles indifferent to, or despising commerce, was now influenced by the commercial classes and found its profit in aiding their development. These classes were now replacing the capital destroyed in the wars of the fifteenth century, eager for fresh markets, and with no maritime adversary to fear. For the moment English mercantile effort took a direction that did not bring it into conflict with larger interests, but when the natural expansion of trade and shipping brought the country into collision with other powers the struggles of centuries, which had shaped and hardened a skilful and dauntless maritime population, bore their natural fruit in a school of seamen able to use and direct the instruments which the increasing wealth and ambition of the nation placed in their hands.

HENRY VIII
1509-1547

The New Policy and its Causes.

Henry VII had been chiefly occupied in securing the permanence of his dynasty, and although sometimes drawn into action abroad, had avoided any serious entanglement in continental politics. His son’s policy was the reverse of this, and his reign presents a series of unsuccessful attempts to make England the centre round which European politics were to revolve. These views necessitated the maintenance and employment of an armed force, and although the army was still considered the effective weapon of offence the growing opinion that the navy was essentially the national arm ensured a proper solicitude being bestowed upon it, although its real predominance was not yet recognised; ‘when we would enlarge ourselves let it be that way we can and to which it seems the eternal Providence hath destined us,’ was, we are told, the argument of those who were opposed to an invasion of France by land.[127] The use of such reasoning as this shows that the epoch of maritime expansion was not far distant.

But besides deduction from past experience there were other causes working to induce a natural and, it may be said, almost automatic increase in the navy of the crown. In the past centuries ‘our ancient adversary’ of France had been the only enemy really within touch, and no systematic attack by sea from France had been practicable for more than a hundred years. But the consolidation of that kingdom, and the accession of Francis I, a monarch by no means indifferent to the supremacy of the sea, one of whose first acts was to order the construction and fortification of the Port of Havre in 1516-17, and who built ships and brought round fleets from the Mediterranean to contest the command of the channel, necessarily compelled a corresponding activity on the English side. Another circumstance enforcing increased naval strength was the union of Brittany with the French crown. This event was regarded by contemporary Englishmen somewhat in the light that we should now look upon the domination of the coastlines of Holland and Belgium by Germany and France. The marriage of Anne of Brittany to Charles VIII, in December 1491, gave France its most valuable arsenals and ports, and the command of a race of fine seamen. Henry VII, perhaps recognising that the subjection of the province could only at most be deferred and not prevented, made but perfunctory efforts, either by war or diplomacy, to hinder it. Hitherto, except for the customary practice of piracy, the Breton ports had been neutral or friendly, and the Breton seamen indifferent to the dynastic or national quarrels of the two great powers. In the future the ports were to be the chief source of danger to English maritime supremacy, and the men the mainstay of the navy which carried on a prolonged and doubtful contest with England for more than a century.

With Spain, notwithstanding isolated ship and fleet actions occasionally occurring, warfare had never been serious or continuous, nor had the political interests of the two countries been of such a nature as to bring them into conflict. The union, however, under the sway of Charles V, of the Empire, of Spain, and of the Netherlands, altered, in view of the new attitude assumed by Henry VIII, the pre-existing situation, and here again, besides the Imperial troops, Spanish fleets had to be reckoned with. Although those fleets were never in reality so powerful as they appeared to contemporary observers, the necessities of Trans-Atlantic voyages and the practice of ocean navigation had given experience to officers and men and improved the build of the ships, so far at anyrate as size and apparent power were concerned.[128] Accommodation had to be supplied for larger crews and for numerous passengers, but the science of shipbuilding was not sufficiently advanced to meet these requirements except by methods which gave bigness at the expense of seaworthiness. But whatever the actual combatant value of the Spanish navy, or its power of mobilisation at any required moment and place, it was a factor to be considered in the counsels of the Emperor’s possible enemies and was another reason for the strengthening of the English navy. That that navy occupied a strategically advantageous position on the line of communication between the peninsular and northern possessions of the Empire was a fact not likely to be forgotten by the advisers of either Henry or Charles.

In the north a comparatively long peace with Scotland, and the distractions caused by the Wars of the Roses, had enabled that power to extend its commerce and obtain a prosperity reflected in the existence of a navy, for the first and only time strong enough to attract the attention of foreign observers. In 1512 James IV had three agents in France especially retained to arrange a supply of naval stores and ships,[129] and Lord Darcy informed Henry that the king of Scotland, who spent much of his time on board the ships, possessed some sixteen or twenty men-of-war. The Great Michael recently built, and perhaps the actual instigation of the Henry Grace à Dieu, was one of the wonders of the country and reputed to be the largest and strongest vessel yet launched in northern latitudes. That ‘Jack Tarrett, a Frenchman,’ was her shipwright pointed to the ever present danger of the old alliance between France and Scotland, a danger much intensified if Scotland was to take a place as a naval power.

Without, therefore, attributing to Henry VIII an exceptional foresight, the conditions were such as to compel an increase in the navy commensurate with the larger aims of the royal policy and the wider duties the execution of such a policy involved. The navy was not relatively larger than it had been under some of the preceding kings, notably Henry V, the main distinction being that under Henry VIII it was slowly tending towards its future position as a principal instrument of offence instead of acting as a mere auxiliary. This, again, was as much, or more, due to the changed circumstances of land warfare as to any definite intention. The English army was still a militia; the troops of France and the Empire were now standing armies, highly trained and veterans in war. For most of the western countries the age of feudal levies was over, but England had not yet clearly acknowledged the new era. The troops sent under the Marquis of Dorset in 1512 to invade Guienne, in conjunction with Ferdinand’s Spaniards, returned home en masse in defiance of their commander’s and of Henry’s orders and threats. ‘The world was breathless with astonishment at such a flagrant act of insubordination.’[130] An English army was not yet composed of ragged losels pressed from the gutter, but the ancient feudal tie which knit together knight and retainer was almost destroyed. Armies of this type could not possibly match themselves against the professional continental soldiers. But the country could not have afforded nor would it have permitted a permanent military force, therefore either its claims to exercise a powerful mediatory position were to be forsaken or that peculiar genius for the sea, which had hitherto been of secondary use but which had always been implicitly recognised as the especial heritage of the race, was to replace the mere ability to fight it shared with many other nations. But for the singular skill of the English archer the change would have come long before; improvements in artillery and musketry at last compelled it. The effects were not plainly seen till the reign of Elizabeth, but the militant history of Henry VIII is a series of steps—whether due to a sagacious recognition of the altered situation or to a mechanical compliance with it—towards an increase in the power and use of the Navy, and improvements in its administration, although, as the traditions of centuries are not lightly set aside, armies were still levied to fulfil their ancient rôle in France.

There was also another and personal element which doubtless had its influence. Henry was, if not a born sailor, at least something more than a yachtsman. He was continually inquiring about the merits of new ships, and requiring reports on their sailing qualities in a way that implied some technical knowledge, and showed a real interest beyond the political one in sea affairs. He is said to have been himself the designer of a new model. Sometimes he acted as an amateur master or pilot and dressed the character, of course in cloth of gold. On one occasion when present at the launch of a vessel he wore vest and breeches of cloth of gold, and scarlet hose, with a gold chain and whistle.[131] This was a factor which helped the progress of events, but which could have had little influence had the royal inclination been contrary to the tendency of the time.

Royal Navy List.

The following list of the men-of-war of the reign, has for convenience been thrown into a tabular form, which, however, gives it a fuller and more final appearance than it is intended to claim. The records are not sufficiently complete or detailed to enable the inquirer to be certain in all cases of the exact year of building, rebuilding or purchase, and a further element of uncertainty is introduced by the changes of name which occurred, and continuity of name in what may be supposed to be new ships, but of whose building there is no distinct evidence. The dates printed in heavier type may be taken as exact; the others can only be regarded as likely to be correct, and the tonnage varies at different times in nearly every ship. From the preceding reign came the Regent, Sovereign, Mary and John, (or Carvel of Ewe), Sweepstake and Mary Fortune.

