Fortunately the services of the Royal Navy were never needed in earnest during the reign of James. How it would have broken down under the direction of Mansell may be inferred from the steady decrease in the number of seaworthy ships, and the increasing disorganisation of every department, during each year of his retention of office. The administration of the Commissioners was both competent and honest, but the grievous results of Mansell’s treasurership were too plainly shown during the earlier years of the next reign, when fleets were once more sent to sea. Ships might be replaced and open peculation checked, but the deeper wounds of spirit and discipline caused by fourteen years of license among the higher officials, and fourteen years of heartless chicanery suffered by those more lowly placed were not so readily healed, and bore their fruits for long afterwards in the habitual dishonesty of officials and workmen, in the disloyalty and half-heartedness of the seamen, and later, in the shameless knaveries that disgraced the Navy office at the close of the century, many of which had their origin under Mansell’s rule. The Commissioners were hampered in their efforts by want of money, an embarrassment from which Mansell suffered little.

Nor can the King be absolved from the responsibility of permitting Mansell’s misdeeds. He knew at least as early as 1608 of the iniquities daily occurring in every branch of the service, but he contented himself with making ‘an oration.’ He was ready enough to act as an amateur arbiter on technical details, to superintend launches, to visit the ships, and to give them euphuistic names, but that portion of his kingly office which involved protecting the helpless and punishing the guilty was sufficiently satisfied by ‘an oration.’ And had not Buckingham desired to be Lord Admiral, we have no reason to suppose that James I would have seen any cause for interference merely on behalf of seamen who were starved and robbed, or of the English people whose chief defence was being destroyed, and whose money went to enrich a ring of thieves. So far had the traditions of Plantagenet and Tudor kingliness degenerated into Stewart ‘kingcraft.’

CHARLES I
1625-1649
PART I—THE SEAMEN

The life of Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham and Earl of Nottingham, commander of the English fleet in 1588, and for thirty-three years Lord Admiral of England, may be regarded as the link between the mediæval and the modern navy. Born in 1536, and dying in 1624, his era connects the cogs and crayers, carracks and balingers of the Plantagenets, then hardly out of use, with the established Royal Navy of James I, a fleet divided into rates; controlled on present principles, and differing but little in essentials from that existing up to the introduction of armour and machine guns. His period of authority included the struggle which shaped isolated maritime essays into an organised navy, and fashioned a school of seamanship of which the traditions have never since been lost. Although we cannot point to any important measure known to be directly due to his initiative, his influence, during at any rate the earlier half of his time of office, must, judging by results, have been always exercised towards the selection of capable men for command, towards the adoption of any promising invention or improvement, and towards the encouragement and welfare of the seamen on whom the stress of work and danger must fall, and for whom he always showed a humane sympathy. At the time of trial he proved himself equal to his responsibilities; and that he was so well served by his subordinates of all grades implies a confidence and respect on their part not given merely to a peer and an officer of the crown, but to one in whose skill, care, and kindliness, experience had already taught men of all ranks to confide. Then, as now, only an able leader had good officers and willing men. He clung too long to office, and his old age was sullied by an eagerness for money amounting almost to avarice, and by the unwavering support given to one as unworthy of it as Mansell; no allegation, however, was ever made against his own honesty, either of act or purpose, and for the rest his years are his best excuse. He has a right to be judged by his season of vigorous manhood, when acting with the other sea heroes of the age of Elizabeth, among whom he holds an honourable place.

The new Political Conditions.

