Читать книгу A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217 to 1688 - David Hannay - Страница 4

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Authorities.—Much information concerning the navy during the earlier Tudor period will be found in Charnock's Naval Architecture, vol. ii. cap. 2 and 3; but the chief authority now is Mr. Oppenheim's recently published Administration of the Navy, 1509–1660. This may be supported by numerous passages in the Calendar of State Papers for the reign of Henry VIII., prepared by Mr. Brewer. The details of the fighting in Conquet Bay are given in Echyngham's letters to Wolsey in the Calendar. The collection called "State Papers," edited by Mr. Haines, 1831–1852, contains Lisle's letters during the operations of 1545. The memoirs of Martin du Bellay and Blaise de Montluc give the French side. The early history of the Trinity House has been investigated by Mr. C. L. Barrett, The Trinity House of Deptford Strond, 1893.

The Tudor dynasty filled the throne of England for a hundred and eighteen years. A hundred and six years of that period belong to the reigns of Henry VII., Henry VIII., and Elizabeth, three rulers of consummate ability. No other reigning house has maintained so high a level of governing faculty during so large a proportion of its existence, and it is not the least part of the wonderful good fortune of England that her destinies should have been directed, at a time of change and growth, by sovereigns of eminent capacity. She passed in those years from an old world to a new, and, however high we may rank the faculty of the race, it is impossible to doubt that the transition must have been far less successful than it was if there had been weakness or folly in its rulers. The two Henrys and Elizabeth, it must be remembered, were, in the fullest sense of the word, rulers. They had to submit to necessity, to abstain from much, to accept much which was by no means pleasing to them, but it was because they could do this, and did not persist in endeavouring to drive the world where it would not go, in the fatal fashion of the Stuarts, that they succeeded. The great men who served them, and the qualities of the English people, were not made by the Tudors, but it was they who chose the servants, and used the qualities of their subjects.

The foundation of the modern navy was a great and vitally important part of their administrative work. It must not be supposed that there was any sharp-drawn line dividing the Middle Ages from the later times. The new monarchy itself cannot be said to have differed formally from the old. Henry VII. claimed to reign by the same right and authority as his predecessors. The difference was in the method and the spirit. From the end of the fifteenth century till the beginning of the seventeenth, Englishmen looked to the sovereign as the representative on earth of that law whose "voice" is "the harmony of the world." To the great mass of Englishmen, to all, in fact, except a few nobles, and the poor and martial northern counties, the king was the divinely appointed ruler who stood between them and anarchy. They expected him to govern by the law, but they also recognised his commission to pronounce and enforce it. In later times the authority of the Crown became an object of hostility, but from the day that Henry VII. put on the circle of gold which had fallen from the helmet of Richard III. on the field of Market Bosworth, till Elizabeth sank to rest, old, weary, and half broken-hearted, there were few Englishmen who would have drawn any distinction between the State and the King. On the Continent of Europe the same influence was at work, turning the mediæval king into the modern despot.

So, too, in regard to the navy, there is no deliberate break with the past, no express beginning of any new thing. The ships are still the king's, commanded by his captains, manned by his mariners, administered by his servants. Even in matters of detail the old usages lingered far into the seventeenth century. The captain continued for long to be more soldier than sailor, the man whose business it was to fight, not to sail the ship. In Boteler's "Dialogues," published in the reign of Charles II., though probably written in the reign of his father, it is proposed, as if there were some novelty in the suggestion, that no man should be appointed captain until he had been at least one voyage to sea. The attempt to form a regular corps of naval officers dates from the Restoration, and must be put to the credit of James II., then Duke of York and Lord High Admiral. The crews were still collected for each voyage, and disbanded at its end. This applies not only to the men, but to the officers, though the king might keep a certain number of captains about him, by putting them on the footing of gentlemen of his household. It was not until the time of the Commonwealth, and then through the exertions of the Council of State, that the navy was raised to a strength which made it possible to dispense with the service of pressed or hired merchant ships when a great fleet had to be fitted out. On the face of it, in fact, and if we look to the mere letter, there was no change at all. The admiral was still a great officer of State, who acted as king's lieutenant in sea affairs. There were king's ships managed by the king's servants, and in time of need the old calls were made on the ports to provide their quota for the defence of the country.

Yet for all that there was a change, and the beginning of something new. The same causes which were leading to the formation of professional standing armies on the Continent, were at work to induce the Tudors to pay attention to their navy. English kings had done so before them. When the Duke of Norfolk told Chapuys, the ambassador of Charles V., in 1535, that it was a good thing for a king of England to be provided with ships to inspire awe in those who wished to attack him, he was saying nothing which was not well known to John or Edward III. The difference lay in the continuity of attention paid to the navy by the Tudors, in the proportion of their revenue which they spent on it, and in the formation of a department expressly devoted to the work of maintaining the king's ships. In former times so much of the king's navy as was his personal property bore a close resemblance to those bands of mercenaries which he raised for a particular war, and disbanded when he had no further need for their services. From the time of the Tudors his ships became a permanent establishment. It is from them that the Royal Navy descends, not from the sea militia of the Cinque Ports. The British army began with the regiments of Charles II., not with the host which was called out on the summons of our ancient kings.

From the very necessity of the case, a permanent fighting force calls for the attention of a no less permanent civil administration. Throughout nearly the whole of the reign of Henry VIII. the work continued to be done under the supervision of the Clerk of the Ships, but by an increasing staff of subordinate clerks, called for by its growing needs and the establishment of a dockyard at Portsmouth. The office, in fact, grew, as has been commonly the case with our administrative machinery, by adaptations to meet needs. At last, in 1546, in the year before his death, the king formed the first regular Navy Board by letters patent dated April 24. It consisted of a Lieutenant of the Admiralty, a Treasurer, a Comptroller, a Surveyor, a Clerk of the Ships, and two officials who had no special title. A "Master of the Ordnance of the Ships" was created at the same time, but this was a separate office. This organisation was subject during its history to suspensions and modifications, as will be seen further on; but four of the officers here named, the Treasurer, Surveyor, Comptroller, and Clerk of the Ships, or of Acts, or of the Navy, continued with brief intervals to be the chiefs of the civil administration of the navy till 1832. Upon them fell the duties of buying stores, building and taking care of ships, managing the dockyard, distributing provisions, paying wages, and what we should now call the compassionate allowances given to wounded men. This body existed, with temporary suspensions, but little permanent modification, till 1832, when it was merged into a body from which it must always be carefully distinguished—namely, the Admiralty.

