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Title: Samuel Pepys and the Royal Navy


Author: J. R. (Joseph Robson) Tanner



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SAMUEL PEPYS AND THE ROYAL NAVY


       *       *       *       *       *

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

C. F. CLAY, Manager

LONDON: FETTER LANE, E. C. 4


NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

 BOMBAY   }
 CALCUTTA } MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd.
 MADRAS   }

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

TOKYO: MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

       *       *       *       *       *


SAMUEL PEPYS AND THE ROYAL NAVY


Lees Knowles Lectures Delivered
at Trinity College in Cambridge,
6, 13, 20 and 27 November, 1919

by

J. R. TANNER, Litt.D.

Fellow of St John's College







Cambridge
At the UNIVERSITY PRESS
1920




PREFACE


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

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

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

      J. R. T.

  _February, 1920._




CONTENTS

   LECTURE                                      PAGE

     I. INTRODUCTORY                               1

    II. ADMINISTRATION                            18

   III. FINANCE                                   37

    IV. VICTUALLING; DISCIPLINE; SHIPS; GUNS      57

   INDEX                                          80




LECTURE I

INTRODUCTORY


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

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

These manuscripts may be roughly classified in three groups:

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

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

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


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

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

1. They bring into relief the remarkable durability of naval abuses.
John Hollond was not the first writer to denounce abuses in the navy.
This had been a fruitful topic for anonymous writers long before his
day, and if the scattered papers on the subject were collected they
would constitute a complete literature. The charges begin at least as
early as the time of Hawkyns, and one writer[4] accuses him of what
has always been regarded as one of the more modern refinements of
cheating—the manufacture of a complete set of false books and vouchers
for the purpose of baffling enquiry. The Pepysian Library contains
copies of a number of exposures ranging from 1587 to 1611. The Reports
of the Commissions of 1608 and 1618, and in a lesser degree of that
of 1626, are of special importance in the history of the evolution
of fraud. Sir William Monson, who in 1635 'turned physician' and
studied 'how to cure the malignant diseases of corruption' that had
'crept in and infected his Majesty's whole navy,'[5] assigns some
passages in his _Naval Tracts_ to naval abuses; and in 1636 the Earl of
Northumberland, fresh from the experience of a naval command, denounces
them in a state paper to the King in Council[6]. Hollond only develops
in detail earlier themes, and Pepys, who thought very highly of his
_Discourses_, 'they hitting the very diseases of the navy which we are
troubled with now-a-days,'[7] takes up the same tale. And such is the
tenacity of life exhibited by a well-established naval abuse, that
a Parliamentary enquiry of 1783[8] into the Victualling Department
at Portsmouth revealed malpractices of a kind very similar to those
described by Hollond. The keys of the victualling storehouses had been
entrusted to improper recipients, who had access to the stores at all
hours; certain persons kept hogs in the King's storehouses, which were
'fed with the King's serviceable biscuit'; planks, spars, staves, and
barrels were converted to private use; 'mops and brooms' from the
store were appropriated by an official who 'kept a shop and dealt in
those articles'; the King's wine was drawn off in large quantities 'in
bottles in a clandestine manner'; certificates were granted for stores
before they were actually received, and for articles received short,
these being signed in blank by the clerk of the check beforehand; it
was a 'common practice' to send in bags of bread deficient in weight;
the accounts were imperfectly kept, and showed enormous deficiencies
of stores; by collusion with the contractor stores were accepted that
were 'of improper quality and not according to contract'; and the
victualling board paid excessive prices to a bread contractor with whom
they were in collusion and refused to allow others to tender.

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

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

(_b_) Hollond also speaks strongly against the practice of using the
State's labour in the gardens or grounds of officials, and the State's
materials in repairing private houses or sumptuously decorating
official residences, 'by painting, paving, and other ornamental
tricking.'[10] Here he attacks a longstanding abuse, for a writer of
1597 had already charged the Comptroller of the Navy with employing
five labourers from the dockyard 'by the space of half a year' at his
house at Chatham 'about the making of a bowling alley and planting of
trees,'[11] and in 1603 Phineas Pett was accused of appropriating the
King's timber 'to make a bridge into his meadow' and to set up 'posts
to hang clothes on in his garden,' and also labour for the same[12]. It
is true that Pett's accuser is not above suspicion, for he begins his
philippic with an artless exposition of his motives: 'In the last year
of the Queen's reign, I, seeing some abuses by Phineas Pett, told him
he had not done his duty. He strook me with his cudgel. I told him he
had been better he had held his hand, for he should pay for it.' Pett
was in some respects a calumniated man, but this particular kind of
peculation is more easily justified to the official conscience than any
other, and there is nothing inherently improbable in the accusation.

(_c_) The combination of captains and pursers to return false musters,
or to present men to receive pay who never served, was another
longstanding abuse. There was in the navy a recognised system of
drawing pay for non-existent persons to which no discredit attached,
for it was the regular way of giving the officers extra pay. Thus the
captains were allowed a 'dead pay' apiece on the sea-books 'for their
retinues'; and in harbour no less than four varieties of dead pay
were recognised, including wages and victuals paid to men for keeping
ships 'which long since had no being.' We also hear of an allowance
demanded in the Narrow Seas 'for a preacher and his man, though no
such devotion be ever used on board.' The same principle appears in
the 18th century in connexion with what were known as 'widows' men.'
The captain was authorised to enter one or two fictitious persons in
every hundred men of his ship's complement, and the wages drawn in
their names and the value of the victuals to which they would have
been entitled were applied to the relief of the widows of officers
and seamen who had served in the navy[13]. In the 16th and 17th
centuries, however, the established principle was liable to a variety
of fraudulent applications. A paper of 1603 gives a circumstantial
account of a case in which the companies of a squadron of four ships
were mustered, and it was found that of 1250 men charged for, only
958 were actually serving, the King being 'abused in the pay of 292
men, which for four months, the least time of their employment,' was
£800[14]. The Report of the Commission of 1608 explains how this could
happen, for 'the captains, being for the most part poor gentlemen, did
mend their fortunes by combining with the pursers'[15]; and Hollond, in
his _First Discourse_, urges as a remedy 'an increase of means from the
King' for 'all subordinate ministers acting in the navy,' since 'for
want thereof' they are 'necessitated to one of these two particulars,
either to live knaves or die beggars—and sometimes to both.'[16]

(_d_) The danger of collusion among officials was one of the chief
difficulties in the way of would-be reformers, and just as collusion
between the captains and the pursers defrauded the King in the matter
of pay, so collusion between the victuallers and the pursers defrauded
the King over the provision of victuals. Sir William Monson, in his
_Naval Tracts_, gives instances of such collusion, and shews how
easily it can be managed. Thus the victualler and the purser would
contract between themselves for the purser to be allowed to victual a
certain number of men on board each ship, paying the victualler for
the privilege but making his own profit on the victuals he supplied.
'Which,' says Monson, 'besides that it breeds a great inconvenience,
for the purser's unreasonable griping the sailors of their victuals,
and plucking it, as it were, out of their bellies, it makes them become
weak, sick, and feeble, and then follows an infection and inability
to do their labour, or else uproars, mutinies, and disorders ensue
among the company.'[17] Even if the officers of the ship did their
duty, it was sometimes the case that the higher authorities ashore
intervened from corrupt motives. Monson tells us that when the _James_
was taking in victuals in Tilbury Hope, 'there appeared a certain
proportion of beef and pork able with its scent to have poisoned the
whole company, but by the carefulness of the quartermasters it was
found unserviceable. Yet after it was refused by the said officers
of the ship, and lay upon the hatches unstowed, some of the Officers
of the Navy repaired aboard and, by their authority and great anger,
forced it to be taken in for good victuals.... My observation to this
point is that, though the Officers of the Navy have nothing to do with
the victualling part, yet it is likely there is a combination betwixt
the one and the other, like to a mayor of a corporation, a baker, who
for that year will favour the brewer that shall the next year do the
like to his trade when he becomes mayor.'[18] Hollond's remedy for
these abuses was to abolish the victualling contractor altogether, and
for the State to take over the victualling by means of a victualling
department[19]. This system of victualling 'upon account,' as it
was called, was actually adopted from 1655 to the Restoration, and
again after 1683; but the difficulties were not altogether met by the
change, for the officials who victualled 'upon account' were liable to
collusion with the vendors of victuals from whom they bought, and in
this case the King's service suffered in a different way.

(_e_) The administrative defects of the victualling recurred on almost
as serious a scale in the department of stores, and great complaints
are made, both by John Hollond and the earlier writers, of the bad
quality of cordage and timber and of the frauds connected with their
purveyance. Cordage would be entered by the storekeeper as heavier than
it weighed; old cordage would be sold at absurdly low prices to the
minor officials of the dockyard; and materials still fit for service
would be condemned as unserviceable by an official who himself acted as
a contractor for purchasing unserviceable stores[20]. The inefficiency
of the surveyors of timber led them to purchase bad materials[21], and
their dishonesty provoked them to glut the King's stores with defective
timber at exorbitant prices[22] in order to favour the monopolist or
merchant with whom they were in profitable collusion.


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

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

    There are people, I'm told—some say there are heaps—
    Who speak of the talkative Samuel as Peeps;
    And some, so precise and pedantic their step is,
    Who call the delightful old Diarist, Pepys;
    But those I think right, and I follow their steps,
    Ever mention the garrulous gossip as Peps.

But is he nothing more than 'the talkative Samuel,' 'the delightful
old Diarist,' 'the garrulous gossip'? Even 'old' is the wrong epithet
unless it is restricted to historical antiquity, for Pepys was not 27
when he began the _Diary_[23], and only 36 when the partial failure of
his eyesight compelled him, to his great regret, to give it up, 'which
is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave.'[24] Yet he lived
to be 70 years of age, and although for part of his career he was out
of office, he certainly became, what Monck had called him earlier with
exaggerated compliment, 'the right hand of the navy.'[25] The maturity
of his powers lies outside the period of the _Diary_, and it is his
later life that makes good his claim to be regarded as one of the best
public officials who ever served the State. In fact, Pepys's _Diary_ is
only a by-product of the life of Samuel Pepys.

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

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

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

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

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

 There being a prospect (as you will know) of a considerable number of
 great ships to be built, and many applications being already, and more
 likely to be yet made to his Majesty and my Lords of the Admiralty
 for employments by persons so far from having merited the same by
 any past service as to be wholly strangers to the business thereof,
 or at least have their qualifications for the same wholly unknown,
 nor have any title to his Majesty's favour therein more than their
 interest (which possibly they have bought too) in the persons they
 solicit by, And knowing that it is his Majesty's royal intentions, as
 well as for the benefit of his service, that the employments arising
 upon his ships be disposed to such as by their long and faithful
 services and experiences are best fitted for and deserve the same, I
 make it my desire to you that you will at your first convenience cause
 the list of the present standing officers of his Majesty's fleet,
 namely, pursers, boatswains, and carpenters, to be overlooked, and a
 collection thence made of such as by length of service, frequency and
 strictness of passing their accounts, together with their diligence
 and sobriety, you shall find most deserving to be advanced from lesser
 ships to bigger, transmitting the same to me in order to my laying it
 (as there shall be occasion) before his Majesty for the benefit of the
 persons you shall therein do right to and encouragement of others to
 imitate them in deserving well in his service, Towards the obtaining
 of which I shall by the grace of God endeavour constantly to do my
 part, as I doubt not you will also do yours, putting in execution
 the Lord Admiral's instructions for informing yourselves well in the
 good and bad behaviour of these officers, and particularly by your
 enquiries after the same at pays, when by the presence of the ship's
 companies the same will most probably be understood.

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

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




LECTURE II

ADMINISTRATION


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

At the date of the King's Restoration the direction of the navy was
in the hands of an Admiralty Commission of twenty-eight, appointed by
the restored Rump Parliament in December, 1659[30], with a Navy Board
of seven experts under it. One of the earlier acts of Charles II on
his return was to dissolve these two bodies, and to revive the ancient
form of navy government by a Lord High Admiral and four Principal
Officers—the Treasurer, the Comptroller, the Surveyor, and the Clerk
of the Acts. James, Duke of York, the King's brother, afterwards James
II, was made Lord High Admiral—an appointment which realised the
ideas of Monson, who had written earlier: 'The way to settle things
is to appoint an Admiral, young, heroical, and of a great blood. His
experience in sea affairs is not so much to be required at first as his
sincerity, honour, and wisdom; for his daily practice in his Office,
with conference of able and experienced men, will quickly instruct
him.'[31] All the Stuarts were interested in the sea. Nothing gave
Charles II more pleasure than to sail down the Thames in one of his
yachts to inspect his ships, and his brother possessed something like
an expert knowledge of naval affairs. Even Macaulay, who has scarcely a
good word to say for him, allows that he would have made 'a respectable
clerk in the dockyard at Chatham.'[32] He was an authority on
shipbuilding questions[33], and Pepys, in a private minute not intended
for publication and therefore likely to express his real mind, ascribes
much of the strength of the navy in his day to the Duke's energy in
'getting ships to be begun to be built, in confidence that when they
were begun they would not let them want finishing, who otherwise would
never of themselves have spared money from lesser uses to begin to
build.'[34] He was also by temperament stiff in discipline, and threw
his influence strongly on the side of reform. The numerous references
to him in the State Papers shew that while he was Lord High Admiral he
bestowed a great deal of attention upon the duties of the office[35].

The new Treasurer of the Navy was Sir George Carteret, who, entering
the service as a boy, had risen to high command in the navy, and had
served as Comptroller in the reign of Charles I. 'Besides his other
parts of honesty and discretion,' says Clarendon, he was 'undoubtedly
as good, if not the best, seaman in England,'[36] and Sir William
Coventry, his consistent opponent, described him to Pepys as 'a
man that do take the most pains, and gives himself the most to do
business of any about the Court, without any desire of pleasure or
divertisements.'[37] Pepys himself wrote of him not long before his
fall: 'I do take' him 'for a most honest man.'[38]

Sir Robert Slyngesbie, the new Comptroller, was himself the son of a
Comptroller of the Navy, and had served as a sea-captain as early as
1633[39], having been 'from his infancy bred up and employed in the
navy.'[40]

Sir William Batten, the Surveyor, was only returning to an office
which he had already held, for he had been Surveyor of the Navy from
1638 to 1642, and afterwards an active naval commander. Pepys began by
borrowing £40 of him[41], and then came to dislike him. Their relations
were not improved by the small social jealousies which broke out
between their wives. Lady Batten complained to Pepys that 'there was
not the neighbourliness between her' and Mrs Pepys 'that was fit to
be'; that Mrs Pepys spoke 'unhandsomely of her,' and her maid 'mocked
her' over the garden wall[42]. Soon after, Pepys records with some
satisfaction that he and his wife managed to take precedence of Lady
Batten in going out of church, 'which I believe will vex her.'[43]
What the _Diary_ calls a 'fray' eventually took place between the
two ladies, and Lady Batten was 'mighty high upon it,' telling Mrs
Pepys's 'boy' that 'she would teach his mistress better manners,
which my wife answered aloud that she might hear, that she could
learn little manners of her.'[44] Pepys came to the conclusion that
his wife was to blame[45]. Sir William Batten, who does not deserve
the treatment he meets with in the _Diary_, had at first done what he
could to accommodate the quarrel, saying to Pepys that 'he desired
the difference between our wives might not make a difference between
us,'[46] but quarrels of this kind are the hardest of all to compose,
and it is not to the _Diary_ that Batten's biographer goes for his
facts. Pepys calls him a knave[47] and a sot[48], and accuses him
of 'corruption and underhand dealing'[49]; and in reviewing his own
position on the last day of the year 1663, he writes: 'At the Office I
am well, though envied to the devil by Sir William Batten, who hates me
to death, but cannot hurt me. The rest either love me, or at least do
not shew otherwise....' The news of Batten's last illness was, however,
received with some sign of relenting. 'Word is brought me that he is so
ill that it is believed he cannot live till to-morrow, which troubles
me and my wife mightily, partly out of kindness, he being a good
neighbour—and partly because of the money he owes me upon our bargain
of the late prize.'[50]

