SOURCE: Introduction to Samuel Pepys and the Second Dutch War: Pepys's Navy White Book and Brooke House Papers, edited by Robert Latham, Scolar Press, 1995, pp. xvii-xxxix.

[In the following essay, Latham reviews Pepys's records, written while he was a clerk of the Navy Board, documenting English military reform after the Dutch War of 1665-67.]

I THE NAVY WHITE BOOK¹

In his Diary for 7 Apr. 1664, immediately after observing that war against the Dutch seemed imminent, Pepys wrote: ‘Vexed to see how Sir W. Batten ordered things this afternoon (vide my office-book; for about this time I have begun, my notions and informations increasing now greatly every day, to enter all occurrences extraordinary in a book by themselfs).’ There was already in existence an office memorandum book (now in the Public Record Office), begun by Pepys and his clerks in July 1660 on his appointment as Clerk of the Acts which registered selected decisions of the Navy Board and other items of general interest to its members.² The new book, on the other hand, was to be Pepys's personal record of the Board's debates and transactions and of how, in fact, each member of the Board had discharged his responsibilities. It was designed to be a means of defence against criticism. It also came to be, in Pepys's words, a record of ‘matters to be reformed or improved’.³ The book was a handsome folio bound in white vellum, with the royal arms stamped on both covers in a style identical to that of the larger and more important books of the Office. Its contents consist of memoranda in the hands of Pepys and his clerks dated between 1664 and 1672, but principally between 1664 and 1669, followed by a brief Index written and presumably composed by Pepys, not printed here.

The entries before July 1665 (pp. 3-126)⁴ were written by Pepys almost entirely in shorthand.⁵ They were arranged, with dates and headings, in loose chronological order, and with references to the numbered bundles of official papers on which many are based. Soon after the outbreak of the war Pepys ceased to use the book and made brief notes on loose sheets,⁶ which were later copied into the book, almost entirely by his chief clerk, Richard Gibson,⁷ whose clear and flowing hand is unmistakable. Shortly after January 1667 the memoranda were once again entered in the book in the same format as in the pre-war section, but in longhand and by his clerks—again principally by Gibson.⁸ The number of times that Pepys refers to Gibson's preparing his copy in his presence suggests that he wrote at Pepys's dictation. But clearly the present text is a fair copy.

These post-war entries are longer than those of the pre-war period, being concerned with complicated problems such as the accounts of contractors. But despite the deterioration of his eye-sight which forced Pepys to abandon his Diary in May 1669, he continued to dictate voluminous entries in the Navy White Book. In 1669 they occupy over 100 manuscript pages, more than for any other year. Thereafter they dwindle—to 3 in 1670, none in 1671 and 10 in 1672. They end in December 1672, six months after the Third Dutch War had begun, but have little bearing on it.

In the first pages of the book are notes of the preparations made for war from the autumn of 1663 onwards. Pepys already had some knowledge of timber and the timber trade and the measuring of great masts—it was now particularly important for him to understand the making of sails and cordage, which were more liable to loss by damage and wastage in wartime than any other stores. It is no accident that these two materials are the subject of the longest of the memoranda in the early pages of the book (pp. 27-31, 39-42). About sailmaking it may be that he had learned something indirectly from his upbringing as a tailor's son—certainly he appears to be entirely at his ease in the discussions he records about seams and selvedges, and is able to defend the use of wide canvases in sails against the experienced sailors among his colleagues who favoured narrow ones. He made frequent visits to the ropeyards, learning how to test hemp by trials of its tensile strength, how to spin it and lay it in tar. In these notes Pepys returns to the subject of cordage time and time again, and his long account of the prices of Scandinavian tar and pitch is evidence of his care to familiarise himself with the international price mechanisms which the trade involved (pp. 32-5).

In supervising the supply of stores he had to pit his wits against those of the contractors. The book opens with a note of the hidden profits made by Backwell the financier, and as it proceeds Pepys makes a point of recording cases of price rigging which became more frequent with the approach of war, the most notable being William Cutler's attempt to raise the price of tar by spreading a rumour that the tar house at Stockholm had been destroyed by fire (pp. 97-100), ‘Merchants will be merchants’, as Pepys observed in another connection (p. 75). But royal servants were often not much better. According to Pepys's observation in these notes, not many dockyard officers could be relied on to put the King's interest before their own. He reports a sad number of cases of embezzlement and corruption, as well as of sheer inefficiency.

In his efforts at reform, in the dockyards and elsewhere, Pepys complains that he received little help from his immediate colleagues. Sir William Batten (Surveyor 1660-7), Col. Thomas Middleton (Surveyor 1667-72) and Sir William Penn (Commissioner 1660-9) were all indifferent administrators; and only Sir William Coventry (Secretary to the Lord High Admiral 1660-7 and Commissioner 1662-7) was constant in his support.

War intensified the problems that had plagued the Board in times of peace: the familiar issues of lack of money, careless supervision by officers of the yards, defective materials, and corruption and embezzlement. In addition war brought new problems—principally those of the recruitment and victualling of seamen. The Admiralty, lacking money for wages, was forced to recruit by means of the press gang, whose tyrannous conduct Pepys more than once criticised in the Diary. In the White Book his comments are rather on its effects on the efficiency of the fighting force. It led to chaos in the allocation of men to ships (pp. 233-4), to undermanning of victuallers' ships so serious that they were unable to carry supplies to the fleet (p. 128), and, most disturbing of all perhaps, to the alienation of the seamen from the King's service, sometimes to the point of mutiny (p. 160).

As for victualling, Pepys had gained close experience as Surveyor-General (a post invented at his suggestion in January 1665), and in April 1666 he attempted some reforms in the office of purser, which was the part of the organisation most easily susceptible to improvement by administrative regulation. But pursers could still evade the Board's scrutiny (p. 129), and the scrutiny, when it occurred, was far from thorough (p. 177).

The Admiralty, he found, was not well-supported in the crucial business of directing the movement of ships. Pilots were too few in number and were often put to work in unfamiliar waters (pp. 129, 134). There were too many delays in despatching pressed men to their ships and in clearing wrecks from the River. Both tasks would be better performed, he thought, if made the responsibility of a single member of the Board (pp. 129, 140). He was probably thinking of the improvements in administration which had followed from his own appointment as Surveyor-General of Victualling in 1665.