The Admiralty, which has now absorbed the whole administration of the navy, originally only exercised the higher military control. It was, in fact, the representative of the Lord High Admiral, and is still technically described as the commission named to discharge the duties of his office. This office descended to the Tudors from earlier times. The Lord High Admiral was, to repeat a phrase already used, the king's lieutenant for sea affairs. He exercised a large jurisdiction, gave commissions to the military officers of the navy, the lieutenants, that is to say, and captains, issued the orders, and commanded in war. The non-military officers, the masters and their mates, whose duty was the navigation of the ship, the doctors and pursers, fell under the Navy Office. This department was subordinate to the admiral, and bound to execute his orders, but he did not sit in it. In earlier times he discharged the duties of his office in his own house. Even at later periods, when there was an Admiralty Office at Whitehall, the Navy Office had its own quarters in Seething Lane, or, later on, in Somerset House, until the great reform of 1832 welded the departments together.

By the end of the reign of Henry VIII. the navy was, in so far as the main lines are concerned, organised pretty much as it was destined to remain for three centuries. The chief change introduced during this long period was the formation of the regular corps of naval officers, which dates from the Restoration. Until that time there was no organised body of fighting sea officers, as we may call them, in order to avoid the confusion which arises from the use of the word "military" as applied to the naval service. Individual men were habitually employed, and, when not on service, provided for by being put on the footing of gentlemen of the royal household, but they had no general commission as naval officers, and no claim to pension. The Lord High Admiral gave commissions when a fleet was fitted out, issued instructions, and commanded in person. The Navy Office, or Navy Board, did the civil work. On this side of the administration the necessity for taking care of ships and stores early led to the formation of a regular staff of pilots, boatswains, and gunners, who belonged to the navy, and were not merely attached to this or that ship for as long as she was in commission.

The growth of the ship itself had much to do with bringing about the formation of a permanent Royal Navy. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, it was no longer possible to rely on such resources as could be found in the Cinque Ports, even if they had not been silted up by the action of the currents of the Channel. Little vessels built for the coasting trade had neither the size, the strength, nor the armament which had now become necessary for the work of war. The larger merchant ships of the great ports were, indeed, better fitted for the purpose. In those times of insecurity at sea they generally went armed, even in peace. Accordingly, we find that until the middle of the seventeenth century pressed or hired merchant ships were always to be found in great fleets. But their inferiority to the vessel built for war was early recognised. Queen's officers were found to declare that the merchant ships were of little use, except to make a show, in the fight with the Armada. The special warship early became a necessity to a power which was bound to keep up its strength at sea. It could only be provided by the State, which at that time meant the king. Henry VII. saw that truth clearly, and so did his successors on the throne. If they did not build vessels enough to render them independent of all other sources of supply in war, it was because of the poverty of the Crown. From the time, indeed, when vessels of any size began to be required for purposes of war, the State was compelled to rely on those it built for itself. The great bulk of our trade was conducted in vessels of small size. Even at the end of the first quarter of this century, a merchant ship of 500 tons burden was thought large. The great majority ranged from 150 to about 250 tons for the most distant voyages. But as early as the reign of Henry VII. warships were built of 1000 tons. Such vessels could not be supplied by the trade. Neither were the trading craft, being built as economically as possible, equal in strength to those constructed for war.

The great ships of the early Tudors were an exaggeration of the cogs of the Middle Ages. They were longer, broader, and built much higher in the sides. But they had the same towering castles at bow and stern. The word forecastle preserves the memory of the species of fort which once cumbered the fore part of ships. These fortresses were shut off from the rest of the ship by barriers, called, in later times at least, cobridges, and defended even when the enemy was in possession of the waist. Small guns, called "murdering pieces," were mounted on them, to clear the deck on emergency. As parts of a castle they had their merits, but they were very dangerous top hamper for a ship. The fate of the Mary Rose, which will be mentioned later on, shows how easily vessels of the time were upset. Their instability was exaggerated by the nature of the rigging. In the largest vessel there were four masts—one at the prow, another at the stern, and two between. They were apparently complete spars, not divided, as in later times, into lower mast and topmast. Each carried a great square sail or course of excessive height, to which a topsail could be added. The strain thrown on the hull by these great sails must have been severe. It was aided by the castles, which had a constant tendency to tear away when the ship was rolling. As the structure was weak, and the caulking alone was trusted to keep the ships watertight, it is easy to understand that a very short cruise or a very moderate spell of bad weather was enough to reduce the noblest of them to the condition of a sieve. Indeed, the unfitness of the "capital ships" of the sixteenth century for winter cruising was recognised by everybody. Even a hundred years later, when many improvements had been introduced, naval officers were reluctant to keep large vessels at sea after summer was over. As late as the reign of William III., at the end of the seventeenth century, a council of officers declared that the heavier line-of-battle ships could not be safely kept out after the first days of autumn. In the earlier Tudor times they were of use only in fine-weather months. The smaller vessels, being less built upon, and not subject to the same amount of leverage tending to tear them to pieces, were more seaworthy. As they must also have sailed very badly, there is no apparent reason for the confidence inspired in our ancestors by the presence of one of these "capital ships." They must be supposed to have trusted it to bear down opposition by its mere weight, just as a very fine corps of mail-clad horsemen would sweep lighter opponents before them on the field of battle.

Their armament consisted of a multiplicity of guns, ranging from very small pieces mounted on the castles up to the "cannon royal," a 68-pounder, on the main deck. Guns of different sizes were mounted on the same deck. Experience gradually showed the unwisdom of this variegated armament. In the following generations the cannon royal was given up as too heavy, and the very small pieces as too light, while the batteries were made uniform.

The subsequent progress of the navy is better understood when we remember from what it was that it started. The early Tudor warship was absurdly over-hampered with superstructures, rigged in a fashion which was inefficient, and yet exposed the vessel to a dangerous leverage, and armed as if the aim had been to produce confusion. It was still so little fitted to struggle with the forces of the sea and wind, that it could not meet winter weather. From that point the Royal Navy advanced to the stage at which Nelson could keep his watch off Toulon for two years, and at the end of them be still ready for the pursuit of Villeneuve. The story is one of continual simplification and adaptation. The towering over-built castles were cut down, the long complete mast was subdivided into lower, top, and top-gallant. These two last named could be lowered in case of need to relieve the ship. The unwieldy course was reduced, and the topsails and top-gallant sails added to the power of the ship, while remaining themselves perfectly handy. The upright mast in the prow was lowered till through successive stages it became the bowsprit. The armament was brought into a comparatively few classes of guns.

