[1381] State Papers, Colonial, 19th Oct. 1654.
[1382] State Papers, Dom., 26th Feb. 1656; Elton to Admiralty Commissioners. It is very likely that the message did reach Cromwell.
[1383] The Parliamentary Navy Committee, which had managed matters throughout the civil war, existed for some time contemporaneously with the Admiralty Committee. But it soon lost all authority.
[1384] State Papers, Dom., 12th March 1649.
[1385] The first Commissioners of the Admiralty and Navy were Generals, Robert Blake, George Monk, John Disborowe, and Wm. Penn; Colonels, Philip Jones, John Clerk, and Thos. Kilsey; Major Wm. Burton, and John Stone, Edward Horseman and Vincent Gookin, Esquires. They acted from 3rd Dec. 1653.
[1386] Commons Journals, 1st June 1659.
[1387] Holland, Smith, Pett, and Willoughby, were appointed by order of the House on 16th Feb. 1649; Thompson was added later in place of captain Roger Tweedy, who had been a Commissioner during the civil war, and who was again proposed but rejected on 16th February. On 21st of February the House ordered that Holland, like Batten called Surveyor, was to have £300 a year; the others £250 a year.
[1388] State Papers, Dom., 9th May 1649. This letter is signed by Holland, Smith, and Thompson. The tone of Holland’s Discourse of the Navy (1638), is one of fulsome adulation of the Monarchy and the principles it represented; but the Discourse was not in print and he had had time to realise the new tendency. Holland was the least active of the Commissioners, but if he helped to carry out some of the reforms he recommended in 1638 he did his share of service.
[1389] State Papers, Dom., 20th July 1653, Monk to Admiralty Committee.