The first duty of the Navy Board in the immediate post-war period was to repair the wastage caused by the hostilities. The bulk of the work therefore fell on Middleton, Batten's successor as Surveyor of the Navy, who repeatedly complained of the difficulties caused by Batten's failure to keep adequate records. Middleton himself did not greatly relish desk-work, but he applied himself with vigour to the supervision of the yards. He impressed Pepys by the good sense of his view that whenever a great ship was building, a smaller vessel should be built alongside her, ‘there being always so much leavings to be found’ (p. 156). Shortage of money in the post-war period was, as ever, the main difficulty. Many contractors now insisted on payment in advance, or on some form of security that was not dependent on the credit of the government (pp. 189-91). Debts outstanding from the war, or before it, demanded attention. Sir William Warren's bills alone for masts, timber and freightage kept the Office busy for months. Pepys, despite his close and profitable alliance with Warren, resisted all proposals from other members of the Board to pay him before he had produced copper-bottomed evidence to support his claims. Among the other principal creditors of the Navy were, of course, the unpaid seamen. They had to be content with vouchers (‘tickets’) never before used on such a scale. At pp. 164-5 Pepys records a summary of the speech he made on 17 July 1668 to the Privy Council (in answer to criticism in Parliament) justifying the use of tickets on practical grounds even though it meant paying the money to ticket-mongers who bought them from seamen at a figure well below their value. Elsewhere he records other abuses of the ticket system: Adm. Sir William Jennens's attempt to acquire the proceeds of tickets for 800 or so imaginary supernumeraries (pp. 176-82) and Capt. O’Brien's attempt to have a ticket issued for the mistress he kept on board disguised as a man (p. 248).

In November 1668 the Navy Treasury had been put into the hands of political enemies of the Duke of York, Sir Thomas Osborne and Sir Thomas Littleton, who held the office jointly. They did not cooperate smoothly either with the Duke or the Navy Board. They issued new rules without consultation (p. 159); paid tickets for 1666 before those for 1665 (p. 158), and occasionally refused to meet a bill that antedated their own appointment (pp. 189-91).

The combined effects of the war and of political pressure had forced the King in August 1668 to institute an inquiry into the constitution of the Navy Board. The result was a recommendation (made largely at Pepys's suggestion) that no structural changes were needed. All would be well if only the Principal Officers without exception were to perform the duties laid down for them in the Admiral's Instructions. No member of the Board, for instance, should rely on deputies or clerks to do his work for him. Admittedly Mennes had assistants (Brouncker and Penn) to help him with his accounts, but they had been formally appointed, and had been allotted specific duties (p. 176). Again, clerks should not be treated as personal servants who might as a favour be allotted extra duties in order to earn extra pay. Middleton, for instance, had transferred one of his clerks to Brouncker's service without consulting the Board. Pepys was outraged. He set out his views on the affair and on the whole question of the qualifications to be required of Principal Officers and their clerks in a minute which is among the most powerful he ever wrote (pp. 194-9).

Old abuses continued to trouble him: excessive prices paid for petty emptions (p. 145), embezzlement (p. 124) and blatant cases of private trading by commanders (pp. 200-1). The use of impressment in peacetime led him to protest to the Admiral (pp. 203-10). He tells of Sir Edward Spragg boasting that he could man his fleet simply by sending his press gang into the London brothels—a story which John Evelyn heard ‘with great affliction’ (p. 217). Pepys for his part found it a sad contemplation that seamen took service in East Indiamen simply to escape the press (p. 205).

A little later there is a long report (pp. 221-7) of a conversation on 10 June 1669 with Coventry, whom Pepys admired more than any other public servant. Coventry, after recalling his original opposition to the war, turns to the debate about the employment of gentlemen captains in the Navy. It was a debate which had political overtones: had not the success of Cromwell's navy against the Dutch owed something to the fact that the greater part of his naval commanders were chosen for their skill in war or their experience in navigation—or both—rather than for their gentility? Coventry's argument here was not political but pragmatic, and was based on the simple consideration that ships could not safely be entrusted to landsmen. He had often stated it before. He now develops it rhetorically—at one and the same time making his case and answering objections to it. Pepys's reporting, which gives the impression of missing none of the twists and turns of the argument, is in its way as impressive as the subtlety of the speaker himself. It is also, perhaps, significant of something more. It suggests that Pepys reported Coventry's views so thoroughly because he so thoroughly agreed with them. His own first article of faith was a belief in the importance of professionalism in the King's service at all levels, from anchorsmiths to admirals, and in himself not least. Every page of the Navy White Book testifies to that belief.

II THE BROOKE HOUSE PAPERS⁹

(I) THE BROOKE HOUSE COMMISSION

After the inglorious end of the Second Dutch War in 1667, culminating in the raid on the Medway in June and the conclusion of an unsatisfactory peace in August, two extensive inquiries into its conduct were held, and for a time ran concurrently: a Committee on Miscarriages appointed by the Commons in October 1667 and what became known from its place of meeting as the Brooke House Commission appointed by statute in the following December. Inquiries so wide-ranging into the conduct of royal servants during a war were unprecedented, but the circumstances themselves were without precedent. Only recently, under the Republic, had war on such a scale been undertaken.

The Committee on Miscarriages concerned itself with the conduct of the campaigns and only incidentally with Navy Board matters. The Board was criticised for alleged mismanagement of victualling, which according to Rupert and Albemarle had fatally constricted the movements of their fleets in 1666. It was blamed rather more convincingly for the weak defences of the Medway, but managed to shift the blame on to the Commissioner at Chatham, Peter Pett. The payment of seamen by tickets was the readiest charge against it, since specific sums had been reserved for the seamen in parliamentary grants¹⁰—but Parliament did not understand that the complexities of naval finance made it impossible to reserve funds for a specific purpose. Nor did it understand that there was no avoiding payment by tickets since inter alia it enabled the Navy Treasury when calculating pay to take into account the fact that most seamen would have served in more than one ship. Appearing before the Commons on 5 March 1668 Pepys explained it all in a long speech which encroached on to the members' dinner hour.¹¹

The Committee on Miscarriages was poorly designed for its purpose. It was too large, and the 56 MPs who composed it were unable to give it their undivided attention. Moreover, it lacked both the power to compel witnesses to attend and the power to administer oaths. Beyond having an accused person voted guilty of a miscarriage, the Committee could do nothing except attempt to have him impeached—a weapon which it found was apt to break in its hands. (Articles of impeachment were voted against Pett, but he was saved from trial by the prorogation of Parliament.) The Committee's proceedings caused a public stir, but in the end posed no real threat to the Principal Officers of the Navy apart from Pett.