The method in which the ships of the Tudors were manned and fought is better known than their construction. During his first war with France (1511–1514) Henry VIII. provided for the equipment of his fleet very much after the fashion which continued to be followed in the raising of regiments till the end of the eighteenth century. He entered into a contract with his admiral, Sir Edward Howard. The king, on his part, undertook to provide ships, guns, and a sum of money. The admiral, on the other hand, bound himself to do his sovereign service, and to give him one-half the prizes. The business of collecting the crews was apparently left to the admiral, who was armed with the power to press, and was entitled to command the service of local officials for the purpose. It shows how far a fleet was looked upon as a temporary force, that this contract was only to last for three months, and to be renewable for periods of the same length. If the desired purpose was effected, or peace was made, the whole force would be dissolved. Hired or pressed ships would be paid off, and allowed to go. The king's ships would be returned to his own docks, which were then in the Thames, there to remain under the care of his officials of the Navy Office (or, since we are speaking of 1512, it would be more accurate to say, the officials who in the course of the ensuing years were to be organised into the Navy Office) until they were again wanted. The men would be disbanded. There would be left the admiral, who was a great officer of State, ready to command when called upon, the civil officers, the caretakers of the ships and stores, and the ships themselves—the materials, in short, out of which a fleet could be formed when required.

This was the method in its main lines. The details will be best understood by taking a single ship, and seeing how she was manned. For example, let us take the establishment of the Gabriel as she was in the month of March in the fourth year of the reign of Henry VIII. (1513). It gives the disposition of the crew, that is, the classes into which it was divided, and their rates of pay. The statement, which is taken from Charnock, does not agree with the list of the navy in 1513 as quoted in the Calendar of State Papers of Henry VIII., but it supplies us with an account of the crew of a great ship of the time which is substantially accurate as a model. How little confidence is to be placed in the details of the lists of "the king's army on the sea" which are preserved from this reign may be shown by a single fact. In one "book," or, as we should say, "return," corrected by Wolsey, the Gabriel is described as of 800 tons, having two captains, Cortney (Courtenay) and Cornwall, with 600 men, of whom 250 are mariners. In another she is said to be of 700 tons, with one captain, Sir Will. Pirton, and 500 men.

	Number of Men.	Wages of Men.
Sir William Trevellian, captain, at 18d. a day	1	42/-
His retinue, every man 5/- a month	420	£105
The town of Gloucester, every man 5/- a month	25	£6 15/-
John Clerk, master	1	5/-
Mariners, every man 5/- a month	240	£60
Dead shares, that is to say, the master, 6; his mate, 2; the pilot, 3; four quartermasters, 4; their mates, 3; the boatswain, 2; his mate, 1; the coxswain, 1; his mate,½; the carpenter, 1; the caulker, 1; the steward, 1; his mate,½; the purser, 1 = 27½, £6, 17s. 6d.
Gunners, every man 5/- a month	20	100/-
Rewards to the gunners, that is to say, the master gunner, 3/- a month; his mate, 2/6; the four quartermasters, every one of them 2/6 apiece, 10/-; fourteen gunners at 20d. apiece, 2¾		40/10
Sum of the men, 602; of the dead shares, 27½; of the money, £187, 10s. 4d.

No lieutenant is named, and an officer of that name only appears later, but he probably had an ancestor in the gentleman who was captain of the retinue of Sir William Trevelyan. This gentleman was a soldier appointed to fight, and not to attend to the navigation and seamanship, which was the duty of the master. From the fact that the mariners are given as a separate class, we may confidently conclude that the retinue consisted of soldiers, whom the captain brought with him. It will be seen that they greatly exceeded the sailors in number, and this was for long the rule. There is, in truth, no greater mistake than to suppose that the crews of the great warships at any time contained a majority of real seamen, but in Henry's reign the proportion of soldiers was larger than was commonly the case in later times. The indenture made in 1512 with Sir Edward Howard provides that of the 3000 men to be raised over and above the crew of the Regent, which is mustered by itself, 1750 were to be soldiers, and 1233 sailors. It is probable, however, that under the name of soldiers were included many men who afterwards would have been entered as "waisters" and "landsmen," parts of the ship's company who were only expected to work on deck or below, and were not in the proper sense "sailormen." The gunners also were a separate class, and we may safely conclude in their case also that they were not—at least not necessarily—sailors, but rather marine artillerymen.

"Dead pays" is an odd expression, which, however, almost explains itself. They were imaginary men, whose pay was applied to the purpose of providing a sufficient salary for the warrant officers. In theory every member of the crew received the same allowance of 5s. pay and 5s. rations for a month of twenty-eight days. The captain, who drew eighteenpence a day, was the only exception. It was a manifestly insufficient salary, but a gentleman in his position was probably a man of means, who expected to serve at his own charges, and looked to prize and ransom money, or to the king's favour, for his reward, as also for the means of rewarding the volunteers of good family who followed his banner. The system was one which obviously lent itself to abuse. A poor or unscrupulous captain would be tempted to enrich himself by making false musters, that is, by misstating the number of men actually present in his ship, and pocketing the money paid for wages. He would always have the help of subordinates who were bribed, or were afraid to offend a great man when he wished to deceive the king. This absurdly roundabout way of remunerating the officers was finally given up, but it left a curious representative in the so-called "widows' men" of quite recent times. They also were imaginary sailors, and the pay allowed for them was handed over to Greenwich Hospital, to form a fund for the pensions of women whose husbands were killed in action. The twenty-five men of the town of Gloucester mentioned in the list of the Gabriel's crew may be supposed to have been contributed by the town to the king's navy as its quota of the levy. In the crews of other ships we find mention of the men of Exeter, or of the county of Devon, or the Earl of Arundel, or some other great noble, who were similarly mustered apart. These are traces of the mediæval organisation which survived into and overlapped the new time.

