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SAMUEL PEPYS AND THE ROYAL NAVY
* * * * *
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
C. F. CLAY, Manager
LONDON: FETTER LANE, E. C. 4
NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
BOMBAY }
CALCUTTA } MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd.
MADRAS }
TORONTO: J. M. DENT AND SONS, Ltd.
TOKYO: MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
* * * * *
SAMUEL PEPYS AND THE ROYAL NAVY
Lees Knowles Lectures Delivered
at Trinity College in Cambridge,
6, 13, 20 and 27 November, 1919
by
J. R. TANNER, Litt.D.
Fellow of St John's College
Cambridge
At the UNIVERSITY PRESS
1920
PREFACE
In 1919 the writer was appointed by the Master and Fellows of Trinity
College, Cambridge, Lees Knowles Lecturer in Military and Naval History
for the academical year 1919-20, and the lectures are now printed
almost exactly in the form in which they were delivered in November,
1919.
The object of the Lecturer was to present in a convenient form the
general conclusions about the administration of the Royal Navy from the
Restoration to the Revolution arrived at in the introductory volume of
his _Catalogue of Pepysian Manuscripts_, published by the Navy Records
Society in 1903 with a dedication, in the two hundredth year after
his death, 'to the memory of Samuel Pepys, a great public servant.'
The evidence there collected shews that Pepys, familiar to the last
generation in the sphere of literature, was also a leading figure in an
entirely different world, who rendered inestimable services to naval
administration in spite of the peculiar difficulties under which he
worked. These conclusions, with a part of the evidence on which they
depend, are summarised in the present volume.
Thanks are due to the Master and Fellows of Trinity College for
encouraging the enterprise; to the Council of the Navy Records Society
for permission to use the material already published in the Society's
series; to the Delegates of the Oxford Clarendon Press for allowing the
author to use and quote from his Introduction to the reprint of Pepys's
_Memoires of the Royal Navy, 1679-88_, issued in the Tudor and Stuart
Library in 1906; and to Messrs Sidgwick and Jackson for a similar
permission to use the Introduction to the section on 'Sea Manuscripts'
in _Bibliotheca Pepysiana_.
J. R. T.
_February, 1920._
CONTENTS
LECTURE PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
II. ADMINISTRATION 18
III. FINANCE 37
IV. VICTUALLING; DISCIPLINE; SHIPS; GUNS 57
INDEX 80
LECTURE I
INTRODUCTORY
The materials for the administrative history of the Royal Navy from the
Restoration to the Revolution are largely contributed by Cambridge.
The section of the Pepysian Library at Magdalene which Samuel Pepys
classified as 'Sea Manuscripts' contains 114 volumes, the contents of
which cover a wide field of naval history. Pepys's leading motive in
collecting these is probably to be found in his projected 'History of
the Navy.' Early in his career he thought of writing a 'History of
the Dutch War,' 'it being a thing I much desire, and sorts mightily
with my genius.'[1] Later on the design expanded into a complete naval
history, upon which, at the time of his death, he was supposed to have
been engaged for many years. Evelyn writes in his _Diary_ on 26 May,
1703: 'This day died Mr Samuel Pepys, a very worthy, industrious, and
curious person, none in England exceeding him in knowledge of the
navy.... He had for divers years under his hand the History of the
Navy, or _Navalia_ as he called it; but how far advanced, and what
will follow of his, is left, I suppose, to his sister's son.' Pepys's
correspondence with Evelyn and Sir William Dugdale suggests that it
would have included in its scope the antiquities of the Navy and
possibly the history of navigation, as well as administrative history;
and this view is supported by his selection of 'sea' manuscripts for
his Library.
These manuscripts may be roughly classified in three groups:
(i) Official documents of Pepys's own time, the presence of which
in the Library may be explained by the predatory habits of retiring
officials in his day. Among these are to be found collections of
real importance for the administrative history of the navy during
his time, such as (1) _Naval and Admiralty Precedents_ from 1660 to
1688—described as 'a collection of naval forms and other papers,
serving for information and precedents in most of the principal
occasions of the Admiralty and Navy calling for the same'; (2)
_Admiralty Letters_, 14 volumes containing the whole of the ordinary
correspondence which passed out of Pepys's office during his two
Secretaryships, 1673-1679 and 1684-1688[2]—the equivalent of the
modern letter-copying books, but in those days transcribed afresh with
laborious care by a staff of clerks; (3) the _Admiralty Journal_, the
minute-book of the Commission of the Admiralty from 1674 to 1679; (4)
_Naval Minutes_, a volume in which Pepys made miscellaneous memoranda,
many of them notes for his projected History; and (5) the _Navy White
Book_, in which he noted abuses in shorthand, and wrote down what he
called 'matters for future reflection' arising out of the Second Dutch
War.
