Chapter V: The Navy in the CIVIL War

AUTHORITIES.--The general history of this time has been exhaustively told by Mr. Gardiner in his history of the Civil War. Mr. Granville Penn has collected the Parliamentary orders, pamphlets, and proclamations relating to naval affairs in his Life of Sir William Penn. The Royalist side is told by Clarendon, and in the papers printed by Mr. Warburton in his _Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers_.

In so far as his control over the navy was concerned, the reign of Charles I. came to an end with the appointment of the Earl of Warwick as vice-admiral by the authority of the Parliament in defiance of his wishes. From that time forward the fleet became a docile instrument in the hands of his enemies, and so remained throughout the whole of the first Civil War. The king did indeed dismiss Northumberland from his post as Lord High Admiral, and the order was obeyed. It may very well be that the Parliament was not sorry to be rid of an officer whose powers were so great. Even in the midst of armed rebellion the Englishmen of the seventeenth century were great sticklers for the letter of the law, and the Lord High Admiral, the legality of whose appointment could not be questioned, might have caused the Houses at Westminster considerable trouble if he had thought fit to act against them, or even only to abstain from acting energetically on their behalf. With the minor officers there was not the same probability of trouble. The king did order them to render no obedience to Parliament, and a few acted on his command. Others, however, had no scruple in accepting the doctrine that the order of the king meant his order as expressed by Parliament--a convenient sophistry by which many men at that period contrived to reconcile the reality of rebellion with the profession of loyalty.

Among those who actively assisted Parliament to obtain possession of the fleet was William Batten, the Surveyor of the Navy. He is described by Clarendon as an "obscure fellow," who obtained his post by dint of a bribe. This account of him has been somewhat heatedly contradicted by modern writers. But it agrees very well with the rather off-hand account of his appointment given by Northumberland. If Batten belonged to the Somersetshire family of that name, he was a man of strong Puritan connections. However that may be, he had passed his life as a merchant skipper, trading on his own account, or as master in the navy, till he became Surveyor in 1638, when the Commission of 1628 was dissolved and Northumberland was appointed Lord High Admiral. There is a pretty general agreement of authorities that he paid for his post, which at that time does not necessarily mean that there was anything corrupt about his nomination. His assistance had a good deal to do with Warwick's success in bringing the fleet to obedience in July 1642.

Parliament had taken measures to arm a considerable naval force in the very first days of March, on the plea that the Lords and Commons had "received advertisement of extraordinary preparations made by the neighbouring princes both by land and sea; the intentions whereof have been so represented as to raise an apprehension in both Houses that the public honour, peace, and safety of His Majesty and his kingdom cannot be secured unless a timely course be taken for the putting of this kingdom into a condition of defence at sea as well as land." Orders were issued that "all and every the ships belonging to His Majesty's navy which are fit for service, and not already abroad, nor designed for this summer's fleet, be with all speed rigged and put in such a readiness as that they may soon be ready for sea." At the same time Northumberland was requested "to make known to all masters and owners of such ships as now are in or about any the harbours of this kingdom, and may be of use to the public defence thereof, that it will be an acceptable service to the King and Parliament if they likewise will cause their ships to be rigged, and so far put in readiness, as they may at a short warning set forth to sea upon any emergent occasion, which will be a means of great security to His Majesty and his dominions."

The king had left London, and was either at Royston or at Newmarket when he heard of this order for the "speedy rigging of the navy." Northumberland was suffering from an accident which befell him more than once at a critical moment. He was ill, and could not take the command in person. It was now that the king endeavoured to secure the appointment of Sir John Pennington as Northumberland's deputy in actual command. But Parliament, in pursuit of its policy of laying hands on the militia, insisted on seeing a list of the officers in command. It was presented on the 10th of March. Parliament confirmed most of the names, but expressly voted "that the Lord Admiral shall be desired by this House that the commander-in-chief of this summer's fleet under his lordship may be the Earl of Warwick." At the same time Sir Harry Vane was instructed to "carry unto the Lord Admiral the list of those commanders that are not allowed of by this House, and desire his lordship to supply others in the place of those, and to send the names of them to the House with all convenient speed."