The manner of fighting of the time is sufficiently well known. Of strategy, in the proper sense of the word, the sea-captains of Henry VIII. knew the essential. They could harry an enemy's coast and commerce for the purpose of provoking him to fight, or lie in front of any port where his ships might be at anchor, and wait till he came out. The actual management of ships when engaged with the enemy was decidedly rough and ready. It does not appear that there was as yet any formation of a fleet. One great number of ships advanced in a swarm against another, and each individual vessel got into action as speedily as the seamanship of her master and the spirit of her captain allowed. In one of the letters of Sir Edward Echyngham to Wolsey we have a spirited account of the preparations made to meet some hostile French ships. He reports that on a certain day in April 1515 he spied three French men-of-war "that made unto usward; and then I comforted my folk and made them to harness, and because I had no rails upon my deck I coiled a cable round about the deck breast high, and likewise in the waist, and so hanged upon the cable mattresses, and dagswayns (a species of coarse, shaggy blanket used by the poor), and such bedding as I had within board, and setting out my marris pikes, and my fighting sails all ready to encounter these three French barks, with such poor ordnance as I had, and then they saw that I made unto them with so good a will, and would not shrink from them, then they put themselves to flight, and then I chased them till they came to the Abbey of Fécamp, which lies hard by the seaside, and so they gat them under the walls of the haven, and we followed them until they shot their ordnance into us." From Sir Edward Echyngham's despatch, it is clear that his ship had no bulwarks between the fore and after castles, and the protection for the men fighting on deck was secured by making a temporary barrier of bedding, blankets, and sails. It was here that the enemy would naturally attempt to enter, and the men stationed in this part of the ship, commonly called the waist, would be most exposed to the fire of the enemy's tops and castles. The practice of concealing this, the most vulnerable part of the deck, by hanging up what were called waist-cloths, continued until the next century. They were, however, a very poor substitute for bulwarks, being exceedingly inflammable. Well-painted wood will resist fire for a long time, but canvas sails, bedding, and blankets are much more easily set blazing. An accidental explosion in the ship herself, the wads from the guns on the cobridge heads, or, worst of all, the flames of a fireship alongside, would cause all the canvas and rigging to burn up like a bonfire. A frightful instance of the facility with which a disaster of this kind could be produced was given in the very first naval battle of Henry VIII.'s reign. The mention of pikes proves that Sir Edward Echyngham calculated that a considerable part of his fighting would consist in repelling boarders or in attempting to board. Indeed, until it got to hand-to-hand fighting, there was little decisive result to be expected from the sea battles of that time. The guns were, as has been said above, often heavy, but the artillery practice of the crews was very rough. The allowance for windage was absurdly large, and it was consequently a matter of chance in what direction a bullet would go. Besides, the use of cartridges had not yet been introduced, and the powder was ladled out of a barrel—a very slow and very dangerous practice. It seems to have been thought that a great fleet had maintained a fire of wonderful intensity if it discharged three hundred shot in one day's work. This is far less than the total amount of the fire of either the Victory or the Royal Sovereign at Trafalgar.

By firmly establishing the royal authority, and by filling his treasury, Henry VII. had prepared the way for his son's work as an organiser of the navy. He certainly left his son a navy of no contemptible strength, according to the standard of that time. The Statute-book of his reign contains several acts meant to encourage shipping. The comparative obscurity of his navy is probably mainly to be accounted for by the fact that he looked upon war with dislike, and never pushed a quarrel with his formidable neighbour, the King of France, beyond the point at which Louis XI. was prepared to offer him a bribe to keep quiet. But, however much Henry VIII. may have received from his father, he certainly exerted himself strenuously to increase his inheritance. He not only built ships, but he improved the naval architecture of his subjects by inviting workmen from the great Italian ports. He not only built and improved ships, but he took a very keen and intelligent interest in the organisation of his fleet and in the performances of his vessels. He extended his establishments on the Thames, and to him belongs the credit of setting up the dockyard at Portsmouth. And we know that in March 1513, in the fourth year of his reign, he issued a "Licence to found a Guild in honour of the Holy Trinity and St. Clement in the Church of Deptford Strond, for reformation of the navy, lately much decayed by admission of young men without experience, and of Scots, Flemings, and Frenchmen as loadsmen." Loadsmen were those who were considered capable to throw the lead, and were the skilled seamen from whom the masters and pilots, or, as we now say, mates, were chosen. This was the Trinity House, which still exists, and still continues to perform the duty assigned to it by Henry VIII. of examining those who wished to be accepted as fit to navigate or pilot a ship, besides taking care of the lights and buoys all round the coast. Its connection with the navy was much closer in Tudor times than it came to be later on; for not only did it supply the masters and pilots of the king's ships, but it was entrusted with the supply and transport of many kinds of stores.

A letter written by Sir Edward Howard on the 22nd of March 1513 gives a very pleasing instance of the minute personal interest which the king took in his ships. The document has been so damaged by time and accident that a large part of it is illegible, but from what can be deciphered we learn that Sir Edward gave the king a minute account of the performances of all the vessels in his squadron, during a cruise from the mouth of the river to the Channel. Fragments of sentences tell how the one sailed very well, and how "your good ship, the flower, I trow, of all ships that ever sailed," did something which the damaged state of the paper conceals, and then "came within three spear-lengths of the Kateryn and spake to John Fleming, Peter Seman, and to Freeman, master, to bear record that the Mary Rose did fetch her at the tail." "The flower of all ships that ever sailed" was apparently the Mary Rose herself, Howard's own flagship, the same which was destined to come to such a disastrous end in the Solent some thirty years later. Sir Edward tells how she "fet" the Mary George, and in all ways proved herself "the noblest ship of sail … at this hower that I trow be in Christendom." When they came to anchor, the admiral noted down the order in which the vessels forming his squadron came up to the Road: "The first after the Mary Rose was the Sovereign, then the Nicholas, then the Leonard of Dartmouth, the Mary George, the Harry of Hampton, the Ann of Greenwich, the Nicholas Montrygo, called the Sancho de Garra, and the Katherine and the Mary." That the king's officers were encouraged to keep him so minutely informed of the performances of his ships is proof enough of the interest Henry took in his navy.

Although the new time had begun, the change from the Middle Ages was not yet very perceptible in so far as the general direction of a war was concerned. It was still a matter of raids and casual battles. The first naval action of Henry's reign was in pursuit of the old standing war against the pirates. A Scotchman named Andrew Barton had been robbed by the Portuguese, and had received letters of marque from his own sovereign, authorising him to indemnify himself for his loss out of any Portuguese property he could find upon the seas. In much later and more civilised times it was never difficult to turn a privateer into a pirate, and in the early sixteenth century the distinction between them was fine in the extreme. Barton betook himself to considering that everybody he came across on blue water was a Portuguese, or would serve the purpose very well. He plundered Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Flemings indiscriminately, and without the slightest regard to the embarrassments he cost his own sovereign. At last he became such a nuisance that ships had to be fitted out to pursue him. According to a story which is not very well founded, they were sent out at the expense of the Earl of Surrey, and were commanded by his sons, Sir Thomas and Sir Edward. The two vessels belonging to Barton, called the Lion and the Jenny Perwin or Bark of Scotland, were overtaken by Surrey's two cruisers, and captured after a fight of a most determined and picturesque character, for which, however, the chief authority is a spirited ballad of much later date. There is no doubt, however, as to the death of Barton, who was one of the numerous Scotch pirates of the time.