(ii) A second group of papers consists of official and unofficial
documents—many of them acquired or copied at some expense—brought
together deliberately in order to serve as material for the projected
'History of the Navy.' These include (1) a copy of Sir William Monson's
_Naval Discourses_; (2) copious extracts from naval authorities and
historians carefully indexed; (3) Penn's _Naval Collections_, being 'a
collection of several manuscripts, taken out of Sir William Penn's
closet, relating to the affairs of the Navy'; (4) various volumes
relating to shipbuilding and navigation, including the curious and
valuable work entitled _Fragments of Ancient Shipwrightry_ and Sir
Anthony Deane's _Doctrine of Naval Architecture_. This last contains
delicate and elaborate drawings of a ship of each rate, and Evelyn
records in his _Diary_ under date 28 January, 1682, the remarkable
impression which a sight of it made upon him: 'Mr Pepys, late Secretary
to the Admiralty, showed me a large folio containing the whole mechanic
part and art of building royal ships and men-of-war, made by Sir
Anthony Deane, being so accurate a piece from the very keel to the
lead block, rigging, guns, victualling, manning, and even to every
individual pin and nail, in a method so astonishing and curious, with
a draught, both geometrical and in perspective, and several sections,
that I do not think the world can shew the like. I esteem this book
as an extraordinary jewel.' There also falls into this group (5) the
large and important collection in eleven volumes entitled by Pepys _A
Miscellany of Matters Historical, Political, and Naval_. This contains
copies of 1438 documents, transcribed from various sources, and ranging
from a complete copy in 114 folio pages of Sir Philip Meadows's work
on the Sovereignty of the Seas down to 'A true Copy of the Great Turke
his Stile which he most commonly writeth in His great Affaires.' They
include documents relating to naval abuses; papers concerning salutes
and the history of the flag, shipbuilding, victualling, and finance;
a number of patents, commissions, and lists of ships; transcripts
from the Black Book of the Admiralty; and collections relating to the
Shipwrights' Company and to the Corporation of Trinity House.
(iii) The third group consists of books and papers which specially
appealed to Pepys's characteristic curiosity, and have no direct
bearing upon naval history. The line between this and the second group
cannot, however, be sharply drawn, as few of the 'Sea Manuscripts' are
merely curious, and irrelevant to the history of the navy as Pepys
himself interpreted it. The contents of this group are not important
for our present purpose, but one interesting fact may be noted. The
inclusion in the _Miscellanies_ of papers relating to Sir William
Petty's calculations and experiments, and of a copy of 'A Discourse
made by Sir Robert Southwell before the Royal Society, 8 April, 1675,
touching Water,' suggests that Pepys's scientific interests were
genuine, and were not due, as has been suggested, to a desire to
commend himself to Charles II.
It is fortunate for the student of naval administration during the
Restoration period that the 'Sea Manuscripts' in the Pepysian Library
include two 'Discourses'[3] upon naval abuses written at the beginning
of the period, which enable us to understand some of the difficulties
with which Pepys and his colleagues had to contend. The _Second
Discourse_ by John Hollond, in succession Paymaster, Commissioner, and
Surveyor of the Navy under the Commonwealth Government, following a
_First Discourse_ of 1638, is dated 1659; and the _Discourse_ by Sir
Robert Slyngesbie, a royalist naval commander, made Comptroller of the
Navy on the King's return, is dated 1660. These give us the criticisms
of a Parliamentarian of administrative experience and those of a
royalist of experience at sea, made at the Restoration and supplying an
excellent groundwork for the study of the period which followed it.
There is no time to traverse the whole field of the _Discourses_, but
certain points may be considered by way of illustration.
1. They bring into relief the remarkable durability of naval abuses.
John Hollond was not the first writer to denounce abuses in the navy.
This had been a fruitful topic for anonymous writers long before his
day, and if the scattered papers on the subject were collected they
would constitute a complete literature. The charges begin at least as
early as the time of Hawkyns, and one writer[4] accuses him of what
has always been regarded as one of the more modern refinements of
cheating—the manufacture of a complete set of false books and vouchers
for the purpose of baffling enquiry. The Pepysian Library contains
copies of a number of exposures ranging from 1587 to 1611. The Reports
of the Commissions of 1608 and 1618, and in a lesser degree of that
of 1626, are of special importance in the history of the evolution
of fraud. Sir William Monson, who in 1635 'turned physician' and
studied 'how to cure the malignant diseases of corruption' that had
'crept in and infected his Majesty's whole navy,'[5] assigns some
passages in his _Naval Tracts_ to naval abuses; and in 1636 the Earl of
Northumberland, fresh from the experience of a naval command, denounces
them in a state paper to the King in Council[6]. Hollond only develops
in detail earlier themes, and Pepys, who thought very highly of his
_Discourses_, 'they hitting the very diseases of the navy which we are
troubled with now-a-days,'[7] takes up the same tale. And such is the
tenacity of life exhibited by a well-established naval abuse, that
a Parliamentary enquiry of 1783[8] into the Victualling Department
at Portsmouth revealed malpractices of a kind very similar to those
described by Hollond. The keys of the victualling storehouses had been
entrusted to improper recipients, who had access to the stores at all
hours; certain persons kept hogs in the King's storehouses, which were
'fed with the King's serviceable biscuit'; planks, spars, staves, and
barrels were converted to private use; 'mops and brooms' from the
store were appropriated by an official who 'kept a shop and dealt in
those articles'; the King's wine was drawn off in large quantities 'in
bottles in a clandestine manner'; certificates were granted for stores
before they were actually received, and for articles received short,
these being signed in blank by the clerk of the check beforehand; it
was a 'common practice' to send in bags of bread deficient in weight;
the accounts were imperfectly kept, and showed enormous deficiencies
of stores; by collusion with the contractor stores were accepted that
were 'of improper quality and not according to contract'; and the
victualling board paid excessive prices to a bread contractor with whom
they were in collusion and refused to allow others to tender.