The Brooke House Commission, appointed in December 1667, presented a more formidable challenge. It was set up to inquire not into undefined miscarriages, but into the specific problem of what use had been made of the money granted by Parliament for the war—a matter which directly and principally affected the Navy Board as the main spending department. Since the King's own revenue, which by convention served as the national war chest, was inadequate of itself to provide money and credit for a war on the scale of a naval war against the Dutch, Parliament had granted some £5m. towards the cost.¹² It now claimed the right to inquire into its disbursement.

The origins of the Commission went back to September 1666 when the Commons, in determining the amount which should be appropriated to war expenses, chose a committee to inspect the accounts of the Navy, Ordnance and Army.¹³ Accounts were produced by the responsible officials, but the King refused to allow the officials—being servants of the Crown—to be examined on their contents. An attempt was then made in the Commons to remit the inquiry to a joint committee of the two Houses which (they claimed) would have the same power to impose oaths on witnesses as was enjoyed by the House of Lords itself. This move also came to nothing. The Commons therefore in December tried threats. They tacked on to the Poll Bill then before them a proviso designed to empower a committee of nine members of their own House to investigate accounts and swear witnesses. No investigation, no supply. The King refused to have his hand forced, and threatened to veto the bill. Then followed an attempt by the government's critics to enact their proviso in the form of a separate bill, but this foundered in a series of disputes between the two Houses which was only brought to an end by the King's proroguing Parliament on 14 Jan. 1667. When Parliament reassembled in May, the King made an attempt to resolve the main constitutional difficulty by issuing letters patent appointing a commission composed of judges and members of both Houses, which was empowered to examine the accounts. This fell through with the refusal of some of the MPs to accept nomination.

All difficulties were resolved, however, in the summer of 1667 by the Dutch raid on the Medway and the humiliating peace which followed. The King was in no position to hold out when Parliament met on 10 October after the recess. The Lord Keeper then announced to the two Houses:

His Majesty formerly promised you that you should have an account of the moneys given towards the war, which His Majesty hath commanded his officers to make ready; and since that way of commission (wherein he had put the examination of them) hath been ineffectual, he is willing you should follow your own method, examine them in what way and as strictly as you please. He doth assure you, he will leave everyone concerned to stand or fall, according to his own innocence or guilt.¹⁴

By December a bill had been drawn up and passed which established a small body of salaried Commissioners to scrutinize the expenditure on the war.¹⁵ They were to be nine in number, with a quorum of five, and by a resolution of the Commons, none was to be a member of the Lower House.¹⁶ They were to examine not only the expenditure of parliamentary grants made for that purpose in 1664-7,¹⁷ but also the expenditure from customs and prize money—two sources of revenue that were normally under the King's exclusive control. The Commission was to work full time, with the assistance of a staff of clerks.¹⁸ It had authority to enforce the production of accounts, to compel attendance and to impose oaths. It was to expose all ‘frauds, exactions, negligences, and defaults or abuses’, and was directed to take proceedings in the Court of Exchequer to recover any debts due to the King, employing informers if necessary, and to recompense the seamen for any losses they had incurred through the abuse of their pay tickets. Its powers were to run for three years after the close of the current session, unlike those of a parliamentary committee of inquiry which, unless renewed, lasted only for the session in which it was appointed. It was to report to Parliament from time to time ‘to the end that your Majesty and this whole kingdom may be satisfied and truly informed’. Pepys was nervous of the outcome. ‘[The Commissioners]’, he wrote on 30 December, ‘are the greatest people that ever were in the nation as to power’, and for days after the act was published he could not bring himself to read it.¹⁹

The nine Commissioners, chosen by the Commons from a list of twenty nominated by a committee, included no front-rank politicians, apart from Coventry's nephew, Sir George Savile, later the Marquess of Halifax. The chairman, Lord Brereton,²⁰ was an accomplished mathematician, better known perhaps in the Royal Society than in political circles, but admired on all sides for his ability and integrity.²¹ He had sat in the Commons in two parliaments in 1659 and 1660 as a supporter of the Presbyterian interest—the party of moderate critics of the monarchy who had been displaced by the republicans at the end of the second Civil War and who had later helped to bring about the Restoration. Since 1660 this group had lost its place in the limelight but was now, after the fall of Clarendon, enjoying something of a revival. Two of Brereton's colleagues were chosen from the same party—William Pierrepont, one of the most respected men in politics,²² and Sir John Langham, a prominent London Presbyterian, MP for Northampton in 1661 and 1662.²³

Col. George Thomson was from a different mould.²⁴ An ardent Puritan, he was a self-made merchant who had given good service in the Commissions of Admiralty and Navy during the Commonwealth, and never tired of extolling the virtues of the Republic (pp. 360, 368). He was far and away the most knowledgeable of the Commissioners in naval matters, and proved industrious to a fault in exposing the shortcomings of the newly re-established Navy Board.²⁵ With Lord Brereton he was the most active of the Commissioners in the debates before the Privy Council which followed the presentation of their Report. Of the other members of the Commission, Giles Dunster and Sir William Turner (Lord Mayor 1668-9)²⁶ were experienced London merchants brought in as experts on finance and business affairs. The more obscure John Gregory seems to have been a man of business attached to the service of Sir Joseph Williamson, Under-Secretary of State and Keeper of State Papers.²⁷ The appointment of Col. Henry Osborne, son of Sir Peter Osborne, of Chicksands, Bedfordshire, is a little difficult to explain. He had been a royalist but had never held high public office or been a member of Parliament.²⁸ He may have been one of those obscure men whose very obscurity, according to Coventry,²⁹ qualified them for election.