The anger of the king was unavailing, except to deprive Northumberland of his official rank. The ships in the Downs submitted themselves with little or no opposition to Warwick's orders. It is possible that if Sir John Pennington had been a man of more energy, he might have caused the Parliament considerable trouble. But his virtues were those of a docile, trustworthy servant. When called upon to act for himself, he could do nothing effectual. When the king forbade his servants to submit to the orders of the officers appointed by Parliament, Warwick boldly put his authority to the test by calling upon the ships in the Downs to accept his commission. A few only of the captains hesitated, and of these no more than two made any serious appearance of resistance. Even they were ill supported by their men, for the unarmed boats' crews of other ships were allowed to board and take possession of their vessels. The sympathies of the navy were plainly with the Parliament. It has been said recently that the navy was mainly neutral between the king and his enemies in this great struggle. I do not clearly understand what meaning is attached to the word neutral when it is used to describe the actions of men who give the most effective armed help to one party in a Civil War. From 1642 until a part of the fleet revolted in 1648, the navy never failed to do the king all the harm in its power. It attacked the garrisons held for him, and helped to defend the coast towns which his troops were besieging. It captured ships sailing on his service, and it fired on his wife. It is difficult to conceive what less neutral line of conduct it could possibly have followed. A more simple explanation of the action of the navy is, I think, that which has been given above. It supported the Parliament because it was Puritan, and this it was partly by choice, and partly of necessity. The seafaring population came from the more Puritan parts of England. The same causes which made the other inhabitants Puritan acted on the sailor. Then, until Prince Rupert took Bristol, every considerable seaport was in the hands of the Puritans, and a sailor who would not serve the Parliament would have found some difficulty in following his trade at all. Writers who have been very anxious to make out that the navy played an important independent part have been at some pains to show that it held some weighty constitutional doctrines, and in particular that it combined a disinterested love of liberty with an enlightened loyalty to the king's person. It is, however, possible to feel admiration and respect for the seamen of the seventeenth century without going so far as to credit them with what there is no reason to believe they possessed. Like many other Englishmen at that period the sailors may have thought it possible to coerce the king, to take the command of the militia out of his hands, to beat his soldiers, to kill his friends, to make him a prisoner, and, at the end of all this, to establish his authority. In other words, they entered upon a revolution without seeing more clearly than the average Presbyterian member of Parliament what its inevitable consequences must be. They had been brought up to have an awful reverence for the "Lord's anointed," and were glad to have a good legal-looking excuse before laying unhallowed hands upon him. Therefore, with the most loyal intentions in the world, they applied themselves with much courage and zeal to the work of bringing His Majesty to the mercy of the root-and-branch men.