2. Let me give you next a few illustrations of the kind of abuse which
Hollond and his predecessors had pointed out, and with which Pepys and
his colleagues had to deal.
(_a_) Hollond, like Pepys, appears to have had a genuine sympathy for
the sorrows of the 'poor seaman,' and he complains bitterly of the
long delays in paying wages; the 'intolerable abuse to poor seamen
in their wages' by naval captains' who are of late turned merchants,
and have and do lay magazines of clothes, ... tobacco, strong waters,
and such like commodities into their ships upon pretence of relieving
poor seamen in their wants, but indeed for no other reason than their
private profit'[9]; the practice of discharging sick men without
adequate funds to take them home; and the payment of wages by tickets
instead of cash, thus creating a depreciated paper currency.
(_b_) Hollond also speaks strongly against the practice of using the
State's labour in the gardens or grounds of officials, and the State's
materials in repairing private houses or sumptuously decorating
official residences, 'by painting, paving, and other ornamental
tricking.'[10] Here he attacks a longstanding abuse, for a writer of
1597 had already charged the Comptroller of the Navy with employing
five labourers from the dockyard 'by the space of half a year' at his
house at Chatham 'about the making of a bowling alley and planting of
trees,'[11] and in 1603 Phineas Pett was accused of appropriating the
King's timber 'to make a bridge into his meadow' and to set up 'posts
to hang clothes on in his garden,' and also labour for the same[12]. It
is true that Pett's accuser is not above suspicion, for he begins his
philippic with an artless exposition of his motives: 'In the last year
of the Queen's reign, I, seeing some abuses by Phineas Pett, told him
he had not done his duty. He strook me with his cudgel. I told him he
had been better he had held his hand, for he should pay for it.' Pett
was in some respects a calumniated man, but this particular kind of
peculation is more easily justified to the official conscience than any
other, and there is nothing inherently improbable in the accusation.
(_c_) The combination of captains and pursers to return false musters,
or to present men to receive pay who never served, was another
longstanding abuse. There was in the navy a recognised system of
drawing pay for non-existent persons to which no discredit attached,
for it was the regular way of giving the officers extra pay. Thus the
captains were allowed a 'dead pay' apiece on the sea-books 'for their
retinues'; and in harbour no less than four varieties of dead pay
were recognised, including wages and victuals paid to men for keeping
ships 'which long since had no being.' We also hear of an allowance
demanded in the Narrow Seas 'for a preacher and his man, though no
such devotion be ever used on board.' The same principle appears in
the 18th century in connexion with what were known as 'widows' men.'
The captain was authorised to enter one or two fictitious persons in
every hundred men of his ship's complement, and the wages drawn in
their names and the value of the victuals to which they would have
been entitled were applied to the relief of the widows of officers
and seamen who had served in the navy[13]. In the 16th and 17th
centuries, however, the established principle was liable to a variety
of fraudulent applications. A paper of 1603 gives a circumstantial
account of a case in which the companies of a squadron of four ships
were mustered, and it was found that of 1250 men charged for, only
958 were actually serving, the King being 'abused in the pay of 292
men, which for four months, the least time of their employment,' was
£800[14]. The Report of the Commission of 1608 explains how this could
happen, for 'the captains, being for the most part poor gentlemen, did
mend their fortunes by combining with the pursers'[15]; and Hollond, in
his _First Discourse_, urges as a remedy 'an increase of means from the
King' for 'all subordinate ministers acting in the navy,' since 'for
want thereof' they are 'necessitated to one of these two particulars,
either to live knaves or die beggars—and sometimes to both.'[16]
(_d_) The danger of collusion among officials was one of the chief
difficulties in the way of would-be reformers, and just as collusion
between the captains and the pursers defrauded the King in the matter
of pay, so collusion between the victuallers and the pursers defrauded
the King over the provision of victuals. Sir William Monson, in his
_Naval Tracts_, gives instances of such collusion, and shews how
easily it can be managed. Thus the victualler and the purser would
contract between themselves for the purser to be allowed to victual a
certain number of men on board each ship, paying the victualler for
the privilege but making his own profit on the victuals he supplied.