The same year which saw the capture of these skimmers of the sea saw also the beginning of a much greater naval war. In 1511 Henry entered into the first of his wars with France. As he had then been only two years upon the throne, the fact that he was able to despatch a considerable naval force against the French coast at once, shows that he must have inherited a large force of ships from his father. Four-and-twenty vessels of his own, which he reinforced by ships hired from the Hanse Towns and of the Spaniards, represented the, for that time, very respectable naval power of the kingdom. The war was carried on in the barbarous mediæval style. In 1511 Sir Edward Howard, to whom the king gave the command as Lord High Admiral, ravaged the coasts of Brittany. The devastation of his dominions stung the King of France into making counter exertions, and a fleet was collected at Brest under the command of an officer of the name of Primauguet, which our historians, availing themselves of the licence of the age, corrupted into Sir Pierce Morgan. In 1512 King Henry's fleet was collected at Portsmouth, to be prepared to repel the French if they made any attack, or to fall upon them first if their coming was delayed. The king himself rode down to Portsmouth and reviewed the soldiers, who formed the larger part of his crews on the Downs. Then the fleet sailed, standing over to the coast of France. What exactly followed it is very difficult to say on the evidence we possess. The fleets certainly met somewhere in the neighbourhood of Brest. The historians on either side contradict one another flatly, both as to the respective strengths of the combatants and as to the result of the fight, each asserting that his own countrymen were outnumbered, and that the enemy ended by flying away in a scandalous state of panic. The one point on which all agree is, that somehow or other, and in consequence of manœuvres which are perfectly unintelligible as they are narrated, the great English ship the Regent, of which Sir Thomas Knevet, the King's Master of the Horse, was captain, and the still larger French ship named the Cordelier, fell on board one another, caught fire, and blew up. Knevet and the French admiral, Primauguet, whose flag was flying in the Cordelier, both perished, and from one thousand to fifteen hundred men with them. Whether, as the French assert, this disaster had such a terrifying effect on the English ships that they all ran away, or whether, as our authorities maintain, the French were completely cowed, and took refuge in Brest, the fact that the battle came to an end with no very decisive result is well established. The terrible circumstances of the loss of these two ships produced a profound impression. We notice in ensuing years a marked disinclination among French and English to come too close. It is a feeling easy to understand. There was little use in destroying your enemy if you perished with him; and when both were so inflammable, and the danger of fire was so great, it was always likely that flames would break out somewhere, and if they did, it was nearly certain that they would spread from one to the other. The substantial fruits of victory remained to the English, for their enemies attempted no retaliation. King Louis XII. was plainly convinced of the inferiority of his forces, for he prepared for the struggle of the ensuing year by sending for a reinforcement of galleys from the Mediterranean. They were brought round by a French Knight of Malta of the name of Pierre Jean le Bidoulx, which was abbreviated into Pregent by his countrymen, and corrupted by us into Perye John, and Preter John.

The winter months put a stop to the movements of ships between 1512 and 1513. In this year the operations began as before, that is to say, the English fleet sailed over to the coast of France for the purpose of making plundering raids, and then there was a fight between the two fleets. In this case, however, the end was disastrous to England. In spring Sir Edward Howard had his fleet collected at Plymouth. The total strength was of ships 24, of tons 8460, which gives an average of some 350 tons each. The statement as to the strength of the crews drawn up for Wolsey illustrates the superiority of the soldier to the sailor element in the fleets of the time. It is recorded that the captains were 26 in number, and the soldiers 4650, while of masters there were 24, and of mariners 2880. From this method of arranging the different elements of the crew, it is obvious that the captain and his soldiers were not looked upon as naval men in our sense of the word, but purely as fighting men, and were altogether considered as as much superior in dignity as they undoubtedly were in numbers to the sailors. It will be seen that these vessels must have been crowded to what would now be thought a dangerous extent. There were no less than two hundred men per ship. It was no doubt for this reason that the fleets of that time were attended by a swarm of small vessels called victuallers. There was, in fact, insufficient room to store the provisions required for such considerable bodies of men in such diminutive craft for any length of time. These victuallers were of course a serious hindrance to any fleet. They were slow, and, being only merchant ships, employed wholly as transports, were perfectly incapable of offering any resistance to an enemy. Thus the naval force which they were meant to feed was not only kept back from movements of any rapidity, but was constantly compelled to employ a large part of its strength in protecting its own food against attacks by even insignificant ships belonging to the other side. One short cruise out, an attack on some part of the enemy's coast, and a prompt return home, was all that could be expected from fleets pestered by so many obstructions.

It is said that Howard was so well pleased with the force under his command that he urged the king to come down and take part in the attack on France himself, for which he was soundly rebuked by the Council as having shown an insufficient regard for the safety of His Majesty's sacred person. Yet King Henry might have made this voyage with very little risk, and Howard himself might have returned from the coast of France in safety but for his own headlong courage. On reaching the neighbourhood of Brest, which he seems to have done on the 12th of April, the admiral found the enemy in no humour to give him a meeting. Their ships fled back into Brest on his approach, not, as it appears, into the actual harbour, which lies at the end of the very appropriately named Goulet or Gullet, but into Bertheaume Bay, which lies just outside on the north. Here they took refuge under the protection of forts, and refused to be enticed out. Howard had, in fact, made his appearance on the French coast at a very inconvenient time for the enemy. Pregent, who was on his way with the galleys from the Mediterranean, had not yet been able to join the French ships at Brest. The English were placed between the two divisions of the enemy, and, being apparently superior in force to either of them, could have crushed them in detail if once they could have been got out of the protection of their forts. But to come out was just what the French would not do; nor could Howard by any insults, or even by the damage he inflicted on the coast villages, sting them into giving him battle. Provoked by the shyness of his enemy, and perhaps sore from the rebuke inflicted on him by the Council, Howard made two successive, and, as the result shows, very rash attacks on the enemy. He first endeavoured to sail in and attack the French at anchor in Bertheaume Bay, but, being very ill supplied with pilots, he speedily came to grief. One of the largest of his vessels, commanded by Arthur Plantagenet, a natural son of Edward IV., ran on the rocks, and became a total wreck. It does not appear that Howard blamed "Master Arthur" for the loss of the ship. In a letter to the king on the 17th of April he praises him for his courage, and says that he had given him leave to go home. "For sir, when he was in extreme danger … he called upon our Lady of Walsingham for help and comfort, and made a vow that, an it pleased God and her to deliver him out of the peril, he would never eat flesh nor fish till he had seen her." As Master Arthur Plantagenet would have been reduced by his hasty vow to the sad necessity of living upon dry bread, it was humane to let him get home as quickly as might be. The Middle Ages were not yet quite over, but the years were at hand when any officer of King Henry's who had pleaded a vow to our Lady of Walsingham as the excuse for retiring from the presence of the enemy would have soon found himself in another and even a worse form of peril than shipwreck.

