CHAPTER VI.
UNJUST APPRECIATION OF BUCKINGHAM’S CHARACTER--HIS ENERGY IN RESPECT TO THE NAVY--SIR WALTER RALEGH’S WORKS ON MARITIME AFFAIRS--PRINCE HENRY’S PREDILECTION FOR THEM--HIS MINIATURE SHIP--HIS DEATH--LORD NOTTINGHAM’S NEGLECT AND VENALITY--HIS POWERS--£60,000, YEARLY, ALLOTTED FOR THE NAVY--BUCKINGHAM’S EFFORTS--EXAMPLE SET BY RICHELIEU--IGNORANCE OF SHIP-BUILDING IN THOSE DAYS--BUCKINGHAM DRAWS UP A PLAN OF DEFENCE--FEAR OF THE SPANISH ARMADA--THE DUKE PROPOSES TO FORM A COMPANY FOR THE WEST, AS WELL AS THE EAST INDIES--PLAN OF TAXATION--ALSO OF DEFENCE ON SHORE.
CHAPTER VI.
Hitherto the character of Buckingham has been considered merely in the light of a courtier, in which capacity his good fortune, more than his merits, secured him success. In foreign Courts, the infirmities of this changeable and imprudent man were brought conspicuously to light; his vanity, his assumption, his growing arrogance, these, and his love of pleasure, added to the dissolute morals of the day, constituted the sources of that obloquy; nevertheless, the memory of this celebrated man has been indiscriminately blackened. Hence he has been described as “utterly devoid of every talent of a minister,” and the popular opinion points to the notion that he did much harm, no good,[[264]] and that the sole qualities conspicuous in his career were his love of oppression, his venality, and his insolence.
Happily for the reputation which has been thus maligned, numerous documents,[[265]] which have of late been rescued from neglect, abundantly prove that Buckingham achieved one important benefit to his country--the restoration of the British navy. Whatever may have been his motives, by what means soever he may have compassed his ends, there can now be no doubt but that to him we owe the re-establishment of that mighty power to which we are indebted for our existence as a nation, and it may be presumed that had his life been prolonged his exertions in this respect would have produced still more apparent effects; and that the country would have acknowledged, in after ages, the services which it seems to have overlooked.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the merchant ships were considered to constitute the principal part of our maritime power; they then amounted to one hundred and thirty-five, many of them of five hundred tons each. The ships of war belonging to the Crown were thirteen only in number, so that the navy, so boasted and renowned, was composed chiefly of merchant ships which were hired for the queen’s service.[[266]]
King James, on his accession to the crown of England, called in all the ships of war as well as the numerous privateers belonging to the English merchants, and declared himself “at peace with all the world.” This was certainly not the means by which the navy was to be improved and maintained. It was, nevertheless, increased in his reign to nearly double the number of Queen Elizabeth’s ships of war; namely, from thirteen to twenty-four.[[267]]
In the very commencement of James’s reign the far-sighted Sir Walter Ralegh discerned the dangerous condition of a sea-girt country devoid of its proper defences; he perceived how ruinous this system of curtailment of what was essential, accompanied by the most lavish excesses in many things of trivial import, must prove; and he placed before his sovereign a manuscript essay, entitled, “Observations concerning the trade and commerce of England with the Dutch and other nations.” The design of this work was to show how supinely England suffered other nations to carry away the commerce of the world, by her neglect of maritime affairs. This was one of eight treatises that Ralegh wrote on maritime affairs; being, as he proudly announces, “the first author, either ancient or modern, that had ever treated this subject.”[[268]]
Although these works have long since been obsolete, and the practices recommended in them superseded by modern invention, they afford a curious view of the progress of navigation, and of those arts and sciences with which it is connected; to say nothing of the wonderful amount of knowledge which they display, and of the powerful intellect portrayed in every page written by this great man.
His eloquence, however, was powerless as far as James was concerned; but stimulated a far more comprehensive mind than that of the pedant king. Several of these essays were addressed to Prince Henry, whose awakened mind perceived his father’s blindness, and comprehended the value of that which James cast away. Whilst James, forgetting that Elizabeth had checked the Spanish Armada by her reliance, not on her own ten ships, but on the far better appointed merchant vessels--that she had rested, not on the size of her fleet, but on the material which composed it--he curtly dismissed his maritime auxiliaries, and, discharging the privateers from any bond to assist him for the future, slept soundly, it may be presumed, on his pillow at Westminster, congratulating himself on having set an example to all Christendom, whilst he had, in fact, almost invited another Armada to invade our shores.