'Which,' says Monson, 'besides that it breeds a great inconvenience,
for the purser's unreasonable griping the sailors of their victuals,
and plucking it, as it were, out of their bellies, it makes them become
weak, sick, and feeble, and then follows an infection and inability
to do their labour, or else uproars, mutinies, and disorders ensue
among the company.'[17] Even if the officers of the ship did their
duty, it was sometimes the case that the higher authorities ashore
intervened from corrupt motives. Monson tells us that when the _James_
was taking in victuals in Tilbury Hope, 'there appeared a certain
proportion of beef and pork able with its scent to have poisoned the
whole company, but by the carefulness of the quartermasters it was
found unserviceable. Yet after it was refused by the said officers
of the ship, and lay upon the hatches unstowed, some of the Officers
of the Navy repaired aboard and, by their authority and great anger,
forced it to be taken in for good victuals.... My observation to this
point is that, though the Officers of the Navy have nothing to do with
the victualling part, yet it is likely there is a combination betwixt
the one and the other, like to a mayor of a corporation, a baker, who
for that year will favour the brewer that shall the next year do the
like to his trade when he becomes mayor.'[18] Hollond's remedy for
these abuses was to abolish the victualling contractor altogether, and
for the State to take over the victualling by means of a victualling
department[19]. This system of victualling 'upon account,' as it
was called, was actually adopted from 1655 to the Restoration, and
again after 1683; but the difficulties were not altogether met by the
change, for the officials who victualled 'upon account' were liable to
collusion with the vendors of victuals from whom they bought, and in
this case the King's service suffered in a different way.
(_e_) The administrative defects of the victualling recurred on almost
as serious a scale in the department of stores, and great complaints
are made, both by John Hollond and the earlier writers, of the bad
quality of cordage and timber and of the frauds connected with their
purveyance. Cordage would be entered by the storekeeper as heavier than
it weighed; old cordage would be sold at absurdly low prices to the
minor officials of the dockyard; and materials still fit for service
would be condemned as unserviceable by an official who himself acted as
a contractor for purchasing unserviceable stores[20]. The inefficiency
of the surveyors of timber led them to purchase bad materials[21], and
their dishonesty provoked them to glut the King's stores with defective
timber at exorbitant prices[22] in order to favour the monopolist or
merchant with whom they were in profitable collusion.
The worst and most corrupt period of naval administration was the reign
of James I, and by the Restoration the navy was on a higher plane of
efficiency and honesty; but the criticisms of such writers as Hollond
and Slyngesbie shew how much remained for the reformer to do. It is
remarkable that the period of the later Stuarts, so deeply sunk in
political corruption, produced a great naval organizer and reformer in
the person of Samuel Pepys.
There are 17 different ways of spelling the Diarist's name, but only
three of pronouncing it. The descendants of his sister Paulina, now
represented by the family of Pepys Cockerell, pronounce it _Peeps_;
this is also the established tradition at Magdalene, and is probably
the way in which Samuel himself pronounced it. The branch of the Pepys
family which is now represented by the Earl of Cottenham, pronounce
their name _Peppis_. The British public calls it _Peps_, and this is
the only pronunciation in favour of which there is no family or other
tradition. An epigram contributed to the _Graphic_ in November, 1891,
not only comes to a wrong conclusion about the pronunciation, but is
also full of misleading statements about the man:
There are people, I'm told—some say there are heaps—
Who speak of the talkative Samuel as Peeps;
And some, so precise and pedantic their step is,
Who call the delightful old Diarist, Pepys;
But those I think right, and I follow their steps,
Ever mention the garrulous gossip as Peps.
But is he nothing more than 'the talkative Samuel,' 'the delightful
old Diarist,' 'the garrulous gossip'? Even 'old' is the wrong epithet
unless it is restricted to historical antiquity, for Pepys was not 27
when he began the _Diary_[23], and only 36 when the partial failure of
his eyesight compelled him, to his great regret, to give it up, 'which
is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave.'[24] Yet he lived
to be 70 years of age, and although for part of his career he was out
of office, he certainly became, what Monck had called him earlier with
exaggerated compliment, 'the right hand of the navy.'[25] The maturity
of his powers lies outside the period of the _Diary_, and it is his
later life that makes good his claim to be regarded as one of the best
public officials who ever served the State. In fact, Pepys's _Diary_ is
only a by-product of the life of Samuel Pepys.
Nevertheless the _Diary_, in spite of its infinite accumulations of
unimportant detail, and its conscientious record of small vices, shews
us the great official in the making. Let me give two illustrations, one
on the lower levels of the _Diary_ and the other where it reaches its
highest plane.
