was in the hands of able and experienced men, and that they were
acting under instructions which were good enough to survive without
material alteration for another century and a half. Yet there is
abundant evidence in the Pepysian manuscripts and elsewhere to shew
that naval administration during the period 1660-1673 was in the main
a disastrous failure. The reason why the collapse was so complete was
the pressure of the Second Dutch War upon the resources of the naval
administration, but the essential causes lay deeper than external
events. First and foremost undoubtedly stands the problem of finance.
The want of money was the root of all evil in the Stuart navy. I
propose to deal fully with this problem in my next lecture, and will
only ask you to note its existence now. But there was more than this.
On 15 August, 1666, Pepys made a remarkable entry in the _Diary_ which
I think gives the key to the situation: 'Thence walked over the Park
with Sir W. Coventry, in our way talking of the unhappy state of our
Office; and I took an opportunity to let him know, that though the
backwardnesses of all our matters of the Office may be well imputed
to the known want of money, yet perhaps there might be personal and
particular failings.' He then notes Coventry's reply, which indicates
the way in which personal failings were themselves affected by want of
money. 'Nor, indeed, says he, is there room now-a-days to find fault
with any particular man, while we are in this condition for money.' The
whole service was breathing the miasmas exhaled by a corrupt Court.
Slackness was fashionable because the King was slack, and the higher
naval administration had to contend with idleness and dishonesty in
the lower ranks of the service due to a relaxation of the standards
of public and private duty. In this conflict it was at a serious
disadvantage, for it was impossible effectively to control subordinates
whom there was no money to pay. The members of the Navy Board were
capable and experienced, and their intentions were excellent, but the
atmosphere was poisonous and the situation beyond control. 'Personal
and particular failings' in combination with financial disorder ruined
the Navy Office, as they would have ruined any public department in any
country and at any time.
It would be idle to pretend that the Restoration officials conformed
to modern standards of official purity; although they were very much
better than the corrupt administrators of the reign of James I.
Pepys is convicted on his own confession of a good deal that would
be unthinkable to-day. During the period of the _Diary_ his salary
as Clerk of the Acts was £350 a year; while in 1665 he was appointed
Treasurer of the Tangier Commission, and from 1665 to 1667 he was
Surveyor-General of Victualling with an additional £300 a year[81].
His salary as Secretary of the Admiralty was £500 a year, but he only
enjoyed this for two periods amounting altogether to ten years. Yet as
early as May, 1667, he was worth £6900[82]; and in the end he retired
on a competence, and was able to indulge the expensive tastes of the
collector. It is evident that his legitimate emoluments must have
been supplemented in other ways. Readers of the _Diary_ will remember
that on 2 February, 1664, he received from Sir William Warren, the
timber merchant, 'a pair of gloves' for his wife 'wrapt up in paper,'
which he 'would not open, feeling it hard'; this phenomenon being due
to the presence, presumably in the fingers, of 'forty pieces in good
gold.' Warren gave him many other presents, and shewed himself 'a most
useful and thankful man,'[83] bringing him on one occasion £100 'in a
bag,' which Pepys 'joyfully' carried home in a coach, Warren himself
'expressly taking care that nobody might see this business done.'[84]
On another occasion Captain Grove gave him money in a paper which Pepys
did not open till he reached his office, taking the precaution of 'not
looking into it till all the money was out, that I might say I saw no
money in the paper if ever I should be questioned about it.'[85] He
appears to have profited largely by his transactions with Gauden, the
Victualler of the Navy[86]; with the Victuallers for Tangier[87]; and
with Captain Cocke, a contractor for hemp[88]. He also made profits out
of flags[89], prizes[90], and Tangier freights[91]; and the _Diary_
records other gifts of money and plate[92], including 'a noble silver
warming-pan.'[93] On the other hand, the official letters, numbering
thousands, conspire to produce by a series of delicate impressions
the conviction in the mind of the reader that Pepys was immensely
proud of the navy, and keenly anxious for its efficiency and success.
His attitude is affected by his fundamental Puritanism, and in the
_Diary_ he is always trying to justify to himself the presents which he
accepted. He was glad to do the giver a good turn when he could, but
it was with the proviso that it should be 'without wrong to the King's
service.'[94] The inventor of such a phrase is on dangerous ground, but
he is not yet utterly debased; and the high responsibility of his later
life may very well have served as an antiseptic to arrest corruption
before it had gone far. At any rate, this is as much in advance of
the cynical greed of the earlier administrators as it is behind the
contempt for all forms of corruption which is natural to well-paid
officials educated to modern standards.
