We have complaints daily made unto us by poor seamen pressed out of merchant ships into the state’s service that they are grossly abused by their masters and owners in pretending leakage, damage, or not delivery of their goods, whereby they keep their pay from them, meanly taking advantage of the poor men’s forcing away by the state’s press masters and not having time to get their rights, are by this means defrauded of their wages. We look upon it as a very great oppression and have therefore thought good to acquaint your honours therewith.

Shortly afterwards they had to write on behalf of merchants who had trusted them[1396]:—

It is not pleasing to us to fill your ears with complaints, yet we judge it our duty, while entrusted with so great a share of the naval affairs, to again remind you of the emptiness of all the stores.... We have not been wanting in obtaining supplies by means of fair promises, and now we are hardly thought and spoken of by those who cannot obtain their money.

In one instance the ‘fair promises’ resolved themselves into a bill for £400 on account, which, said the recipient, ‘has hitherto done me no more good than an old almanac.’ It has been remarked that the position of all who were in the service of the state became more difficult as time passed, and money became scarcer and scarcer towards 1660. When, in 1658, the Navy Commissioners were obliged to pay—or promise—prices from 30 to 50 per cent. above the market standard, it may be supposed that their situation had its own discomforts.[1397] Besides guarding the material interests, they had to review the moral conduct, of their subordinates, and they were evidently shocked to be compelled to report to the Admiralty Commissioners that captain Phineas Pett, clerk of the check at Chatham, was the father of an illegitimate child. On another occasion Willoughby was inquiring whether a boatswain possessed two wives.

After the resignation of Richard Cromwell Parliament interposed more directly in naval affairs, and the Commissioners exercised less authority; on one occasion the agent at Chester, who went on board a man-of-war to muster the men, was refused an opportunity to perform his duty, and told, in answer to his threats, that ‘the power of the Navy Commissioners was not as formerly.’ A fact so plainly put must have been generally recognised, and accounts for the comparative disappearance of the Commissioners from the papers of the last year of the Commonwealth.

The Administration:—The Navy Treasurer.

From 1st January 1651, Richard Hutchinson replaced Vane as Treasurer of the Navy under circumstances noticed on a previous page. He began with a salary of £1000 a year, in lieu of all former fees and perquisites, and the appearance of his name in the State Papers is almost invariably associated with requests for higher pay, or melancholy wails about the amount of work thrown upon him by the wars in which we were engaged. For 1653 he was allowed an extra £1000;[1398] not satisfied with this he petitioned again in December, and so successfully that, by an order of the Council, he was to be given, in 1654, £2500, and a further £1000 for every £100,000 disbursed in excess of £1,300,000.[1399] That this man, who was merely a glorified clerk, who was never required to act on his own initiative, and whose work demanded neither energy, foresight, nor talent, should have received over £2500 a year, while the Navy Commissioners, to whose organising genius was mainly due the rapid and complete equipment which enabled the English fleets to be of sufficient strength at the point of contact, were rewarded with £250 a year, and a gratuity of £150 for one twelvemonth, is one of those incidents which interest the impartial student of forms of government. From January 1655 his pay was fixed at £1500 a year, with £100 commission on every £100,000 issued above £700,000; a year later he tried to get this commission doubled, and to have it allowed on his first three years of office, ‘I having much larger promises at the time.’[1400] A remark like this, the ease with which he obtained his almost annual increments, and the fact that he was appointed in spite of Vane’s opposition, taken together, lead one to suspect that he must have had some potent influence behind him.

The Commonwealth Captains.

Among officers, captains were the class who gave most trouble throughout these years, the number tried for, or accused of, various delinquencies yielding a much higher percentage of the total employed than that afforded by the men, or by officers of any other rank. This was, perhaps, largely due to the rapid promotion necessitated by the sudden increase of the Navy, commanders being chosen mainly for professional capacity, and, if considered politically safe, few questions were asked about their religious or moral qualifications. Many, again, had risen from the forecastle, and possibly brought with them reminiscences of the habits existing in the Caroline Navy: others had been privateer captains, an occupation which did not tend to make their moral sense more delicate. Professional honour was not yet a living force, and, in some orders issued by Monk to the captains of a detached squadron, the threat of loss of wages as a punishment for disobedience came after, and was obviously intended as a more impressive deterrent than, the disgrace of being cashiered.[1401]

With one offence, however—cowardice—very few were charged; after 1642 few men wanting physical courage were likely to force their way to the front. George Wager, who chose to blow up the Greyhound rather than strike the English flag, had been a boatswain; Amos Bear, a boatswain’s boy; Robert Clay, a carpenter; Heaton, a trumpeter’s mate; Badiley, Sansum, and Goodson, cabin boys; and doubtless close inquiry would reveal many more examples. Four days before the execution of Charles the Navy Commissioners wrote to Portsmouth, and presumably to other naval stations, ‘to entreat’ those in charge to take care that all officers appointed were well affected to the Parliament, and authorising them to suspend any suspected ones on their own responsibility.[1402] But the government was not unforgiving; two of Rupert’s captains, Goulden and Marshall, commanded state’s ships,[1403] and officers who had deserted in the mutiny of 1648 were received back into the service of the Commonwealth. The following list, in all probability by no means complete, will show the large number of captains whose conduct came under observation, and the character of their misdemeanours:—