In January 1668 the Commissioners settled into their headquarters at Brooke House in Durham Yard, Holborn,³⁰ and opened an office near Bishopsgate for the receipt of complaints about seamen's tickets.³¹ They organised themselves into ‘divisions’ corresponding with the subjects of their inquiry,³² and began to call for papers and information. Their first letter to the Navy Office (21 January) asked for an account of stores, contracts and ship hire—in Pepys's words ‘more than we shall ever be able to answer while we live.’³³ Pepys drafted a reply which Coventry advised him to alter as being ‘a little too submissive’ and as granting ‘a little too much and too soon our bad managements, though we lay [them] on want of money’.³⁴ On the 31st he went to Brooke House accompanied by the Navy Office doorkeeper, who carried a pile of contract books, and ‘was received with great respect and kindness and did give them great satisfaction, making it my endeavour to inform them what it was they were to expect from me and what was the duty of other people’. ‘I do observe’, he concluded, ‘they do go about their business like men resolved to go through with it, and in a very good method like men of understanding’—working through the day and ‘eat[ing] only a bit of bread at noon and a glass of wine’.³⁵ In early February the Navy Board sent them inter alia 164 sea books, 3 contract books, 3 order books, and 12 bill books.³⁶ Before the month was up they had ventured on Warren's Hamburg business, seamen's pay, and the affair of Sandwich's prize goods.³⁷ This last Pepys might have been involved in had he not sold out his share of the proceeds;³⁸ as it was, his old colleague in Sandwich's service, Capt. Ferrer, was sharply dealt with by Lord Brereton when he appeared before the Commissioners later in the year and failed to satisfy them that he had provided all the evidence they needed.³⁹

On 14 March the Commission submitted a progress report to the Commons which was well received. The occasion is described in the parliamentary diary kept by John Milward, one of the members for Derbyshire:

Sir Thomas Meers informed the House that some of the Commissioners of Accounts were at the door and desired to give the House an account how far they had proceeded; whereupon it was ordered to call them in, but before they were called in we had a great debate whether they should have chairs set [for] them or not, but in regard Lord Viscount Halifax was not there it was said no Peer was there, for Lord Brereton was not a Peer of England, and therefore they had no chairs, but seats only at the Bar was prepared for them; the Bar was not let down, and Lord Brereton and five more of the commissioners came in. Sir William Turner (who is pricked for next Lord Mayor) was speaker for all the rest; he presented to the Speaker a book of seven sheets of paper written close on both sides. There was a debate whether it should be read or not; it was ordered to be read, and it was a very exact form and method of their proceedings. It did inform that some persons did abscond and would not be brought in to make their accounts to what they were able to charge upon them; they also informed of the great abuse of buying tickets at 7s. per pound and some at 5s. the pound, and also of the irregular paying of such tickets; but they gave us no account as yet of the disposing of any moneys. When the book was read the commissioners were called in and the House gave them their hearty thanks for their excellent method and great care in their proceedings, and prayed them to continue the same, and that this House will at all times and upon all occasions be ready to assist them.⁴⁰

Another short report was made in April.⁴¹

Pepys had the Office keep a register of all transactions with the Commission⁴² and did what he could to satisfy their queries. When Brooke House complained that they had been kept waiting for a copy of the survey of the Navy of February 1663 and would report the delay to Parliament if kept waiting any longer, Pepys replied (15 April):

1. That for anything concerning his place the Commissioners had not stayed two days.

2. That he cannot do the whole work of the Navy, and is ashamed it is not done.

3. That he may say, as a matter of complaint rather than excuse, that his fellow Officers did not do their parts to enable him to do his, in the making up and piecing things together.

4. That he hath not heard a word from the Comptroller, Treasurer, the executors of the last Surveyor or the present Surveyor to enable him to write a word for digesting the matter.⁴³

The Commissioners' investigations occupied the whole of 1668 and most of 1669. They had to examine the accounts of the Exchequer officials receiving the money and the accounts of the numerous financial officers of the armed forces responsible for spending it. They had to call for papers, receive depositions, interview witnesses, invite comments from officials and in some cases reply to them. It was the autumn of 1669 before they were in a position to present their main conclusions. These took the form of 10 Observations concerning the accounts of Carteret, Navy Treasurer during the war, and 18 Observations concerning the Navy Board⁴⁴ which constituted the principal part of the Report presented to the King and to the two Houses of Parliament on 25 and 26 October. In addition they sent a series of accounts and a mass of letters and other pièces justificatives.⁴⁵ Included amongst them, attached to an abstract of Carteret's accounts, was a statement that was later to cause a great stir, to the effect that £514,518 8s. 8[frac12]d. had been spent ‘for other uses than the war’.⁴⁶ In early November the two Houses appointed committees to examine the Report, and began with the charges concerning Carteret. He chose not to answer them personally, and was allowed legal representation in both Houses—one of his lawyers being Robert Sawyer, Pepys's old chamber-fellow at Magdalene.

The Lords' Committee, rather oddly, included Halifax, himself one of the Commissioners, and Sandwich, who was involved in the prize-goods affair, one of the items under investigation.⁴⁷ It held a series of meetings in November, two of which Pepys attended to give evidence,⁴⁸ and ended by exonerating Carteret completely, although it was clear that his accounts were in serious disorder. The Commons, on the other hand, were severe and after discussing each of the 10 Observations concerning Carteret voted him guilty of misdemeanours in regard to all except one, a minor one about payment for slops. On 10 December he was suspended from the House, and on the 11th the Commons were debating a motion to exclude him from office⁴⁹ when the King intervened and prorogued Parliament until 14 February.

By this time there had been no discussion in Parliament of the 18 Observations concerning the Navy Board. These had been sent to the Board on 29 September with a request for a reply by 19 October when Parliament was due to reassemble. But Pepys was at that time abroad on leave, and Brouncker and Mennes, the only other survivors of the wartime Board still in post, explained that they must put off their reply until his return.⁵⁰ He came back on 20 October, but within days was overwhelmed by a personal tragedy—the death, on 10 November, of his wife.⁵¹ He gathered what papers he could (some were inaccessible at Brooke House) and composed by 27 November an 18-fold answer to the 18 Observations. It is printed below (pp. 271-325). Pepys took it in person to Brooke House on the 29th, and attested it on 14 December.⁵²

Soon after the prorogation on 11 December, the King changed the whole situation by transferring the debate on the charges made against the members of the Navy Board from Parliament to the Privy Council. There the accused were invited to defend themselves in the presence of the King, the Lord High Admiral (the Duke of York), and the Council. The move was made to avoid having royal servants exposed to such severe treatment as Carteret had suffered at the hands of the House of Commons.