The administration of the navy was put into the hands of a Parliamentary Committee of both Houses, under which it worked with more energy than had ever been shown during the reign of the king. The Houses could pay, if not with unfailing regularity, at least much better than the king; moreover, Parliament, with its power of naming committees of its own body, was able to exercise an amount of supervision which had not been possible for the Crown. The work which the navy had to do was partly on the coasts of England and partly on those of Ireland, but it was everywhere the same. In both cases the object was to prevent help coming from abroad to the enemies of Parliament. This was to be done partly by capturing ships coming in with stores, and partly by getting, or keeping, possession of the coast towns. It was a kind of duty which required rather vigilant cruising than much actual fighting. Although mention of the action of the fleet is common, the number of achievements performed by it of which memory remains is small. The majority of them are of the nature of the relief given to the town of Lyme when besieged by Prince Maurice. The ships brought reinforcements of men and stores when the need for them was great. In this way, and on all parts of the coast, they helped the cause of the Parliament. One of the feats the navy did, it is true, made no inconsiderable noise in the world, and has been the subject of much heated rhetoric. The Queen Henrietta Maria, who had left England just when the Civil War was beginning, had been busy abroad purchasing military stores for her husband. The Parliament learned early in 1643 that these military provisions were about to be sent over to Bridlington on the coast of Yorkshire, where the army of the Marquis of Newcastle would be ready to receive them. Whether it was also known that the queen was coming with the stores is not certain. If it had been, the principal effect of the knowledge would have been to induce Parliament to strengthen Batten, who was cruising in the North Sea. The capture of the queen would have been an immense advantage, and her death by a cannon ball a satisfaction. The Parliamentary officer had with him a small squadron of four ships. He missed the queen. The weather was stormy, and Henrietta Maria had to go through the unpleasant ordeal of nine days' tossing about in the North Sea. At last she reached Bridlington, and was able to land. Here a new danger, and a worse, assailed her. Batten discovered that the transports had reached harbour, and were landing their stores. He immediately took measures to prevent these from reaching the king. Bringing his ships close in, he opened fire on the transport and the houses on the quay, and continued to discharge cross-bar and other shot for some hours. The Royalists raised a great outcry over this "obscure fellow's" barbarous want of respect for Her Majesty's royal person. It is certain that she was in considerable peril. Batten's shot crashed into the house in which she was sleeping, and the queen with her ladies had to take refuge in a ditch, where they lay under the shelter of the bank for some time. It was reported, to the no small glee of the Parliament's partisans in London, that the queen had fled out of the house "barelegged" and almost undressed, so sudden had been her flight. However that may be, the daughter of Henry IV. had gone through the perils of storm and battle with cheerful courage. She comforted her terrified ladies-in-waiting on board the transport by telling them that queens of England were never drowned. As she fled from the house at Bridlington, she remembered that her favourite lap-dog had been left behind, and, in spite of the terrors of her attendants, she went back to bring it out. The Cavalier writers were more indignant for the queen than she was for herself. Both then and since they have denounced Batten in no measured terms for the unheard-of brutality and want of chivalry in his behaviour. Yet it is very hard to see what the Parliamentary commander could well have done except what he did do. The king's officers could not have expected to be allowed to march into London only because they put the queen at their head, and yet that would have been almost as rational as to ask that they should be allowed to transport and land munitions of war unmolested because a great Royalist lady travelled in company with them.

These years of the first Civil War, though they would be tedious to tell in detail, are of great importance in the history of the navy. They formed the first period in which a considerable naval force was continuously maintained. Even during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the larger fleets had been armed only for particular expeditions, while during the reign of James there had been but one large armament, and, though the considerable displays of naval force had been comparatively numerous during the first fifteen years of Charles I., still they were intermittent. But the Parliament kept continually on foot what would in former times have been called a Royal Fleet. In 1642 there were 18 men-of-war and 24 hired merchant ships in commission. In 1643 this force was raised to 28 warships, 23 merchant ships, and 8 colliers for service on the coast of England, besides 8 men-of-war and 13 hired merchant ships for service on the coast of Ireland. This makes a total of 80 vessels; and when we consider the average tonnage and weight of broadside, it represents a much greater force than was ever under the command of the officers of the great queen. The mere habit of continual cruising together in fleets must have had an instructive effect, of which the English Navy was to reap the benefit in the approaching struggle with Holland. Regular men-of-war crews must have been gradually formed, and the Parliament secured the services of a trained body of officers.

