Things were so bad that in 1684 the Commission was revoked, and from this date until his death the office of Lord High Admiral was once more executed by the King, with the advice and assistance of 'his royal brother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. 6s. 10d., 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.