The first keeper of the ships under Henry V was William Catton by Letters Patent of 18th July 1413, who from the third to the eighth year of the reign of Henry IV had been bailiff of Winchelsea, and who subsequently held the bailiffship of Rye conjointly with his naval office. He was succeeded from 3rd February 1420 by the before-mentioned William Soper. Berd’s name only occurs in connection with the Grace Dieu. The river Hamble, on Southampton water, was then, and down to the close of the century, the favourite roadstead for the royal ships lying up, and was defended at its entrance by a tower of wood which cost £40,[27] a storehouse with a workshop[28] was also built at Southampton, and one existed in London near the Tower. If the vessels were not built in royal yards or by royal workmen we may infer the control of a crown officer from the fact of a pension of fourpence a day having been granted, when broken down in health, to John Hoggekyns, ‘master-carpenter of the king’s ships,’ and builder of the Grace Dieu, the first known of the long line of master shipwrights reaching down to the present century.
The fittings of ships do not differ materially from those quoted by Sir N. H. Nicolas under Edward III; we find a ‘bitakyll’[29] covered with lead, and pumps were now in use. Cordage was chiefly from Bridport, but occasionally from Holland, and Oleron canvas was bought abroad. Flags were of St Marie, St Edward, Holy Trinity, St George, the Swan, Antelope, Ostrich Feathers, and the king’s arms. The Trinity Royal had a painted wooden leopard with a crown of copper gilt, perhaps as a figure head. The largest anchor of the Jesus weighed 2224lb. The balingers, besides being fully rigged, carried sometimes forty or fifty oars, twenty-four feet long apiece, for use in calms or to work to windward. But even a vessel like the Trinity Royal had forty oars and a large one called a ‘steering skull,’ to assist the rudder we may suppose. The fore and stern stages were now becoming permanent structures. Two ‘somerhuches’ were built on the Holigost and Trinity Royal. Somerhuche was the summer-castle or poop of the early sixteenth century, and the cost, £4, 11s 3d, equivalent now to some £70, seems too great for a mere timber staging.[30] Sails were sometimes decorated with the king’s arms or badges, but probably only in the chief ships and for holiday use.
Henry VI:—The Sale of the Navy.
After the death of Henry V one of the first orders of the Council was to direct the sale of the bulk of the Royal Navy.[31] Modern writers who hold that the spirit of the ‘Libel of English Policie’ was that representing the ideas of the time must explain this startling contrast between fact and theory. The truth is that the ‘Libel’ described, not existing conditions, but those that the writer desired should exist; the whole poem is a lament over past glories and an exhortation to retrieve the maritime position of the country, but the poet did not look at what lay behind a couple of victories at sea and the capture of Calais.[32] After the real triumphs of Henry V and the memories associated with Edward III, the state of things in the Channel doubtless appeared very evil, although they were hardly worse during the reign of Henry VI than was usual, and not nearly so bad as under James I and Charles I. The poem was really an attempt to obtain continuity in naval policy, a thing of which the meaning is, even now, scarcely understood, and which in 1436, when the man-at-arms was the ideal fighting unit, had as little chance of being accepted and carried out as though it had preached religious toleration.
Changed character of the Keeper’s appointment.
By Letters Patent of 5th March 1423, William Soper, merchant of Southampton, a collector of customs and subsidies at that port, and mayor of the town in 1416 and 1424, was again appointed ‘Keeper and Governor’ of the King’s ships, under the control[33] of Nicholas Banastre, comptroller of the customs there; no such clause existed in the patent of 1420. For himself and a clerk Soper was allowed £40 a year, but Banastre was not given any salary. The appointment is noteworthy for more than one reason. It is the first, and apparently the only, instance in which a keeper of the ships acted under the supervision of another officer little his superior in the official hierarchy, and it, with the previous patent of 1420, marks the commencement of a custom frequent enough afterwards of naming well-to-do merchants to posts in the administrative service of the navy. Besides greater business capacity such a man was useful to the government in that he was expected to advance money, or purchase stores, on his own credit when the crown finance was temporarily strained. There is little doubt that Soper’s appointment was of this character, and that his salary, was really by way of interest on money advanced by him for the construction of the Holigost and Gabriel, and for other purposes, years before. The first named ship was built in 1414, the other perhaps later, but it was not until 1430 that he received the sum which represented the final instalment of their cost.[34] By the will of Henry V the whole of his personal possessions were ordered to be sold and the proceeds handed over to his executors to pay his debts. They received, in 1430, one thousand marks from the sale of the men-of-war, the remainder of the money obtained from this source being retained by Soper in settlement of his claims dating from 1414.
The Navy a personal possession of the King.
The transaction is interesting both as showing that the Council did not consider the men-of-war—if compulsorily put up to auction under the will—of sufficient importance to buy in, and as illustrating the fact that the royal ships were personal possessions of the sovereign in which the nation had no interest of ownership. Tunnage and poundage had been granted for ‘the safe keeping of the sea,’ but the application of the money was at the discretion of the king. He might use it to pay hired merchantmen or he might build ships of his own with it, or with the revenue of the crown estates to fulfil the same purpose; in neither case had Parliament any voice in the employment of the money. While calling upon the Cinque Ports to fulfil the conditions of their charters and impressing merchant ships throughout the country, he might keep his own navy idle; there was no national right to profit by its existence. The tunnage and poundage grant did not interfere with the king’s title to seize every ship in the kingdom, and was only an attempt to secure payment to owners, and the wages and victualling of the crews; it in no way placed upon him the responsibility of providing ships, the supply of which was ensured by the unrestricted exercise of the prerogative, and that prerogative was not used any less frequently because of the existence of the tunnage and poundage. As years passed on and the power of the trading classes increased, and the need for specialised fighting ships grew greater, they made their ethical right to the use of the navy for ordinary purposes felt in practice and implicitly recognised by the crown. Hence the distinction became less and less marked but the note of possessive separation between the ‘King’s Navy Royal’ and the trading navy which was, legally, also the king’s and is so referred to in sixteenth century papers, is to be traced to as late as 1649. Since that date the title ‘Royal Navy,’ although associated with our proudest national memories is, historically, a misnomer as applied to the navy of the state.
Piracy.
In 1425, Parliament raised tunnage and poundage to three shillings on the tun of wine and one shilling in the pound on merchandise, at which rate it continued. Probably very little of it was applied to the specific purpose for which it was given, the struggle for the crown of France absorbing every available item of revenue for the support of armies; in 1450 one of the articles against the Duke of Suffolk was that he had caused money given for the defence of the realm and safety of the sea to be otherwise employed. There still remains a sufficient number of complaints and petitions to show to what little purpose our maritime forces were used. In 1432, the Commons formally declared that Danish ships had plundered those of Hull, to the amount of £5000, and others to £20,000 in one year, and requested that letters of reprisal might be issued.[35] Such attempts to clear the Channel as the government recognised sometimes bore a suspicious resemblance to piracy legalised by success. In 1435, Wm. Morfote of Winchelsea petitioned for a pardon, having been, as he euphemistically put it, ‘in Dover Castle a long time and afterward come oute as wele as he myghte,’ and then, ‘of his gode hertly intente,’ had been at sea with 100 men to attack the king’s enemies. He found it difficult to obtain provisions which seems to have been his only motive in asking for a pardon. The answer to the petition, while granting the pardon for ‘an esy fyne,’ more plainly calls him an escaped prisoner.[36] He was member for Winchelsea in 1428.