The only one of the Principal Officers who knew nothing about the
navy was the Clerk of the Acts, Samuel Pepys himself. He obtained the
office by the influence of his patron, Edward Mountagu, the first Earl
of Sandwich, a distinguished naval commander, who was first cousin to
Pepys's father and recognised the claims of kinship after the fashion
of his day. It was necessary first to buy out Thomas Barlow, who had
been Clerk of the Acts under Charles I, and Pepys, observing that he
was 'an old, consumptive man,'[51] offered him £100 a year. He lived
until 1665, and then a characteristic entry appears in the _Diary_. 'At
noon home to dinner, and then to my office again, where Sir William
Petty comes among other things to tell me that Mr Barlow is dead; for
which, God knows my heart, I could be as sorry as is possible for one
to be for a stranger by whose death he gets £100 per annum, he being a
worthy, honest man; but after having considered that, when I come to
consider the providence of God by this means unexpectedly to give me
£100 a year more in my estate, I have cause to bless God, and do it
from the bottom of my heart.'[52]

Besides the four Principal Officers, the new Navy Board also included
three extra Commissioners of the Navy, Lord Berkeley, Sir William Penn,
and Peter Pett. Lord Berkeley was a distinguished soldier, who had
won great honour at Stratton, and had served under Turenne from 1652
to 1655[53]. Sir William Penn was the son of a seaman and had been a
seaman all his life. He had been rear-admiral and then vice-admiral in
the time of the Long Parliament; he had served as vice-admiral under
Blake, had commanded the expedition which seized Jamaica[54], and had
been a member of two Admiralty Commissions during the Interregnum[55].
Peter Pett came of a famous family of shipbuilders[56]—an earlier
Pett had been master shipwright at Deptford in the reign of Edward
VI[57]—and he had already served as resident Commissioner at Chatham
for thirteen years[58]. Pett occupied a somewhat inferior position to
his colleagues, as he was required still to reside at Chatham to take
charge of the dockyard there—at this time the most important of the
royal yards, described in the _Admiralty Letters_ as 'the master-yard
of all the rest.'[59] The other two Commissioners had no special duties
assigned to them, and this was regarded as one of the advantages of
the system now established, since they were 'not limited to any, and
yet furnished with powers of acting and controlling every part, both
of the particular and common duties of the Office' ... 'understanding
the defects of the whole, and applying their assistance where it may be
most useful.'[60]

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

There were a good many subsequent changes, but the importance of
administration by experts was not again lost sight of. The office
of Treasurer of the Navy soon fell to the men of accounts, and in
1667 Sir George Carteret was succeeded by the Earl of Anglesey, a
'laborious, skilful, cautious, moderate' official, who had had seven
years' experience of finance as Vice-Treasurer and Receiver-General
for Ireland[62]. But with this exception, if the post of a Principal
Officer was vacated by a naval expert it was offered to a naval
expert again. When Sir Robert Slyngesbie, the Comptroller, died in
1661[63], he was succeeded by Sir John Mennes, who had served under
Sir William Monson in the Narrow Seas, and had had a wide experience
of the navy[64]. This appointment was not as successful as might
have been expected. Pepys thought him 'most excellent pleasant
company'[65] and 'a very good, harmless, honest gentleman,'[66] but
he is always attacking his incapacity[67], and refers to him on one
occasion as a 'doating fool.'[68] On his death in 1671 the office
passed to Sir Thomas Allin, originally a shipowner at Lowestoft, who
had served under Prince Rupert, and had acquired a reputation in the
Second Dutch War[69]. When Sir William Batten, the Surveyor, died
in 1667, he was succeeded by Colonel Thomas Middleton, who had been
resident Commissioner at Portsmouth[70]; and when in 1672 Middleton
was transferred to Chatham, John Tippetts, who had followed him at
Portsmouth, was appointed to the Surveyorship[71]. It should be noticed
that whereas during the thirteen years of naval history from 1660 to
1673 the office of Treasurer of the Navy was held by four different
persons, and the offices of Comptroller and Surveyor each by three,
there was no change in the office of Clerk of the Acts. Pepys was the
only one of the Principal Officers whose experience was continuous.

The extra Commissionerships, when vacancies arose, did not all go
to naval experts, but men of ability were selected for them, and
sometimes men of distinction. When in 1662 another extra Commissioner
was appointed, the choice fell on William Coventry, a civilian; but
Coventry had already had two years' experience of naval administration
as Secretary to the Lord High Admiral, and his ability soon made him
one of the most valuable members of the Navy Board. Burnet described
him in 1665 as 'a man of great actions and eminent virtues'; Temple
credits him with high political capacity; Evelyn calls him 'a wise
and witty gentleman'[72]; and the _Diary_ shews how warmly Pepys was
attached to him[73]. In 1664 an extra Commissionership was conferred
on Lord Brouncker, a literary man, an intimate friend of Evelyn's, and
the first President of the Royal Society, who took something more than
an amateur's interest in shipbuilding, and in 1662 had built a yacht
for the King[74]. Pepys could not make up his mind about him; for in
1667 he speaks of him as 'a rotten-hearted, false man as any else I
know, even as Sir W. Penn himself, and therefore I must beware of him
accordingly, and I hope I shall,'[75] and in 1668 he regards him as
the best man in the Navy Office[76]. One of the extra Commissioners,
Sir Edward Seymour, was also Speaker of the House of Commons.

The Navy Board was by tradition the Lord High Admiral's council of
advice for that part of his office which was concerned with the
government of the navy, and Monson alludes to its members as 'the
conduit pipes to whom the Lord Admiral properly directs all his
commands for his Majesty's service, and from whom it descends to all
other inferior officers and ministers under them whatsoever.'[77] In
practice the Board enjoyed very large administrative powers, for it
was authorised 'to cause all ordinary businesses to be done according
to the ancient and allowed practice of the Office, and extraordinary
according to the warrants and directions from the Lord Admiral and
the State'[78]; but in theory it existed only in order to carry out
the general instructions which the Duke of York had issued early in
1662[79], not long after he had taken office. These were drawn in
comprehensive terms, and of necessity left a vast number of decisions
on particular questions to be taken by the Board. These instructions
of 1662 remained in force until the Admiralty was reorganised at the
beginning of the 19th century[80].

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

It would be idle to pretend that the Restoration officials conformed
to modern standards of official purity; although they were very much
better than the corrupt administrators of the reign of James I.
Pepys is convicted on his own confession of a good deal that would
be unthinkable to-day. During the period of the _Diary_ his salary
as Clerk of the Acts was £350 a year; while in 1665 he was appointed
Treasurer of the Tangier Commission, and from 1665 to 1667 he was
Surveyor-General of Victualling with an additional £300 a year[81].
His salary as Secretary of the Admiralty was £500 a year, but he only
enjoyed this for two periods amounting altogether to ten years. Yet as
early as May, 1667, he was worth £6900[82]; and in the end he retired
on a competence, and was able to indulge the expensive tastes of the
collector. It is evident that his legitimate emoluments must have
been supplemented in other ways. Readers of the _Diary_ will remember
that on 2 February, 1664, he received from Sir William Warren, the
timber merchant, 'a pair of gloves' for his wife 'wrapt up in paper,'
which he 'would not open, feeling it hard'; this phenomenon being due
to the presence, presumably in the fingers, of 'forty pieces in good
gold.' Warren gave him many other presents, and shewed himself 'a most
useful and thankful man,'[83] bringing him on one occasion £100 'in a
bag,' which Pepys 'joyfully' carried home in a coach, Warren himself
'expressly taking care that nobody might see this business done.'[84]
On another occasion Captain Grove gave him money in a paper which Pepys
did not open till he reached his office, taking the precaution of 'not
looking into it till all the money was out, that I might say I saw no
money in the paper if ever I should be questioned about it.'[85] He
appears to have profited largely by his transactions with Gauden, the
Victualler of the Navy[86]; with the Victuallers for Tangier[87]; and
with Captain Cocke, a contractor for hemp[88]. He also made profits out
of flags[89], prizes[90], and Tangier freights[91]; and the _Diary_
records other gifts of money and plate[92], including 'a noble silver
warming-pan.'[93] On the other hand, the official letters, numbering
thousands, conspire to produce by a series of delicate impressions
the conviction in the mind of the reader that Pepys was immensely
proud of the navy, and keenly anxious for its efficiency and success.
His attitude is affected by his fundamental Puritanism, and in the
_Diary_ he is always trying to justify to himself the presents which he
accepted. He was glad to do the giver a good turn when he could, but
it was with the proviso that it should be 'without wrong to the King's
service.'[94] The inventor of such a phrase is on dangerous ground, but
he is not yet utterly debased; and the high responsibility of his later
life may very well have served as an antiseptic to arrest corruption
before it had gone far. At any rate, this is as much in advance of
the cynical greed of the earlier administrators as it is behind the
contempt for all forms of corruption which is natural to well-paid
officials educated to modern standards.


In 1673 the Test Act drove the Duke of York from office, and brought
about other important changes in the administration of the navy. The
King retained in his own hands the Lord High Admiral's patronage
and also the Admiralty dues, which were to be collected for his
'only use and behoof'; but the rest of his functions were placed in
commission[95]. There were twelve Commissioners, of whom no less than
five—the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Treasurer, the Lord Privy Seal, and
two Principal Secretaries—were great officers of State. Prince Rupert
was at the head of the Commission, and Samuel Pepys was appointed
Secretary, while the Duke of York, although no longer in office,
remained, in spite of the Test Act, an important influence in naval
affairs[96]. Pepys was succeeded in the office of Clerk of the Acts by
his brother, John Pepys, and his clerk, Thomas Hayter, acting jointly.
There were also changes in the composition of the Navy Board, but these
did not affect its character as a body of naval experts.

The chief business of the new administrators was to bring to a close
the Third Dutch War, and then to repair, by an energetic shipbuilding
policy, that depreciation of the navy which was the natural result of
the war. In this work they were on the whole successful. The Admiralty
Commissioners were sensible and vigilant, and they were remarkably
well served by their Secretary; while the Navy Board was strong on
the technical side of its work, and fortunate in having as one of its
members an official so thoroughly capable in his own department as the
great shipbuilder, Sir Anthony Deane. Moreover, although the financial
difficulty continued to hamper and cripple the navy, a vigorous
shipbuilding policy was made possible by the better support which
Parliament now gave to naval expansion. The idea of the importance of
sea power had already acquired a considerable hold upon the political
classes, and the wars with the Dutch had served to strengthen it.
Charles II had read rightly the feeling of his subjects when he allowed
his Chancellor to say to the Pension Parliament in the speech which
opened its eleventh session: 'There is not so lawful or commendable
a jealousy in the world as an Englishman's of the growing greatness
of any Prince at sea.'[97] Thus the most important achievement of the
period 1673-79 was the Act of 1677—the 17th century equivalent of a
modern Naval Defence Act—for the building of 30 new ships. Pepys,
now a member of Parliament, made in support of it a comprehensive
and vigorous speech[98], and he modestly attributed the adoption of
the scheme to the impression this produced upon the House. 'I doubt
not,' he writes to the Navy Board, on 23 February, 1677, 'but ere
this you may have heard the issue of this morning's debates in the
House of Commons touching the navy, wherein I thank God the account
they received from me of the past and present state thereof, compared
first with one another and then with the naval force of our neighbours
as it now is, different from what it ever heretofore has been, was
so received as that the debates arising therefrom terminated in a
vote for the supplying his Majesty with a sum of money for building
ships....'[99] The rates and tonnage of the 30 new ships thus provided
for are specified in the Act[100].

The new programme was pushed forward with the utmost energy, but before
it was completed the control of the navy again changed hands. In 1679
the excitement of the Popish Plot drove the Duke of York from England,
and Pepys was involved in his disgrace. He was accused of conspiring
with Sir Anthony Deane to send information about the navy to the French
Government and to extirpate the Protestant religion; and was committed
to the Tower on the Speaker's warrant[101]. His office at the Admiralty
was, however, vacated by what was in form a voluntary resignation[102].


On the withdrawal of the Duke of York and the resignation of Pepys, the
higher administration of the navy passed to a new Admiralty Commission
of seven, who claimed and enjoyed, in addition to the powers of the
previous Commission, those other prerogatives which the King had
hitherto reserved to himself[103]. But although they had more power
than their predecessors, they were much less competent to use it, for
they were almost entirely without naval experience. Sir Henry Capel,
the First Commissioner, had nothing to do with the navy until his
appointment[104]. The same can be said of Daniel Finch, who, although
he became famous afterwards as Earl of Nottingham, was at this time
only a young politician just beginning his official life[105]. Sir
Thomas Lee's reputation was that of a parliamentary debater[106];
and the other names are not notable. The Commission represents an
intrusion of politicians into a sphere where they were quite out of
place. The introduction of Lord Brouncker in 1681 was a step in the
right direction, although he was not a professional seaman; and other
improvements were effected in 1682, but they came too late. The Navy
Board was still composed of experts, but they could not stop the
mischief wrought by the incompetent authority under which they had to
act. The Commissioners did not find a lenient critic in Pepys, and
his comment upon them is worth quoting because it contains a shrewd
appreciation of Charles II. 'No king,' he wrote in his private _Minute
Book_, 'ever did so unaccountable a thing to oblige his people by,
as to dissolve a Commission of the Admiralty then in his own hand,
who best understands the business of the sea of any prince the world
ever had, and things never better done, and put it into hands which
he knew were wholly ignorant thereof, sporting himself with their
ignorance.'[107] The last phrase brings before us vividly the King's
characteristic way.

The result that followed was inevitable. The dockyards were
disorganised; the effective force of the fleet was reduced; the
reserve of stores was depleted. The Commissioners adopted a wasteful
policy of retrenchment at all costs. Pepys writes of 'the effects of
inexperience, daily discovering themselves' in the conduct of the
Commission[108]; of 'general and habitual supineness, wastefulness,
and neglect of order universally spread through' the whole navy[109],
so that 'whereas peace used evermore to be improved to the making up
the wasteful effects of war, this appears ... to have brought the navy
into a state more deplorable in its ships and less relievable from its
stores than can be shewn to have happened at the close of the most
expenseful war.'[110] His indictment is supported by a formidable array
of facts and figures, and as Macaulay points out[111], is confirmed
by a report from an expert of the French Admiralty, so it cannot be
dismissed as mere denunciation inspired by a natural prejudice against
the men who had displaced him.

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

The important episode of the period 1684-1688 is the appointment
of the Special Commission of 1686 for the regeneration of the
navy—an experiment in organisation for which Pepys was largely
responsible[113]. A sum of £400,000 a year was to be assigned to the
navy[114], and this was to be administered by a body of experts, on
which the two most important figures were Sir Anthony Deane, the great
shipbuilder, and Sir John Narbrough, the hero of the war with Algiers.
The Commission was intended to last for a term of three years, the time
estimated to be necessary for putting the navy into a state of thorough
repair, but its work was performed with such energy and efficiency that
the Commission was dissolved in October, 1688, after only 2½ years
tenure of office, and the system of government by Principal Officers
and Commissioners of the Navy acting under the Lord High Admiral was
restored.

