Henry VI:—Subsequent Naval Administration.
We have no record of the expenditure for the first years of Henry’s reign but, from 31st August 1427 to 31st August 1433, the sum of £809, 10s 2d was spent by Soper for naval purposes, being an average of £134, 18s 4d a year.[55] The Trinity Royal, Holigost, Grace Dieu, and Jesus were still in existence, but dismantled and unrigged at Bursledon. Apparently there were no officers attached to them, or at Southampton, of sufficient experience to assume responsibility, since Peter Johnson, master mariner of Sandwich, was paid for coming to superintend the removal of the masts of the Grace Dieu. The Trinity Royal was so far unseaworthy and useless as to be imbedded in the mud of the river Hamble, and fifteen Genoese and other foreign master mariners were employed about dismasting her. There seems at this time to have been some purpose of rebuilding the Jesus, because she was taken to a dock lately prepared at Southampton, and, of the whole amount before mentioned, £165, 6s 10d was laid out in unrigging her, towing to Southampton, expenses of dock, etc. As the sails and stores of the vessels sold in 1423-4 were still under Soper’s care, a new storehouse, 160 feet long and 14 feet broad, was built at Southampton. That at London had not been closed in 1423, possibly because it may have been within the precincts of the Tower, and much of the equipment of the four great ships still remaining was kept in it.
During the four years ending with the 31st August 1437, £96, 0s 2½d was received from the Exchequer and £72, 1s 6d from the sale of cordage, etc., belonging to the ships;[56] the expenditure was £143, 6s 5¾d. For the two years ending 31st August 1439, the outlay on the Royal Navy was £8, 9s 7d. The ‘Libel of English Policie,’ which is now held to have represented the views of the governing statesmen was therefore given to the world when the estimates for the crown navy averaged £4, 4s 6½d a year.
Economy had been further exercised by the discharge of the shipkeepers as superfluous, and possibly one of the results of this careful thrift was the destruction of the Grace Dieu by fire, while lying on the mud at Bursledon, during the night of the 7th January 1439.[57] Some loose fittings were saved and 15,400lbs. of iron recovered from the burnt wreck. Soper’s next account, from 31st August 1439, ends on 7th April 1442, during which time he received £3, 10s from the Exchequer and £3, 0s 11¾d for 1222lbs. of lead from the ships. The disbursements were £4, 16s 4d, chiefly incurred in breaking up the cabins[58] on the Trinity Royal and Holigost and taking away the timber; the Jesus appears to have been too far perished to experience even this fate.[59]
From 7th April 1442, Soper was succeeded by Richard Clyvedon, a yeoman of the crown[60] by Letters Patent, dated 26th March 1442, but at the smaller fee of one shilling a day which had been received by Soper’s predecessors. In all probability Soper’s salary was very irregularly, if at all paid, and an official outlay which averaged some £1, 10s a year, offered few opportunities in the way of perquisites to a prosperous merchant. For five years and ninety days, from 7th April 1442 until 6th July 1447, the receipts were £61, 2s 7d, all from the sale of stores originally belonging to the vessels sold in 1423-4; no expenses of any sort had to be met since the bare hulks of the Jesus, Trinity, and Holigost, still existing were left to take care of themselves.[61] The next and last accounts continue for the following four years and nine months to the 7th April 1452, when they cease. The amount received was £73, 11s 4½d, again altogether from the sale of stores; the expenditure was £16, 12s 10d, mostly referable to the cost of a chain fixed across the Hamble.[62] As only the rotting hulls of the Trinity and Holigost now remained, it is difficult to estimate its value so far as they were concerned, but for the first time for nearly forty years, there were now fears of French reprisals.
Henry VI:—The Substitutes of the Navy.