In 1673 the Test Act drove the Duke of York from office, and brought
about other important changes in the administration of the navy. The
King retained in his own hands the Lord High Admiral's patronage
and also the Admiralty dues, which were to be collected for his
'only use and behoof'; but the rest of his functions were placed in
commission[95]. There were twelve Commissioners, of whom no less than
five—the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Treasurer, the Lord Privy Seal, and
two Principal Secretaries—were great officers of State. Prince Rupert
was at the head of the Commission, and Samuel Pepys was appointed
Secretary, while the Duke of York, although no longer in office,
remained, in spite of the Test Act, an important influence in naval
affairs[96]. Pepys was succeeded in the office of Clerk of the Acts by
his brother, John Pepys, and his clerk, Thomas Hayter, acting jointly.
There were also changes in the composition of the Navy Board, but these
did not affect its character as a body of naval experts.
The chief business of the new administrators was to bring to a close
the Third Dutch War, and then to repair, by an energetic shipbuilding
policy, that depreciation of the navy which was the natural result of
the war. In this work they were on the whole successful. The Admiralty
Commissioners were sensible and vigilant, and they were remarkably
well served by their Secretary; while the Navy Board was strong on
the technical side of its work, and fortunate in having as one of its
members an official so thoroughly capable in his own department as the
great shipbuilder, Sir Anthony Deane. Moreover, although the financial
difficulty continued to hamper and cripple the navy, a vigorous
shipbuilding policy was made possible by the better support which
Parliament now gave to naval expansion. The idea of the importance of
sea power had already acquired a considerable hold upon the political
classes, and the wars with the Dutch had served to strengthen it.
Charles II had read rightly the feeling of his subjects when he allowed
his Chancellor to say to the Pension Parliament in the speech which
opened its eleventh session: 'There is not so lawful or commendable
a jealousy in the world as an Englishman's of the growing greatness
of any Prince at sea.'[97] Thus the most important achievement of the
period 1673-79 was the Act of 1677—the 17th century equivalent of a
modern Naval Defence Act—for the building of 30 new ships. Pepys,
now a member of Parliament, made in support of it a comprehensive
and vigorous speech[98], and he modestly attributed the adoption of
the scheme to the impression this produced upon the House. 'I doubt
not,' he writes to the Navy Board, on 23 February, 1677, 'but ere
this you may have heard the issue of this morning's debates in the
House of Commons touching the navy, wherein I thank God the account
they received from me of the past and present state thereof, compared
first with one another and then with the naval force of our neighbours
as it now is, different from what it ever heretofore has been, was
so received as that the debates arising therefrom terminated in a
vote for the supplying his Majesty with a sum of money for building
ships....'[99] The rates and tonnage of the 30 new ships thus provided
for are specified in the Act[100].
The new programme was pushed forward with the utmost energy, but before
it was completed the control of the navy again changed hands. In 1679
the excitement of the Popish Plot drove the Duke of York from England,
and Pepys was involved in his disgrace. He was accused of conspiring
with Sir Anthony Deane to send information about the navy to the French
Government and to extirpate the Protestant religion; and was committed
to the Tower on the Speaker's warrant[101]. His office at the Admiralty
was, however, vacated by what was in form a voluntary resignation[102].
On the withdrawal of the Duke of York and the resignation of Pepys, the
higher administration of the navy passed to a new Admiralty Commission
of seven, who claimed and enjoyed, in addition to the powers of the
previous Commission, those other prerogatives which the King had
hitherto reserved to himself[103]. But although they had more power
than their predecessors, they were much less competent to use it, for
they were almost entirely without naval experience. Sir Henry Capel,
the First Commissioner, had nothing to do with the navy until his
appointment[104]. The same can be said of Daniel Finch, who, although
he became famous afterwards as Earl of Nottingham, was at this time
only a young politician just beginning his official life[105]. Sir
Thomas Lee's reputation was that of a parliamentary debater[106];
and the other names are not notable. The Commission represents an
intrusion of politicians into a sphere where they were quite out of
place. The introduction of Lord Brouncker in 1681 was a step in the
right direction, although he was not a professional seaman; and other
improvements were effected in 1682, but they came too late. The Navy
Board was still composed of experts, but they could not stop the
mischief wrought by the incompetent authority under which they had to
act. The Commissioners did not find a lenient critic in Pepys, and
his comment upon them is worth quoting because it contains a shrewd
appreciation of Charles II. 'No king,' he wrote in his private _Minute
Book_, 'ever did so unaccountable a thing to oblige his people by,
as to dissolve a Commission of the Admiralty then in his own hand,
who best understands the business of the sea of any prince the world
ever had, and things never better done, and put it into hands which
he knew were wholly ignorant thereof, sporting himself with their
ignorance.'[107] The last phrase brings before us vividly the King's
characteristic way.
