A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217 to 1688

It has been my endeavour in this book to give a popular, but clear and not inaccurate, account of the growth, and services, of the Royal Navy. I have not attempted a general maritime history of England. This, which would include the rise and extension of commerce, discovery, much scientific matter and much legislation, would be the life-work of a Gibbon or a Hume. Such a task would be far beyond my powers, even if circumstances, which need not be specified, did not refuse me command of the time needed for so great an undertaking.

I am not unconscious that a landsman deals with sea affairs at a certain risk. He has, in Southey's phrase, to walk among sea-terms "as a cat does in a china pantry." He is liable to discover, from the criticism of a sailor, that he has made a fleet sail within two points of the wind--a disaster which it was once my lot to undergo. Perhaps only long professional experience will save a writer from such errors. If, as is only too probable, there are some in this book, I can but beg for the favourable consideration of the friendly reader.

The present volume ends at that dividing line in our history, the Revolution of 1688. Another will give the history of the great struggle with France and her dependent allies, which began in 1689, and ended only when the time of great naval wars was over--for at any rate the larger part of a century, if not for ever. The main subject of the present volume, apart from the formation of the naval service, is the less known, but not less important, and assuredly not less arduous, struggle with Holland.

I have made it the rule to adopt the accepted spelling of names--to write Monk, not Monck; Raleigh, not Ralegh; Hawkins, not Hawkyns. Matthew Arnold once gave it as his reason for not adopting a reformed system of spelling classical names, that he would not pass his life in a wilderness of pedantry in order that his children might attain to an orthographical Canaan. That Hawkins used a "y" where we use "i" in his name, as in other words, therein following the custom of his time, does not seem to me to be any reason for departing from the practice of the language as it is to-day.

DAVID HANNAY.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE Introduction--The Mediæval Navy 1

I. The Navy of the Tudors till the Accession of Elizabeth 33

II. Reign of Elizabeth to the Defeat of the Armada 73

III. From the Armada to the Death of the Queen 116

IV. James I. and Charles I. 146

V. The Navy in the Civil War 180

VI. The First Years of the Commonwealth 195

VII. The First Dutch War 230

VIII. The Latter Half of the War 256

IX. The Protectorate 276

X. The Navy under Charles II. 299

XI. The Second Dutch War to the Four Days' Battle 334

XII. From the Four Days' Battle till the End of the War 364

XIII. The Algerine Pirates and the Third Dutch War 398

XIV. The Last Years of the Stuart Dynasty 444

Index 465

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ROYAL NAVY

INTRODUCTION

THE MEDIÆVAL NAVY

AUTHORITIES.--Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas has made an exhaustive collection of all the evidence as to the history of the Royal Navy in the Middle Ages, in the only two volumes published of his History of the Royal Navy from the Earliest Times to the Wars of the French Revolution. It is the basis of this Introduction. Captain Burrows' Cinque Ports, in the Historical Towns Series, supplements Sir H. Nicolas.