Nevertheless, the progress of society was stronger that the royal will. “The seventeenth century,” thus writes Macpherson, in his History of Commerce, “may be said, from its commencement, to approach to modern times, whether considered in a political light, or in respect to riches, knowledge, or religion.”
In the celebrated treatise which Ralegh presented to his sovereign, he recommended that the “land should be made powerful by the increasing of ships and mariners;” and that such “order in commerce should be established, that the havens of England should be full of ships, the ships full of mariners.” It is singular to find the language of the seventeenth century so singularly according with that of the nineteenth.
His counsels failed to convince the self-opinionated James, but they incited the courage of a boy, who, amid his playthings, listened to the voice of Ralegh, and imbibed his sentiments; and the important measures which were disregarded by men in authority, were promoted by the fancy and favour of a precocious child. Henry, Prince of Wales, that short-lived “type and mould of an heir-apparent,” delighted in maritime pursuits; he brought again into vogue the fast-declining spirit of enterprize. The citizens of London, as they were rowed in their stately barges by Whitehall stairs, saw, with satisfaction, the royal embryo-hero disporting himself with the launch of a ship--twenty-eight feet long only, to be sure, and twelve feet broad, but built by Phineas Pett, one of the ablest shipwrights of his time. Ten years rolled away; the boy, who, at nine years of age, loved his miniature frigate as a toy, became sensible that the days of amusement were past, and that those of actual business were about to commence. He resolved to visit that then-neglected dock-yard at Woolwich, which has since become a wonder of the world. The Prince there honoured an entertainment, given by the ship’s company of the “Royal Anne,” with his presence. Phineas Pett attended his young patron, and the result of that day’s inspection was of great importance to the interests of the navy. Some years had then elapsed since a new ship had been built. In 1609, James actually ordered and completed the construction of the “Prince Royal,” a vessel far superior to any that had yet appeared in the Thames; it carried sixty-four cannon, and was of fourteen hundred tons burden. From this standard, we may infer how miserable had been the previous state of naval force, such a ship being, in our time, the smallest of those admitted into the line-of-battle. It was then regarded as one of the most extraordinary productions of native skill and of royal munificence, and was the theme of praise amid an astonished and adulatory court.
The young Prince next conceived an excellent project. He recommended his father to order the construction of ships to be carried on in Ireland, not only that the natives might be employed, but also because materials were cheaper in the sister island. The King’s shipwrights approved of this plan, and the Lord High Admiral, a doting old functionary, the most ancient servant of the crown then encumbering the service, actually countenanced the enlightened idea. It was not, however, matured; and another scheme, not so practical, but still of the utmost importance to the science of navigation, was frustrated, for the time, by the death of Henry. This was the discovery of the north-west passage, which was, nevertheless, attempted in 1612; but the ear of the gifted youth, whose patronage had fostered the design, was unhappily closed in death before the return of Captain Bretton, the first of the adventurous band of heroes who have attempted the gallant enterprize.
