Samuel Pepys and the Royal Navy

by J. R. Tanner

There were a good many subsequent changes, but the importance of administration by experts was not again lost sight of. The office of Treasurer of the Navy soon fell to the men of accounts, and in 1667 Sir George Carteret was succeeded by the Earl of Anglesey, a 'laborious, skilful, cautious, moderate' official, who had had seven years' experience of finance as Vice-Treasurer and Receiver-General for Ireland[62]. But with this exception, if the post of a Principal Officer was vacated by a naval expert it was offered to a naval expert again. When Sir Robert Slyngesbie, the Comptroller, died in 1661[63], he was succeeded by Sir John Mennes, who had served under Sir William Monson in the Narrow Seas, and had had a wide experience of the navy[64]. This appointment was not as successful as might have been expected. Pepys thought him 'most excellent pleasant company'[65] and 'a very good, harmless, honest gentleman,'[66] but he is always attacking his incapacity[67], and refers to him on one occasion as a 'doating fool.'[68] On his death in 1671 the office passed to Sir Thomas Allin, originally a shipowner at Lowestoft, who had served under Prince Rupert, and had acquired a reputation in the Second Dutch War[69]. When Sir William Batten, the Surveyor, died in 1667, he was succeeded by Colonel Thomas Middleton, who had been resident Commissioner at Portsmouth[70]; and when in 1672 Middleton was transferred to Chatham, John Tippetts, who had followed him at Portsmouth, was appointed to the Surveyorship[71]. It should be noticed that whereas during the thirteen years of naval history from 1660 to 1673 the office of Treasurer of the Navy was held by four different persons, and the offices of Comptroller and Surveyor each by three, there was no change in the office of Clerk of the Acts. Pepys was the only one of the Principal Officers whose experience was continuous.

The extra Commissionerships, when vacancies arose, did not all go to naval experts, but men of ability were selected for them, and sometimes men of distinction. When in 1662 another extra Commissioner was appointed, the choice fell on William Coventry, a civilian; but Coventry had already had two years' experience of naval administration as Secretary to the Lord High Admiral, and his ability soon made him one of the most valuable members of the Navy Board. Burnet described him in 1665 as 'a man of great actions and eminent virtues'; Temple credits him with high political capacity; Evelyn calls him 'a wise and witty gentleman'[72]; and the Diary shews how warmly Pepys was attached to him[73]. In 1664 an extra Commissionership was conferred on Lord Brouncker, a literary man, an intimate friend of Evelyn's, and the first President of the Royal Society, who took something more than an amateur's interest in shipbuilding, and in 1662 had built a yacht for the King[74]. Pepys could not make up his mind about him; for in 1667 he speaks of him as 'a rotten-hearted, false man as any else I know, even as Sir W. Penn himself, and therefore I must beware of him accordingly, and I hope I shall,'[75] and in 1668 he regards him as the best man in the Navy Office[76]. One of the extra Commissioners, Sir Edward Seymour, was also Speaker of the House of Commons.

The Navy Board was by tradition the Lord High Admiral's council of advice for that part of his office which was concerned with the government of the navy, and Monson alludes to its members as 'the conduit pipes to whom the Lord Admiral properly directs all his commands for his Majesty's service, and from whom it descends to all other inferior officers and ministers under them whatsoever.'[77] In practice the Board enjoyed very large administrative powers, for it was authorised 'to cause all ordinary businesses to be done according to the ancient and allowed practice of the Office, and extraordinary according to the warrants and directions from the Lord Admiral and the State'[78]; but in theory it existed only in order to carry out the general instructions which the Duke of York had issued early in 1662[79], not long after he had taken office. These were drawn in comprehensive terms, and of necessity left a vast number of decisions on particular questions to be taken by the Board. These instructions of 1662 remained in force until the Admiralty was reorganised at the beginning of the 19th century[80].

