How far Elizabeth was herself answerable is a moot point. There is no direct evidence that the delay in obtaining provisions was due to her orders. On the other hand we know that the postponements in equipping the ships, and the hesitating action and inconsistent directions and suggestions that characterised the early months of 1588, were due to her, and there is a strong probability that much of the shame should rest with her rather than with ministers who perhaps had to carry out commands to which they had objected in Council. Moreover very few things, especially those involving expense, were done without the knowledge and approval of Elizabeth. It was a personal government and there is no reason to suppose that this particular branch was beyond her cognisance. With the fatality that has usually dogged English militant endeavour the fleet did not even obtain the benefit, at the right time, of the stores provided. Frequently victuallers were blundering about for weeks looking for it, while the admirals were sending up despairing entreaties for supplies. In April, Drake wrote to the Queen ‘I have not in my lifetime known better men and possessed with gallanter minds than your Majesty’s people are for the most part.’ Whether the cause was incompetence or a criminal parsimony their fate, after having saved their country, was to perish in misery, unheeded and unhelped except by the officers who had fought with them. In the conceit of Elizabeth and her like they were only ‘the common sort.’
During the forty years that Baeshe had served the crown he had never been charged with dishonesty and he died poor. Quarles however had at once serious malpractices imputed to him as having occurred within his first year of office.[653] His accuser, a subordinate, as usual offered to do his work for 1000 marks a year less, and on examination of the charges it seems likely that some were untrue and that other defaults occurred in consequence of the orders given to him.
From 1589 the rate again fell to fivepence-halfpenny and sixpence, in harbour and at sea; but for 1590 and 1591 Quarles was allowed £2355, on account of the dearth still existing. He had petitioned that he had suffered a loss of £3172, between April 1590 and April 1591, being the difference between the rates paid to him and the cost per head of the victuals.[654] He died in 1595 and was succeeded by Marmaduke Darell, his coadjutor, ‘clerk of our averie.’[655] Till 1600 the rate remained the same although heavy extra allowances were made each year to Darell; then it was raised to sixpence halfpenny and sevenpence. In this year £738 was spent on repairs to Tower Hill where there were separate houses for beef, bacon, ling, etc., ‘the great mansion being the officers lodgings.’ The storehouses and brewhouses at Portsmouth, built by Henry VIII, still existed under the names originally given them and were repaired at a cost of £234.
One ton and a half of gross tonnage, or one of stowage, was allowed on board ship, for one month’s provisions for four men, of which the beer occupied half, wood and water a quarter, and solid food the remainder of a ton.[656] There is no reason to suppose that either Baeshe, Quarles, or Darell were either dishonest or incompetent. The terrible outbreaks of disease that occurred during nearly every long voyage were not confined to the English service and were the natural result of salt meat and fish, and beer that could not be prevented from turning sour. They could only do their best with the materials at command but which were not suitable to the larger field in which the services of English sailors were now required.
The Administration.
Benjamin Gonson was Treasurer of the Navy when Elizabeth came to the throne and held the post until his death in 1577. The number of vessels added to the Navy during his term of office shows that he was not inactive, and he was certainly a competent public servant. John Hawkyns[657] was his son-in-law, and the relationship doubtless inspired Hawkyns with the hope of succeeding him, and perhaps enabled him to infuse some of his own spirit into the management of the Navy, while Gonson was still its official head. But mere relationship, although it had its influence would not alone have sufficed, had not Hawkyns already made his name as a seaman and as an able commander. In 1567 he received a grant of the reversion to the office of Clerk of the Ships, a post he could only have looked upon as a stepping-stone, and which he never took up. In 1577, when Gonson was ill, Hawkyns petitioned the Queen, probably, although it is not specifically mentioned, for the reversion to his post, and drew up a long catalogue of unrecompensed services.[658] Gonson died in the course of a year, a landed proprietor in Essex, and a successful man, but he had told his son-in-law, when the latter was trying to obtain the reversion, that, ‘I shall pluck a thorn out of my foot and put it into yours.’ Hawkyns lived to realise the truth of the kindly warning. He commenced his duties from 1st January 1577-8, acting under Letters Patent of 18th November 1577, by which he was granted the survivorship to Gonson. For seventeen years, during the most critical period of English history, he was, in real fact, solely responsible for the efficiency of the Navy, and he, more than any other man may be said to have ‘organised victory’ for the English fleets. His duties included not only the superintendence of the work at the dockyards, but that of building, equipping, and repairing the ships, of keeping them safely moored and in good order, of the supply of good and sufficient stores, and apparently of every administrative detail except those connected with the ordnance, and of victualling and pressing the men. The technical improvements he himself invented or introduced have already been noticed. In the administration he made others, which may or may not have been advantageous, but which touched the interests of subordinates, and which resulted in his having to stand alone and carry on his work impeded by the sullen enmity of his colleagues and his inferiors.
