the troops collecting in the interior of the country, re-embarked his
men, and the expedition returned home. It hung about on the coast for a
time in the hope of picking up a few prizes, and it had a brush or two
with the King of Spain's galleys at the mouth of the Tagus. In one of
these, the galleys, aided by a dead calm, succeeded in cutting off and
setting on fire one English vessel which carried a company of soldiers.
But the Spanish trade had been so completely frightened that it had no
longer any ships at sea. The provisions began to run out. Disease had
made so much progress in the squadron that barely two thousand men were
left fit for service. It finally returned home in the midst of very
bad weather, having failed of its main purposes, but having also shown
how entirely the destruction of the Armada had prostrated the naval
strength of the King of Spain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IV

JAMES I. AND CHARLES I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

        The ancient Patentees and their payments are these--
  The Lord High Admiral of England               £ 133   6   8
  The Lieutenants of the Admiralty, which was
    not bestowed all Queen Elizabeth's time        322  18   4
  The Treasurer of the navy for his fee,
     travelling charges, boat hire and clerks      220  13   4
  Comptroller of the navy, the like                155   6   8
  Surveyor of the navy for the like                145   6   8
  Surveyors of victuals for the like               159  10   0
  Clerk of the navy for the like                   100   3   4
  Keeper of the stores-general for the like         78   5  10
  Keeper of the stores at Portsmouth                20   0   0
  Three assistants to the officers                  60   0   0
  A master for grounding the great ships             9   2   6
  Three master shipwrights (at first but two)       66  18   4
  A pilot or master for the black deeps             20   0   0
                                                 _____________
        Total                                    £1491  11   8

 The new erections since His Majesty's reign--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Total, £1244, 6s. 0d.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                        His Majesty's Ships.

       Ships.           Tons.  Men.  Brass Guns.  Commanders.
 =The Lion=, Admiral       600   250     40       Sir Robert Mansel.
 =Vanguard=, Vice-Admiral  660   250     40       Sir Richard Hawkins.
 =Rainbow=, Rear-Admiral   660   250     40       Sir Thomas Button.
 =Constant Reformation=    660   250     40       Captain Arth. Manwaring.
 =Antelope=                400   160     34       Sir Henry Palmer.
 =Convertine=              500   220     36       Captain Thomas Love.

                        Merchant Ships.

                                     Iron Guns.
 =Golden Phenix=           300   120     24       Captain Samuel Argall.
 =Samuel=                  300   120     22       Captain Chr. Harris.
 =Marygold=                260   100     21       Sir John Fearn.
 =Zouch Phenix=            280   120     26       Captain John Pennington.
 =Barbary=                 200    80     18       Captain Thomas Porter.
 =Centurion=               200   100     22       Sir Francis Tanfield.
 =Primrose=                180    80     18       Sir John Hamden.
 =Hercules=                300   120     24       Captain Eusaby Cave.
 =Neptune=                 280   120     21       Captain Robert Haughton.
 =Merchant-Bonaventure=    260   110     23       Captain John Chidley.
 =Restore=                 130    50     12       Captain George Raymond.
 =Marmaduke=               100    50     12       Captain Thomas Harbert.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Middle tier      30 for Culverines and Demi ditto
  Third tier       26 for other Ordnance
  Forecastle       12

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

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

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

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

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

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

The administration of Northumberland, which lasted till June 1642, when
he was dismissed by the king in bitter wrath, is of great importance
in the history of England. It contains nearly, if not quite, the most
discreditable incident in naval history. In the September of 1639
the Spaniards sent out a great fleet with reinforcements for their
garrisons in Flanders. It arrived at the mouth of the Channel on the
7th of the month, and was at once attacked by the Dutch. A running
fight took place along the Channel, in which the Dutch, who were
constantly reinforced, soon gained the advantage. The Spanish admiral,
Don Antonio de Oquendo, the son of the Don Miguel de Oquendo who had
served in the Armada, took refuge in the Downs. His Government was
acting by arrangement with the king's, and he had reason to believe