CHAP. I - THE NAVY BEFORE THE RESTORATION

Summary

“The credit of your navy is so greatly impaired that having occasion to buy some necessary provisions, as tallow and the like, your minister can obtain none but for ready money”: so wrote the Admiralty Commissioners to the Council of State two months before the death of the Protector; nor was it the first time that they had written in that strain. The reins of government were indeed already loosening in Oliver Cromwell's grasp, and the Navy early felt the change. The all too small assignments to the Navy had been diverted in part to the Army, and to pay the salaries of the Protector, the Judges and others. A naval administrator without money is like a sower without seed, and at a decent interval after the death of Oliver the Commissioners again wrote a bitter complaint to the Council giving a vivid picture of the financial condition of the Navy. They wrote, “we have several times laid before you the great straits and necessities of naval affairs and hoped something would have been done…. The late sad change has constrained us to silence, but the need becoming more pressing, and no whit provided for, we must remind you thereof, the rather that the receipts assigned to the Navy are again in part diverted and diminished, though falling very short of the charge. We have struggled to keep off clamours, but ships have to be kept abroad upon dead wages, contracts and debts are unpaid, the stores are unsupplied, and contracts for the ensuing year have to be disannulled. We beg that the Navy income may not be diverted, and that some course may be taken to carry on the service.”