The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) π
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were promoted in the same way who not only were not good
officers, but who were intellectually and morally incapable of
ever becoming good officers, and whose only recommendation was
that they had been ruined by folly and vice. The chief bait which
allured these men into the service was the profit of conveying
bullion and other valuable commodities from port to port; for
both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean were then so much
infested by pirates from Barbary that merchants were not willing
to trust precious cargoes to any custody but that of a man of
war. A Captain might thus clear several thousands of pounds by a
short voyage; and for this lucrative business he too often
neglected the interests of his country and the honour of his
flag, made mean submissions to foreign powers, disobeyed the most
direct injunctions of his superiors, lay in port when he was
ordered to chase a Sallee rover, or ran with dollars to Leghorn
when his instructions directed him to repair to Lisbon. And all
this he did with impunity. The same interest which had placed him
in a post for which he was unfit maintained him there. No
Admiral, bearded by these corrupt and dissolute minions of the
palace, dared to do more than mutter something about a court
martial. If any officer showed a higher sense of duty than his
fellows, he soon found out he lost money without acquiring honor.
One Captain, who, by strictly obeying the orders of the
Admiralty, missed a cargo which would have been worth four
thousand pounds to him, was told by Charles, with ignoble levity,
that he was a great fool for his pains.
The discipline of the navy was of a piece throughout. As the
courtly Captain despised the Admiralty, he was in turn despised
by his crew. It could not be concealed that he was inferior in
Seamanship to every foremast man on board. It was idle to expect
that old sailors, familiar with the hurricanes of the tropics and
with the icebergs of the Arctic Circle, would pay prompt and
respectful obedience to a chief who knew no more of winds and
waves than could be learned in a gilded barge between Whitehall
Stairs and Hampton Court. To trust such a novice with the working
of a ship was evidently impossible. The direction of the
navigation was therefore taken from the Captain and given to the
Master; but this partition of authority produced innumerable
inconveniences. The line of demarcation was not, and perhaps
could not be, drawn with precision. There was therefore constant
wrangling. The Captain, confident in proportion to his ignorance,
treated the Master with lordly contempt. The Master, well aware
of the danger of disobliging the powerful, too often, after a
struggle, yielded against his better judgment; and it was well if
the loss of ship and crew was not the consequence. In general the
least mischievous of the aristocratical Captains were those who
completely abandoned to others the direction of the vessels, and
thought only of making money and spending it. The way in which
these men lived was so ostentatious and voluptuous that, greedy
as they were of gain, they seldom became rich. They dressed as if
for a gala at Versailles, ate off plate, drank the richest wines,
and kept harems on board, while hunger and scurvy raged among the
crews, and while corpses were daily flung out of the portholes.
Such was the ordinary character of those who were then called
gentlemen Captains. Mingled with them were to be found, happily
for our country, naval commanders of a very different
description, men whose whole life had been passed on the deep,
and who had worked and fought their way from the lowest offices
of the forecastle to rank and distinction. One of the most
eminent of these officers was Sir Christopher Mings, who entered
the service as a cabin boy, who fell fighting bravely against the
Dutch, and whom his crew, weeping and vowing vengeance, carried
to the grave. From him sprang, by a singular kind of descent, a
line of valiant and expert sailors. His cabin boy was Sir John
Narborough; and the cabin boy of Sir John Narborough was Sir
Cloudesley Shovel. To the strong natural sense and dauntless
courage of this class of men England owes a debt never to be
forgotten. It was by such resolute hearts that, in spite of much
maladministration, and in spite of the blunders and treasons of
more courtly admirals, our coasts were protected and the
reputation of our flag upheld during many gloomy and perilous
years. But to a landsman these tarpaulins, as they were called,
seemed a strange and half savage race. All their knowledge was
professional; and their professional knowledge was practical
rather than scientific. Off their own element they were as simple
as children. Their deportment was uncouth. There was roughness in
their very good nature; and their talk, where it was not made up
of nautical phrases, was too commonly made up of oaths and
curses. Such were the chiefs in whose rude school were formed
those sturdy warriors from whom Smollett, in the next age, drew
Lieutenant Bowling and Commodore Trunnion. But it does not appear
that there was in the service of any of the Stuarts a. single
naval officer such as, according to the notions of our times, a
naval officer ought to be, that is to say, a man versed in the
theory and practice of his calling, and steeled against all the
dangers of battle and tempest, yet of cultivated mind and
polished manners. There were gentlemen and there were seamen in
the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not
gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.