The proceedings in Council began in late December⁵³ and were first concerned with matters that had arisen from the examination of Carteret's case. On 3 Jan. 1670 Pepys was called in, with Exchequer officials, to counter the charge that over £500,000 had been spent on ‘other uses than the war’⁵⁴—a charge which had aroused agreeable expectations in the public mind that the officials would be found guilty of providing for the King's mistresses out of money meant for the war.⁵⁵

It was a week later, on 10 January, that the Council undertook consideration of the criticisms made of other members of the Navy Board. On that day, before the Council met with members of the Board and of the Commission in the Council Chamber, Pepys, with the King and the Duke of York, withdrew into the King's Closet, and presented the King with a copy of his answer to the 18 Observations, and also a copy of a letter which he had just sent to the Commission on 6 January in defence of his own conduct.⁵⁶

The debates which followed at intervals between 12 January and 21 February, centred on the 18 Observations and were recorded by Pepys in his ‘Brooke House Journal’ (below, pp. 334-435). A remarkable feature of the proceedings was that the public were admitted, presumably to give maximum publicity to the official case. On the afternoon of Friday 28 January, when the allegation about the King's misuse of the parliamentary grant was at issue, the Council Chamber, according to Pepys, was full to capacity.⁵⁷ Starkey, the newsletter writer, who was present, reported that ‘hundreds’ were there.⁵⁸ The government's case was that, far from misusing public money, the King had spent £800,000 from his own revenues on the war; and moreover that the £500,000-odd which the Commissioners claimed had been spent on ‘other uses’ was a miscalculation due to their failure to take into account the cost of preparing for the war as well as the cost of waging it.⁵⁹ The Commissioners immediately, on the same day as the debate, issued a supplementary report stating that they had revised that part of their original report: ‘If any person has drawn wrong conclusion from our enquiries, we in all humility hope it may be looked upon as our unhappiness, and not our fault.’⁶⁰

On 14 February, when the Houses re-assembled, they were assured by the King and the Lord Keeper that His Majesty had looked into all these matters himself.⁶¹ The Court party was now completely in control of Parliament and was determined to render the Commission harmless. On 18 February they secured a decisive vote in the Commons which gave supply precedence over inquiries into the war,⁶² and went on to grant an unusually generous subsidy. Paradoxically, the Commission was drawn into the business of arranging for the supply. At the same time their correspondence with Pepys continued—about Warren's accounts with the Navy Treasury and on 20 March they appeared at the Bar of the House to present papers on one of the charges in which some MPs for maritime constituencies had an interest—that concerning prize ships and prize goods.⁶³ But the finances of the war were no longer a political issue, and under the terms of the statute establishing the Commission, its duties terminated in May 1671.

(II) PEPYS'S DEFENCE OF THE CONDUCT OF THE NAVY

On 27 Nov. 1669 Pepys sent to the Brooke House Commissioners a ‘General Defence’ of the Navy Board against the charges they had brought in their 18 Observations of 29 September, adding that it was to be understood that he wrote without prejudice to his colleagues' freedom to write in their own defence (pp. 271-325). Mennes, Brouncker and Penn submitted their individual answers, and Pepys followed suit with his own ‘Particular Defence’ on 6 Jan. 1670 (pp. 325-30). On 8 January he submitted copies of his General and his Particular Defence to the King and the Duke of York (pp. 330-3).

His answers to the charges are for the most part convincing. The Commissioners were ill-informed at some points about procedures in the Navy Office, and misled about certain facts, e.g. about the prize ships (pp. 318-23). They were inclined to exaggerate and were unwilling to make allowance for war conditions. But in his counter-attack on the record of the naval administrators of the Commonwealth Pepys is less convincing. They created and maintained a battle fleet of unprecedented size and power, and until the closing years of the Republic kept it well-paid and supplied.

In his defence of his own conduct the most interesting feature is his claim to ‘integrity’. There is no denying that like most of his colleagues in the Navy Office, except the lowliest, he accepted gifts in money and in kind from naval contractors, in compensation for the low rate of his salary. No doubt the considerable sums he regularly received from Warren the timber merchant and Gauden the Victualler might have caused him embarrassment if they had become known. But the gifts did not prevent him from criticising his benefactors when necessary.⁶⁴ He never became the paid servant of anyone but the King, and there was probably substance in his claim that in these private transactions the public interest was always protected.⁶⁵

(III) THE BROOKE HOUSE JOURNAL

The climax of Pepys's relations with Brooke House came when the Commissioners and Navy Board debated the 18 Observations and the Board's answers before the King and Privy Council in a series of meetings held between 3 January and 21 February 1670. The Council records are almost completely silent about the debates,⁶⁶ and if the Brooke House Commission kept a record of them, it does not appear to have survived. It was Pepys's habit, however, when attacked, not only to defend himself but to keep a careful record of his defence.⁶⁷ In this case he preserved a report of the debates in journal form, with a preface summarising his part in the events which immediately preceded them. The original manuscript has disappeared and the journal is printed here (pp. 334-435) from a unique copy in the Pepys Library (PL 2874, pp. 385-504). There it is to be found in his ‘Miscellany of Matters Political, and Naval’—a collection in twelve folio volumes of copies of manuscripts from public and private sources, made by clerks after Pepys had retired from office in February 1689. Volume VI of this ‘Miscellany’, in which it occurs, consists of copies of papers in Pepys's own possession. The journal is flanked by two other items of Brooke House material—‘Notes Preparative’ (PL 2874, pp. 361-83)⁶⁸ and copies of his General and Particular Defences (ibid., pp. 509-81), all in the same unidentified hand. They were compiled by two clerks, one writing at the other's dictation. That the notes were dictated is evident from the occurrence of scribal errors which are clearly the result of mis-hearings rather than of misreadings: ‘late’ for ‘great’ (p. 348), ‘his’ for ‘it is’ (p. 359), ‘in’ for ‘ill’ (p. 361), etc.⁶⁹

Before the debates began the Council devoted four meetings between 3 and 7 January to the discussion of Carteret's accounts, to which Pepys was summoned without his colleagues (pp. 336-41). There followed two meetings at which procedure for the debates was settled (pp. 341-5), after which the debates opened on 17 January. They were continued in nine subsequent meetings and ended on 21 February. Pepys attended all of them, though once arriving late, having stopped on his way in an attempt to see Claude Duval the highwayman carried to his execution (p. 366).