We are accustomed to the general statement that Henry VIII enlarged the navy, but the foregoing list shows a much more extensive increase than is implied by a general expression and, if so far as number is concerned it errs at all, it errs on the side of omission. A little indulgence in admitting names could have extended it considerably. No foreign purchased merchantman has been inserted without the authority of a definite statement, or unless it appears in lists later than the reign under consideration; but there are foreign ships omitted as only temporarily hired which may really have belonged to the crown. Other vessels which occur in almost indistinguishable fashion among men-of-war have been left out in view of the custom which frequently obtained of describing hired ships as king’s ships while they were in the royal service, and in some cases it has been found impossible to satisfactorily trace particular vessels. For instance, during the first half of the reign a ‘great galley’ of 600 or 800 tons, flits in a most puzzling way through some, but not the most reliable, of the papers. I take it to have been an indefinite designation applied at various times to various ships,[211] but that opinion may be altogether wrong and it may be the actual name of a large vessel which has left no other indication of its existence. Again, the Earl of Southampton, for four years Admiral of England, bequeathed Henry his ‘great ship’ by his will dated September 1542. The Earl died in 1543, but which is the ship in question, or whether it appears at all in the foregoing list, cannot be determined.

Activity in Construction and Purchase of Ships.

Exclusive of the thirteen rowbarges, there are eighty-five vessels, and of these forty-six were built, twenty-six purchased, and thirteen were prizes. The periods of greatest activity synchronise with war with France 1512-14, war with France and Scotland 1522-5, with the possibility in 1539 of a general alliance on religious grounds against England, and with war against France and Scotland in 1544-6. But allowing for uncertainty of dates, possibility of omissions, and our almost entire ignorance of the repairs and rebuildings which must have been progressing uninterruptedly, there is no cessation of vigorous action throughout the reign. The existing dockyards could have hardly been equal to the demands on them for repairs alone, and this is doubtless one reason for the large number of ships purchased, a course which was also probably cheaper for the moment. All Henry’s foreign purchases seem to have been Italian or Hanseatic. During 1511-14 he hired several Spaniards and tried to buy some, but his desires were vain in face of the strict Spanish navigation laws. In 1513 the Spanish envoy, de Quiros, was instructed to inform the king that the sale of Spanish ships abroad was forbidden under heavy penalties, and that his government could not permit them to be sold even to Henry.[212] In fact we find from another source that the sale of ships was forbidden to foreigners even though they were naturalised Spanish subjects, and as, from October 1502, a bounty of 100 maravedis a ton was given up to 1500 tons it is hardly surprising that their sale to aliens was sternly interdicted.[213] In 1513 Knight wrote to Henry that the whole of a Spaniard’s goods had been confiscated for selling a carrack to him. Under these circumstances the king had to buy in the North German ports, and, judging from the small number of years most of them remained in the effective, many must have been built for the purpose of sale to him.

Royal Ships:—Build and Rigging.

The vessel which has the chief place in popular memory is the Henry Grace à Dieu, but she probably differed little in size, form, or equipment, from others nearly as large. Her total cost, with the three small barques built with her, was £8708 5s 3d, but out of the 3739 tons of timber used 1987 cost nothing being presented by several peers, private persons, and religious bodies. According to the accounts she was constructed under the supervision of William Bond, but if a nearly contemporary letter may be trusted Brygandine, the clerk of the ships designed and built her.[214] Bond’s connection with her may have been merely financial and confined to payments of money. Fifty-six tons of iron, 565 stones of oakum and 1711 lbs of flax were other items. She was a four-master and possibly a two-decker with fore, main and mizen top-gallant sails, but with only two sails on the other masts, and with two tops on each of the three principal masts.[215] All ships but the very smallest had four masts, the two after ones being called, respectively, the main and bonaventure mizens. There was nothing exceptional in the Henry’s fittings, top-gallant sails being known to have been used in the previous reign, and, as at that time, the topmasts were not arranged for lowering. An equivalent to the ease given a labouring ship by striking the topmasts was obtained by lowering the fore and main yards to the level of the bulwarks. As most of the guns were carried in the poop and forecastle ships must have been ‘built loftie’ on the Spanish model and presented a squat and ungainly appearance. Vessels were now mostly carvel built, and those clench, or clinker, built, were regarded as too weak to stand the shock of collision when boarding was intended. Speaking of some foreign ships brought into Portsmouth, Suffolk wrote that some of them were ‘clenchers, both feeble, olde, and out of fashion,’ and therefore not to be taken up for service with the fleet.[216]

Spritsails were now coming into more common use and, with the spanker on the bonaventure mizen or fourth mast and sometimes with another on the main mizen, served the purpose of the later fore-and-aft sails. Vessels were now, although still slowly and clumsily, able to work more closely to windward. There is one entry which runs ‘eight small masts at 6s 8d the pece ymploied in the Great Bark and other the Kynges shipps for steddying saills.’[217] It can only be said that there is no mention in the inventories, or any sign in the drawings of ships of this century, of what are now called studding sails.

Royal Ships:—Armament.

An ordinary vessel appears to have been armed along the waist, in her forecastle of two or three tiers, and in her summer castle or poop, also divided into decks. For some of these ships we still have the armament:—[218]

Ships like the Henry, Sovereign, and Mary Rose carried also heavier pieces than these, the commencement of the change to fewer but more powerful guns, which progressed rapidly during the middle of the century. The Mary Rose had 79 guns (besides six in her tops), of which 33 were serpentines, 26 stone guns, and 10 murderers, but she also had five brass curtalls and five brass falcons.[225] The Sovereign, when rebuilt in 1509, was given four whole and three half curtalls of brass, three culverins, two falcons, and eleven heavy iron guns among her 71 guns.[226] The curtall, or curtow, was a heavy gun of some 3000 lbs., hitherto only used as a siege piece on land, and its transference to maritime use marks a revolution in ship armament which deserves attention. The Mary Rose and Sovereign were in 1509, the two most powerfully armed ships which had yet existed in the English navy, perhaps the most powerfully armed ships afloat anywhere that year, and it is curious to notice that the Peter Pomegranate built with them was fitted in the old style, with innumerable serpentines which could have been of little more effect than toy guns, appearing almost as though the contrast was an intentional experiment. At any rate with the heavier armaments of the Sovereign and Mary Rose, commences the long struggle between the attack and defence still going on, for hitherto there had been practically no attack so far as a ship’s sides were concerned.

The system was extended as the reign progressed, and in 1546, we find comparatively small ships like the Grand Mistress carrying two demi cannons and five culverins, the Swallow one demi cannon and two demi culverins, out of a total of eight heavy guns; the Anne Gallant four culverins, one curtall, and two demi culverins; the Greyhound one culverin, one demi culverin, and two cannons petro,[227] besides their other smaller pieces.[228] Even the Roo of 80 tons has two demi culverins and three cannons petro. To measure the full extent of the change we must compare these vessels with the Henry, of three or four times their tonnage, which in 1514, carried only one bombard, two culverins, six falcons and one curtow, in addition to 126 serpentines and 47 other guns of various but probably light weights, seeing that most of them were used with chambers.

To whom was this innovation due? It commenced with Henry’s accession, and if not owing to his direct initiative, he has the merit of recognising its value and persistently putting it into execution. But we know from other non-naval documents that he had some knowledge of artillery and took an active personal interest in such matters, and it may very well be that the improvement was his own. In any case it was one in which England took and kept the lead, and which gave the country an incalculable advantage in the contest with Spain during the close of the century.

Royal Ships:—Ordnance Stores.

From other papers we can ascertain with sufficient completeness the character of the weapons and stores for offensive purposes carried on board. There is a state paper of July 1513, coincident with the invasion of France which gives the following details[229]:—

The reader will remark the small number of gunners allowed. The Sovereign had 70 or 80 pieces and the proportion here does not allow even one gunner to a piece on a broadside. Perhaps the soldiers manned the guns, but it is more likely that the seamen were beginning to take a combatant part instead of confining themselves to working the ship. Bows and arrows still formed an important part of the equipment, but although we have no similar list for shot the amount of powder shows the reliance now placed on artillery and musket fire. Incidentally, among remains of stores, we find ‘200 harquebus shot,’ 900 serpentine shot, 1350 iron ‘dyse,’ 8 darts for wildfire, to set the sails of an enemy’s ship on fire, and two chests of wildfire with quarrels.[233] Also ‘300 small and grete dyse of iern,’ 420 stone and 1000 leaden shot, 120 shot of iron ‘with cross bars,’ 22 ‘pecks for to hew gonstones’[234] and 74 arrows of wildfire.[235]

Ships, Galleys and Galleasses.