The result that followed was inevitable. The dockyards were
disorganised; the effective force of the fleet was reduced; the
reserve of stores was depleted. The Commissioners adopted a wasteful
policy of retrenchment at all costs. Pepys writes of 'the effects of
inexperience, daily discovering themselves' in the conduct of the
Commission[108]; of 'general and habitual supineness, wastefulness,
and neglect of order universally spread through' the whole navy[109],
so that 'whereas peace used evermore to be improved to the making up
the wasteful effects of war, this appears ... to have brought the navy
into a state more deplorable in its ships and less relievable from its
stores than can be shewn to have happened at the close of the most
expenseful war.'[110] His indictment is supported by a formidable array
of facts and figures, and as Macaulay points out[111], is confirmed
by a report from an expert of the French Admiralty, so it cannot be
dismissed as mere denunciation inspired by a natural prejudice against
the men who had displaced him.
Things were so bad that in 1684 the Commission was revoked, and from
this date until his death the office of Lord High Admiral was once more
executed by the King, with the advice and assistance of 'his royal
brother the Duke of York'[112]; and on his accession James II became
his own Lord High Admiral. The office of Secretary of the Admiralty was
revived, and Pepys was appointed thereto; and the government of the
navy remained in the same hands until the Revolution.
The important episode of the period 1684-1688 is the appointment
of the Special Commission of 1686 for the regeneration of the
navy—an experiment in organisation for which Pepys was largely
responsible[113]. A sum of £400,000 a year was to be assigned to the
navy[114], and this was to be administered by a body of experts, on
which the two most important figures were Sir Anthony Deane, the great
shipbuilder, and Sir John Narbrough, the hero of the war with Algiers.
The Commission was intended to last for a term of three years, the time
estimated to be necessary for putting the navy into a state of thorough
repair, but its work was performed with such energy and efficiency that
the Commission was dissolved in October, 1688, after only 2½ years
tenure of office, and the system of government by Principal Officers
and Commissioners of the Navy acting under the Lord High Admiral was
restored.
The way in which Pepys manœuvred Sir Anthony Deane on to the Commission
deserves a passing notice. It was not an easy matter, as Deane replied
to a flattering overture by pointing out that his ordinary business
as a shipwright was bringing in to him 'more than double the benefit
... the common wages of a Commissioner of the Navy amounts to,' and
moreover he was fifteen in family, 'and not without expectation of
more.'[115] Pepys was then directed by James II to make a list of all
the notable shipbuilders in England, one of whom might be selected
as an alternative to Deane. The result was a very libellous and
tendencious document[116]. Sir John Tippetts was dismissed because
'his age and infirmities arising from the gout (keeping him generally
within doors, or at least incapable of any great action abroad) would
render him wholly unable to go through the fatigue of the work designed
for Sir Anthony Deane.' The second candidate, Sir Phineas Pett, is
briefly dismissed with the words 'In every respect as the first.'
Another candidate 'never built a ship in his life ... he is also full
of the gout, and by consequence as little capable as the former of the
fatigue before mentioned.' Another is 'illiterate ... low-spirited, of
little appearance or authority'; his father 'a great drinker, and since
killed with it.' Mr Lawrence, the master shipwright at Woolwich, is
'a low-spirited, slow, and gouty man ... illiterate and supine to the
last degree.' Another is 'an ingenious young man, but said rarely to
have handled a tool in his life'—a mere draughtsman. Another 'is one
that loves his ease, as having been ever used to it, not knowing what
it is to work or take pains ... and very debauched.' Another is 'a
good and painful, but very plain and illiterate man; a Phanatick; of
no authority and countenance.' And so he goes on through an appalling
list of disqualifications, which had their intended effect upon the
King's mind; they induced 'full conviction of the necessity of his
prevailing with and satisfying Sir A. D.'[117] Satisfactory terms
were arranged[118], and on Saturday, 13 March, 1686, Mr Pepys brought
Sir Anthony Deane 'to the King in the morning to kiss his hand, who
declared the same to him to his full satisfaction, and afterwards
to my Lord Treasurer at the Treasury Chamber with the same mutual
content.'[119]
The circumstances in which the second Secretaryship of Samuel Pepys
came to an end are part of the general history of England, and need
no repetition here. On 21 December, 1688, Pepys mentions that the
King was 'a second time withdrawn,'[120] and on Christmas Day we find
him writing to the fleet at the bidding of the Prince of Orange[121].