30 May, 1660: 'All this morning making up my accounts, in which I
counted that I had made myself now worth about £80, at which my heart
was glad and blessed God.' 3 June, 1660: 'At sermon in the morning;
after dinner into my cabin to cast my accounts up, and find myself to
be worth near £100, for which I bless Almighty God, it being more than
I hoped for so soon.' 5 September, 1660: 'In the evening, my wife being
a little impatient, I went along with her to buy her a necklace of
pearl, which will cost £4. 10_s._, which I am willing to comply with
her in for her encouragement, and because I have lately got money,
having now above £200 cash beforehand in the world. Home, and having
in our way bought a rabbit and two little lobsters, my wife and I did
sup late, and so to bed.' This methodical care in calculating ways and
means and recording expenditure, when applied to the greater affairs
of the navy, appears as a habit of method and order, and a remarkable
instinct for business. Pepys introduced into a slipshod and rather
chaotic organisation a high degree of system and method, and so vastly
increased its efficiency in every direction.
My other illustration is from the account given in the _Diary_ of the
funeral of Sir Christopher Myngs, who had been mortally wounded in
action on the last day of the great battle with the Dutch off the North
Foreland, June 1-4, 1666. Pepys was present at the funeral in a coach
with Sir William Coventry, at which, he tells us[26], 'there happened
this extraordinary case—one of the most romantique that ever I heard of
in my life, and could not have believed but that I did see it; which
was this:—About a dozen able, lusty, proper men come to the coach-side
with tears in their eyes, and one of them that spoke for the rest begun
and says to Sir W. Coventry, "We are here a dozen of us that have long
known and loved and served our dead commander, Sir Christopher Mings,
and have now done the last office of laying him in the ground. We would
be glad we had any other to offer after him, and in revenge of him.
All we have is our lives; if you will please to get his Royal Highness
to give us a fireship among us all, here is a dozen of us, out of all
which choose you one to be commander, and the rest of us, whoever he
is, will serve him; and, if possible, do that that shall show our
memory of our dead commander, and our revenge." Sir W. Coventry was
herewith much moved (as well as I, who could hardly abstain from
weeping), and took their names, and so parted; telling me he would move
his Royal Highness as in a thing very extraordinary, which was done.'
No more touching tribute than this has ever been paid to the memory
of a great seaman, nor better evidence given of the simple loyalty of
sea-faring men which in their descendants has served us so well of
late. 'The truth is,' continues Pepys, 'Sir Christopher Mings was a
very stout man, and a man of great parts, and most excellent tongue
among ordinary men.... He had brought his family into a way of being
great; but dying at this time, his memory and name ... will be quite
forgot in a few months as if he had never been, nor any of his name be
the better by it; he having not had time to will any estate, but is
dead poor rather than rich.' A writer who could describe such a scene
in a style which comes so near distinction, and could then reflect with
dignity upon the swift passing of human greatness, is something more
than a 'delightful old Diarist' or a 'garrulous gossip'; but it is
characteristic of Pepys that he should thus conclude his entry for the
day: 'In my way home I called on a fisherman and bought three eeles,
which cost me three shillings.'
I have quoted this passage about the funeral of Sir Christopher Myngs
for another reason—it enables us to understand how Pepys developed
later on so impressive an official style. He takes pleasure in long,
labyrinthine sentences, in which the thread of thought winds deviously
through an infinity of dependent clauses, but the thread is never lost,
and the reader always arrives in the end at the destined goal. He has
a discriminating taste in the selection of words, always choosing the
more impressive, and leaving the reader with the sense of something
dignified moving before him, like a procession, but never sacrificing
clearness and precision to mere sound. Yet associated with all this
pomp is a sense of humour, usually full-flavoured, but on occasion as
subtle and delicate as need be[27], and finding its way even into the
more dismal kinds of official correspondence.
To illustrate the point of complexity, let me read you a letter to the
Navy Board of 2 June, 1677, which I came across not long ago among
the Pepysian papers[28]. It consists of a single colossal sentence,
yet the meaning is perfectly clear. If you want a parallel, you should
go to the Prayer Book, to the Exhortation which precedes the General
Confession; for this, although punctuated as three sentences, is
structurally only one.
There being a prospect (as you will know) of a considerable number of
great ships to be built, and many applications being already, and more
likely to be yet made to his Majesty and my Lords of the Admiralty
for employments by persons so far from having merited the same by
any past service as to be wholly strangers to the business thereof,
or at least have their qualifications for the same wholly unknown,
nor have any title to his Majesty's favour therein more than their
interest (which possibly they have bought too) in the persons they
solicit by, And knowing that it is his Majesty's royal intentions, as
well as for the benefit of his service, that the employments arising
upon his ships be disposed to such as by their long and faithful
services and experiences are best fitted for and deserve the same, I
make it my desire to you that you will at your first convenience cause
the list of the present standing officers of his Majesty's fleet,
namely, pursers, boatswains, and carpenters, to be overlooked, and a
collection thence made of such as by length of service, frequency and
strictness of passing their accounts, together with their diligence
and sobriety, you shall find most deserving to be advanced from lesser
ships to bigger, transmitting the same to me in order to my laying it
(as there shall be occasion) before his Majesty for the benefit of the
persons you shall therein do right to and encouragement of others to
imitate them in deserving well in his service, Towards the obtaining
of which I shall by the grace of God endeavour constantly to do my
part, as I doubt not you will also do yours, putting in execution
the Lord Admiral's instructions for informing yourselves well in the
good and bad behaviour of these officers, and particularly by your
enquiries after the same at pays, when by the presence of the ship's
companies the same will most probably be understood.