The well known picture of the embarkation of Henry VIII at Dover, on his way to the interview with Francis I in 1520, represents the Henry Grace à Dieu as the chief ship in the fleet. This was inherently improbable as the Henry drew too much water to enter either Dover or Calais harbours, but it can be proved to be incorrect from documentary evidence. The squadron consisted of the Great Bark, Less Bark, Kateryn Plesaunce, Mary and John, and two rowbarges.[236] The interview was originally proposed for 1519 and a year previously on 22nd May 1518, the Kateryn Plesaunce was commenced for the express purpose of carrying the King and Queen across the Channel.[237] She cost £323, 13s 9d, including the victualling and lodging expenses of the men working upon her, and required 80 tons of ballast.[238] In none of the accounts relating to men-of-war are there any details of extrinsic decoration, if it existed, and even in the Kateryn, intended for a royal pleasure trip there is only one charge of ten shillings for painting and gilding the ‘collere.’ House carpenters were employed for ‘the makynge of cabons and embowynge of wyndows,’ and although the chief cabin was wainscoted and lighted by 112 feet of glass, the Queen’s own cabin was cheaply furnished with a dozen ‘joined stools’ at tenpence apiece.

The Kateryn was sometimes called a bark and sometimes a galley and this leads us to the question of the classification of the royal vessels. If we accept without inquiry that of the list of 5th January 1548,[239] we find ships like the Anne Gallant, Unicorn, Salamander, Tiger, Hart, Antelope, Lion, Dragon, Jennet, Bull and Greyhound, described as galleys. But in Anthony’s list of 1546 the same vessels are called galleasses; obviously therefore the two words did not define particular types as rigidly as they do among naval archæologists to-day, or even as they did towards the end of the sixteenth century. The Kateryn galley of 1512 was a three masted vessel with bowsprit and fore and main topmasts, as was also the Rose another ‘galley’ of the early years of the reign.[240] Both were supplied with oars—thirty—as was usual with small vessels long after this date when the name galley had fallen into disuse. Another, the Sweepstake (of Henry VII), had a mizen mast,[241] and a sprit mast on the bowsprit,[242] so that it may be assumed that she also was a three-master although elsewhere she is described as ‘the king’s rowbarge called the Sweepstake.’[243]

In 1546 the Hart, Antelope, Tiger, and Bull are four-masted flush-decked ships, apparently pierced on a lower gun deck for nine pieces a side; the Anne Gallant and Grand Mistress four-masters, of 450 tons, with forecastle and poop, carrying guns on the upper and on a lower deck; the Greyhound, Lion, Jennett, and Dragon, are similar well-decked vessels with the addition of great stern and quarter galleries extending nearly the whole length of the poop and nearly one-third of the length of the vessel. The contradictions we have to face can be best exemplified by one example, the Greyhound, which in the 1548 list is called a galley, in a 1546 list said to be a copy of Anthony’s,[244] a galleass, and in that portion of Anthony’s manuscript remaining in the Museum, a ship.[245] This last authority, a series of original drawings, calls only the Greyhound, Lion, Jennett, and Dragon, ‘ships’ and the only point in which they seem to differ from the ordinary type is in the possession of the stern and quarter galleries. If these drawings are accurate, and they so far differ from each other as to lead us to suppose that they were intended to portray individual ships, it is impossible that any one of them can have been impelled by oars, although sweeps may have been occasionally and temporarily used for a particular purpose. They may have been worked from the gun-ports, in which case the Grand Mistress could only have used eight a side. The conclusion therefore is that the term galley did not imply an oared vessel of the Mediterranean type, such as we now associate with the word, but was applied first to light ships small enough to use sweeps when necessary, and later to an improved model, possibly built on finer lines than the heavy, slow moving hulks of the beginning of the reign, and expected to bear, to the ponderous 600 or 1000 ton battle ship, the same relation in speed that the real galley bore to a mediæval sailing vessel. A fleet formation of 1545 was of course based on that customary in an army and we have Van, Battle or main body, and Wing, arranged for. In that year some of the vessels just mentioned were not yet afloat, but the Salamander, Swallow, Unicorn, Jennett, Dragon, and Lion were included in the Battle. The Wing, composed of ‘galliasses and ships with ores,’ comprised among others, the Grand Mistress, Anne Gallant, and Greyhound. That they should have been classed with ‘the ships with ores,’ does not show that they were of the same order, but only that they were supposed to be sufficiently handy under sail to act with them.

There was therefore a certain number of ships, large and small, vaguely and uncertainly called galleys, possessing certain modifications on the normal type, and there is some reason to believe that the innovation, whatever may have been the particular change in form or structure, was due to Henry himself. He sometimes appears to have had his own designs carried out; a prize was to be altered ‘so as she now shall be made in every point as your Grace devised.’[246] In 1541 Chapuys wrote to the emperor:

‘The King has likewise sent to Italy for three shipwrights experienced in the art of constructing galleys, but I fancy that he will not make much use of their science as for some time back he has been building ships with oars according to a model of which he himself was the inventor.’[247]

Chapuys must have been referring to the earlier Rose, Kateryn, and Swallow type, and possibly to others not now to be traced; but to the presence of the Italian shipwrights was undoubtedly owing the launch of the Galley Subtylle in 1544. ‘Subtylle’ was not an especial name, but was applied to a class more lightly built and quicker in movement than the ordinary galley. This was the only real galley built by him since it differed in no respect from the standard Mediterranean pattern, but in 1546 thirteen ‘rowbarges’ of twenty tons apiece were added to the Navy. These were rowing vessels, and unless intended for scouting or for towing and to give general assistance, it is difficult to see their utility as they were too small to engage with any chance of success. In the result they were sold within a year or two of Henry’s death. The sixteenth century galley service, such as it was, was forced on the English government by the action of Francis I in bringing his own and hired galleys round from the Mediterranean. It was always repugnant to the national temperament and soon languished when the exciting cause was removed. Although three or four galleys were carried on the navy list until 1629 the last years in which any served at sea were 1563 and 1586.

These various attempts at evolving a new type, which should combine the best points of the galley and the sailing vessel, show that Henry recognised at least some of the faults of the man-of-war of his day. He failed because the solution was not within the scientific knowledge of his time, and perhaps also because the work of the galley benches must have been abhorrent to the hereditary instincts and traditions of the English sailor. But he was the first English king who gave the Navy some of that forethought and effort at improvement that had hitherto been devoted wholly to the army. His experiments left so little visible trace in the one direction that in 1551 Barbaro could write to the Seigniory, ‘They do not use galleys by reason of the very great strength of the tides,’[248] but, in another, the drawings of the last ships launched, the four of 1546, one of which, the Tiger, is reproduced in the frontispiece—comparatively low in the water, little top-hamper, neat and workmanlike in appearance—show a very great advance on anything before afloat, and indicate a steady progression towards the modern type.

Royal Ships:—Decoration and sailing qualities.

If we are to judge of the decoration of ships by the references to ornament in the naval accounts, we should have to conclude that it was entirely absent. Unquestionably it was to a certain extent present, since its absence would have been contrary to the instincts of humanity and the customs of every nation that has had a navy. But it could not have been as extensive as it afterwards became, nor have taken any very expensive form. The hulls were doubtless painted as in the previous reign, but the bows and stern seem to have been quite devoid of carving or gilding. The tops, which were large enough to hold heavy guns, were ornamented with ‘top-armours’ of red, yellow, green, or white kersies lined with canvas. The Sovereign had copper and gilt ornaments on the end of the bowsprit, and gilt crowns for the mast heads had been an embellishment used for centuries. The Unicorn and Salamander have representative figures on their beakheads,[249] but as they were prizes no deduction can be drawn as to English custom. The English built ships have no figurehead, but the beakhead sometimes ends in a spur, implying the idea of ramming. This spur, however, points upward and is much too high to have been of any use for that purpose. The ships’ sides were still surrounded with pavesses, now only light wooden shields and decorations, but which were survivals of the real shields of knights and men-at-arms in ancient vessels, ranged round the sides of the ship until needed for fighting. A hundred years later the cloth weather protection round the oarsmen of a Mediterranean galley was still called the pavesade. These pavesses seem to have sometimes taken the place of bulwarks, not always present. In 1513 Sir Edward Echyngham, captain of a ship then at sea wrote that he had fallen in with three Frenchmen,

‘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, dagswayns,[250] and such bedding as I had within board.’[251]

The form of expression suggests that the absence of rails was unusual.