The way in which Pepys manœuvred Sir Anthony Deane on to the Commission
deserves a passing notice. It was not an easy matter, as Deane replied
to a flattering overture by pointing out that his ordinary business
as a shipwright was bringing in to him 'more than double the benefit
... the common wages of a Commissioner of the Navy amounts to,' and
moreover he was fifteen in family, 'and not without expectation of
more.'[115] Pepys was then directed by James II to make a list of all
the notable shipbuilders in England, one of whom might be selected
as an alternative to Deane. The result was a very libellous and
tendencious document[116]. Sir John Tippetts was dismissed because
'his age and infirmities arising from the gout (keeping him generally
within doors, or at least incapable of any great action abroad) would
render him wholly unable to go through the fatigue of the work designed
for Sir Anthony Deane.' The second candidate, Sir Phineas Pett, is
briefly dismissed with the words 'In every respect as the first.'
Another candidate 'never built a ship in his life ... he is also full
of the gout, and by consequence as little capable as the former of the
fatigue before mentioned.' Another is 'illiterate ... low-spirited, of
little appearance or authority'; his father 'a great drinker, and since
killed with it.' Mr Lawrence, the master shipwright at Woolwich, is
'a low-spirited, slow, and gouty man ... illiterate and supine to the
last degree.' Another is 'an ingenious young man, but said rarely to
have handled a tool in his life'—a mere draughtsman. Another 'is one
that loves his ease, as having been ever used to it, not knowing what
it is to work or take pains ... and very debauched.' Another is 'a
good and painful, but very plain and illiterate man; a Phanatick; of
no authority and countenance.' And so he goes on through an appalling
list of disqualifications, which had their intended effect upon the
King's mind; they induced 'full conviction of the necessity of his
prevailing with and satisfying Sir A. D.'[117] Satisfactory terms
were arranged[118], and on Saturday, 13 March, 1686, Mr Pepys brought
Sir Anthony Deane 'to the King in the morning to kiss his hand, who
declared the same to him to his full satisfaction, and afterwards
to my Lord Treasurer at the Treasury Chamber with the same mutual
content.'[119]

The circumstances in which the second Secretaryship of Samuel Pepys
came to an end are part of the general history of England, and need
no repetition here. On 21 December, 1688, Pepys mentions that the
King was 'a second time withdrawn,'[120] and on Christmas Day we find
him writing to the fleet at the bidding of the Prince of Orange[121].
He continued to act as Secretary of the Admiralty until 20 February,
1689, but on 9 March he was directed to hand over his papers to his
successor, Phineas Bowles[122]. He was too intimately associated with
the exiled James for the government of the Revolution to continue him
in power.




LECTURE III

FINANCE


It is scarcely a matter for surprise that those historians who were
the first to appreciate the great Puritan movement, so long under a
cloud, should have yielded to the temptation of over-emphasizing the
contrast between the vigour and comparative purity of government during
the Interregnum and its nervelessness and corruption under the Younger
Stuarts. That some such contrast exists it is impossible to deny. The
Commonwealth navy was on the whole well managed, and every reader of
Pepys's _Diary_ knows that he was disposed to regret in private the
administrative successes of the treasonable times. 3 June, 1667: 'To
Spring Garden, and there eat and drank a little, and then to walk up
and down the garden, reflecting upon the bad management of things now,
compared with what it was in the late rebellious times, when men, some
for fear and some for religion, minded their business, which none now
do, by being void of both.' Or again, 4 September, 1668: 'The business
of abusing the Puritans begins to grow stale and of no use, they being
the people that at last will be found the wisest.' But it is possible,
while dwelling upon a moral contrast, to ignore the difference in the
financial situation. The virtuous Puritan colonels who controlled the
navy under the Commonwealth had command of large financial resources,
for confiscations and Royalist compositions were very productive,
and the governments of the Interregnum could apply to the raising of
taxes irresistible military force. As far as the compositions went,
they were, however, living upon capital, and when this was exhausted,
the pressure of financial difficulties soon began to be felt. The
maintenance of the great professional army came to be a burden too
heavy for the resources of the country as they stood in that day, and
the navy suffered from the competition of the army for the available
funds. The disease usually assigned to the Restoration period declared
itself before the Restoration took place, and when the King came back
he found the navy already deep in debt. In 1659 nearly half a million
was due on account of wages alone, and the total debt must have been
over three-quarters of a million[123]. An official report of July,
1659, estimated the outgoings at £20,000 a week, but pointed out that
'since May 31 has not been received above £8000 a week.'[124] It must
be remembered that with 17th century money values these figures are
very much larger than they look, and as the State had not yet invented
funding debt, and so charging it on posterity, its position was that
of an extravagant private person. Thus the naval administrators of the
Restoration were succeeding to a bankrupt estate, and in the _Diary_
Pepys strikes a note of despair. 31 July, 1660: the navy 'is in very
sad condition, and money must be raised for it.' 11 June, 1661: 'now
the credit of the Office is brought so low, that none will sell us
anything without our personal security given for the same.' 31 August,
1661: 'we are at our Office quiet, only for lack of money all things
go to rack.' 30 September, 1661: 'the want of money puts all things,
and above all the Navy, out of order.' 28 June, 1662: 'God knows, the
King is not able to set out five ships at this present without great
difficulty, we neither having money, credit, nor stores.'

The same difficulties were felt before, during, and after the Second
Dutch War. In September, 1664, when war was impending, Commissioner
Pett tried to buy tallow and candles for the navy at Maidstone, but
found the country 'so shy' that they refused to deal[125]. In January,
1666, the Commissioner at Portsmouth wrote that all men distrust London
pay[126]. Nearly half the letters to the Navy Board calendared for
1665-6 refer to the difficulties experienced by government agents in
obtaining supplies[127]. In this way bargains were lost for want of
ready money[128], and where credit was obtained, enormous prices had to
be paid[129]. The hardships to private persons were intolerable. A firm
of slop-sellers who had supplied goods to the value of £24,800 during
the last two years, and had received only £800, would shortly be ruined
in their estates and families[130]. A Bristol shipbuilder writes: 'I
have so disabled myself in the relief of poor workmen that I am now
out of a capacity of relieving mine own family: I have disbursed and
engaged for more than I am worth.'[131] The Barber Surgeons' Company
claim £1,496. 6_s._ 10_d._, long unpaid, for filling medicine chests,
and complain of the opprobrious language they receive from surgeons
who can get no pay[132]; and a certain poor widow, a creditor of the
government, is in a most deplorable condition, without a stick of wood
or coals to lay on the fire, and owing money to about fifteen people as
poor as herself, who torment her daily[133].

The total annual charge of the navy in time of peace is not easy to
calculate. On 18 February, 1663[134], Pepys himself estimated 'the
true charge of the Navy,' since the King's coming in to Christmas last,
to have been 'after the rate of £374,743 a year,' but it is not clear
what this figure includes. Perhaps the pre-war expenditure may be
put at not far short of £400,000. In a letter to Sir Philip Warwick,
dated 14 March, 1666[135], he supplies materials for estimating
expenditure in time of war. So enormous were the arrears that the sum
of £2,312,876 would be needed to pay the fleet and yards to 1 August,
1665, to clear off the arrears of the Victualler and provide victuals
for the current year, to finish ten new ships that had been ordered,
and to meet wear and tear and wages for the first ten months of 1666.
Towards this the total funds available, including a Parliamentary
grant of £1,250,000 made in October, 1665, amounted to £1,498,483.
Thus there was a deficit of £814,393. But to this would have to be
added other charges not included in the first estimate—principally
wear and tear and wages for the last two months of 1666, arrears of
wages, and other debts, which would increase the deficit to £1,277,161,
over and above 'the whole expense of the Office of the Ordnance.' In
other words, the funds available for the navy in March, 1666, in the
second year of the war, were scarcely more than half its probable
requirements[136]. Nevertheless, Pepys derived great consolation from
a calculation which he had made of the cost of the First Dutch War in
1653, whereby it appeared that 'the State's charge then seems to have
exceeded the King's for the same service and time by £171,785.'[137]
This is the justification of a note in the _Diary_ of 16 March, 1669:
'Upon the whole do find that the late times in all their management
were not more husbandly than we.' To meet the situation recourse was
again had to Parliament, and in October, 1666, the Commons voted
£1,800,000, although their suspicion that the money was being wasted
led to the appointment of that Commission of Public Accounts which was
to give Pepys and his colleagues infinite trouble[138], and was to lay
the foundation of Parliamentary enquiry into the proceedings of the
executive.

As soon as the war came to an end, the higher authorities began to
consider schemes of retrenchment in the navy. A committee appointed
29 July, 1667, by Order in Council, to consider the King's expenses
called for a report upon the cost of the navy, and the Duke of York
put forward some preliminary suggestions[139], the most important
being a reduction of certain establishments and the closing of the
dockyard at Harwich. He also suggested a reduction in the number of
the Commissioners from ten to six, or at most seven, although he was
disposed to resist any great reduction in their salaries on the ground
that these should be sufficient to make the Principal Officers and
Commissioners 'value their employments, and not subject them to a
necessity of base compliances with others to the King's prejudice, by
which to get one shilling to himself he must lose ten to the King, and
when he shall have once subjected himself to an inferior pleasure by
such a falsehood, he never more dares act the part of a good officer,
being by his former guilt become a slave to his inferior.' This
argument, while it served incidentally to protect Pepys's emoluments,
is not a bad statement of the case for a living wage as an antidote to
corruption. The scheme eventually adopted, suggested by Sir William
Coventry, aimed at a reduction of peace expenditure to £200,000 a
year[140], but the goal was never reached, for the naval expenditure of
the next two or three years was not, as a matter of fact, limited to
the £200,000 a year proposed, nor was ready money provided—an essential
condition of the scheme. The policy of retrenchment on a great scale
would have to be carried on for a long time before it could affect
the accumulated masses of the navy debt[141], and there is abundant
evidence of continued financial stringency after the war as well as
before it. This carried its nemesis into the Third Dutch War. The
comparative failure of the naval operations of 1673 was due to the fact
that the fleet had been sent out insufficiently manned and equipped;
and the want of a reserve of stores and of men and materials for
refitting occasioned the loss of nearly six weeks in the best season of
the year[142].

As soon as the Third Dutch War came to an end in February, 1674,
another period of feverish retrenchment set in, and an attempt was
made 'to lessen the growing charge in the navy, towards which no one
particular seems more to conduce than that of reducing the number of
the persons employed therein, both at sea and in the yards.'[143] Other
economies were also practised. Ships as they came in were paid off
and laid up[144], and it was decided to undertake no new works 'until
his Majesty hath in some measure got over the debt which remains
to him upon the old.'[145] Meanwhile the official correspondence
contains frequent references to the shortness of money. For instance,
in January, 1674, the _Swan_ was delayed at Plymouth 'from the
unwillingness of the tradesmen to trust his Majesty further'[146];
and in December, 1677, Pepys reports from Sir John Kempthorne that
'the brewer at Portsmouth doth absolutely declare that he will not
provide any beer for the _Rupert_ and _Centurion_ till he is better
assured of his payment than he now is.'[147] At the beginning of
1678 the situation was somewhat relieved by the Parliamentary vote
for preparations against France, but this improvement was of short
duration, and in December we find Pepys referring to one of the most
wasteful consequences of a want of money—'that mighty charge which has
so long lain upon our hands for want of money wherewith to discharge
those of the ships which remain yet unpaid off.'[148]

In spite of the frequent references to want of funds scattered up and
down the official correspondence, the financial position of the navy
greatly improved in the later years of the Restoration period. At Lady
Day, 1686, the debts of the Navy Office were reckoned at £171,836.
2_s._ 9_d._—a remarkable reduction on the enormous totals of 1666[149].
After the accession of James II no less than £305,806 was paid by the
Treasurer of the Navy on account of debts incurred in Charles II's
reign[150], so it is not surprising to find that, both in the closing
years of Charles II and the earlier years of James II, money was still
difficult to get, and the old complaints recur although in a less
aggravated form.

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


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

The state of things during the Second Dutch War was appalling. The
_Diary_ contains pitiable stories of poor seamen starving in the
streets because there was no money to pay their wages. 7 October,
1665: 'Did business, though not much, at the Office; because of the
horrible crowd and lamentable moan of the poor seamen that lie starving
in the streets for lack of money, which do trouble and perplex me to
the heart; and more at noon when we were to go through them, for then
a whole hundred of them followed us; some cursing, some swearing,
and some praying to us.'[151] We hear of wages nine months[152],
twenty-two[153], twenty-six, thirty-four[154], and even fifty-two[155]
months in arrear. One captain with a breezy style complains that for
want of pay 'instead of a young commander, he is rendered an old
beggar.'[156] The crews of two ships petition the Navy Board to order
them their pay 'that their families may not be altogether starved
in the streets, and themselves go like heathens, having nothing to
cover their nakedness.'[157] The Commissioner at Portsmouth writes of
workmen in the yard there, that they are turned out of doors by their
landlords, and perish more like dogs than men[158].

Naturally enough, this state of things affected discipline. The crews
of the _Little Victory_ and the _Pearl_ at Hull mutinied for want of
pay, and refused to weigh anchor[159], and in the yards the workmen
gave a great deal of trouble. The Chatham shipwrights and caulkers, to
whom two years' wages were owing, marched up to London to appeal to the
Navy Board, as 'their families are denied trust and cannot subsist,'
and under this pressure we are told that arrangements were made 'to
pay off some of the most disorderly.'[160] At Chatham the Commissioner
writes that he is almost torn to pieces by the workmen of the yard for
their weekly pay[161]. Sir John Mennes writes from Portsmouth on 14
July, 1665, for money to be sent immediately to stop 'the bawlings and
impatience of these people, especially of their wives, whose tongues
are as foul as the daughters of Billingsgate.'[162] Apparently the
money did not come, and in October the Commissioner was forced to lend
the men ten shillings apiece to keep them from mutiny[163]. A fortnight
later a mutiny actually broke out, but Commissioner Middleton shewed
praiseworthy promptitude in dealing with it. According to his own
account, he seized 'a good cudgel' out of the hands of one of the men,
and took more pains in the use of it than in any business for the last
twelve months. He adds: 'I have not been troubled since.'[164] On 27
October, 1666, the outlook in London was so threatening that the Navy
Board applied to the Officers of the Ordnance for 'twelve well-fixed
firelocks with a supply of powder and bullet' for the defence of
the Navy Office, in view of 'the present great refractoriness and
tumultuousness of the seamen.'[165] Nor did the trouble end when
peace came, for the financial situation was still difficult. On 11
March, 1671, Jonas Shish wrote from Deptford to the Navy Board: 'The
shipwrights and caulkers are very much enraged by reason that their
wages is not paid them. The last night the whole street next the King's
Yard, both of men and women, was in an uproar, and meeting with Mr
Bagwell, my foreman, they fell on him, and it was God's great mercy
they had not spoiled him. I was then without the gate at my son's
house, and hearing the tumult, I did think how Israel stoned Hadoram
that was over the tribute, and King Rehoboam made speed and gat him
up to fly to Jerusalem, so I gat speedily into the King's Yard, for I
judge if the rude multitude had met with me, I should have had worse
measure than my foreman.'[166]

In view of these facts about pay, it is not surprising that it was
found difficult to obtain men. In order to man the fleets for service
against the Dutch it was necessary to employ the press, and this
produced very poor material. Pepys notes in 1666 that men were pressed
in London that 'were not liable to it,' 'poor patient labouring men
and housekeepers,'[167] and he adds 'it is a great tyranny.' The
redoubtable Commissioner Middleton, writing from Portsmouth on 29
March, 1666, tells Pepys that he is ashamed to see such pressed men
as are sent from Devonshire—one with the falling sickness and a lame
arm; another with dead palsy on one side and not any use of his right
arm[168]. A year later he makes similar complaints from Chatham with
regard to the pressed men supplied by Watermen's Hall. 'The Masters
of Watermen's Hall are good Christians but very knaves; they should
be ordered to send down ten or twelve old women to be nurses to the
children they send.'[169]

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

'It can never be well in the navy,' wrote Pepys on 5 September, 1680,
'till the poor seamen can be paid once in a year at furthest, and
tickets answered like bills of exchange; whereas at this very day
... ships are kept out two or three years, and four of them just
now ordered forth again only for want of money, after being brought
in to be paid off.'[171] A little later he notes the effect of this
upon discipline[172], and comments on the 'unreasonable hardship'
entailed by 'the general practice of our navy' 'of paying those ships
off first where the least sum clears the most men; those who have
served longest, and therefore need their pay most, being postponed
to those who have served least.'[173] In a maturer reflection made
after his retirement, dated December, 1692, Pepys still places the
'length and badness of the payment of the seaman's wages' first among
his 'discouragements.' This, together with 'their ill-usage from
commanders, and want of permission to help themselves in intervals
of public service by a temporary liberty of earning a penny in the
merchant's' are 'discouragements that I cannot think anything can be
proposed of temptations of other kinds sufficient to reconcile them
to.'[174] Nevertheless, Pepys claimed credit for more punctual payments
for the Special Commission of 1686, during the time they held office.
'Not a penny left unpaid,' he writes, 'to any officer, seaman, workman,
artificer, or merchant, for any service done in, or commodity delivered
to the use of the Navy, either at sea or on shore, within the whole
time of this Commission, where the party claiming the same was in the
way to receive it.'[175]

