Each of these forms of rivalry had a share in producing the failure of the next considerable naval effort of Elizabeth's reign. In 1597 Philip was still threatening England with attack, this time from the Basque Ports. After the loss of so much money in the previous year, Elizabeth was by no means disposed to renew the voyage to Cadiz. Indeed it is doubtful whether she could have repeated that attack without straining her popularity to a dangerous extent. Not she only, but London and the smaller ports, had been put to heavy expenses for small profit. If the queen had attempted to press ships from London and the out-ports, there would certainly have been a considerable outcry, and it was never her policy to give her subjects any excuse for being discontented, when it was in her power to avoid it. She therefore fitted out a moderate squadron of fifteen ships. It was put under the command of the Earl of Essex, and despatched to sea, with orders to look into the King of Spain's harbours. It was driven back by bad weather, but discovered enough to show that Philip's threats were not serious. Although the year was far advanced, it was decided to make another attempt to get possession of the Spanish plate-ships by one of the usual voyages to the "Isles." The greater part of the soldiers, recruited earlier in the year, were disbanded. A thousand seasoned men belonging to the old Low Country regiments were retained, and the squadron sailed a second time. It touched the Spanish coast near Ferrol, in the hope of drawing out the King of Spain's ships to action. But they did not stir. Essex then continued his voyage to the Azores, but the whole campaign was a failure. The ships separated; they either did not sight the Spaniards at all, or if they did, were unable to catch them. Ill luck was as usual pleaded as an excuse, but the true explanation of the failure of the expedition is to be sought elsewhere. Sir Walter Raleigh accompanied the expedition. He had taken to adventure at sea ever since he had deeply offended the queen's vanity, which expected all her courtiers to fall in love with herself alone, and had more reasonably offended her dignity by seducing her maid of honour, Miss Throgmorton. But he did not renounce the hope of regaining her favour, and was bitterly angered at finding himself supplanted in the queen's good graces by the Earl of Essex. Essex, for his part, had no love for Raleigh, and had already accused him of spoiling the full success of the Cadiz voyage for his own ends. Consciously or unconsciously, the two men were engaged in counteracting one another throughout the whole cruise. In such circumstances nothing effectual was likely to be done. The squadron finally returned without prizes. During its absence, a Spanish squadron had sailed against England, but had been driven back by storms from the neighbourhood of the Scilly Isles.

After 1597 the war began to die down. In 1598 the Royal Navy was idle, and in 1599 it did little beyond show how rapidly a squadron could be fitted for sea by the Navy Office when the queen called upon it to exert itself. A squadron of twenty vessels was "rigged, victualled, and furnished to sea in twelve days." Sir William Monson records that the feat excited the surprise and admiration of foreigners. In 1600, again, nothing was done. Spain and England were, in fact, both becoming exhausted. War had put a stop to what was then our most lucrative branch of commerce, and it had been found by experience that privateering did not compensate for the want of peaceful industry. Negotiations for peace were begun, and continued throughout the years 1599 and 1600. In the latter year three ships were sent to the Isles under the command of Sir Richard Levison, but the King of Spain took care to provide the flota with a powerful escort, and Sir Richard returned home without so much as a single prize. The negotiations for peace ended for the time in failure, but the naval war did not revive with any energy. In 1601 a Spanish squadron landed three thousand five hundred soldiers in Ireland for the purpose of co-operating with the Earl of Tyrone, who was then in full rebellion against Queen Elizabeth. This invasion of her dominions roused the queen to fresh exertions. She despatched a squadron under the command of Sir Richard Levison to the coast of Ireland, to prevent the Spaniards from reinforcing the detachment they had already landed. He had with him only five ships, but they proved sufficient for the work. The Spanish fleet had returned home after disembarking Don Juan del Aguila with his three thousand five hundred men, but a squadron which had followed with a reinforcement of seven hundred men was attacked in Kinsale harbour with success; and although the failure of the Spanish invasion was mainly due to the want of co-operation on the part of Tyrone, and the energy of the Lord Deputy Mountjoy, the navy rendered material assistance by cutting the communications with Spain.

The exhaustion of both parties now began to be shown by the small scale of the armaments on either side. The three thousand five hundred soldiers of Don Juan del Aguila, and the fleet that carried them to Ireland, were a great fall from the standard of the Spanish expeditions of earlier years. The squadron Queen Elizabeth sent in revenge to the coast of Spain was trifling. It consisted only of nine vessels under the command of Sir Richard Levison as admiral, with Sir William Monson as his second in command. Sir William in his Naval Tracts, which are the best authority for the history of the navy in Elizabeth's reign, has given a very prominent place to the cruise of this year, and in particular to his own very remarkable display of courage, energy, and sagacity. Sir William was no doubt an excellent officer, and the capture or destruction of the Portuguese carracks in the roadstead of Zizembre was a creditable bit of service, but it is hardly entitled to be told at length in a general history of the navy. In the following year the same two officers commanded the squadron in the Narrow Seas, but the war was over. Queen Elizabeth herself died in this year, and was succeeded by the peace-loving James I. Philip II. had been dead for four years, and his successor was a feeble prince, under whom the power of Spain went rapidly to decay. In France, Henry IV. had established his right to the throne at the point of the sword. Everywhere, except in Holland, which would not make peace unless its independence was secured, and except in the minds of the men of the stamp of Sir Walter Raleigh, to whom war was a source of income, there was a longing for the end of hostilities. The great Elizabethan epoch was over, and when England was next to be engaged in serious warfare at sea, it was with a very different enemy, and in quite another cause.