The English navy at that time might, according to the most exact
estimates which have come down to us, have been kept in an
efficient state for three hundred and eighty thousand pounds a
year. Four hundred thousand pounds a year was the sum actually
expended, but expended, as we have seen, to very little purpose.
The cost of the French marine was nearly the same the cost of the
Dutch marine considerably more.48
The charge of the English ordnance in the seventeenth century
was, as compared with other military and naval charges, much
smaller than at present. At most of the garrisons there were
gunners: and here and there, at an important post, an engineer
was to be found. But there was no regiment of artillery, no
brigade of sappers and miners, no college in which young soldiers
could learn the scientific part of the art of war. The difficulty
of moving field pieces was extreme. When, a few years later,
William marched from Devonshire to London, the apparatus which he
brought with him, though such as had long been in constant use on
the Continent, and such as would now be regarded at Woolwich as
rude and cumbrous, excited in our ancestors an admiration
resembling that which the Indians of America felt for the
Castilian harquebusses. The stock of gunpowder kept in the
English forts and arsenals was boastfully mentioned by patriotic
writers as something which might well impress neighbouring
nations with awe. It amounted to fourteen or fifteen thousand
barrels, about a twelfth of the quantity which it is now thought
necessary to have in store. The expenditure under the head of
ordnance was on an average a little above sixty thousand pounds a
year.49
The whole effective charge of the army, navy, and ordnance, was
about seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds. The noneffective
charge, which is now a heavy part of our public burdens, can
hardly be said to have existed. A very small number of naval
officers, who were not employed in the public service, drew half
pay. No Lieutenant was on the list, nor any Captain who had not
commanded a ship of the first or second rate. As the country then
possessed only seventeen ships of the first and second rate that
had ever been at sea, and as a large proportion of the persons
who had commanded such ships had good posts on shore, the
expenditure under this head must have been small indeed.50 In the
army, half pay was given merely as a special and temporary
allowance to a small number of officers belonging to two
regiments, which were peculiarly situated.51 Greenwich Hospital
had not been founded. Chelsea Hospital was building: but the cost
of that institution was defrayed partly by a deduction from the
pay of the troops, and partly by private subscription. The King
promised to contribute only twenty thousand pounds for
architectural expenses, and five thousand a year for the
maintenance of the invalids.52 It was no part of the plan that
there should be outpensioners. The whole noneffective charge,
military and naval, can scarcely have exceeded ten thousand
pounds a year. It now exceeds ten thousand pounds a day.
Of the expense of civil government only a small portion was
defrayed by the crown. The great majority of the functionaries
whose business was to administer justice and preserve order
either gave their services to the public gratuitously, or were
remunerated in a manner which caused no drain on the revenue of
the state. The Sheriffs, mayors, and aldermen of the towns, the
country gentlemen who were in the commission of the peace, the
headboroughs, bailiffs, and petty constables, cost the King
nothing. The superior courts of law were chiefly supported by
fees.
Our relations with foreign courts had been put on the most
economical footing. The only diplomatic agent who had the title
of Ambassador resided at Constantinople, and was partly supported
by the Turkish Company. Even at the court of Versailles England
had only an Envoy; and she had not even an Envoy at the Spanish,
Swedish, and Danish courts. The whole expense under this head
cannot, in the last year of the reign of Charles the Second, have
much exceeded twenty thousand pounds.53
In this frugality there was nothing laudable. Charles was, as
usual, niggardly in the wrong place, and munificent in the wrong
place. The public service was starved that courtiers might be
pampered. The expense of the navy, of the ordnance, of pensions
to needy old officers, of missions to foreign courts, must seem
small indeed to the present generation. But the personal
favourites of the sovereign, his ministers, and the creatures of
those ministers, were gorged with public money. Their salaries
and pensions, when compared with the incomes of the nobility, the
gentry, the commercial and professional men of that age, will
appear enormous. The greatest estates in the kingdom then very
little exceeded twenty thousand a year. The Duke of Ormond had
twenty-two thousand a year.54 The Duke of Buckingham, before his
extravagance had impaired his great property, had nineteen
thousand six hundred
were promoted in the same way who not only were not good
officers, but who were intellectually and morally incapable of
ever becoming good officers, and whose only recommendation was
that they had been ruined by folly and vice. The chief bait which
allured these men into the service was the profit of conveying
bullion and other valuable commodities from port to port; for
both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean were then so much
infested by pirates from Barbary that merchants were not willing
to trust precious cargoes to any custody but that of a man of
war. A Captain might thus clear several thousands of pounds by a
short voyage; and for this lucrative business he too often
neglected the interests of his country and the honour of his
flag, made mean submissions to foreign powers, disobeyed the most
direct injunctions of his superiors, lay in port when he was
ordered to chase a Sallee rover, or ran with dollars to Leghorn
when his instructions directed him to repair to Lisbon. And all
this he did with impunity. The same interest which had placed him
in a post for which he was unfit maintained him there. No
Admiral, bearded by these corrupt and dissolute minions of the
palace, dared to do more than mutter something about a court
martial. If any officer showed a higher sense of duty than his
fellows, he soon found out he lost money without acquiring honor.
