In 1637 they appear to have been promised that if they could obtain their augmentation without going to the royal coffers for it they were welcome to whatever they could get. Accordingly they point out that in this year they had prevented fraudulent overcharge on the part of owners of hired merchantmen to the extent of £1874, and they therefore desired to divide the whole of this sum.[1190] What advantage this would be to the crown they omitted to say. They were exceptionally unlucky, seeing that most officials had only to petition in order to receive. In one case £20 a year was taken off the salaries of the masters attendant, but, when these complained, they had each £40 a year added and with less work. Their ill fortune was, perhaps, due to the disfavour with which the Lords of the Admiralty seem to have usually viewed them, and it was not until the era of the Long Parliament, when, from motives of fear, all wages were raised, that they shared in the general increase.
None of these Officers was of any historic interest. For two and a half years, between 1627[1191] and 1629, Sir Sackville Crowe was Treasurer, but he, to put as favourable a construction as possible on what happened, got his accounts into confusion to the extent of £1500.[1192] Before and after Crowe, Sir Wm. Russell was sole Treasurer[1193] till 1639,[1194] then for two years with the younger Vane,[1195] and again in 1642 by himself till August, after which Vane alone was reappointed. Russell was a mere man of affairs, who confined himself to his accounts, and seems never to have ventured an opinion on anything outside them. Sir Thos. Aylesbury was the first Surveyor of the Navy in 1628, and he, when he resigned, was succeeded by Kenrick Edisbury,[1196] perhaps the most observant and energetic of the chief Officers, who held the post till his death in 1638, when he was succeeded by Wm. Batten,[1197] who was appointed ‘during pleasure,’ instead of by patent for life, as in preceding cases.[1198] Sir Guildford Slingsby had been Comptroller of the Navy under Mansell, and was again given the same office in February 1628 by Charles. The main incidents of his second tenure which have come down to us relate to his assaults on his inferiors, and his quarrels with his brother Officers. Immediately after his appointment, John Wells, the storekeeper of the Navy, petitioned that, although the other officers had allotted him lodgings in the Navy Office, Slingsby, to accommodate his family and servants, ‘hath violently taken his lodgings from him.’[1199] In 1629 his colleagues complained to the Lords Commissioners that he had felled with a pocket pistol, and otherwise maltreated, the man in charge of the Navy Office, and kept him out of the house, notwithstanding their wish to reinstate him.[1200] Slingsby died in 1632, and Sir H. Palmer succeeded him. The most notable event in Palmer’s official career was his excuse for selling government cordage and pocketing the proceeds—‘because his predecessors had done the like.’ He subsequently amended this defence by saying that he had spent the money on naval necessaries.[1201] Denis Fleming and Thos. Barlow[1202] were successively Clerks of the Navy; and Edward Nicholas, who had been Buckingham’s secretary, became secretary to the Commissioners of the Admiralty.
Till 1628 William Burrell was in charge of all shipbuilding and repairs, and in 1629 Burrell and Phineas Pett were made assistants to the Principal Officers. Burrell died in 1630, and from January 1631 Pett became himself a Principal Officer, being three months junior to Sir Kenelm Digby, who had been appointed in the previous October. Neither Digby nor Pett had any defined duties, and in Digby’s case the position seems to have been almost entirely honorary, although at one time he was treating with Mervyn for the latter’s command in the Channel. Mervyn asked £5000, his arrears of pay, to his rights in which Digby would presumably succeed, and the £3000 he had given for his admiralship of the narrow seas.[1203] It would be a matter of some interest to know to whom that £3000 was paid, but there had been obviously no secrecy in the transaction.
After Buckingham’s death the Lords Commissioners met twice a week, sometimes at Wallingford House and sometimes in the Council Chamber at Whitehall. In March 1638 the child Duke of York was made Lord Admiral for life,[1204] and Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland, his acting substitute during the King’s pleasure;[1205] the Navy therefore, ceased to be governed by commission from that date. In 1628 the Principal Officers met at St Martin’s Lane, but in March 1630 some rooms were taken for them in a house in Mincing Lane at a rental of £30 a year.[1206] Thenceforward expenses incurred in relation to that house appear in many of the accounts. It cost £150 for furnishing, twelve months’ beer there £13, 8s,[1207] yearly water rate £1, 6s 8d, but only 3s 6d for Christmas gratuities.
Although in 1628 the four Officers had been reinstated in a portion of their former authority, they by no means escaped the control of, and occasionally severe censure from, the Lords of the Admiralty. Sometimes my Lords considered that their sympathies ran rather with their subordinates than with the King’s interests, and, as most of them had been suspended for acts similar to those they were called upon to condemn in minor officials, the charge was not unfounded.[1208] In the fleet of 1637 embezzlement of stores by the boatswains had been very general. There was nothing unusual in this, but the resolve of the Lords Commissioners to punish the guilty persons appeared to strike the Principal Officers as both unusual and unfair. Their pleas on behalf of these men provoked the Commissioners to write, ‘We observe that you are more apt to intercede for those that are most faulty than to certify what you find against other boatswains ... it is time by due punishment to break up this custom of the boatswains’ exorbitant wasting of his majesty’s stores, the continuance whereof so long with impunity hath, it seems, made the Officers think it almost lawful.’[1209] On another occasion they were told, ‘If you were as careful of his majesty’s service as you are to cast all such unfitting troubles on us, you would gain much more reputation and esteem to yourselves’;[1210] and, once again, reference was made to their ‘supine negligence.’ While they were exposed to these snubs from their superiors, one of their inferiors certainly, and others probably, expressed opinions of them with the same frankness. They complained to the Lords that Francis Brooke, storekeeper at Portsmouth, ‘used many base words of ourselves, calling us loggerheads.’ Perhaps the Admiralty agreed with him; at any rate it is not found that Brooke was reprimanded, so that the only consolation left to them was their salaries.
