46 CHAPTER III. HENRY THE EIGHTH'S NAVY. [1511–1546.] FOR nothing are Henry VIII. and his great counsellors, with Cardinal Wolsey at their head, more highly to be praised than for the zeal and wisdom with which they sought to augment the naval strength of England, and, by means of that naval strength, to improve the position and influence of their country among the other states of Europe. The extreme importance of an efficient navy, as we have seen, had been discovered by some of the Plantagenets, especially by Edward III. and Henry V. Henry VII., also, had done much. towards laying the foundations of English maritime power. In the first year of his reign the attention of Parliament had been called to "the great minishment and decay of the navy and the idleness of the mariners," whereby it was feared that the whole nation would be ruined; and, in accordance with the rude political economy of Tudor times, a law had been straightway passed prohibiting the importation of Gascon and Guienne wines, then an important branch of English commerce, in any but English, CHAP. III.] The Beginnings of the English Navy. 47 Welsh, and Irish ships, manned with native sailors.* This Act had been renewed and amplified four years later, and many other efforts had been made, during the four-and-twenty years in which Henry VII. was King, to promote the growth of shipping, both for warlike and for peaceful purposes. To that end the voyages of the Cabots and their associates had been encouraged, so long as there seemed a likelihood of their producing any advantage to the nation. To the same end some war ships, of famous size and strength, according to the poor standard of the times, had been constructed by the Crown; the chief of which, the Henry Grace à Dieu, a clumsy hulk containing five masts overloaded with rigging, so narrow and so high, especially in the rear, as to be in great danger of capsizing, and only able to move with any precision when it was following the wind, cost upwards of 14,0007. in the building.† But these were only the rough beginnings of a work which was fairly inaugurated under the rule of Henry VIII. The new King saw, as clearly as his father had done, the necessity of increasing the influence of England among the nations of Europe, and he wisely held that an essential means towards this object was in the extension of English power at sea. Other states, in times when Europe still comprised nearly the whole of the known world of civilization, might do without navies; but, if England was to be anything more than *Acts of Parliament, 1 Henry VII., cap. 8. CHARNOCK, History of Marine Architecture (1801), vol. ii., pp. 28-31. a self-contained island, was to have any considerable share in the general progress of Christendom, it must be to a great extent through the agency of a well-constructed, well-sustained, and well-manned fleet. So it appeared to Henry VIII.; and his two greatest advisers, Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, forgot their jealousies in furtherance of the same prudent thought. Wolsey worked chiefly in seeing to the proper building, manning, and victualling of ships. The Duke of Norfolk's principal service was in sending his two eldest sons to be the first and worthiest of the earlier Tudor admirals. Sir The Howards, famous for their association with every other important office of state, had already been connected with the history of English seamanship. John Howard, son of the Sir William Howard who made the family illustrious by his service as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas under Edward III., was made Admiral of the King's northern fleet in 1335; and another Sir John Howard, after distinguishing himself as a land soldier in the French wars of Henry VI.'s reign, was made Captain-General of the navy by Edward IV. in 1462, and again in 1470. He had not much naval work to do, but in military and official ways he was very serviceable both to Edward IV. and to Richard III., one reward for his devotion being his elevation by the latter monarch, in 1483, to the Dukedom of Norfolk. He was slain at the battle of Bosworth, and his son, Thomas, Earl of Surrey, was, on Henry VII.'s accession, attainted for his devotion to the Yorkist CHAP. III. Lord Thomas and Sir Edward Howard. 49 party. The King, however, soon had ample evidence of the earl's ability and trustworthiness. We are told that he used to visit him and treat him as a friend even during his captivity in the Tower. The captivity was not long. In 1489 Thomas Howard was reinstated in his earldom and the possessions attached to it, and in succeeding years he was endowed with numerous important offices under the Crown. Henry VII. made him Lord Treasurer of England, and by Henry VIII. he was appointed Earl Marshal in 1510. In 1514, for his victory over James IV. of Scotland at Flodden Field he was created Duke of Norfolk.* His eldest son was Lord Thomas Howard, born about the year 1474, who, in succession to his father, became Earl of Surrey in 1514 and third Duke of Norfolk in 1524. More famous was the second son, Sir Edward Howard, whose early death, it is probable, alone prevented him from succeeding Cardinal Wolsey to the foremost place in England during the latter half of Henry VIII.'s reign. His public life began in 1492, when he was only sixteen or seventeen years old. In that year Henry VII. sent a little expedition of twelve ships, under the direction of Sir Edward Poynings, to punish Baron de Ravenstein and his freebooting auxiliaries, for the systematic piracies by which they did much hårm, not only to the German government, whose allegiance they had thrown off, but also to all the nations trading with Flanders, and most of all to England, seeing that COLLINS, Peerage, vol. i., pp. 53, 54, 55, &c. VOL. I. * E the English merchants then used Antwerp as a chief mart for traffic with nearly all the continental towns. Ravenstein had taken possession of the town and harbour of Sluys, fortified by two strong castles, and Poynings was sent to attack the city by sea, while the Duke of Saxony and a German army besieged it by land. For twenty days successively the ships made the best assaults in their power, and at last, though more through the accidental burning of a bridge between the two castles, than through the successful fighting of either the army or the fleet, the little nest of pirates was destroyed. For his prowess in this his first employment on naval work, young Edward Howard was highly praised.* In 1497 he was knighted for his brave deportment on land, while attending his father on an expedition to Scotland;† and in later years he was employed, and always successfully, in various minor services to Henry VII. Henry VIII., on his accession in 1509, made him Royal Standard-Bearer of England.‡ Our earliest information concerning his elder brother Thomas is that, in 1510, either in reward for some unrecorded service, or as a compliment to the famous house of Howard, he was installed as a Knight of the Garter.§ In the following year some memorable employment was found for both brothers in the capture of Andrew Barton, the great Scottish merchant and pirate, scion of * HALL, Union of the Two Noble Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York (1548), sub Henry VII., fols. 17, 22b. RYMER, vol. xiii., † COLLINS, vol. i., p. 80. p. 251. |