In this dismal condition they struggled through the narrow paths which traversed the dense tropical forest, without meeting more than a very trifling resistance from the Spaniards. By the 16th they had reached the Jaina. Here they remained until the 24th, engaged in what can only be called pottering. General Venables came back to the flagship, partly for the purpose of taking "a vomit," and partly in search of his wife, who went with him when he returned to his post. Every kind of difficulty as to provisions, scaling ladders, and powder united to hamper the attack on the Spaniards. It does not appear that the men were absolutely destitute of courage. On the 18th a portion of them were roughly handled in an ambush, but they rallied well, and beat the enemy back. The hardships of the service, of which the most intolerable was thirst, did something to depress their spirits, but what worked upon them most was unquestionably the discovery that they were being led without energy or intelligence. First, the army advanced from the Jaina to Fort Jerónimo. A vaunting attack, made without sufficient means, was followed by a retreat to the former position. When at last, on the 24th, the real attack was to be delivered, the troops, badly armed, badly disciplined, and mostly of bad quality to start with, were thoroughly ready for a panic.

On Wednesday the 25th the final attack on the Fort Jerónimo was to be made. The troops advanced and met at first with no opposition. They established themselves on the eastern side of the fort, where no guns were mounted. An advance guard, called in the language of the time a "Forlorn," was to open the attack, supported by a party of "Reformadoes"—that is to say, officers belonging to corps which had been suppressed or broken up and incorporated with others. Behind them were the other regiments of the expedition. When the Forlorn was close on the fort, and the attack just about to begin, a small body of Spanish lancers, put by all the witnesses at some forty or fifty men, fell suddenly upon the English. Their charge was directed against the Forlorn, which fell suddenly and shamefully into disorder, and fled headlong back on the Reformadoes. The Reformadoes, whose part it was to have set an example to the army, were seized with a no less ignoble spasm of terror. The Forlorn and the Reformadoes, mingled in confusion, retreated upon the supporting regiments, which they infected with their own cowardice. The whole mass gave way in flight, and retreated in all the hubbub of an utter rout. Some of the officers did indeed behave with the gallantry to be expected of English gentlemen. Haynes, the major-general, the same officer who had co-operated with Blake in the taking of the Channel Islands for the Parliament, broke out of the mob of runaways, and, armed only with a small walking-sword, threw himself in the path of a handful of Spanish lancers who were pressing the pursuit. He was accompanied by an ensign named Blagg, who showed the colours in the vain hope of rallying some support. But the example of these brave men was lost on the terror-stricken rabble. Haynes was borne to the ground and slain; Blagg tore his colours from the staff, and, wrapping them round his body, fell down, and there died, pierced with many wounds. The completeness of their success appears to have taken the Spaniards entirely by surprise. They were a mere handful, and, although they are said to have killed between three and four hundred, they were not supported, and were easily repulsed when some of the English were induced to make a stand. The corps to which belongs the honour of saving the expedition from extermination was the sailors' regiment commanded by Admiral Goodson. These men were no doubt veterans of the Dutch war, who were hardened to perils. They let the cowards pass, and then closed up to cover their retreat. So soon as they were resolutely faced, the forty or fifty Spanish lancers, who had hitherto "had the execution" of some thousands of Englishmen, fell back.

There were those among the English who believed that all was not lost, and that a second attempt might be made with a fair prospect of success. But the bulk of officers and men were completely cowed. They could think of nothing except of hurrying back with the utmost possible speed to the landing-place, and taking refuge in the ships. The officers would not trust themselves with such men, and indeed the spirit of the whole force was completely broken. While retreating during the night, they were terrified at the noise made by the land-crabs in the bush, and opened a wild fire right and left.

While the army was making this deplorable exhibition of itself, the ships were parading to and fro in front of San Domingo, engaging at odd moments in a languid artillery fire with the forts. Penn declared that he could have easily destroyed Fort Jerónimo, and have swept the sea-wall of the town. He excused his failure to act, by saying that his colleagues would not agree. Venables, in particular, was opposed to the destruction of Jerónimo, on the ground that it would be useful as a hospital. It is not obvious, however, that Penn need have been deterred by this from attacking the town. His conduct was certainly wanting in enterprise, and the difference between him and his colleague seems to be this, that whereas Venables did wrong, Penn did too little.

Having lost hundreds of men by the sword, and a still larger number by the tropical diseases which were now raging, the unlucky expedition cast about for some means of escaping the reproach of utter failure. Some of the more poor-spirited among them were ready to return to Barbadoes, and from thence to England. The majority, either because they possessed more courage, or because, however much they feared the enemy and the climate, they dreaded Oliver Cromwell still more, were resolved to make a last effort before returning empty-handed. A compensation which was easily to be secured lay ready to their hands. The island of Jamaica is almost due west of the west end of the island of San Domingo, at a distance of about a hundred miles. Gage, the author of the Survey of the West Indies, was with Venables, and he, with the English planters from Barbadoes and St. Kitts, could easily inform the generals that the island was almost uninhabited, and would be an easy prize. On the 4th of May, Penn and Venables left the bay of San Domingo, and on the 10th appeared before the Spanish town on the south side of Jamaica. Here, fortunately for them, perhaps, there was no opposition. The population, in fact, was very small, hardly able to beat off a considerable raid of pirates. The town was occupied after a mere show of resistance on the 9th, 10th, and 12th of May. The Spanish governor made his submission at once. His countrymen, with greater spirit, deserted the town and took refuge in the hills.

Having now at last done something, the English leaders hastened to deprive themselves personally of all credit by deserting their command and running back to England. The early history of Jamaica is a very painful one, and need not be told here. Perhaps the moral of it all is best given by a witness who wrote after the Restoration of Charles II. He reported that when the Spaniards saw how fast the English died, they were surprised, but that, when they learned how much they drank, they were surprised that any of them lived. The military and naval leaders squabbled, and the soldiers and sailors fought. At last it was decided that Penn should return to England with the bulk of the fleet, leaving Goodson with twelve of the lighter vessels. He sailed on the 25th of June, returning home by the western end of Cuba and the Florida Channel. One English vessel, the Discovery, had been blown up by accident at Jamaica. On the way another disaster occurred. The Paragon, which had been Badiley's ship in the Mediterranean, caught fire and blew up, with the loss of a hundred lives. Penn returned to England in a very intelligibly dismal state of mind. He was inclined to see the hand of the Lord visiting the sins of the expedition, and something he referred to mysteriously as the "sin in England," on the men of little faith about him. He was also visibly nervous as to the reception it was likely he would meet with from the Protector, and began garrulously excusing himself before he reached home. It was not without cause that he, and possibly his colleague Venables, of whom we have less evidence, looked forward to facing Oliver Cromwell. The old explanation of the Protector's anger, that he punished the generals for taking Jamaica when they were ordered to take San Domingo, was given in ignorance of their instructions; but he had good cause to be angry with them, both for the incapacity displayed at San Domingo, and for their hasty desertion of their conquest of Jamaica. As his spy service was both watchful and efficient, it is at least possible that Cromwell had warning of their letters to the king. They reached England on the 31st August, anchoring at Spithead. Within a fortnight they were both in the Tower, on the recommendation of the Protector's Council. They did not escape from this till they had made abject submission. Penn retired to the estate which he had begged for himself out of the confiscated property of the king's friends in Ireland, and was no more employed during Oliver Cromwell's life.

