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.* among the crews, and while corpses | of battle and tempest, yet of cultivated were daily flung out of the portholes. mind and polished manners. There Such was the ordinary character of were gentlemen and there were seamen 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 The charge of the English ordnance singular kind of descent, a line of in the seventeenth century The valiant and expert sailors. His cabin was, as compared with other ordnance. boy was Sir John Narborough; military and naval charges, much and the cabin boy of Sir John Nar- smaller than at present. At most of borough was Sir Cloudesley Shovel. the garrisons there were gunners; and To the strong natural sense and daunt- here and there, at an important post, less courage of this class of men Eng- an engineer was to be found. But land owes a debt never to be forgotten. there was no regiment of artillery, no It was by such resolute hearts that, in brigade of sappers and miners, no spite of much maladministration, and college in which young soldiers could in spite of the blunders and treasons of learn the scientific part of the art of more courtly admirals, our coasts were war. The difficulty of moving field protected and the reputation of our flag pieces was extreme. When, a few upheld during many gloomy and peril-years later, William marched from ous years. But to a landsman these Devonshire to London, the apparatus tarpaulins, as they were called, seemed which he brought with him, though 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, * My information respecting the condition was too commonly made up of oaths of the navy, at this time, is chiefly derived from Pepys. His report, presented to Charles and curses. Such were the chiefs in the Second in May 1684, has never, I believe, whose rude school were formed those been printed. The manuscript is at Magdasturdy warriors from whom Smollett, lene College, Cambridge. At Magdalene Colin the next age, drew Lieutenant Bowlege is also a valuable manuscript containing ling and Commodore Trunnion. But ment of the country in December 1684. 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 VOL. I. 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 a detailed account of the maritime establish Pepys's" Memoirs relating to the State of the Royal Navy for Ten Years, determined December 1688," and his diary and correspondence during his mission to Tangier, are in print. I have made large use of them. See also Sheffield's Memoirs, Teonge's Diary, Aubrey's Life of Monk, the Life of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, 1708, Commons' Journals, March 1. and March 20. 168. L seven Noneffective charge. Charge of vernment. gunpowder kept in the English forts | no part of the plan that there should and arsenals was boastfully mentioned be outpensioners. The whole noneffecby patriotic writers as something which tive charge, military and naval, can might well impress neighbouring na- scarcely have exceeded ten thousand tions with awe. It amounted to four- pounds a year. It now exceeds ten teen or fifteen thousand barrels, about thousand pounds a day. a twelfth of the quantity which it is now Of the expense of civil government thought necessary to have in store. only a small portion was deThe expenditure under the head of frayed by the crown. The civil go ordnance was on an average a little great majority of the functionabove sixty thousand pounds a year.* aries whose business was to administer The whole effective charge of the justice and preserve order either gave army, navy, and ordnance, was about their services to the public gratuitously, hundred and fifty thousand or were remunerated in a manner which pounds. The noneffective caused no drain on the revenue of the charge, which is now a heavy state. The sheriffs, mayors, and alderpart of our public burdens, men of the towns, the country gentlecan hardly be said to have existed. A men who were in the commission of very small number of naval officers, who the peace, the headboroughs, bailiffs, were not employed in the public service, and petty constables, cost the King drew half pay. No Lieutenant was on nothing. The superior courts of law the list, nor any Captain who had not were chiefly supported by fees. 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.† 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.‡ Greenwich Hospital had not been founded. Chelsea Hospital was building: but the cost of that institution was defrayed partly by a deduction usual, niggardly in the wrong gains of from the pay of the troops, and partly place, and munificent in the and courby private subscription. The King wrong place. The public serpromised to contribute only twenty vice was starved that courtiers might thousand pounds for architectural ex-be pampered. The expense of the penses, and five thousand a year for the navy, of the ordnance, of pensions to maintenance of the invalids.§ It was 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 Turkey 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.* In this frugality there was nothing laudable. Charles was, as Great ministers tiers. needy old officers, of missions to foreign courts, must seem small indeed to the present generation. But the personal favourites of the sovereign, seen a privy seal, dated May 17. 1683, which confirms Evelyn's testimony. * James the Second sent Envoys to Spain, Sweden, and Denmark; yet in his reign the diplomatic expenditure was little more than 30,000l. a year. See the Commons' Journals, March 20. 1688. Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684, 1687. his ministers, and the creatures of It is evident, therefore, that an official those ministers, were gorged with pub- man would have been well paid if he lic money. Their salaries and pensions, had received a fourth or fifth part of when compared with the incomes of the what would now be an adequate stinobility, the gentry, the commercial pend. In fact, however, the stipends and professional men of that age, will of the higher class of official men were appear enormous. The greatest estates as large as at present, and not seldom in the kingdom then very little exceeded larger. The Lord Treasurer, for extwenty thousand a year. The Duke ample, had eight thousand a year, and, of Ormond had twenty two thousand a when the Treasury was in commission, year.