The debates, to which the public (in a remarkable departure from precedent) were admitted,⁷⁰ were presided over by the King with the Duke of York at his side, and followed the order of the 18 Observations. Each Observation was read by one of the Commissioners, who then submitted ‘a paper of instances’; whereupon Pepys replied by presenting his written answer and elaborating on it. Other members of the Board might follow with their comments, after which the debate would be thrown open, Privy Councillors occasionally joining in. In the virtual absence of other official or unofficial records, Pepys's report cannot be checked. But it is unlikely to have contained serious mistakes of fact—Pepys's personal Diary can hardly be faulted at all on that ground, and the Brooke House Journal, like the Diary, was composed immediately or very soon after the event.⁷¹ But we have no means of knowing if Pepys suppressed or distorted some part of the Commissioners' case. He certainly devotes much less space to their speeches than to his own.

His reports are fluent and copious, and only rarely given in note form.⁷² Like the lengthy reports of conversations that are a feature of the Diary, they are evidence of Pepys's powers of memory. Many of his own speeches are in his best official style and are reported in dense detail. They read like memoranda, though here and there they come alive when he addresses reminders to himself—of what he ought to have said (pp. 352, 383, 391) or of what he means to say later (pp. 354, 360, 406, 410). Of the speakers few are described with the same attention to visual detail that they would have received in the Diary. They are voices only. On a few rare occasions they become persons too—as in the angry scene when Pepys met head-on Brereton's accusation that he had embezzled a seaman's ticket worth £7 odd, and the King ‘with a smile and shake of his head’ gently scorned the suggestion that his Clerk of the Acts could have stooped so low (pp. 429-32). Throughout the debates the King presided with firmness and good humour, but without any pretence of impartiality. He never lost sight of the fact that he had arranged these proceedings as a means of defending his servants. He exhibited a confidence that came not only from his regality but also from his close knowledge of naval business: the terms of a contract (p. 347), the state of stocks of pipestaves (p. 392) or the global sums spent on the war by the two chief combatants (pp. 400-1).

Early in the proceedings he established a rapport with Pepys, choosing him to help to prepare Carteret's case which was discussed before the charges against the Navy Board were broached. He ruled that the debates concerning the Navy Board should centre on Pepys's answers to the Observations, and that his colleagues should present points concerning their own conduct as they arose in the course of the general discussion. The understanding between Charles and Pepys developed as the discussions proceeded. Like Pepys, the King welcomed any chance of mocking the Commissioners' admiration of the republican régime—‘“those pure angelical times” (saith the King), to which I added “those times concerning which people discourse in matters of the Navy as historians do of the primitive times in reference to the church”’ (p. 371). On the last day of the debates, Pepys protested that the Commissioners were raising charges without giving notice:

Which method of theirs I showed would … perpetuate the dispute without any end to be foreseen of it; while answers being given to satisfaction to this day's objection, that satisfaction shall never be owned but in lieu thereof a new race of objections shall be started, so as I plainly told his Majesty, my work must be to get a son and bring him up only to understand this controversy between Brooke House and us, and that his Majesty too should provide for successors to be instructed on his part in the state of this case, which otherwise would never likely be understood, either as to what thereof had already been adjusted or what remained further to be looked after in it (pp. 432-3).

At the beginning of the proceedings Pepys was asked by the King to be responsible for replying to the charge that Charles most resented—that he had spent money granted for the war on ‘other uses’. Arlington followed this by suggesting that Pepys should publish a refutation:

as he did believe that Mr Pepys was the best informed of any man to do his Majesty this service, so (he added) that though Mr Pepys was by, yet he should not refrain to say that his style was excellent and the fittest to perform this work; though he would have it recommended to him to study the laying it down with all possible plainness, and with the least show of rhetoric if he could (p. 340).

Nothing came of the proposal—perhaps it was thought more effective to counter coffee-house gossip of this sort in the speeches of the King and the Lord Keeper at the opening of the next session of Parliament⁷³. Meantime Pepys in these debates forced Brooke House to make an apology (p. 432).

On the subject of storekeepers' accounts (pp. 398-401) and seamen's tickets (pp. 403-10), he stunned his critics by firing off a barrage of detail. In both cases his speeches, for all their length and complexity, lacked nothing in lucidity. The forcefulness of his argument appears in the journal's summary of his speech answering the criticism that the Board had signed the Treasurer's ledgers without first ascertaining the dates of the items of expenditure. He showed

that the crime here charged upon us was our not doing what was never enjoined us, what in no age was ever practised, what we could not have attempted to have done without unfaithfulness, what in itself is impossible to be done, and lastly what as soon as we were enjoined it and enabled thereto has as far as it is possible been punctually executed (pp. 367-8).

As a debater, Pepys could be hard-hitting. In his examination of Gregory's evidence about prize ships (pp. 432-4) he drove his critic into a corner, challenging him several times to repeat his words. Occasionally, also, he took the contest into enemy territory. He questioned the validity of the Commissioner's inquisitorial methods of inquiry, which presumed guilt in the accused (pp. 365-6, 369). He denied their assumption that deviations from the Admiral's Instructions were always an offence, pointing out, in one of his best speeches (pp. 388-9), that the Instructions were meant to be interpreted with due regard to the circumstances of war. He maintained, like the King, that the only valid ground on which criticism of the Board's conduct could be based would be that their faults had demonstrably impeded the war effort. The Commissioners, he submitted, had not proved, and could not prove, any such charge.

The closing words of the Journal breathe an air of triumph typical of Pepys at his most complacent: ‘And so … the whole business of these Observations ended, with a profession of all satisfaction on his Majesty's part.’

Notes

1. PL 2581.

2. ‘Conclusions and Memorandums Occasional’: PRO, ADM 106/3520.