In telling the naval history of the great queen's reign from the Armada year forward, I have thought it better to leave aside the action of the adventurers except where they are found combined with those of the Royal Navy. But from 1588 to the end of the century these champions of our power on the sea were numerous, and in some cases brilliantly successful. There were, indeed, far more of them than are recorded. In the general suspension of trade, privateering voyages became a very important resource of merchants and seafaring men. Commerce with Spain did not indeed altogether come to an end. Although we did not, like the Dutch, keep up an open trade with the enemy, English merchant ships were not infrequently to be found in Spanish ports both in Europe and in the islands of the Atlantic. The West Indian harbours were indeed jealously closed to foreigners. But English merchant ships which adopted the simple precaution of flying the Scotch flag seem to have found little difficulty in trading with the Spaniards. Yet this resource had its dangers, and the temptations to seek a profit by pillaging the Spaniard were very great. Thus there were always swarms of now forgotten English privateers at sea. Sir William Monson assures us that the great majority of these adventures proved disastrous, or at least barren, and we can well believe it. Small privateers, measuring often no more than forty or fifty tons, were incapable of attacking not only the large and well-protected Spanish flotas, but even of dealing with a single fairly-armed galleon. They had not only their want of material strength against them, but also their want of discipline, and the fact that they were frequently fitted out by owners who were too poor to equip them properly. Their crews were largely composed of men who fled to them to escape the stricter discipline, and more limited opportunities of plunder afforded by the queen's ships. Such vessels, so equipped and so manned, would, in the ordinary course, come frequently to grief, and it is not likely that Sir William Monson was exaggerating when he said that a large proportion of them either perished unheard of at sea, or returned without so much as seeing a Spaniard.

Among these obscure men there were, however, a few whose achievements are memorable. Of these, by far the most brilliant was George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland. He has not in modern times had that measure of reputation which is his due. In truth, no man more fully illustrated what was most brilliant in the adventures of the Elizabethan epoch. Of some of the others—Drake, Hawkins, or Raleigh, for instance—we may doubt whether the hope of gain was not their main inducement. But the earl was a great noble, who did not indeed deny that he hoped to take prizes from the Spaniards, and make his profit by them, but who certainly was mainly influenced by a chivalrous love of adventure, and the feeling that it became a man of his rank to set an example. Certainly, his ten voyages undertaken between 1586 and 1597 will compare with the deeds of any of the seamen of his time. It is true that he did not sail in all the expeditions fitted out at his expense, but he did in many of them. Three are particularly interesting. In 1592 the earl's ships were at the taking of the great carrack Madre de Dios, which fell into the hands of a squadron of English privateers belonging, some to Cumberland, some to the Hawkins family, and some to Sir Walter Raleigh. It was a misfortune of the adventurers that one of the queen's ships was present at the capture. It was a very small vessel, and had very little share in the merits of the enterprise. In fact, but for the strenuous exertions of the privateers, she would have been carried off by the carrack. Her captain, Sir Robert Cross, ran the big Portuguese on board, who thereupon "lashed his ship fast by the shrouds and sailed away with her by her side." Hereupon Captain Norton, Cumberland's commander, boarded the carrack to save the queen's ship, and, being well supported by the others, carried her after a prolonged struggle. The Madre de Dios was brought to England, and her capture proved a fruitful event. She had come from the Portuguese possessions in the East Indies, and carried a cargo of "spices, drugs, silks, calicoes, quilts, carpets, and colours." The sight of it is said to have stimulated strongly the desire of the merchants of London to share in the trade of the East, and to have had a direct influence in the formation of the East India Company. The earl's profit was not in proportion to his hopes; for the queen, taking advantage of the fact that one of the least of her ships had had the smallest possible share in the capture, contrived, by a very characteristic mixture of force and fraud, to secure the lion's share for herself. She indeed was robbed by her own agents, but she forced Cumberland to put up with £36,000 as a free gift from her, in place of the greater sum he had expected to receive. The eighth voyage, which took place in 1594, was marked by two actions of extraordinary ferocity with Portuguese carracks. One, the Cinco Chagas, was burnt in action, after a scene of great horror. Another beat off the attack of the privateers. But the most memorable of the earl's enterprises, and indeed the most brilliant achievement of any subject in the queen's reign, was the earl's voyage to the West Indies in 1597, the year in which Essex and Raleigh were wrangling and failing at the Azores. His experience in 1592 had shown Cumberland the disadvantage of sailing with the queen's ships. Elizabeth was known to be very tender of her vessels, so that whoever sailed with them had to be in continual anxiety lest they should come to grief, while the queen was most apt to take advantage of their presence to deprive her partners of a fair share of the booty. The unsuccessful attack on the carracks in 1594 had also shown Cumberland the need for large vessels of considerable strength. He therefore built one for himself at Deptford. She was of 800 tons, at that time the burden of a ship of the first rank, and was named by the queen, who christened her at the launching the Scourge of Malice. In 1597 the earl raised a force of eighteen sail, and took the command in person. He sailed on the 6th of March, intending, if possible, to capture the Portuguese East India ships on their way out, but, failing that, to proceed to the West Indies, and there capture some island or town "that would yield him wealth and riches, being the chief end of his undertaking." The first part of his plan failed. After cruising for a time on the coast of Portugal to very little purpose, he sailed to the Canaries. Here, also, no booty was to be found, and the earl then told his men that he intended to go on to the West Indies, hoping to make profit, "by first the sacking of Margarita, which they knew was rich, then Puerto Rico, after that, San Domingo, then in July the outward-bound fleet would be in the Acoa, where we could not miss them, and if these gave us not content, in the end of July or August we should meet the fleet at Cape St. Antonio."

