[Footnote 65: Written in 1900. (_Nineteenth_Century_and_After_,
1901.)]
An eminent writer has recently repeated the accusations made
within the last forty years, and apparently only within that
period, against Queen Elizabeth of having starved the seamen
of her fleet by giving them food insufficient in quantity and
bad in quality, and of having robbed them by keeping them out of
the pay due to them. He also accuses the Queen, though somewhat
less plainly, of having deliberately acquiesced in a wholesale
slaughter of her seamen by remaining still, though no adequate
provision had been made for the care of the sick and wounded.
There are further charges of obstinately objecting, out of mere
stinginess, to take proper measures for the naval defence of the
country, and of withholding a sufficient supply of ammunition
from her ships when about to meet the enemy. Lest it should be
supposed that this is an exaggerated statement of the case against
Elizabeth as formulated by the writer in question, his own words
are given.
He says: 'Instead of strengthening her armaments to the utmost,
and throwing herself upon her Parliament for aid, she clung to
her moneybags, actually reduced her fleet, withheld ammunition
and the more necessary stores, cut off the sailor's food, did, in
short, everything in her power to expose the country defenceless
to the enemy. The pursuit of the Armada was stopped by the failure
of the ammunition, which, apparently, had the fighting continued
longer, would have been fatal to the English fleet.'
The writer makes on this the rather mild comment that 'treason
itself could scarcely have done worse.' Why 'scarcely'? Surely
the very blackest treason could not have done worse. He goes
on to ask: 'How were the glorious seamen, whose memory will be
for ever honoured by England and the world, rewarded after their
victory?'
This is his answer: 'Their wages were left unpaid, they were
docked of their food, and served with poisonous drink, while for
the sick and wounded no hospitals were provided. More of them
were killed by the Queen's meanness than by the enemy.'
It is safe to challenge the students of history throughout the
world to produce any parallel to conduct so infamous as that
which has thus been imputed to an English queen. If the charges
are true, there is no limit to the horror and loathing with which
we ought to regard Elizabeth. Are they true? That is the question.
I respectfully invite the attention of those who wish to know
the truth and to retain their reverence for a great historical
character, to the following examination of the accusations and of the
foundations on which they rest. It will not, I hope, be considered
presumptuous if I say that--in making this examination--personal
experience of life in the navy sufficiently extensive to embrace
both the present day and the time before the introduction of
the great modern changes in system and naval _matériel_ will be
of great help. Many things which have appeared so extraordinary
to landsmen that they could account for their occurrence only
by assuming that this must have been due to extreme culpability
or extreme folly will be quite familiar to naval officers whose
experience of the service goes back forty years or more, and
can be satisfactorily explained by them.
There is little reason to doubt that the above-mentioned charges
against the great Queen are based exclusively on statements in
Froude's History. It is remarkable how closely Froude has been
followed by writers treating of Elizabeth and her reign. He was
known to have gone to original documents for the sources of his
narrative; and it seems to have been taken for granted, not only
that his fidelity was above suspicion--an assumption with which I
do not deal now--but also that his interpretation of the meaning
of those who wrote the papers consulted must be correct. Motley,
in his 'History of the United Netherlands,' published in 1860,
had dwelt upon the shortness of ammunition and provisions in
the Channel Fleet commanded by Lord Howard of Effingham; but
he attributed this to bad management on the part of officials,
and not to downright baseness on that of Elizabeth.
Froude has placed beyond doubt his determination to make the Queen
responsible for all shortcomings.
'The Queen,' he says, 'has taken upon herself the detailed
arrangement of everything. She and she alone was responsible.
She had extended to the dockyards the same hard thrift with which
she had pared down her expenses everywhere. She tied the ships to
harbour by supplying the stores in driblets. She allowed rations
but for a month, and permitted no reserves to be provided in the
victualling offices. The ships at Plymouth, furnished from a
distance, and with small quantities at a time, were often for
many days without food of any kind. Even at Plymouth, short food
and poisonous drink had brought dysentery among them. They had
to meet the enemy, as it were, with one arm bandaged by their
own sovereign. The greatest service ever done by an English fleet
had been thus successfully accomplished by men whose wages had
not been paid from the time of their engagement, half-starved,
with their clothes in rags, and so ill-found in the necessaries
of war that they had eked out their ammunition by what they could
take in action from the enemy himself. The men expected that
at least after such a service they would be paid their wages
in full. The Queen was cavilling over the accounts, and would
give no orders for money till she had demanded the meaning of
every penny that she was charged.... Their legitimate food had
been stolen from them by the Queen's own neglect.'
