Pepys and the Navy

C S Knighton

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9780752494876
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

Pepys's diary has made him a literary celebrity. In his own time he was known as the chief naval official under Charles II and James II and this aspect of the diarist's life has not received the attention it deserves from his modern biographers. Charles Knighton, a Pepys scholar with a particular interest in naval history, reveals the full extent of Pepys's achievements in creating a modern navy which was both permanent and professional.

Notes

Chapter One

1. The Journal of Edward Montagu, First Earl of Sandwich, Admiral and General at Sea, 1659–1665, ed. R.C. Anderson (NRS, LXIV, 1929), pp. 33–4. B.S. Capp, Cromwell’s Navy: The Fleet and the English Revolution, 1648–1660 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 109, 336–9. R.L. Ollard, Cromwell’s Earl: A Life of Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich (1994), pp. 65–9.

2. Howarth, pp. 11–12, 15, 16, 17–18. Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson . . . by his widow Lucy, ed. C.H. Firth (1885), II, p. 235. Capp, Cromwell’s Navy, pp. 342–4.

3. Diary, I, p. 1.

4. Ibid., pp. 65, 71, 75, 77, 81, 82–3, 85–6.

5. Ibid., pp. 86, 90, 95–6, 98. DNB (Creed, John).

6. Diary, I, pp. 97, 99–100, 102–3, 104, 109. Capp, Cromwell’s Navy, pp. 357–60. J.D. Davies, Gentlemen and Tarpaulins: The Officers and Men of the Restoration Navy (Oxford, 1991), pp. 121–6.

7. Diary, I, pp. 86, 105, 108, 112–13, 123–5, 126. G. Penn, Memorials of the Professional Life and Times of Sir William Penn (1833), II, p. 210. G. Trease, Samuel Pepys and his World (1972), p. 32.

8. Ibid., pp. 131–2, 134, 135, 136–9. Capp, Cromwell’s Navy, pp. 368–9. Penn, Memorials, II, pp. 220–1.

9. Diary, I, pp. 143–4, 152, 154–5, 157. PL 2141 (Charles II’s escape); printed in Charles II’s Escape from Worcester, ed. W. Matthews (1967), pp. 34–84.

10. Diary, I, pp. 104, 158–9, 160, 167, 169. Navy White Book, p. 258. Davies, Gentlemen and Tarpaulins, p. 128.

11. Diary, I, pp. 174, 177, 184, 185, 189, 191, 210, 216; VII, p. 31; VIII, pp. 63, 227–9; IX, pp. 145, 325, 329, 334–5. Cf. Particular Friends: The Correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, ed. G. de la Bédoyère (Woodbridge, 1997), p. 98. PL 2820 (see below, pp. 34–5).

12. Diary, pp. 188, 191, 192–3, 194. Orders in Council of 4 July: PRO, PC 2/54, ff. 54–5; copies PRO, SP 29/7, no. 43 (CSPD 1660–1, p. 110, where Batten mistakenly as ‘Baker’); PL 2611, pp. 113–16; 2867, pp. 350–1 (first order only); Penn, Memorials, II, pp. 243–5 (the first order, mistakenly dated 2 July), 246; others listed in Diary, I, p. 191 n. 2. Tanner (Naval MSS, I, pp. 6, 7 n. 1) thought the Pepys MSS misdated the first order, but later (Sea MSS, p. 34), corrected himself. The second order says the committee reported to the Council on 2 July, from which the heading in the Penn copy may be derived. Navy Board Officials, 1660–1832, comp. J. M. Collinge (Office-Holders in Modern Britain, VII, 1978), p. 1 & n. 1. G.E. Aylmer, The King’s Servants: The Civil Service of Charles I, 1625–1642 (2nd edn, 1974), p. 208. R. Hutton, The Restoration: A Political and Religious History of England and Wales, 1658–1667 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 137–8.

13. Collinge, Navy Board Officials, p. 129. PRO, SP 38/19, p. 14 (CSPD 1660–1, p. 139; warrant for appointment of Clerk of the King’s Ships, during pleasure, with notional stipend of £3 6s 8d). F.W. Brooks, ‘William de Wrotham and the office of Keeper of the King’s Ports and Galleys’, EHR, XL (1925), pp. 570–9. C.F. Richmond, ‘English naval power in the fifteenth century’, History, LII (1967), pp. 6, 9, 11–12. The Navy of the Lancastrian Kings, ed. S. Rose (NRS, CXXIII, 1982). British Naval Documents, 1204–1960, ed. J.B. Hattendorf et al. (NRS, CXXXI, 1993), pp. 33–4, 42–3. D. M. Loades, The Tudor Navy: An Administrative, Political and Military History (Aldershot, 1992), pp. 15–17, 36. N.A.M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Great Britain, I, 660–1649 (1997), pp. 53, 128–30, 158–9. PL 2871, pp. 87–8.