The earl did not seriously intend to attempt the execution of all parts of this extensive plan. In the fragment of a history of the voyage written by himself he confesses very candidly that he spoke "more to carry the men with good liking thither, than for any thought he had of them himself." But at that time it was never necessary to spend much pains in persuading Englishmen to sail to the West Indies. Cumberland's crews entered with "greedy desire and hopeful expectation" into his schemes. He therefore stretched over from Lanzarote, one of the Canaries, to Dominica in the Leeward Isles, where he cast anchor on the 23rd of May. A week was spent in recruiting the health of his men. The English traded with the Caribs, and bathed in the hot springs. They found the Caribs friendly, and the tropical luxuriance of the vegetation filled at least the more educated of them with delight. Cumberland would have wished to make use of the time for the purpose of drilling his men, who were still very raw. But the hillsides of Dominica are so steep, and the tropical forests were then so dense, that no convenient drill ground could be discovered. After a week's rest they went on, refreshed by food and hot baths, and reached the Virgin Islands in the course of three days of sailing to the north-west. Here at last Cumberland was able to set about turning the men he had collected into something approaching soldiers. A large proportion of them had no doubt served before, but as yet there were many who had no practice, and the whole body was still undivided into companies. What little could be done in the course of a few days was done, and the earl took occasion to make his men a speech. The burden of it was that the play was over, and the work going to begin. Hitherto he had borne with the many "gross faults committed among you, suffering every man to do what he would, and urging no man further than he listed." For this leniency the earl had several reasons, but now all were to understand that discipline must be maintained, and that no man should be allowed to infringe it. Having delivered this harangue "standing under a great cliff of a rock, his prospect to the seaward, stepped upon one of the greater stones, which, added to his natural stature, gave him a pretty height above the other company," Cumberland sent his men back to their ships, and prepared to carry out his attack on Puerto Rico. His social rank and his power to pay wages out of his ample revenue combined to give him a "pretty height above the other company," and he was able to introduce a degree of good order among his followers, which few plebeian adventurers could have attained. Therefore his capture of San Juan de Puerto Rico was a fine orderly operation of war, conducted with no less humanity than gallantry.

The island of Puerto Rico lies directly to the west of the Virgin Islands. The town of San Juan is on the northern side, about thirty miles to the west of the headland of San Juan, which is the easterly limit of the land. The coast runs almost due east and west. The town stands upon a little island of some two and a half miles long by a quarter wide, which itself lies parallel to the coast. At the eastern extremity of this little island it is connected with the mainland of Puerto Rico by a spit on which a bridge has now been built. At the south-east corner, the space between the lesser and the greater island is very trifling, and at this point there is a ferry. The town of San Juan de Puerto Rico lies at the western end of the little island, some slight distance away from the spit and the ferry. The small island is very rocky, particularly towards the sea front. The place is naturally strong, and only three years before had beaten off an attack by Drake. But at that time it was occupied by a strong detachment of soldiers sent to protect the treasure. At the time of the Earl of Cumberland's attack, it was left to its own resources, which, however, were not contemptible.

Standing over from the Virgin Islands, the earl sailed past the precipitous northern coast of Puerto Rico, till he came to the place where the hills turn inland, and the coast begins to afford landing-places. Here he sent forward two pinnaces under the command of one Captain Knotsford, an old seaman trained in Hawkins's service, with orders to choose a landing-place. Knotsford, being apparently in fear lest he should be carried to leeward of San Juan, lay-to too soon, and waited for the earl, who joined him by night. The choice of a landing-place was thus thrown upon Cumberland himself. He pitched on one, which seamen who had been there with Sir Francis Drake declared to be unmanageable, because the surf was at all times beating on the beach. They had probably judged too hastily from a single experience. The earl found the sea calm, and landed his men without the least difficulty. They were in number "not so few as a thousand." A day's march "through most unpassable rocks and cliffs" brought them to within sight of the island of San Juan at the east end. Their march had been observed by a handful of Spanish horsemen, who did not offer any effectual resistance, and who disappeared into the forest as the English approached the end of St. Juan.