We thus see that Froude has made Elizabeth personally responsible
for the short rations, the undue delay in paying wages earned, and
the fearful sickness which produced a heavy mortality amongst the
crews of her Channel Fleet; and also for insufficiently supplying
her ships with ammunition.
The quotations from the book previously referred to make it clear
that it is possible to outdo Froude in his denunciations, even where
it is on his statements that the accusers found their charges. In
his 'History of England'--which is widely read, especially by
the younger generation of Englishmen--the Rev. J. Franck Bright
tells us, with regard to the defensive campaign against the Armada:
'The Queen's avarice went near to ruin the country. The miserable
supplies which Elizabeth had alone allowed to be sent them (the
ships in the Channel) had produced all sorts of disease, and
thousands of the crews came from their great victory only to die.
In the midst of privations and wanting in all the necessaries
of life, the sailors had fought with unflagging energy, with
their wages unpaid, with ammunition supplied to them with so
stingy a hand that each shot sent on board was registered and
accounted for; with provisions withheld, so that the food of
four men had habitually to be divided among six, and that food
so bad as to be really poisonous.'
J. R. Green, in his 'History of the English People,' states that:
'While England was thrilling with the triumph over the Armada, its
Queen was coolly grumbling over the cost and making her profit
out of the spoiled provisions she had ordered for the fleet that
had saved her.'
The object of each subsequent historian was to surpass the originator
of the calumnies against Elizabeth. In his sketch of her life in
the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' Dr. Augustus Jessopp
asserts that the Queen's ships 'were notoriously and scandalously
ill-furnished with stores and provisions for the sailors, and
it is impossible to lay the blame on anyone but the Queen.' He
had previously remarked that the merchant vessels which came to
the assistance of the men-of-war from London and the smaller
ports 'were as a rule far better furnished than the Queen's ships,'
which were 'without the barest necessaries.' After these extracts
one from Dr. S. R. Gardiner's 'Student's History of England'
will appear moderate. Here it is: 'Elizabeth having with her
usual economy kept the ships short of powder, they were forced
to come back' from the chase of the Armada.
The above allegations constitute a heavy indictment of the Queen.
No heavier could well be brought against any sovereign or government.
Probably the first thing that occurs to anyone who, knowing what
Elizabeth's position was, reads the tremendous charges made against
her will be, that--if they are true--she must have been without a
rival in stupidity as well as in turpitude. There was no person
in the world who had as much cause to desire the defeat of the
Armada as she had. If the Duke of Medina Sidonia's expedition
had been successful she would have lost both her throne and her
life. She herself and her father had shown that there could be a
short way with Queens--consort or regnant--whom you had in your
power, and whose existence might be inconvenient to you. Yet,
if we are to believe her accusers, she did her best to ensure
her own dethronement and decapitation. 'The country saved itself
and its cause in spite of its Queen.'
How did this extraordinary view of Elizabeth's conduct arise?
What had Froude to go upon when he came forward as her accuser?
These questions can be answered with ease. Every Government that
comes near going to war, or that has gone to war, is sure to
incur one of two charges, made according to circumstances. If
the Government prepares for war and yet peace is preserved, it
is accused of unpardonable extravagance in making preparations.
Whether it makes these on a sufficient scale or not, it is accused,
if war does break out--at least in the earlier period of the
contest--of not having done enough. Political opponents and the
'man in the street' agree in charging the administration with
panic profusion in one case, and with criminal niggardliness in
the other. Elizabeth hoped to preserve peace. She had succeeded
in keeping out of an 'official' war for a long time, and she had
much justification for the belief that she could do so still
longer. 'She could not be thoroughly persuaded,' says Mr. David
Hannay,[66] 'that it was hopeless to expect to avert the Spanish
invasion by artful diplomacy.' Whilst reasonable precautions
were not neglected, she was determined that no one should be
able to say with truth that she had needlessly thrown away money
in a fright. For the general naval policy of England at the time,
Elizabeth, as both the nominal and the real head of the Government,
is properly held responsible. The event showed the perfect efficiency
of that policy.
[Footnote 66: _A_Short_History_of_the_Royal_Navy_, pp. 96, 97.]
