Part 2

My other illustration is from the account given in the _Diary_ of the funeral of Sir Christopher Myngs, who had been mortally wounded in action on the last day of the great battle with the Dutch off the North Foreland, June 1-4, 1666. Pepys was present at the funeral in a coach with Sir William Coventry, at which, he tells us[26], 'there happened this extraordinary case—one of the most romantique that ever I heard of in my life, and could not have believed but that I did see it; which was this:—About a dozen able, lusty, proper men come to the coach-side with tears in their eyes, and one of them that spoke for the rest begun and says to Sir W. Coventry, "We are here a dozen of us that have long known and loved and served our dead commander, Sir Christopher Mings, and have now done the last office of laying him in the ground. We would be glad we had any other to offer after him, and in revenge of him. All we have is our lives; if you will please to get his Royal Highness to give us a fireship among us all, here is a dozen of us, out of all which choose you one to be commander, and the rest of us, whoever he is, will serve him; and, if possible, do that that shall show our memory of our dead commander, and our revenge." Sir W. Coventry was herewith much moved (as well as I, who could hardly abstain from weeping), and took their names, and so parted; telling me he would move his Royal Highness as in a thing very extraordinary, which was done.' No more touching tribute than this has ever been paid to the memory of a great seaman, nor better evidence given of the simple loyalty of sea-faring men which in their descendants has served us so well of late. 'The truth is,' continues Pepys, 'Sir Christopher Mings was a very stout man, and a man of great parts, and most excellent tongue among ordinary men.... He had brought his family into a way of being great; but dying at this time, his memory and name ... will be quite forgot in a few months as if he had never been, nor any of his name be the better by it; he having not had time to will any estate, but is dead poor rather than rich.' A writer who could describe such a scene in a style which comes so near distinction, and could then reflect with dignity upon the swift passing of human greatness, is something more than a 'delightful old Diarist' or a 'garrulous gossip'; but it is characteristic of Pepys that he should thus conclude his entry for the day: 'In my way home I called on a fisherman and bought three eeles, which cost me three shillings.'

I have quoted this passage about the funeral of Sir Christopher Myngs for another reason—it enables us to understand how Pepys developed later on so impressive an official style. He takes pleasure in long, labyrinthine sentences, in which the thread of thought winds deviously through an infinity of dependent clauses, but the thread is never lost, and the reader always arrives in the end at the destined goal. He has a discriminating taste in the selection of words, always choosing the more impressive, and leaving the reader with the sense of something dignified moving before him, like a procession, but never sacrificing clearness and precision to mere sound. Yet associated with all this pomp is a sense of humour, usually full-flavoured, but on occasion as subtle and delicate as need be[27], and finding its way even into the more dismal kinds of official correspondence.

To illustrate the point of complexity, let me read you a letter to the Navy Board of 2 June, 1677, which I came across not long ago among the Pepysian papers[28]. It consists of a single colossal sentence, yet the meaning is perfectly clear. If you want a parallel, you should go to the Prayer Book, to the Exhortation which precedes the General Confession; for this, although punctuated as three sentences, is structurally only one.

There being a prospect (as you will know) of a considerable number of great ships to be built, and many applications being already, and more likely to be yet made to his Majesty and my Lords of the Admiralty for employments by persons so far from having merited the same by any past service as to be wholly strangers to the business thereof, or at least have their qualifications for the same wholly unknown, nor have any title to his Majesty's favour therein more than their interest (which possibly they have bought too) in the persons they solicit by, And knowing that it is his Majesty's royal intentions, as well as for the benefit of his service, that the employments arising upon his ships be disposed to such as by their long and faithful services and experiences are best fitted for and deserve the same, I make it my desire to you that you will at your first convenience cause the list of the present standing officers of his Majesty's fleet, namely, pursers, boatswains, and carpenters, to be overlooked, and a collection thence made of such as by length of service, frequency and strictness of passing their accounts, together with their diligence and sobriety, you shall find most deserving to be advanced from lesser ships to bigger, transmitting the same to me in order to my laying it (as there shall be occasion) before his Majesty for the benefit of the persons you shall therein do right to and encouragement of others to imitate them in deserving well in his service, Towards the obtaining of which I shall by the grace of God endeavour constantly to do my part, as I doubt not you will also do yours, putting in execution the Lord Admiral's instructions for informing yourselves well in the good and bad behaviour of these officers, and particularly by your enquiries after the same at pays, when by the presence of the ship's companies the same will most probably be understood.