When they saw the place they had come to attack in front of them, the earl and his companions learned for the first time that they could not get across without boats, and, as the Spaniards had a fort at that point, there would have been great danger in attempting the use of that method. It seemed then, as the earl's chaplain puts it, that "we were at a flat bay; even at our wits' end." Cumberland, however, was not so soon at the end of his wits as the chaplain. He argued very justly that the Spanish horsemen whom they had just seen ride off into the woods must have some means of getting into the island, and he fairly concluded that where the Spaniards could cross, so could the English. The difficulty was to find the passage. On their march, Cumberland's soldiers had captured a negro, by whom they had been guided so far. The man spoke little Spanish, or, as we can well believe, English either, and was moreover in extreme terror between the probability that the English would kill him if he refused to guide them, and the prospect that the Spaniards would hang him for acting as guide. At last he was made to understand that the English were in search of some ford at which they could walk into the island. He led them to a point where there was a causeway, probably that where the bridge now stands. It was now late, and the whole force was very tired, so Cumberland gave his men a few hours' rest before making an attack. They all slept in their armour on the bare ground, the earl among them with his target for a pillow. Two hours before daybreak they were called quietly under arms, and prepared to rush the causeway. The earl would have led himself, but was persuaded to leave the command of the van to his lieutenant, Sir John Berkeley. The attempted surprise was a failure, though well planned and gallantly executed. The Spaniards had a stockade at the end of the causeway, and, being on the look-out, they opened a hot fire at the English as they came on. Cumberland, though he had left the leading of the storm to Berkeley, would not keep out of the fight, and his zeal led him into danger in a fashion which, to us, is not without a certain absurdity. As he was cheering his men on along the causeway in the dark, his shield-bearer stumbled and fell against him. Cumberland was thrown off his feet and pushed into the water, falling on his back, so that, being encumbered by the weight of his armour, he could not get up, and would infallibly have been drowned if two of his followers had not fished him out after several unsuccessful dives. When rescued, it was found that he had swallowed so much salt water as to be very sick. He spent the rest of the action sitting in complete prostration by the side of the causeway. When the first signs of daylight were visible, the English were called off, and retired with the loss of some fifty men.

It was obvious that there was no getting into the island by that entry, and therefore the earl went back to the point at which he had first touched St. Juan; and, bringing round one of his ships, battered down the fort at the landing. His vessel was stranded and became a wreck, but an entry was made into the island. A march of a mile through wood and rocky ground brought the invaders to the town, which is described, probably with great exaggeration, as being of the same circuit as Oxford. It had been deserted by all except the women, children, and old men. The men capable of bearing arms had shut themselves up in the fort called the Morra, which it was necessary to reduce by a regular siege. As very frequently happened in the ventures of that time, there was more honour than material profit made at San Juan de Puerto Rico; but in this case the leader aimed chiefly at honour, or at least something altogether beyond the mere ransom. It was Cumberland's intention to retain possession of San Juan de Puerto Rico for the Crown of England, and he actually remained there far longer than was wise, if he had considered only his immediate interests. His intention to antedate the establishment of the English in the West Indies by more than half a century was altogether premature. His force, already weakened by sickness and inaction, was not strong enough for the undertaking. After losing nearly four hundred men by fevers, the earl took to his ships and returned to England.

I have told the history of the Earl of Cumberland's capture of San Juan de Puerto Rico at what may appear undue length if it is judged by the intrinsic importance of the feat; but it stands here as the representative of a score of others which could not be told without swelling this book to irrational proportions. The naval war of Elizabeth's reign was, above all, a war of adventurers. Cumberland was only the richest, the best born, and, it is not unjust to add, the most high-minded, of a large class which included Cavendish, Grenville, Preston, Sommers, Dudley, Shirley, Lancaster, and a score of others whose names meet us here and there as commanding ships in fights and captures, but who came out of and returned to obscurity. The regular naval war did not differ materially from the enterprises of these sea-rovers. The capture of Cadiz was only the taking of San Juan de Puerto Rico on a great scale, and the cruises to the Isles were very much like the earl's cruises to the Canaries. It is this adventurous quality, the touch of romance and knight-errantry, which gives its peculiar charm to the Elizabethan time. There is a youthfulness about the epoch which is lost by the next generation. England was "mewing her mighty youth," springing from a small power to a great, and from a little trading nation to one whose sails were on every sea. When Elizabeth ascended the throne, the English flag had only once or twice gone farther than to Archangel in the north and Scanderoon in the Levant. Before her death, ships bearing her flag and manned by her subjects had "prowled with hostile keel" in all the seas of the world; and her merchants were preparing to open a permanent trade with the East Indies, while English colonists had established a footing on the continent of North America. In this great work the Royal Navy was not the only instrument. It is seldom that we find it acting alone, and never when a great display of power was required. Yet the Royal Navy was the steel of the lance, the model of discipline and warlike efficiency. The city of London, or so great a subject as the Earl of Cumberland, might show a few ships not inferior to the queen's, but that was quite the exception. The Royal Navy was already as distinctly marked from the other shipping of the country as it was in later generations.