Goodson remained at Jamaica for nearly two years, prosecuting the war with Spain. The smallness of the force left under his command made it impossible for him to undertake operations on a great scale. In truth, what he did bore a very close resemblance to the piratical warfare afterwards carried on by the buccaneers. He sailed twice to the Spanish Main, burning and plundering small towns, taking water and provisions at unfortified places, but attempting nothing against the great port of Carthagena. To some among the English officers at Jamaica this method of conducting hostilities was not acceptable. They thought it piratical, and unworthy of a great State; but it was all Goodson could do, and it served a useful purpose. The first two years of our establishment in Jamaica were times of miserable weakness and suffering. The governors died one after the other, and the ranks of their followers were terribly thinned by fever. If during this interval a vigorous attack had been made by the Spaniards, who were acclimatised and expert in bush fighting, it is not impossible that we should have lost the island. The presence of Goodson's ships and his activity warded off this danger, and it is partly to him, therefore, that we must attribute the merit of retaining this colonial possession.

Before the fleet under Penn left to undergo its varied fortunes in the West Indies, another naval armament had sailed from England under the command of Robert Blake. It started somewhat earlier than the expedition directed against the West Indies—on the 29th September. Blake's orders were ultimately to attack the Spaniards, but the time for hostilities against them in Europe had not yet come. In the interval there was plenty for an English admiral to do in the Mediterranean. In the first place, he had, in the modern phrase, "to show the flag"—that is to say, to let foreign nations see that England was mistress of a naval force capable of extorting respect. Then the Protector had inherited from the Council of State a number of diplomatic disputes with the Italian princes. The presence of a powerful English fleet in the Mediterranean was likely to add material weight to the expostulations of his diplomatists. Blake worked his way slowly along the Spanish and Italian coasts of the Mediterranean, and was everywhere treated with deference. There is a story that at Malaga he gave the Spaniards a proof that the ruler of England did not bear the sword in vain for the defence of his subjects. It is said that an English sailor who was on shore on leave displayed his Puritan sentiments by insulting the host. For this he was maltreated by the mob, on the instigation of a friar. Blake, so the story goes, insisted on the punishment of the ecclesiastic, and was told by the governor that he had no power to punish churchmen, which, if it was ever said, was untrue. Upon this, the English admiral threatened to open fire unless the friar was given up to him. His threat and the ocular demonstration they had of his strength brought the Spanish authorities to reason. The friar was sent on board, presumably expecting and, if he was a fanatic, hoping for martyrdom. Blake, however, confined himself to rebuking the over-zealous friar, and declaring that he would make the English name as much respected as ever was that of a Roman citizen. There is nothing improbable in the story, which, however, rests solely on the authority of Bishop Burnet. Whatever may be the accuracy of this anecdote, it is beyond question that Blake's mission was to make the name of Englishmen respected in the Mediterranean, and that it was fulfilled. The Italian princes found that delay would no longer be tolerated. Their disputes with the English Government were wound up. A naval power is not limited in its influence, as the strongest of merely military powers must needs be. The States around the Mediterranean might have despised the menace of the New Model Army, which was no doubt capable of marching all through Italy, if only it could have got so far; but a fleet can make the power of the State felt wherever ships can go. Cromwell's menaces were formidable to the very extremities of the Mediterranean.

In that sea there was one duty to be discharged which the English Navy had been forced to neglect for too long. The pirates of the Barbary States had long been a pest and a menace to the commerce of Europe, and even to the coasts of Christian States. Within the Mediterranean nobody had yet seriously undertaken to break their power. It is true that they no longer operated in great fleets, as they had done in the days of Barbarossa. The age of the pirate admirals had been succeeded by that of the Raises, or pirate captains, but they were still formidable to commerce, if they attempted no longer to capture towns and conquer territory. The growing English trade in the Mediterranean suffered from them severely. When the Church of England included a prayer for prisoners and captives in her Litany, the words had a significance they no longer bear. In 1620 the ridiculously feeble effort already recorded, to check this disgraceful infliction, had been made with no better result than to convince these Mohammedan sea rovers that England was not formidable. It was necessary to bring them to a sounder view of the facts, and this was one part of the task entrusted to Blake.

After passing along the coasts of Spain and Italy, Blake went on to discharge this part of his duties. He first sailed over to Algiers in March and opened negotiations. It was his purpose to secure his object—the release of English captives and some security for the exemption of English ships from capture in future—without fighting, if possible. The Barbary States were still nominally part of the dominions of the Sultan, and there was always a chance that severe measures taken at their expense might provoke retaliation on the servants and property of the Levant Company at Smyrna and Scanderoon. At Algiers, then, Blake attempted peaceful negotiations with the Dey, and even exerted himself on his behalf with the Grand Master of the Knights of St. John. The Dey was obstinate, or, as he habitually lived in terror of the piratical portion of his subjects, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that he did not dare to make such an arrangement as Blake demanded. Still the English admiral held his hand. Before taking hostile measures at Algiers, he decided to pay a visit to the less formidable piratical town of Tunis. The Dey of this other town of plunderers was not less unreasonable, and by this time Blake's patience was exhausted. After returning for a few days to Trapani in Sicily, he came back and fell upon the pirate ships. Tunis was strong, and the Dey believed it to be unattackable. It lies at the very bottom of the deep gulf between Cape Farina and Cape Bon. The approach was protected by the forts of Farina and Goletta, famous in the wars of Charles V. and Philip II. The pirate galleys had been hauled under the guns of these fortifications, and their owners might with some show of reason believe them safe, but they had never yet been attacked in the style adopted by Blake. On the 4th of April 1655 (just one month, be it noted for purposes of comparison, before Penn and Venables sailed away from San Domingo shamefully beaten) the English admiral stood in and opened fire on the Tunisian ships. The forts proved very ineffectual, and the fire of the vessels was soon silenced. Then the English took to their boats and boarded. They were quickly masters of the prizes, and lost no time in burning them. From Tunis Blake went first to Tripoli, and then came back to Algiers. In these places satisfactory arrangements were at last made. The Orientals had, in fact, discovered that the moderation of the English admiral was not due to fear or weakness, and they at once bowed to force. Blake's conduct was approved by Cromwell, and he was now free to proceed to the execution of the last part of his duty.