14. Naval Minutes, pp. 60, 153, 234 382. Loades, Tudor Navy, pp. 50, 81–4. Rodger, Safeguard of the Sea, pp. 222–5. LP Henry VIII, XX, ii, Appendix, no. 27 (iii); XXI, i, no. 718 (1, 2, 5, 6, 8–10). Br. Naval Documents, pp. 90–1, 95–6. A.W. Johns, ‘The principal officers of the Navy’, MM, XIV (1928), pp. 32–54. C.S.L. Davies, ‘The administration of the Royal Navy under Henry VIII: the origins of the Navy Board’, EHR, LXXX (1965), pp. 268–88.

15. Calendar of Patent Rolls 1549–51, p. 309. Baeshe papers in PL 2875–6, passim. Order of 8 January 1557: PRO, PC 2/7, pp. 565–6 (APC, VI, pp. 39–41); SP 11/10, no. 1 (CSPD Mary I, p. 259); Br. Naval Documents, pp. 70–1 (from PC 2/6, pp. 487–8). T. Glasgow, Jnr, ‘Maturing of naval administration, 1556–1564’, MM, LVI (1970), pp. 3, 7–9.

16. Naval Minutes, p. 119. Pepys had a copy of the patent naming Hawkins and Benjamin Gonson joint-Treasurers (18 November 1577): PL 2876, pp. 181–5; other papers relating to Hawkins as Treasurer in PL 2875–6, 2878, passim. J.A. Williamson, Hawkins of Plymouth (2nd edn, 1969), p. 200. William Borough, A Discourse of the Variation of the Compass (1581); Pepys owned the 1585 and 1596 editions: PL 1077(6), 1078(4). Cf. Naval Minutes, pp. 229, 378. Borough as administrator: PL 2876, pp. 423–4; 2878, pp. 526–7; Drake’s complaint (21 May 1587): PL 2876, p. 273. Cf. J. S. Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy (1898), II, pp. 79–80, 87–8, 89, 101, 105–7. G.M. Thompson, Sir Francis Drake (1972), p. 207.

17. LP Henry VIII, XX, ii, Appendix, no. 27 (iii). Diary, VI, pp. 307–8 & n. 1. Bodl. MS Rawlinson A. 200–7, incl. Gonson’s accounts for 1562–3, 1570 and 1574 (A. 200–202); others listed in D.794, f. 1 (I am grateful to Prof. D.M. Loades for checking these details). Papers relating to Gonson: PL 2875, pp. 93–4; 2876, passim. Navy White Book, p. 379.

18. Diary, I, p. 318; III, p. 40; IV, p. 96 & n. 4; V, p. 177; IX, pp. 482, 486. Papers relating to Buck: PL 2876, p. 670; 2878, passim. R. Lockyer, Buckingham: The Life and Political Career of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, 1592–1628 (1981), p. 76. Cf. M.B. Young, Service and Servility: The Life and Work of Sir John Coke (Woodbridge, 1986); The Jacobean Commissions of Enquiry, 1608 and 1618, ed. A.P. McGowan (NRS, CXVI, 1971). Papers relating to Coke: PL 2873, 2875, passim. Report of 1618 Commission: PL 2735, pp. 44–109. Naval Minutes, pp. 95–6, 109 & n. 6, 271, 278.

19. PRO, SP 12/15, no. 4; SP 14/90, no. 98 (CSPD 1547–80, p. 165; 1611–18, p. 438). PL 2611, pp. 1–63 (instructions said to be given by the Marquess of Buckingham as Lord High Admiral, which would date them to 1619–23). BL, Sloane MS 3232, ff. 87–138 (Northumberland’s instructions, dated 14 November 1646, at which time his position was senior member of the parliamentary Admiralty Commission: in modern terms, both First Lord and First Sea Lord); ff. 139–191v (Buckingham’s instructions, undated). The Naval Tracts of Sir William Monson, ed. M. Oppenheim (NRS, XXII × XLVII, 1902–14), III, pp. 389–418. Those of the Duke of York are in PL 2611, pp. 129–90; ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• One: The Calling
• Two: Colleagues and Commodities
• Three: Contracting and Expanding
• Four: The Ships do the Business
• Five: Question Time
• Six: Rather like an Admiral
• Seven: Creating a Standard
• Eight: The Uses of Adversity
• Nine: Top Gun
• Ten: The Oracle of the Navy
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Bibliography