Hawkyns owed his knighthood to Howard rather than the Queen; his reward after 1588 was to be allowed a year wherein to unravel his intricate accounts. In fact few of Elizabeth’s officials escaped her left-handed graces. Baeshe died in poverty after forty years of honest service, and Hawkyns was continually struggling to clear himself from suspicions that were kept hanging over him, but from which he was given no proper opportunity to free himself. Elizabeth’s favours and bounties were reserved for court gallants of smoother fibre than were these men. In 1594, shortly before his last unhappy voyage, Hawkyns founded a hospital at Chatham for ten poor mariners and shipwrights. He, with Drake, established the ‘Chatham Chest,’ for disabled seamen, and it should be remembered to his honour that, in an age when little care was bestowed on inferiors if they had ceased to be of any utility, he never relaxed his efforts until his craft had rescued from Spanish prisons the survivors of those under his command in 1568 whom he had been compelled to leave ashore after escaping from San Juan de Ulloa.
Charges of peculation against persons connected with maritime affairs were rife on all sides. The shipwrights quarrelled among themselves and with Hawkyns, and two of the former, Chapman and Pett, were moreover accused by outsiders of gross overcharges.[659] Captains were said to dismiss pressed men for bribes, to retain wages, and keep back arms;[660] pursers to steal provisions, to make false entries by which they obtained payments for money never advanced to the men, and to remain ashore while their ships were at sea.[661] Pursers, cooks, and boatswains, bought their places: the cooks had the victuals in their care and recouped themselves at the expense of the seamen; boatswains stripped a ship of movable fittings, on her return home, and stole rigging and cordage.[662] According to the evidence of a witness, in the inquiry of 1608, these abuses, if they did not commence, took fresh and vigorous life after the death of Hawkyns. In 1587 he recognised the theft going on and his inability to completely suppress it; ‘I thincke it wolde be mete their weare a provost marshyall attendante upon ye Lord Admirall and Offycers of the Navye to doe suche present execucyon aboorde the shippes uppon the offenders as shulde be apoynted.’[663] Accusations were not wanting during Gonson’s lifetime but the increased activity of the Navy after his death gave a wider scope both to suspicion and to actual peculation. Hawkyns was not the only one of the Principal Officers whose conduct was impeached, but in virtue of his position the brunt of attack fell upon him. There was hardly one of his duties which at some time or another did not give occasion for a charge of dishonesty.[664]
Hawkyns, if we may judge by the letters remaining in the Record Office, was more frequently in communication with Burghley, explaining his intentions and desires, than with his official chief the Lord Admiral. Either therefore Burghley was satisfied with his conduct—and there is one letter that directly supports this view—or the Lord Treasurer allowed a man whose honesty he doubted to remain in a responsible office without removing him, or adopting any new measure of supervision. The quality of the cordage had been a common cause of complaint and, in 1579, Hawkyns wrote that he had taken measures, of which he doubted not the success, to remedy this and other evils, and that he had a memorandum ready proposing a course to be followed, ‘wherebye the offyce wolld not onelye flourysshe but within a few yers be bountyfullye provyded of all maner of provycion without extra charge to her Maiestie.’[665] Subsequent events show that the suggestions he was here about to make were accepted and, as a consequence of his new methods, the clamour raised against him grew so loud that in January 1583-4 a commission sat to inquire into the condition of the ships and the conduct of the office. Nothing is known of their report but it was evidently not of a character fatal to his reputation. In another letter to Burghley shortly afterwards he attributes his success in carrying out reforms to the aid he had received from the minister’s skill,
‘in the passinge of theis greate thinges thadversaries of the worke have contynewallye opposyd themselves against me ... and their slawnders hathe gone verye farr ... onlye to be avenged of me and this servis which doth discover the corruption and ignoraunce of the tyme past.’[666]