The reputation of Samuel Pepys has suffered in two ways. Readers of the
_Diary_ under-estimate him because they conceive of him as a diarist
only, and do not realize the seriousness of his public responsibilities
or the greatness of his official career. On the other hand, naval
historians have often under-estimated him because they have failed to
appreciate the difficulties with which he had to contend. If these
difficulties are allowed for, the services rendered by Samuel Pepys
to the navy are incomparable. He stood for a vigorous shipbuilding
policy, for methodical organisation in every department, and for
the restoration of a lost naval discipline. This was recognised by
his immediate posterity, and in the century after his death a great
tradition grew up about his name. A commission which reported in
1805 spoke of him as 'a man of extraordinary knowledge in all that
related to the business' of the navy, 'of great talents, and the most
indefatigable industry.' The respect paid to his authority by the
generation of naval administrators which succeeded his own—comparable
only perhaps to the weight which Lord Chief Justice Coke had carried
among the lawyers of an earlier time—led to a number of transcripts
being made from the Pepysian manuscripts and preserved in the Admiralty
Library for the guidance of his successors. And this tradition has to
be reconciled with the other and widely different tradition associated
with the Pepys of the _Diary_.
It is not easy to realise that the two traditions belong to the same
person. It is extraordinary that a man should have written the _Diary_,
but it is much more extraordinary that the man who wrote the _Diary_
should also have been 'the right hand of the navy.' From the _Diary_
we learn that Pepys was a musician, a dandy, a collector of books
and prints, an observer of boundless curiosity, and, as a critic has
pointed out, one who possessed an 'amazing zest for life.' From the
Pepysian manuscripts we learn that he was a man of sound judgment,
of orderly and methodical business habits, of great administrative
capacity and energy; and that he possessed extraordinary shrewdness
and tact in dealing with men. At certain points in the _Diary_ we
can see the great official maturing, but in the main the intimate
self-revelation of a human being seems far removed from official life.
It is the combination of qualities that is so astounding, and those who
regard Pepys only as 'the most amusing and capable of our seventeenth
century diarists'[29]—a mere literary performer making sport for us—do
little justice to a great career.
LECTURE II
ADMINISTRATION
The history of naval administration between the Restoration and the
Revolution falls naturally into four periods: (1) 1660-73, from
the appointment of the Duke of York to be Lord High Admiral, until
his retirement after the passing of the Test Act; (2) 1673-79, the
first Secretaryship of Samuel Pepys; (3) 1679-84, the period of
administrative disorder which followed his resignation; and (4)
1684-88, from the return of the Duke of York to office until the
Revolution—this period being also that of Pepys's second Secretaryship.
At the date of the King's Restoration the direction of the navy was
in the hands of an Admiralty Commission of twenty-eight, appointed by
the restored Rump Parliament in December, 1659[30], with a Navy Board
of seven experts under it. One of the earlier acts of Charles II on
his return was to dissolve these two bodies, and to revive the ancient
form of navy government by a Lord High Admiral and four Principal
Officers—the Treasurer, the Comptroller, the Surveyor, and the Clerk
of the Acts. James, Duke of York, the King's brother, afterwards James
II, was made Lord High Admiral—an appointment which realised the
ideas of Monson, who had written earlier: 'The way to settle things
is to appoint an Admiral, young, heroical, and of a great blood. His
experience in sea affairs is not so much to be required at first as his
sincerity, honour, and wisdom; for his daily practice in his Office,
with conference of able and experienced men, will quickly instruct
him.'[31] All the Stuarts were interested in the sea. Nothing gave
Charles II more pleasure than to sail down the Thames in one of his
yachts to inspect his ships, and his brother possessed something like
an expert knowledge of naval affairs. Even Macaulay, who has scarcely a
good word to say for him, allows that he would have made 'a respectable
clerk in the dockyard at Chatham.'[32] He was an authority on
shipbuilding questions[33], and Pepys, in a private minute not intended
for publication and therefore likely to express his real mind, ascribes
much of the strength of the navy in his day to the Duke's energy in
'getting ships to be begun to be built, in confidence that when they
were begun they would not let them want finishing, who otherwise would
never of themselves have spared money from lesser uses to begin to
build.'[34] He was also by temperament stiff in discipline, and threw
his influence strongly on the side of reform. The numerous references
to him in the State Papers shew that while he was Lord High Admiral he
bestowed a great deal of attention upon the duties of the office[35].