Still improvement was not wholly retarded. The incorporation of the East India Company (in 1613), gave a new impetus to navigation, and everything appeared favourable to the navy, except that branch of the government. Lord Nottingham seemed to consider his important office as a sinecure, except in regard to his privileges and perquisites. His dominion comprehended--to use the actual words which described it--"the government of all things done upon the sea-coast, in any part of the world; of all ports and havens, and over all rovers below the first bridge next below the sea." He was a sort of mortal Neptune; his privileges were thus defined:--"All penalties, of all transgressions, on sea or on shore, were his; the goods of pirates and of felons at sea were his; all stray wrecks were his; deodands, and the share of all lawful prizes not to be granted to lords of manors, were his." It may be easily conceived what ceaseless fighting and squabbling, what corruption, litigation, and oppression were the result of an authority which was so little controlled by the discussions of Parliament in those days, or by the honour and conscience of individuals in power. So long as the Earl of Nottingham slumbered over his duties, dreaming, doubtless, of delightful shipwrecks and desirable transgressions and piracies, the navy, of course, was not augmented. Sixty thousand pounds a-year had then been allotted to that shadow of a shade, the naval service; but the only time that the naval service was recalled to the memory of King James, was when the octogenarian, Lord Nottingham, appeared at Court in his full-dress uniform. Most people began to think that the Lord High Admiral was immortal; but, happily for the country, old age fairly captured him at last; he died, and made room for the Duke of Buckingham to step into all his beloved privileges and perquisites, which, in truth, the Duke also too well appreciated. It soon became a question what had become of all the sixty thousand pounds yearly which had been granted for the naval service, for there seemed to be scarcely any navy whatsoever. Buckingham, in his new office, however, displayed qualities for which the world had given him little credit. One of his first steps was to drag poor King James, aguish, peevish, and prejudiced as he was, to Deptford, to see how little there was there to be seen. His next, to get commissioners appointed to superintend the construction of new vessels, and the repairs of old ones, the sum allotted to them being cut down to thirty thousand pounds, for which consideration they were to build two new ships yearly. Cardinal Richelieu had also endeavoured to remedy the neglect of his predecessors in power, and to support a widely-extended commerce, the only channels of which are on the wide ocean. In his concern for maritime affairs, he set the first example of energy to Buckingham. From this era, therefore, may be traced the rise of our modern naval service in importance; the very vices of both these favourites of fortune, of Richelieu on the one hand, and of Buckingham on the other, had the effect of virtues under certain circumstances. To their lavish expenditure, to their fearlessness of responsibility, to their boundless ambition, France and England owe the maintenance of their maritime power, and the restoration of their national defences.
Numberless obstacles, of course, occurred at the very outset of the Duke of Buckingham’s undertakings in England; one of the great impediments was the ignorance which prevailed in those days of the proper mode of building ships of battle. The shipwrights were unaccustomed to construct any vessels but such as were intended to carry merchandise. There was a certain man, named Burwell, who had been employed by the East India Company, and who was so distinguished for his skill as a shipwright that he was entrusted to build for the British navy. He committed a grand error in the very first ship that he launched, because, to make use of the language of a contemporary historian,[[269]] "he did not observe the difference between the merchant ships and the King’s ships, the one made for stowage, the other only for strength and magnificence."
On his accession, Charles I. renewed his father’s warrant granted to twelve commissioners of the navy; and the exigencies of the times, and the probability of a speedy war with Spain, stimulated the exertions of the Lord Admiral and the generosity of the country. Spain was preparing the finest armament that had ever left her shores; and an invasion on the part of that power was openly threatened, and almost anticipated, even by the stout-hearted English.
Buckingham then drew up a plan of assault, as well as of defence, in order to lower the pride of the enemy. A company was, he proposed, to be incorporated for the West, as well as for the East Indies. A fleet, consisting of two ships of the line, eighteen ships and two pinnaces of the merchant-adventurers, was to be equipped, and to this force were to be added twenty Newcastle ships, for the nautical skill and gallant characteristics of the collier crews were wisely resorted to in this emergency by the Lord Admiral. To meet the expenses of the fleet, a general subscription of all estates of men was proposed. The nobility were each to contribute a hundred pounds; the gentlemen and yeomen were to be taxed to a certain amount; cities and corporate bodies were to give a sum of twenty-four thousand pounds. The merchants and the East India Company were not to escape the general infliction. Thus, to man and to furnish the first great fleet that England had sent forth, was the principle of arbitrary taxation commenced in this country.
At the same time, with the fear of Spanish Armadas, of conquest, torture, and slavery, acting upon the public mind, efforts to restore the national defences on shore were promptly carried on.
In those days, pirates infested the narrow seas; and all the seaport towns were taxed, in order to support a sort of coast-guard to keep off these troublesome visitors. But every usage which could ensure public safety had been neglected. Our national defences had fallen into decay simultaneously with our navy. The correspondence between Buckingham and his agents in different ports exists in the State Paper Office, and affords a mournful picture of forts neglected and in ruins. Shoals, and sands, and points, fatal even to the most experienced mariners, were the snare and gulf of many a vessel, and not a single light-house had been erected to warn the navigator of his danger. The office of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, which, in part of the reign of James the First, devolved on Lord Zouch, had been conducted with scarcely more zeal and honesty than the post of Lord High Admiral by the Earl of Nottingham. Until the stirring exertions of the ill-fated Duke of Buckingham were directed both to the augmentation of the naval armaments and to their preservation from risks, the Goodwin Sands were without a light-house; and a project for erecting one upon that dangerous passage was first suggested to Buckingham by Sir Thomas Wildrake, and subsequently adopted by the Duke, whose efforts to guard the narrow seas, and to clear them of pirates, are beyond all praise, when we consider the supineness of his predecessors in office. It was not until 1619 that a light was placed upon the Lizard Point, which had already been fatal to the Dutch merchants, who had lost, in the course of one year, a hundred thousand pounds by shipwrecks.