The reign of James I may be looked upon as a maritime truce, during which old antagonisms remained latent while new ones were springing into life. The contest with Spain was practically terminated, that power having been vanquished not so much by English superiority of seamanship as by the national decay due to causes patent to all students of history. But now other and more dangerous rivals were to be faced in France and the United Provinces, both wealthier than England, the former temporarily strong in a centralised monarchy of which the resources were to be wielded by Richelieu, and in an army reorganised and a navy created by him, the latter spiritually strong from the same sources as had stirred English thought, with traditions of mercantile supremacy reaching back to the dawn of European commerce, and proud of a successful contest with the greatest of European states. Moreover the fresh strife was to be waged under less favourable conditions than heretofore. Against Spain England occupied a position of strategical advantage; her fleets concentrated at any western port could strike at either the mother country or at the straggling, disconnected colonies of the new world. Against France and the Low Countries she was between hammer and anvil, her own harbours continually threatened, her commerce exposed to constant attack, and her fleets quite insufficient in strength for their new duties. Nor had the interval of peace been utilised in view of the approaching conflict, although it cannot be said that warnings were wanting. The royal ships were fewer in number and of little greater strength than at the death of Elizabeth; few improvements had been effected in their construction, while seamanship had greatly deteriorated, owing to the decay of the fishing industry, the lack of enterprise and long voyages, and the bad treatment of the men. England was still greatly dependent on Russia for cordage and other naval necessaries, an administrative weakness of which Spain had endeavoured to take advantage in 1597 by negotiating with the rulers of Russia and Poland for a cessation of such exports to England and Holland,[943] but a weakness which might have formidable results with enemies planted on the line of communication. The Dutch had taken the lesson to heart, for, since that year, they had made their own cordage.[944]

England, France, and Holland.

An examination of the comparative wealth and state revenues of the three countries would show the relative position of England to be still less favourable. Although the commerce of this country had increased during the reign of James, the royal revenue, except that drawn from the customs, had remained nearly stationary, while the administration was more extravagant than that of Elizabeth, and the salaries of officials and the prices of materials and labour were higher, owing to the influx of the precious metals. The wars of France and the Netherlands had indirectly given room for expansion to English commercial and speculative activity; but, in the one case, the reign of Henry IV, and, in the other, the truce with Spain had enabled both countries to meet their rival on more equal terms. The same causes operated throughout the reign of Charles, for it may be held that the place of England as a naval power in 1642 was even relatively lower than in 1625; and this without reference to the question of good or bad government, for any attempt to maintain a maritime supremacy comparative to the last years of the sixteenth century would have entailed national bankruptcy. That strength was a temporary and, in a sense, artificial condition, attributable not to the actual power or resources of the country, but to the momentary cessation of the compression of mercantile rivalry and competition, to the stimulus due to the increase of circulating coin, and in a lesser degree, to the wave of moral exaltation then moving the Teutonic races.[945] Indeed, it may be said in favour of the ship-money writs that but for the fleets they enabled Charles to send to sea, and so present a semblance of power, the strife with France and Holland might have been precipitated by nearly half a century. That they had some such intimidating influence was shown by the care taken by the French fleets, also cruising, to avoid meeting them, and the efforts of the French court to evade the question of the dominion of the narrow seas.

It was fortunate for England that the troubles of the Fronde coincided with the first Dutch war, for had the strength of France been then thrown into the balance against fleets and dockyards still organised on a Tudor scale, which had undergone little expansion during two reigns, the maritime glory of this country might have had an early end. Even if Charles had not quarrelled with his parliaments, no grants of theirs could have kept pace with the rapid growth of French prosperity; in 1609, after paying off an enormous amount of crown debts, the yearly revenue was 20,000,000 livres,[946] and in 1645 it was £3,560,000.[947] The ordinary revenue of the English crown in 1610 was £461,000, in 1623 £539,000, in 1635 £618,000,[948] and for the five years from 1637 to 1641 it averaged £895,000 a year, exclusive of ship money.[949] It has been difficult to obtain any statistics for the United Provinces, but, as the trade and commercial marine on which they relied were greater than those of England, it is obvious that a contest with France alone would have overwhelmingly strained our resources during the reign of Charles I, and that an alliance of the two states would, in all probability, have been most disastrous to us. M. Lefèvre Pontalis indeed, in the first chapter of his ‘Vie de Jean de Witt,’ states exactly that the Dutch merchant marine comprised 10,000 sail and 168,000 men; but, as he gives no authority and may be referring to any one of the first seventy-five years of the seventeenth century, the information in that form is valueless for purposes of comparison.[950]