CHAPTER V
THE NAVY IN THE CIVIL WAR
Authorities.—The general history of this time has been exhaustively told by Mr. Gardiner in his history of the Civil War. Mr. Granville Penn has collected the Parliamentary orders, pamphlets, and proclamations relating to naval affairs in his Life of Sir William Penn. The Royalist side is told by Clarendon, and in the papers printed by Mr. Warburton in his Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers.
In so far as his control over the navy was concerned, the reign of Charles I. came to an end with the appointment of the Earl of Warwick as vice-admiral by the authority of the Parliament in defiance of his wishes. From that time forward the fleet became a docile instrument in the hands of his enemies, and so remained throughout the whole of the first Civil War. The king did indeed dismiss Northumberland from his post as Lord High Admiral, and the order was obeyed. It may very well be that the Parliament was not sorry to be rid of an officer whose powers were so great. Even in the midst of armed rebellion the Englishmen of the seventeenth century were great sticklers for the letter of the law, and the Lord High Admiral, the legality of whose appointment could not be questioned, might have caused the Houses at Westminster considerable trouble if he had thought fit to act against them, or even only to abstain from acting energetically on their behalf. With the minor officers there was not the same probability of trouble. The king did order them to render no obedience to Parliament, and a few acted on his command. Others, however, had no scruple in accepting the doctrine that the order of the king meant his order as expressed by Parliament—a convenient sophistry by which many men at that period contrived to reconcile the reality of rebellion with the profession of loyalty.
Among those who actively assisted Parliament to obtain possession of the fleet was William Batten, the Surveyor of the Navy. He is described by Clarendon as an "obscure fellow," who obtained his post by dint of a bribe. This account of him has been somewhat heatedly contradicted by modern writers. But it agrees very well with the rather off-hand account of his appointment given by Northumberland. If Batten belonged to the Somersetshire family of that name, he was a man of strong Puritan connections. However that may be, he had passed his life as a merchant skipper, trading on his own account, or as master in the navy, till he became Surveyor in 1638, when the Commission of 1628 was dissolved and Northumberland was appointed Lord High Admiral. There is a pretty general agreement of authorities that he paid for his post, which at that time does not necessarily mean that there was anything corrupt about his nomination. His assistance had a good deal to do with Warwick's success in bringing the fleet to obedience in July 1642.
Parliament had taken measures to arm a considerable naval force in the very first days of March, on the plea that the Lords and Commons had "received advertisement of extraordinary preparations made by the neighbouring princes both by land and sea; the intentions whereof have been so represented as to raise an apprehension in both Houses that the public honour, peace, and safety of His Majesty and his kingdom cannot be secured unless a timely course be taken for the putting of this kingdom into a condition of defence at sea as well as land." Orders were issued that "all and every the ships belonging to His Majesty's navy which are fit for service, and not already abroad, nor designed for this summer's fleet, be with all speed rigged and put in such a readiness as that they may soon be ready for sea." At the same time Northumberland was requested "to make known to all masters and owners of such ships as now are in or about any the harbours of this kingdom, and may be of use to the public defence thereof, that it will be an acceptable service to the King and Parliament if they likewise will cause their ships to be rigged, and so far put in readiness, as they may at a short warning set forth to sea upon any emergent occasion, which will be a means of great security to His Majesty and his dominions."
The king had left London, and was either at Royston or at Newmarket when he heard of this order for the "speedy rigging of the navy." Northumberland was suffering from an accident which befell him more than once at a critical moment. He was ill, and could not take the command in person. It was now that the king endeavoured to secure the appointment of Sir John Pennington as Northumberland's deputy in actual command. But Parliament, in pursuit of its policy of laying hands on the militia, insisted on seeing a list of the officers in command. It was presented on the 10th of March. Parliament confirmed most of the names, but expressly voted "that the Lord Admiral shall be desired by this House that the commander-in-chief of this summer's fleet under his lordship may be the Earl of Warwick." At the same time Sir Harry Vane was instructed to "carry unto the Lord Admiral the list of those commanders that are not allowed of by this House, and desire his lordship to supply others in the place of those, and to send the names of them to the House with all convenient speed."