Great offence was, of course, given by all these reformations; and Lord Zouch even, as is implied in a letter of Buckingham’s to him, had ventured to threaten the dreaded favourite with an attack. Whatever has been said of Buckingham’s arrogance, his letters are generally expressed with much courtesy, and his reply to Lord Zouch was forbearing, though explicit. He recommended that the disputed powers--those contested between the Lord High Admiral and the Warden of the Cinque Ports--should be defined, to the end, not of present controversy, but of an amicable and permanent arrangement.[[270]] Some years afterwards, Buckingham found it convenient, probably in order to have the repair and management of the forts in his own hands, to purchase of Lord Zouch his post; a consideration of one thousand pounds in ready money, and an annuity of five hundred pounds, were given for it. Such was the state of the Duke’s affairs that he was unable to pay down the stipulated one thousand pounds at once, but was constrained to “offer land or any other security.”
Not many months had elapsed, after his appointment to the office of Lord High Admiral, before Buckingham made use of his influence over James the First to induce him to augment his navy. Commissioners were chosen and selected to promote ship-building, and to regulate the expenses attendant thereon. James, attended by his Lord Admiral, visited Deptford in order to see two new ships, with which he was greatly delighted; and still more that from the yearly charge of sixty thousand pounds, in which his navy had stood him heretofore, it was reduced to thirty thousand pounds, for four years, during which time the Commissioners undertook to build two new ships every year, and to repair the old; and after that to discharge these claims for twenty thousand pounds a-year.[[271]]
The King, adds the narrator of this incident, “congratulated with the Lord Admiral that he had appointed so good officers to assist him in his beginnings, so that he named the one ship ‘Buckingham’s Entrance,’ and the other, in the memory of the Commissioners’ good service, ‘Reformation.’”[[272]] This timely encouragement produced, of course, the most salutary effect.[[273]] We have seen that during the reign of James the First the number of ships of war was nearly doubled; and it is due to Buckingham to state that almost the whole of this increase was the result of his exertions.
The young Lord High Admiral had declared, at his outset, that his inexperience almost disqualified him for that important position to which the partiality of his Sovereign had promoted him; but it was soon perceived that his very wilfulness and impetuosity, and his liberal notions of expense, were almost virtues under certain circumstances. The Dutch were our great maritime rivals; for France had no naval armament; and although the contemptuous assertion of Voltaire, that Louis the Thirteenth had not, at his accession, one ship of war, is false, yet he might be said almost to be destitute of naval force, so poor and ill-provided were his vessels, and so incompetent and miserable his seamen. It became Buckingham’s pride to outvie all continental nations in naval power. The design might have been ascribed to his animosity in the event of the treaty with Spain, against that kingdom; but it is clear that he cherished it whilst the British nation was at peace with all the world, and that his schemes of improvement were formed before.
Charles the First renewed his father’s commission to twelve commissioners of the navy. These were, at present, confined to three distinct branches; such as a comptroller, a surveyor, a clerk of the navy. They were subordinate, in Buckingham’s time, to the Lord High Admiral, and afterwards to the Admiralty Board, from whom they were to receive directions.[[274]] During the short period of Buckingham’s rule, after the accession of Charles, much was effected, more still was planned.
It was not merely with ambitious views that Buckingham had obtained the post of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. An active and liberal hand was required to restore our national defences, which had fallen to decay simultaneously with our navy. In all matters the Duke of Buckingham himself interfered; most of the letters on important affairs are addressed to him directly, not through his secretaries; and most of the epistles appear to have received immediate replies, which, it is to be regretted, are dispersed and extinct. On more than one occasion, tributes to the Duke’s impartiality and energy are proffered. “I am yet comforted,” writes a suitor, "that your grace is so wise and just as to ask account of every man’s part, and where you find most fault, there to lay most censure."[[275]] Sometimes “my lady of Buckingham,” as she is designated in one of the letters on naval affairs, is employed as a mediator, as in the case of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, who, wishing to pass the ship “Sea Horse,” obtained a warrant through her interest.