One Captain, who, by strictly obeying the orders of the
Admiralty, missed a cargo which would have been worth four
thousand pounds to him, was told by Charles, with ignoble levity,
that he was a great fool for his pains.
The discipline of the navy was of a piece throughout. As the
courtly Captain despised the Admiralty, he was in turn despised
by his crew. It could not be concealed that he was inferior in
Seamanship to every foremast man on board. It was idle to expect
that old sailors, familiar with the hurricanes of the tropics and
with the icebergs of the Arctic Circle, would pay prompt and
respectful obedience to a chief who knew no more of winds and
waves than could be learned in a gilded barge between Whitehall
Stairs and Hampton Court. To trust such a novice with the working
of a ship was evidently impossible. The direction of the
navigation was therefore taken from the Captain and given to the
Master; but this partition of authority produced innumerable
inconveniences. The line of demarcation was not, and perhaps
could not be, drawn with precision. There was therefore constant
wrangling. The Captain, confident in proportion to his ignorance,
treated the Master with lordly contempt. The Master, well aware
of the danger of disobliging the powerful, too often, after a
struggle, yielded against his better judgment; and it was well if
the loss of ship and crew was not the consequence. In general the
least mischievous of the aristocratical Captains were those who
completely abandoned to others the direction of the vessels, and
thought only of making money and spending it. The way in which
these men lived was so ostentatious and voluptuous that, greedy
as they were of gain, they seldom became rich. They dressed as if
for a gala at Versailles, ate off plate, drank the richest wines,
and kept harems on board, while hunger and scurvy raged among the
crews, and while corpses were daily flung out of the portholes.
Such was the ordinary character of those who were then called
gentlemen Captains. Mingled with them were to be found, happily
for our country, naval commanders of a very different
description, men whose whole life had been passed on the deep,
and who had worked and fought their way from the lowest offices
of the forecastle to rank and distinction. One of the most
eminent of these officers was Sir Christopher Mings, who entered
the service as a cabin boy, who fell fighting bravely against the
Dutch, and whom his crew, weeping and vowing vengeance, carried
to the grave. From him sprang, by a singular kind of descent, a
line of valiant and expert sailors. His cabin boy was Sir John
Narborough; and the cabin boy of Sir John Narborough was Sir
Cloudesley Shovel. To the strong natural sense and dauntless
courage of this class of men England owes a debt never to be
forgotten. It was by such resolute hearts that, in spite of much
maladministration, and in spite of the blunders and treasons of
more courtly admirals, our coasts were protected and the
reputation of our flag upheld during many gloomy and perilous
years. But to a landsman these tarpaulins, as they were called,
seemed a strange and half savage race. All their knowledge was
professional; and their professional knowledge was practical
rather than scientific. Off their own element they were as simple
as children. Their deportment was uncouth. There was roughness in
their very good nature; and their talk, where it was not made up
of nautical phrases, was too commonly made up of oaths and
curses. Such were the chiefs in whose rude school were formed
those sturdy warriors from whom Smollett, in the next age, drew
Lieutenant Bowling and Commodore Trunnion. But it does not appear
that there was in the service of any of the Stuarts a. single
naval officer such as, according to the notions of our times, a
naval officer ought to be, that is to say, a man versed in the
theory and practice of his calling, and steeled against all the
dangers of battle and tempest, yet of cultivated mind and
polished manners. There were gentlemen and there were seamen in
the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not
gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.