In connexion with the seamen something should be said about the
organisation for the care of the sick and wounded. The credit of
being the first English Government to recognise the obligation of
providing for the sick and wounded belongs to the Commonwealth. The
principle that the State should provide for those who had suffered
in its service was laid down by the Long Parliament in 1642, and
an attempt was made to apply it to the case of soldiers wounded in
the Civil War[176]. A little later the same principle was applied
to seamen, and the idea and the machinery were taken over by the
Restoration statesmen. In October, 1664, in view of the impending war
with the Dutch, a temporary Commission for the care of Sick and Wounded
Seamen on the model of the Commission of 1653 was appointed for the
duration of the war, the most active member of it being John Evelyn,
the diarist[177]. This Commission was re-appointed in March, 1672,
for the Third Dutch War, and the elaborate instructions given to it
are to be found in the volume of _Naval Precedents_ in the Pepysian
Library[178]. The Commissioners were to distribute the sick and
wounded among the hospitals of England, 'thereby to ease his Majesty's
charge'; and as soon as this accommodation was exhausted, they were
to billet them upon private persons at the King's expense. London,
Yarmouth, Ipswich, Southwold, Aldeburgh, Harwich, Chatham, Gravesend,
Deal, Dover, Gosport, Southampton, Weymouth, Dartmouth, and Plymouth
were specially assigned for the reception of sick and wounded men set
ashore from their ships. At these 'places of reception' as they were
called, the Commissioners were to appoint an agent, and to provide
'a physician (if need be) and chirurgeon, and nurses, fire, candle,
linen, medicaments, and all things necessary,' but in 'as husbandly and
thrifty a manner' as might be. The Commission was also charged with
the care of prisoners of war, and was instructed to provide for their
maintenance on a scale 'not exceeding 5_d._ per diem for every common
seaman and inferior officer, and 12_d._ per diem for every commission
officer.' For a time also it was concerned with awarding gratuities to
the 'widows, children, and impotent parents of such as shall be slain
in his Majesty's service at sea'; but in 1673 these duties were taken
over by another commission, for Widows and Orphans, and a regular scale
was established on which gratuities were to be given. Widows of men
slain in the service were to receive a gratuity equal to eleven months
of their husband's pay, an additional third being allowed to each
orphan except those who were married at the time of the father's death.
If the deceased left no widow, his mother was to receive the bounty,
provided that she was herself a widow, indigent, and over 50 years of
age. The bounty to a child was to be allowed to accumulate until it was
of an age to be apprenticed. This Commission terminated at the end of
the war, and by an order of 21 December, 1674, its functions devolved
on the Navy Board.

These arrangements were all admirable upon paper, and the members
of the Commissions displayed indefatigable industry, but in this
department of affairs as in others the best of schemes were wrecked
on the rock of finance. On 30 September, 1665, Evelyn wrote that he
had 5000 sick, wounded, and prisoners dying for want of bread and
shelter. 'His Majesty's subjects,' he adds, 'die in our sight and at
our thresholds without our being able to relieve them, which, with our
barbarous exposure of the prisoners to the utmost of sufferings, must
needs redound to his Majesty's great dishonour, and to the consequence
of losing the hearts of our own people, who are ready to execrate
and stone us as we pass.'[179] On 5 June, 1672, the same loyal and
humane gentleman wrote in a similar strain from Rochester: 'I have
near 600 sick and wounded men in this place, 200 prisoners, and the
apprehension of hundreds more.... I hope there will be care to supply
my district here with moneys, or else I shall be very miserable, for
no poor creature does earn his bread with greater anxiety than I at
present.'[180] The moneys did not come, and by the end of the summer
some of the localities were becoming restive at the non-payment of
arrears. There was a great deal of noise made at Gravesend when the
Commissioners of the Navy passed by, and on 27 August Evelyn wrote to
Pepys: 'Those cursed people of Gravesend have no bowels, and swear that
they will receive not a man more till their arrears are discharged. We
are above £2000 indebted in Kent, where our daily charge is £100 for
quarters only. Judge by this how comfortable a station I am in.'[181]

When the war came to an end the temporary Commission was withdrawn,
and by a warrant from the Lords of the Admiralty dated 28 March, 1674,
its duties were handed over to James Pearse, 'chirurgeon-general of
his Majesty's navy.'[182] Pearse was a man of business after Pepys's
own heart, and he carefully systematised the whole of his functions,
reducing them 'into such a method that it is not possible for me
(or whomsoever shall succeed me) to wrong his Majesty or injure his
subjects.'[183]

'Mariners and soldiers maimed in his Majesty's service at sea' were
entitled to relief out of the Chest at Chatham, a fund provided by
deducting 6_d._ a month from each man's pay. Fourpence a month was
also deducted for the maintenance of a chaplain, and Pepys explains
how the Chest benefited from an arrangement by which all moneys
were also assigned to it 'arising out of the seamen's contributions
for a chaplain upon ships where (by the remissness or impiety of
the commander) no chaplain is provided.'[184] A paper of 24 July,
1685[185], gives the scale of this relief:

  A leg or arm lost is £6. 13. 4. paid as present relief, and
  so much settled as an annual pension for his lifetime          £6 13 4

  If two legs be lost his pension is doubled                    £13  6 8

  For the loss of two arms, in consideration of his being
  thereby rendered uncapable of getting a livelihood
  any other way, per annum                                      £15  0 0

  But if an arm be on, and disabled only, is £5 per annum        £5  0 0

  An eye lost is £4 per annum                                    £4  0 0

 ... And where any wound or hurt occasions a fracture, contusion,
 impostumation, or the like, under the loss of a limb, such are viewed
 by the chirurgeons, and certified to deserve what in their opinions
 may be a proportionable reward in full satisfaction. And these sorts
 of hurts frequently accompany the loss of a limb in other parts of the
 body, for which they have a reward apart from their annual allowance,
 according to the chirurgeon's discretion.

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

As far as the rates themselves were concerned the story is one of
steady improvement. In 1653 the pay of a general or admiral of the
fleet had been £3 a day during his employment; of a vice-admiral, £2;
and of a rear-admiral, £1[186]. The scale adopted by Order in Council,
26 February, 1666[187], raised the admiral's pay from £3 to £4; the
vice-admiral's from £2 to £2. 10_s._; and the rear-admiral's from
£1 to £2. The vice-admiral of a squadron only was to get 30_s._ and
the rear-admiral of a squadron £1. The pay of the other officers was
not increased beyond the rates fixed in 1653[188]. The able seamen
in 1660 received 24_s._ a month; the ordinary seamen, 19_s._; the
apprentices or 'gromets,' 14_s._ 3_d._; and the 'boys,' 9_s._ 6_d._ The
wages of the carpenter, boatswain, and gunner varied from £2 to £4 a
month according to the rate of the ship. Monthly wages in harbour, as
distinguished from sea wages, were on a lower scale[189]. In 1686 a new
establishment of wages[190] made a few minor changes, but the pay of
the seamen was not affected thereby.

The misfortune of the 'poor seaman' was not that his rate of pay was
insufficient, but that he could not get his money, or if he got it at
all it was in the depreciated paper currency known as the 'ticket.' A
ticket was a certificate from the officers of his ship, issued to each
seaman, specifying the term and quality of his service. This, when
countersigned by the Navy Board, was the seaman's warrant for demanding
his wages from the Treasurer of the Navy on shore. The original purpose
of tickets was to save the necessity of transporting large sums of
money on board ship, but the want of funds in the navy soon made it
the regular practice to treat tickets as inconvertible paper, and to
discharge all seamen with tickets instead of money—or with money for
part of their time and a ticket for the rest. Theoretically, the ticket
should have supplied the seaman with credit almost up to the full
amount of his wages, but in practice the long waiting and uncertainty
of payment caused a great depreciation of tickets. We hear of women
brokers standing about the Navy Office, offering to help seamen who
might have tickets to ready money—but always upon terms. They took
them to Mrs Salesbury in Carpenter's Yard, near Aldgate, who bought
them for cash at a discount of at least 5_s._ in the £, and sometimes
more[191]. This caused great discontent among the seamen, who naturally
objected to being paid by the State in depreciated paper, and on
13 February, 1667, Pepys records in the _Diary_ that 'there was a
very great disorder this day at the Ticket Office, to the beating
and bruising of the face' of one Carcasse, the clerk. The grievance
attracted attention, and in 1667 the House of Commons enquired into
'the buying and selling of tickets.'[192] The 'infinite great disorder'
of the Ticket Office also attracted the notice of the Commissioners of
Public Accounts[193], but the reply of the Navy Board when invited to
justify the practice was conclusive. 'We conceive the use of tickets
to be by no other means removable than by a supply of money in every
place, at all times, in readiness where and when ... any ... occasions
of discharging seamen shall arise.'[194]

Apart from the disastrous results of the practice of issuing tickets
without money to pay them, the actual machinery of the system was
better under Charles II than it had hitherto been. Printed tickets with
counterfoils had been invented under the Commonwealth, and were in
use as early as August, 1654[195]; but in 1667 elaborate instructions
for the examining and signing of tickets and comparing them with the
counterfoils were issued by the Navy Board to protect the Office
against fraud[196]. John Hollond complains of the abuses to which even
a solvent ticket system gave rise. It enabled 'wrong parties' to secure
the seaman's wages—these being 'such as have wrought upon the advantage
of the men's necessities'—'either pursers, clerks of the check, or
creditors, whether alehouse-keepers, or slopsellers, or else pretended
sweethearts.'[197] He also notes the facilities which the system
afforded for the abuse of 'dead pays,' tickets being issued for seamen
who were dead or who never served, and men suborned to personate them
at the pay-table[198]. This was particularly easy in time of war, when
the pressure of business was too great to allow of the tickets being
properly examined.

A new and important principle in connexion with the pay of naval
officers was established in 1668. Deane had urged in 1653 that seamen
should be entered for continuous service and kept on continuous pay
like soldiers[199], but the practice of the navy was quite different,
both for officers and men. Hitherto it had been usual to regard naval
officers as appointed for particular services, and possessing no claim
upon the Government when these services had been discharged. The result
of this was that, except in time of war, the field of employment was
far too small, and a number of good officers were thrown upon their
own resources. But at the close of the Second Dutch War the Government
formally recognised for the first time the claims of officers to pay
in time of peace. The first step did not go far, but the principle
now accepted was destined to lead to the modern system of continuous
employment. By an Order in Council of 17 July, 1668[200], it was
provided that, in consideration of 'the eminent services performed in
the late war against the Dutch by the flag officers,' and the fact
that 'during the time of peace several of them are out of employment,
and thereby disabled to support themselves in a condition answerable
to their merits and those marks of honour his Majesty hath conferred
on them,' they should receive 'pensions' in proportion to the scale of
pay on active service which had been fixed at the beginning of the war.
These 'pensions' ranged from £150 a year for captains of flag-ships
up to £250 a year for rear-admirals and vice-admirals of fleets[201].
By an Order of 26 June, 1674, the same scale was established for flag
officers who had served in the Third Dutch War[202]; and in 1674 and
1675 the system of half-pay for officers when they were not being
actually employed was further extended to the captains and masters of
first and second rate ships who had served in the war[203], and to the
commanders of squadrons[204].

In 1672[205] another important change relating to pay was made by the
Council. The principle of pensions on superannuation was adopted for
officers. These were to be 'equal to the salary and known allowances
they enjoyed,' provided that they had completed fifteen years of
service 'where the employment is constant, such as that of boatswains,
gunners, pursers, carpenters, &c.,' or eight years where it is not
constant, 'such as that of masters, chirurgeons, &c.' In 1673[206]
the principle of superannuation was extended from cases of old age to
officers wounded in service at sea. Such officers were to receive one
year's wages, 'and the continuance of them in pay during the whole time
they shall by good proof appear to have lain under cure.'




LECTURE IV

VICTUALLING; DISCIPLINE; SHIPS; GUNS


The arrangements for victualling had always had an important bearing
upon the contentment and efficiency of the seamen. 'However the pay
of the mariners, both for sea and harbour, may be wanting for some
time,' wrote one of the Victuallers, 'yet they must have continual
supplies of victuals, otherwise they will be apt to fall into very
great disorders.'[207] Pepys, in his private _Minute Book_[208], makes
the same point. 'Englishmen,' he says, 'and more especially seamen,
love their bellies above anything else, and therefore it must always be
remembered, in the management of the victualling of the navy, that to
make any abatement from them in the quantity or agreeableness of the
victuals, is to discourage and provoke them in the tenderest point,
and will sooner render them disgusted with the King's service than any
one other hardship that can be put upon them.' But in this department
also the want of money had fatal effects, and contributed more than any
other cause to the comparative failure of the administration to provide
victuals of good quality, sufficient quantity, and promptly delivered
where they were required.

Before the Restoration the victualling was being managed by Victualling
Commissioners 'upon account,' the State keeping the business in its own
hands[209]. But the system had scarcely a fair trial owing to financial
embarrassments[210], and just before the King's return matters were
as bad as they could well be[211]. The restored Government reverted to
the older system of contract, and in September, 1660, Denis Gauden was
appointed contractor under the satisfying title of 'surveyor-general
of all victuals to be provided for his Majesty's ships and maritime
causes,' with a fee of £50 a year, and 8_d._ a day for a clerk[212].
The whole burden of the victualling therefore rested upon a single
man, and when the war with the Dutch broke out, he was unable to
grapple with its demands; yet no fundamental change could be made in
the system until the Government was in a position to settle accounts
with him. Thus the victuals, although on the whole good in quality,
were deficient in quantity, and when Gauden was remonstrated with he
could always reply, and generally with perfect truth, that it was
impossible for him to do better as long as the Government failed to
carry out their part of the contract, and to make payments on account
at the stipulated times[213]. In the spring of 1665, when the fleet
was fitting for sea, complaints of the failure of the Victualler were
frequent[214]. Later on, when Pepys went down to visit the fleet in
September, Lord Sandwich told him that most of the ships had been
without beer 'these three weeks or month, and but few days' dry
provisions.'[215] In this year complaints of uneatable provisions
occur, though not often, but when they were bad they were sometimes
very bad. On 10 August, Commissioner Middleton wrote to Pepys from
Portsmouth that the _Coventry_ was still in port; her beer had nearly
poisoned one man, who 'being thirsty drank a great draught.'[216]
Probably now, as undoubtedly later, the backwardness of the victualling
in turn reacted upon the deficiency of men, for the sailors deserted
from ships where they could get no food[217].

The practical breakdown of the victualling system during the spring
and summer of 1665 led to the establishment, at Pepys's suggestion, of
new machinery for keeping the Victualler up to the mark—a Surveyor of
Victuals appointed at the King's charge in each port, with power to
examine the Victualler's books; and a central officer in London to whom
they were to report weekly[218]. As soon as Pepys's plan was adopted,
he wrote to suggest that he himself should be the new Surveyor-General
of Victualling[219], and on 27 October he accepted office[220] at a
salary of £300 a year[221]. The appointment was temporary only, and
came to an end at the conclusion of peace. While it lasted it effected
a slight improvement. Pepys himself was much pleased with the success
of his arrangements, and he was complimented upon them by the Duke of
York[222]. As he had £500 a year from Gauden as well as the £300 from
the King[223], he managed to do well out of the war.

The experience of the war had shewn the weak points of the one-man
system, and in subsequent contracts several Victuallers were associated
in a kind of partnership[224], but the fundamental difficulty was one
of finance, and this a mere multiplication of persons did little to
meet. Thus there are complaints in 1671[225], and the difficulties were
greatly increased when the Third Dutch War broke out in the spring of
1672. The Victuallers received such scanty payments from the Government
that they had to carry on the service with their own money and
credit[226], and eventually their condition in respect of funds became
'so exceeding strait' that they could not make proper deliveries[227].
This provoked the commanders at sea to take the field against them,
and Prince Rupert was so annoyed that he declared that he would never
thrive at sea till some were hanged on land[228]; and a little later
expressed the opinion that the only way to deal with the Victuallers
would be to send one of them on shipboard, there to stay in what
condition his Majesty shall think fitting, till they have thoroughly
victualled the fleet[229].