The reputation of Samuel Pepys has suffered in two ways. Readers of the _Diary_ under-estimate him because they conceive of him as a diarist only, and do not realize the seriousness of his public responsibilities or the greatness of his official career. On the other hand, naval historians have often under-estimated him because they have failed to appreciate the difficulties with which he had to contend. If these difficulties are allowed for, the services rendered by Samuel Pepys to the navy are incomparable. He stood for a vigorous shipbuilding policy, for methodical organisation in every department, and for the restoration of a lost naval discipline. This was recognised by his immediate posterity, and in the century after his death a great tradition grew up about his name. A commission which reported in 1805 spoke of him as 'a man of extraordinary knowledge in all that related to the business' of the navy, 'of great talents, and the most indefatigable industry.' The respect paid to his authority by the generation of naval administrators which succeeded his own—comparable only perhaps to the weight which Lord Chief Justice Coke had carried among the lawyers of an earlier time—led to a number of transcripts being made from the Pepysian manuscripts and preserved in the Admiralty Library for the guidance of his successors. And this tradition has to be reconciled with the other and widely different tradition associated with the Pepys of the _Diary_.

It is not easy to realise that the two traditions belong to the same person. It is extraordinary that a man should have written the _Diary_, but it is much more extraordinary that the man who wrote the _Diary_ should also have been 'the right hand of the navy.' From the _Diary_ we learn that Pepys was a musician, a dandy, a collector of books and prints, an observer of boundless curiosity, and, as a critic has pointed out, one who possessed an 'amazing zest for life.' From the Pepysian manuscripts we learn that he was a man of sound judgment, of orderly and methodical business habits, of great administrative capacity and energy; and that he possessed extraordinary shrewdness and tact in dealing with men. At certain points in the _Diary_ we can see the great official maturing, but in the main the intimate self-revelation of a human being seems far removed from official life. It is the combination of qualities that is so astounding, and those who regard Pepys only as 'the most amusing and capable of our seventeenth century diarists'[29]—a mere literary performer making sport for us—do little justice to a great career.

LECTURE II

ADMINISTRATION

The history of naval administration between the Restoration and the Revolution falls naturally into four periods: (1) 1660-73, from the appointment of the Duke of York to be Lord High Admiral, until his retirement after the passing of the Test Act; (2) 1673-79, the first Secretaryship of Samuel Pepys; (3) 1679-84, the period of administrative disorder which followed his resignation; and (4) 1684-88, from the return of the Duke of York to office until the Revolution—this period being also that of Pepys's second Secretaryship.

At the date of the King's Restoration the direction of the navy was in the hands of an Admiralty Commission of twenty-eight, appointed by the restored Rump Parliament in December, 1659[30], with a Navy Board of seven experts under it. One of the earlier acts of Charles II on his return was to dissolve these two bodies, and to revive the ancient form of navy government by a Lord High Admiral and four Principal Officers—the Treasurer, the Comptroller, the Surveyor, and the Clerk of the Acts. James, Duke of York, the King's brother, afterwards James II, was made Lord High Admiral—an appointment which realised the ideas of Monson, who had written earlier: 'The way to settle things is to appoint an Admiral, young, heroical, and of a great blood. His experience in sea affairs is not so much to be required at first as his sincerity, honour, and wisdom; for his daily practice in his Office, with conference of able and experienced men, will quickly instruct him.'[31] All the Stuarts were interested in the sea. Nothing gave Charles II more pleasure than to sail down the Thames in one of his yachts to inspect his ships, and his brother possessed something like an expert knowledge of naval affairs. Even Macaulay, who has scarcely a good word to say for him, allows that he would have made 'a respectable clerk in the dockyard at Chatham.'[32] He was an authority on shipbuilding questions[33], and Pepys, in a private minute not intended for publication and therefore likely to express his real mind, ascribes much of the strength of the navy in his day to the Duke's energy in 'getting ships to be begun to be built, in confidence that when they were begun they would not let them want finishing, who otherwise would never of themselves have spared money from lesser uses to begin to build.'[34] He was also by temperament stiff in discipline, and threw his influence strongly on the side of reform. The numerous references to him in the State Papers shew that while he was Lord High Admiral he bestowed a great deal of attention upon the duties of the office[35].