He continued to act as Secretary of the Admiralty until 20 February,
1689, but on 9 March he was directed to hand over his papers to his
successor, Phineas Bowles[122]. He was too intimately associated with
the exiled James for the government of the Revolution to continue him
in power.
LECTURE III
FINANCE
It is scarcely a matter for surprise that those historians who were
the first to appreciate the great Puritan movement, so long under a
cloud, should have yielded to the temptation of over-emphasizing the
contrast between the vigour and comparative purity of government during
the Interregnum and its nervelessness and corruption under the Younger
Stuarts. That some such contrast exists it is impossible to deny. The
Commonwealth navy was on the whole well managed, and every reader of
Pepys's _Diary_ knows that he was disposed to regret in private the
administrative successes of the treasonable times. 3 June, 1667: 'To
Spring Garden, and there eat and drank a little, and then to walk up
and down the garden, reflecting upon the bad management of things now,
compared with what it was in the late rebellious times, when men, some
for fear and some for religion, minded their business, which none now
do, by being void of both.' Or again, 4 September, 1668: 'The business
of abusing the Puritans begins to grow stale and of no use, they being
the people that at last will be found the wisest.' But it is possible,
while dwelling upon a moral contrast, to ignore the difference in the
financial situation. The virtuous Puritan colonels who controlled the
navy under the Commonwealth had command of large financial resources,
for confiscations and Royalist compositions were very productive,
and the governments of the Interregnum could apply to the raising of
taxes irresistible military force. As far as the compositions went,
they were, however, living upon capital, and when this was exhausted,
the pressure of financial difficulties soon began to be felt. The
maintenance of the great professional army came to be a burden too
heavy for the resources of the country as they stood in that day, and
the navy suffered from the competition of the army for the available
funds. The disease usually assigned to the Restoration period declared
itself before the Restoration took place, and when the King came back
he found the navy already deep in debt. In 1659 nearly half a million
was due on account of wages alone, and the total debt must have been
over three-quarters of a million[123]. An official report of July,
1659, estimated the outgoings at £20,000 a week, but pointed out that
'since May 31 has not been received above £8000 a week.'[124] It must
be remembered that with 17th century money values these figures are
very much larger than they look, and as the State had not yet invented
funding debt, and so charging it on posterity, its position was that
of an extravagant private person. Thus the naval administrators of the
Restoration were succeeding to a bankrupt estate, and in the _Diary_
Pepys strikes a note of despair. 31 July, 1660: the navy 'is in very
sad condition, and money must be raised for it.' 11 June, 1661: 'now
the credit of the Office is brought so low, that none will sell us
anything without our personal security given for the same.' 31 August,
1661: 'we are at our Office quiet, only for lack of money all things
go to rack.' 30 September, 1661: 'the want of money puts all things,
and above all the Navy, out of order.' 28 June, 1662: 'God knows, the
King is not able to set out five ships at this present without great
difficulty, we neither having money, credit, nor stores.'
The same difficulties were felt before, during, and after the Second
Dutch War. In September, 1664, when war was impending, Commissioner
Pett tried to buy tallow and candles for the navy at Maidstone, but
found the country 'so shy' that they refused to deal[125]. In January,
1666, the Commissioner at Portsmouth wrote that all men distrust London
pay[126]. Nearly half the letters to the Navy Board calendared for
1665-6 refer to the difficulties experienced by government agents in
obtaining supplies[127]. In this way bargains were lost for want of
ready money[128], and where credit was obtained, enormous prices had to
be paid[129]. The hardships to private persons were intolerable. A firm
of slop-sellers who had supplied goods to the value of £24,800 during
the last two years, and had received only £800, would shortly be ruined
in their estates and families[130]. A Bristol shipbuilder writes: 'I
have so disabled myself in the relief of poor workmen that I am now
out of a capacity of relieving mine own family: I have disbursed and
engaged for more than I am worth.'[131] The Barber Surgeons' Company
claim £1,496. 6_s._ 10_d._, long unpaid, for filling medicine chests,
and complain of the opprobrious language they receive from surgeons
who can get no pay[132]; and a certain poor widow, a creditor of the
government, is in a most deplorable condition, without a stick of wood
or coals to lay on the fire, and owing money to about fifteen people as
poor as herself, who torment her daily[133].