After the failure in Bertheaume Bay, Howard turned to attack "Pery John," as he calls him. The Knight of Malta, finding himself cut off from Brest, had taken refuge in Conquet Bay, which lies just round the point San Mathieu, the extreme western end of the north side to the approach to Brest. Le Conquet is a little island, one of several which stretch south-east from Ushant, and the bay is just opposite on the mainland; the channel between them is called the Passage du Four. The French commander had drawn his galleys up on the beach. It was one of the advantages of these long, narrow, and in stormy waters unseaworthy craft, that they could be beached with ease, and so escape larger and heavier vessels which dared not follow them so near the shore. If Howard could have landed men and guns, he might very soon have made an end of the galleys. And it does appear that he had a scheme of the kind in contemplation, but, whether because he feared interruption by French ships coming out of Brest, or whether only because his buoyant courage ran away with him, he took another course. The story is told by Sir Edward Echyngham in a letter to Wolsey dated the 5th of May. "The news of these parts be so dolorous," he begins, "that unneith I can write them for sorrow;" and it was indeed a sorrowful story. Sir Edward Howard, so we make out, finding that the enemy would not give him a fair meeting, and that, while he was subject to interruption from Brest, he could not safely land his soldiers to attack Pregent, had at last despatched part of his fleet into what we then called the Trade, which is now known as the Passage de l'Iroise, and had decided to make a front attack on the enemy in Conquet Bay with the others. It was, in fact, a cutting-out expedition; and once more we note that the Middle Ages were lingering on, for the admiral led himself, as Sir John Chandos might have done, on a piece of work which in later times would have been more appropriately left to a subordinate officer. The object, as Sir Edward Echyngham reported, "was to win the French galleys with the help of boats, the water being too shallow for ships," and he goes on to describe what followed in words which it would be hardly possible to better.

"The galleys were protected on both sides by bulwarks, planted so thick with guns and cross-bows, that the quarrels and the gonstons (gunstones) came together as thick as hailstones. For all this the admiral boarded the galley that Preyer John was in and Charran the Spaniard with him and sixteen others. By advice of the admiral and Charran they had cast anchor into [word illegible] of the French galley, and fastened the cable to the capstan that if any of the galleys had been on fire they might have veered the cable, and fallen off; but the French hewed asunder the cable, or some of our mariners let it slip. And so they left this [word illegible] in the hands of his enemies. There was a mariner wounded in eighteen places who by adventure recovered unto the buoy of the galley so that the galley's boat took him up. He said he saw my Lord-Admiral thrust against the rails of the galley with marris pikes. Charran's boy tells a like tale, for when his master and the admiral had entered, Charran sent him for his hand gun which before he could deliver the one galley was gone off from the other, and he saw my Lord-Admiral waving his hands and crying to the galleys, 'Come aboard again, come aboard again,' which when my Lord saw they could not, he took his whistle from about his neck, wrapped it together and threw it into the sea."

So died Sir Edward Howard, deeply lamented. "For there was never nobleman so ill lost as he was, that was of so great courage, and had so many virtues, and that ruled so great an army so well as he did, and kept so good order and true justice." Sir Edward was the first of the short list of our admirals who died in battle, and it may be said that he was the last knight in the old sense of the word—that is to say, a valiant man of his person, thinking more of the point of honour than of beating an enemy by good management—who commanded an English fleet. Although it has been the custom to speak of the valour of this attempt as honourable to the whole force engaged, the truth seems to be that Sir Edward Howard was not well supported. This small English galley in which he boarded the Frenchman appears in sober fact, to have been seized with a panic. No sooner had the knights and gentlemen leapt on to the Frenchman's deck than their mariners left them to shift for themselves. Nor was it only the sailors who were somewhat deficient in spirit. Sir Edward Echyngham reports that "Sir Henry Shirborne and Sir William Sidney boarded Prior John's galley, but being left alone, and thinking the admiral safe, returned." These two, though brave men, satisfied themselves hastily of the safety of their leader, and it is not easy to understand how they could have failed to see his peril, considering that the whole body was crowded on the narrow space of a galley's deck.

The loss of Sir Edward Howard most certainly had the effect of depriving his command of all spirit. Within ten days they were back in England, and Echyngham's account of the repulse was written from Hampton. The excuses given for this hasty return were that the fleet did not know to whom the command ought to fall upon the death of the admiral, and the want of victuals. They are more plausible than convincing, and the fact probably is that the fleet was dispirited on finding that the French were too strongly posted to be attacked. The discipline, too, was probably not very good at a time when all forces were raised for temporary expeditions. The death of a leader whose rank and character secured the respect of his followers, was not infrequently followed by the disbanding of his whole force.

The short remainder of this war, which speedily came to an end, was filled by a mere repetition of the old raids by English ships on the French coast, and by French on the English. Pregent plundered the coast of Sussex, while the English ships were refitting, till he had an eye knocked out by an English arrow. English captains in revenge plundered the coast of France, and so it went on with much brutality and no decisive effect till the war died a natural death.

For thirty years there were no further events in the history of the navy which call for particular notice. Henry entered into several wars with Francis I., the successor of Louis XII., and his navy was used to good effect; but little would be gained by a barren recital of the number and strength of the fleets fitted out to transport our armies across the Channel, or harass the French coast. The superiority of Henry during all these years was very marked. He had, in fact, no serious enemy at sea, for Scotland was too poor to send out any naval armament above the level of a casual pirate or semi-pirate, while Charles V., whose dominions included both our rivals at sea in the coming generations, the Spaniards and the Hollanders, was generally at peace with the King of England. Francis I. might have been a most formidable enemy if he had applied himself to developing his navy. He did not indeed actually neglect it at any time, and towards the end of his reign he made one strenuous attempt to get the upper hand at sea. But he had too much to do elsewhere, not to be forced to sacrifice his fleet. His rivalry with Charles V., both in the contest for the empire and in the struggle to obtain possession of the duchy of Milan, made it absolutely necessary for him to devote his resources mainly to the maintenance of armies on land.

