In 1656 independent charities relating to the sick and maimed existed in the shape of the Chatham Chest, Ely Place, the Savoy Hospital, and the Commissioners, and it was then suggested that they should be amalgamated, both on account of economy and the prevention of fraud, but this was never done. For several years the Treasurer of the Navy paid £735 a week for the support of pensioners, but in what proportion this was divided among the foregoing charities is uncertain.
The Chatham Chest.
Of these institutions the only one of which we have any details is the Chatham Chest. For the three years 1653-5 the accounts stand:—[1325]
| Revenue[1326] | Revenue from Lands[1327] | Expenditure | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £ | £ | s | d | £ | s | d | |
| 1653 | 5653 | 433 | 6 | 8 | 10,065 | 0 | 0 |
| 1654 | 4000[1328] | 433 | 6 | 8 | 4531 | 18 | 10 |
| 1655 | 4000[1328] | 433 | 6 | 8 | 4500 | 0 | 0[1329] |
There was thus an excess of outlay over receipts, for these three years, of more than £4000, and Edward Hayward, then in charge, asks for assistance from the central authority. He probably obtained it, as on another occasion, Hutchinson was ordered to lend the Chest £3000.[1330] In March 1656 a report was drawn up which made the income from land £382, 10s a year, and recommended the removal of the Chest to London to save expense and the inconveniences experienced by the men. From this report we learn that officers’ widows were entitled to pensions from it, but not those of the men.[1331] In June 1657 there were 800 or 900 pensioners, but half the arrears were unpaid; a year later the situation was worse and the delay had reduced the men ‘to such extreme misery that I fear many of them have perished of late,’ the writer, Pett, having been forced to leave Chatham to escape these outcries. Pett adds, ‘If Rochester Cathedral were given to the governors to be improved ... it might go towards paying the arrears.’
There are two references in the Commonwealth papers which suggest that Hayward did not escape suspicion then of having appropriated Chest money to his own use, but in the inquiry into its management, begun in 1662, the weight of scrutiny fell upon Pett. Hayward said that he had lost all the books relating to the years 1648-55, although he afterwards produced some of them. From the interrogatories addressed to Pett we may infer that he and captain John Taylor, who was jointly responsible with him, amicably passed each other’s accounts; that the accuracy of these accounts was attested by only some of the officers who should have signed them; that the same travelling expenses were entered three or four times over; that he and Taylor had taken large sums from the Chest as salary, no commissioner having ever before charged for his management; and that such items occurred as £52, 13s 4d for the governor’s dinners, etc., at one meeting, £10 a year salary to a ‘mathematician,’ and £9 to Taylor ‘for relief for a fall.’[1332]
The Victualling.
The quality of the food supplied to the men and the honesty of the victualling agents both steadily deteriorated during the Commonwealth. Complaints began to be frequent about 1650, and a fresh contract was then entered into with Colonel Pride and others to undertake the duty at eightpence per head at sea, and sevenpence in harbour, the government bearing the cost of transport to fleets on service.[1333] The lax system in force was not, however, calculated to act as a deterrent; in May 1650 a victualling office clerk, who had embezzled £137, gave security for it, and was suspended, but, inferentially, only until the money was refunded. It may be said that, generally, the object of the Navy authorities, in cases of fraud and embezzlement by clerks or officers, was not so much to punish as to obtain restitution. Possibly they found it to be the most effective form of punishment. During 1652 the pressure caused by the necessity of supplying an unprecedentedly large number of men produced more disorders in this branch of the service, and in June the contractors were called before the Council, told that their explanations were unsatisfactory, and heard the Admiralty Commissioners directed to continually watch and inspect the victuals furnished.
The story of the victualling arrangements during these eleven years brings out the most striking point of difference between the Commonwealth administration and those which were antecedent to it, in the fact that matters affecting the health and comfort of seamen were not ignored as in previous periods. This, we know, was greatly due to political necessity, but the letters remaining, written by officials of all ranks, show that a conscientious recognition of justice due to the sailors, and of responsibility for their welfare, widely existed. This sentiment is much more clearly marked among captains, admirals, and commissioners than among the ruling politicians, although members of the government were doubtless not unaffected by the prevailing spirit; the financial straits of the country, however, first cramped, and then destroyed, reforms which otherwise might have become permanent.
In 1652 new buildings for the Victualling department were built in several ports; and from February 1650 the slaughterhouse at Deptford, standing on ‘the poore’s ground’ and originally devoted to the service of Greenwich Palace, was taken for that of the state.[1334] In 1653 the rate rose to ninepence a head, and it may be roughly calculated that the Victuallers were called upon to provide at least some 7,500,000 lbs. of bread, 7,500,000 lbs. of beef and pork, and 10,000 butts of beer, besides cheese, butter, fish, and other necessaries. The mechanism at their command was little superior to that used by their predecessors under Charles I, and English agriculture could hardly yet have recovered from the effects of the civil war. The victualling contracts between September 1651 and December 1652 came to £332,000,[1335] a sum representing a drain on the food resources of the country difficult to meet, not so much, perhaps, in quantity as in suddenness, although since 1648 there had been an unbroken series of years of dearth. Remembering commissariat experiences of our own, happening under much more favourable conditions within living memory, the wonder is, not that there should have been complaints, but that there should have been comparatively so few under circumstances, which might almost have excused absolute failure. Pride and his associates were condemned because they were judged by a higher standard than had previously existed, but under Charles I their management would have been praised as highly successful.