The alliance with France was in the meantime maturing. There was no longer any reason for delaying an open declaration of hostilities against Spain. On the contrary, as Penn and Venables had had time to develop their attack on the West Indies, it was very desirable that the Spaniards should be prevented from sending reinforcements, and this could be most effectually done by compelling them to stand on guard at home. Blake was therefore ordered to cruise off Cadiz, for the double purpose of intercepting the treasure-ships on their way back from America and of preventing the despatch of a Spanish squadron to the West Indies. The blockade was so far successful that the Spaniards were paralysed, but no prizes were taken, and by the approach of autumn the English ships were severely strained. In October Blake returned to England. The war with Spain had not as yet been prosecuted with very triumphant success. The failure at San Domingo was a huge disgrace, hardly balanced in the opinion of the world by the capture of Jamaica. The successful blockade of Cadiz, though it must have caused great loss to the enemy, had not produced those visible results in the way of prizes and bullion which the nation could understand. But Cromwell was resolved to persevere.

In 1656 Blake returned to the coast of Spain. On this cruise he was accompanied by Edward Montagu, afterwards the first Earl of Sandwich, and their object was again to capture the much-desired Plate Fleet. This year they had a better chance of success. In 1655 the Spanish Government had stopped the vessels, but it was now in such dire need of money that it was compelled to run the risk of bringing them home. In summer a first detachment reached the neighbourhood of Cadiz, only to fall into the hands of the English blockading fleet. Blake and Montagu were not present at the capture, for they had retired to the friendly ports of Portugal to refit, but a squadron had been left to watch the port, under the command of Richard Stayner. It proved amply sufficient for the work to be done. The Spanish treasure-ships, though of great bulk for the time, were intrinsically very feeble, and their decks were hampered by merchandise. Stayner burned or captured nearly the whole, with a very trifling loss to himself. The bullion and goods taken amounted in value to nearly the revenue of England for a year—to over two millions sterling. Montagu returned to England with the booty, taking Stayner with him. Although the great sugar-loaves of silver were pillaged by the sailors, there was enough left to load thirty waggons, which were driven through London to the Tower, to the general gratification of the Protector's subjects.

Blake in the meanwhile remained outside of Cadiz during the autumn and winter, till the spring of 1657, waiting for the next instalment of the Plate Fleet. It was an unheard-of thing at that time to keep a fleet out for the winter. Even now the heavier vessels had been sent home with Montagu and Stayner, but the persistence of the others in remaining abroad shows that our navy was increasing in seaworthiness and hardihood. In the April of 1657 Blake was rewarded for his perseverance by learning that a large Spanish squadron carrying treasure had taken refuge at Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

To attack them in this port was in the general opinion an enterprise of the utmost hazard. The bay of Santa Cruz is deep and the island hilly, therefore the harbour is perpetually liable either to be in a dead calm, or to be swept by the violent gusts of wind off the land. These natural obstacles made entrance difficult for a fleet. And Santa Cruz was in addition very powerfully fortified. So strong, in fact, had art and nature made the harbour, that the Spaniards considered a successful attack impossible, and Blake's contemporaries looked upon his triumph as an unheard-of achievement of daring. Yet the Commonwealth admiral, like so many other men of strong mind, showed his strength by despising the vain appearance of force. He estimated the inefficiency of the Spaniards at its true value. Moreover, he saw that the forts, if attacked closely, would probably fail to stop the entry of a fleet running before a good breeze and borne on a rising tide. Once in the harbour, and in the midst of the Spanish vessels, he would be comparatively safe, since they would mask the fire of the guns on shore. With the turn of the tide, aided, as it was very likely to be, by one of the common winds off the land, he would be able to secure his retreat. No doubt there was an appreciable risk, as there always must be in the serious operations of war. But it was one a bold man commanding an effective fighting force could run without temerity.

The attack was made on the 20th of April, in the early hours of the morning. The fleet had sighted the harbour by daybreak, and the look-out frigates had reported that the Spanish ships were still in the bay. The decision to attack was taken at once, and the English fleet stood in. The result fully justified the calculations we may suppose Blake to have made. The English ships ran past the forts with little or no damage. They were in the midst of the Spanish ships and in hot action by eight o'clock. The Spanish galleons were as ill fitted for war as the vessels taken outside of Cadiz. Though the English remained in the bay while daylight lasted, they lost only 50 killed and 120 wounded, while none of the ships received more damage than could be made good at sea in a few days' work. The fate of the Spaniards was very different. By seven in the evening they were all sunk, driven on shore, or set on fire. When the work was thoroughly done, the English prepared to drift out on the ebb-tide. By this time daylight must have been over, and in the dusk and following darkness they would probably in any case have passed the forts with very little injury. But by one of those strokes of good fortune which commonly come to the help of a bold and skilfully conducted enterprise, the wind arose from the south-west, and they regained the sea swiftly, with no further injury.

The attack on the Spaniards at Santa Cruz de Tenerife was not only the most brilliant achievement of the navy during Cromwell's Government, but it was by far the finest single feat performed in the seventeenth century, and, though it has been equalled, it has never been greatly surpassed in later times. Even Nelson's attack on Copenhagen was not more intrepid. The delight felt by all Englishmen, without distinction of party, was unbounded. Cromwell sent Blake a "jewel" consisting of his portrait set in gold and diamonds, and the royal historian Clarendon has praised him without stint or qualification. Blake, indeed, deserved alike the jewel and the praise. Nothing quite of the same stamp as the attack on Santa Cruz had ever been done before, except his own bombardment of the forts of the Dey of Tunis. The captures of the Puntal Castle at Cadiz by the Earl of Essex in 1597, and then by his son in 1625, were small in comparison. In the Elizabethan time, ships had either shrunk from attacking forts, or, as in the case of Drake's attack on San Juan de Puerto Rico, had been beaten off. At the Ile de Rhé, our ships had shown no inclination to tackle the French fortifications. It is to Blake, as Clarendon justly pointed out, that the credit belongs of first showing what a fleet could do. But for Blake, his work was over. The destruction of the West India fleet had completed the task he was sent to do on the coast of Spain. He was therefore ordered to return home, but he never lived to reach his native country. He died, as it would seem, of scurvy, on board his flagship, the George, at the mouth of Plymouth Sound, on the 7th of August 1657. He was buried with his old fellow-admiral and general-at-sea, Richard Deane, in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, whence their bodies were taken with those of other Puritan leaders, at the Restoration, and thrown into a pit on the north side of the Abbey.

