EARLY LESSONS IN KINGCRAFT

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and to hand it down undiminished to his successors. These early lessons in kingcraft petrified his whole nature, and fostered a selfishness which prevented his affections passing beyond the circle of his family and princely relations.

In the means which he pursued towards absolute power he was vacillating and uncertain, petulant rather than politic; but in the belief of his own kingly rights he had a persistence which resembled instinct. He broke promise after promise; but he probably thought that it was worse keeping such promises than breaking them. If the opponents of the prerogative or of the church had to be imprisoned, tortured, or ruined, it was the retribution which they had brought upon themselves. He was unfeeling

rather than cruel; if his friends suffered in his cause, it was their duty to sacrifice themselves for their king, nor was he unwilling to grant them a modicum of gratitude, and some little regret.

At Charles's accession a parliament was at once convoked, and assembled on the 18th of June 1625. The Commons soon showed that they were resolved not to grant the expected supplies till grievances were redressed. They complained of the failure of the royal navy to protect commerce on the seas, and they pointed out that the king's chaplain had preached in favour of Romish doctrines and passive obedience, and urged that the penal laws against the Catholics should be rigidly enforced. In the meantime they would only accord a small subsidy and the tonnage and poundage for one year. As these customs had heretofore been granted for the king's whole reign, the Lords refused their consent. Charles, angry at

the distrust of the Lower House, which, however, was based on past experiences, abruptly dissolved the parliament after it had only sat eight weeks. Yet he needed money sadly, for he had now entered on a war with Spain. Before doing so he should have known something about the condition of his ships and seamen.

It was in the reign of Henry VIII. that the English navy became powerful. The improvement in the size and armament of the ships was owing to the impulse of a stirring age, encouraged by the personal interest of the monarch. Though this was relaxed during the short reigns of Edward and Mary Tudor, at her accession Queen Elizabeth had a fleet of thirty-two vessels of various kinds; twentynine were added during her reign. The times were favourable for England gaining the supremacy of the sea. France was distracted by the religious wars, and the Hollanders were eager for help in their life and death struggle with Spain. Much of the glory of Elizabeth's reign was derived from naval victories. The spirit of adventure, which in former times had led men to the heart of France, was now directed to explore the vast shores of the new world and to snatch from the Spaniard his ill-gotten gains. With Elizabeth, war on the sea should be something which yielded up a rich return for her private purse. In consideration of sharing in the plunder, the Tudor queen condoned with naval enterprises which the despoiled Spaniards denounced as piracy, and whoever gained, she took care that her share should be the largest. Fitted out for longer voyages, the ships were now of larger build; the distinction between

PARSIMONY OF ELIZABETH

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the merchantmen and the man-of-war was not

clearly drawn. Half trader, half privateer, these ships could be readily turned into a fighting fleet. In the Armada which Philip of Spain sent against England, only twenty-five ships belonged to the crown; the rest were merchantmen seized or hired for the expedition. On the other side was a fleet mainly furnished by the spontaneous impulse of a sea-faring nation to meet a great danger. During the fighting in the Channel there were thirty-four queen's ships, and 163 armed merchantmen. The change of the weather, the help of the Dutch fleet, the skill of the sea-captains, and the brave spirit of the crews, gained a victory for which Elizabeth herself deserved little credit. Her vacillating policy, and worst of all, her parsimony, kept the depots in such a state of exhaustion that ammunition and supplies well-nigh failed, and had the contest gone on for a day or two longer, the English fleet would have been obliged to fall back for lack of powder and shot. After the victory the queen gave solemn thanks to God, struck a medal, and left her sailors to starve.1

Under the first Stuart king the old abuses became worse and new ones sprang up. There was much jobbery and embezzlement. Places in the dockyards, and the commands of warships, were sold or bestowed on unworthy favourites. King James took some interest in the navy, and could discern abuses better than he could check them: his speech was like the wind; the culprits had but to bend their

1 A History of the Administration of the Royal Navy, by M. Oppenheim, London, 1896, vol. i., p. 143.

heads and raise them again. After the peace with Spain privateering was no longer a school for seamanship, and piracy passed over to the Dunkirkers and Algerine rovers, while the Dutch bore off much of the fishing and carrying trade.

In default of the subsidies expected from parliament, Charles tried to raise money by forced loans never intended to be repaid. What he could raise was spent upon fitting out an expedition against Cadiz, in the hopes of the spoils of the shipping in the harbour. Though a whole summer had been passed in preparations, it was October before they were ready to sail, and never did a fleet leave an English port in a sorrier condition. Leaky vessels, old sails, rotten cordage newly tarred over, sailors impressed, unpaid, ready to desert, "fed on food that a dog would not eat," the men dying daily, the survivors mutinous. The officers, most of whom had gained their places through bribes or court favour, found the ships rolled too much for their comfort in rough weather and knew not how to handle their vessels in any sea. The fleet sailed with no orderly plan, the ships colliding with one another, or chasing one another in mistake for Spaniards. In such state the armament managed to get to Cadiz after twenty-one days, where, owing to the unprepared state of the enemy, they might have taken the town and shipping had the incapacity of the officers on land not been as deplorable as those on the sea. The wretched fleet straggled ignominiously back in mid-winter to the western ports of England and Ireland, a danger to the country which sent them forth, for infection went and came with the crews.

SAILORS LEFT TO STARVE

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"It almost seemed," writes Oppenheim,' "as though the naval service was disintegrating, and that such organisation as it had attained was to be broken up, since the shipwrights and labourers at the dockyards were also unpaid, although they did not find it so difficult to obtain credit. Pennington was now almost despairing, and said that, having kept the men together by promises as long as he could, only immediate payment would prevent them deserting en masse, and it would grieve any man's heart to hear their lamentations, to see their wants and nakedness, and not to be able to help them.”

"There is a curious resemblance between these words and those used nearly forty years before by Nottingham in describing the condition of the men who had saved England from the Armada, and who were likewise left to starve and die, their work being done. But any comparison is, within certain limits, in favour of Charles and Buckingham. Elizabeth had money, but all through her life held that men were cheaper than gold."

The English people at first threw the blame of this failure upon the Duke of Buckingham, who engrossed most of the high offices of the realm. A new parliament had to be summoned (February 1626). The same members were returned, who at once impeached the favourite, although the king was threatening in his behalf.

Charles now offended the House of Lords, from whom he might have hoped for farther support by refusing a writ to the Earl of Bristol, the adversary of Buckingham, who took his seat in defiance of the 1 Op. cit., p. 225.