Of the rate of sailing attained by these ships and their weatherly qualities we know hardly anything. On 22nd March 1513 Sir Edward Howard wrote to Henry, evidently in answer to a royal command to make a report on the subject, describing the merits of the squadron he had been trying, apparently between the Girdler and the North Foreland.[252] The Kateryn Fortileza sails very well; the Mary Rose is ‘your good ship, the flower I trow of all ships that ever sailed;’ the Sovereign, ‘the noblest ship of sail is this great ship at this hour that I trow be in Christendom.’ Some time, but not long, before 1525 the Sovereign was in very bad condition, and her repair was urged because ‘the form of which ship is so marvellously goodly that great pity it were she should die.’[253] Her name however does not subsequently occur and she was probably broken up. In 1522 Sir William Fitzwilliam related in a letter to the king that the Henry sailed as well or better than any ship in the fleet, that she could weather them all except the Mary Rose, and that she did not strain at her anchors when it was blowing hard.[254] It seems rather late in the day for a trial of a vessel afloat in 1514, but some alterations may have been previously made rendering it advisable. Even when ill and near his end Henry evinced the same interest in the seagoing qualities of his ships, since we learn from a letter of 1546 that he had required to be informed whether ‘the new shalupe was hable to broke the sees.’

Flags and Signals.

If carving, gilding, and painting were scant on these ships they shone bravely with flags and streamers. Those of the Peter Pomegranate were banners of St Katherine, St Edward, and St Peter, six of the arms of England in metal;[255] of a Red Lion; four of the Rose and Pomegranate; two of ‘the castle,’ and eight streamers of St George.[256] The Henry Grace à Dieu was furnished with two streamers for the main mast respectively 40 and 51 yards long, one for the foremast of 36 yards, and one for the mizen of 28 yards; there were also ten banners 3½ yards long, eighteen more 3 yards long, wrought with gold and silver and fringed with silk, ten flags of St George’s Cross, and seven banners of buckram, at a total cost of £67, 2s 8d.[257] Banners mentioned in other papers were, of England, of Cornwall, of a rose of white and green, of a Dragon, of a Greyhound, of the Portcullis, of St George and the Dragon, of St Anne, of ‘white and green with the rose of gold crowned,’ of ‘murrey and blue with half rose and half pomegranate, with a crown of gold,’ and of ‘blue tewke with three crowns of gold.’[258] White and green were now the recognised Tudor colours, and there is some indication of their use in that sense in the reign of Henry VII; the Greyhound was the badge of that king, the Dragon of his son. The Portcullis referred to the control of the straits of Dover, the Pomegranate to Catherine of Aragon and Spain; the constant recurrence of the Rose as a badge and as a ship’s name needs no explanation. The banner with the representation of a saint upon it was a survival of the custom existing in earlier times, by which every ship was dedicated to a saint, under whose protection it was placed and whose name it usually bore.

Besides ornament flags had long served the more prosaic purpose of signalling. Even among merchantmen there seem to have been some recognised signals, as in 1517 the Mary of Penmark, driven into Calais by bad weather, hoisted ‘a flag in the top,’ for a pilot.[259] This signal must therefore have long been common to at least two seafaring peoples. So far as the Royal Navy was concerned, we can only say that a flag ‘on the starboard buttock’ of the admiral’s ship called his captains to a council.[260] But a system of day and night signalling had long been in existence in the Spanish service, and in view of the close connection between the two countries commercially, and the employment of Spanish ships and seamen by the crown, it would have been extraordinary had it not been known and used here. According to Fernandez de Navarrete[261] a scheme of signals for day and night use was practised in 1430. In 1517 a flag half way up the main mast called the captains to the flagship; sight of land was announced by a flag in the maintop; a strange ship by one half way up the shrouds, and more than one strange sail by two flags placed vertically. A ship requiring assistance fired three guns, and sent a man to wave a flag in her top, while if the admiral’s ship showed a flag on her poop, every captain was to send a boat for orders. A code with guns and lights made the corresponding signals during darkness and fog.[262]

Fleet Regulations.

The earliest set of regulations for the government of a fleet in this reign is contained in an undated paper entitled ‘A Book of Orders for the War by Se and Land,’ prepared by Thomas Audley by command of Henry.[263] The articles relating to sea matters, and dealing with the management of a fleet may be thus summarised:—

1. No Captain shall go to windward of his Admiral. 2. Disobedient captains shall be put ashore. 3. No ship to ride in the wake of another. 4. If the enemy be met the weather-gage is to be obtained; only the Admiral shall engage the enemy’s Admiral, and every ship is, as nearly as possible to attack an opponent of equal strength. 5. Boarding not to be undertaken in the smoke, nor until the enemy’s deck had been cleared with small shot. 6. If a captured ship could not be held the principal officers were to be taken out of her, the vessel ‘boulged,’ and ‘the rest committed to the bottome of the sea for els they will turne upon you to your confusion.’ 7. When going into action the Admiral is to wear a flag at his fore and main, and the other ships at the mizen. 8. The Admiral shall not enter an enemy’s harbour, nor land men without calling a council.

From the last regulation it would appear that only limited authority was left to the admiral, and it was perhaps due to Sir Edward Howard’s actions of 1512 and 1513, the last of which, an attempt to cut out galleys, was a defeat, and cost Howard his life. From the second it seems that little disciplinary power was left in the admiral’s hands, and from the seventh that it was not customary to fly the colours at sea. It will be observed, from the methodical way in which the captains were directed to go into action, that the tendency was still strong to handle a fleet as troops and companies were handled ashore.[264]

The next fleet orders show little alteration.[265]

1. Every ship shall retain its place in the Van, Battle, and Wing, and every captain take his orders from the commander of his own division. 2. In action the Van shall attack the French Van, Admiral engage Admiral, and every captain a Frenchman of equal size. 3. The Wing shall always be to windward so that it may ‘the better beate off the gallies from the great ships.’ 4. The watchword at night to be ‘God save King Henry,’ when the other shall answer ‘Long to raigne over us.’

This fleet is the first recorded to have been opened into divisions, each section being distinguished by the position of a flag. The Lord Admiral flew the royal arms in the main top and the St George’s cross at the fore, while the other ships of the ‘battaill’ carried the St George at the main. The admiral commanding the Van wore the St George’s cross at the fore and main, and the rest of his command the same flag at the fore. The officer commanding the Wing flew the St George in both mizen tops and those under him in one.

The Lords Admirals.

The hour of the professional seamen had not yet come for either admirals or captains. Like most of Henry’s executive or administrative officers they were taken from among the men he saw daily round him at court. It would be unfair to suppose this the cause that the Navy did little during his reign, for the very existence of a powerful fleet is often reason enough why its services should not be needed. It was not until 1545 that the French made any real attempt to contest the command of the sea. In that year John Dudley, Lord Lisle, afterwards Duke of Northumberland, commanded the English forces, and, in a position where some of Sir Edward Howard’s bull like tactics might have been judicious, he failed to come aux prises with his adversary.[266] If we may believe his own confessions he distrusted his powers and recognised his incapacity, but in after years, when the aggrandisement of his family was concerned, he showed no such hesitating modesty. On one occasion he wrote to Henry admitting his want of experience but expressing a hope that ‘the goodness of God’ would serve instead.[267] On another, he said, ‘I do thynck I shuld have doon his Maiestie better service in some meaner office wherein to be directed and not to be a director.’[268] If honestly felt this frame of mind was hardly calculated to inspirit his subordinates.

Although the office of admiral as a commander of a fleet dates from the thirteenth century it was for long only a temporary appointment, obtaining its chief importance from the character of the person holding it. When several fleets were at sea and the principal command was vested in one person he became for the time, Admiral of England, laying down his title with his command. From the beginning of the fifteenth century this office of ‘Great Admiral of England, Ireland and Aquitaine’ became a permanent one, carrying with it the control of all the maritime strength of the crown, and being usually bestowed on a relative of the sovereign. The first of such patents is of 23rd Dec. 1406, and bears a resemblance, in the powers and privileges it confers, to the similar ones of the Admiralship of Castile, that can hardly be accidental.[269] But as far as the navy was concerned his duties were purely militant, and there is no trace of his interference in administration.

The ‘Great Admiral’ also possessed jurisdictive functions, trying, by his deputy, all maritime causes, civil and criminal. The fees and perquisites attached to the exercise of these duties made the post valuable in the fifteenth century, but it does not appear to have ensured any especial political power to its holder during that troubled time.