During the brief remainder of Cromwell's life, the navy had little to do except to assist the troops which were co-operating with Turenne in the siege of Dunkirk. With the death of the Protector the whole foundation of his Government was removed. It was based on his personal ascendency, and was supported by his immense superiority of faculty to all enemies. Englishmen submitted to it because the alternative was anarchy. When Oliver died, the anarchy which he had warded off came swiftly upon the nation. Between the end of 1658 and the beginning of 1660 power was snatched from one feeble hand by another, till at last Monk, at the head of the army in Scotland, imposed himself on all rivals. By this time the vast majority of Englishmen had come to the conclusion that their one means of escape from a succession of mere military tyrannies lay in the restoration of the ancient monarchy. Happily for England, no man saw that truth more clearly than Monk, and under his sagacious, phlegmatic guidance the restoration of the monarchy was effected in the May of 1660. A historian of the navy is strongly tempted to endeavour to prove that it helped materially towards attaining this result. I can, however, see no evidence that this was the case. A navy, though powerful to ward off foreign intervention in our affairs, was very little able to influence the nation. It could only apply pressure by intercepting trade and cruising outside ports,—in other words, by condemning itself to the hardships and tedium of blockade, and that, too, in circumstances which made effective blockade impossible, since the fleet could not draw supplies from abroad, and could only get them at home by the goodwill of their countrymen. The utter failure of the Royalist revolt in the fleet in 1648 even to check the triumph of the Independents is an example of the happy incapacity of a navy to take an influential part in civil strife. Throughout the war the navy had followed, not led, and this was its part during the fourteen months of confusion which intervened between the fall of the Protectorate and the Restoration of King Charles.

CHAPTER X
THE NAVY UNDER CHARLES II

Three reigns of English kings stand out as of exceptional interest in the history of the Royal Navy. King John's, for in it we first find a fixed sea force, and the intelligent use of the power it supplies. King Henry VIII. comes next, and to him belongs the credit of framing a regular administration. In the reign of Charles II. the work of his predecessors was completed. The government, or, to employ the phrase of the time, the "Œconomy," of the navy was finally established as it was destined to remain. Succeeding rulers might have to fill up and perfect, but, except in details, the navy became, under this king, what it was destined to continue to be through a century and a half of war and glory. The defects of Charles's character have, perhaps justly, made posterity somewhat unfair to him. He took the base view of his office, that it was an estate to be enjoyed. There is an almost touching candour in his complaint to Clarendon that his subjects spoke evilly of Barbara Palmer and her like, instead of imitating the French, who had a becoming respect for the ladies whom the king delighted to honour. To Charles it appeared to be a truth so manifest as to require no demonstration that his kingdom was given him for his pleasure, and that his subjects were to be expected to revere his amusements. In so far Charles set a ruinous example, for his servants regarded their offices as he did his crown. Yet the king was intelligent, knew what ought to be done, was willing to give orders that it should be done, and to approve of those who worked well for him. His fatal defect was that he could never make that sacrifice of his ease which was necessary if he was really to govern. Therefore, though many excellent measures had his approval, they were commonly carried out detestably.

The main instrument of King Charles's government of his navy was his brother James, Duke of York, who shared his own character, though with a much duller intelligence and a far less genial disposition. The duke had been destined for the office of Lord High Admiral from his boyhood. During the exile of the Royal House he had for a time made way for Prince Rupert, but he came into his inheritance with the Restoration. Acting with the approval and support of the king, the duke did a great work for the navy. The whole code by which it was administered on shore, or sailed and fought at sea, during succeeding generations, was outlined by the various orders of the Duke of York. To a great extent, no doubt, the merits of the king and his brother may be said to have been forced upon them. The time was past when the navy could be treated as a mere collection of ships which might for the most part lie idle, save in war, or when in peace a minute winter and summer guard divided its time between escorting ambassadors, and giving a languid chase to pirates on the coasts of Great Britain. The growth of commerce, and still more the increased expectation on the part of subjects that they were to be continually protected in their commerce, made the maintenance of a permanent force on a large scale necessary. The Long Parliament and Cromwell had accustomed the country to ten times more than it had ever received from James I. or Charles I. The restored monarchy could not safely do much less. With the necessity for a permanent force came the need for a regular corps of sea officers, and a great development in the dockyards. But it does not detract from the credit due to the king and his brother that they did what was necessary. On the contrary, it is their highest praise. They could not possibly have had the kind of glory which belongs to Louis XIV. and Colbert. A French ruler and his minister might create a navy for a definite political purpose, where none existed, and where none would ever have come into being without their fostering. The English Navy had grown out of the needs and with the strength of the nation. It needed only to be shaped, not built up from the foundations.

In another respect the reign of Charles is an epoch in naval history. The Royalists might endeavour to restore the ancient framework of government, and in show they had a great measure of success. But the monarchy which came back with Charles II. was a very different thing from the monarchy which perished with Charles I. It had not the same sanctity. The Royalists might read Filmer, and preach passive obedience, and talk of Divine Right, but their professions were at the outside the rhetoric of a party. In Parliament they themselves were far from disposed to approach the king with the humble deference their fathers had shown to Elizabeth, and even James. They were resolved to intermeddle, to control, to have a direct influence on the administration. They spoke out bold and sharp when they were angry. Parliament, in fact, would not pay the doctrine, that it was a merely consultative body, the honour of refutation by argument. However the high Royalist party might talk, the Peers or the Commons brushed all theories summarily aside in moments of passion, and insisted on making their real power felt in the direct control of the administration.

When the Duke of York hoisted his flag as Lord High Admiral at Schevening in 1660, and escorted his brother back, the materials forming the Navy of England were in existence. There were the ships, the dockyards on the river and at Portsmouth, and there were the officers and crews, and a staff of workmen. What remained to be done was to establish a permanent code of regulations, and to organise a regular corps of sea officers. This second part of the duke's duty was encumbered by a difficulty arising out of the Civil War. The whole body of the men in command of the ships had been the servants of Oliver Cromwell. The lower ranks of officers were particularly suspected of dangerous principles. Yet the monarchy could not afford to dispense with these men altogether. The few seamen who had followed the fortunes of the king and Prince Rupert were not numerous enough to supply the staff of a great fleet, while many of them had lost their experience, and had been injured in character by the debauchery which had been one of the main resources of the exiles in idleness. The Crown, therefore, was compelled to overlook the antecedents of the existing body of admirals and captains, and to pick out from them those who were the least likely to prove "factious." Not a few of these men had given serious guarantees to the Crown. Penn had offered his services before sailing to Jamaica in 1654. Montagu and Lawson had taken an active share in the restoration of the king. We may credit them with an honest conversion to the belief that the choice for England lay between anarchy and the House of Stuart. We know from Pepys that Montagu can have had little of what the Cavalier understood by loyalty. He told his humble kinsman, during the period of confusion which preceded the Conference at Breda, that the king would probably be restored, but that unless he minded his manners he would not last long. This was not the spirit of Sir John Berkeley or Lord Byron. But it may be taken to represent pretty fairly the view of the average sensible man, in whom whatever religious and political opinions he might have were modified by a regard for his own interest. With few exceptions, the leaders of the fleet were quite as ready as Montagu to serve the king. A few were set aside as too Puritan to be trustworthy, and among them was Goodson, who had done such honourable service in the conquest of Jamaica. A selection was made among the others of men who might be relied on, and they were bound to the king's service by a retaining fee. These men were, properly speaking, the beginnings of the corps of naval officers. They formed a service permanently employed by the king, and had recognised rights to continue in pay, not only when actually at sea, but when on shore.