The new Treasurer of the Navy was Sir George Carteret, who, entering the service as a boy, had risen to high command in the navy, and had served as Comptroller in the reign of Charles I. 'Besides his other parts of honesty and discretion,' says Clarendon, he was 'undoubtedly as good, if not the best, seaman in England,'[36] and Sir William Coventry, his consistent opponent, described him to Pepys as 'a man that do take the most pains, and gives himself the most to do business of any about the Court, without any desire of pleasure or divertisements.'[37] Pepys himself wrote of him not long before his fall: 'I do take' him 'for a most honest man.'[38]

Sir Robert Slyngesbie, the new Comptroller, was himself the son of a Comptroller of the Navy, and had served as a sea-captain as early as 1633[39], having been 'from his infancy bred up and employed in the navy.'[40]

Sir William Batten, the Surveyor, was only returning to an office which he had already held, for he had been Surveyor of the Navy from 1638 to 1642, and afterwards an active naval commander. Pepys began by borrowing £40 of him[41], and then came to dislike him. Their relations were not improved by the small social jealousies which broke out between their wives. Lady Batten complained to Pepys that 'there was not the neighbourliness between her' and Mrs Pepys 'that was fit to be'; that Mrs Pepys spoke 'unhandsomely of her,' and her maid 'mocked her' over the garden wall[42]. Soon after, Pepys records with some satisfaction that he and his wife managed to take precedence of Lady Batten in going out of church, 'which I believe will vex her.'[43] What the _Diary_ calls a 'fray' eventually took place between the two ladies, and Lady Batten was 'mighty high upon it,' telling Mrs Pepys's 'boy' that 'she would teach his mistress better manners, which my wife answered aloud that she might hear, that she could learn little manners of her.'[44] Pepys came to the conclusion that his wife was to blame[45]. Sir William Batten, who does not deserve the treatment he meets with in the _Diary_, had at first done what he could to accommodate the quarrel, saying to Pepys that 'he desired the difference between our wives might not make a difference between us,'[46] but quarrels of this kind are the hardest of all to compose, and it is not to the _Diary_ that Batten's biographer goes for his facts. Pepys calls him a knave[47] and a sot[48], and accuses him of 'corruption and underhand dealing'[49]; and in reviewing his own position on the last day of the year 1663, he writes: 'At the Office I am well, though envied to the devil by Sir William Batten, who hates me to death, but cannot hurt me. The rest either love me, or at least do not shew otherwise....' The news of Batten's last illness was, however, received with some sign of relenting. 'Word is brought me that he is so ill that it is believed he cannot live till to-morrow, which troubles me and my wife mightily, partly out of kindness, he being a good neighbour—and partly because of the money he owes me upon our bargain of the late prize.'[50]

The only one of the Principal Officers who knew nothing about the navy was the Clerk of the Acts, Samuel Pepys himself. He obtained the office by the influence of his patron, Edward Mountagu, the first Earl of Sandwich, a distinguished naval commander, who was first cousin to Pepys's father and recognised the claims of kinship after the fashion of his day. It was necessary first to buy out Thomas Barlow, who had been Clerk of the Acts under Charles I, and Pepys, observing that he was 'an old, consumptive man,'[51] offered him £100 a year. He lived until 1665, and then a characteristic entry appears in the _Diary_. 'At noon home to dinner, and then to my office again, where Sir William Petty comes among other things to tell me that Mr Barlow is dead; for which, God knows my heart, I could be as sorry as is possible for one to be for a stranger by whose death he gets £100 per annum, he being a worthy, honest man; but after having considered that, when I come to consider the providence of God by this means unexpectedly to give me £100 a year more in my estate, I have cause to bless God, and do it from the bottom of my heart.'[52]

Besides the four Principal Officers, the new Navy Board also included three extra Commissioners of the Navy, Lord Berkeley, Sir William Penn, and Peter Pett. Lord Berkeley was a distinguished soldier, who had won great honour at Stratton, and had served under Turenne from 1652 to 1655[53]. Sir William Penn was the son of a seaman and had been a seaman all his life. He had been rear-admiral and then vice-admiral in the time of the Long Parliament; he had served as vice-admiral under Blake, had commanded the expedition which seized Jamaica[54], and had been a member of two Admiralty Commissions during the Interregnum[55]. Peter Pett came of a famous family of shipbuilders[56]—an earlier Pett had been master shipwright at Deptford in the reign of Edward VI[57]—and he had already served as resident Commissioner at Chatham for thirteen years[58]. Pett occupied a somewhat inferior position to his colleagues, as he was required still to reside at Chatham to take charge of the dockyard there—at this time the most important of the royal yards, described in the _Admiralty Letters_ as 'the master-yard of all the rest.'[59] The other two Commissioners had no special duties assigned to them, and this was regarded as one of the advantages of the system now established, since they were 'not limited to any, and yet furnished with powers of acting and controlling every part, both of the particular and common duties of the Office' ... 'understanding the defects of the whole, and applying their assistance where it may be most useful.'[60]