Before the value of this practice was to be put to the test, the nation, and the navy with it, were destined to pass through the sharpest convulsion in the whole course of our history. The first Civil War came to an end, having practically settled nothing except that the Parliament had proved itself strong enough to beat down the king's partisans. King Charles did not, however, consider himself completely defeated. Indeed he was incapable of understanding that utter overthrow was possible for the king who held his place by Divine Right. Wicked rebels might prove too strong for him for a time, but it was his firm conviction that in the long-run no party could do without him. Thus, even before he was delivered by the Scots into the hands of his Parliament, he began the desperate game of playing off one party of his conquerors against the other. The Presbyterians remained of the opinion, as when they had begun the war, that they could beat the king utterly, and yet leave him not only king, but prepared to co-operate with them. One of the purposes for which they expected his aid was the suppression of the Independents, who were fully as offensive to the Presbyterians as the Presbyterians were to the Church of England. But the Independents were the commanding element in the New Model Army, which represented the whole armed force of the Parliament, since its other troops had been disbanded on the conclusion of the war. The Independents were thoroughly resolved that, after fighting to be free from the Church of England, they would not submit to dictation by the Presbyterians. The king began trying to set them by the ears; and out of these rivalries and intrigues, with the help of a Presbyterian army from Scotland, there arose the second Civil War.

In this struggle the navy was more visibly affected by the divisions of the nation. Its leaders had begun to discover that it was not so simple a business as they had thought, to beat the king and yet leave him uninjured. Moreover, professional rivalry affected them to no small extent. The sea officers were offended when they saw the whole effective power of the nation in the hands of the New Model Army. Their loyalty to the king was vigorously revived when they found that not only the Crown, but they themselves, were at the orders of a committee of successful soldiers. So, during 1647 and 1648, the navy was agitated by dissensions. In the spring of 1648 the party which was now, by the help of the soldiers, supreme in Parliament began to be very uneasy about the spirit of the fleet. There was a great deal of dangerous talk as to the necessity for a personal treaty with the king; while ship's companies took to imitating the "agitators" who had organised the _pronunciamiento_ of the soldiers at Triploe Heath and elsewhere. They also had their ideas as to the settlement of the nation. In view of this untrustworthiness of their naval force, Parliament decided to put the command of the fleet into other hands. Batten was removed from his place as second in command to Warwick, and Penn, who had served throughout the war on the coast of Ireland, and had finally been in actual command of the station, was put under arrest. A military officer, Colonel Rainsborough, was sent to take command of the squadron in the Downs and the river. This measure provoked a partial revolt in May 1648. The officers and men of the ships which were to have been under the command of Rainsborough refused to obey his orders, and put him on shore. This action was justified by a declaration of principles on the part of "the commanders and officers of the ship =Constant Reformation= with the rest of the fleet." These politicians stated their view of the best way for providing a settlement for the nation. They were in agreement with the Kentish petitioners, and their demands were grouped under four heads.

"_First_,--That the King's Majesty, with all expedition, be admitted in safety and honour to treat with both Houses of Parliament.

"_Secondly_,--That the army now under the command of the Lord Fairfax be forthwith disbanded, their arrears being paid them.

"_Thirdly_,--That the known laws of the kingdom may be established and continued, whereby we ought to be governed and judged.

"_Fourthly_,--That the privileges of Parliament and liberty of the subject be preserved."

In the following month this declaration was amended by the complaints that the Parliament had taken to issuing commissions without the name of the king; that several landsmen had been made sea-commanders, and that "the insufferable pride, ignorance, and insolency of Colonel Rainsborough, the late Vice-Admiral, alienated the hearts of the seamen." The political side of these pronouncements need not detain us long. If these were the aims of the seamen, they were trying, as the Presbyterian party in Parliament also were, to bring things back to the point at which they had been before 1638, with this difference, that the king was to show himself converted to their way of thinking by ten years of failure, defeat, and bitter indignity. Like the Presbyterians, they forgot to secure the co-operation of the king. The complaint that Parliament had taken to issuing commissions without the royal name shows that the sailors, or at least those who spoke for them, were immensely surprised at the result of their own efforts. When they made it a grievance that several landsmen had been made sea-commanders, they were inventing an entirely new grievance. Landsmen always had been sea-commanders, and were to be so again in the coming years.