The growth of the navy, and the certainty that in future a large permanent force would be required, must of themselves have convinced the king and his brother of the necessity for providing some way of recruiting this body by trustworthy men as vacancies occurred. It was no longer possible to wait until war arose, and then provide for the command of ships by appointing gentlemen and merchant skippers. The way in which the necessary means were provided is eminently characteristic of that practical use of expedients by which almost every part of our administration has been built up. When a similar necessity was seen by Louis XIV. and his minister Colbert, they met it by establishing the corps known in the French Navy as the Gardes de la Marine—young gentlemen who were to be educated in a school set aside for the purpose. The Duke of York took a very different course, described by himself in a letter to Sir Richard Stayner.

Mr. Thomas Darcy was, in the modern sense of the word, the first midshipman in the English Navy. The title had hitherto been given to a petty officer serving under the boatswain, and it even continued to be used in that sense for some time. By the duke's own orders, nobody was to be rated a midshipman who had not served seven years at sea. There does not seem to have been any intention that the young gentlemen who were sent in the squadron with Stayner to apply themselves to the learning of navigation, and fit themselves to the service of the sea, were to be known by the name. It was purely by use and wont that midshipmen came to be the title of the young gentlemen who were in training to make officers, and ceased to be applied as had heretofore been the case. This appointment completed the foundation of the corps of naval officers. Young gentlemen sent on board ship in this way were known as King's Letter boys, and it was understood that they were qualifying for the rank of lieutenant, though they never were allowed to possess the right to demand it. When this modest little expedient is compared with the imposing establishment of the French king, it looks humble enough, yet it may, when judged by the results, well be considered the wiser method of the two. The French naval officers of the end of the seventeenth and the whole of the eighteenth century were more book-learned than ours, more cultivated men, much more addicted to the scientific side of their profession and to writing books, but they were far less efficient as practical seamen. Moreover, they formed a close corporation which had a strong moral if not legal claim to the exclusive right to command the king's ships. Such a body was very jealous, and even very selfish. It was capable of sacrificing the interests of the country to the protection of its own privileges. On the other hand, the English naval officer was commonly, in the ordinary sense of the word, ignorant, but he was thoroughly broken to the sea life, and, if he did not write about his business, he knew it. Moreover, lads who were sent into a ship simply to learn, and had no claim to promotion as a matter of right, were not likely to grow up with the exclusive class jealousy of the French officer. It must be remembered that the King's Letter boy only differed from other boys in the manner of his entry into the ship, and because he was to be treated on the footing of a gentleman. His right to be promoted depended, not on his King's Letter, but on the amount of his service and on his capacity to prove himself fit for promotion. Any other member of the crew who had done the service and possessed the necessary qualifications was equally capable of receiving the king's commission. In practice, no doubt, the lad who had sufficient interest to obtain the King's Letter was more likely to have the interest to secure promotion than another. In practice, too, the service needed to qualify for the rank of lieutenant was sometimes given more in show than reality. The corruption and favouritism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries allowed of many abuses. One of these was the habit of permitting the names of lads to be borne on ships' books while they themselves were at school or in the nursery; but this is only one of the innumerable instances in which fact and theory failed to square, and, however ill the original scheme was carried out, the intention of the Duke of York was secured in essentials. It came to be understood that nobody could be an officer in the English Navy who had not served an apprenticeship in a king's ship, and that, when once an officer, he was regularly in the service of the king. No doubt this could not be done at once. During early years, and before a sufficient number of apprentices had been trained, it was necessary to continue the old practice of appointing men from the outside. Here, as is so often the case, the old overlapped the new, but the foundations had been laid, and it is perfectly accurate to say that the British naval officer, in the modern sense of the word, dates from the reign of Charles II.

There was nothing accidental in the decision of the Duke of York. We know again from Pepys, that in the early days of the duke's administration there was much talk of breeding men to the sea, and making the sea service as honourable as the land. The appointment of Darcy was undoubtedly decided on with this very intention, and the subsequent history of the Royal Navy may be held to show that the duke builded better than he knew. It was long before his work was complete. Half-pay, that is, payment when not on active service, was first given in 1668 to a limited number of flag-officers. Other ranks only got it by degrees. But the principle was established. When once a king's officer was in the king's service for life, it followed that he had a claim to support when not employed. Before the reign of Charles II. no such right had been recognised, therefore there was then no regular service.

Another change, which had become a sheer matter of necessity, was the establishment of a permanent code of discipline. Hitherto each admiral, on being appointed to his office, had issued his own set of regulations. By use and wont there had arisen what was called "the Custom of the Sea." What remained to be done was to give expression to this custom, with the needful improvements and developments, in a statute, if that name can be applied to a set of orders promulgated by an administrative and not a legislative authority. Mention has been already made of "The Laws of War and Ordinances of the Sea, Ordered and Established by the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England" in 1652. This may, in a way, be said to be the first rough draft of the Queen's Regulations and Admiralty's Instructions. Oddly enough, the code is in thirty-nine Articles, a number which one would think a Puritan Parliament would be likely to avoid. A great part of it deals less with discipline and the duties of officers and men than with exhortations to fight well and prohibitions against holding relations with the enemy, or with "malignants." It is, however, explicit on two points: first, on the course to be taken with prizes, and then on the duties of captains engaged in convoying merchant ships. The prizes are not to be pillaged, and the captains engaged on convoy duty are ordered to protect the merchant ships, and to abstain from making profits for themselves. Valour against the enemy and obedience to command are enforced in repeated clauses, and the majority of them end with this formula, or some variation of it: "upon pain of death or such other punishment as the offence may deserve."

When the Duke of York drafted his own orders for the general maintenance of discipline, he no doubt had the Parliament's laws and ordinances before him. Some of its phrases were adopted, and one of them continued in use into this century—that, namely, which forbids unlawful and rash oaths, cursings, execrations, drunkenness, uncleanness, and other scandalous acts in derogation of God's honour and corruption of good manners. But there was much in the document drawn up by the Parliament which would have been out of place in the duke's instructions. Moreover, it was so much more a general exhortation to good discipline and hard fighting than a body of regulations, that the larger part of it was dropped. The Duke of York himself issued two sets of orders, which were meant to go together and complete one another. The first contains the "general instructions" addressed to each captain, and consists of forty-four Articles. The second is headed, "Orders Established for the well governing of His Majesty's Ships, and Preservation of good order among the respective Commanders, Officers, and Seamen serving His Majesty in the same."

