Samuel Pepys and the Royal Navy

by J. R. Tanner

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.