* The Duke of Buckingham, the junior Lords had sixteen hundred before his extravagance had impaired a year each. The Paymaster of the his great property, had nineteen Forces had a poundage, amounting, in thousand six hundred a year.† George Monk, Duke of Albemarle, who had been rewarded for his eminent services with immense grants of crown land, and who had been notorious both for covetousness and for parsimony, left fifteen thousand a year of real estate, and sixty thousand pounds in money which probably yielded seven per cent.‡ These three Dukes were supposed to be three of the very richest subjects in England. The Archbishop of Canterbury can hardly have had five thousand a year. § The average income of a temporal peer was estimated, by the best informed persons, at about three thousand a year, the average income of a baronet at nine hundred a year, the average income of a member of the House of Commons at less than eight time of peace, to about five thousand a year, on all the money which passed through his hands. The Groom of the Stole had five thousand a year, the Commissioners of the Customs twelve hundred a year each, the Lords of the Bedchamber a thousand a year each.* The regular salary, however, was the smallest part of the gains of an official man of that age. From the nobleman who held the white staff and the great seal, down to the humblest tidewaiter and gauger, what would now be called gross corruption was practised without disguise and without reproach. Titles, places, commissions, pardons, were daily sold in market overt by the great dignitaries of the realm; and every clerk in every department imitated, to the best of his power, the evil example. hundred a year.| A thousand a year During the last century, no prime was thought a large revenue for a bar-minister, however powerful, has become rister. Two thousand a year was hardly rich in office; and several prime ministo be made in the Court of King's ters have impaired their private fortune Bench, except by the crown lawyers. in sustaining their public character. * Carte's Life of Ormond. In the seventeenth century, a statesman who was at the head of affairs might easily, and without giving scanSee the Report of the Bath and Montague dal, accumulate in no long time an case, which was decided by Lord Keeper estate amply sufficient to support a Somers, in December 1693. During three quarters of a year, beginning dukedom. It is probable that the infrom Christmas 1689, the revenues of the see come of the prime minister, during his of Canterbury were received by an officer ap- tenure of power, far exceeded that of pointed by the crown. That officer's accounts are now in the British Museum. (Lansdowne any other subject. The place of Lord MSS. 885.) The gross revenue for the three Lieutenant of Ireland was popularly quarters was not quite four thousand pounds; reported to be worth forty thousand net revenue was evidently something consider- pounds a year. The gains of the Chancellor Clarendon, of Arlington, of Lauderdale, and of Danby, were cer and the difference between the gross and the able. King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the Balance of Trade. Sir W. Temple says, "The revenues of a House of Commons have seldom exceeded four hundred thousand pounds." Memoirs, Third Part. Langton's Conversations with Chief Justice Hale, 1672. * Commons' Journals, April 27. 1689; Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. † See the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo. pass through an endless succession of orchards, cornfields, hayfields, and beanfields, then ran through nothing but heath, swamp, and warren.* In the drawings of English landscapes made in that age for the Grand Duke Cosmo, scarce a hedgerow is to be seen, and numerous tracts, now rich with cultivation, appear as bare as Salisbury Plain.† At Enfield, hardly out of sight of the smoke of the capital, was a region of five and twenty miles in circumference, which contained only three houses and scarcely any enclosed fields. Deer, as tainly enormous. The sumptuous | road books and maps of the seventeenth palace to which the populace of Lon- century. From those books and maps don gave the name of Dunkirk House, it is clear that many routes which now the stately pavilions, the fishponds, the deer park and the orangery of Euston, the more than Italian luxury of Ham, with its busts, fountains, and aviaries, were among the many signs which indicated what was the shortest road to boundless wealth. This is the true explanation of the unscrupulous violence with which the statesmen of that day struggled for office, of the tenacity with which, in spite of vexations, humiliations and dangers, they clung to it, and of the scandalous compliances to which they stooped in order to retain it. Even in our own age, formid-free as in an American forest, wandered able as is the power of opinion, and high as is the standard of integrity, there would be great risk of a lamentable change in the character of our public men, if the place of First Lord of the Treasury or Secretary of State were worth a hundred thousand pounds a year. Happily for our country the emoluments of the highest class of functionaries have not only not grown in proportion to the general growth of our opulence, but have positively diminished. State of ture. there by thousands. It is to be remarked, that wild animals of large size were then far more numerous than at present. The last wild boars, indeed, which had been preserved for the royal diversion, and had been allowed to ravage the cultivated land with their tusks, had been slaughtered by the exasperated rustics during the license of the civil war. The last wolf that has roamed our island had been slain in Scotland a short time before the close of the reign of Charles the Second. But many breeds, now extinct or rare, both of quadrupeds and birds, were still common. The fox, whose