3. This is the description he gives in the catalogue of his library: PL, ‘Supellex Literaria’, vol. ii, ‘Additamenta’, p. 15. He makes the same point in a letter of 28 July 1667 to Coventry: Further Corr., p. 180.

4. The page references here and elsewhere in the Introduction, where they refer to the text, are to the pages of this edition, not to pages of the manuscript.

5. As in the Diary, he used a system invented by Thomas Shelton. For an account, see Diary, vol. i, pp. xlviii-lxi.

6. They do not appear to have survived.

7. He had been a purser under the Commonwealth and a victualling officer at Great Yarmouth in the war, after which he became Pepys's chief clerk. In 1670 he was made chief purser to the Mediterranean fleet, and returned to Pepys's service during the last months of his tenure of the Clerkship of the Acts. For his career, see Diary, x. 155-6.

8. Judging by the handwriting, Hewer wrote entries at pp. 232, 236-7, 251-3, and Hayter those at pp. 256-60.

9. Pepys never had these papers gathered together or gave them a general title. That given here is editorial.

10. £30,000 had been reserved for the seamen's pay in the Eleven Months Assessment (1667): CJ, viii. 683; 18 & 19 Car. II c. 13, sect. x.

11. Summary in John Milward, Parl. Diary 1666-8 (ed. Robbins, Camb. 1938), pp. 207-9. Cf. Diary, ix. 102-4.

12. C. D. Chandaman, Eng. Public Revenue 1660-88 (Oxf. 1975), pp. 177, 189.

13. CJ, viii. 625.

14. LJ, xii. 116.

15. 19 & 20 Car. II c. 1.

16. CJ, ix. 28.

17. For example, the Royal Aid (1664), the Additional Aid (1665), the Poll Tax (1667), the Three Months Assessment (1667) and the Eleven Months Assessment (1667).

18. William Jessop was appointed secretary, with William Symons and Edmund Portman as clerks. All three had served as government clerks in the Interregnum, and the first two were old acquaintances of Pepys when, in 1655-60, he served as a clerk in the Exchequer.

19. Diary, viii. 601.

20. 3rd Baron Brereton of Laughlin in the Irish peerage; succeeded 1664, a founding Fellow of the Royal Society. He came of a family of Cheshire landowners and was a grandson of Sir William Brereton the parliamentary general. He was never well-off, and after the Commission's work was done retired to his estate, protected from his creditors by appointment to Court office as a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber. For biographical details see B. D. Henning (ed.), Hist. Parl. The Commons 1660-90 (1983), i. 715-16.

21. Cf. Evelyn, Diary, iii. 232; Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. Powell, 1940), p. 132; Burnet, Hist. own Time (ed. O. Airy, Oxf. 1897-1900), i. 483. On first meeting him Pepys found him ‘a very sober and serious, able man’ (Diary, ix. 10), and like Brouncker he welcomed his appointment (ibid., viii. 577; CSPD Add. 1660-85, p. 228). Though impatient with his manner in the debates before the Privy Council, he admired his management of the Commission's inquiries: Diary, ix. 10, 68.

22. In 1660 he had been both a Councillor of State and an Admiralty Commissioner, but had not sat in Parliament since 1661. He did not sign the Commission's report. For biographical details, see Henning, op. cit., pp. 243-4.

23. His election to the Cavalier Parliament was declared void in 1662. His nomination to the Commission was the only one to be contested in the Commons: CJ, ix. 36. For biographical details, see Henning, op. cit., p. 709.

24. For his career see Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances, i. 1010; ii. 1277, 1407; B. Worden, Rump Parliament (Camb. 1974), pp. 314-25; Aylmer, State's Servants, pp. 204, 399.

25. See, e.g. Diary, ix. 394.

26. Dunster was appointed Surveyor of Customs in 1671 for his services: CSPD 1671, p. 510. Turner was a prosperous dealer in drapery with international business connections. (See his papers in the Guildhall Library, London.) As Lord Mayor he showed great acumen in his management of the rebuilding after the Fire, and in religious matters he was popular with the Dissenters for his lenity. His brother William, a distinguished lawyer, had married Pepys's cousin Jane Pepys.

27. Pepys thought him ‘an understanding gentleman’ (Diary, viii. 534). When he first knew him he was an Exchequer man, but at the Restoration he moved to the office of Secretary Nicholas: ibid, ii. 232; vii. 116. For his association with Secretary Williamson, see Diary, vii. 116; CSPD 1667-8, pp. 471, 472, 483; CTB 1667-8, p. liv.

28. VCH, Beds., ii. 271. After the Commission's work was over he was made an equerry (his brother John was a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber), and given a post in the Navy as Treasurer for Sick and Wounded: CTB 1667-8, p. 11. His sister was Dorothy, later famous as the author of the charming letters addressed to Sir William Temple.

29. Diary, viii. 572.

30. Once the residence of Sir Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke, the Elizabethan poet and courtier. Since his death in 1628 it had occasionally been used for public purposes. See H. B. Wheatley and P. Cunningham, London Past and Present (1891), s.n.

31. Diary, ix. 43.

32. There is mention of the ‘Navy division’ in ‘Mr Pepys's Defence’: PL 2554, p. 160.

33. Bodl. Lib., Rawl. MSS A 185, p. 314; Diary, ix. 34.

34. Diary, ix. 42.

35. Ibid., ix. 43-4, 56.

36. PRO, ADM 106/2886, pt I, p. 26.

37. Ibid., pp. 29, 35, 36, 45, 90.

38. Diary, vi. 314 & n. 1.

39. See Ferrer's delightful letter quoted in F. R. Harris, Life of 1st Earl of Sandwich (1912), ii. 197.

40. Milward, Parl. Diary, pp. 225-6.

41. CJ, ix. 79.

42. PRO, ADM 106/2886, pt I. He also had his clerk Gibson keep a record of the Board's answers to the Commission's inquiries from 21 Jan. 1668 to 23 July 1670. It survives in Bodl. Lib., Rawl. MSS A 185, pp. 313-14.

43. PRO, ADM 106/2886, pt I, p. 218.

44. In the Commons debates that followed, the meaning of the word ‘Observation’ was called into question. The Commissioners denied that it implied legal judgement; it was merely a statement of fact: A. Grey, Debates (1763), i. 168, 234. This was a common meaning of the word at the time.