In this as in other cases England owed a great deal to the geographical position which saved her from the temptations and necessities besetting her rival. It is enough to say that from 1514 to 1544 the English fleet carried troops across the Channel or escorted the armies marching into Scotland, practically unresisted. This interval was, however, of great importance in the history of the navy. The establishment of the Navy Office was not completed till 1546, but the dockyards were more thoroughly organised, and were greatly extended. There was still very much to be done in the formation of a permanent service. A certain lingering confusion between the Navy Royal and the general shipping of the country probably accounts for the king's decision to leave the management of Deptford Dockyard in the hands of the Trinity House. But the tendency was always towards the formation of special services to be employed for definite ends. Although no regular naval service was as yet formed, the foundations were laid. Even when there was no expedition to be carried out against the French or the Scotch, the king took care never to leave the seas without their winter or their summer guard—small squadrons of vessels appointed to patrol the Straits and the Channel. This force was very small—in quiet times hardly exceeding six or seven little vessels, and the crews were hired only for the summer or winter commission. The fact that a man had commanded a ship in one or other guard did not give him any right to continued employment, but from the very nature of the case a certain continuity of service would arise. Officers who proved satisfactory, or had good friends at court, were employed again and again, and the king's captains began to be a recognised body; while it is safe to presume that there were some soldiers and mariners who found his service more acceptable than that of private employers, and who volunteered into it with regularity. It was during these years, too, that the first efforts to improve the construction of ships were made by the introduction of skilled shipwrights from the Italian ports. Of these Henry must have had a respectable staff in constant employment. When the Mary Rose was sunk at St. Helens, the efforts made to raise her were mainly directed by Italian workmen.

After neglecting, or if not actually neglecting, then subordinating, the naval strength of his kingdom to his armies, and to much less worthy purposes, for thirty years, Francis I. was at last driven into making a desperate effort at sea by the capture of Boulogne in 1544. When the King of England had appeared in France at the head of an army of 30,000 men, and had added another defensible position to the fortress he already possessed at Calais, the unwisdom of leaving him the command of the Channel was borne in upon Francis with a force which aroused him to efforts really worthy of the occasion. In the spring of 1545 (the operations of the previous year had merely been the transport of the army, and a few plundering expeditions) preparations were made on both sides for something deserving to be called war. The King of France built ships in batches, and brought from the Mediterranean not only his own galleys, but large numbers of vessels hired from the Ragusans, whom our ancestors called the Aragoozes. The superiority of the fleet which he was soon able to command might have taught a French ruler how very possible it was for his great monarchy, then certainly more than twice as populous and rich as England, to excel her in the number of her fleets. The English were outnumbered from the first, and knew it. In the spring of 1545, Lord Lisle, then Henry's admiral, and the famous or infamous Duke of Northumberland of the next reign, made his appearance on the coast of France with a scheme for attacking the French in the Seine; but he did not carry it into effect, and the explanation that he found his enemy too strong is at least the most plausible. When the French put to sea, the English certainly acted in a manner to be expected of men who felt themselves overmatched. They retired into Portsmouth harbour, and allowed the French admiral, D'Annebault, to advance to the anchorage of St. Helens, and establish himself there unopposed. The real strength of the French fleet was by no means in proportion to its numbers. A large part of the ships were galleys, which were of little or no use except in a dead calm. It seems, too, that the spirits of the French fleet had been a good deal damped by a disaster which happened before they left Havre. A great vessel, the Philippe, the most beautiful in the world according to the French writers, caught fire in the harbour of Havre, and burned to the water's edge. Blaise de Montluc, who saw the disaster, immediately formed the conclusion that no good would come of the enterprise; and if he, who was the most intrepid of mankind, had come to this gloomy conclusion, we may be sure that there were plenty more in the fleet who were not in a more confident spirit.

A much more trustworthy indication of the little result to be expected from the enterprise would have been the want of spirit of the officers chosen to command by the French king. They had, in reality, an immense superiority of strength. One hundred and fifty "great ships," and at least a hundred smaller vessels, were collected under the command of D'Annebault, and the troops amounted to eight or ten thousand men under the command of Marshal Biez. The force was amply sufficient to strike such a blow to England as would have very rapidly compelled Henry to restore Boulogne, if it had been used with any degree of resolution, but the French leaders were from the beginning on the outlook for difficulties. They left Havre on the 16th of July, and two days later made their appearance on the coast of Sussex, where they spent some time in plundering insignificant fishing villages. No attempt to molest them was made by the English fleet, which lay quiet in Portsmouth harbour. After doing just enough on the coast of Sussex to arouse the whole countryside, the French fleet came on to the Isle of Wight, and anchored at St. Helens. Here they remained, apparently for about ten days, neither attacking with determination, nor being attacked to any purpose. The fine July weather and the prevailing calms were wholly in favour of the French, whose fleet consisted largely of galleys. On the English side, a number of the smaller vessels had been fitted with sweeps, in order that they might act against the rowing vessels of the enemy. But neither did they show any particular zeal to attack. The king himself had come down to Portsmouth to survey the fortifications, and if courtly historians did not praise him too much, it was at his suggestion that the English vessels were provided with oars. Henry did not stay to witness the fighting (if it deserves that name) which ensued, but returned to London, leaving the command of the fleet to Lisle, and of the garrison to Suffolk. The operations were of a very monotonous description, and leave us under the impression that each side was reluctant to fight till it had the other at a hopeless disadvantage.

On the first day the French admiral sent forward sixteen galleys under the command of the Baron de la Garde, for the purpose of drawing the English admiral out to St. Helens, where he might be overpowered by numbers. Lisle was resolute not to be tempted to put himself at a disadvantage. Indeed, the plan was rather a futile one, which it hardly needed any great display of skill on the part of the English admiral to defeat. The galleys were not able to face the king's ships when any wind was blowing. They were very lightly built, and carried only one gun in the bow. If the English ships were able to manœuvre, they could either overpower their enemy by the fire of their broadsides, or, better still, run into them and sink them. Such a vessel as the Great Harry running before a good breeze would probably have gone over a galley without suffering any material damage herself. Therefore the vessels sent by D'Annebault could not, without extreme rashness, come within striking distance of the English fleet, except in a dead calm. When, however, the weather was of this kind, the English ships were unable to move, and could not sail into the French fleet even if they had been disposed to do so. The fight, then, between the two resolved itself into something like this. During the calm hours of the morning, the Baron de la Garde and his colleague Strozzi, the Prior of Capua (the same who afterwards took the castle of St. Andrews from the Scotch Reformers, and had John Knox for his prisoner), came near enough to Lisle's ships to open an exasperating fire. So long as the wind did not get up, the English vessels lay helpless, and could only reply to the fire of their enemy with the few guns they could bring to bear. In such a case, the galleys at all times took care, as far as possible, to station themselves right ahead or else astern of their opponent, in order to avoid the fire of the broadside, though this, considering the rude gunnery of the early sixteenth century, was almost an excessive precaution, since the narrow, low-lying galley, when end on, must have presented a mark much more likely to be missed than to be hit. When the breeze got up, the English ships stood toward the enemy, who thereupon incontinently fled, and was not followed for any considerable distance. This moment was dangerous for him, for if he did not turn quick enough and get away before the English were quite close, he was likely to suffer very severely, for the galleys carried no guns astern. La Garde and the Prior of Capua were expert officers, and when, after some hours of long bowls, the wind got up and the English ships began to bear down, they extricated themselves very smartly from danger.