life is now, in many counties, held almost as sacred as that of a human being, was then considered as a mere nuisance. Oliver Saint John told the Long Parliament that Strafford was to be regarded, not as a stag or a hare, to whom some law The fact that the sum raised in England by taxation has, in a time agricul- not exceeding two long lives, been multiplied fortyfold, is strange, and may at first sight seem appalling. But those who are alarmed by the increase of the public burdens may perhaps be reassured when they have considered the increase of the public resources. In the year 1685, the value of the produce of the soil far ex- Ogilby, Cosmographer Royal. He describes * See the Itinerarium Angliæ, 1675, by John ceeded the value of all the other fruits great part of the land as wood, fen, heath on of human industry. Yet agriculture both sides, marsh on both sides. In some of was in what would now be considered his maps the roads through enclosed country are marked by lines, and the roads through as a very rude and imperfect state. unenclosed country by dots. The proportion The arable land and pasture land were of unenclosed country, which, if cultivated, not supposed by the best political arith-must have been wretchedly cultivated, seems to have been very great. From Abingdon to meticians of that age to amount to much Gloucester, for example, a distance of forty or more than half the area of the kingdom.* fifty miles, there was not a single enclosure, The remainder was believed to consist and scarcely one enclosure between Bigglesof moor, forest, and fen. These computations are strongly confirmed by the *King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the Balance of Trade. wade and Lincoln. + Large copies of these highly interesting drawings are in the noble collection bequeathed by Mr. Grenville to the British Museum. See particularly the drawings af Exeter and Northampton. Evelyn's Diary, June 2.1675. was to be given, but as a fox, who was closure acts passed since King George to be snared by any means, and knocked the Second came to the throne exceeds on the head without pity. This illus- four thousand. The area enclosed under tration would be by no means a happy the authority of those acts exceeds, on one, if addressed to country gentlemen a moderate calculation, ten thousand of our time but in Saint John's days square miles. How many square miles, there were not seldom great massacres which were formerly uncultivated or ill of foxes to which the peasantry thronged cultivated, have, during the same period, with all the dogs that could be mus-been fenced and carefully tilled by the tered: traps were set: nets were spread: proprietors, without any application to no quarter was given; and to shoot a the legislature, can only be conjectured. female with cub was considered as a But it seems highly probable that a feat which merited the warmest grati- fourth part of England has been, in the tude of the neighbourhood. The red course of little more than a century, deer were then as common in Glouces- turned from a wild into a garden. tershire and Hampshire as they now are Even in those parts of the kingdom among the Grampian Hills. On one which at the close of the reign of Charles Occasion Queen Anne, travelling to the Second were the best cultivated, the Portsmouth, saw a herd of no less than farming, though greatly improved since five hundred. The wild bull with his the civil war, was not such as would white mane was still to be found wan- now be thought skilful. To this day dering in a few of the southern forests. no effectual steps have been taken by The badger made his dark and tortuous public authority for the purpose of obhole on the side of every hill where the taining accurate accounts of the produce copsewood grew thick. The wild cats of the English soil. The historian must were frequently heard by night wailing therefore follow, with some misgivings, round the lodges of the rangers of Whit- the guidance of those writers on statlebury and Needwood. The yellow-tistics whose reputation for diligence breasted marten was still pursued in Cranbourne Chase for his fur, reputed inferior only to that of the sable. Fen eagles, measuring more than nine feet between the extremities of the wings, preyed on fish along the coast of Norfolk. On all the downs, from the British Channel to Yorkshire, huge bustards strayed in troops of fifty or sixty, and were often hunted with greyhounds. The marshes of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire were covered during some months of every year by immense clouds of cranes. Some of these races the progress of cultivation has extirpated. Of others the numbers are so much diminished that men crowd to gaze at a specimen as at a Bengal tiger, or a Polar bear.* The progress of this great change can nowhere be more clearly traced than in the Statute Book. The number of en * See White's Selborne; Bell's History of British Quadrupeds; Gentleman's Recreation, 1686; Aubrey's Natural History of Wiltshire, 1685; Morton's History of Northamptonshire, 1712; Willoughby's Ornithology, by Ray, 1678; Latham's General Synopsis of Birds; and fidelity stands highest. At present an average crop of wheat, rye, barley, oats, and beans, is supposed considerably to exceed thirty millions of quarters. The crop of wheat would be thought wretched if it did not exceed twelve millions of quarters. According to the computation made in the year 1696 by Gregory King, the whole quantity of wheat, rye, barley, oats, and beans, then annually grown in the kingdom, was somewhat less than ten millions of quarters. The wheat, which was then cultivated only on the strongest clay, and consumed only by those who were in easy circumstances, he estimated at less than two millions of quarters. Charles Davenant, an acute and well informed though most unprincipled and rancorous politician, differed from King as to some of the items of the account, but came to nearly the same general conclusions.* The rotation of crops was very im and Sir Thomas Browne's Account of Birds found in Norfolk. *King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the Balance of Trade. |