It is, on the whole, to the credit of the Victuallers that the
complaints as to quality are not more numerous than they are during
this period of large demands and scanty payment. If you would care
for illustrations, on 15 March, 1671, on board the _Reserve_ 'there
was a general complaint amongst the seamen, both of the badness of
the meat and want of weight.'[230] On 6 September, 1672, there was a
protest from the _Gloucester_ against the badness of the beer; but the
Victuallers replied rather ambiguously that their beer was as good
as ever was used in the fleet, and they counted themselves happy in
that they had been afflicted with less bad beer 'by many degrees than
ever was in such an action.'[231] On 29 September the commander of the
_Augustine_ wrote to say that the doctor attributed the sickness among
his men to the extreme badness of the beer[232]; while objection was
also taken to an untimely dispensation of rotten cheese[233].

The victualling contract of which we possess the fullest details was
that of 31 December, 1677[234]. From this it appears that the daily
allowance of each man was 'one pound averdupois of good, clean, sweet,
sound, well-bolted with a horse-cloth, well-baked, and well-conditioned
wheaten biscuit; one gallon, wine measure, of beer' ... 'two pounds
averdupois of beef, killed and made up with salt in England, of a
well-fed ox ... for Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays'—or,
instead of beef, for two of those days one pound averdupois of bacon,
or salted English pork, of a well-fed hog ... and a pint of pease
(Winchester measure) therewith' ...; 'and for Wednesdays, Fridays, and
Saturdays, every man, besides the aforesaid allowance of bread and
beer, to have by the day the eighth part of a full-sized North Sea cod
of 24 inches long, or a sixth part of a haberdine 22 inches long, or
a quarter part of the same sort if but 16 inches long ... or a pound
averdupois of well-savoured Poor John, together with two ounces of
butter, and four ounces of Suffolk cheese, or two-thirds of that weight
of Cheshire.' The contract provides for English beef because there was
a strong prejudice in the navy against Irish beef. Pepys quotes one
writer as saying 'The Irish meat is very unwholesome, as well as lean,
and rots our men'[235]; and John Hollond argues that to serve Irish
beef was greatly to discourage the seamen[236]. 'Haberdine' is salt or
sun-dried cod, and 'Poor John' is salted or dried hake.

In the case of vessels sailing 'to the southward of the latitude of 39
degrees N.' it was allowable for the contractors to vary the diet—'In
lieu of a pound of biscuit, a pound of rusk of equal fineness; in lieu
of a gallon of beer, a wine quart of beverage wine or half a wine pint
of brandy ... in lieu of a piece of beef or pork with pease, three
pounds of flour and a pound of raisins (not worse than Malaga), or in
lieu of raisins, half a pound of currants or half a pound of beef suet
pickled; in lieu of a sized fish, four pounds of Milan rice or two
stockfishes of at least 16 inches long; in lieu of a pound of butter
or two pounds of Suffolk cheese, a wine pint of sweet olive oil.' The
separate victualling contract for the Mediterranean[237] provided
for this lighter diet there in any case; but the variation was not
popular among the seamen. In Captain Boteler's _Six Dialogues about Sea
Services_, printed in 1685 but written some fifty years earlier, the
'admiral,' who, having just been appointed to the 'high-admiralship,'
is occupied throughout the book in remedying an abysmal ignorance of
naval matters by conversation with a 'sea-captain,' suggests that
it would be better for the health of the mariners if the ordinary
victualling were assimilated 'to the manner of foreign parts.'
'Without doubt, my lord,' replies the captain, 'our much, and indeed
excessive feeding upon these salt meats at sea cannot but procure
much unhealthiness and infection, and is questionless one main cause
that our English are so subject to calentures, scarbots, and the
like contagious diseases above all other nations; so that it were to
be wished that we did more conform ourselves, if not to the Spanish
and Italian nations, who live most upon rice-meal, oatmeal, biscake,
figs, olives, oil, and the like, yet at the least to our neighbours
the Dutch, who content themselves with a far less proportion of
flesh and fish than we do, and instead thereof do make it up with
pease, beans, wheat-flour, butter, cheese, and those white meats (as
they are called).' To this view the admiral assents, but he adds,
'The difficulty consisteth in that the common seamen with us are so
besotted on their beef and pork as they had rather adventure on all
the calentures and scarbots in the world than to be weaned from their
customary diet, or so much as to lose the least bit of it.' I should
explain that a calenture is a fever, associated with delirium, to which
sailors in the tropics were peculiarly liable; and scarbot is the
scurvy[238].

Pepys expected much from the new contract of 1677[239], but the
old complaints of delay and bad quality recur[240], and in 1683
his successors decided to abandon contract in favour of a state
victualling department resembling in its general character the
system of victualling 'upon account,'[241] established from 1655 to
the Restoration. If we may infer anything from the silence of the
_Admiralty Letters_, hitherto so vocal upon the subject, this change
of method resulted in an improvement in the victualling of the navy,
and on the whole the Victualling Office did not come out badly under
the test of the mobilisation of 1688. The necessity for this had been
realised about the middle of August, and at first the delays caused
a good deal of anxiety; but by the end of October Pepys was able to
report that the fleet is 'now (God be thanked) at the Gunfleet, and in
very good condition there.'[242] There were still ships waiting to be
got ready for sea, but of these he writes: 'I do with the same zeal
continue to press the despatch of the rest that are behind that I would
do for my victuals if I were hungry.'[243]


One of the earlier acts of the Restoration Government was the passing
of a statute to incorporate into the system of English law the
ordinances already in force during the Interregnum for regulating
the discipline of the navy. Before 1652 such crimes as murder and
manslaughter on board ship had been punishable by the ordinary law, and
lesser offences by the 'known orders and customs of the seas';[244] but
in that year the service was for the first time subjected to articles
of war,[245] and it was upon these that the provisions of the Act of
1661[246] were founded. By this commanders at sea were empowered to try
a great variety of offences by court-martial, and for many of these the
maximum penalty was death. This Act continued to govern the navy until
the reign of George II.

Another Act, of 1664,[247] dealt with two matters which had given a
great deal of trouble to the Navy Board—the frequent embezzlement of
naval stores, and the riots among disappointed seamen who could not
get their pay. Efforts had been already made to prevent embezzlement
by adopting special modes of manufacture for the King's rope, sails,
and pennants, and by marking other stores with the broad arrow;[248]
but there were some things, such as nails and some other kinds of
ironwork, which could not be thus marked. Ironwork in particular was
especially favoured by the depredators, because it could be so easily
disposed of. In August, 1663, an illicit storehouse discovered at
Deptford for the reception of nails, iron shot, and other embezzled
ironwork, was described as the 'gulf that swallows up all from any
place brought to him.'[249] The riots also had been a serious matter.
The preamble of the Act gives as the ground of legislation 'diverse
fightings, quarrellings, and disturbances ... in and about his
Majesty's offices, yards, and stores,' and 'frequent differences and
disorders' which had occurred on pay-days through 'the unreasonable
turbulency of seamen.' To meet this state of things the Act invests the
Navy Board with some of the powers of magistrates, and authorises them
to punish riots and embezzlements with fine and imprisonment.

The Act was useful, but it did not entirely stop embezzlement. In
September, 1666, a prize worth £300 was plundered of her lading, and
'will soon,' we are told, 'be dismantled of all her rigging, till
she will not have a rope's end left to hang herself, or the thievish
seamen that go in her.'[250] Chatham Harbour had always been 'miserably
infested' with 'thieves and pilfering rogues,'[251] and in February,
1668, the clerk of the check wrote, 'our people's hands are of late so
inured to stealing, that if the sawyers leave any work in the pits half
cut, it's a hazard whether they find it in the morning.'[252] The state
of things complained of was partly due to the uncertainty of pay. As
far as the riots of seamen were concerned, the Act was a failure, as
for their grievances force was no remedy. Pepys writes on 4 November,
1665[253], when the Act of 1664 was in full operation, 'After dinner
I to the Office and there late, and much troubled to have a hundred
seamen all the afternoon there, swearing below and cursing us, and
breaking the glass windows, and swear they will pull the house down on
Tuesday next. I sent word of this to Court, but nothing will help it
but money and a rope.'

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

Another abuse of long standing had been the taking of merchants'
goods in the King's ships. Sir Robert Slyngesbie had observed in his
_Discourse_[255] in 1660 that this made it easy for the officers to
sell the King's stores under the pretence that they were merchandise;
to waste time in the ports which ought to have been spent at sea; and
so to fill the ship's hold 'that they have no room to throw by their
chests and other cumbersome things upon occasion of fight, whereby
the gun decks are so encumbered that they cannot possibly make so
good an opposition to an enemy as otherwise they might'; and, lastly,
to defraud the custom-house. In 1674 Pepys took the matter up, and
induced the King to take severe notice of the offenders[256], and
in one particularly flagrant case of 1675 to offer the delinquent
commander the alternative of imprisonment until trial by court-martial,
or forfeiting the whole of his pay for the voyage, and 'making good to
the poor of the Chest' at Chatham out of his own purse the value of the
freight of the merchants' goods brought home by him[257].

The absence of commanders from their ships without leave gave a good
deal of trouble during the period 1673-9. On 1 October, 1673, the
Commissioners of the Admiralty ordered that the commanders should be
'pricked out of pay' for such absences[258]; but on 25 May, 1675,
Pepys observes 'with much trouble' that the 'late resolutions' 'are
already forgotten,' commanders 'appearing daily in the town' without
leave[259]. On 9 July he 'spied' the captain of the _Lark_ 'at a
distance sauntering up and down Covent Garden, as I have too often
heretofore observed him spending his time when the King's service
required his attendance on shipboard, as it doth at this day—a practice
which shall never pass my knowledge in any commander (be he who he
will) without my taking notice of it to his Majesty and my Lords of the
Admiralty.'[260] Three years later complaints of this kind became very
frequent, and so to the end of Pepys's first Secretaryship in 1679. On
24 March, 1678, he writes: 'I must confess I have never observed so
frequent and scandalous instances as I do at this day by commanders
hovering daily about the Court and town, though without the least
pretence for it.'[261] 'I would to God,' he writes on 29 June to Sir
Thomas Allin, 'you could offer me something that may be an effectual
cure to the liberty taken by commanders of leaving their ships upon
pretence of private occasions, and staying long in town, to the great
dishonour of his Majesty's service, and corrupting the discipline
of the Navy by their example ... it seeming impossible as well as
unreasonable to keep the door constantly barred against commanders'
desires of coming to town upon just and pressing occasions of their
families, and of the other hand no less hard upon the King that his
gracious nature as well as his service should be always liable to be
imposed upon by commanders, as often as their humours, pleasures, or
(it may be) vices shall incline them to come ashore. Pray think of it
and help me herein, for, as I shall never be guilty of withstanding
any gentleman's just occasions and desires in this matter, so I shall
never be able to sit still and silent under the scandalous liberties
that I see every day taken by commanders of playing with his Majesty's
service, as if it were an indifferent matter whether they give any
attendance on board their ships, so as they have their wages as if they
did.'[262]

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

The decay of discipline in the Restoration period has been associated
by some writers with the practice of appointing 'gentlemen captains'
without experience to important commands at sea. The matter is
discussed by Macaulay, picturesquely but with exaggeration[264]; Pepys,
in the _Diary_, quotes Coventry as referring to the 'unruliness' of
the 'young gentlemen captains'[265] and confessing 'that the more of
the cavaliers are put in, the less of discipline hath followed in the
fleet'[266]; and a Restoration paper printed in Charnock's _Marine
Architecture_[267] very much shocks that author by its 'illiberal and
improper observations' on the subject. He admits, however, that 'there
certainly appears much truth and solidity in the general principle
of them,' though 'it might have been wished for the sake of decency
and propriety' that the writer 'had conveyed his animadversions in
somewhat less vulgar terms.' The victim of Charnock's criticism traces
every kind of evil to the year 1660, when 'gentlemen came to command
in the navy.' These 'have had the honour to bring drinking, gaming,
whoring, swearing, and all impiety into the navy, and banish all order
and sobriety out of their ships'; they have cast their ships away for
want of seamanship[268]; they have habitually delayed in port when
they should have been at sea; a gentleman captain will bring 'near
twenty landmen into the ship as his footmen, tailor, barber, fiddlers,
decayed kindred, volunteer gentlemen or acquaintance, as companions,'
and these 'are of Bishop Williams's opinion, that Providence made man
to live ashore, and it is necessity that drives him to sea.' The writer
concludes that 'the Crown will at all times be better able to secure
trade, prevent the growth of the naval strength of our enemy, with
£100,000 under a natural sea admiralty and seamen captains ... than
with three times that sum under land admirals and gentlemen captains
not bred tarpaulins.'

With some qualifications this is the view of Pepys. He disclaims
hostility to gentlemen captains as such; but he quotes from a speech
delivered by Colonel Birch in the House of Commons, in which he had
urged that one of the 'present miscarriages' of the navy is that
'employment and favour are now bestowed wholly upon gentlemen, to the
great discouragement of tarpaulins of Wapping and Blackwall, from
whence ... the good commanders of old were all used to be chosen.'[269]
Pepys also refers to the liberty taken by gentlemen commanders of
'thinking themselves above the necessity of obeying orders, and
conforming themselves to the rules and discipline of the Navy, in
reliance upon the protection secured to them therein through the
quality of their friends at Court.'[270] Pepys himself was probably an
impartial witness, for he was denounced by each side for favouring the
other[271].

It is in a way remarkable that during the period of complaints
against gentlemen captains we come upon the first establishment of
an examination for lieutenants. Towards the end of 1677 complaints
reached the Admiralty from Sir John Narbrough, commanding in the
Mediterranean, of the 'defectiveness' of his lieutenants 'in their
seamanship.'[272] Pepys also refers to 'the general ignorance and
dulness of our lieutenants of ships' as 'a great evil' of which 'all
sober commanders at this day' complain. They are 'for the most part
(at least those of later standing) made out of volunteers, who having
passed some time superficially at sea, and being related to families
of interest at Court, do obtain lieutenancies before they are fitted
for it.'[273] The result was the adoption on 18 December of a regular
establishment[274], drawn up by Pepys[275], 'for ascertaining the
duty of a sea-lieutenant, and for examining persons pretending to
that office.' A lieutenant was required to have served three years
actually at sea; to be 20 years of age at least; to produce 'good
certificates' from the commanders under whom he had served of his
'sobriety, diligence, obedience to order,' and 'application to the
study and practice of the art of navigation,' as well as three further
certificates—from a member of the Navy Board who had served as a
commander, from a flag officer, and from a commander of a first or
second rate—'upon a solemn examination,' held at the Navy Office, of
'his ability to judge of and perform the duty of an able seaman and
midshipman, and his having attained to a sufficient degree of knowledge
in the theory of navigation capacitating him thereto.' Candidates
were sometimes ploughed[276], and this, as Pepys points out, was an
encouragement to the 'true-bred seaman' and greatly to the benefit of
the King's service. 'I thank God,' he writes in 1678[277], 'we have not
half the throng of those of the bastard breed pressing for employments
which we heretofore used to be troubled with, they being conscious
of their inability to pass this examination, and know it to be to no
purpose now to solicit for employments till they have done it.'

To about the same time as the examination for lieutenants belongs
another minor reform—an establishment for the better provision of naval
chaplains. In April or May, 1677, the King and Lords of the Admiralty
resolved 'that no persons shall be entertained as chaplains on board
his Majesty's ships but such as shall be approved of by the Lord Bishop
of London.'[278] The proposal originated in the first instance with
Pepys, who designed it to remedy 'the ill-effects of the looseness
wherein that matter lay, with respect both to the honour of God
Almighty and the preservation of sobriety and good discipline in his
Majesty's fleet.'[279] The details of the scheme were more fully worked
out by resolutions adopted by the Admiralty Commission on 15 December,
1677[280].