The general instructions are calculated to produce a somewhat unfavourable impression of the moral qualities both of the ships' companies and the workmen in the dockyard. From first to last the captain is instructed to be constantly on watch against those who will defraud the king if they can, and is threatened with dire consequences if he is himself guilty of fraud. The forty-third Article addresses him in language which would be considered now highly insulting to any gentleman. He is told that when his ship is paid off, he shall not have any part of his pay till the principal officers of the navy are persuaded of his honesty; and there is a rider to the effect that if his misdeeds escaped detection at the time, and were afterwards discovered, the duke will take care that he is duly punished. To judge from these instructions, what the Government was chiefly anxious to secure in the case of a captain was, that he would go early to his ship, leave her as little as possible, and be vigilant in putting a stop to that practice of defrauding the king which "has become a frequent (though insufferable) abuse." There is something almost pathetic in the indignant "though insufferable" which breaks into the wording of this clause. Other Articles throw a light on the discipline and organisation of the time. Thus, Article XV. orders the captain to rate no man A.B. until he has had five years' sea service, and no man a midshipman who has not had seven, and is able to navigate, except by special orders. The exception provides for the case of Mr. Thomas Darcy and others. By Article XXII. he is ordered to demand the salute within the four seas, and under no condition to give a salute anywhere unless he is sure it will be returned. Article XXXIX. is particularly valuable, because it tells us what was then considered the training required to form a seaman gunner. The captain is told to take care "that for the first month the men be exercised twice a week, to the end that they may become good firemen, allowing six shots for every exercising. That the second month they be exercised once every week, and after that only once in two months, allowing six shots to every exercising." This does not necessarily mean that the men were not exercised at the guns except when they were firing at the target. By Article XL. we learn that there were many complaints that captains carry merchandise. This they were forbidden to do, unless it be "gold, silver, or jewels." A great deal is heard of this complaint and this regulation during the reign of Charles and his brother. There will be occasion to come back to it, for the purpose of showing how ill and how little it was obeyed.

"The Orders Established for the well governing of His Majesty's Ships" are but ten in number. They are a series of rapid prohibitions of such offences as swearing (this was a dead letter), drunkenness (very partially obeyed), sleeping on watch, breaking leave, and so forth. It is noteworthy that the penalty attached is in most cases loss of pay. There are, however, exceptions. First, Article III. declares that if any man receiving the pay of a seaman, or less, is found guilty of telling a lie, he shall be hoisted to the forebrace with a shovel and broom tied to his back, and the crew shall cry, "A liar, a liar!" Flogging, which was afterwards so common in the navy, is only mentioned once in Article VIII., as the punishment due, according to the Custom of the Sea, for certain dirty acts, which are specified with an explicitness of language impossible to quote.

Alongside of the organisation of a regular service and the establishing of a code of discipline there was much other work to be done. The first and the most important was to settle the system of administration in the civil branches and the dockyards. During the Commonwealth and Protectorate the navy had been governed by Commissioners of the Admiralty, a Commission for discharging the office of Lord High Admiral at sea, and by other Commissioners for executing the duties of the Navy Office. With the Restoration there was an inevitable desire to restore the old prevailing system of the monarchy. The duke took his office as Lord High Admiral and gathered all its power into his own hands. At the same time, the Navy Office was replaced on the old footing, with one significant change. Two Commissioners were added to the Navy Board, John, Lord Berkeley, and Penn, with general powers of supervision and control. Sir W. Coventry, who was also Secretary to the Duke of York, was added as a third Commissioner in 1662. There were also Commissioners of Dockyards at Chatham, Harwich (a post suppressed in 1668), and Portsmouth who did not belong to the Board. During the first days of his rule the duke was compelled by necessity to go on with the machinery left him by Cromwell. Until the arrears of the navy were paid off, no new start could be made. So soon as this was done, the duke re-established the old order. The regulations which he issued were not in the main new, but were a repetition of those promulgated by the Earl of Northumberland when he was made Lord High Admiral in 1638. The duke prefixed to them a letter which is of considerable interest. From it we learn that the necessity for removing from the navy officers of dangerous principles and replacing them by new men had introduced many into the king's ships who were incompetent. The officers were therefore ordered to get reports from the captains as to the conduct of their subordinates, in order that those who were shown to be unfit might be removed. Then follows the body of the orders. Although they made a very small book when published under the name of the "Œconomy of the Navy Office" in 1717, they are longer than they need have been if mere repetition had been avoided, and a more businesslike arrangement had been adopted. The officers are first to do everything jointly and then to do it separately, and many of the articles are but echoes of one another. As these orders are but a re-issue of Northumberland's, they contain no notice of the functions of the two Commissioners, but we learn from them at great length and very explicitly what the functions of the Treasurer, Surveyor, Comptroller, and Clerk of the Acts were and continued to be until the reorganisation carried out by Sir James Graham. The introduction which is addressed to the Board as a whole is minute, but the essential clause of it is the XVIIIth. It instructs them that they are to watch and check one another, "and so all may inspect each other's actions by their general power as officers, there being no difference in their trust, though otherwise a distinction in their places and particular duties and employments." What they were to check and inspect will be best shown by the functions of each officer, but it must be understood that whatever any head of a department could do in his own place, all could do in any department for the general service.

The first of these officers in dignity was the Treasurer of the Navy. As his name shows, he was responsible for the financial management. It was his duty to make a statement of accounts for others to pass—that is to say, to accept as accurate in so far as their own departments were concerned. It was he who solicited for "Privy Seals"; in other words, he drew the money from the Lord High Treasurer. He made a yearly report to the Lord High Admiral of the state of all the departments in the navy. He was forbidden to pay bills by which the king or the party to whom the same was due might be "damnified," and he was ordered to be present at all payments and to charge himself fairly with all abatements, etc.

The officer who ought to be named next, though he comes third in the "Œconomy of the Navy," is the Surveyor. It was his business to make an estimate at the end of each year of the stores needed for the next; to report to the Lord High Admiral on the state of the ships; to take care by himself or his "instruments" that all stores be right as to price and quality; to keep an account of all loans of stores issued out of the usual course on sudden need or private service; to charge and discharge all boatswains—that is to say, to debit them with all stores issued to ships, and to credit them with all stores properly used. At the end of every year he was instructed to ask his brother officers to inspect his trust—or, in more modern phrase, to certify he had done his work properly. He was to keep books. At the end of every year he was to report what repairs would be required in the next. Then comes an instruction which is very significant, for in it lies part of the explanation of the failure of these elaborate instructions to secure their purpose. The surveyor was told that, as the increase of the navy and its lying in several places far distant made it impossible for him to see to everything as heretofore, his duty might have to be discharged by a Clerk of Survey, but in that case the clerk was not to issue bills, nor was the surveyor to go by his subordinate's opinion only.

The next officer to be noticed is the Comptroller. Put briefly, the duty of this official was to check the books of the treasurer and surveyor. For this purpose he kept a separate set of accounts, and was expected to superintend all the payments made by the Navy Office and to survey the stores. He was to inform the Board of the current prices of the market; to examine the storekeeper's books every quarter; to be present at all the meetings; to watch his brother officers continually; to report to the Lord High Admiral on the state and amount of the stores; to keep an account of all imprests, that is, all money advanced; to keep a copy of all estimates, privy seals, and assignations of money to the treasurer; and finally, to balance the treasurer and victualler's accounts, so that he may report to the Lord High Admiral whether any of the king's money is in hand at the end of the year.