The first day having thus passed in a species of fighting which might have been prolonged for weeks with little material damage to either side, the French went on for a second, but not apparently for a third day. Yet, on this occasion, they were encouraged by the conviction that they had really inflicted a severe loss on the English fleet. There had been a loss, but it was due, unless all contemporary Englishmen were in a conspiracy to conceal the truth, to something more discreditable to us than the enemy's cannon. The king's ship, the Mary Rose, had been thrown away by pure mismanagement. This was the vessel so ardently praised by Sir Edward Howard in the words quoted already. She capsized as she was coming out of Portsmouth harbour, owing, as it would seem, partly to defects in her construction, partly to neglect of precautions on the part of her crew. The lower-deck ports are said to have been only sixteen inches above the water-line, which is certainly dangerously low. As her crew were tacking her, or altering her course in some other way, she heeled over. If the ports had been shut and the guns made fast, no great harm might have followed, but the ports were open and the guns cast loose. When the water rushed in, the additional weight caused the vessel, overburdened as she was with the weight of her fore and after castles, to heel still further, and then the unfastened guns fell in a rush on the lee-side, probably breaking through wherever they fell against the planking. The Mary Rose filled and sank with such amazing rapidity, that of the 400 soldiers and 200 sailors, more or less, who formed her crew, not more than 40 were saved.

The pardonable conviction that they were entitled to credit themselves with the destruction of the Mary Rose had no very inspiriting influence on the French. M. d'Annebault even gave up making any further attacks to draw the English ships out by the use of his galleys, and adopted the alternative course of landing small parties of men in St. Helens Bay, at Shanklin, and the Blackgang Chine, for the purpose of plundering the country. None of these landing-parties seem to have been of any strength, and several of them were roughly handled by the militia of the island. D'Annebault has been severely criticised by his countrymen for want of energy, and on the whole with justice. He excused himself, partly by pleading that if he had landed a great number of men, he would have so weakened his fleet that the English at Portsmouth could have fallen upon him with every prospect of success, and partly by the opinion of a council of war. The first of these excuses is very lame, for at a later period D'Annebault could afford to put four thousand men on shore in France, and yet be strong enough to give battle to Lisle at Shoreham. He could certainly have landed three thousand in the Isle of Wight, and if he had done so he might have retaliated very severely for the damage done by the English in France, while the ships at Portsmouth must have incurred deep discredit if they had lain idle while the houses of their countrymen were being burned before their eyes. The council of war is only technically a better excuse. He did indeed call a council of all the pilots in his fleet, to ask them whether it was possible to attack the English at Portsmouth with success. The pilots, as might have been expected, magnified the dangers and the difficulties—the shoals, the narrowness of the entry, the currents, the tides, the risk that the first vessels entering would be overpowered, and block the way for those following, the chance that a ship anchoring in a tideway would swing stern-on to the English fire, and, in short, all the topics of dissuasion which are usually advanced by subordinates on such occasions. If the expert knowledge of pilots had been listened to by Nelson, he would never have fought the battle of the Baltic. Fortunately for King Henry VIII., D'Annebault does not seem to have reflected that you can hardly hope to inflict serious injury upon an enemy who possesses some effective strength, except at the very serious risk of being hurt yourself. He wanted, to judge by his actions, to win without running any serious risk; and as the enemy with whom he had to deal was not one likely to give him a victory upon these easy terms, he had finally to retire without delivering an effective stroke. His timidity and want of resource are strikingly illustrated by the fact that he made no use of his galleys for the purpose of towing his great ships into Spithead, which they could easily have done. On the other hand, it must be confessed that no very great enterprise was shown by the English in the use of their own row-boats. We neither hear of them as being employed to tow the big ships into action, nor of any really serious attack made by them upon the galleys. Perhaps the fate of Sir Edward Howard was too fresh in the recollections of our officers to allow of any repetition of his attempt in Conquet Bay.

Whether any considerable number of men were either killed or wounded in these very languid operations is doubtful, but both fleets certainly lost heavily from a cause which, throughout the whole of this and the following two centuries, was far more destructive than the sword. Hardly had King Henry VIII. left Portsmouth when his generals began to report to him the prevalence of sickness in his fleet; while the plague broke out amongst the French at St. Helens, even if it had not begun before they left Havre. Overcrowding, dirt, and salt food were universal in old fleets, and they produced their natural effects. We are probably well within the mark in supposing that for every man killed in action, or mortally wounded, fifty died of fever or the plague, and this continued to be the rule until well past the middle of the eighteenth century. What between disappointment at the obstinacy of the English in not fighting him on his own terms, the timidity of his pilots, and want of enterprise, D'Annebault, after spending several days in this futile manner, sailed away from St. Helens, coasting along Sussex, and making, as before, small plundering attacks, which even seem to have been very badly conducted, and could in any case serve no purpose except to embitter the already sufficiently savage hostility of the two countries. After a few days of this, he stood over to the coast of France, and near Boulogne landed not only four thousand soldiers, but three thousand pioneers, who had been supplied to him for the purpose of erecting the fortifications in the Isle of Wight. Even after this he still thought himself sufficiently strong to return to the English coast, and he reappeared accordingly in a few days.

On their return to the coast of England, the French made no attempt to renew the attack on the Isle of Wight. They prowled along the shores of Sussex and of Kent in what reads like a very aimless manner. If they had any definite object, it was to prevent the English from sending reinforcements to Boulogne. On the whole, it does appear likely that they had some such purpose, for the general direction of their cruise was towards the narrow seas. So soon as they were relieved from their fears at Portsmouth, the English ships were ordered out to observe the French. It appears, from a letter of Lisle's to Paget, that he had been instructed by the king to remain at Spithead.