As Buckingham progressed in experience, and his views became more enlarged, his enthusiasm for naval affairs increased; and was, doubtless, heightened by the knowledge that Cardinal Richelieu, who, amongst his other titles, enjoyed that of High Admiral of France,[[276]] and who thought it no shame to wear the badge of office over his cardinal’s robes, and famous hair shirt beneath, supported commerce, the very channels of which are on the wide ocean. These considerations were, early in the reign of Charles the First, strengthened and brought into play by the certainty of a speedy war with Spain.
But it is reasonable to infer that the example and the works of Sir Walter Ralegh still held their influence over society, as they had done over the dawning intellect of Henry, Prince of Wales. The immature projects of that royal youth, suggested, it is probable, by the spirit of enterprise to which Ralegh had sacrificed his own interests, were now revived by Buckingham. King Charles co-operated with him in these earnest endeavours to carry out the discovery of the north-west passage to China, “an action,” says Macpherson, “of great importance to trade and navigation, and in sundry respects of singular benefit to all our realms and dominions.”[[277]] As a reward for this undertaking, Buckingham received a present from King Charles of one of his pinnaces;[[278]] but death put a stop to these public-spirited endeavours.
The period of Buckingham’s administration over the Admiralty affairs was, however, one of incessant activity, carried on, as is shown by correspondence in the State Paper Office, almost to the last hour of his life. It seems idle to adduce the language of panegyric to support a statement, else might we refer to the verses addressed by Carew “to my Lord Admiral, on his late sickness and recovery,” in which he alludes to
"Sorrow like that which touched our hearts of late;
Your pining sickness and your restless pain,
At once the land affecting, and the main:
When the glad news that you were Admiral
Scarce through the nation spread, ’twas feared by all
That our great Charles, whose wisdom shines in you,
Should be perplexed how to chuse a new."
It was not until the year 1624, after the rupture of the Spanish treaty, that Buckingham could have been fully aware of all the responsibilities of his post. There were then great complaints of want of shipping; the Spanish nation, it was said, setting out one of the finest fleets that had ever been seen.[[279]] To meet the terrors of what Buckingham termed “the pretended Spanish invasion,” he drew up a list of propositions, whereby the pride of the enemy was to be lowered, and the supremacy of England maintained. First, as the plan went, the enemy “was to be entertained in successive fleets upon his own coasts, which were to destroy his shipping, to intercept his provisions, to hinder him from gathering a heading whereat to possess some place of accompt.”
Secondly, the Spaniard was to be assailed in the West Indies;--to intercept his fleets, to invade his possessions, to fortify garrisons, and to establish there government confederacies. This, as Buckingham planned, was to be undertaken, at the common charge of the kingdom, by a company “incorporated for the West, as there already is for the East;” and the naval force was to consist of a fleet composed of two ships of the line, eighteen ships, and two pinnaces of the merchant adventurers.
The King’s ships were to be manned with twenty seamen and fifty soldiers, the merchants’ with sixty seamen and one hundred soldiers, the pinnaces with twenty seamen. To this armament was to be added twenty Newcastle ships, each with thirty seamen and one hundred soldiers apiece, making in all 2,120 seamen and 3,900 landsmen.
Parliament was to be applied to in each estate for a general subscription. The nobility at the rate of 100l. a man, to be paid in two years--this, it was computed, would amount to 4,900l. (60,000l.); the gentry and yeomen, 150,000l.; the cities and corporate towns, 24,000l.; the six confederate companies of merchants, including the East India “companies, may,” as the author of this plan remarked, “well contribute.”[[280]] To the principle of this scheme of Buckingham’s may be traced the origin of many subsequent discontents. In his ardour for achieving the power of England, or perhaps, in part, for avenging affronts which he might consider as almost personal, he forgot all constitutional rights. The remark of Bolingbroke occurs to the mind, on reading this plan of arbitrary and almost indiscriminate taxation. Buckingham, says that writer, “had, in his own days, and he hath in ours, the demerits of beginning a struggle between prerogative and privilege, and of establishing a sort of warfare between the prince and the people.”[[281]]
On the first of April, 1624, Buckingham addressed the committee of both Houses, assembled in the painted chamber. The object of his speech was to press the necessity of raising a loan of 100,000l., to fit out the navy. Buckingham had, by this time, fully determined upon a war with Spain, not, as Roger Coke expresses it, for the “recovery of the Palatinate,” but to express his hatred against Olivarez, and, therefore, “a fleet must be rigged up.”[[282]] According to the Duke’s account of the matter, upon the breaking off of the treaty with Spain, he was commanded by His Majesty to take a survey of the navy, and to prepare it for “all occasions.” Upon conferring with the “officers thereof concerning their reparation,” Buckingham was informed that a very large sum would be requisite to furnish the fleet with necessaries and crews. No means could be suggested of raising the adequate sum. “My lords and gentlemen,” said the Duke, “His Majesty has imposed a great trust on me in this office of Admiralty, and I can do nothing without money. Such monies as I have of my own I will most willingly expend in this service, but that alone will do no good without future assistance.”