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

The reign of James II was in a peculiar degree a period of the
framing and revising of 'establishments,' and on 13 April, 1686, a
new establishment was made concerning 'volunteers and midshipmen
extraordinary.'[282] This appears to be a confirmation of an earlier
establishment of 4 May, 1676, designed to afford encouragement
'to families of better quality ... to breed up their younger sons
to the art and practice of navigation' by 'the bearing several
young gentlemen, to the ends aforesaid' on board the King's ships
as 'volunteers,' and to provide employment for ex-commanders or
lieutenants by carrying them as 'midshipmen extraordinary' over and
above the ordinary complement assigned to the ship in which they
sailed. Another 'establishment' of the same period is that of November,
1686, for boatswains' and carpenters' sea stores[283].

During the earlier part of Pepys's second Secretaryship, drunkenness
gave a good deal of trouble. For instance, in 1685 the commander of
the _Diamond_ complained that his officers were 'sottish, and unfit
to serve the King,' particularly the gunner, who was 'dead drunk in
his cabin when the powder was to be taken out.'[284] Pepys refers on
5 August, 1684, to 'the generality of that vice, now running through
the whole navy,'[285] and on 4 February, 1685, he writes, 'Till that
vice be cured, which I find too far spread in the navy, both by sea
and land, I do despair of ever seeing his Majesty's service therein to
thrive, and as I have given one or two instances of my care therein
already, so shall I not fail by the grace of God to persevere in it, as
far as I am able, till it be thoroughly cured, let it light where it
will.'[286] In these efforts the Secretary of the Admiralty, was soon
to be powerfully supported by the new King, 'there being no one vice,'
Pepys writes on 15 February, 1685, 'which can give more just occasion
of offence to his Majesty than that of drunkenness, for the restraining
which, as well in the navy as in every other part of the service, I
well know he has immoveably determined to have the severest means used,
nor shall I in my station fail (according to his commands and my duty)
to give my helping hand thereto.'[287]

In connexion with discipline it may be mentioned that even as early as
the Restoration there were labour troubles in the dockyards. In 1663
a separate room was applied for in the new storehouse at Portsmouth
for use as a workroom, 'as seamen and carpenters will never agree to
work together.'[288] In the same year the clerk of the Portsmouth
ropeyard complained of the workmen employed there. By hasty spinning
they finished what they called a day's work by dinner-time, and then
refused to work again till four o'clock. 'Yesterday,' he writes,
'about twenty-five of them left the work to go to the alehouse,
where, I think, they remain.'[289] On 26 March, 1664, the shipwrights
and caulkers at Deptford are complained of because they work very
slowly, and 'give ill language' when pressed to work[290]. Later on,
in January, 1671, Commissioner John Cox appears to have had almost as
much trouble with the master workmen and their instruments in Chatham
dockyard. They were remiss in their attendance, and met his efforts at
their amendment by passive resistance[291].


The two great shipbuilding years of our period were 1666 and 1679—the
first accounted for by the Second Dutch War, and the latter by the Act
of 1677 for thirty new ships to which I have already referred[292].
How much was done during the Restoration period to strengthen the navy
on its material side can be realised by a comparison made in tabular
form in Pepys's _Register of Ships_[293]. In 1660 the navy consisted
of 156 vessels, in 1688 of 173; but a comparison of numbers gives no
adequate idea of relative strength. In 1660 there were only 3 first
rates as against 9 in 1688; second rates, 11 at both dates; third
rates, 16 against 39; fourth rates, 45 against 41; fifth rates, 37
against 2; sixth rates, 23 against 6—shewing that the tendency had been
to build bigger ships. In 1660 there were only 30 ships of the first
three rates, but in 1688 the number was nearly doubled, rising to 59.
Another feature in the table is the development of the fireship and the
yacht[294]. In 1660 there were no fireships in the navy; in 1688, 26.
In 1660 there was one yacht, and in 1688 there were 14. The strength
of the fleet may also be tested in another way, by comparing tonnage,
men, and guns[295]. In 1660 the tonnage was 62,594; in 1688, 101,032.
In 1660 the number of men borne on the sea establishment was 19,551; in
1688,41,940. In 1660 the total number of guns was 4,642; in 1688, 6,954.

In connexion with guns, the important achievement of the period
was the systematising, under the methodical hand of Pepys, of the
arrangements for determining the number and type of the armament of
each rate, and the number of men required to work it. In 1677 he
drew up a 'general establishment' of men and guns[296], and this was
officially adopted as 'a solemn, universal, and unalterable adjustment
of the gunning and manning of the whole fleet[297].'


Let me now sum up briefly our general conclusions.

In the light of the facts which I have endeavoured to set out in
these lectures, the old notion that the naval administration of the
Interregnum was pious and efficient and that of the Restoration immoral
and slack appears crude and unsatisfying. But there is this element
of truth in it—that vigorous efforts for the regeneration of the
navy were to a certain extent rendered abortive by the corruption of
the Court and the lowness of the prevailing political tone. Able and
energetic reformers were baffled by want of money, and this was due
partly to royal extravagance and partly to unsatisfactory relations
with Parliament, which suspected peculation and waste. Discipline
also was undermined by the introduction into the service of unfit
persons, who obtained admission and were protected from the adequate
punishment of their delinquencies by the interest of persons of
quality at Court. Further, an atmosphere was created which enervated
some of the reformers themselves. It is remarkable that in spite of
these drawbacks so much should have been accomplished. The facts and
figures contained in the naval manuscripts in the Pepysian Library
go a long way to justify the claims made by Pepys on behalf of the
administrations with which he himself was connected, and particularly
on behalf of the Special Commission of 1686, which, as he says,
'raised the Navy of England from the lowest state of impotence to
the most advanced step towards a lasting and solid prosperity that
(all circumstances considered) this nation had ever seen it at.'[298]
The characteristic vices of the Restoration, as he describes them,
are all there—'the laziness of one, the private business or love
of pleasure in another, want of method in a third, and zeal to the
affair in most'—but except during the period 1679 to 1684 there was
no abject incompetence and some steady progress. Even Charles II
understood 'the business of the sea,'[299] 'possessed a transcendent
mastery in all maritime knowledge,'[300] and when he was acting as
Lord High Admiral transacted a good deal of naval business with his
own hand[301]. James II was a real authority upon shipbuilding[302],
took an interest in the details of administration[303], recognised the
importance of discipline, and might have restored it if destiny had
not intervened. But much more is to be attributed to the methodical
industry of their great subordinate, and to his 'daily eye and hand'
upon all departments of naval affairs. His vitality of character and
variety of interests appear in the _Diary_, but from his official
correspondence we get something different; for in a document which is
so true to human nature as the _Diary_, it is almost inevitable that
the diarist, although sufficiently self-satisfied, should be quite
unconscious of his strongest points. We should expect business habits
in a Government official, but in his correspondence Pepys exhibits a
methodical devotion to business which is beyond praise. We have here
sobriety and soundness of judgment; a sense of the paramount importance
of discipline, and the exercise of a steady pressure upon others
to restore it in the navy; a high standard of personal duty, which
permits no slackness and spares no pains; and a remarkable capacity
for tactful diplomacy. The decorous self-satisfaction of the _Diary_
has been replaced in later years by professional pride; and an outlook
upon business affairs which had always been intelligent, has become
profoundly serious. The agreeable vices of the _Diary_ suggest the
light irresponsible cavalier. The official correspondence suggests that
Pepys was a Puritan at heart, although without the Puritan rigidity of
practice or narrowness of view. In his professional career he exhibits
precisely those virtues which had made the naval administration of
Blake's time a success—the virtues of the Independent colonels who
manned the administrative offices during the First Dutch War. The
change is that from the rather dissolute-looking young Royalist painted
by Lely about 1669 to the ample wig and pursed official lips of the
later portrait by Kneller[304].

It is not surprising that a man so observant, so experienced, and so
absorbed in the navy should have drawn the moral of the naval history
of his own time. In his _Memoires of the Royal Navy_[305], the only
work which he ever acknowledged[306], Pepys states the essential
'truths' of the 'sea œconomy' of England, which are as valid to-day as
when he wrote them down—'that integrity and general (but unpractised)
knowledge are not alone sufficient to conduct and support a Navy
so as to prevent its declension into a state little less unhappy
than the worst that can befall it under the want of both'; 'that not
much more (neither) is to be depended on even from experience alone
and integrity, unaccompanied with vigour of application, assiduity,
affection, strictness of discipline, and method'; but that what is
really needed is 'a strenuous conjunction of all these.' For himself
he claims due credit, for it was 'a strenuous conjunction of all these
(and that conjunction only)' that redeemed the navy in 1686.

An anonymous admirer[307] wrote of Pepys as 'the great treasurer
of naval and maritime knowledge,' who was 'aequiponderous' to his
colleagues 'in moral, and much superior in philosophical knowledge and
the universal knowledge of the œconomy of the navy.' Modern eulogies
are phrased more simply, but we may fairly claim for this great public
servant that he did more than anyone else under a King who hated 'the
very sight or thoughts of business'[308] to apply business principles
to naval administration.




FOOTNOTES:


[1] _Diary_, 13 June, 1664.

[2] Vols. ii.-v. of these letters have been calendared already, and
calendars of vols. vi. and vii. are in preparation: see the writer's
_Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._ (Navy Records Society's Publications),
vols. ii. and iii.

[3] See Hollond's _Discourses of the Navy_, ed. J. R. Tanner, published
by the Navy Records Society in 1896. This volume also includes
Slyngesbie's _Discourse of the Navy_.

[4] Pepysian MSS., _Miscellanies_, x. 273.

[5] _Naval Tracts_ (ed. M. Oppenheim), iv. 143.

[6] See Appendix to Hollond's _Discourses_, pp. 361-406.

[7] _Diary_, 25 July, 1662.

[8] 'Interim Report of a Committee to inquire into abuses in the
Victualling Department at Portsmouth' (_House of Commons Miscellaneous
Reports_, vol. xxxvi. No. 55).

[9] _Discourses_, p. 131.

[10] _Discourses_, p. 149.

[11] _A Large and Severe Discourse_, &c. (Pepysian MSS.,
_Miscellanies_, x. 226).

[12] _A Large and Particular Complaint against Phineas Pett_, &c.
(Pepysian MSS., _Miscellanies_, x. 257).

[13] _Discourses_, p. 140 _n._

[14] _An Account of Particular Abuses to be proved against the Officers
of the Navy_ (Pepysian MSS., _Miscellanies_, x. 271).

[15] C. N. Robinson, _The British Fleet_, p. 347. There are two
copies of the Report of 1608 in the Pepysian Library—MSS. 2165, and
_Miscellanies_, iii. 355.

[16] _Discourses_, p. 100.

[17] _Naval Tracts_, iv. 147.

[18] _Naval Tracts_, iv. 143.

[19] _Discourses_, p. 154.

[20] Pepysian MSS., No. 2735, p. 65.

[21] Hollond, _First Discourse_ (_Discourses_, p. 78).

[22] _Ib._ p. 67.

[23] On 1 January, 1660.

[24] _Diary_, 31 May, 1669.

[25] _Diary_, 24 April, 1665.

[26] _Diary_, 13 June, 1666.

[27] See for instance a letter of 17 December, 1678, courteously
discouraging a commander from sending his chaplain's sermon to the
Bishop of London for his perusal, as owing to the pressing nature of
his Parliamentary engagements the Bishop might not be 'at leisure to
overlook it' (Pepysian MSS., _Admiralty Letters_, viii. 432).

[28] Pepysian MSS., _Admiralty Letters_, vi. 43.

[29] Historical MSS. Commission, _Fifteenth Report_, Appendix, pt. ii.
p. 153.

[30] A list of Lord High Admirals and Admiralty Commissions
from August, 1628, to March, 1689, is given in Pepysian MSS.,
_Miscellanies_, xi. 211-26.

[31] _Naval Tracts_, iv. 141.

[32] _History of England_ (2 vols. Longman, 1880), i. 218.

[33] Pepysian MSS., _Admiralty Letters_, xii. 71. We also find him
desiring 'for his own satisfaction and use to have an account of the
just rake of all the upright-stemmed ships in his royal navy, and the
present seat of the step of each main-mast' (_ib._ xi. 200); and his
pocket-book in the Pepysian Library (MSS. No. 488) contains a number
of facts about the navy. For his interest in inventions see _Admiralty
Letters_, xii. 91 and xiii. 23.

[34] Pepysian MSS. No. 2866, _Naval Minutes_, p. 175.

[35] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1667-8, p. xxxvi; _cf._ also
_Diary_, 8 July, 1668 ('I to the Duke of York to attend him about the
business of the Office; and find him mighty free to me, and how he is
concerned to mend things in the Navy himself, and not leave it to other
people').

[36] _Dictionary of National Biography_, ix. 208.

[37] _Diary_, 30 October, 1662.

[38] _Ib._ 12 April, 1667.

[39] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1631-3, p. 546.

[40] _State Papers, Domestic, Charles II_, i. 153.

[41] _Diary_, 31 July, 1661.

[42] _Ib._ 5 November, 1662.

[43] _Ib._ 28 December, 1662.

[44] _Diary_, 10 March, 1663.

[45] _Ib._ 11 March, 1663.

[46] _Ib._ 25 July, 1662.

[47] _Ib._ 5 July, 1664.

[48] _Ib._ 23 May, 1664.

[49] _Ib._ 13 June, 1663.

[50] _Ib._ 4 October, 1667.

[51] _Ib._ 17 July, 1660.

[52] _Diary_, 9 February, 1665.

[53] _Dictionary of National Biography_, iv. 361-2.

[54] _Ib._ xliv. 308-9.

[55] The Commissions of 1653 and 1659 (Pepysian MSS., _Miscellanies_,
xi. 216, 218, 219).

[56] _Dictionary of National Biography_, xlv. 103.

[57] _Ib._ xlv. 102.

[58] H. B. Wheatley, _Samuel Pepys and the World he lived in_, p. 285.

[59] x. 358.

[60] _Report of the Navy Commissioners to the Duke of York_, 17 April,
1669; printed in Charnock, _Marine Architecture_, ii. 406.

[61] _Observations on the Navy and Sea Service_ (_Works_, viii. 336).

[62] _Dictionary of National Biography_, ii. 2-3.

[63] 'So home again, and in the evening news was brought that Sir R.
Slingsby, our Comptroller, (who hath this day been sick a week) is
dead; which put me into so great trouble of mind that all the night I
could not sleep, he being a man that loved me, and had many qualities
that made me love him above all the Officers and Commissioners in the
Navy' (_Diary_, 26 October, 1661).

[64] _Dictionary of National Biography_, xxxvii. 253-4.

[65] _Diary_, 2 January, 1666.

[66] _Ib._ 20 August, 1666.

[67] _Ib._ 7 April, 1663; 5 October, 1663; 6 October, 1666; 4 January,
1669.

[68] _Ib._ 2 April, 1664.

[69] _Dictionary of National Biography_, i. 332.

[70] Pepys joined with Penn in recommending him as 'a most honest and
understanding man, and fit for that place' (_Diary_, 5 October, 1667).

[71] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1672, p. 551.

[72] _Dictionary of National Biography_, xii. 363.

[73] _E.g._ 14 September, 1662 ('found him to admiration good and
industrious, and I think my most true friend in all things that are
fair'); 18 November, 1662 ('I am still in love more and more with him
for his real worth'); and elsewhere.

[74] _Dictionary of National Biography_, vi. 470.

[75] _Diary_, 29 January, 1667.

[76] _Ib._ 25 August, 1668.

[77] _Naval Tracts_, iii. 398.

[78] Pepysian MSS. No. 2611, Sir William Penn's _Collections_, p. 4.

[79] These were founded upon earlier instructions issued in 1640 by the
Earl of Northumberland when Lord High Admiral. They were printed in
1717 from an imperfect copy under the title _The Œconomy of H.M.'s Navy
Office_, but there are two complete copies in the Pepysian Library, one
among _Naval Precedents_ (No. 2867, pp. 356-98) and the other in Sir
William Penn's _Collections_ (No. 2611, pp. 127-90).