CHAPTER IV
JAMES I. AND CHARLES I.

In the summer of 1604 Sir William Monson was appointed to command the squadron in the Narrow Seas. In the course of his duty he had occasion to speak with the officer commanding the Dutch ships then engaged in the blockade of Dunkirk. "At my coming thither," he writes, "I went on board the Admiral of Holland, who had been my old and familiar acquaintance by reason of many actions and services we had been in together. I told him that after twenty years spent in the wars, I was now become a watchman with a bill in my hand to see peace kept and no disorder committed in the Narrow Seas." The image which Monson applied to himself might, with equal justice, have been used of the Government he served. After a long and stormy reign, divided into nearly equal periods of conflict without open war and then of undisguised hostilities, England had settled down under a sovereign whose dearest wish it was to see peace kept and no disorders committed in the Narrow Seas or elsewhere. It could hardly be said that King James was a watchman with a bill in his hands. This king would, in fact, have been a more effectual guardian of the peace, if he had taken better care to have his weapon ready, and shown a greater faculty for using it. Yet he chose the part of the peacemaker, and his decision inevitably had its effect on the navy.

With the exception of one deplorably ill-managed expedition against the pirates of Algiers in 1620, the king's reign was barren of warlike enterprises at sea; but it is not, on that account, without great interest in naval history. In the first place, it is during the reign of King James that we first get a good opportunity of seeing the navy engaged in its regular work of keeper of the peace, or protector as the Church Service words it, of all those who go upon the sea upon their lawful occasions. Then it was a time of great advance in shipbuilding and of great experiments in naval administration.

The same Sir William Monson, whose name has appeared so often already, has left an account of his services as admiral in the Narrow Seas, written for his own justification at a time when he was accused by the Dutch of showing partiality in the discharge of his office. The exact merits of this accusation are hardly to be settled now, nor does it very much matter whether Monson leant too much to one side or the other, in the chronic disputes between Dutchmen and Spaniards which were then disturbing the Channel. It would have been beyond the power of any officer to convince both parties that he was fair, and we have his word for it that he cordially disliked the Dutch. Even if he had felt more kindly towards them, it would have been difficult for him not to come into collision with their officers. There were pretensions on both sides which it was clearly impossible to reconcile. The King of England not only claimed the absolute sovereignty of the Four Seas, but made claims to a general superiority on the ocean which were irksome to the rising naval power of Holland. The stolid good sense of the Dutch, who always thought more of substance than of form, and the sagacity which showed them the folly of quarrelling with England while their conflict with Spain was not yet ended, could alone have availed to keep them from resenting pretensions which almost seemed to have been designed to provoke our neighbours into war. The officers of the King of England not only claimed the right to exact the salute within the Four Seas, but they absolutely insisted that no flag was to be shown in the presence of their own, even far beyond the limits of the jurisdiction claimed for England. Sir William Monson recalls with pride how he once rebuked the insolence of a Dutch officer who, after making the salute, had rehoisted his own flag in Irish waters, by telling him that it was only out of the condescending politeness of Lord Howard that the Dutch admiral had been allowed to display his colours in the expedition to Cadiz.

The Dutch, though they bore the lordly arrogance of England tamely enough, when all that was at stake was the matter of the salute, were pertinacious in insisting on their own way on points of material advantage. Thus, for instance, they insisted upon prohibiting all trade by English vessels to the ports of Flanders held by the Spaniards, though they themselves never suspended their lucrative commerce with Spain at any period during the war. In pursuit of their belligerent rights, they did not hesitate to attack Spanish vessels, or those belonging to the Spanish Netherlands, even in English waters. Sir William Monson recounts the difficulty he found in preventing two Dutch cruisers from attacking a vessel belonging to Dunkirk, in the very roadstead of Sandwich. His task was made harder by the fact that the men of the English seaports sympathised openly with the Dutch. The hostility to Spain had grown strong during the great queen's reign, and had not yet given place to the hatred of the Hollander. The great change produced by the accession of the House of Stuart is forcibly illustrated by the fact that one of Monson's first duties, during the reign of King James, was to contrive the smuggling over from Dover to Flanders of some thousands of Spanish soldiers, who were driven to take refuge in our ports. They had come up Channel with eight war galleons, the largest force which by the terms of the new treaty was allowed free entry to an English harbour. It seems difficult to believe that the Spaniards would have risked so small a squadron in the Channel in face of the naval power of Holland, unless they had assurances that it would not only be protected, but helped to make its way into Flemish ports. Sir William Monson has not told by what artful management he contrived to pass the Spaniards, who had taken refuge at Dover, across the Channel. The story might have cost him some ill-will, and he thought it better to keep silent. But if the Dutch learned, as they not improbably did, that he had been giving so much zealous assistance to an enemy who was endeavouring to conquer their country, it is not wonderful that they doubted his impartiality. Not the least important part of his duty consisted in escorting "such princes, ambassadors, and others, as were entitled to the honour." Of these he convoyed no less than thirty-two in eleven years, with all their servants and followers, who, on some occasions, reached the figure of three hundred, all of whom Sir William had to feed. One of these guests, the Count of Villa Mediana, was confined for five days by foul weather in Monson's ship, having with him a train of two hundred persons, who consumed, in all, ten meals each. The honour of discharging such a dignified function as that of protector of princes and ambassadors was embittered for Monson, and indeed for naval officers, as late as Nelson's time, and later, by the meanness of the Government, which left them to bear the expense of entertaining these guests of the State. Monson has left it on record that at the end of his service he was "as yet unsatisfied" for no less a sum than fifteen hundred pounds spent in this way. Five or six thousand pounds would probably be the modern equivalent. But Monson, who took a pension from Spain, had ways of making the loss good. These, varied by an occasional raid on foreign fishermen engaged in poaching on our waters, represented the usual duties of the officer commanding the Channel squadron, or, to use the language of the time, the Winter and the Summer Guard, in the early seventeenth century.

