Samuel Pepys and the World He Lived In

by Henry B. Wheatley

Our literature is singularly deficient in accounts of the official history of the navy. There are numerous books containing lives of seamen and the history of naval actions, but little has been written on the management at home. The best account of naval affairs is to be found in the valuable “Tracts” of the stout old sailor Sir William Monson, which are printed in “Churchill’s Voyages.”[188]

Sir William was sent to the Tower in 1616, and his zeal in promoting an inquiry into the state of the navy, contrary to the wishes of the Earl of Nottingham, then Lord High Admiral, is supposed to have been the cause of his trouble.

The establishment of the navy, during a long period of English history, was of a very simple nature. The first admiral by name in England was W. de Leybourne, who was appointed to that office by Edward I., in the year 1286, under the title of “Admiral de la Mer du Roy d’Angleterre,” and the first Lord High Admiral was created by Richard II. about a century afterwards. This word “admiral” was introduced into Europe from the East, and is nothing more than the Arabic amir-al[189] (in which form the article is incorporated with the noun). The intrusive d, however, made its appearance at a very early period. The office of “Clerk of the King’s Ships,” or “of the Navy,” afterwards “Clerk of the Acts of the Navy,” is in all probability a very ancient one, but the first holder of the office whose name Colonel Pasley, R.E.,[190] has met with, is Thomas Roger or Rogiers, who lived in the reigns of Edward IV., Edward V., and Richard III. In the third volume of Pepys’s MS. “Miscellanies” (page 87) is an entry of an order, dated 18th May, 22 Edw. IV. (1482), to the Treasurer and Chamberlain of the Exchequer, to examine and clear the account of “our well beloved Thomas Roger, Esq., Clerk of our Ships.” In Harleian manuscript 433, which is believed to have belonged to Lord Burghley, there is a register of grants passing the Great Seal during the reigns of Edward V. and Richard III., and No. 1690 contains the appointment of “Thomas Rogiers to be clerc of all maner shippes to the King belonging.” It has no date, but is very probably a reappointment by Richard III. on his assumption of the crown.

The navy owes much to Henry VIII., who reconstituted the Admiralty, founded the Trinity House, and established the dockyards at Deptford, Woolwich, and Portsmouth. The origin of the board of “Principal Officers and Commissioners of the Navy,” commonly called in later times “the Navy Board,” dates from his reign. His predecessors had usually themselves managed whatever naval force they possessed, assisted by their Privy Council, and by the officer already alluded to, who was styled “Clerk” or “Keeper” of the King’s ships, but in Henry’s time the rapidly increasing magnitude and importance of the navy rendered a more complete and better organized system of management necessary. To supply this want several new offices were created, and before Henry’s death we find, in addition to the Lord High Admiral and the Clerk of the Ships, a Lieutenant (or Vice-Admiral), a Treasurer, a Comptroller, and a Surveyor of the Navy,[191] as well as a Keeper of the Naval Storehouses at Erith and Deptford.[192] A few years later we meet with a “Master of the Ordnance of the Ships.” This last office, which had been held by Sir William Woodhouse, was granted by Philip and Mary in 1557 to William (afterwards Sir William) Winter in addition to that of Surveyor, to which he had been appointed by Edward VI.[193]

Each of these officers must have received some sort of instructions for his guidance, but no general code of rules for the administration of the navy was framed until after the accession of Elizabeth, who issued, about 1560, a set of regulations for “the Office of the Admiralty and Marine Causes,” with the following preamble:[194]—“Forasmuch as since the erection of the said office by our late dear father Henry VIII., there hath been no certain ordinance established so as every officer in his degree is appointed to his charge: and considering that in these our days our navy is one of the chiefest defences of us and our realm against the malice of any foreign potentate: we have therefore thought good by great advice and deliberation to make certain ordinances and decrees, which our pleasure and express commandment is that all our officers shall on their parts execute and follow as they tender our pleasure, and will answer to the contrary.”

Then follows a list of the several officers at that time forming the Board, viz.:—

1. The Vice-Admiral.
2. The Master of the Ordnance and Surveyor of the Navy: one officer.
3. The Treasurer.
4. The Comptroller.
5. The General Surveyor of the Victuals.
6. The Clerk of the Ships.
7. The Clerk of the Stores.[195]

The officers were to meet at least once a week at the office on Tower Hill, to consult, and take measures for the benefit of the navy, and were further directed to make a monthly report of their proceedings to the Lord Admiral.

The particular instructions which follow are brief, and by no means explicit:—

1. The Master of the Ordnance is to take care to make the wants of his department known to the Lord Admiral in good time, and he is to obtain the signatures of three of his colleagues every quarter to his books and accounts, which are then to be submitted to the Court of Exchequer.