It is evident that the administration of the navy after the Restoration was in the hands of able and experienced men, and that they were acting under instructions which were good enough to survive without material alteration for another century and a half. Yet there is abundant evidence in the Pepysian manuscripts and elsewhere to shew that naval administration during the period 1660-1673 was in the main a disastrous failure. The reason why the collapse was so complete was the pressure of the Second Dutch War upon the resources of the naval administration, but the essential causes lay deeper than external events. First and foremost undoubtedly stands the problem of finance. The want of money was the root of all evil in the Stuart navy. I propose to deal fully with this problem in my next lecture, and will only ask you to note its existence now. But there was more than this. On 15 August, 1666, Pepys made a remarkable entry in the Diary which I think gives the key to the situation: 'Thence walked over the Park with Sir W. Coventry, in our way talking of the unhappy state of our Office; and I took an opportunity to let him know, that though the backwardnesses of all our matters of the Office may be well imputed to the known want of money, yet perhaps there might be personal and particular failings.' He then notes Coventry's reply, which indicates the way in which personal failings were themselves affected by want of money. 'Nor, indeed, says he, is there room now-a-days to find fault with any particular man, while we are in this condition for money.' The whole service was breathing the miasmas exhaled by a corrupt Court. Slackness was fashionable because the King was slack, and the higher naval administration had to contend with idleness and dishonesty in the lower ranks of the service due to a relaxation of the standards of public and private duty. In this conflict it was at a serious disadvantage, for it was impossible effectively to control subordinates whom there was no money to pay. The members of the Navy Board were capable and experienced, and their intentions were excellent, but the atmosphere was poisonous and the situation beyond control. 'Personal and particular failings' in combination with financial disorder ruined the Navy Office, as they would have ruined any public department in any country and at any time.

It would be idle to pretend that the Restoration officials conformed to modern standards of official purity; although they were very much better than the corrupt administrators of the reign of James I. Pepys is convicted on his own confession of a good deal that would be unthinkable to-day. During the period of the Diary his salary as Clerk of the Acts was £350 a year; while in 1665 he was appointed Treasurer of the Tangier Commission, and from 1665 to 1667 he was Surveyor-General of Victualling with an additional £300 a year[81]. His salary as Secretary of the Admiralty was £500 a year, but he only enjoyed this for two periods amounting altogether to ten years. Yet as early as May, 1667, he was worth £6900[82]; and in the end he retired on a competence, and was able to indulge the expensive tastes of the collector. It is evident that his legitimate emoluments must have been supplemented in other ways. Readers of the Diary will remember that on 2 February, 1664, he received from Sir William Warren, the timber merchant, 'a pair of gloves' for his wife 'wrapt up in paper,' which he 'would not open, feeling it hard'; this phenomenon being due to the presence, presumably in the fingers, of 'forty pieces in good gold.' Warren gave him many other presents, and shewed himself 'a most useful and thankful man,'[83] bringing him on one occasion £100 'in a bag,' which Pepys 'joyfully' carried home in a coach, Warren himself 'expressly taking care that nobody might see this business done.'[84] On another occasion Captain Grove gave him money in a paper which Pepys did not open till he reached his office, taking the precaution of 'not looking into it till all the money was out, that I might say I saw no money in the paper if ever I should be questioned about it.'[85] He appears to have profited largely by his transactions with Gauden, the Victualler of the Navy[86]; with the Victuallers for Tangier[87]; and with Captain Cocke, a contractor for hemp[88]. He also made profits out of flags[89], prizes[90], and Tangier freights[91]; and the Diary records other gifts of money and plate[92], including 'a noble silver warming-pan.'[93] On the other hand, the official letters, numbering thousands, conspire to produce by a series of delicate impressions the conviction in the mind of the reader that Pepys was immensely proud of the navy, and keenly anxious for its efficiency and success. His attitude is affected by his fundamental Puritanism, and in the Diary he is always trying to justify to himself the presents which he accepted. He was glad to do the giver a good turn when he could, but it was with the proviso that it should be 'without wrong to the King's service.'[94] The inventor of such a phrase is on dangerous ground, but he is not yet utterly debased; and the high responsibility of his later life may very well have served as an antiseptic to arrest corruption before it had gone far. At any rate, this is as much in advance of the cynical greed of the earlier administrators as it is behind the contempt for all forms of corruption which is natural to well-paid officials educated to modern standards.

In 1673 the Test Act drove the Duke of York from office, and brought about other important changes in the administration of the navy. The King retained in his own hands the Lord High Admiral's patronage and also the Admiralty dues, which were to be collected for his 'only use and behoof'; but the rest of his functions were placed in commission[95]. There were twelve Commissioners, of whom no less than five—the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Treasurer, the Lord Privy Seal, and two Principal Secretaries—were great officers of State. Prince Rupert was at the head of the Commission, and Samuel Pepys was appointed Secretary, while the Duke of York, although no longer in office, remained, in spite of the Test Act, an important influence in naval affairs[96]. Pepys was succeeded in the office of Clerk of the Acts by his brother, John Pepys, and his clerk, Thomas Hayter, acting jointly. There were also changes in the composition of the Navy Board, but these did not affect its character as a body of naval experts.