Sir William Monson had a piece of work to do at the very end of his active service of a much more lively character than any of these, and one too characteristic of the time, and the conditions of sea life, to be passed over.

In 1614 the king's Scotch subjects petitioned him for help against the pirates who were infesting the coasts. The call was pressing, and was favourably received by the king. Sir William Monson and Sir Francis Howard were despatched at once with four ships in such haste that the "victuals and other things" they needed were to be sent after them. The little squadron left Margate on the 14th of May, and reached Leith on the 23rd of the same month. Here Monson applied to the "Lords of that Realme," for information concerning the pirates, desiring "to be furnished with able pilots, for His Majesty's ships were of greater burden and value than usually had been employed on these coasts, and besides, that the navigation to the northward of that place (Leith) was not frequented by our nation, and therefore unknown to us." Able pilots were duly supplied, and information was forthcoming. From the Frith of Forth Monson sailed to the north, to Sinclair Castle, the house of the Earl of Caithness, by whom he was informed that the number and powers of the pirates had been much exaggerated in the petition to His Majesty. Instead of twenty, there were but two, and they men of "base condition." From the expression it appears likely that Monson would have not been much surprised to learn that his pirates were gentlemen of good birth, and indeed there would have been nothing wonderful in it at a time when a member of the distinguished Buckinghamshire family of Verney was a noted leader among the Algerines. Monson's pirates were very small deer. One of them hardly deserved the name, being only a trader who had been terrified into joining his captors. This man had seized the first chance to escape, and had just rendered up himself and one of the two vessels to the Earl of Caithness. The other pirate turned out to be one Clarke, who had formerly been a boatswain's mate with Monson in the Channel. From Caithness the English officer sailed to the Orkneys in pursuit of Clarke. Here "he found more civil, kind, and friendly usage than could be expected from such kind of creatures in show." Leaving Sir Francis Howard to guard the coast, he sailed in pursuit of the runaway Clarke to Shetland. From Shetland he went on to the Hebrides, where he intended that his consort should join him. "The brutishness and uncivility of those people of the Hebrides exceeds the savages of America," is the rude description given of the islanders by Sir William Monson. Clarke was not to be found in the Hebrides, but Monson obtained information of a certain gentleman, Cormat by name, living in Ireland near Broadhaven, who was known as a favourer and protector of pirates. To Broadhaven, then, Monson sailed, meeting on the way with such weather as is "fit only for a poet to describe." In the great storm and ground seas the squadron was scattered. Of the four ships Monson had with him, one went down, and the three others were separated, "and saw one another no more till they met in England." On the 28th June Monson reached Broadhaven, a place which would have been unknown to him, if he had not had with him a pirate whom he had taken out of the hands of the Earl of Caithness. This man guided him into the haven, and then was of material assistance in carrying out a stratagem which Monson had devised for the more effectual discovery and punishment of Cormat (whose real name was probably Cormac) and his lawless associates.

So fine was the distinction between the lawless and the law-abiding on the seas at that time, that Monson had no difficulty in picking out from his crew a number of men who had formerly been pirates. "These men he sent in his boat to the gentlemen of that place, and took upon him to be a pirate and the name of Captain Manwaring." The ex-pirate, whom Monson trusted, acted so as to prove the truth of the adage touching the wisdom of employing a thief to catch a thief. He entered into the plot with almost scandalous zest. Mr. Cormac had three daughters, all of whom, it appears, had pirate sweethearts. "These silly women" were cruelly deluded with stories to the effect that Captain Manwaring was very rich with plunder, and very generous, also that he was acquainted with all their sweethearts. Misled by this fiction, Mr. Cormac and his belongings were at once consumed with a desire to make the acquaintance of Captain Manwaring. He put cattle at a convenient place on the coast with their ears slit, in order that the supposed pirates might take them in a "warlike manner, that it might appear their cattle were taken by violence." Next day Monson sent for the cattle, sending fifty armed men under Captain Chester in a "disorderly manner like pirates." Captain Chester was civilly received by the Misses Cormac, "whose desire was to hear of their sweethearts, but all in general coveted to see Captain Manwaring, who they confidently believed would enrich them all." In the course of the day Mr. Cormac sent two "ambassadors," who "delivered a friendly (though in a rude manner like their country) message of their love." It was an invitation to a dinner and dance.