It must not, however, be supposed that because the Royal Navy was not kept up, no measures were taken to protect maritime interests. The predecessors of Henry V had employed a combination of royal and impressed ships; Henry V apparently intended to increase the crown navy until it was powerful enough to enable him to rely on it for every purpose but that of transport. Rightly or wrongly the Protector and Council adopted a different system and one which was continued through all the political changes of the reign. Instead of keeping up a royal force, or of pressing ships and placing them under the crown officers, indentures were entered into now and again with certain persons supposed to be competent to provide under their own command an agreed number of ships and men to keep the sea for a specified time. In favour of this plan it was perhaps argued that it was cheaper than any other, and that it should prove sufficiently effective as the coast of France was either in English occupation or belonged to a neutral or ally in the Duke of Brittany, and that an expensive Royal Navy was unnecessary when a French navy was impossible and only the ordinary rovers of the sea had to be met and destroyed. Against it might be urged that, besides the delay inevitable to the process of collecting merchantmen at a given rendezvous, it was the object of the persons undertaking the work to make a profit on the bargain and that they would probably minimise effort, time, and expense, as much as practicable. So far as the scanty evidence enables us to judge it is possible that, until the loss of the French coastline, the plan, had it been carried on under the authoritative supervision of an able and honest crown official, might have worked successfully. Doubtless the economy promised was the final argument because, once the Royal Navy had been suffered to perish, there was never throughout the reign any financial possibility of restoring it. By 1433 the royal expenses were nearly double the revenue; and the Lord Treasurer, Cromwell, told the King, ‘nowe daily many warrantis come to me of paiementes ... of moche more than all youre revenus wold come to thowe they wer not assigned afore; whereas hit aperith by your bokes of record which have been showed that they have been assigned nygh for this eleven yeere next folowyng.’[63]
As many of the debts of Henry V for hire of ships and men’s wages were still unpaid, the conditions were evidently not favourable to the direct action of the crown either in replacing its own navy or taking ships into pay. An intermediary of recognised position to whom a payment was usually at once made on account, doubtless inspired more confidence in owners and men. Although not the first in point of time, the commission of Sir John Speke by an agreement of 2nd May 1440, is noticeable in that the service was apparently the first in which the men were paid and victualled at a weekly rate, one and sixpence a week wages and the same for victuals.[64] For at least two centuries the rate had been threepence a day, with usually an additional sixpence a week ‘reward,’ and this reduction of pay seems to imply that there were plenty of men to be obtained. In 1442 the Commons themselves arranged the period—2nd February to 11th November—during which a fleet was to be at sea, and even designated the ships which were to serve, together with the allowances to officers and men.[65] There were to be eight ships, all merchantmen, manned by 1200 men, and each of the eight was to be attended by a barge and balinger having respectively 80 and 40 men apiece. There were also four pinnaces. One of the ships is the Nicholas of the Tower of Bristol. ‘Of the Tower’ was the man-of-war mark, and this is the only one found in the lists of merchantmen of the century. The Nicholas of the Tower of Henry V was sold to some purchasers belonging to Dartmouth, but may have passed into Bristol ownership. It was the crew of this vessel, usually described as a man-of-war, who seized and executed the Duke of Suffolk on his passage to Flanders when exiled in 1450.
The seamen’s pay, two shillings a month, if not an error of entry, can only be explained by the expectation of a liberal division of prize-money, one half of which was to be shared among masters, quartermasters, soldiers and sailors. The other half was divided into thirds, of which two went to the owners and one to the captains and under-captains. The victualling was now one and twopence a week. The captains and under-captains were military officers; there was no ship-captain in the modern sense although the master, whose pay was sixpence a day, was his nearest equivalent. The conditions were beginning to slowly change during this century, but hitherto the fighting had been done on board ship by the soldiers embarked for the purpose. The duty of the sailors, whether officers or men, was only to handle the vessel at sea or in action. The fleet does not appear to have put to sea till August, although the undertakers, Sir William Ewe, Miles Stapylton, and John Heron, were receiving money for its preparation in June.[66] In 1445 the charges for the passage of Margaret of Anjou when she came to share the crown do not show the same tendency to lower wages; masters were still paid sixpence a day, but the men received one and ninepence a week and their sixpence ‘reward,’ and pages (boys) one and three halfpence a week.[67] During the winter of 1444-5 a Cinque Ports squadron was in commission from September to the following April, and this must be almost the last instance of the performance of the ancient service of the ports in a complete manner. Twenty-six vessels were provided—four from Hastings, seven from Winchelsea, four from Rye, Lydd, and Romney, two from Hythe, three from Dover, five from Sandwich, and one from Faversham, numbers which perhaps indicate the relative importance of the towns at this time. The whole cost of the fleet was only £672, 9s 1½d, while Margaret’s journey was considered worth £1810, 9s 7½d.[68] The tonnage of the Cinque Ports vessels is not given, but that they were of no great size may be inferred from the small number of men in each.
In 1449 Alexander Eden and Gervays Clifton, afterwards Treasurer of Calais, were entrusted with the care of the Channel and, although their deeds have left no mark in history, they were considered so satisfactory at the time that, in the following year, Clifton was granted a special reward of four hundred marks for his good service. In 1450 Clifton and Eden were again performing the same duty and, in 1452, Clifton and Sir Edward Hull. Certainly there was now every reason for redoubled vigilance. Between 1449 and 1451 the English Conquests in France had gone like a dream; only Calais was left, and that was considered to be imminently threatened. Notwithstanding loans, mortgages of revenues, and money obtained by pawning the crown jewels, the government owed £372,000, while the receipts from the crown estates were not more than £5000 a year, and the yearly charge of the household alone was £23,000. If we add to these facts a saintly king, and an inefficient government, the first mutterings of the storm of civil war, and a foe, exhausted it is true, but eager for vengeance, we are able to partly picture the extent of the losses in honour and prosperity which made one of the first acts of the Duke of York, when created Protector on 27th March 1454, the appointment of a fresh commission to guard the seas. On the following 3rd April, the tunnage and poundage for three years was assigned to the Earls of Salisbury, Shrewsbury, Wiltshire, Worcester, and Oxford, the Lords Stourton and Fitzwalter, and Sir Robert Vere, for that purpose.[69] That immediate action might be taken a loan of £1000 was raised in the proportions of London £300, Bristol £150, Southampton £100, Norwich and Yarmouth £100, Ipswich, Colchester and Malden £100, York and Hull £100, New Sarum, Poole and Weymouth £50, Lynn £50, Boston £30, and Newcastle £20, to be repaid out of the tunnage and poundage.[70]