Frequently it became a mere court title of honour; the Earl of Oxford was Great Admiral during the whole reign of Henry VII, but his name never occurs in naval affairs. In many instances, during the fifteenth century, the Admiral of England did not command at sea at all, but during the reign of Henry VIII the post became one of actual executive control, and, later, of administrative responsibility. The Lords Admirals of this reign were mostly men who, before or afterwards, held other important State or Household appointments and who had no expert knowledge of their duties. The Earl of Oxford was succeeded by Sir Edward Howard by Letters Patent of 15th August 1512; his brother, Lord Thomas Howard, son of the victor of Flodden, was appointed 4th May 1513; Henry, Duke of Richmond, illegitimate son of the King, 16th July 1525; William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton, 16th August 1536; John, Lord Russell, 18th July 1540; and John Dudley, Lord Lisle, 27th January 1543. That most of these men had no experience whatever of the sea was not considered detrimental to their efficiency.

Royal Ships lost.

There were not many men-of-war lost during Henry’s reign, but both absolutely and relatively, seeing the little active service undergone by the Navy, the number is much larger than under Elizabeth. The Regent was burnt in action in 1512. In 1513 a ship commanded by Arthur Plantagenet, an illegitimate son of Edward IV, sank after striking on a rock in Bertheaume Bay, near Brest, but we are ignorant whether she was a man-of-war or a hired merchantman, probably, however, the latter. Sometime in or before 1514, a small vessel, name unknown, was wrecked at Rye,[270] but a more important loss was that of the Great Elizabeth, in September 1514, at Sandgate, west of Calais, during the passage of the Princess Mary to France when 400 men were drowned.[271] The Christ, freighted to the Mediterranean for trade, was, in 1515, captured by Barbary corsairs and all but thirty of those on board killed. Letters patent were issued, authorising a national subscription for their ransom. The next was that of the Anne Gallant, in August 1518, on the coast of Galicia while chartered by some London merchants on a trading voyage.

In 1545 several foreign hired fighting ships were wrecked by stress of weather, but the most remarkable loss of the reign was that of the Mary Rose which capsized off Brading on 20th July 1545, when getting under way. Ralegh says that her ports were only sixteen inches above the water line, and attributes the disaster to this circumstance. Beyond the fact that most of Ralegh’s observations on maritime matters, where not doubtful or unintelligible, can be shown to be incorrect,[272] there is the great improbability that after at least fifty years’ experience of gun-ports they should have been cut so low since she had been rebuilt in or before 1536. Moreover Anthony’s drawings show them to have been pierced very much higher in other vessels. A contemporary writer, who obtained his account from an eye-witness, ascribed it to a different cause and makes no mention of the ports.[273]

By the 1st August measures had been taken towards raising her and the persons who had undertaken the work desired,

‘Ffyrst ii of the gretest hulkes that may be gotten, more the hulk that rydeth withyn the havyn, Item iiii of the gretest hoys withyn the havyn, Item v of the gretest cables that may be had, Item x grete hawsers, Item x new capsteynes with xxᵗⁱ pulleyes, Item l pulleyes[274] bownde with irone Item v doseyn balast basketts, Item xl lb of talowe, Item xxx Venyzian maryners and one Venyziane carpenter, Item lx Inglysshe maryners to attend upon them, Item a greate quantitie of cordage of all sortes, Item Symonds patrone and maister in the ffoyst doth aggree that all thynges must be had for the purpose aforeseid.’[275]

It appears from this that cables were to be passed through her ports, or made fast to her, and that by means of the hulks she was to be bodily hauled up, a course from which rapid success was anticipated. On the 5th August, her yards and sails had been removed and ‘to her mastes there is tyed three cables with other ingens to wey her upp and on every side of her a hulk to sett her uppright.’[276] Two days later the officers at Portsmouth fully expected that she would be weighed within twenty-four hours,[277] but on the 9th

‘Thitalians which had the doying for the wayeing of the Mary Roos have been with my Lord Chamberlayn and me to signifie unto us that after this sourt which they have followed, hithierto, they can by no meanes recover her for they have alredye broken her foremast ... and nowe they desyer to prove another waye which is to dragg her as she lyeth untill she come into shallowe ground and so to set her upright, and to this they axe vi days’ proof.’[278]

The second way proved as fruitless as the first, but we read that 22 tuns of beer were consumed during the work, which must have made it appear an enjoyable summer outing to the men.[279] Up to 30th June 1547, the whole amount expended in the various attempts was £402, 6s 8d[280] and this may have included £57, 11s 5d to Peter Paul, an Italian, for the recovery of some of her guns, which was paid within the time for which the total was made up but appears in other papers.[281] The last reference to the unfortunate ship is another payment of £50 to Peter Paul for recovering ordnance and then, after four years of effort, any further hope was foregone.[282]

Royal Ships hired by Merchants.

During the greater part of his reign, Henry like his predecessors, allowed merchants to charter men-of-war for trading voyages. In 1511, £200 was paid for the Mary and John by two merchants who hired her to go to the Baltic, a five months’ voyage, but out of this sum the king paid the wages of the crew and supplied flags and doubtless other stores.[283] One reason for putting royal officers and men on board may have been to prevent the ship being used for piratical purposes. In the same year the Anne Gallant also went to the Baltic,[284] and from there to Bordeaux before returning to London, and the Peter Pomegranate to Zealand; in 1515 Richard Gresham freighted the Mary George, and Richard Fermor the Christ, to the Mediterranean. For the Anne Gallant the crown received £300, and for the crew of the Peter 100 ‘jorgnets’ were provided.[285] When the Anne Gallant was wrecked in 1518 the loss seems to have been submitted to arbitration, ‘for the copyinge of the byll of the grosse averies of the same Anne Gallant and the warde of the arbetrers theruppon made iiˢ,’ but there is no trace of the result.[286] In 1524, the Minion and Mary Guildford were at Bordeaux, and in 1533, two other vessels. After that year there is no further instance known of Henry permitting his ships to be hired by private persons.

Convoys.

Convoys were provided by the government during war time. In 1513, the Royal Navy being fully occupied on service, £55 was paid to the owner of the Mawdelin of Hull for escorting a wool fleet to Calais, and there are other similar agreements.[287] In the preceding year there was a guard of the herring fleet afloat, although we have no knowledge of its strength.[288] In 1522 we have the first sign of an attempt to patrol the four seas, four vessels were stationed between the Thames and Rye, four others between Rye and the Channel Islands, and three are assigned to the somewhat unintelligible location of between the Channel Islands and the Tweed.[289] Doubtless it was only a temporary measure, but it is important as showing that it was now understood that the Navy had a more continuous purpose than mere attack or defence in fleets.

Dockyards:—Portsmouth.

Portsmouth dockyard, with the storehouses and workshops attached to it, and said to have been situated at that portion of the present yard known as the King’s Stairs, was the only one existing in 1509. The enlargement of the Navy necessitated a corresponding increase in the accommodation for building and repairs, and naturally the first references are to Portsmouth. In the first year of the reign there are payments for ‘the breaking up of the dockhead where the Regent lay—having put the said ship afloat out of the same dock into the haven of Portsmouth—making a scaffold with great masts for the sure setting on end of her main mast,’[290] and £1175, 14s 2d was expended there on the Sovereign.[291] During the first war with France, additions were made to the establishment,[292] and from a later paper we learn that five of these were brewhouses, the Lion, Rose, Dragon, White Hart and Anchor,[293] while some ‘reparrynge and tylinge of the houses att the dokke,’ was also executed. In other respects the town was cared for, since in 1526, 675 pieces of ordnance were on the walls and in store, and in the same year £20 was spent on repairing the dock.

In 1523, however, the existing dock must have been much enlarged in view of the charges ‘for making a dock at Portsmouth for the king’s ship royal,’ the Henry Grace à Dieu.[294] She was brought into the dock with much ceremony,

‘the same day that the King’s Ship Royal the Henry Grace à Dieu was had and brought into the dock at Portsmouth of and with gentlemen and yeomen dwelling about the country there which did their diligence and labour there in the helping of the said ship, and also with mariners and other labourers in all to the number by estimation of 1000 persons.’[295]

These assistants consumed during their arduous labours through the day eight quarters of beef, forty-two dozen loaves of bread and four tuns of beer. The method of construction was still the same as under Henry VII, as there are payments for ‘digging of clay for the stopping up of the same dock head,’ and for breaking up these solid fabrics. The next event connected with the Portsmouth yard was the purchase of nine acres of land, in 1527, at twenty shillings an acre; this ground was surrounded by a ditch and hedge with gates at intervals.[296] The dockyard however gradually sank in consideration during this reign. Woolwich and Deptford soon disputed supremacy with it, and the gradual formation of Chatham yard between 1560 and 1570 completed its decay. Its last year of importance was 1545, when the fleet collected there, and when its approaching neglect was so little anticipated that the chain across the mouth of the harbour was renewed and fresh improvements were contemplated. But from that year until the era of the Commonwealth it almost disappears from naval history.