The last of the great officers forming the Board was the Clerk of the Navy or Clerk of the Acts. This official answered to the permanent Under Secretary of our time. He was, in fact, the head of the secretariat, or purely office work, and it was his duty to attend all meetings of the Board and to keep a record of all transactions. It appears from the "Œconomy of the Navy" that he was hampered by the obligation to control what were called "petty emptions," by which were probably meant the purchase of stationery, furniture, etc., which were required for the office. But it was added, that as so much more of this work has to be done now than was formerly the case, he may leave it to be done by subordinates, whom, however, he was expected to control. It was also his duty to see that a "plurality of persons was proposed for the supply of all wants." The modern statement of this obligation would be that he was bound to take care that the surveyor and other members of the Board did not get into the habit of dealing with one merchant only, with whom they might have a corrupt understanding.

Beneath these great officials there were a number of lesser and subordinate officers who did not form a part of the Navy Board. The first of these was the Storekeeper, whose function it was to receive all stores, stow them away, and issue them out again on a warrant of two or more principal officers. He was to examine all bills for stores delivered; to refuse what was unfit; to receive no stores without a copy of the contract; to keep accounts; to do all work by himself, and not, unless in case of necessity, by his servants. These instructions applied to what were called in-stores—that is to say, perishable things kept in warehouses. They held good, however, for all out-stores—that is to say, wood, metal, etc., which lay in the open air. He was minutely directed as to the tests to be applied to timber, and was to take care that when ships were broken up, all the parts worth keeping were kept.

The Clerk of the Cheque was in fact a time-clerk. It was his business to check the number of men employed, and the time they worked. He was to take surprise-musters whenever he pleased, and to hold an ordinary muster once a month. He was to watch the porter and the storekeeper. The abuses which he was especially instructed to prevent are still familiar to all who have to superintend a great shop or workyard, "such as men coming late to work, departing from work before the bell rings, tippling in alehouses or the porter's taphouse, carriaging away of timber instead of chips, etc." Chips, be it observed, came to be the slang name for all kinds of pilfering from the dockyards. It was a well-established joke to say that the handsome houses in their neighbourhood were all built out of chips. The clerk of the cheque was bound to draw up and send to the treasurer the muster-books of ships newly commissioned.

The Master Attendant was in fact a sailing-master employed in a dockyard, and not in a ship. He did the purely naval work of the yard, such as shifting ships at their moorings, and maintaining discipline among the caretakers.

The title of Master Shipwright explains itself. The officers known by that name were in fact shipbuilders. It is worthy of note that they are vehemently forbidden to beautify ships—that is to say, to waste the king's stores in those elaborate carvings and gildings which the sea officers loved. In some of the models of the time, it is not only the case that the bow and stern are covered with elaborate carving, but the very portholes are surrounded with wreaths of gilded laurel.

The Clerk of the Ropeyard was a clerk of the cheque for the ropewalks. The Porter was an official of some dignity, who exercised very necessary functions. It depended more on him than any other man to check common and vulgar pilfering, therefore he was particularly instructed "to take notice of all back doors, all private passages by water, in the shipwrights' or caulkers' own boats, or through men's houses, or over the walls, etc., and to observe from time to time all those who used conveyances and neglect the common passage of the King's Gate, and to give the Clerk of the Cheque notice thereof of their check and amendments." Private passage means of course private errand, and by that doorway many millions of the king's money leaked away during a century and a half. The porter was carefully instructed to sell no drink.

The boatswains of the yard took charge of the stores and tackle under the orders of a master shipwright. The boatswains of ships were the caretakers of the vessels at the moorings. The gunner of the yard had general charge of the stores, and was bound to watch one night out of three. The purser of the yard took charge of food, served out provisions, and was also bound to watch one night out of three.

If the most elaborate provisions for standing on guard against fraud could have kept the civil administration of the navy honest, these orders of the Earl of Northumberland, renewed and emphasised by the Duke of York, ought to have effected that wholesome purpose. Nothing can surpass the care taken to check the malpractices of one individual by the vigilance of another. The ideal which has been satirically attributed to certain Continental politicians, namely, the employment of half of the population as police spies on the other, would seem to have been reached in these instructions, and it would appear to be almost impossible for anyone to commit fraud under the vigilant watch of so many competent observers. But we know as a matter of fact that the administration of the navy was very corrupt under Charles II., and that it continued to be corrupt throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, and that the abuses were so flagrant in the beginning of this as to provoke the appointment of a Commission when Lord St. Vincent was head of the Admiralty. The great original cause of this failure was unquestionably a moral one. The most artful provisions for preventing pilfering and waste are useless when the officials whose duty it is to carry them out are themselves wasteful and dishonest. We know that in the reign of Charles II., everybody, from the king downwards, looked to make his pleasure, or his profit, out of his share of the government of the country. The more honest among them were content to get what gifts they could from those who had occasion to frequent their office and thought it worth while to buy their friendship. Samuel Pepys, for instance, who, according to the standard of the time, was rather an honest official, took every penny he could get. Pepys, however, seems to have drawn the line at entering into a conspiracy to steal stores or to supply bad ones. Others who were less scrupulous pushed his practices a step or two further. They were not content with merely taking such gifts as might be made them by a contractor who still supplied good stores. They were ready to help a fraudulent tradesman to sell rubbish to the State, provided he made it worth their while. Even short of this excess a great deal was done which was in reality fraudulent. There came to be a kind of tradition that what was taken from the State was stolen from nobody in particular. Men who were honourable enough in private transactions had no scruple about licking their fingers "like good cooks" when what stuck to them was the money voted for the navy. Such men were not likely to be vigilant in watching the similar offences of other people. They were too conscious that they themselves were vulnerable. Thus a tradition of dishonesty and a habit of waste established themselves in the dockyards, and it at last reached such a height that money disappeared by millions in a few years.