Observers who acquitted the Principal Officers of intentional fraud accused them of incompetence. They were said not to know where their respective duties began or ended, but the conditions under which they worked were not favourable to success in management. Each one kept his books at his own residence, and neither sufficient time nor assistance was allowed for the various duties of inspection or bookkeeping which fell to him. Moreover they were compelled to purchase stores from persons holding patents for the sale of special articles such as iron, canvas, etc., a necessity sufficient to account for any depth of badness in the supply.
Frauds and Thefts.
Whether the confusion was due to neglect or overwork, the effect on the lower ranks of naval employés was the same. From the first year of the reign we have a continuous record of carelessness and fraud, which neither Commissioners nor Lords Commissioners seem to have been able to stamp out. In 1625, on board the ships at sea, pursers charged on the full number of men supposed to be mustered, and shared the profits made on those absent with their captains, while gunners and boatswains each kept from two to five servants who were rated as seamen, but who were boys and landsmen, and whose wages were retained by the officers. When the vessels were laid up the shipkeepers were usually drunk or absent. Captain Joshua Downing one night rowed down the Medway, and ‘might have gone on board all ships but three and done any mischief,’ and ‘in these twenty years last past all the navy hath not bred five able sailors nor two able gunners.’[1211] Of 330 shipkeepers, in 1634, only 42 were ‘the King’s own men’; the rest were hired servants or apprentices, their pay being received by the ship, or dockyard, officers who hired them.[1212] In 1638 matters were as bad. John Holland, then paymaster of the Navy, wrote that the shipkeepers and apprentice servants of the officers were coachmen, tailors, gardeners, etc., and that the apprentices were dismissed at the end of their term as ignorant as when they joined.[1213] Robberies were frequent. ‘Generally the watchman is the thief and the shipkeeper the cabin-breaker;’ but the ship and dockyard officers dared not prosecute, because such a course would have called attention to their own delinquencies.[1214] Downing’s experience did not evoke much attention, since, in the following year, it was reported from Chatham, ‘There are divers that are upon the king’s majesty’s charges both for victuals and wages, but give no attendance nor do no service; neither can we take any muster of any man but just at dinner time, for no longer than they are tied by the teeth are they to be kept on board,’[1215] this being in the full stress of war time.
When captains were turning their men-of-war into cargo boats, to enable merchants to defraud the customs,[1216] we need not be surprised that their inferior officers allowed themselves license in theft, and the references to carpenters, gunners, boatswains, and pursers, about the illicit sale of ships’ stores are innumerable. That fortunes were made from ‘chips’ taken out of the dock yards is well known. ‘The infinite abuse and prejudice the king has in all or most of his yards under colour of chips is intolerable;‘[1217] again, ‘a great quantity of wood is carried away by workmen when they go to breakfast, at dinner time, and at night under colour of chips; they cut up good timber and call it chips;‘[1218] and in some yards the shipwrights built huts in which to store their plunder. In one case a lighter containing 8000 tree-nails, said to be made from chips, but more probably stolen from Deptford yard, was seized, and the destined receiver was found to be one of the government shipwrights who also owned a private shipbuilding yard. Some of the dockyard workmen converted the storehouses into lodgings for themselves and their families, and this abuse continued until the parliamentary Navy Committee made a clean sweep of them.[1219]
Of all the subordinate officials, the pursers, as in later times, were the most acquisitive, having the greatest opportunities. Most places in the Navy were for sale, but theirs were considered so profitable that they were eagerly sought. In 1626 Nicholas was informed that a person, lately mayor of Rochester, would give him £100 for the appointment to the Anne Royal, or £60 for either of two others. As the ex-mayor could only sell again, the eventual holder must have anticipated a handsome income. One article on which he would make it was the beer; the brewer delivered this by beer measure, but the purser served it out by wine measure, pocketing the value of the difference.[1220] Sometimes he was a pluralist. One man was cook of the Bear and purser of the George, and executed both places by deputy. Of course pursers like the others, sold their stores ashore. But one of their particular sources of profit was the men’s clothes. In 1623 wearing apparel was first ordered to be provided for the men, and to be sold to them at cost price, subject to a commission of one shilling in the pound for the purser. In 1628 it was being sold, when obtained, at £1, 7s a suit, to be deducted from the wages, but, as occurred with other naval requisites, the contractors frequently refused to furnish supplies without prepayment. By 1636 the commissions had increased. The merchant had to pay two shillings in the pound for entering the clothes on board; the paymaster and purser took each a further shilling on all articles sold, and of course the unfortunate sailor had to meet all these extra and illegal perquisites, the result being that ‘the men had rather starve than buy them.’ The original purpose of the supply was ‘to avoyde nastie beastlyness by contynuall wearinge of one suite of clothes, and therebie boddilie diseases and unwholesome ill smells in every ship.’ The whole of the clothes served out during the earlier years of the reign was not a quantity likely to have much improved the unpleasantly suggestive conditions of this passage.