Dockyards:—Woolwich.

Woolwich, commonly but erroneously called the Mother Dock, grew up round the Henry Grace à Dieu. The accounts[297] show various amounts expended in the hire of houses and grounds there for purposes associated with the ship, and some of these were converted into permanent purchases. One such occurred in 1518 when the king bought a wharf and houses from Nicholas Partriche, an alderman of London, for £100,[298] but the Longhouse, and perhaps others had been built in 1512. In 1546 the yard was again enlarged by the addition of docks and land belonging to Sir Edward Boughton, which were obtained by means of an exchange of property; these docks had been leased by the crown for at least seven years previously at £6, 13s 4d a year.[299]

In connection with Woolwich we find a description of the office formalities necessary when a ship was moved from one place to another. In 1518 the Henry Grace à Dieu and the Gabriel Royal were brought from Barking creek, the first to Erith, and the second to Woolwich, and among the expenses incurred were payments

‘To John Dende scryvenor in Lombarde Strette for certen wrytyngs and bylls made by hym for the Kyngs lysences to my office, belongynge, that is to seye, for one warraunte made to Master Comely, the Kinges attorney, xiiᵈ, and for a letter to rygge the schippes viiiᵈ, and for a warraunte to have the schippes owt of Barkyn Creke, viiiᵈ, and for ii comyssions made to provide all things concernynge the same schippes, iiˢ, and for divers copyes of the same xviᵈ.’[300]

It is doubtful however whether a dry dock existed at Woolwich at this time. In this particular instance there is a payment to John Barton, ‘marshman,’ for the making ‘of the Gabriel Rialls docke the sixteenth daye of Marche anno dicto in grett when the seid shipp most be browght apon blokks xxxˡⁱ’.[301] Seventeen men were at work and this cannot refer to a dry dock which would have required more men and much more money; it seems to have been a graving place in which the vessel was shored upon blocks. But when the Henry was being built the charges include the travelling expenses of men from Southampton and Portsmouth ‘for the makynge of the dokkehede,’ and ‘to break up the dokhede.’

Dockyards:—Deptford.

The formation of Deptford is usually assigned to 1517, when John Hopton, comptroller of the ships, undertook, for 600 marks, to ‘make and cast a pond’ in a meadow adjoining the storehouse, and to build

‘A good hable and suffycient hed for the same pond and also certyn hable sleysis through the which the water may have entre and course into the foresaid ponde as well at spryng tydes as at nepetydes.’[302]

It was to be of sufficient size to take the Great Galley, Mary Rose, Great Bark, Less Bark, and Peter Pomegranate. There is some evidence that a pond with an inlet communicating with the river, was in existence in the thirteenth century, in which case Hopton only adapted and improved it. The storehouse can be traced back to 1513,[303] but it is possible that the building hired at ‘Greenwich’ in 1485, by Henry VII was really at Deptford, seeing that Deptford Strand was sometimes called West Greenwich; if so its beginnings are older than Portsmouth. Even in 1513 there is a reference to ‘the howse at the dockhede,’ but in 1518, when the Great Nicholas was brought to Deptford for repair, there are charges for putting her into the dock, for ‘making the same dockhed,’ ‘for pylinge of the dockhede,’ and for ‘scouring out the dokk at the este ende of the Kyngis storehouse.’ There was also made ‘a myghty hegge of grete tesarde and tenets[304] along the seid dockside and the retorne of the same;’ in the same year a wharf and two sheds were built.[305] The use made of Deptford grew steadily until by the end of the reign it had become the most important yard. In 1546-7 more storehouses had to be hired at a cost of £17, 18s 8d for the year, while £1, 6s 8d covered the extra payments for the same purpose at Woolwich, and no such temporary augmentation was required at Portsmouth.[306]

Dockyards:—Erith.

There seems at one time to have been intention to make Erith a permanent naval station. By Letters Patent of 12th January 1513-4, John Hopton was appointed ‘keeper of the new storehouses at Deptford and Erith for supplying the king’s ships.’ On 18th February £32 was paid to Robert Page of Erith for

‘The purches of a tenement with an orchard and gardeyn and othir appurtenaunces thereunto belonging, conteigning foure acres of ground, being and sett in the parish of Erith by us of hym bought upon the which ground we have newe edified and bilded a house called a storehouse for the saffe kepyng of our ordynaunce and habillamentes of warre belonging to our shippes.’[307]

In 1521 the fittings, guns, and ground tackle of some of the ships were kept here, and shortly before that the sills of the doors had been raised ‘for the keepinge owt of the hye tydis for att every tyde affore ther was ii ffoote depe of water in the seide storrhowsse.’ At this date there were 88 bolts of canvas, 219 cables and hawsers, 27 masts, and 25 guns besides powder, pikes, bows and blocks in the house, which must have been of good size. We do not know the circumstances that led to its disuse, but long before the end of the reign Erith ceases to be mentioned in connection with naval affairs.

If we were to assume that the docks, so frequently spoken of in official papers, were all dry docks, we should have to conclude that there were nearly as many in existence then as now. There can, however, be no doubt that the term was applied indifferently to a complete dock with gates, to a graving place, and even to a temporary protection of timber, fitted round a ship afloat to protect it from the ice. At Erith, in 1512-13 there was ‘a new docke’ made, in which the Sovereign was placed and repaired, the dock and repairs together occupying only eight weeks.[308] But in 1526 the construction of a dock at an estimated cost of £600 was suggested, so that it is certain that one did not exist there previously.[309] In another instance John Barton and twenty-three marshmen were paid for two days’ work while they ‘cast and made a dock for the Grett Galey affore the towne of Depfforde Stronde for the suer keepinge of her ther owt of the ysse.’[310] Subsequently certain ships are said to have been brought ‘into their dock’ after they had been aground for breaming and floated again;[311] in such a case it seems to have meant only a mooring place. At Portsmouth in 1528 a number of labourers were ‘working by tide for the making of a dock for the grounding of the Mary Rose, Peter Pomegranate, and John Baptist,’ which vessels were ‘wound aground by certain devices.’[312] These examples show clearly that the word when found in a sixteenth century paper, must be understood in a far wider sense than is customary to-day. Nevertheless there are references which seem to imply that there were other docks than those in the government yards. In 1513 men were engaged in ‘casting and closing the dockhede with tymber bord and balyste at Ratcliffe,’ and another one at Limehouse is also mentioned.[313]

Shipwrights and Workmen.

There was as yet no large resident population of shipwrights and others at the naval centres chosen by the government. For the Henry Grace à Dieu workers were brought from districts far afield. Plymouth, Dartmouth, Bere Regis, Exeter, Saltash, Bradford, Bristol, Southampton, Bodmin, Exmouth, Poole, Ipswich, Brightlingsea, Yarmouth, Hull, Beverley, York, and other places furnished contingents. Most of the men came from the south and west, but of single towns Dartmouth and Ipswich supplied the largest numbers. While travelling to and returning from the scene of their employment they received a halfpenny a mile, known as conduct money, for food and lodging, and the agents sent to press them were paid one shilling a day.[314] Probably the call to the royal service was not unpopular as all classes of workmen were boarded and lodged in addition to their wages; under Henry VII they were victualled, but there is no mention of free lodging.

Shipwrights received from twopence to sixpence a day, sawyers, caulkers, and pumpmakers, twopence to fourpence, smiths twopence to sixpence, and labourers from twopence to fivepence. The staff at Portsmouth included a chip-bearer and a chip-gatherer at sevenpence a day, so that at this time ‘chips’ did not constitute the scandalous perquisite it afterwards became. Of the carpenters working on the Henry Grace à Dieu, 141 were supplied with ‘coats’ costing from two to five shillings each, but that was a nearly exceptional expenditure, although 164 were provided for the men building the Mary Rose and Peter Pomegranate. The cost of victualling averaged twopence halfpenny a day, and they were given bread, beef, beer, ling, cod, hake, herring, pease, and oatmeal. There were cooks to prepare their food and a ‘chamberlyn’ to make the beds which were bought or hired for their use; flockbeds and mattresses cost from 3s 4d to 5s, bolsters 1s and 1s 6d, sheets 2s to 3s, blankets 1s 4d, and coverlets 1s to 2s.[315] Sometimes flock beds and mattresses were temporarily procured for twopence, and feather beds for threepence a week. The beds were made to hold two or three men, and in at least one instance ten men were packed into three beds. By 1545 wages seem to have risen somewhat, since at Deptford and Portsmouth that year the pay and victualling of all classes—carpenters, smiths, labourers, caulkers, and sawyers—came to ninepence a day.