Even if the code of honour had been higher, it would have been difficult to prevent waste and mismanagement altogether. There was a defect in the organisation of the Navy Office which counteracted the purpose of all the instructions. They were drawn up by the Earl of Northumberland at a time when the navy was still a small force and its establishments were very limited. At that time it was not difficult for the four officers of the Navy Board to maintain that personal supervision of every detail of the service contemplated by the instructions. But with the growth of the English Navy in the middle of the seventeenth century, with the great developments of its establishments caused by the construction of the dry dock at Portsmouth, which belongs to the time of the Commonwealth, this had entirely ceased to be the case. It was little less than absurd to expect the treasurer, surveyor, comptroller, and clerk of the acts to be present at all ratings and payments, and to superintend every detail of the receipt and issue of stores of so great a force as the English Navy, yet this is what was contemplated. The truth that the task was beyond the power of the officers was not recognised by the duke and his advisers. In the instructions to the surveyor there is some slight recognition of the fact, but it does not go nearly far enough. The consequence of expecting four men at the head of the civil administration of the navy to superintend personally every detail of its working, down to the mere receipt and issue of stores in the ordinary course of business, was an utter want of direct responsibility for the sufficient execution of the work. The men at the head could not do all that was expected of them in theory. Therefore they in practice left it to their subordinates. The subordinates, again, could do nothing of themselves, but only by the orders of their superiors. Thus nobody was really answerable for carrying out the work. The men at the head escaped responsibility because it was physically impossible for them to attend to everything. The men below escaped because they only acted by order. Between the two a host of makeshift usages grew up, which in their origin were inspired by nothing more lofty than the convenience of the officials. When men found that they could take with impunity, they took. It may be doubtful, if we look at the moral standard of the time, whether any organisation of the office would have prevented dishonesty. It is certain, however, that the organisation, which as a matter of fact did exist, gave corruption every chance. Yet it is advisable not to exaggerate the extent of the evil. That there were robbery and waste is an undeniable fact. Many fine houses were built out of chips, and fortunes were made at the public expense. During the reign of Charles II. and the generation following, when the corruption was at its worst, rotten ships and bad stores were to be found; even then, however, efficient ships were sent to sea. Later on, corruption took the form of spending a great deal more than was necessary, rather than supplying bad goods. The prevailing sentiment of the time looked upon robbing the State very much as otherwise quite honourable people still look upon a little smuggling.

The attempt to make the principal officers of the navy jointly responsible met with the success which, as experience has shown, generally follows on the effort to give a collective character to what from the necessity of the case must needs be individual. It may be laid down as a general rule, that where several men are said to be jointly responsible, one of two things will happen. Either they will all insist upon acting effectively, and in that case nothing will be done; or else one of them will gain a superiority of influence, and then the others, though nominally his equals, will in reality be reduced to the position of subordinates. It was the second of these alternatives which became practically established in the working of the Navy Office. The comptroller, who in theory was empowered only to check the treasurer and surveyor, became gradually the most important officer of the Board. The Lord High Admiral, or the Commissioners who were discharging the office, learned from him what had been done or what it was desirable to do. In the same way the members of our own Admiralty Board, though in theory jointly responsible with the First Lord, have in practice become subordinate to him.

In the course of time, too, other departments began to group themselves around the Navy Board, in proportion as the work grew more complex. The Commonwealth had already found it necessary to establish a special commission for dealing with the Sick and Hurt. The Sick and Hurt Office became a permanent part of the machinery of naval administration. To it was left the management of the Chest at Chatham. This fund, originally established by Sir John Hawkins in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was fed by the fines levied for breach of discipline and by percentages of prizes. It was meant to be devoted to the support of seamen disabled in service, either by sickness or wounds. In the reign of William III. it was reinforced by a sum levied on the pay of all seamen, and in later days the maladministration of this fund grew into an outrageous abuse. The business of victualling the navy had originally been discharged by an official in the department of the surveyor, but it grew beyond his power to discharge. At the very end of the reign of Charles II., in 1683, a special Victualling Board was created. Later on, other departments were made separate, such, for instance, as the Commissioners for Transports, who were established and abolished, and then established again. Then there was a special Pay Office; and it must be understood that, while the main lines remained unchanged, there was much that was fluid, unstable, and tentative in details. When it was fully grown, the old naval administration consisted of no less than fifteen departments. It was a further cause of confusion that they were not even all under one roof. The Navy Office was in Seething Lane, the Sick and Hurt, with the Victualling Board, had their office on Tower Hill. The Pay Office was in Broad Street.

It was another proof of the final formation of the navy in this reign, that a special corps of soldiers was now first established for service in the fleet. This was the Admiral's, or, as it was called from the colour of its uniform, the Yellow Regiment. It was the first corps of marines proper of which we have any notice. Soldiers had been largely employed in the fleet before, but it does not appear that any attempt had been made to distinguish between the soldier who served in the king's ships and the soldier who was available for all military services. The Admiral's Regiment was specially devoted to the fleet. This corps was the predecessor, but not the ancestor, of the modern Marines. It was created partly, as it would seem, by drafts from one of the London trained bands in 1664, at the outbreak of the second Dutch war, and was disbanded at the Revolution. The old belief that the naval officer was rather a fighting man at sea than a seaman, was still so strong that the functions of officer in the Admiral's Regiment and naval officer were still considered interchangeable.

The period during which the sea service was growing to its full stature was also one of strenuous and varied fighting. When King Charles II. was restored to his throne in what is officially counted as the twelfth year of his reign, the unstable adventurers who had temporarily held, or professed to hold, power in England had a considerable armament at sea. Richard Cromwell sent a force to the north, under the command of Edward Montagu. The object of this expedition was to intervene in the war between the Kings of Sweden and Denmark. A Commission, including Algernon Sidney, was sent to keep a watch on the admiral. But Montagu was too anxious as to his own fortunes in the prevailing confusion at home to have the heart to act so far away, and his subordinate officers were of the same way of thinking. They took a pretext to return home, leaving the Commissioners behind them. In England, where Richard Cromwell had been upset, there was no definite authority to call them to account. Montagu indeed retired from the command for a time, and was replaced by John Lawson. This seaman was an Anabaptist. From his own account he had begun life as skipper and part owner of a small trading vessel in the north of England. Clarendon called his trade by its name when he described Lawson as a collier. During the Civil War he had fought both on land and sea for the Parliament. It might be supposed that with this past, and with what was then called his fanatical principles, Lawson would have been an opponent of the Restoration of the king. Yet he was found agreeing with, if not promoting, a petition from the fleet in favour of the Restoration, and he co-operated with Monk. When the king's Government was established, some of the Royalists were disposed to visit Lawson's earlier sins upon him, but he and the other experienced seamen of the Commonwealth were too useful to the Crown to be dispensed with. King Charles II., with characteristic wit, described them as men who having had the pest already and been cured of it, were therefore the less likely to be infected again. The high praise given by Clarendon to the character of Lawson shows that, in the opinion of a thorough Cavalier, the Anabaptist seaman had accepted the monarchy without reserve.

There was much work for the king's sea officers to do. It was impossible, to begin with, for the restored monarchy to neglect the work of protecting commerce in the Mediterranean, and the navy was hardly established on its new footing under the Duke of York before a naval force was despatched against the Barbary pirates. The latter part of 1660 and the whole of 1661 had been spent in the work of settling the new Government. Parliament had to vote money for the payment of arrears, and it was indeed impossible for the new rulers to take all in hand very speedily. So soon, however, as Parliament had supplied necessary funds, and as the work of new modelling the list of officers—that is, of removing all who were too Puritan, and re-establishing as many Royalists as it was safe to employ—had been completed, a squadron was sent abroad, under the command of Montagu, now created Earl of Sandwich, with Lawson as second. It had a double duty to perform. The first part of its work was to chastise the Barbary pirates, who had recovered from the scare caused by Blake's attack on Tunis, and were again engaged in searching and plundering English ships in the Mediterranean. Then the fleet had to bring home the king's wife, Catharine of Braganza, after taking possession of the post on the coast of Africa ceded as part of her dower.