In October 1642 the Parliament announced that henceforth one-third of the value of a prize was to be divided among officers and crew, in addition to wages. Its effect was undoubted since from February 1643 to April 1649 prize goods were sold for £123,200, and this must represent an enormously higher original value.[1240] But out of this sum officers and men only got £14,465, while the two collectors, Thomas Smith and John Hall took £4989, Warwick £5985, and the expenses of storage, lading and unlading, etc., were £17,000. The delay and deductions in the payment of the thirds were among the chief causes of the trouble the Commonwealth experienced with the seamen in its earlier years, and in this account we see quite extraneous charges borne upon it. The Treasurer of the Navy took £30,000 from it, Augier, the parliamentary agent in Paris, £610, the secretary and usher of the committee of foreign affairs their salaries, and it had to meet various other items which would now go under the head of secret service money. The Dutch system of rewards for captures was in working order long before ours, and was liberal enough in amount. Privateers were allowed, beyond the value of the ship and goods taken, a state reward of from 8000 to 30,000 guilders, the latter sum being given for any vessel of more than 100 lasts burden.[1241] If the enemy was sunk at sea instead of being brought into port, only half these sums were paid.
Naval Expenditure.
The following table, compiled from the Audit Office Declared Accounts for the several years, gives the ordinary and extraordinary expenditure in round figures, as well as that of ship money, of which £1,028,702 was demanded by writ, and £716,528 was paid over to the Navy Treasurer.[1242] The estimates for the ordinary and extraordinary are for routine, naval, and dockyard work and the Channel squadron, and do not include the cost of the expeditions of the first three years or of any of the later fleets. The amounts in the last column but one are those actually paid by Sir William Russell out of tunnage and poundage, anticipated revenue, and other sources. For instance, in 1625 he spent £170,000, of which he received £119,000 from the exchequer, £40,000 from tenths, fifteenths, and subsidies, and ‘from the French king’s agent’ towards fitting out of Vanguard £4800.[1243] The last column gives the sums paid out of the ship-money receipts for the corresponding fleets; no doubt much of the balance went to clear off old debts, to pay for ship building, as in the case of the Sovereign, and other purposes:—
| Estimates for ordinary and extraordinary navy and victualling | Dockyard expenditure, ordinary and extraordinary | Cordage | Actually expended by Treasurer | Paid out of ship-money | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chatham | Woolwich | Deptford | Portsmouth | |||||
| £ | £ | £ | £ | £ | £ | £ | £ | |
| 1625 | 28,000 | 170,000 | ||||||
| 1626 | 28,700 | 117,000 | ||||||
| 1627[1244] | 40,500 | 8445 | 1522 | 1714 | 370 | 63,000 | ||
| 1628 | 40,800 | 5860 | 704 | 3171 | 359 | 110,000 | ||
| 1629 | 47,000 | 57,000 | ||||||
| 1630 | 34,700 | 4977 | 185 | 2141 | 1460 | 4805 | 102,000 | |
| 1631 | 34,200 | 46,000 | ||||||
| 1632 | 27,900 | 6700 | 97 | 1025 | 1591 | 4455 | 21,000 | |
| 1633 | 28,600 | 7453 | 100 | 1233 | 1834 | 4145 | 69,000 | |
| 1634 | 31,300 | 48,000 | ||||||
| 1635 | 31,200 | 85,000 | 88,000 | |||||
| 1636 | 15,500 | 5050 | 625 | 3029 | 3000 | 3265 | 58,000 | 136,000 |
| 1637 | 14,200 | 12,500 | 122,000 | |||||
| 1638 | 20,300 | 22,000 | 109,000 | |||||
| 1639 | 38,100 | 58,000 | 47,500 | |||||
| 1640 | 38,800 | 78,000 | 44,500 | |||||
| 1641 | 38,500 | 88,000 | ||||||
| 1642 | 28,700 | 66,000 | ||||||
| 13th May 1645 to 31st Dec. 1646 | 392,000 | |||||||
| 1647 | 178,000 | |||||||
| 1st Jan 1648 to 12th May 1649 | 22,000 | 3414 | 2247 | 5189 | 336,000 | |||
The disbursements during the civil war years by no means represented the whole of the naval expenses, there being always hundreds of thousands of pounds owing. The authorities, however, took care that the executive branches should be comparatively punctually paid, owners of hired ships and purveyors of stores being the principal sufferers by delay. There is another paper[1245] which gives the amounts for the years wanting in the official returns, and is perhaps more reliable than them in that it includes the total expenses, both in money paid and liabilities incurred. In view of the general belief that this country was vastly weaker in ships than Holland at the outbreak of the first Dutch war of 1652, the strength of the parliamentary fleets deserves especial notice:—
| Men-of-war | Armed Merchantmen | Cost of Men-of-war | Cost of Merchantmen | Total[1246] | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £ | s | d | £ | s | d | £ | s | d | |||
| 1642 | 19[1247] | 23 | 122,988 | 16 | 3 | 74,342 | 8 | 0 | 204,810 | 16 | 3 |
| 1643, S.[1248] | 36 | 32 | 133,760 | 3 | 0 | 74,881 | 11 | 6 | } 332,869 | 15 | 3 |
| 1643, W.[1249] | 20 | ||||||||||
| 1644, S. | 36 | 23 | 106,349 | 10 | 4 | 49,088 | 15 | 0 | } 246,970 | 16 | 4 |
| 1644, W. | 18 | ||||||||||
| 1645, S. | 34 | 25 | 93,161 | 3 | 9 | 43,947 | 4 | 6 | } 256,495 | 5 | 0[1250] |
| 1645, W. | 29 | ||||||||||
| 1646, S. | 45 | 20 | 138,194 | 6 | 4 | 42,931 | 8 | 0 | } 300,356 | 18 | 0[1250] |
| 1646, W. | 26 | ||||||||||
| 1647, S. | 43 | 16 | 124,395 | 12 | 0 | 44,743 | 8 | 0 | } 244,655 | 0 | 0[1251] |
| 1647, W. | 29 | ||||||||||
Vane acted under an ‘ordinance of both houses of 8th August 1642, concerning subsidy of tunnage and poundage,’ and simply continued the forms and system used by his predecessors.[1252]
Dockyards:—Portsmouth.