Among the malpractices examined into at some length by the commissioners was the sale and purchase of places, already referred to. Hugh Lidyard was made clerk of the checque at Woolwich by Sir John Trevor, for which he was to pay Trevor £20 yearly and a hogshead of wine; another witness deposed that ‘of late years the general way of preferment is by money and few that he knoweth ... come freely to their places.’ Pursers paid from £70 to £120 for their posts, boatswains £20, and cooks £30. Robert Hooker gave Edward Masters, of Nottingham’s household, £130 for the pursership of the Repulse, this he sold for the same amount and bought that of the Quittance for £100. His profit he made by victualling the men for sixpence a day, and he admitted that at least ten more men were carried on the books than were on board. Naturally, as promotion went by length of purse,
‘the officers put in and keep in whom they list though they be never so unfit, and put out whom they list though never so fit, and woe be to him that taketh exception to any man though he be never so unruly ... it breaketh the hearts of them that are worthy.’
It was equally natural that men who had paid heavily for their employments were unscrupulous in recouping themselves. ‘The captains being for the most part poor gentlemen did mend their fortunes by combining with the pursers,’ who were in league with the victuallers to send in returns of more men than were on board the ships. Boatswains and gunners sold their stores, shipwrights stole timber, and captains sheltered and took bribes from pirates, or turned their vessels into merchantmen to enable owners of goods to evade payment of customs. The Surveyors of victualling were accused of overcharging and of frauds to at least £4000, in four years.
The Reorganisation of 1618.
James had every reason to sharply check the waste going on, for the crown debt, which was only £400,000 at his accession, had mounted to £1,000,000 in 1608, while the deficit in revenue was £70,000 a year.[867] But ‘an oration’ in broad Scotch from the lips of the conceited pedant staggering under the weight of the Tudor crown did not prove an effective method of reform. The old knaveries continued even as though James had not made a speech. In 1613 Cotton attempted, through the intervention of Northampton and Rochester, to obtain another inquiry; but his efforts failed through the influence of Nottingham and the intrigues of Mansell. In 1618 the naval administration was worse than ever, and other departments were equally corrupt; ‘the household was one mass of peculation, and extravagance.’[868] Even now Sir Lionel Cranfield, who was the moving spirit in the endeavour to purify the public service, might have failed had not Buckingham himself desired to occupy the post of Lord Admiral. Nottingham at last retired with a gratuity of £3000 and another pension of £1000 a year. Mansell was succeeded, from the 10th May 1618, by Sir William Russell, a merchant, who paid him for his place and who was wealthy enough to advance subsequently £30,000 towards fitting out the Cadiz expedition of 1625.[869] It is probable that, from his lack of technical knowledge, Russell’s direction, if more honest than Mansell’s, would have been as unsuccessful had he been entrusted with control, but his duties were financial only and confined to the keeping of accounts. The other officers were ‘sequestered from their posts’ and their business entrusted to a board of Navy Commissioners, appointed for five years and responsible to the Lord Admiral. Of the Commissioners, Sir John Coke was the leading spirit and received £300 a year; one was in charge of Chatham, with a salary of £200 a year; another, William Burrell, a shipbuilder, was placed at Deptford to supervise all building and repairs, for which he received £300 a year; and Thomas Norreys acted as Surveyor with £200 a year.[870] Immediate benefit was obtained from the reform; the fleet and dockyards were kept in repair, theft was checked, and two new ships a year were built in five consecutive years, all for less money than Mansell had squandered in doing nothing efficiently. Buckingham appears, also, to have not only given his subordinates a loyal support but to have been honestly anxious to obtain the best men for the service, and to render officers and sailors contented. The chronic emptiness, however, of the treasury, for which he was largely answerable, made his endeavours in this last direction of less avail.
The Navy Commissioners.
The new Commissioners,[871] on entering office, sent in a report of the state of affairs they found existing in the various naval departments;[872] all the frauds of 1608 were still flourishing, with some new ones due to the lapse of time. Places were still sold, and at such high prices that the buyers ‘profess openly that they cannot live unless they may steal’; the cost of the Navy had of late been some £53,000 a year, ‘that could not keep it from decay.’ For building a new ship in place of the Bonaventure £5700 had been allowed but, although £1700 had been paid on account of it, no new vessel had been commenced, and though this same ship ‘was broken up above seven years past yet the King hath paid £63 yearly for keeping her.’ Further, ‘the Advantage was burnt about five years since and yet keepeth at the charge of £104, 9s 5d; the Charles was disposed of in Scotland two years since and costeth £60, 16s 10d for keeping.’ For repairing the Merhonour, Defiance, Vanguard, and Dreadnought, £23,500 had been paid
‘for which eight new ships might have been built as the accounts of the East India Company do prove; yet all this while the King’s ships decayed and if the Merhonour were repaired she was left so imperfect that before her finishing she begins again to decay.’
In nine years £108,000 had been charged for cordage, and the Commissioners express their intention of reducing the expenditure on this item by two-thirds.