fifteen days in any year, to count from the time when they weighed
anchor. During these fifteen days they served at the expense
of the towns. Beyond that date they were maintained by the
king. The Cinque Ports Squadron has been spoken of as the
foundation of the Royal Navy. But a feudal array is wholly
alien in character to a national force. The Cinque Ports, after
playing a prominent part in the 13th century, sank into insignificance.
They were always inclined to piracy at the expense
of other English towns. In 1297, during one of the expeditions to
Flanders, they attacked and burnt twenty ships belonging to
Yarmouth under the eyes of Edward I. (1272–1307). The
national militia had a longer life. The obligation of the coast
towns and counties to provide ships and men for the defence
of the realm was enforced till the 17th century. Nor did the
method of enforcing that obligation differ materially. In the
reign of King John (1199–1216), when the records began to be
regularly kept, but when there was no radical change in system,
the reeves and bailiffs of the seaports were bound to ascertain
by a jury the number, size and quality of all ships belonging to
the port. When the ships were required for the king’s service
they were embargoed. The local authorities were then bound
to see that they were properly equipped and manned. It was
the duty of the reeves and bailiffs to arrange that they should
reach the place named by the king as rendezvous at the time
fixed by him. These embargoes inflicted heavy loss even when
they were honestly imposed, and loud complaints were heard
in Parliament from the later years of Edward III. (1327–1377)
that they afforded the king’s officers many openings for oppression
and corruption.
The true ancestors of the modern navy must be sought in the third element of the navy of the middle ages—the king’s ships and his “mercenaries.” Under King John we find the full record of a regular organization of a Royal Navy as apart from the feudal array of the Cinque Ports or the fyrd. In 1205 he had in all 50 “galleys”—long ships for war—distributed in various ports. William of Wrotham, archdeacon of Taunton, one of the king’s “clerks,” or ecclesiastical persons who formed his civil service, is named, sometimes in combination with others, as “keeper of the king’s ships,” “keeper of the king’s galleys” and “keeper of the king’s seaports.” The royal vessels cannot have differed from the 57 warships of the Cinque Ports, and at first his navy was preferable to the feudal array, or the levy from the counties, mainly because it was more fully under his own control. They were indeed so wholly his that he could hire them out to the counties, and at a much later period the ships of Henry V. (1413–1422) were sold to pay his personal debts after his death. Yet though the process by which the king’s ships became the national navy was slow, the affiliation is direct from them to the fleet of to-day, while the permanent officials at Whitehall are no less the direct descendants of William of Wrotham and the king’s clerks of the 13th century. When on active service the command was exercised by representatives of the king, who were not required to be bred to the sea or even always to be laymen. In the crusade of 1190 the fleet of Richard the Lion Hearted (1189–1199), drawn partly from England and partly from his continental possessions, was governed by a body of which two of the members were churchmen. They and their lay colleagues were described as the ductores et gubernatores totius navigii Regis. The first commanders of squadrons were known as justiciarii navigii Regis, ductores et constabularii Regis.
The crusade of 1190 doubtless made Englishmen acquainted with the title of “admiral”; but it was not till much later that the word became, first as “admiral and captain,” then as “admiral” alone, the title of an officer commanding a squadron. The first admiral of all England was Sir John Beauchamp, appointed for a year in 1360. The permanent appointment of a lord admiral dates from 1406, when John Beaufort, natural son of John of Gaunt, and marquess of Somerset and Dorset, was named to the post. The crews consisted of the two elements which, in varying proportions and under different names, have been and are common to all navies—the mariners whose business it was to navigate the ship, and the soldiers who were put in to fight. Until the vessel had been developed and the epoch of ocean voyages began, the first were few and subordinate. As the seas of Britain were ill adapted for the use of the galley in the proper sense, though the French employed them, English ships relied mainly on the sail. They used the oar indeed but never as a main resource, and had therefore no use for the “turma” (ciurma in Italian, chiourme in French, and chusma in Spanish) of rowers formed in the Mediterranean craft. Crews were obtained partly by free enlistment, but also to a great extent, by the press (see Impressment). The code of naval discipline was the laws of Oleron (see Sea Laws), which embodied the general “custom of the sea.” By the reign of Edward III. (1327–1377) the duties and jurisdiction of the admiral were fixed. He controlled the returns of the ships made by the reeves, selected them for service, and chose his officers, who had their commission from him. A rudimentary code of signals by lights or flags was in use.
The history of the middle ages bears testimony to the general efficiency and energy of the navy. Under weak kings, and at certain periods, for instance in the latter years of Edward III. and the reign of his grandson Richard II. (1377–1399), it fell into decay, and the coast was ravaged by the French and their allies the Basque seamen, who manned the navy of Castile. Henry IV. (1399–1413), though an astute and vigorous ruler, was driven to make a contract with the merchants, mariners and shipowners, to take over the duty of guarding the coast in 1406–1407. Their admirals Richard Clitherow and Nicholas Blackburne were appointed, and exercised their commands. But the experiment was not a success, and was not renewed. Apart from these periods of eclipse, the navy in all its elements, feudal, national and royal, was more than a match for its enemies. The destruction of the fleet prepared by Philip Augustus, the French king, for the invasion of England in 1213 at Damme, the defeat of Eustace the Monk in 1217 off Dover, the victory over the French fleet at Sluys in 1340, and the defeat of the Spaniards off Winchelsea in 1350, were triumphs never quite counterbalanced by any equivalent overthrow. Still better proofs of the ability of any navy to discharge its duties were the long retention of Calais, and the constant success of the rulers of England in their invasions of France. The claim to the sovereignty of the seas has been attributed on insufficient evidence to King John, but it was enforced by Edward III.
Under the sovereigns of the Tudor dynasty (1485–1603) the development of the navy was steady. Though Henry VII. (1485–1509) made little use of his fleet in war, he built ships. His son Henry VIII. (1509–1547) took a keen interest in his navy. Shipbuilding was improved by the importation of Italian workmen. The large resources he obtained by the plunder of the Church enabled Henry VIII. to spend on a scale which had been impossible for his predecessors, and was to be impossible for his successors without the aid of grants from Parliament. But the most vital service which he rendered to the navy was the formation of, or rather the organization of existing officials into, the navy office. This measure was taken at the very end of his reign, when the board was constituted by letters patent dated 24th of April 1546. It consisted of a lieutenant of the admiralty, a treasurer, a comptroller, a surveyor, a clerk of the ships, and two officials without special title. A master of the ordnance for the ships was also appointed. Henry’s board, commonly known as the navy board, continued, with some periods of suspension, and with the addition of different departments—the victualling board, the transport board, the pay office, &c., added at various times—to be the administrative machinery of the navy till 1832. They were all theoretically subject to the authority of the lord high admiral, or the commissioners for discharging his office, who had the military and political control of the navy and issued all commissions to its officers. In practice the boards were very independent. The double government of the navy, though it lasted long, was undoubtedly the cause of much waste—partly by the creation