It will be observed that on the Navy Board of the Restoration expert experience was overwhelmingly represented. Of its seven members four were seamen; one a soldier—and it must be remembered that at this time the line between the two services was not distinctly drawn, for Blake had been a lieutenant-colonel and Monck commander-in-chief of an army before they were appointed to command fleets as 'generals-at-sea'; one represented experience of shipbuilding and dockyard administration; and only the Clerk of the Acts knew nothing about the sea. Sir Walter Ralegh had remarked in his day: 'It were to be wished that the chief officers under the Lord Admiral ... should be men of the best experience in sea-service,' and had complained that sometimes 'by the special favour of princes' or 'the mediation of great men for the preferment of their servants,' or 'now and then by virtue of the purse,' persons 'very raw and ignorant' are 'very unworthily and unfitly nominated to those places.'[61] But such criticisms applied no longer. The King had made a good choice of fit persons duly qualified, and had established a naval administration which, if it failed, would not fail for lack of knowledge.

There were a good many subsequent changes, but the importance of administration by experts was not again lost sight of. The office of Treasurer of the Navy soon fell to the men of accounts, and in 1667 Sir George Carteret was succeeded by the Earl of Anglesey, a 'laborious, skilful, cautious, moderate' official, who had had seven years' experience of finance as Vice-Treasurer and Receiver-General for Ireland[62]. But with this exception, if the post of a Principal Officer was vacated by a naval expert it was offered to a naval expert again. When Sir Robert Slyngesbie, the Comptroller, died in 1661[63], he was succeeded by Sir John Mennes, who had served under Sir William Monson in the Narrow Seas, and had had a wide experience of the navy[64]. This appointment was not as successful as might have been expected. Pepys thought him 'most excellent pleasant company'[65] and 'a very good, harmless, honest gentleman,'[66] but he is always attacking his incapacity[67], and refers to him on one occasion as a 'doating fool.'[68] On his death in 1671 the office passed to Sir Thomas Allin, originally a shipowner at Lowestoft, who had served under Prince Rupert, and had acquired a reputation in the Second Dutch War[69]. When Sir William Batten, the Surveyor, died in 1667, he was succeeded by Colonel Thomas Middleton, who had been resident Commissioner at Portsmouth[70]; and when in 1672 Middleton was transferred to Chatham, John Tippetts, who had followed him at Portsmouth, was appointed to the Surveyorship[71]. It should be noticed that whereas during the thirteen years of naval history from 1660 to 1673 the office of Treasurer of the Navy was held by four different persons, and the offices of Comptroller and Surveyor each by three, there was no change in the office of Clerk of the Acts. Pepys was the only one of the Principal Officers whose experience was continuous.

The extra Commissionerships, when vacancies arose, did not all go to naval experts, but men of ability were selected for them, and sometimes men of distinction. When in 1662 another extra Commissioner was appointed, the choice fell on William Coventry, a civilian; but Coventry had already had two years' experience of naval administration as Secretary to the Lord High Admiral, and his ability soon made him one of the most valuable members of the Navy Board. Burnet described him in 1665 as 'a man of great actions and eminent virtues'; Temple credits him with high political capacity; Evelyn calls him 'a wise and witty gentleman'[72]; and the _Diary_ shews how warmly Pepys was attached to him[73]. In 1664 an extra Commissionership was conferred on Lord Brouncker, a literary man, an intimate friend of Evelyn's, and the first President of the Royal Society, who took something more than an amateur's interest in shipbuilding, and in 1662 had built a yacht for the King[74]. Pepys could not make up his mind about him; for in 1667 he speaks of him as 'a rotten-hearted, false man as any else I know, even as Sir W. Penn himself, and therefore I must beware of him accordingly, and I hope I shall,'[75] and in 1668 he regards him as the best man in the Navy Office[76]. One of the extra Commissioners, Sir Edward Seymour, was also Speaker of the House of Commons.

The Navy Board was by tradition the Lord High Admiral's council of advice for that part of his office which was concerned with the government of the navy, and Monson alludes to its members as 'the conduit pipes to whom the Lord Admiral properly directs all his commands for his Majesty's service, and from whom it descends to all other inferior officers and ministers under them whatsoever.'[77] In practice the Board enjoyed very large administrative powers, for it was authorised 'to cause all ordinary businesses to be done according to the ancient and allowed practice of the Office, and extraordinary according to the warrants and directions from the Lord Admiral and the State'[78]; but in theory it existed only in order to carry out the general instructions which the Duke of York had issued early in 1662[79], not long after he had taken office. These were drawn in comprehensive terms, and of necessity left a vast number of decisions on particular questions to be taken by the Board. These instructions of 1662 remained in force until the Admiralty was reorganised at the beginning of the 19th century[80].