He then expounded his plan; that which has already been detailed, of levying a tax on the three estates for the expenses of the fleet, appears for the time to have been abandoned. He now recommended their sending for “monied men,” to raise a loan, of which, he assured them, not one penny should be applied to any other purpose than the one mentioned.[[283]] “And let me tell you,” he added in conclusion, “that you have great reason to take this into a present and careful consideration, for I have lately been advertised, by letters from Spain, that they have now in readiness a great fleet, exceeding that of eighty-eight, with provisions of 200 or 220 of flat-bottom boats, to serve them in this their intended designs; and the Spaniards have of late so intruded upon our coasts, that they have taken an English ship in the face of us. This was advertised by a servant of mine own, who spake with the pilot who was in that ship when it was taken.”
This application was followed by immediate efforts to restore the British navy; the numerous documents in the State Paper Office, to which reference has been made, most completely contradict the assertion of one of Buckingham’s bitterest enemies, Roger Coke, that after “Buckingham became Lord Admiral, the English navy lay unarmed, and fit for Spain; that he neglected the guarding of the seas, whereby the trade of the nation not only decayed, but the seas became ignominiously infested by pirates and enemies, to the loss of very many of the merchants and subjects of England.”[[284]]
With regard to pirates, most of the ports were taxed in King James’s time, by way of contribution, to prevent them; and little more could be done until the navy was repaired and augmented. There are innumerable letters manifesting Buckingham’s extreme care to clear the Channel from pirates. The light erected on the Lizard Point, as Sir J. Killigrew, in a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton, then ambassador at the Hague, remarked, “might speak itself to most parts of Christendom.”[[285]] The forts and defences were inspected, and many oversights in Lord Zouch’s wardership remedied. Such were Buckingham’s exertions. His contemporaries were singularly ungrateful to him for the benefits which he laboured to procure them; but posterity experienced their effects. Thirty years after his time, Pepys thus comments upon the improvement in our naval force, as a popular theme of remark--"Sir William Compton I heard talk with great pleasure of the difference between the fleet now and in Queene Elizabeth’s days, when, in ’88, she had but thirty-six sail, great and small, in the world, and ten rounds of powder was their allowance against the Spaniard."[[286]]
Among the articles of Buckingham’s subsequent impeachment, in 1626, there was inserted the following statement: “The East India Company having, in 1624, loaded four ships and two pinnaces for India, the Lord High Admiral, knowing that they must lose their voyage unless they sailed on a certain day, extorted from them the sum of ten thousand pounds for liberty to sail for India.” Upon being charged with this act of tyranny, the Duke justified himself by the plea that the Company had captured several rich prizes from the Portuguese at Ormuz and elsewhere, and that a large portion of the plunder was due to the King, and also to himself as High Admiral; and he proved that the sum said to be extorted from the Company was given by way of compromise, instead of 15,000l., which was legally due; and he was able to show that the whole sum, except two hundred pounds, was appropriated by the King for the use of the navy.[[287]]
One fact was soon acknowledged, that even King James the First had a stronger and more magnificent navy than any of his predecessors. It is worthy of remark, that such was the comparative ignorance of the times in ship-building, that when a shipwright named Bunnell, who had been employed by the East India Company, was brought, on account of his pre-eminence, into the British navy, “he was mistaken in the construction of the first ship that he built for the King;” because, as Bishop Goodman relates, "he did not observe the difference between the merchant ships and the King’s ships--the one made for stowage, the other only for strength and magnificence."[[288]]
Such was the state of our maritime affairs at the accession of Charles the First. The object to which all these preparations were destined was soon apparent. Trifling as this naval force appeared in those days, it was deemed magnificent in the reign of the Stuart Kings.