The total annual charge of the navy in time of peace is not easy to
calculate. On 18 February, 1663[134], Pepys himself estimated 'the
true charge of the Navy,' since the King's coming in to Christmas last,
to have been 'after the rate of £374,743 a year,' but it is not clear
what this figure includes. Perhaps the pre-war expenditure may be
put at not far short of £400,000. In a letter to Sir Philip Warwick,
dated 14 March, 1666[135], he supplies materials for estimating
expenditure in time of war. So enormous were the arrears that the sum
of £2,312,876 would be needed to pay the fleet and yards to 1 August,
1665, to clear off the arrears of the Victualler and provide victuals
for the current year, to finish ten new ships that had been ordered,
and to meet wear and tear and wages for the first ten months of 1666.
Towards this the total funds available, including a Parliamentary
grant of £1,250,000 made in October, 1665, amounted to £1,498,483.
Thus there was a deficit of £814,393. But to this would have to be
added other charges not included in the first estimate—principally
wear and tear and wages for the last two months of 1666, arrears of
wages, and other debts, which would increase the deficit to £1,277,161,
over and above 'the whole expense of the Office of the Ordnance.' In
other words, the funds available for the navy in March, 1666, in the
second year of the war, were scarcely more than half its probable
requirements[136]. Nevertheless, Pepys derived great consolation from
a calculation which he had made of the cost of the First Dutch War in
1653, whereby it appeared that 'the State's charge then seems to have
exceeded the King's for the same service and time by £171,785.'[137]
This is the justification of a note in the _Diary_ of 16 March, 1669:
'Upon the whole do find that the late times in all their management
were not more husbandly than we.' To meet the situation recourse was
again had to Parliament, and in October, 1666, the Commons voted
£1,800,000, although their suspicion that the money was being wasted
led to the appointment of that Commission of Public Accounts which was
to give Pepys and his colleagues infinite trouble[138], and was to lay
the foundation of Parliamentary enquiry into the proceedings of the
executive.
As soon as the war came to an end, the higher authorities began to
consider schemes of retrenchment in the navy. A committee appointed
29 July, 1667, by Order in Council, to consider the King's expenses
called for a report upon the cost of the navy, and the Duke of York
put forward some preliminary suggestions[139], the most important
being a reduction of certain establishments and the closing of the
dockyard at Harwich. He also suggested a reduction in the number of
the Commissioners from ten to six, or at most seven, although he was
disposed to resist any great reduction in their salaries on the ground
that these should be sufficient to make the Principal Officers and
Commissioners 'value their employments, and not subject them to a
necessity of base compliances with others to the King's prejudice, by
which to get one shilling to himself he must lose ten to the King, and
when he shall have once subjected himself to an inferior pleasure by
such a falsehood, he never more dares act the part of a good officer,
being by his former guilt become a slave to his inferior.' This
argument, while it served incidentally to protect Pepys's emoluments,
is not a bad statement of the case for a living wage as an antidote to
corruption. The scheme eventually adopted, suggested by Sir William
Coventry, aimed at a reduction of peace expenditure to £200,000 a
year[140], but the goal was never reached, for the naval expenditure of
the next two or three years was not, as a matter of fact, limited to
the £200,000 a year proposed, nor was ready money provided—an essential
condition of the scheme. The policy of retrenchment on a great scale
would have to be carried on for a long time before it could affect
the accumulated masses of the navy debt[141], and there is abundant
evidence of continued financial stringency after the war as well as
before it. This carried its nemesis into the Third Dutch War. The
comparative failure of the naval operations of 1673 was due to the fact
that the fleet had been sent out insufficiently manned and equipped;
and the want of a reserve of stores and of men and materials for
refitting occasioned the loss of nearly six weeks in the best season of
the year[142].