Monson now began to put his stratagem in force. He laid the two messengers by the heels in the hold of his ship, after cruelly asking them whether they thought she looked like a pirate. Then he landed himself with more men in a disorderly manner. He was received on the beach by a large crowd with an effusive welcome. One of the crowd was an English trader, another was a merchant from Galway. Both of these made a trade of buying plunder from pirates. A third noted character in the hospitable mob was Cormac's schoolmaster; for an Irish gentleman, however lax he might be in the matter of piracy, was never indifferent to learning. Surrounded by cheers and enthusiasm, the imaginary Captain Manwaring made triumphant progress to Mr. Cormac's house. A royal entertainment had been prepared. The harper, a recognised member of every Irish household, played to welcome him, and the Misses Cormac proposed a dance. Monson would not himself dance, but he allowed his followers to amuse themselves. In the meantime he talked with Cormac and his daughters, "laughing and jeering at their two messengers aboard who they did not suspect were detained prisoners, but drinking and frolicking in the ship, as the use was upon the arrival of pirates." Then he had some talk with the trader, of whom he draws a most engaging picture. Believing that he had in truth to deal with a pirate, the man was completely candid. He explained how he treated the sheriffs, showing "a pass procured upon false pretences from the Sheriff of that county, authorising him to travel from place to place to make inquisition of his goods, which he falsely pretended he was robbed of at sea; he laughed at the cheat he had put upon the Sheriff in getting his pass, and urged the advantage that might be made of it in sending to and fro in the country without suspicion.... His antic behaviour was enough to put the melancholist man in good humour, sometimes he played the part of a Commanding Sheriff; then he acted his own with many witty passages as to how he deceived the Sheriff." Sir William Monson pumped this clever fellow, of whom he was making a dupe, and in particular got a letter from him to certain mariners in the county who were the regular associates of pirates.

So soon as he had this useful document in his pocket, Sir William sprang his mine on this innocent Irish family. He told them who he was, and that they were all prisoners. "Here was seen the mutability of the world; their mirth was turned into mourning and their dancing into lamenting, each bewailing and repenting as is the custom of offenders." The inexorable Sir William returned on board, leaving them all under guard, and his carpenter busy in setting up the gallows, but the end was not tragic for the family of Cormac and their guests. After giving them "four-and-twenty hours' fright" in irons, and receiving a solemn promise that they would never connive at pirates again, Monson pardoned them. He was perhaps the more readily induced to be merciful by the fact that in the meantime another vessel had turned up outside Broadhaven, and had at once stood off to sea on finding the anchorage occupied. Rightly judging that the new-comer was a pirate, Monson compelled Cormac to give help in bringing him to justice. The old rogue was perfectly prepared to save his own neck, and wrote letters which induced the new-comer to remain on the coast and send a large part of his crew ashore for cattle. Monson, who watched his compulsory allies with sleepless vigilance, seized the opportunity to board the pirate while a large part of his crew were on shore. Hauling his boats over a strip of land between Broadhaven and the place where the pirates were, he dropped during the night on the deceived malefactors and captured them without difficulty. His new prisoners were treated with less tenderness than the Cormacs. "Examining the behaviour of all the pirates, of many he picked out the worst, who had tasted twice before of His Majesty's gracious pardon." This time they tasted of His Majesty's justice, being duly hanged as a terror to evil-doers. If Monson is to be believed, this severe example cleared the Irish coast of pirates, but he undoubtedly overrated the efficacy of the remedy. Years afterwards, when Strafford came to Ireland as Lord Deputy, the coast was still infested with pirates, and very stringent measures had been taken to re-establish security for trade.

This story, though it may seem somewhat out of place when told at such length in a history of the Royal Navy, has appeared to me to be worth repeating. One concrete example will do more than any number of general statements to show what the condition of a country was. All through the reign of Elizabeth and the first two Stuarts piracy was common on the coast of Great Britain and Ireland. Sir William Monson's experiences show why it could flourish. The number of ships kept in regular commission by the king was small, and much of their time was taken up in carrying princes and ambassadors between England and the Continent. In outlying districts there were always persons of the stamp of Mr. Cormac and his "hackney daughters," who were prepared to give the pirates a friendly welcome in consideration of a share of the booty. Traders were ready to buy their stolen goods. And it is even obvious, from Monson's casual mention of members of his crew who had been pirates, that nobody thought very much the worse of a man for having followed the trade once in a way. The sea was still very lawless, and the Royal Navy had hardly yet taken its police duties firmly in hand.