The war having really come, it was inevitable that the Government,
and Elizabeth as its head, should be blamed sooner or later for not
having made adequate provision for it. No one is better entitled
to speak on the naval policy of the Armada epoch than Mr. Julian
Corbett,[67] who is not disposed to assume that the Queen's action
was above criticism. He says that 'Elizabeth has usually been
regarded as guilty of complete and unpardonable inaction.' He
explains that 'the event at least justified the Queen's policy.
There is no trace of her having been blamed for it at the time at
home; nor is there any reason to doubt it was adopted sagaciously
and deliberately on the advice of her most capable officers.'
Mr. David Hannay, who, as an historian, rightly takes into
consideration the conditions of the age, points out that 'Elizabeth
was a very poor sovereign, and the maintenance of a great fleet
was a heavy drain upon her resources.' He adds: 'There is no
reason to suppose that Elizabeth and her Lord Treasurer were
careless of their duty; but the Government of the time had very
little experience in the maintenance of great military forces.'
[Footnote 67: _Drake_and_the_Tudor_Navy_, 1898, vol. ii. p. 117.]
If we take the charges against her in detail, we shall find that
each is as ill-founded as that of criminal neglect of naval
preparations generally. The most serious accusation is that with
regard to the victuals. It will most likely be a surprise to
many people to find that the seamen of Elizabeth were victualled
on a more abundant and much more costly scale than the seamen of
Victoria. Nevertheless, such is the fact. In 1565 the contract
allowance for victualling was 4-1/2d. a day for each man in harbour,
and 5d. a day at sea. There was also an allowance of 4d. a man
per month at sea and 8d. in harbour for 'purser's necessaries.'
Mr. Oppenheim, in whose valuable work[68] on naval administration
the details as to the Elizabethan victualling system are to be
found, tells us that in 1586 the rate was raised to 6d. a day
in harbour and 6-1/2d. at sea; and that in 1587 it was again
raised, this time to 6-1/2d. in harbour and 7d. at sea. These
sums were intended to cover both the cost of the food and storage,
custody, conveyance, &c., the present-day 'establishment charges.'
The repeated raising of the money allowance is convincing proof
that the victualling arrangements had not been neglected, and
that there was no refusal to sanction increased expenditure to
improve them. It is a great thing to have Mr. Oppenheim's high
authority for this, because he is not generally favourable to
the Queen, though even he admits that it 'is a moot point' how
far she was herself responsible.
[Footnote 68: _The_Administration_of_the_Royal_Navy,_
_1509-1660_. London, 1896.]
If necessary, detailed arguments could be adduced to show that
to get the present value of the sums allowed in 1588 we ought
to multiply them by six[69] The sum allowed for each man's daily
food and the 'establishment charges'--increased as they had been
in 1586--did little more than cover the expenditure; and, though
it does not appear that the contractor lost money, he nevertheless
died a poor man. It will be hardly imputed to Elizabeth for iniquity
that she did not consider that the end of government was the
enrichment of contractors. The fact that she increased the money
payment again in 1587 may be accepted as proof that she did not
object to a fair bargain. As has been just said, the Elizabethan
scale of victualling was more abundant than the early Victorian,
and not less abundant than that given in the earlier years of
King Edward VII.[70] As shown by Mr. Hubert Hall and Thorold
Rogers, in the price-lists which they publish, the cost of a week's
allowance of food for a man-of-war's man in 1588, in the money of
the time, amounted to about 1s. 11-1/2d., which, multiplied by
six, would be about 11s. 9d. of our present money. The so-called
'savings price' of the early twentieth century allowance was
about 9-1/2d. a day, or 5s. 6-1/2d. weekly. The 'savings price'
is the amount of money which a man received if he did not take
up his victuals, each article having a price attached to it for
that purpose. It may be interesting to know that the full allowance
was rarely, perhaps never, taken up, and that some part of the
savings was till the last, and for many years had been, almost
invariably paid.
[Footnote 69: See Mr. Hubert Hall's _Society_in_the_Elizabethan_
_Age_, and Thorold Rogers's _History_of_Agriculture_and_Prices_,
vols. v. and vi. Froude himself puts the ratio at six to one.]
[Footnote 70: It will be convenient to compare the two scales
in a footnote, observing that--as I hope will not be thought
impertinent--I draw on my own personal experience for the more
recent, which was in force for some years after I went to sea.