[80] H. B. Wheatley, _Samuel Pepys and the World he lived in_, p. 138.

[81] _Diary_, 31 October, 1665.

[82] _Ib._ 31 May, 1667.

[83] _Ib._ 6 February, 1665.

[84] _Diary_, 16 September, 1664.

[85] _Ib._ 3 April, 1663.

[86] _Ib._ 21 July, 1664; 4 February, 1667; 2 August, 1667.

[87] _Ib._ 16 July, 1664; 10 September, 1664; 16 March, 1665; 31
October, 1667; 27 December, 1667.

[88] _Ib._ 25 May, 27 June, 14 August, and 10 November, 1666.

[89] _Ib._ 27 November, 1664; 28 January, 1665; 28 May, 1669.

[90] _Ib._ 17 July, 1667; 14 August, 1667; 3 February, 1668.

[91] _Ib._ 28 November, 1664; 9 December, 1664; 29 March, 1665.

[92] _E.g._ _Ib._ 5 January, 2 May, 27 May, 3 June, 10 June, 22 June,
18 July, 21 July, 1664; 21 March, 1665; 21 February, 1668; 24 February,
1668.

[93] _Ib._ 1 January, 1669.

[94] _Ib._ 10 December, 1663. _Cf._ 5 January, 10 September, 24
September, and 12 October, 1664, where the same mental attitude is
indicated.

[95] Pepysian MSS., _Miscellanies_, xi. 221, and _Calendar of State
Papers, Domestic_, 1673, p. 415.

[96] The Duke's presence 'behind the throne' is confirmed by a number
of references in the _Admiralty Letters_ (_e.g._ ii. 60, 90; iii. 231,
234, 235, 301, 319, 329, 331).

[97] Cobbett, _Parliamentary History_, iv. 587.

[98] The substance of this speech is reported in Grey's _Debates_ (iv.
115), but there is in the Pepysian _Miscellanies_ (ii. 453) a copy of
notes for this or some other speech, entitled 'Heads for a Discourse in
Parliament upon the business of the Navy, Anno 1676,' which, though it
differs from the report, does not do so more widely than what an orator
actually says often differs from what he intended to say. An abstract
is given in _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 48.

[99] Pepysian MSS., _Admiralty Letters_, v. 345.

[100] 29 Car. II, c. 1.

[101] _Dictionary of National Biography_, xliv. 363.

[102] Pepysian MSS., _Admiralty Letters_, ix. 282.

[103] Pepysian MSS., _Miscellanies_, ii. 411. There are two copies of
their commission in the Pepysian Library (_Naval Precedents_, p. 236,
and _Miscellanies_, ii. 413).

[104] _Dictionary of National Biography_, ix. 17.

[105] _Dictionary of National Biography_, xix. 1.

[106] _Ib._ xxxii. 383.

[107] Pepysian MSS., No. 2866, _Naval Minutes_, p. 76.

[108] Pepys, _Memoires of the Royal Navy, 1679-88_ (Oxford reprint), p.
6.

[109] _Ib._ p. 18.

[110] Pepys, _Memoires of the Royal Navy, 1679-88_ (Oxford reprint), p.
9.

[111] _History of England_ (Longmans, 2 vols., 1880), i. 146.

[112] It is often said that the office of Lord High Admiral was
restored to the Duke; but this is clearly not the view of Pepys
(Pepysian MSS., _Miscellanies_, xi. 225).

[113] Materials for the history of this experiment are to be found
in a manuscript volume in the Pepysian Library entitled, _My Diary
relating to the Commission constituted by King James II, Anno 1686, for
the Recovery of the Navy, with a Collection of the Principal Papers
incident to and conclusive of the same_ (Pepysian MSS., No. 1490).

[114] Pepys's 'Proposition' is printed in his _Memoires_ (pp. 18-23);
and further details of the exact distribution of the £400,000 a year
are given in a paper entitled 'Measures supporting my Proposition'
(Pepysian MSS., No. 1490, p. 123). See also the writer's Introduction
to the Oxford reprint of the _Memoires_.

[115] Pepysian MSS., No. 1490, p. 131.

[116] _Ib._ p. 145.

[117] Pepysian MSS., No. 1490, p. 16.

[118] The precise nature of these does not transpire, but Deane had
stated that, in justice to his family, he could not value his whole
time at less than £1000 a year (_Ib._ p. 139). The King's first offer
was £500.

[119] _Ib._ p. 17.

[120] Pepysian MSS., _Admiralty Letters_, xv. 470.

[121] _Ib._ xv. 472.

[122] _Dictionary of National Biography_, xliv. 364.

[123] A. W. Tedder, _The Navy of the Restoration_, p. 41.

[124] _Ib._ p. 41 _n._

[125] _State Papers, Domestic, Charles II_, cii. 123.

[126] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1665-6, p. 189. See also
_ib._ 1666-7, p. 233, and _Diary_, 20 June, 1667.

[127] _Ib._ 1665-6, p. xxxix.

[128] _Ib._ 1666-7, p. 228, and 1665-6, p. 189.

[129] Even in 1658 the Navy Commissioners had been obliged to buy at
from 30 to 50 per cent. above the market price (M. Oppenheim, _The
Administration of the Royal Navy_, 1509-1660, p. 351).

[130] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1664-5, p. 353.

[131] _State Papers, Domestic, Charles II_, ccxlii. 56; _Calendar of
State Papers, Domestic_, 1667-8, p. 563.

[132] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1667, p. 454.

[133] _Cf._ _ib._ 1667-8, p. 455 and 1666-7, p. 233.

[134] _Diary._

[135] Pepysian MSS., No. 2589, pp. 1-3.

[136] Another statement of the expenditure of the navy during the
Second Dutch War is to be found in a letter from the Navy Board to
the Lord Treasurer, dated 24 September, 1666, which gives for the
information of Parliament, just then about to meet, an estimate for the
period 1 September, 1664, to 29 September, 1666. This calculation is
given in the writer's _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 102.

[137] Pepysian MSS., No. 2589, p. 118.

[138] Ranke, _History of England_, iii. 449-50; see also the _Diary_.

[139] _State Papers, Domestic, Charles II_, ccxiii. 65.

[140] Penn, _Memorials of Sir William Penn_, ii. 528; _Calendar of
State Papers, Domestic_, 1667, p. 420. On Coventry's connexion with
the scheme see _Diary_, 19 August, 1667. Particulars of it are given
in _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 104. With this calculation should
be compared a detailed estimate of the annual charge of 'his Majesty's
navy in harbour' for the year 1684 (Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, _Naval
Precedents_, p. 402), the substance of which is given in _Catalogue of
Pepysian MSS._, i. 111. The total is £135,084. 6_s._ 11_d._, but this
is exclusive of ships at sea.

[141] Estimated at the end of the war as £1,100,000 (_Calendar of State
Papers, Domestic_, 1667, p. 471).

[142] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1673, pp. x, 218, 333, 341,
510.

[143] Pepysian MSS., _Admiralty Letters_, iii. 130.

[144] _Ib._ iii. 182.

[145] Pepysian MSS., _Admiralty Letters_, iii. 186.

[146] _Ib._ iii. 49, 51, 52.

[147] _Ib._ vi. 277. Other instances are given in _Catalogue of
Pepysian MSS._, i. 108.

[148] _Ib._ viii. 403.

[149] _A State of the Debt contracted in the Navy between 1 January,
1671[-2] ... and 25 March, 1686, and which remains at this day
unpaid according to the books in this Office_ ... (Pepysian MSS.,
_Miscellanies_, xi. 18). This paper is printed in _Catalogue of
Pepysian MSS._, i. 110.

[150] Pepysian MSS., _Miscellanies_, xi. 20.

[151] _Cf._ _Diary_, 6 July, 1665, 30 September, 1665, 31 October,
1665, and 12 March, 1667.

[152] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1664-5, p. 304.

[153] _Ib._ 1667, p. 46.

[154] _Ib._ 1667, p. 75.

[155] _Ib._ 1667, p. lx note. See also p. 514.

[156] _Ib._ 1665-6, p. 385.

[157] _Ib._ 1667, p. lx note, and p. 514.

[158] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1664-5, p. 522.

[159] _Ib._ 1667, p. 75.

[160] _Ib._ 1667-8, p. xiv.

[161] _Ib._ 1667-8, p. 443.

[162] _Ib._ 1664-5, p. 475.

[163] _Ib._ 1665-6, p. 32.

[164] _Ib._ 1665-6, p. 53.

[165] Historical MSS. Commission, _Fifteenth Report_, Appendix, pt.
ii., p. 167.

[166] _State Papers, Domestic, Charles II_, ccxcvii. 19. Other
instances are given in _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 120.

[167] _Diary_, 1 and 2 July, 1666.

[168] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1665-6, p. 323.

[169] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1667-8, p. xv. As late
as 1742 Captain John Hamilton reports the pressing of a lime-burner
who was nearly blind, and 'a little old cobbler of 56, taken out of
his stall rather it should seem for a pastime than service'; and
letters of 1747 shew that the pressing of mere lads, or of persons not
able-bodied, was a subject of 'general and constant complaint' (Public
Record Office, _Captains' Letters_, H 12; _Secretary's Letters_, 3). In
1864 or 1865 a 'man' who weighed 70 lbs. was sent on board the _Prince
Consort_ at Spithead.

[170] 13 April, 1673: _State Papers, Domestic, Charles II_, cccxliii.
141. See also _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1673, p. 228.

[171] Pepysian MSS., No. 2866, _Naval Minutes_, p. 24.

[172] _Ib._ p. 39.

[173] _Ib._ p. 71.

[174] Pepysian MSS., No. 2866, _Naval Minutes_, p. 287.

[175] _Memoires of the Royal Navy_ (Oxford reprint), p. 80.

[176] C. H. Firth, _Cromwell's Army_, ch. ix.

[177] Evelyn's _Diary_ (ed. Austin Dobson), ii. 218.

[178] Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, pp. 537-53.

[179] _State Papers, Domestic, Charles II_, cxxxiii. 63; see also
_Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1666-7, p. 398.

[180] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1672, p. 157.

[181] _State Papers, Domestic, Charles II_, cccxxviii. 114.

[182] Pepysian MSS., _Miscellanies_, xi. 106.

[183] _Ib._ xi. pp. 103-110, where Pearse's report of September, 1687,
giving an account of the reforms effected by him during his long tenure
of office, is pasted into the volume. The substance of this is printed
in _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 137.

[184] _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 205.

[185] Pepysian MSS., _Miscellanies_, vi. 71.

[186] _State Papers, Domestic, Interr._ xxxii. 39.

[187] Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, _Naval Precedents_, p. 217.

[188] A table of these rates is given in Oppenheim, p. 360.

[189] See Pepysian MSS., No. 488, _King James II's Pocket Book of Rates
and Memorandums_. Tables of harbour and rigging wages taken from this
source are printed in _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 141.

[190] Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, _Naval Precedents_, pp. 195-6. This new
table of wages is printed in _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 150.

[191] _Catalogue of State Papers, Domestic_, 1666-7, p. 426; see also
_ib._ 1665-6, p. 75.

[192] _Diary_, 13 November, 1667.

[193] Pepysian MSS., _Miscellanies_, vi. 465-80.

[194] Penn, _Memorials of Sir William Penn_, ii. 509.

[195] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1654, p. 548.

[196] Pepysian MSS., No. 2554.

[197] _Discourses._, p. 129 and _nn._

[198] _Ib._ p. 140.

[199] _Dictionary of National Biography_, xiv. 257.

[200] Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, _Naval Precedents_, p. 477. There is a
reference to this in the _Diary_, 6 July, 1668. Sir William Coventry
was against it, and Pepys agreed with him.

[201] The scale is given in _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 145.

[202] _Naval Precedents_, p. 222.

[203] Order in Council of 6 May, 1674 (_Naval Precedents_, p. 164; see
also p. 259). The substance of the Order is given in _Catalogue of
Pepysian MSS._, i. 146.

[204] Order in Council, 19 May, 1675 (_Naval Precedents_, p. 165). The
substance of the Order is given in _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 147.

[205] Order in Council, 6 December, 1672 (_Naval Precedents_, p. 198).

[206] Order in Council, 6 June, 1673 (_Naval Precedents_, p. 218).
There is another copy in _Miscellanies_, vi. 67. For subsequent
extensions of the Order, in 1673 and 1674, see _Catalogue of Pepysian
MSS._, i. 148-9.

[207] _State Papers, Domestic, Charles II_, ccxcix. 121.

[208] P. 254.

[209] Hollond, _Discourses_, pp. 124, 154.

[210] Oppenheim, p. 326.

[211] Oppenheim, p. 327.

[212] _State Papers, Domestic, Charles II_, Docquet Book, p. 46.

[213] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1665-6, p. xxxix. See also
pp. 23, 27, 55, 203.

[214] _Ib._ 1664-5, pp. 306, 311, 317, 321, 382.

[215] _Diary_, 18 September, 1665.

[216] _State Papers, Domestic, Charles II_, cxxviii. 85; see also
_Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1664-5, p. 480.

[217] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1667-8, p. xviii.

[218] _Ib._ 1665-6, p. 7; see also p. 11, and _Diary_, 14 October, 1665.

[219] _Diary_, 19 October, 1665.

[220] _Ib._ 27 October, 1665.

[221] _Ib._ 31 October, 1665.

[222] _Ib._ 26 July, 1666.

[223] _Ib._ 4 June, 1667.

[224] See _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 155.

[225] See _ib._ i. 156-7.

[226] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1671-2, pp. 66, 498.

[227] _Ib._ 1672, p. 484. For other references see pp. 31, 98, 106,
124, 453; and _ib._ 1673, p. 72.

[228] _Ib._ 1673, p. xi.

[229] _Ib._ 1673, p. 384.

[230] _State Papers, Domestic, Charles II_, ccxcvii. 36. See also
_Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1671, p. 135.

[231] _State Papers, Domestic, Charles II_, cccxxix. 11.

[232] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1672, p. 668.

[233] _Ib._ 1672, p. 675. An interesting discussion of victualling
abuses is contained in a paper of 1673 or 1674, entitled _The Expense
and Charge of his Majesty's Naval Victuals considered and regulated_,
by Captain Stephen Pyend or Pine, who had been himself formerly a
purser (Pepysian MSS., _Miscellanies_, iii. 723). The substance of it
is printed in _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 160-4.

[234] Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, _Naval Precedents_, p. 416. The contract
is fully discussed in _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 165-177.

[235] Pepysian MSS., No. 2866, _Naval Minutes_, p. 146.

[236] _Discourses_, p. 177.

[237] Described in _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 177.

[238] 'Calentures,' or burning fevers, were supposed to be bred by
calms. Sir Walter Ralegh refers to his own sufferings from them
(_Remains_, London, 1664, p. 223).

'Scarbot' is probably from 'scharbock,' the Danish name for one form
of scurvy (John Quincey, _Lexicon Physico-medicum_, London, 1787); the
modern Danish term for scurvy is 'skabet.'

[239] See _Admiralty Letters_, vi. 228.

[240] Instances are given in _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 179-80.

[241] A discussion of the relative merits of the two systems occurs
in Hollond, _Discourses_, p. 154. The substance of the patent of 10
December, 1683 (_Naval Precedents_, p. 48), which established the new
department, is given in _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, pp. 180-2.

[242] Pepysian MSS., _Admiralty Letters_, xv. 250 (26 Oct). See also
pp. 219-20, 256-7, 284.

[243] Pepysian MSS., _Admiralty Letters_, xv. 241.

[244] See Pepysian MSS., No. 2611, _Penn's Collections_, p. 95:
'Instructions for the Admiralty, 1647.' These customs were not
abrogated, either by the ordinances of the Interregnum or by the
statutes of the Restoration.

[245] Oppenheim, p. 311.

[246] 13 Car. II. c. 9. A summary of the provisions of the Act is given
in _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 184.

[247] 16 Car. II. c. 5; renewed by 18 & 19 Car. II. c. 12.

[248] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1661-2, p. 152.

[249] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1663-4, p. 249.

[250] _Ib._ 1666-7, p. 148.