45. The report and its appended papers are in HLRO, Main Papers 26 Oct. 1669, 213 A and 213 B; summary in HMC, 8th Report, App., pt i. 128-33. There is a summary of the debates on it in the Commons in CTB 1667-8, Introduction, pp. lxx, lxxx-lxxxiv.

46. HLRO, Main Papers 26 Oct. 1669, 213 A, f. 8r; HMC, op. cit., p. 128. The Commissioners later stated that by ‘other uses’ they had in mind other naval uses: below, pp. 372-3.

47. LJ, xii. 261.

48. Below, pp. 334-5.

49. He resigned his post as Vice-Treasurer of Ireland in January 1670, but was in office again after 1673 when he was made a Commissioner of the Admiralty.

50. Below, p. 334.

51. Ibid.

52. PL 2554, p. 111.

53. The precise date is unknown. Pepys (below, p. 335) says no more than that they started in December. According to Starkey, the newsletter writer, they began shortly before 1 January (BL, Add. MSS 36916, f. 157r). The Privy Council Register is almost entirely silent about them. There is a little information in the draft minutes (BL, Stowe MSS 489, ff. 249-66) but what follows here is largely based on Pepys's Journal.

54. Below, p. 336.

55. Below, pp. 337-8.

56. Below, pp. 341-2.

57. Below, p. 372.

58. BL. Add. MSS 33916, f. 162r. The public did not always preserve a respectful silence (below, p. 433).

59. Below, p. 374.

60. BL, Egerton MSS 2543, ff. 217-19 (copy); printed in J. Ralph, Hist. Engl. (1744), i. 178-9n.

61. LJ, xii. 287; CJ, ix. 121.

62. CJ, ix. 124. At this point some 80 of the country (‘opposition’) MPs seceded. According to Burnet, the votes were secured by bribery (Hist. own Time, ed. Airy, Oxf. 1897-1900, i. 486), but this view is discounted by Dr Witcombe (D. T. Witcombe, Charles II and the Cavalier House of Commons 1663-74, Manchester 1966, p. 99).

63. Several members for ports had been employed by the Prize Office in the war. CJ, ix. 128, 136; Grey, op. cit., pp. 233-4; A. Marvell, Poems and Letters (ed. Margoliouth, Oxf. 1952), i. 100, 101; BL, Add. MSS 36916, ff. 176r, 178r.

64. See below, pp. 300, 311 n.2.

65. See the discussion in Diary, vol. i, pp. cxxx, cxxxiii-cxxxiv.

66. The Privy Council Register has a note at 7 January of an order to the Principal Officers to attend on the 10th at 9 a.m., but no further record of the meeting: PRO, PC 2/62, f. 52r. There are brief notices of some of the debates in the draft minutes of the Council's proceedings made by the Clerk, Sir Edward Walker (BL, Stowe MSS 489, ff. 249-66).

67. The most remarkable is his ‘Book of Mornamont’ (PL 2881-2)—the two large volumes of copies of papers which he gathered in self-defence when accused of treason during the Popish Plot.

68. These appear to have been made when he was composing his General Defence of the Office. They have not been printed in this volume.

69. Other examples include ‘sure’ for ‘score’ (p. 383), ‘done’ for ‘down’ (p. 391), ‘lost’ for ‘passed’ (p. 392), ‘will’ for ‘which’ (p. 421), and ‘and’ for ‘at’ (p. 423).

70. See above, p. xxxiii & n. 2.

71. This is clear from the reminders he addresses to himself.

72. He occasionally includes notes made in preparation for a speech, e.g. the elaborate notes on payment by tickets at pp. 411-16.

73. See above, p. xxxiii & n. 5.

Bibliographical Abbreviations

(Works are published in London unless otherwise stated)

Allin, Journals: The Journals of Sir Thomas Allin, 1660–1678, ed. R. C. Anderson (NRS 1939, 1940)

Anderson: Lists of Men-of-War, 1650–1700, pt i, English Ships, 1649–1702, comp. R. C. Anderson (The Society for Nautical Research Occasional Publications, no. 5: Cambridge 1935)

Aylmer, State's Servants: G. E. Aylmer, The State's Servants, 1649–60 (1973)

BL: British Library

Bodl. Lib., Rawl.: Bodleian Library, Oxford, Rawlinson MSS

CJ: Journals of the House of Commons

CSPD: Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series

CTB: Calendar of Treasury Books

Diary: The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. Latham and W. Matthews (1970–83)

Ehrman, Navy: J. P. W. Ehrman, The Navy in the War of William III, 1689–1697 (Cambridge 1953)

Evelyn, Diary: The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. de Beer (Oxford 1955)

Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances: Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, eds C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait (1911)

Further Corr.: Further Correspondence of Samuel Pepys 1662–1679, ed. J. R. Tanner (1929)

HLRO: House of Lords Record Office

HMC: Historical Manuscripts Commission

HMC, Lindsey (Supp.) : Supplementary report on the manuscripts of the late Montagu Bertie, twelfth Earl of Lindsey, formerly preserved at Uffington House, Stamford, Lincolnshire, A.D. 1660–1702, eds C. G. O. Bridgeman and J. C. Walker

LJ: Journals of the House of Lords

Milward, Parl. Diary : The Diary of John Milward, Esq., Member of Parliament for Derbyshire (September, 1666 to May, 1668), ed. C. Robbins (Cambridge 1938)

Naval Minutes: Samuel Pepys's Naval Minutes, ed. J. R. Tanner (NRS 1926)

NMM: National Maritime Museum

Oeconomy: The Oeconomy of His Majesty's Navy Office (1717)

OED: Oxford English Dictionary

G. Penn, Memorials: G. Penn, Memorials … of Sir William Penn, Knt (1833)

Pepys, Memoires: Samuel Pepys, Memoires of the Royal Navy 1679–1688 (1690)

PL: Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge

PRO: Public Records Office

Shorthand Letters: Shorthand Letters of Samuel Pepys, ed. E. Chappell (Cambridge 1933)

VCH: Victoria History of the Counties of England

Duke of York, Memoirs : James, Duke of York, Memoirs of the English Affairs, chiefly naval … 1660 to 1673 (1729)