The improvement in shipbuilding which took place in this reign was mainly the work of the most able member of a remarkable family of shipwrights, sea-captains, and navy officials who are found engaged in and about the royal dockyards from the reign of Edward VI. to close on the end of the reign of Charles II. Phineas Pett, who was born in 1570 and died in 1647, was the son of Peter Pett, master shipwright at Deptford in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He received a better education than had probably been given to any previous member of his family. After preliminary schooling at Rochester and Greenwich, he entered the famous Puritan college, the "House of Pure Emanuel," at Cambridge in 1586. The death of his father, in 1589, left him destitute, and Phineas was for some years compelled to pick up a precarious livelihood in the dockyards or in sea voyages. In 1597 he entered the service of Lord Howard, which no doubt means his service as Lord High Admiral, but not in any domestic capacity. His foot being now well down, Pett kept his place, and very considerably bettered it before long. Having been employed by Howard to build a miniature ship for Henry, eldest son of James I., he attracted the favourable notice of the prince, who in his short life certainly proved that he possessed a remarkable eye for men of brains and character. Pett's favour drew upon him a great deal of jealousy in the dockyard, and he was at last openly accused by his rivals of incompetence. But he stood his ground stoutly, and finally justified himself in an inquiry held before the king at Woolwich. James, like all the house of Stuart, had a taste for clever scientific men. He was mainly a scholar and a theologian, as his son Charles I. was a judge of pictures and of literature, and as his grandson Charles II. had a taste for natural science and chemical experiments. But he could understand the merits of such a question as was debated before him at Woolwich, and his inclination would be to support an educated man against the merely practical men who were accusing him of bungling because he departed from their familiar old rules of thumb. The whole house of Stuart, indeed, had a liking for ships and sea affairs, which they showed even before they became kings of England. Under royal protection, Pett was able to bring about great improvements in construction by reducing the amount of timber used and relying on better proportion for strength. The great ship called the Prince Royal, designed by him, and launched in 1610, was the finest yet built for the Crown, and he surpassed her in the Sovereign of the Seas, launched in 1637, during the reign of Charles I. He established his family so firmly in the dockyards, that they overran all the offices in them by the middle of the century.

The labours of this skilful shipbuilder would have been of little avail but for the exertions of others among the king's servants who in 1618 prevailed over the interested opposition of the Lord High Admiral to the appointment of a Committee to inquire into the state of the navy. Even in the great queen's reign all had not been perfect in the dockyards. During her later years, when they had lost the vigilant supervision of Hawkins, a good deal of corruption had begun to creep in. Under the lax government of James I., and when there was no longer a permanent state of war to brace the energies of the admirals and captains, and to apply a perpetual check on the execution of work, the naval administration fell rapidly into an inefficient condition. As early as 1608 there had been talk of an inquiry. But Lord Howard of Effingham, or, to give him his later title, the Earl of Nottingham, used his influence to put a stop to the proposal. He no doubt considered that he was personally insulted when the conduct of the department under his command was called in question. Yet inquiry was certainly needed. We cannot believe that the hero who led the English fleets against the Armada, and was joint commander with Essex in the triumphant expedition to Cadiz, was himself guilty of corruption. The truth is, that he looked upon the minute examination of accounts as work beneath his dignity, and fit only for subordinate officials, whom he regarded as his servants. He managed the navy, in fact, very much as a profuse, easy-going noble would have conducted the affairs of his own house. Of course he was robbed by his servants, and, when they were accused of misconduct, he resented the interference as implying a reflection on his judgment. So fraud and peculation flourished under the protection of his honourable name.

The corruption at the Admiralty was so flagrant that another attempt to set going an inquiry was made in 1613. It went so far that a Commission was actually drafted, but Nottingham, thoroughly aroused at this second insult, consulted lawyers as to the legality of the document, and threatened a constitutional opposition. Again he succeeded in staving off inquiry. Four years later, however, a third, and this time a successful, effort was made to overhaul the Admiralty. The Howard family were in conflict with the rising favour of George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham, and the admiral suffered with the rest. In this case there can be no question that the interests of the nation were on the side of Buckingham. The Commission which took the work in hand contained some excellent men of business. Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, was one, and another was Sir John Coke, a model public servant, though a somewhat mean-spirited man, who continued in the service of the Crown far into the reign of Charles I.

The report issued by this body in September 1618 gives a sufficiently lamentable account of the condition into which the navy had fallen during the fifteen years since the death of Queen Elizabeth. It was to little use that Pett was building finer ships, when they were allowed to go to decay, through mismanagement in the dockyards, from the very day they were built. As to the scandalous defects which had been steadily increasing under the lax supervision of Nottingham, there can be no sort of question. The Commissioners, to begin with, found that no accounts had been prepared for the last four years, and they were driven to discover what the expenditure of the navy had been by the laborious process of going over all the warrants issued during that period. After what appears to have been a very fair and careful examination, they came to a decision that the money spent yearly on an average during the last four years had been £53,004, 7s. 11d. It was far more than Elizabeth had spent to maintain an efficient sea force in war-time, and yet it could not keep the navy from decay. Out of a nominal force of forty-three ships, sixteen were either non-existent or absolutely rotten. The others, though they were capable of being repaired, were in so bad a condition as to need a thorough refit, and this although the cost of the navy had been increasing rapidly. The report of the Commissioners is a model of good order and explicit convincing statement. It leaves no doubt on the mind why it was that the strength of the navy decreased as its expenses grew. The Commissioners give an account of the administration, which is now of great historical interest.

First, they draw up a list of the officers to whom the government of the navy was entrusted, showing us the whole establishment as it stood in 1618, distinguishing between the old order created by Henry VIII. and the recent additions:—