Unquestionably, many previous sovereigns of England had directed much of their thoughts to the maritime power of the country. From the time of Alfred himself, downwards, we may trace, at various intervals, evident marks of the measures adopted by our Kings and the legislature, and also by powerful individuals and merchant companies, to keep up a succession of sea-worthy vessels, and mariners to man them. Two hundred years before the date of Henry's expedition, as early as the year 1212, King John seems to have established a sort of dry covered dock at Portsmouth for the preservation of ships and their rigging during the winter. But the very instances to which appeals have been made by various writers, to prove the antiquity of the naval force of South Britain, tend by their testimony to confirm the opinions we are here disposed to adopt. In every successive reign, the annals of which supply any information on the subject, the evidence is clear that the rulers of England did not contemplate the establishment of a fleet belonging to the nation as its own property. The tenures, moreover, by which many maritime towns held their charters, whilst they evince the importance attached to this department of an island's political power, coincide altogether with the view we are taking. The obligation, for example, under which the Cinque Ports lay of furnishing, whenever required, fifty ships, manned each with twenty-four mariners, for fifteen days, enabled the monarch indeed to calculate, from the fulfilment of such stipulated engagements, on a certain supply, adequate, it may be, to meet the usual demand; but at the same time it implied that he had no fleet of his own on which he could rely. Whilst the limited extent to which ships could be supplied by the most rigid exaction of the terms of those tenures compelled the state, on any occasion when extraordinary efforts were requisite, to depend upon the varying and precarious supply produced by the system of impressment.[98]
When Henry ascended the throne, he found still in full operation this old system of our maritime proceedings. Whenever, as we have seen, an occasion required the transport of a considerable body of men from our havens, or forces to be embarked for the protection of our shores and of our merchants, in addition to the contingent, which could be exacted from various chartered towns, the King's government was obliged either to hire ships from foreign countries, or to lay forcible hands by way of impressment on the vessels of his own subjects. A few instances, more or less closely connected with the immediate subject of our present inquiry, will serve to illustrate that point.
When, for example, Henry's great grandfather Edward III. was preparing for the expedition, which he headed in person, intended to relieve Rochelle, his grandfather John of Gaunt, February 10, 1372, as we find by the records of the Duchy of Lancaster, commanded all his stewards in Wales to assist Walter de Wodeburgh, serjeant-at-arms, appointed by the King to arrest all ships of twenty tons' burden [and upwards?] for the passage of the King and his army to France, and to take sufficient security that they be all ready by the 1st of May either at Southampton, Portsmouth, Hamel in the Rys, or Hamel Stoke.
The records of the Privy Council (11 December, probably 1405,) supply us with an instance (one out of many) which shows, at the same time, the great injury which the public service sustained by this system, and the ruinous consequences which it was calculated to entail on the merchants and the owners of ships. Henry IV. had intended to proceed in person to Guienne; and for that purpose, with the advice of his council, had impressed all the ships westward. His voyage was deferred; but the ships were still, as they had been for a long time, under arrest. The masters had sent a deputation to him to implore some compensation for their great expenses,[99] and some means of support. Henry then wrote to the council, praying them [vous prions] to provide some help for these poor men; and to assure them that no long time would elapse before their services would be called for, since either himself or his representative would undertake the voyage. In the same letter he prayed the council also to write under his privy seal to the King of Portugal, to beg of him a supply of galleys, sufficient to enable him to resist the malice of his enemies the French, and to protect his land and his realm.
We must not suppose that the French monarch found himself under more favourable circumstances when he would prepare for any important affair on the sea. The same system of impressment and hiring was necessarily adopted in France. Thus we find, in 1417, when the French government resolved to make a powerful effort to crush the navy of England, the ships were first to be "hired, at a great sum of gold, from the state of Genoa." These mercenary vessels formed the fleet over which the Earl of Huntingdon gained a decided victory immediately before Henry's second expedition to France.
Thus, too, (not to cite any more examples,) no sooner had Henry determined to assert his rights on the Continent, and to enforce them by the sword, than he despatched ambassadors to Zealand and Holland to negociate with the Duke of Holland for a supply of ships; doubtless assured that all which he could impress or hire in all his ports would not be sufficient for the safe transport of his troops, and "their furniture of war." But Henry's ardent and commanding mind soon saw how powerful an engine, both of defence and of conquest, would be found in a permanent royal navy, and how indispensable such an establishment was to any insular sovereign who desired to provide for his country the means of offering a bold front against aggression, protecting herself from insult, maintaining her rights, and taking a lead among the surrounding powers. He resolved, therefore, not to depend upon the precarious and unsatisfactory expedients either of hiring vessels, which would never be his own, (in a market, too, where his enemy might forestal him, and where his necessities would enhance the price,) or of compelling his merchants to leave their trading, and minister to the emergence of the state, at their own inevitable loss, and not improbable ruin. His immediate determination was to spare neither labour nor expense in providing a navy of his own, such as would be ever ready at the sovereign's command to protect the coast, to sweep the seas of those hordes of pirates which then infested them, and to bear his forces with safety and credit to any distant shores. He thus thought he should best secure his own ports and provinces from foreign invasion; afford a safeguard to his own merchants, and to those traders who would traffic with his people; and generally make England a more formidable antagonist and a more respected neighbour.
This new line of policy he adopted very early in his reign. Whilst he was at Southampton, (at the date of this digression, on his first expedition to Normandy,) we find him superintending the building of various large ships: and, two years afterwards, when news reached him of the victory gained by his brother the Duke of Bedford over the French fleet off Harfleur, the tidings found him making the most effectual means for securing future victories; he was at Smalhithe in Kent, personally superintending the building of some ships to add to his own royal navy, then only in its infancy.[100]
Nor did he confine his labours in this great work to England; he employed also his Continental resources in forwarding the same object. A letter from one John Alcestre, from Bayonne,[101] informs us of a ship of very considerable dimensions then on the stocks at that port, for the building of which the mayor and "his consorts" had contracted with Henry. The vessel was one hundred and eighty-six feet in length from "the onmost end of the stem onto the post behind." "The stem" was in height ninety-six feet, and the keel was in length one hundred and twelve feet.
Henry appears also to have acquired the reputation in foreign countries of having a desire to possess large vessels of his own. An agent in Spain, for example, after informing one of the King's officers in England of his unsuccessful endeavour to cause to be seized for the King's use four armed galleys of Provence, expected to enter the port of Valencia, and which the King of Arragon's government had consented to arrest for Henry, but which disappointed them by not coming to land, mentions that two new carraks (a species of large transport vessel) were in building "at Bartholem," which the King might have if he pleased.
The high importance which Henry attached to these rising bulwarks of his country shows itself in various ways; in none more curious and striking than (a fact, it is presumed, new to history,) in the solemn religious ceremony with which they were consecrated before he committed them to the mighty waters. One of the highest order of the Christian ministry was employed, and similar devotions were performed at the dedication of one of the royal "great ships," as we should find in the consecration of a cathedral. They were called also by some of the holiest of all names ever uttered by Christians.[102] Thus, on the completion of the good ship the Grace-Dieu at Southampton, the "venerable father in Christ, the Bishop of Bangor,"[103] was commissioned by the King's council to proceed from London at the public expense to consecrate it.