It is hard to say how far the discontent of the seamen had anything to do with the revolt, if that can be called a revolt which was, in fact, a refusal to obey revolutionary authority. It was probably mainly the work of a few officers, and the men were carried away by the example of their commanders and by the contagious example of the Royalists in the county of Kent. The officers did in some cases belong to the Presbyterian Parliamentary party, which was now becoming Royalist under the stimulus of rivalry with the Independents.

In any case this revolt against the predominant party in Parliament extended such a very little way in the fleet, and proved so thoroughly impotent, that we can hardly suppose the bulk of the seamen to have been seriously discontented. The defection of the navy was stopped by the use of a very moderate degree of ingenuity on the part of the dominant faction. They sent the Earl of Warwick, whose sympathies were known to be with the Parliamentary Presbyterians, back to take command in place of Rainsborough. The City was very Presbyterian, and it presented a petition on behalf of Batten, to which no attention was paid. Warwick was successful in keeping the bulk of the fleet steady, but the insurgent ships helped the Kent Royalists to obtain possession of the castles of Deal, Walmer, and Sandown. No active measures were taken against them by the Lord Admiral Warwick. He was too busy in new-modelling the fleet. The process of new-modelling consisted in removing all officers and men whose loyalty was doubtful, and in replacing them by others whose principles were trustworthy, or who belonged to that useful class of fighting men who may be trusted to return an equivalent of service for their pay and allowances. The mutiny of the fleet was, in fact, shattered by Fairfax, who in the early days of June swept through the county of Kent, dashing the Royalist forces to pieces, and driving the remnants over the river into Essex. As the Royalist seamen were deprived of all hope of obtaining fresh stores by the defeat of their friends on shore, and as the ships under Warwick remained steady, there was nothing for it but to stand across the North Sea to Holland and there put themselves under the command of the Prince of Wales. The Prince was at that time in France, whither he had fled from the Channel Islands. Encouraged by the news that the ships were beginning to declare for his party, he hurried to Helvoetsluys and there took the command on the 9th of June.

As far as the king was still master to decide who was to command either ships or soldiers, authority over his navy belonged to the young Duke of York, who, in theory, was Lord High Admiral. But the duke was a mere boy of fifteen, and not on good terms with his brother. By the decision of the Prince of Wales and his Council, the command of the squadron was given to Lord Willoughby of Parham. Under this new admiral, who, as the authors of the late protestation must have observed with disgust, was a "landsman," the Royalist squadron sailed from the Dutch harbour on the 17th of July, and, carrying with it the Prince of Wales, stood over to Yarmouth. It appeared before the town on the 22nd of July, with the intention of favouring a Royalist rising, which might have disturbed Fairfax, who was now engaged in the siege of Colchester. But though the Royalists had a party in the town, the friends of the Parliament were strong enough to hold their ground. Finding that it was hopeless to endeavour to raise the county of Norfolk, and being, moreover, in dire want of money, the Royalist squadron sailed for the Thames. It found Warwick still engaged in new-modelling his fleet, and, although the sailors are said to have been eager to engage, made no attack upon him. Warwick reported that his men also were full of zeal and eager to fight, but no conflict took place. The Prince of Wales summoned the Parliamentary Admiral to take down the Royal Standard, which he flew as Lord High Admiral; and Warwick refused to make this submission, on the ground that he held his place by lawful authority, namely, by the will of the king as expressed through the Parliament. While these flourishes of summons and retort were passing between the two fleets, the prince's ships were busily engaged in capturing merchant vessels. One of these was estimated to be worth £20,000, and the prince demanded a ransom of that amount for her. The City, now longing for a reconciliation with the king, would have been well enough disposed to receive the prince. But Parliament was inexorable. The Independents had befooled the Presbyterians, always easy to deceive, by apparent concessions, and, in the meantime, the victory of Fairfax in Kent and the success of Cromwell against the Royalists in Wales were re-establishing their supremacy. They declared that the prince and all who were acting with him were guilty of high treason.