The new Treasurer of the Navy was Sir George Carteret, who, entering
the service as a boy, had risen to high command in the navy, and had
served as Comptroller in the reign of Charles I. 'Besides his other
parts of honesty and discretion,' says Clarendon, he was 'undoubtedly
as good, if not the best, seaman in England,'[36] and Sir William
Coventry, his consistent opponent, described him to Pepys as 'a
man that do take the most pains, and gives himself the most to do
business of any about the Court, without any desire of pleasure or
divertisements.'[37] Pepys himself wrote of him not long before his
fall: 'I do take' him 'for a most honest man.'[38]
Sir Robert Slyngesbie, the new Comptroller, was himself the son of a
Comptroller of the Navy, and had served as a sea-captain as early as
1633[39], having been 'from his infancy bred up and employed in the
navy.'[40]
Sir William Batten, the Surveyor, was only returning to an office
which he had already held, for he had been Surveyor of the Navy from
1638 to 1642, and afterwards an active naval commander. Pepys began by
borrowing £40 of him[41], and then came to dislike him. Their relations
were not improved by the small social jealousies which broke out
between their wives. Lady Batten complained to Pepys that 'there was
not the neighbourliness between her' and Mrs Pepys 'that was fit to
be'; that Mrs Pepys spoke 'unhandsomely of her,' and her maid 'mocked
her' over the garden wall[42]. Soon after, Pepys records with some
satisfaction that he and his wife managed to take precedence of Lady
Batten in going out of church, 'which I believe will vex her.'[43]
What the _Diary_ calls a 'fray' eventually took place between the
two ladies, and Lady Batten was 'mighty high upon it,' telling Mrs
Pepys's 'boy' that 'she would teach his mistress better manners,
which my wife answered aloud that she might hear, that she could
learn little manners of her.'[44] Pepys came to the conclusion that
his wife was to blame[45]. Sir William Batten, who does not deserve
the treatment he meets with in the _Diary_, had at first done what he
could to accommodate the quarrel, saying to Pepys that 'he desired
the difference between our wives might not make a difference between
us,'[46] but quarrels of this kind are the hardest of all to compose,
and it is not to the _Diary_ that Batten's biographer goes for his
facts. Pepys calls him a knave[47] and a sot[48], and accuses him
of 'corruption and underhand dealing'[49]; and in reviewing his own
position on the last day of the year 1663, he writes: 'At the Office I
am well, though envied to the devil by Sir William Batten, who hates me
to death, but cannot hurt me. The rest either love me, or at least do
not shew otherwise....' The news of Batten's last illness was, however,
received with some sign of relenting. 'Word is brought me that he is so
ill that it is believed he cannot live till to-morrow, which troubles
me and my wife mightily, partly out of kindness, he being a good
neighbour—and partly because of the money he owes me upon our bargain
of the late prize.'[50]
The only one of the Principal Officers who knew nothing about the
navy was the Clerk of the Acts, Samuel Pepys himself. He obtained the
office by the influence of his patron, Edward Mountagu, the first Earl
of Sandwich, a distinguished naval commander, who was first cousin to
Pepys's father and recognised the claims of kinship after the fashion
of his day. It was necessary first to buy out Thomas Barlow, who had
been Clerk of the Acts under Charles I, and Pepys, observing that he
was 'an old, consumptive man,'[51] offered him £100 a year. He lived
until 1665, and then a characteristic entry appears in the _Diary_. 'At
noon home to dinner, and then to my office again, where Sir William
Petty comes among other things to tell me that Mr Barlow is dead; for
which, God knows my heart, I could be as sorry as is possible for one
to be for a stranger by whose death he gets £100 per annum, he being a
worthy, honest man; but after having considered that, when I come to
consider the providence of God by this means unexpectedly to give me
£100 a year more in my estate, I have cause to bless God, and do it
from the bottom of my heart.'[52]
Besides the four Principal Officers, the new Navy Board also included
three extra Commissioners of the Navy, Lord Berkeley, Sir William Penn,
and Peter Pett. Lord Berkeley was a distinguished soldier, who had
won great honour at Stratton, and had served under Turenne from 1652
to 1655[53]. Sir William Penn was the son of a seaman and had been a
seaman all his life. He had been rear-admiral and then vice-admiral in
the time of the Long Parliament; he had served as vice-admiral under
Blake, had commanded the expedition which seized Jamaica[54], and had
been a member of two Admiralty Commissions during the Interregnum[55].