The principal designers and master shipwrights were John Smyth, Robert Holborn, and Richard Bull, who were in 1548 granted pensions on the Exchequer of fourpence a day ‘in consideration of their long and good service, and that they should instruct others in their feats.’[316] James Baker, the only master shipwright whose reputation outlived his generation, is not mentioned among these men, but he is elsewhere spoken of as ‘skilful in ships,’[317] and he possessed a pension, also from the Exchequer, of eightpence a day. In the reign of James I he was still remembered and said to have been the first who adapted English ships to carry heavy guns, a survival which, whether exactly correct or not, testifies to an exceptional skill in his art. In 1546 Baker got into trouble by being in possession of some forbidden religious books, and it is likely that only his professional ability saved him. Henry ordered that he should be examined, but ‘His Maiestie thynketh you shall find him a very simple man, and therefore wold that without putting him in any great fear you should search of him as much as you may.’ Evidently the king knew him well, and had doubtless often discussed shipbuilding with him.

The famous Pett family who furnished a succession of celebrated shipbuilders between the reigns of Mary I and Mary II, were not yet prominent. In 1523 a Peter Pett is among the shipwrights, pressed from Essex and Suffolk, who were working at Portsmouth, and there is a yet earlier mention of a payment of £38, 1s 4d to a John Pett for caulking the Regent in 1499.[318] A recent writer,[319] in a Pett pedigree, gives Thomas Pett of Harwich as the father of the first well known Peter Pett who died in 1589. It is therefore possible, but scarcely probable, that this was the Peter Pett who was working in 1523 as a boy.

Officers and Men:—Pay and Clothing.

By the treaty of 1511, between Henry and Ferdinand, the former undertook to hold the Channel between the Thames and Ushant with 3000 men, of whom some 1600 were sailors and gunners.[320] For the fleet of 1513, exclusive of the crews of 28 victualling ships, 2880 seamen were required;[321] in 1514, during the month ending with 22nd May, there were 23 king’s ships, 21 hired merchantmen, and 15 victuallers in commission manned by 3982 seamen and 447 gunners, exclusive of the soldiers carried as well.[322] When maritime action in force recommenced in 1545, it was estimated that 5000 men would be wanted which ‘wilbe some dyffycultie.’ Beyond this one expression there is no hint of any trouble having been experienced in procuring these men although the numbers were larger than those which Charles I, a century later, found it almost impossible to obtain. As the proportion allowed theoretically was two men to a ton[323] the ships were much more heavily manned than in the seventeenth century, but in practice the crews do not usually work out at one man to a ton, even including soldiers.

Henry’s success was due in a great measure to the fact that the men were punctually paid and fairly well fed, two elementary incentives to loyal service neglected during the two succeeding centuries. In his first war of 1512 he entered into an agreement with the admiral, Sir Edward Howard, by which the latter, being supplied with ships, men, and money, had the whole administration placed in his hands, having to pay wages and find provisions and clothes.[324] In every subsequent expedition the admiral’s duties were only executive. The rate of pay was five shillings a month, and at this it remained during nearly the whole reign, but in addition, a certain number of dead shares, or extra pays, the division of which is somewhat obscure, were allotted to each ship. They are first met with during the war with France in 1492, and, at that time, in connection with the pay of the soldiers serving on board the fleet. Subsequently the favour was extended to the maritime branch, and was perhaps intended to replace the ‘reward’ of sixpence a week in addition to their pay, which had been enjoyed by the seamen in preceding centuries. But if the dead shares were at any time divided among the sailors they speedily lost the privilege, and early in the reign we find the shares, reckoned at five shillings apiece, reserved for the officers. There are a few apparent exceptions, perhaps due to our ignorance of the exact sixteenth century meaning of the words used. The wages bill of the Katherine of London[325] distinctly says that the dead shares are divided between ‘master and mariners,’ and there are some other similar cases, e.g. ‘168 dead shares to be divided among the mariners.’[326] But in the vast majority of references they are seen to be meant for the officers.

The number of course depended on the size of the ship, and for the Henry Grace à Dieu they were thus distributed[327]:—Master —; master’s mate, 4; four pilots, 16; four quartermasters, 12; quartermaster’s mates, 4; boatswain, 3; boatswain’s mate, 1½; cockswain, 1½; cockswain’s mate, 1; master carpenter, 3; carpenter’s mate, 1½; under-carpenter, 1; two caulkers, 3; purser, 2; three stewards, 3; three cooks, 3; cook’s mates, 1½; two yeomen of the stryks, 2; their mates, 1; two yeomen of the ports, 2; their mates, 1. The officers’ pay was the same as that of the men, but they received in addition either these dead shares, reckoned at five shillings each, in the proportion shown here, or ‘rewards’ of so much a month. The Peter Pomegranate may be taken as a representative ship, as the Henry carried some officers unknown in the smaller vessels. In the Peter the master obtained one pound ten shillings a month of twenty-eight days; the master’s mate and quartermasters ten shillings; the boatswain twelve shillings and sixpence; master gunner, carpenter, purser, steward and cook, ten shillings, and gunners six shillings and eightpence. Surgeons were paid ten shillings and thirteen shillings and fourpence, and pilots twenty and thirty shillings a month, but neither were always carried.[328] Within certain limits, however, officers’ wages vary considerably, depending on the number of dead shares allotted among them, which, again, was subject to the size of the ship, an indication of the commencing division into rates. But before Henry’s death the formula of pay ran ‘dead shares and rewards included’ for an average, exclusive of captains, of eight shillings a month[329] all round, so that the old system was beginning to be discarded.

For many years of the reign some sort of uniform in the shape of ‘coats’ or ‘jackets’ was supplied to the men, but its exact character is nowhere described. When the Mary Rose and Peter Pomegranate were brought round from Portsmouth to the Thames thirty-five coats in green and white were provided, but as the cost was 6s 8d apiece these could only have been for the officers.[330] Sir Edward Howard, by his agreement in 1512, had to furnish the sailors with them at 1s 8d each, and he appears to have charged for 1616 besides 1812 for the soldiers.[331] Masters and pilots had sometimes coats of damask, every coat containing eight yards.[332] In 1513, we find references to 1244 mariners’, gunners’, and servitors’, jackets,[333] and to 638 coats of white and green cloth, 13 of white and green camlet, 4 of satin, and one of damask.[334] Although indications of uniform for the men have been noticed under Edward IV and Henry VII, the provision was much more liberal when Henry ascended the throne. He had at first an overflowing treasury wherewith to minister to his love of display and carry out more completely a custom he may also have thought useful from the point of view of health and of making the men proud of the royal service. But the allusions to seamen’s clothes are few after the first years. The system appears to have lasted, although perhaps not continuously, until his death, since in 1545 the writer of an estimate of naval charges asks if 1800 seamen are to have coats at two shillings each.[335]

Sick and Wounded Men.

Sick men appear to have been kept in pay if landed for that reason, because when Sir Thomas Wyndham proposed to send such members of his crew ashore, the council preferred that he should keep them on board as they would only be receiving pay uselessly on land and might not come back.[336] Those discharged disabled from wounds sometimes received a gratuity; in 1513, sixty men of the Mary James sent home in that condition were given twopence a mile conduct money, the usual rate being a halfpenny a mile, and a gift of £20 among them.[337]

Until 1545, there is no record of exceptional disease in fleets, but in September of that year the plague broke out in the English ships, although as the French were suffering even more and were eventually compelled by it to disband their fleet, it did not adversely affect the result of the operations. In August there were many men sick which was ascribed ‘to the great hete and the corrupcion of the victuall by reason of the disorder in the provision and the strayte and warm lying in the shippes.’[338] On the 28th August Lisle wrote to Paget that there was much illness, ‘those that be hole be veray unsightlie havyng not a ragg to hang uppon ther backes.’ On 3rd September, Lisle landed at Treport in Normandy, and sacked and burnt the town, and it is not until after that date that the word ‘plague’ is used and the terrible disease raged virulently. On 4th September there were 12,000 effective men, soldiers and sailors; on the 13th, 8488, so that in little more than a week 3512 ‘were sick, dead, or dismissed,’[339] By 11th September, Lisle was back at Portsmouth and wrote to the king that the ships were generally infected. Although the fleet was then broken up, it seems to have lingered on in the vessels kept in commission through the winter as there are references to it in the following April.