The anger of the king was unavailing, except to deprive Northumberland of his official rank. The ships in the Downs submitted themselves with little or no opposition to Warwick's orders. It is possible that if Sir John Pennington had been a man of more energy, he might have caused the Parliament considerable trouble. But his virtues were those of a docile, trustworthy servant. When called upon to act for himself, he could do nothing effectual. When the king forbade his servants to submit to the orders of the officers appointed by Parliament, Warwick boldly put his authority to the test by calling upon the ships in the Downs to accept his commission. A few only of the captains hesitated, and of these no more than two made any serious appearance of resistance. Even they were ill supported by their men, for the unarmed boats' crews of other ships were allowed to board and take possession of their vessels. The sympathies of the navy were plainly with the Parliament. It has been said recently that the navy was mainly neutral between the king and his enemies in this great struggle. I do not clearly understand what meaning is attached to the word neutral when it is used to describe the actions of men who give the most effective armed help to one party in a Civil War. From 1642 until a part of the fleet revolted in 1648, the navy never failed to do the king all the harm in its power. It attacked the garrisons held for him, and helped to defend the coast towns which his troops were besieging. It captured ships sailing on his service, and it fired on his wife. It is difficult to conceive what less neutral line of conduct it could possibly have followed. A more simple explanation of the action of the navy is, I think, that which has been given above. It supported the Parliament because it was Puritan, and this it was partly by choice, and partly of necessity. The seafaring population came from the more Puritan parts of England. The same causes which made the other inhabitants Puritan acted on the sailor. Then, until Prince Rupert took Bristol, every considerable seaport was in the hands of the Puritans, and a sailor who would not serve the Parliament would have found some difficulty in following his trade at all. Writers who have been very anxious to make out that the navy played an important independent part have been at some pains to show that it held some weighty constitutional doctrines, and in particular that it combined a disinterested love of liberty with an enlightened loyalty to the king's person. It is, however, possible to feel admiration and respect for the seamen of the seventeenth century without going so far as to credit them with what there is no reason to believe they possessed. Like many other Englishmen at that period the sailors may have thought it possible to coerce the king, to take the command of the militia out of his hands, to beat his soldiers, to kill his friends, to make him a prisoner, and, at the end of all this, to establish his authority. In other words, they entered upon a revolution without seeing more clearly than the average Presbyterian member of Parliament what its inevitable consequences must be. They had been brought up to have an awful reverence for the "Lord's anointed," and were glad to have a good legal-looking excuse before laying unhallowed hands upon him. Therefore, with the most loyal intentions in the world, they applied themselves with much courage and zeal to the work of bringing His Majesty to the mercy of the root-and-branch men.
The administration of the navy was put into the hands of a Parliamentary Committee of both Houses, under which it worked with more energy than had ever been shown during the reign of the king. The Houses could pay, if not with unfailing regularity, at least much better than the king; moreover, Parliament, with its power of naming committees of its own body, was able to exercise an amount of supervision which had not been possible for the Crown. The work which the navy had to do was partly on the coasts of England and partly on those of Ireland, but it was everywhere the same. In both cases the object was to prevent help coming from abroad to the enemies of Parliament. This was to be done partly by capturing ships coming in with stores, and partly by getting, or keeping, possession of the coast towns. It was a kind of duty which required rather vigilant cruising than much actual fighting. Although mention of the action of the fleet is common, the number of achievements performed by it of which memory remains is small. The majority of them are of the nature of the relief given to the town of Lyme when besieged by Prince Maurice. The ships brought reinforcements of men and stores when the need for them was great. In this way, and on all parts of the coast, they helped the cause of the Parliament. One of the feats the navy did, it is true, made no inconsiderable noise in the world, and has been the subject of much heated rhetoric. The Queen Henrietta Maria, who had left England just when the Civil War was beginning, had been busy abroad purchasing military stores for her husband. The Parliament learned early in 1643 that these military provisions were about to be sent over to Bridlington on the coast of Yorkshire, where the army of the Marquis of Newcastle would be ready to receive them. Whether it was also known that the queen was coming with the stores is not certain. If it had been, the principal effect of the knowledge would have been to induce Parliament to strengthen Batten, who was cruising in the North Sea. The capture of the queen would have been an immense advantage, and her death by a cannon ball a satisfaction. The Parliamentary officer had with him a small squadron of four ships. He missed the queen. The weather was stormy, and Henrietta Maria had to go through the unpleasant ordeal of nine days' tossing about in the North Sea. At last she reached Bridlington, and was able to land. Here a new danger, and a worse, assailed her. Batten discovered that the transports had reached harbour, and were landing their stores. He immediately took measures to prevent these from reaching the king. Bringing his ships close in, he opened fire on the transport and the houses on the quay, and continued to discharge cross-bar and other shot for some hours. The Royalists raised a great outcry over this "obscure fellow's" barbarous want of respect for Her Majesty's royal person. It is certain that she was in considerable peril. Batten's shot crashed into the house in which she was sleeping, and the queen with her ladies had to take refuge in a ditch, where they lay under the shelter of the bank for some time. It was reported, to the no small glee of the Parliament's partisans in London, that the queen had fled out of the house "barelegged" and almost undressed, so sudden had been her flight. However that may be, the daughter of Henry IV. had gone through the perils of storm and battle with cheerful courage. She comforted her terrified ladies-in-waiting on board the transport by telling them that queens of England were never drowned. As she fled from the house at Bridlington, she remembered that her favourite lap-dog had been left behind, and, in spite of the terrors of her attendants, she went back to bring it out. The Cavalier writers were more indignant for the queen than she was for herself. Both then and since they have denounced Batten in no measured terms for the unheard-of brutality and want of chivalry in his behaviour. Yet it is very hard to see what the Parliamentary commander could well have done except what he did do. The king's officers could not have expected to be allowed to march into London only because they put the queen at their head, and yet that would have been almost as rational as to ask that they should be allowed to transport and land munitions of war unmolested because a great Royalist lady travelled in company with them.