Naval Expenditure.
There is, of course, no chronological series of papers relating to the naval expenditure of the reign. Only isolated accounts for those years when active service was undertaken are to be found. The general disbursements for 1513 came to £699,000,[415] and the naval expenses, from 4th March to 31st October, were £23,000, but this seems to have been almost entirely for wages and hire of ships, only £291, 17s 9½d having been spent on repairs, and neither victualling, ordnance stores, nor the cost of preparation being included.[416] Detailed accounts were strictly kept although so few have survived. In one book it is stated that two copies of the accounts were to be made; one to be retained by the person charged with making payments, the other to be kept ‘in oure owne custodie for oure more perfytte rememberaunce in that behalf.’[417] The first kept as his acquittance by Sir John Daunce, is now in the Record Office, and bears Henry’s signature in numerous places, showing the close personal attention he gave to naval affairs. When William Gonson was acting as paymaster, he received between 21st August 1532 and 25th August 1533, £4169, 10s, from 16th December 1534 to 11th December 1535 £7093, 17s 9½d, and from 4th April 1536 to 29th June 1537, £3497, 3s 2d.[418] As a whole, on these years, the crown was indebted, beyond the money paid out to Gonson, £1487, 12s 9d, and the expenditure was almost entirely for dockyard work and stores, although there must also have been the cost of ships in commission, not here entered.
During the years of warfare between 1544-7 the amounts expended became very large. Richard Knight, who describes himself as ‘servant’ of Lord St John, received between 12th February 1544-5 and 30th June 1547, £101,127, and of this £84,000 was devoted to seamen’s wages and victualling.[419] Of the total sum £40,000 came from the Exchequer, £20,500 from the Court of Augmentation, £1600 benevolence money in Norfolk, and £8000 from the court of Wards and Liveries. Coincidently many thousands of pounds were paid through William Gonson, John Wynter, and his successor, Robert Legge, and doubtless through other persons. The new system of administration did not at first work altogether successfully as far as bookkeeping was concerned. From the following letter of Lisle’s we find that Sir William Paget, a Secretary of State, had written to him making inquiries, and he answers
‘You write unto me that the Tresawrer of thadmyralltie being called to accompt his reckoning is so illfavoridly mad that there semith a want of £2000 wich you cannot well se what is become of hit.’
and goes on to explain a series of transactions, but both Legge and Wynter appear to have been performing the duties of Treasurer which may be a reason for the entanglement of figures.[420] It was stated that during 1544-5, the crown had expended £1,300,000,[421] and the naval expenses from September 1542 to the end of the reign are fully detailed in a later paper.[422]
| Cordage, timber, and other stores, | £45,230 | 18 | 8 |
| Coat and conduct money, | 2,415 | 13 | 2 |
| Wages of seamen, soldiers, shipwrights, dockyards, etc., | 127,846 | 10 | 7 |
| Victualling, | 65,610 | 10 | 4½ |
| Ordnance and ammunition, | 19,276 | 13 | 10½ |
| Furniture[423] of ships, | 1582 | 14 | 7 |
| Hire of docks, storehouses, riding and posting charges, | 502 | 4 | 6 |
Piracy and Privateering.
Great stress has been laid on the prevalence of piracy in the sixteenth century as the chief school of English seamanship. Of course it was practised during this reign to an extent that would now be thought monstrous, but it did not attain the proportions of a few years later, nor were English seamen dependent on its development for a knowledge of their art. When religious and political motives impelled them to a guerilla warfare, they became pirates because they were already good seamen, with the training of centuries behind them, and the sea was their natural field of action. The succession of conflicts between France and the Empire induced an internecine maritime war between those powers, in the shape of privateering, which sometimes smouldered but never died out. Convoys for the Spanish American fleets were instituted in 1522 on account of the depredations of French privateers. The despatches of the Imperial ministers show that France, during the reign of Henry and his immediate successors, was, much more than England, a source of injury to Spanish trade. The success of French privateering, together with the voyages for purposes of discovery and settlement, of Verazzani in 1523, of the brothers Parmentier in 1529, of Jacques Cartier and Roberval in 1534 and 1549, of Villegagnon 1555, of Bois-le-Compte in 1556, of Jean de Ribaut in 1562, and of René de Laudonnière in 1564, a succession of efforts which only closed with the outbreak of the wars of religion, seemed to point to France rather than to England as destined to challenge Spanish maritime supremacy. In 1551 France sent a fleet of 160 sail to Scotland, and it is doubtful whether England could have collected one of equal strength to act at a similar distance.
Englishmen, however, joined in the game to a sufficient extent even now. In 1540 the Emperor was informed that a Spaniard, with gold and amber on board, had been seized by two English ships, and a few such successful and profitable incidents must have acted as a strong incentive to ventures which promised large profits on a moderate outlay. There was very little police of the seas, nor could the guardians themselves be trusted in face of temptation. In 1532 some captains sent out on this service plundered Flemish merchantmen they met.[424] As early as 1515 a commission of Oyer and Terminer was issued to the Earl of Surrey and two others to hear and decide piratical offences[425]; in one case eighteen soldiers serving on a man-of-war stole a boat with the intention of seizing a ship at sea. The French had, during the first quarter of the century, a reputation for fair play, and Wolsey in 1526, wrote to Henry that ‘though many English have been taken at sea by the French, they have always made full restitution,’[426] but when the Scotch began to interfere in the trade, proceedings became embittered by competition. By 1532 the narrow seas were said to be full of Scotch privateers and the customary ransom of prisoners was twenty shillings for a sailor and forty for a master.[427] Both Spaniards and Frenchmen attacked each other in English ports, which, until 1539, were mostly unarmed and plunder was openly sold in the coast towns. That from a Portuguese ship was purchased by the mayor and others of Cork, and in 1537 the owners had been for three years vainly endeavouring to obtain redress.[428]