Captains.

The captains of men-of-war were still usually military officers or courtiers who made no attempt to work the ship. They were for the most part, persons holding appointments in the household, but towards the end of the reign, the new feeling that the sea was as important as the land as a field of national effort had trained officers who were almost professional seamen. These men belonged to the class who would earlier have been content to command soldiers during a voyage, but who were now continuously occupied in commanding ships at sea or in attending to administrative details ashore. Nominally a captain’s pay was one shilling and sixpence a day, but there were frequently extra allowances. In 1513, Walter, Lord Ferrers, captain of the Sovereign received five shillings and two pence a day ‘by way of reward’ over and above his one shilling and sixpence,[340] and Sir William Trevilian of the Gabriel Royal, three shillings and fourpence a day. On the other hand captains who happened to belong to the troop of ‘King’s Spears’ were paid ‘out of the King’s cofers’ and took nothing from the navy expenses.[341] The King’s Spears were a troop of Horseguards, fifty in number, formed by Henry shortly after his accession. Each of them was attended by an archer, man-at-arms, and servant, ‘they and all their horses being trapped in cloth of gold, silver, or goldsmith’s work.’ Eventually want of money led to the disbandment of this force.

In 1545 the demand for captains exceeded the supply for the smaller ships, the circumstances perhaps promising neither fame nor prize money. The official total of men-of-war and armed merchantmen under Lisle’s command was 104 ships, the strongest fighting fleet as yet sent to sea. About some of these he wrote,

‘As concernynge the meane[342] shippes I know noon other waye (I meane those that come out of the west parties and such of London, as were victuallers that want capitaignes) but to place them with meane men to be their capitaignes as serving men and yomen that be most mete for the purpose.’[343]

‘Meane men’[344] here signifies those of moderate social status, and serving men the confidants or attendants of noblemen, and who were frequently gentlemen themselves.

In 1546 a Spaniard was retained as captain of the Galley Subtylle and a Venetian as its patron, or master, but as they were provided with an interpreter the crew must have been English.[345] This is a further proof of the little experience native officers had of galley work; apparently the English captain of the preceding year had not been found efficient. Whether the crew were seamen or criminals is not quite certain; the term ‘forsathos’[346] is used but only in connection with the French prize, the Galley Blancherd, which was undoubtedly manned by prisoners, its original crew. In more ways than one this prize seems to have been a source of trouble to its captors. To keep the men in condition constant practice was essential, ‘Richard Brooke ... keptt me company as far as Gravesend to kepe the forsados in ure and breth as they must contynewally be otherwyse they wilbe shortly nothing worth.’ Most of the captives were Neapolitans, with the habits of their class, and Brooke desired new clothes ‘for all the said forsados who he saith are most insufferable without any manner of things to hang upon theym. So that I perceyve the same galley will be some chardge to His Maiestie contynewally, yf His Highnes do keep her styll with her suit of forsadoes as she ys now.’[347] Lisle urged that if the Blancherd was restored at the conclusion of the war the prisoners should be granted their liberty. Perhaps he may have thought it advisable to get rid of them on any terms, but the argument he pressed was that such a course would make the French chary, at any future time, of bringing their galleys near English ports or ships if the slaves on board knew that surrender meant freedom.

Ship Discipline.

Yet another diplomatist, Dr William Knight, found ‘the ungodly manners of the seamen’ not to his liking, and so far as the scanty material permits us to judge, they appear to have been an unruly and disorderly race. Discipline in the modern sense was of course unknown, and such restraints as existed sat but lightly on both royal and merchant seamen. An undated paper, but which is probably earlier than 1530, discussing the causes of the decay of shipping, describes the men as ‘so unruly nowadays that ther ys no merchantman dare enterpryse to take apon hym the orderyng and governing of the said shippes.’[348] Even the government dealt with them gently, and when in 1513, the crew of a man-of-war were discontented with their captain, Sir Weston Browne, the Vice-Admiral was directed, if he could not pacify them, to replace Browne.[349] Sometimes whole crews went ashore, and when the French attacked Dover in 1514, the king’s ships in harbour there lay uselessly at their anchors for want of men. One sailor, Edward Foster, was examined at Portsmouth in 1539, before the Mayor and two admiralty officials for saying that ‘if his blood and the King’s were both in a dish, there would be no difference between them, and that if the Great Turk would give a penny a day more he would serve him.’[350] One would like to know what happened to this matter-of-fact physiologist.

Regulations existed for the maintenance of order on board ship, and were ‘set in the mayne mast in parchement to be rid as occasion shall serve.’[351] A murderer was to be tied to the corpse and thrown overboard with it; to draw a weapon on the captain involved the loss of the right hand; the delinquent sleeping on watch[352] for the fourth time was to be tied to the bowsprit with a biscuit, a can of beer, and a knife, and left to starve or cut himself down into the sea; a thief was to be ducked two fathoms under water, towed ashore at the stern of a boat, and dismissed. Only a boat from the flagship was to board a stranger to make inquiries, as the men ‘would pilfer thinges from oure nation as well of the kinges dere frends,’ but in a captured ship all plunder, except treasure, between the upper and lower decks was allotted to them. It is interesting, as showing Henry’s desire to avoid giving needless offence, to compare this order, about the manner in which strange ships were to be visited, with another issued at the end of the reign. It was still more impressively worded. Neutrals were to be ‘gently’ examined, and if no enemies’ goods found in them not to be harmed. And ‘the violation of our pleasure in this behaulf is of such importance as whosoever shalbe found culpable therein, we shall not faile so to look upon him as shall be to his demerits.’[353]

In addition to regulations which, if not new as maritime customs, were new as a code of discipline we find that crews were now assigned stations on board ship, an essential towards smartness in work, but one which so far as we know had no previous existence. The station list—or one of them—of the Henry Grace à Dieu has come down to us, and although no similar paper exists for any other ship it cannot be supposed that an improvement in method and working, of which the advantages must at once have made themselves felt, could have failed to have been generally adopted.[354] This list gives:—

• The forecastle 100 men; waist 120
• In the second deck for the main lifts, 20
• In the said deck for the trin and the dryngs,[355] 20
• To the stryks[356] of the mainsail, 8 principal men
• To the bonaventure top, 2
• The little top upon the fore top, 2
• For the boat 40; the cok, 20
• Main capstandard[357] and main sheets, 80
• In the third deck to the topsail sheets, 40
• To the bonaventure and main mizen, 20
• To the helm, 4 men
• To the main top 12; to the fore top, 6; to the main mizen top, 6
• The little top upon the main top, 2
• The little top upon the main mizen top, 2
• The gellywatte, 10.[358]

Notwithstanding these signs of orderly training the loss of the Mary Rose was attributed solely to the insubordination and disorder of those on board. Her captain, Sir George Carew, being hailed when matters looked serious answered that ‘he had a sort of knaves whom he could not rule.’ But these men had been chosen for the Vice-Admiral’s ship as especially good sailors and therefore ‘so maligned and disdained one the other that refusing to do that which they should do were careless to do that which was most needful and necessary and so contending in envy perished in frowardness.’[359]

Victualling.

Until very recent times the victualling on board ship was a source of continual anxiety to the authorities, and of grumbling and vexation to the men; and even in the time of Henry VIII it appears to have given more trouble than any of the other details of administration. There was no victualling department until 1550, and either local men were employed at the ports where supplies were to be collected or others were sent from London to make the purchases. Commissions to provide provisions were given to persons attached to the household, or to highly placed officials with sufficient influence to obtain them. In 1496 John Redynge, clerk of the Spicery, was victualling both the land and sea forces on service.[360] In July 1512, Sir Thomas Knyvet, Master of the Horse, was supplying the fleet and undertaking the responsibility of transport; in October, John Shurly, Cofferer of the Household, and John Heron, Supervisor of the London Customhouse.[361] Between 1544-7 numerous agents were employed and were subject to no central control, unless a reference to the Lord Chamberlain, Lord St John, afterwards Marquis of Winchester, as ‘a chief victualler of the army at the seas’ may be held to imply his general superintendence.