The chief business of the new administrators was to bring to a close the Third Dutch War, and then to repair, by an energetic shipbuilding policy, that depreciation of the navy which was the natural result of the war. In this work they were on the whole successful. The Admiralty Commissioners were sensible and vigilant, and they were remarkably well served by their Secretary; while the Navy Board was strong on the technical side of its work, and fortunate in having as one of its members an official so thoroughly capable in his own department as the great shipbuilder, Sir Anthony Deane. Moreover, although the financial difficulty continued to hamper and cripple the navy, a vigorous shipbuilding policy was made possible by the better support which Parliament now gave to naval expansion. The idea of the importance of sea power had already acquired a considerable hold upon the political classes, and the wars with the Dutch had served to strengthen it. Charles II had read rightly the feeling of his subjects when he allowed his Chancellor to say to the Pension Parliament in the speech which opened its eleventh session: 'There is not so lawful or commendable a jealousy in the world as an Englishman's of the growing greatness of any Prince at sea.'[97] Thus the most important achievement of the period 1673-79 was the Act of 1677—the 17th century equivalent of a modern Naval Defence Act—for the building of 30 new ships. Pepys, now a member of Parliament, made in support of it a comprehensive and vigorous speech[98], and he modestly attributed the adoption of the scheme to the impression this produced upon the House. 'I doubt not,' he writes to the Navy Board, on 23 February, 1677, 'but ere this you may have heard the issue of this morning's debates in the House of Commons touching the navy, wherein I thank God the account they received from me of the past and present state thereof, compared first with one another and then with the naval force of our neighbours as it now is, different from what it ever heretofore has been, was so received as that the debates arising therefrom terminated in a vote for the supplying his Majesty with a sum of money for building ships....'[99] The rates and tonnage of the 30 new ships thus provided for are specified in the Act[100].

The new programme was pushed forward with the utmost energy, but before it was completed the control of the navy again changed hands. In 1679 the excitement of the Popish Plot drove the Duke of York from England, and Pepys was involved in his disgrace. He was accused of conspiring with Sir Anthony Deane to send information about the navy to the French Government and to extirpate the Protestant religion; and was committed to the Tower on the Speaker's warrant[101]. His office at the Admiralty was, however, vacated by what was in form a voluntary resignation[102].

On the withdrawal of the Duke of York and the resignation of Pepys, the higher administration of the navy passed to a new Admiralty Commission of seven, who claimed and enjoyed, in addition to the powers of the previous Commission, those other prerogatives which the King had hitherto reserved to himself[103]. But although they had more power than their predecessors, they were much less competent to use it, for they were almost entirely without naval experience. Sir Henry Capel, the First Commissioner, had nothing to do with the navy until his appointment[104]. The same can be said of Daniel Finch, who, although he became famous afterwards as Earl of Nottingham, was at this time only a young politician just beginning his official life[105]. Sir Thomas Lee's reputation was that of a parliamentary debater[106]; and the other names are not notable. The Commission represents an intrusion of politicians into a sphere where they were quite out of place. The introduction of Lord Brouncker in 1681 was a step in the right direction, although he was not a professional seaman; and other improvements were effected in 1682, but they came too late. The Navy Board was still composed of experts, but they could not stop the mischief wrought by the incompetent authority under which they had to act. The Commissioners did not find a lenient critic in Pepys, and his comment upon them is worth quoting because it contains a shrewd appreciation of Charles II. 'No king,' he wrote in his private Minute Book, 'ever did so unaccountable a thing to oblige his people by, as to dissolve a Commission of the Admiralty then in his own hand, who best understands the business of the sea of any prince the world ever had, and things never better done, and put it into hands which he knew were wholly ignorant thereof, sporting himself with their ignorance.'[107] The last phrase brings before us vividly the King's characteristic way.

The result that followed was inevitable. The dockyards were disorganised; the effective force of the fleet was reduced; the reserve of stores was depleted. The Commissioners adopted a wasteful policy of retrenchment at all costs. Pepys writes of 'the effects of inexperience, daily discovering themselves' in the conduct of the Commission[108]; of 'general and habitual supineness, wastefulness, and neglect of order universally spread through' the whole navy[109], so that 'whereas peace used evermore to be improved to the making up the wasteful effects of war, this appears ... to have brought the navy into a state more deplorable in its ships and less relievable from its stores than can be shewn to have happened at the close of the most expenseful war.'[110] His indictment is supported by a formidable array of facts and figures, and as Macaulay points out[111], is confirmed by a report from an expert of the French Admiralty, so it cannot be dismissed as mere denunciation inspired by a natural prejudice against the men who had displaced him.