184

HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

esq. at that time principal officers of the navy, to take into their consideration,and give their opinions, on its general state. Their report is the more curious,inasmuch as it affords not only a plain, intelligible, and unexaggeratedaccount of its state at that time, which appears to have been far fromflourishing, but also as it contains many curious and interesting particularsrelative to its internal, or civil management, and economy, as well as the ratesor prices at that time of various kinds of materials and stores, together withthe wages of artificers, officers, and other classes of persons, employed in theroyal navy *.

«

A Project for contracting the Charge of his Majesty’s Navy, keepingthe Coast of England and Ireland safely guarded, and his Majesty’sShips in Harbour as sufficiently secured as now they are, provided that theold Debts be paid, the Provisions hereunder mentioned supplied, and certainAssignment settled, for the farther Payment of the Navy quarterly.

Earl of Nottingham, Lord Admiral,

Sir Robert Mansell, Secretary,

Sir Guildford Slingsby, - !

Sir Richard Bingley, V Principal Officers.

Peter Buck, Esq. S

* The apparent want of stores becomes the less surprising, when the long duration of that state ofwarfare which prevailed during the last fifteen years of queen Elizabeth’s reign, is taken into theaccount, and the great expence government had been in consequence driven to, considering the valueof money at that time. The necessity of keeping certain ships always equipped, and at sea, for the betterguard of the coasts, was rendered necessary, even in those days, as well on account of the turbulentand insolent spirit of the Hollanders, which then began to manifest itself toward their deliverers fromthe Spanish yoke, as by a nest of pirates, which, in the early part of this king’s reign, grievously infestedthe Scottish and Irish seas.

The king’s attention appears, by a MS. commission, preserved in the Cotton library, Julius F. iii.fol. 3, to have been directed to this great purpose in 1618. It bears date April the sixth, and isdirected to Henry earl of Northampton, lord keeper of the privy seal, Charles earl of Nottingham, andthirteen other privy counsellors, twelve of whom were persons in high office. [N. B. The thirteenth,person was, pro forma, John Corbet, esq. one of the clerks of the privy council.] These commis-sioners were authorised to enquire into, and rectify a multitude of flagrant abuses, which appear, fromthe tenor of the instrument constituting their authority, to have at that time pervaded the generalmanagement of the navy.

The