The prince remained in the river till the first days of September. He was reinforced by Batten, who escaped from observation in London, and contrived to carry over the =Constant Warwick=, one of the best appointed ships in the Parliament's service. But here his successes ended. The rest of the fleet continued loyal, or at least consistent in disloyalty, and the stores began to run out. The Royalist ships remained, it would seem, on the north side of the Thames near Leigh, and Warwick remained at Chatham. While they were here, a number of vessels came round from Portsmouth to reinforce the Parliamentary squadron. It was made a subject of bitter complaint against Batten, whom the prince had knighted, and to whom he gave a large share of his confidence, that he allowed them to pass undisturbed. The Royalist who had denounced Batten for firing on the queen at Bridlington must have found this favour, shown by her son to such "a villain," somewhat hard to digest. Under the pressure of want of stores, the prince was disposed to return at once to Holland; but his fleet was eager for battle, and so, at least, a pretence of engaging Warwick was made. Upon the last day of August, when the two fleets were within striking distance, they were separated by a sudden gale. When the wind fell, the prince's fleet was within one barrel of pork of actual starvation; and the game being now clearly up, the most fire-eating of his followers saw that there was nothing for it but to stand over to Holland. The Royalists, therefore, retreated and anchored at Goree on the 3rd of September. The Royalist movement in the fleet had completely failed. It did nothing to avert the disasters of their party at Colchester and Preston, and only served to diminish the naval forces of the Parliament by a little, and for a short time. Indeed the immediate result was to make the navy far more anti-Royalist than it had been before. The navy joined in that Remonstrance of the soldiers, which was the preliminary to the trial of the king.

While that great tragedy was in preparation, Warwick was pursuing his successes against the Royalists. On the 19th of September he was off Helvoetsluys, and had established what was, in fact, a blockade of the prince's ships. Correspondence and negotiations passed between the two forces. There would probably have been blows also, if a squadron of Dutch ships, under command of Tromp, had not dropped anchor between them. Each appealed to the other's men, but Warwick only was successful in withdrawing support from his opponent. The prince's squadron was indeed shortly in a deplorable condition. He was in utter want of money, and the loyalty of his followers was by no means equal to standing the strain of starvation. His men had tasted the pleasures of mutiny, and were much enamoured of them. They treated Lord Willoughby of Parham, and Batten, as they had treated Rainsborough. A large party of them refused to serve under Prince Rupert, on the ground that he was a foreigner, and insisted that they would obey nobody except their own Lord High Admiral, the Duke of York. In fact, all the dissensions at that time existing among the Royalists were repeated in the squadron at Helvoetsluys. The genuine Royalists looked upon the recently converted Presbyterians as rebels, only a very little less unpardonable than the Independents. The Presbyterians were by no means prepared to concede all the demands of the Royalists. The perplexities of this section of the prince's followers may be judged from the tone of the rather pitiable apology published by Batten. He confessed that he had been quite misled in supporting the Parliament, and this avowal of imbecility was not made more respectable by his unconscious betrayal of the discreditable fact that his eyes had not been opened till he had thought himself in danger of losing his pay and allowances.

While the leaders were wrangling with one another and were being put ashore by mutinous followers, a large proportion of the prince's sailors became tired of their tardy Royalism, when they found that it meant exile from home and choice of service with the Dutch, or a life of semi-piratical adventure with Prince Rupert. Several of the revolted ships were brought over by their crews to Warwick, and numbers of the sailors of the others followed the example. Among the officers not a few made their peace with the triumphant Parliament, and among them was Batten, who, after joining the Royalists because the Parliament was not sufficiently loyal, went back to what remained of it after Pride's Purge, when it was manifestly ready to cut off the king's head. He was not again employed until the Restoration, but the new masters of England were not rigorous towards his fellow-insurgents.