THE EARLY ENGLISH NAVY.*
ALL those who read Mr. Oppenheim's articles in the English Historical Review, and they attracted considerable notice when they appeared, will be glad to see this book, which is bottomed in them. Being a history of administration, of organisation, it is necessarily concerned largely with details, and will read dully to dull people. But it is a noble attempt to deal with a supremely important subject, and no one who really understands the history of England will wish any of Mr. Oppenheim's tables and statistics curtailed.
The growth of the naval principle in English history can be very clearly traced. "There is no sign in the policy of the early Kings of any perception of the value of a navy as a militant instrument like an army, or any sense of the importance of a real continuity in its maintenance and use. Society was based on a military organisation, but there was no place in that organisation for the Navy except as a subsidiary and dependent force." Mr. Oppenheim makes this remark in connection with the theory as to Edward III.'s views on the "power of the sea." The Libel of English Policy, written a century later, has been supposed to point to Edward's perception of the importance of sea-power, but the truth is that the writer endowed Edward with his own views. It is hardly necessary to go further, as Mr. Oppen- heim does, and question the statement that the Libel represents the ideas of the time at which it was written ; it • A History of the Administration of the Royal Nary and of Merchant Shipping in Relation to the Nan from 1509 to 1660. With an Introdootion Treating of the Preceding Period. By hi. Oppenheini. London: John Lane.
is a difficult point which cannot be settled by a statement of what happened ; certainly a good case can be made out for a continuous stream of tendency from Richard ll.'s days onwards, and the Libel is only one of many evidences of it. However, sold the Navy was, or most of it, after Henry V.'s death. Then comes the contract system, by which the Channel was supposed to be kept clear of pirates and enemies, but was not; a system that Edward IV. for a time continued, forming at the same time a small but growing Navy of his own. With Henry VII. we get substantial advance. He added little to the size of the Navy, but in his day the first dry dock was constructed, the policy of Naviga- tion Acts was definitely pursued, and the commercial treaties of the reign show the need for more ships in the future. Henry VIII.'s reign is a great naval epoch. Any one who has looked through the letters and papers of his reign as they have been calendared must have been struck with that. Mr.
Oppenheim has carefully, chiefly from unpublished sources, worked out the composition of the force, and his tables show how large was the number of the ships it contained. The close personal attention which Henry gave to his Navy bore fruit in a real improvement in the construction of the ships.
The Fleet becomes more of an arm of itself, proper sailing and fighting directions are drawn up, and the dockyard accom- modation is increased. The sailors had doubtless a terribly hard time, and the punishments which were meted out were of the most terrific order. Possibly because we now have more means of knowing about it, the roguery which was to be the curse of the Navy for many a long year was now becoming apparent. "I fear that the pursers will deserve hanging for this matter," very properly wrote an official on one of many similar occasions, and the only remark that can be made is that it is a thousand pities that more of these defaulting gentlemen were not punished. Into what was perhaps the most important change of the reign, the formation of the Navy Board, as it was later called, we have not space to enter, but it is only one of the many evidences of the great practical sagacity of this ferocious representative of the new order.
Elizabeth's naval policy was much as we should expect from what we know of her character. She treated the Navy better than she did other State Departments, but she did little more than keep its strength as she found it. Times had changed, and, as Mr. Oppenheim says, and the remark shows the true historian, "if Henry VIII. created a Navy under the stimulus of a possible necessity, it requires little imagination to conceive his course when the time had come, as it never came for him, to put forth every effort in using it for the preservation of England." The seaman's position deteriorated ; his pay, if he got it, was relatively less than it had been, owing to the great rise in prices; he was horribly fed, and if wounded got scant attention. An interesting note as to his credibility shows bow sunk was the morale of the service. Some officials in 1592 having to examine certain seamen as witnesses, reported : "We hold it bate labor and offence to God to minister oathes unto the generallitie of them."
Still Elizabeth comes out well as contrasted with James I., in spite of the fact that James took a strong personal interest in the Navy. The weaknesses of his character were exactly such as dishonest officials love, and the result may be beet expressed in Mr. Oppenheim's own words :—
" He commenced his reign with a fleet fit to go anywhere and do anything ; he allowed it to crumble away while spending on it more money during peace than Elizabeth did during war ; he chose the most unfit men to manage it at home and command it abroad, and the results of his weak and purposeless rule were seen in the shameful fiasco of 1625 and the degradation of Eng- lish prestige. Had not Buckingham reorganised the Admiralty in 1618 there would shortly have been no Navy to rouse the jealousy of foreign powers."
The ships were badly built, the art of shipbuilding having rather retrograded ; the seamen, who knew the service by this time, went "with as great a grudging to serve in his Majesty's service as if it were to be slaves in the galleys;" and it is small wonder to find them described as "good sailors and better pirates." Of 1608, Mr. Oppenheim quotes : "The Navy is for the greatest part manned with aged, impotent, vagrant, lewd, and disorderly companions ; it is become a ragged regiment of common rogues."
The end of the book is its most important part. Mr. Oppenheim's great lesson to us is the naval greatness of the Commonwealth. It took a long time to kill the bad practices that had grown up ; indeed they were not all killed; but still the advance made was tremendous. The Commonwealth was a period of naval glory, to our thinking far outshining that of Elizabeth's reign, and so will most think who carefully study Mr. Oppenheim's book. We look forward to the time when Pepys will come on to the scene, and we hope that Mr. Oppen- heim will let as many as possible of those who took prominent part in the administration speak for themselves. We want, more sayings like that of Lawson: "All that look towards Zion should hold Christian communion—we have all the guns aboard."
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