Peter Pett came of a famous family of shipbuilders[56]—an earlier
Pett had been master shipwright at Deptford in the reign of Edward
VI[57]—and he had already served as resident Commissioner at Chatham
for thirteen years[58]. Pett occupied a somewhat inferior position to
his colleagues, as he was required still to reside at Chatham to take
charge of the dockyard there—at this time the most important of the
royal yards, described in the _Admiralty Letters_ as 'the master-yard
of all the rest.'[59] The other two Commissioners had no special duties
assigned to them, and this was regarded as one of the advantages of
the system now established, since they were 'not limited to any, and
yet furnished with powers of acting and controlling every part, both
of the particular and common duties of the Office' ... 'understanding
the defects of the whole, and applying their assistance where it may be
most useful.'[60]
It will be observed that on the Navy Board of the Restoration expert
experience was overwhelmingly represented. Of its seven members four
were seamen; one a soldier—and it must be remembered that at this time
the line between the two services was not distinctly drawn, for Blake
had been a lieutenant-colonel and Monck commander-in-chief of an army
before they were appointed to command fleets as 'generals-at-sea'; one
represented experience of shipbuilding and dockyard administration;
and only the Clerk of the Acts knew nothing about the sea. Sir
Walter Ralegh had remarked in his day: 'It were to be wished that
the chief officers under the Lord Admiral ... should be men of the
best experience in sea-service,' and had complained that sometimes
'by the special favour of princes' or 'the mediation of great men
for the preferment of their servants,' or 'now and then by virtue of
the purse,' persons 'very raw and ignorant' are 'very unworthily and
unfitly nominated to those places.'[61] But such criticisms applied no
longer. The King had made a good choice of fit persons duly qualified,
and had established a naval administration which, if it failed, would
not fail for lack of knowledge.
There were a good many subsequent changes, but the importance of
administration by experts was not again lost sight of. The office
of Treasurer of the Navy soon fell to the men of accounts, and in
1667 Sir George Carteret was succeeded by the Earl of Anglesey, a
'laborious, skilful, cautious, moderate' official, who had had seven
years' experience of finance as Vice-Treasurer and Receiver-General
for Ireland[62]. But with this exception, if the post of a Principal
Officer was vacated by a naval expert it was offered to a naval
expert again. When Sir Robert Slyngesbie, the Comptroller, died in
1661[63], he was succeeded by Sir John Mennes, who had served under
Sir William Monson in the Narrow Seas, and had had a wide experience
of the navy[64]. This appointment was not as successful as might
have been expected. Pepys thought him 'most excellent pleasant
company'[65] and 'a very good, harmless, honest gentleman,'[66] but
he is always attacking his incapacity[67], and refers to him on one
occasion as a 'doating fool.'[68] On his death in 1671 the office
passed to Sir Thomas Allin, originally a shipowner at Lowestoft, who
had served under Prince Rupert, and had acquired a reputation in the
Second Dutch War[69]. When Sir William Batten, the Surveyor, died
in 1667, he was succeeded by Colonel Thomas Middleton, who had been
resident Commissioner at Portsmouth[70]; and when in 1672 Middleton
was transferred to Chatham, John Tippetts, who had followed him at
Portsmouth, was appointed to the Surveyorship[71]. It should be noticed
that whereas during the thirteen years of naval history from 1660 to
1673 the office of Treasurer of the Navy was held by four different
persons, and the offices of Comptroller and Surveyor each by three,
there was no change in the office of Clerk of the Acts. Pepys was the
only one of the Principal Officers whose experience was continuous.
The extra Commissionerships, when vacancies arose, did not all go
to naval experts, but men of ability were selected for them, and
sometimes men of distinction. When in 1662 another extra Commissioner
was appointed, the choice fell on William Coventry, a civilian; but
Coventry had already had two years' experience of naval administration
as Secretary to the Lord High Admiral, and his ability soon made him
one of the most valuable members of the Navy Board. Burnet described
him in 1665 as 'a man of great actions and eminent virtues'; Temple
credits him with high political capacity; Evelyn calls him 'a wise
and witty gentleman'[72]; and the _Diary_ shews how warmly Pepys was
attached to him[73]. In 1664 an extra Commissionership was conferred
on Lord Brouncker, a literary man, an intimate friend of Evelyn's, and
the first President of the Royal Society, who took something more than
an amateur's interest in shipbuilding, and in 1662 had built a yacht
for the King[74]. Pepys could not make up his mind about him; for in
1667 he speaks of him as 'a rotten-hearted, false man as any else I
know, even as Sir W. Penn himself, and therefore I must beware of him
accordingly, and I hope I shall,'[75] and in 1668 he regards him as
the best man in the Navy Office[76]. One of the extra Commissioners,
Sir Edward Seymour, was also Speaker of the House of Commons.
The Navy Board was by tradition the Lord High Admiral's council of
advice for that part of his office which was concerned with the
government of the navy, and Monson alludes to its members as 'the
conduit pipes to whom the Lord Admiral properly directs all his
commands for his Majesty's service, and from whom it descends to all
other inferior officers and ministers under them whatsoever.'[77] In
practice the Board enjoyed very large administrative powers, for it
was authorised 'to cause all ordinary businesses to be done according
to the ancient and allowed practice of the Office, and extraordinary
according to the warrants and directions from the Lord Admiral and
the State'[78]; but in theory it existed only in order to carry out
the general instructions which the Duke of York had issued early in
1662[79], not long after he had taken office. These were drawn in
comprehensive terms, and of necessity left a vast number of decisions
on particular questions to be taken by the Board. These instructions
of 1662 remained in force until the Admiralty was reorganised at the
beginning of the 19th century[80].