[251] _State Papers, Domestic, Charles II_, ccxvii. 138.

[252] _Ib._ ccxxxv. 135. See also _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_,
1668-9, pp. 171, 303; _ib._ 1671, pp. 523, 524.

[253] _Diary_. See also the entries for 19 October, 1666, and 25 June,
1667; and p. 45, _supra_.

[254] Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, _Naval Precedents_, pp. 525-8. The
establishment is printed in _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 189-92.

[255] Hollond, _Discourses_, p. 353. Macaulay describes the abuse, but
is silent concerning the attempts to remedy it (_History of England_,
i. 148).

[256] Pepysian MSS., _Admiralty Letters_, iii. 367.

[257] Pepysian MSS., _Admiralty Letters_, iv. 233, 243, 246.

[258] _Ib._ ii. 182.

[259] _Ib._ iv. 110.

[260] _Ib._ iv. 178.

[261] _Ib._ vi. 480.

[262] Pepysian MSS., _Admiralty Letters_, vii. 296.

[263] Pepys, in a letter of 3 February, 1674, addressed to Captain
Rooth, refers to 'the universal loss of discipline amongst the seamen
of England,' 'a vice which I pray God grant I may see rectified before
it prove too fatal, not only to his Majesty's service, but to the whole
navigation of the country.' (_Admiralty Letters_, iii. 78).

[264] _History of England_, i. 147-9.

[265] _Diary_, 27 July, 1666.

[266] _Diary_, 2 June, 1663. _Cf._ also 10 January, 20 October, 1666;
29 June, 1667.

[267] Vol. i. pp. lxxiv-xcv.

[268] _Cf._ _Diary_, 28 October, 1666.

[269] Letter to Sir John Holmes, 15 April, 1679 (Pepysian MSS.,
_Admiralty Letters_, ix. 206).

[270] Letter to the same, 18 April, 1679 (_ib._ ix. 214)

[271] _Ib._ ix. 242-3.

[272] _Ib._ vi. 231.

[273] Letter to Sir John Kempthorne, 1 December, 1677 (_ib._ vi. 264).

[274] Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, _Naval Precedents_, p. 241.

[275] _Admiralty Letters_, vi. 256.

[276] _Ib._ vii. 4.

[277] In a letter of 29 March, 1678 (_ib._ vii. 17).

[278] _Ib._ vi. 3.

[279] _Admiralty Letters_, vi. 18, 45. See also vi. 19 and _Naval
Minutes_, p. 81.

[280] Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, _Naval Precedents_, p. 161. The
substance of these resolutions is given in _Catalogue of Pepysian
MSS._, i. 206. See also there the new instructions of 20 October, 1685,
for the guard-boats in Chatham and Portsmouth harbours (i. 208).

[281] Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, _Naval Precedents_, p. 245. Printed in
Pepys's _Memoires_ (Oxford reprint), pp. 55-68.

[282] Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, _Naval Precedents_, p. 156.

[283] _Ib._ p. 639. Both these establishments are more fully described
in _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, pp. 213-16.

[284] _Admiralty Letters_, xi. 372.

[285] _Ib._ x. 89.

[286] _Admiralty Letters_, x. 310.

[287] _Ib._ x. 331.

[288] _State Papers, Domestic, Charles II_, lxix. 43.

[289] _Ib._ lxxviii. 105. See also _Calendar of State Papers,
Domestic_, 1663-4, pp. 244 and 276.

[290] _State Papers, Domestic, Charles II_, xcv. 147.

[291] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1671, p. 44.

[292] p. 31, _supra_. A list of these ships is printed in _Catalogue of
Pepysian MSS._, i. 223.

[293] _Ib._ i. 304. The whole of Pepys's _Register_, with a number
of illustrative tables, is printed there on pp. 253-306; as also his
_Register of Sea-Commission Officers_ on pp. 307-435.

[294] Another novelty of the period is the revival of the galley in the
English navy. This is fully discussed in _ib._ i. 227-8.

[295] _Ib._ i. 306.

[296] Pepysian MSS., No. 2866, _Naval Minutes_, p. 61.

[297] Pepysian MSS., _Admiralty Letters_, vi. 201-2. This establishment
is given in Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, _Naval Precedents_, p. 202, and
the tables there given are printed and fully discussed in _Catalogue of
Pepysian MSS._, i. 234-42. See also pp. 242-4 for the reorganisation of
the Office of the Ordnance in 1683.

[298] _Memoires_ (Oxford reprint), p. 130.

[299] Pepysian MSS., No. 2866, _Naval Minutes_, p. 76.

[300] Derrick, _Memoirs of the Royal Navy_, p. 84.

[301] For instances of this see _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 246
_nn._

[302] Pepysian MSS., _Admiralty Letters_, xi. 200; xii. 71, 91, 200;
xiii. 23.

[303] _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._, i. 247 _n._

[304] Both these portraits are at Magdalene College, the former in the
Hall and the latter in the Library.

[305] Oxford reprint, p. 130.

[306] _The Portugal History, or a Relation of the Troubles that
happened in the Court of Portugal in the years 1667 and 1668 ... by S.
P. esq._ (1677) has also been attributed to him.

[307] _Letter to the Earl of Marlborough_, by T. H., possibly Thomas
Hayter, Pepys's clerk, who succeeded him in 1673 as Clerk of the Acts.

[308] _Diary_, 15 May, 1663.




INDEX


  Absence of commanders, 67

  Abuses in the navy, 5-10

  Administration, 18-36

  Admiralty commissions:
    1659-60, 18;
    1673-79, 30;
    1679-84, 32;
    special commission of 1686, 34, 48

  Aldeburgh, 49

  Algiers, 35

  Allin, Sir Thomas, comptroller of the navy 24, 67

  Anglesey, Earl of, treasurer of the navy, 24


  Bagwell, Mr, 46

  Barber Surgeons, Company of, 39

  Barlow, Thomas, clerk of the acts, 21

  Batten, Lady, 20

  —— Sir William, surveyor of the navy, 20, 24

  Berkeley, Lord, commissioner of the navy, 22

  Billingsgate, 45

  Birch, Colonel, 70

  _Black Book of the Admiralty_, 3

  Blackwall, 70

  Blake, Robert, 22, 23, 78

  Boatswains' stores, establishment for (1686), 73

  Boteler, Captain, 62

  Bowles, Phineas, secretary of the admiralty, 36

  Bristol, 39

  Brouncker, Lord, commissioner of the navy, 25, 33


  Cabins, establishment for (1673), 66

  'Calentures,' 62, 63

  Capel, Sir Henry, commissioner of the admiralty, 32

  Captains' tables, establishment for (1686), 72

  Carpenters' stores, establishment for (1686), 73

  Carteret, Sir George, treasurer of the navy, 19, 24

  Chaplains, establishment for (1677), 71

  Charles I, 19, 21

  —— II, 4, 18, 33, 43, 44, 54;
    his interest in the sea, 19, 31, 33, 77

  Chatham, 22, 45, 46, 49, 65, 72 _n._, 74

  —— Chest, 51, 67

  Civil War, 48

  Clerk of the Acts, 18

  Cocke, Captain, hemp contractor, 29

  Cockerell, Pepys, 11

  Coke, Lord Chief Justice, 16

  Commissions:
    of 1608, 5, 8;
    of 1618, 5;
    of 1626, 5;
    for sick and wounded (1664 and 1672), 48, 49;
    for widows and orphans (1673), 49;
    _see also_ Admiralty Commissions

  Commons, House of, 31, 70

  Commonwealth, 37, 48

  Comptroller of the Navy, 18

  Cordage, abuses in, 10

  Cottenham, Earl of, 11

  Covent Garden, 67

  Coventry, Sir William, commissioner of the navy, 13, 20, 25, 27,
      55 _n._, 69;
    his financial scheme (1667), 41

  Cox, John, 74


  Dartmouth, 49

  'Dead pays,' 7, 54

  Deal, 49

  Deane, Sir Anthony, commissioner of the navy, 31, 32;
    his appointment on the Special Commission of 1686, 35, 36;
    his _Doctrine of Naval Architecture_, 3

  —— Richard, 55

  Deptford, 22, 46, 65, 74

  Devonshire, 46

  Discipline of the navy, 64-75;
    Act of 1661, 64

  Dockyards, troubles in, 45, 46, 74

  Dover, 49

  Drunkenness in the navy, 73

  Dugdale, Sir William, 1

  Dutch Wars:
    first, 40, 78;
    second, 24, 27, 38, 40 _n._, 44, 48, 55, 58, 75;
    third, 30, 42, 47, 49, 56, 60


  Edward VI, 22

  Embezzlement, Act against (1664), 64

  Evelyn, John, 1, 3, 25;
    commissioner for sick and wounded (1664 and 1672), 48, 49, 50


  Finance, 27, 37-56

  Finch, Daniel (afterwards Earl of Nottingham), commissioner of the
     admiralty, 32

  Fireships, 75

  France, 43

  French Admiralty, report from, 34


  Galleys, 75 _n._

  Gauden, Sir Denis, victualler of the navy, 29, 58, 59

  Gentlemen captains, 68

  Gosport, 49

  Gravesend, 49, 50

  'Gromets', 52

  Grove, Captain, 29

  Guardboats at Chatham and Portsmouth, instructions for (1685), 72 _n._

  Gunfleet, 63

  Guns, 75;
    establishment for (1677), 76


  'Haberdine,' 61

  Half-pay, 56

  Harbour wages, 52

  Harwich, 41, 49

  Hawkyns, Sir John, 5

  Hayter, Thomas, clerk of the acts, 30, 79 _n._

  Hollond, John:
    his _Discourses of the Navy_, 4;
    Pepys's opinion of them, 5

  Hull, 45


  Ipswich, 49


  Jamaica, 22

  James I, 10, 28

  James, Duke of York (James II), 13, 19 _n._, 35, 43, 44, 59, 73, 77;
    appointed lord high admiral (1660), 18;
    his knowledge of naval affairs, 19;
    his instructions of 1662, 26;
    resigned (1673), 30;
    went abroad (1679), 32;
    his own lord high admiral (1685) 34;
    withdraws from the kingdom (1688), 36


  Kent, 51

  Kneller's portrait of Pepys, 78


  Labour troubles in the dockyards, 74

  Lawrence, Mr, master shipwright at Woolwich, 36

  Lee, Sir Thomas, commissioner of the admiralty, 33

  Lely's portrait of Pepys, 78

  Lieutenants, examination for (1677), 70

  London, 39, 45, 46, 49

  —— Bishop of, 14 _n._, 71

  Long Parliament, 48

  Lord High Admiral:
    Duke of York appointed (1660), 18;
    in the hands of the King and an admiralty commission (1673), 30;
    entirely in commission (1679), 32;
    restored to Charles II (1684), 34;
    James II (1685), 34;
    lord high admiral's instructions (1662), 26

  Lord Treasurer, 36

  Lowestoft, 24


  Maidstone, 38

  Manuscripts in the Pepysian Library, 2

  Meadows, Sir Philip, 3

  Mediterranean, 70;
    victualling contract in, 62

  Mennes, Sir John, comptroller of the navy, 24, 45

  Merchants' goods in the King's ships, 66

  Middleton, Colonel Thomas, commissioner and surveyor of the navy, 24,
     45, 46, 58

  Midshipmen, establishments for (1676 and 1686), 73

  Monck, George, 12, 23

  Monson, Sir William, 2, 5, 9, 24

  Myngs, Sir Christopher, 13, 14


  Narbrough, Sir John, 70;
    on special commission of 1686, 35

  Naval Discipline Act (1661), 64

  Naval stores, embezzlement of, 64

  Navy Board:
    in 1659, 18;
    in 1660, 22;
    in 1673, 30;
    in 1679, 33;
    in 1688, 35;
    a body of experts, 18, 23, 27, 30, 33;
    its functions, 26, 50

  North Foreland, 13

  Northumberland, Earl of, 5

  Nottingham, Earl of;
    _see_ Finch


  Orange, Prince of, 36

  Ordnance Office, 40, 76 _n._


  Parliament, 76;
    vote of 1665, 40;
    of 1666, 41;
    of 1677, 32;
    of 1678, 43

  Pay, rates of, 52;
    continuous pay for naval officers, 55;
    _see also_ Wages

  Pearse, James, chirurgeon-general of the navy, 51

  Penn, Sir William, commissioner of the navy, 22, 25;
    his _Naval Collections_, 2

  Pension Parliament, 31

  Pensions, 56

  Pepys, John, clerk of the acts, 30

  —— Mrs, 20

  —— Paulina, 11

  PEPYS, SAMUEL:
    clerk of the acts (1660), 21;
    treasurer of Tangier commission (1665), 28;
    surveyor-general of victualling (1665), 28, 59;
    secretary of the admiralty (1673), 30;
    his speech in Parliament (1677), 31;
    involved in the Popish Plot and resigned (1679), 32;
    second secretaryship (1684), 34;
    deprived (1689), 36.
    His projected history of the navy, 1, 2;
    pronunciation of his name, 11;
    the Diary, 11;
    his official style, 14;
    services to the navy, 16, 77;
    question of his corruption, 28;
    a disciplinarian, 66;
    his views on gentlemen captains, 70;
    on drunkenness in the navy, 73;
    a framer of 'establishments,' 70, 71

  Pepysian Library, 1, 49, 76

  Pett, Peter, commissioner of the navy, 22, 38

  —— Phineas, 7

  —— Sir Phineas, 35

  Petty, Sir William, 4, 22

  Plate carriage, establishment for (1686), 72

  Plymouth, 49

  'Poor John,' 61

  Popish Plot, 32

  Portsmouth, 5, 39, 44, 45, 46, 58, 72 _n._, 74

  Principal Officers, 18, 35, 41;
    _see also_ Navy Board

  Prisoners of war, care of, 49

  Public accounts, commission of, 41, 54

  Puritans, 37

  Pyend, Captain Stephen, 61 _n._


  Riot, Act against (1664), 64

  Rochester, 50

  Royal Society, 4, 25

  Rump Parliament, 18

  Rupert, Prince, commissioner of the admiralty, 24, 30, 60


  Sandwich, Earl of, 21, 58

  Scurvy, 63

  Seymour, Sir Edward, commissioner of the navy, 26

  Shipbuilding, 75;
    Act of 1677, 31, 75

  Ships:
    Augustine, 60
    Centurion, 43
    Coventry, 58
    Diamond, 73
    Gloucester, 60
    James, 9
    Lark, 67
    Little Victory, 45
    Pearl, 45
    Reserve, 60
    Rupert, 43
    Swan, 43

  Shipwrights' Company, 3

  Shish, Jonas, 46

  Sick and wounded seamen, 48

  Slyngesbie, Sir Robert, comptroller of the navy, 20, 24;
    his _Discourse of the Navy_, 4

  Southampton, 49

  Southwell, Sir Robert, 4

  Southwold, 49

  Special Commission of 1686, 34, 48

  Spithead, 47 _n._

  Stratton, 22

  Surveyor of the Navy, 18


  Tangier, 28, 29

  Test Act (1673), 30

  Tickets, wages paid by, 7, 47, 53

  Tilbury Hope, 9

  Timber, abuses in, 10

  Tippetts, Sir John, commissioner and surveyor of the navy, 25, 35

  Tower, Pepys sent to the, 32

  Treasurer of the Navy, 18

  Treasury Chamber, 36

  Trinity House, 3

  Turenne, 22


  Victualling, 57-64;
    abuses in, 5, 9;
    victualling 'upon account,' 10, 57, 63;
    contract of 1677, 61;
    contract for the Mediterranean, 62

  Volunteers, establishments for (1676 and 1686), 73


  Wages, abuses in, 6;
    tickets for, 7, 47, 53;
    'dead pays,' 7, 54

  Wapping, 70

  Warren, Sir William, timber contractor, 28

  Warwick, Sir Philip, 40

  Watermen's Hall, 46, 47

  Weymouth, 49

  Wounded seamen, scale of relief for (1685), 51;
    _see also_ Sick and Wounded


  Yachts, 75

  Yarmouth, 49


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




       *       *       *       *       *




Transcriber's note:

Minor punctuation and printer errors were corrected.



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