The English navy at that time might, according to the most exact
estimates which have come down to us, have been kept in an
efficient state for three hundred and eighty thousand pounds a
year. Four hundred thousand pounds a year was the sum actually
expended, but expended, as we have seen, to very little purpose.
The cost of the French marine was nearly the same the cost of the
Dutch marine considerably more.48
The charge of the English ordnance in the seventeenth century
was, as compared with other military and naval charges, much
smaller than at present. At most of the garrisons there were
gunners: and here and there, at an important post, an engineer
was to be found. But there was no regiment of artillery, no
brigade of sappers and miners, no college in which young soldiers
could learn the scientific part of the art of war. The difficulty
of moving field pieces was extreme. When, a few years later,
William marched from Devonshire to London, the apparatus which he
brought with him, though such as had long been in constant use on
the Continent, and such as would now be regarded at Woolwich as
rude and cumbrous, excited in our ancestors an admiration
resembling that which the Indians of America felt for the
Castilian harquebusses. The stock of gunpowder kept in the
English forts and arsenals was boastfully mentioned by patriotic
writers as something which might well impress neighbouring
nations with awe. It amounted to fourteen or fifteen thousand
barrels, about a twelfth of the quantity which it is now thought
necessary to have in store. The expenditure under the head of
ordnance was on an average a little above sixty thousand pounds a
year.49
The whole effective charge of the army, navy, and ordnance, was
about seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds. The noneffective
charge, which is now a heavy part of our public burdens, can
hardly be said to have existed. A very small number of naval
officers, who were not employed in the public service, drew half
pay. No Lieutenant was on the list, nor any Captain who had not
commanded a ship of the first or second rate. As the country then
possessed only seventeen ships of the first and second rate that
had ever been at sea, and as a large proportion of the persons
who had commanded such ships had good posts on shore, the
expenditure under this head must have been small indeed.50 In the
army, half pay was given merely as a special and temporary
allowance to a small number of officers belonging to two
regiments, which were peculiarly situated.51 Greenwich Hospital
had not been founded. Chelsea Hospital was building: but the cost
of that institution was defrayed partly by a deduction from the
pay of the troops, and partly by private subscription. The King
promised to contribute only twenty thousand pounds for
architectural expenses, and five thousand a year for the
maintenance of the invalids.52 It was no part of the plan that
there should be outpensioners. The whole noneffective charge,
military and naval, can scarcely have exceeded ten thousand
pounds a year. It now exceeds ten thousand pounds a day.
Of the expense of civil government only a small portion was
defrayed by the crown. The great majority of the functionaries
whose business was to administer justice and preserve order
either gave their services to the public gratuitously, or were
remunerated in a manner which caused no drain on the revenue of
the state. The Sheriffs, mayors, and aldermen of the towns, the
country gentlemen who were in the commission of the peace, the
headboroughs, bailiffs, and petty constables, cost the King
nothing. The superior courts of law were chiefly supported by
fees.
Our relations with foreign courts had been put on the most
economical footing. The only diplomatic agent who had the title
of Ambassador resided at Constantinople, and was partly supported
by the Turkish Company. Even at the court of Versailles England
had only an Envoy; and she had not even an Envoy at the Spanish,
Swedish, and Danish courts. The whole expense under this head
cannot, in the last year of the reign of Charles the Second, have
much exceeded twenty thousand pounds.53
In this frugality there was nothing laudable. Charles was, as
usual, niggardly in the wrong place, and munificent in the wrong
place. The public service was starved that courtiers might be
pampered. The expense of the navy, of the ordnance, of pensions
to needy old officers, of missions to foreign courts, must seem
small indeed to the present generation. But the personal
favourites of the sovereign, his ministers, and the creatures of
those ministers, were gorged with public money. Their salaries
and pensions, when compared with the incomes of the nobility, the
gentry, the commercial and professional men of that age, will
appear enormous. The greatest estates in the kingdom then very
little exceeded twenty thousand a year. The Duke of Ormond had
twenty-two thousand a year.54 The Duke of Buckingham, before his
extravagance had impaired his great property, had nineteen
thousand six hundred
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