his father, he certainly exerted himself strenuously to increase his inheritance. He not only built ships, but he improved the naval architecture of his subjects by inviting workmen from the great Italian ports. He not only built and improved ships, but he took a very keen and intelligent interest in the organisation of his fleet and in the performances of his vessels. He extended his establishments on the Thames, and to him belongs the credit of setting up the dockyard at Portsmouth. And we know that in March 1513, in the fourth year of his reign, he issued a "Licence to found a Guild in honour of the Holy Trinity and St. Clement in the Church of Deptford Strond, for reformation of the navy, lately much decayed by admission of young men without experience, and of Scots, Flemings, and Frenchmen as loadsmen." Loadsmen were those who were considered capable to throw the lead, and were the skilled seamen from whom the masters and pilots, or, as we now say, mates, were chosen. This was the Trinity House, which still exists, and still continues to perform the duty assigned to it by Henry VIII. of examining those who wished to be accepted as fit to navigate or pilot a ship, besides taking care of the lights and buoys all round the coast. Its connection with the navy was much closer in Tudor times than it came to be later on; for not only did it supply the masters and pilots of the king's ships, but it was entrusted with the supply and transport of many kinds of stores.
A letter written by Sir Edward Howard on the 22nd of March 1513 gives a very pleasing instance of the minute personal interest which the king took in his ships. The document has been so damaged by time and accident that a large part of it is illegible, but from what can be deciphered we learn that Sir Edward gave the king a minute account of the performances of all the vessels in his squadron, during a cruise from the mouth of the river to the Channel. Fragments of sentences tell how the one sailed very well, and how "your good ship, the flower, I trow, of all ships that ever sailed," did something which the damaged state of the paper conceals, and then "came within three spear-lengths of the Kateryn and spake to John Fleming, Peter Seman, and to Freeman, master, to bear record that the Mary Rose did fetch her at the tail." "The flower of all ships that ever sailed" was apparently the Mary Rose herself, Howard's own flagship, the same which was destined to come to such a disastrous end in the Solent some thirty years later. Sir Edward tells how she "fet" the Mary George, and in all ways proved herself "the noblest ship of sail … at this hower that I trow be in Christendom." When they came to anchor, the admiral noted down the order in which the vessels forming his squadron came up to the Road: "The first after the Mary Rose was the Sovereign, then the Nicholas, then the Leonard of Dartmouth, the Mary George, the Harry of Hampton, the Ann of Greenwich, the Nicholas Montrygo, called the Sancho de Garra, and the Katherine and the Mary." That the king's officers were encouraged to keep him so minutely informed of the performances of his ships is proof enough of the interest Henry took in his navy.
Although the new time had begun, the change from the Middle Ages was not yet very perceptible in so far as the general direction of a war was concerned. It was still a matter of raids and casual battles. The first naval action of Henry's reign was in pursuit of the old standing war against the pirates. A Scotchman named Andrew Barton had been robbed by the Portuguese, and had received letters of marque from his own sovereign, authorising him to indemnify himself for his loss out of any Portuguese property he could find upon the seas. In much later and more civilised times it was never difficult to turn a privateer into a pirate, and in the early sixteenth century the distinction between them was fine in the extreme. Barton betook himself to considering that everybody he came across on blue water was a Portuguese, or would serve the purpose very well. He plundered Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Flemings indiscriminately, and without the slightest regard to the embarrassments he cost his own sovereign. At last he became such a nuisance that ships had to be fitted out to pursue him. According to a story which is not very well founded, they were sent out at the expense of the Earl of Surrey, and were commanded by his sons, Sir Thomas and Sir Edward. The two vessels belonging to Barton, called the Lion and the Jenny Perwin or Bark of Scotland, were overtaken by Surrey's two cruisers, and captured after a fight of a most determined and picturesque character, for which, however, the chief authority is a spirited ballad of much later date. There is no doubt, however, as to the death of Barton, who was one of the numerous Scotch pirates of the time.
The same year which saw the capture of these skimmers of the sea saw also the beginning of a much greater naval war. In 1511 Henry entered into the first of his wars with France. As he had then been only two years upon the throne, the fact that he was able to despatch a considerable naval force against the French coast at once, shows that he must have inherited a large force of ships from his father. Four-and-twenty vessels of his own, which he reinforced by ships hired from the Hanse Towns and of the Spaniards, represented the, for that time, very respectable naval power of the kingdom. The war was carried on in the barbarous mediæval style. In 1511 Sir Edward Howard, to whom the king gave the command as Lord High Admiral, ravaged the coasts of Brittany. The devastation of his dominions stung the King of France into making counter exertions, and a fleet was collected at Brest under the command of an officer of the name of Primauguet, which our historians, availing themselves of the licence of the age, corrupted into Sir Pierce Morgan. In 1512 King Henry's fleet was collected at Portsmouth, to be prepared to repel the French if they made any attack, or to fall upon them first if their coming was delayed. The king himself rode down to Portsmouth and reviewed the soldiers, who formed the larger part of his crews on the Downs. Then the fleet sailed, standing over to the coast of France. What exactly followed it is very difficult to say on the evidence we possess. The fleets certainly met somewhere in the neighbourhood of Brest. The historians on either side contradict one another flatly, both as to the respective strengths of the combatants and as to the result of the fight, each asserting that his own countrymen were outnumbered, and that the enemy ended by flying away in a scandalous state of panic. The one point on which all agree is, that somehow or other, and in consequence of manœuvres which are perfectly unintelligible as they are narrated, the great English ship the Regent, of which Sir Thomas Knevet, the King's Master of the Horse, was captain, and the still larger French ship named the Cordelier, fell on board one another, caught fire, and blew up. Knevet and the French admiral, Primauguet, whose flag was flying in the Cordelier, both perished, and from one thousand to fifteen hundred men with them. Whether, as the French assert, this disaster had such a terrifying effect on the English ships that they all ran away, or whether, as our authorities maintain, the French were completely cowed, and took refuge in Brest, the fact that the battle came to an end with no very decisive result is well established. The terrible circumstances of the loss of these two ships produced a profound impression. We notice in ensuing years a marked disinclination among French and English to come too close. It is a feeling easy to understand. There was little use in destroying your enemy if you perished with him; and when both were so inflammable, and the danger of fire was so great, it was always likely that flames would break out somewhere, and if they did, it was nearly certain that they would spread from one to the other. The substantial fruits of victory remained to the English, for their enemies attempted no retaliation. King Louis XII. was plainly convinced of the inferiority of his forces, for he prepared for the struggle of the ensuing year by sending for a reinforcement of galleys from the Mediterranean. They were brought round by a French Knight of Malta of the name of Pierre Jean le Bidoulx, which was abbreviated into Pregent by his countrymen, and corrupted by us into Perye John, and Preter John.
The winter months put a stop to the movements of ships between 1512 and 1513. In this year the operations began as before, that is to say, the English fleet sailed over to the coast of France for the purpose of making plundering raids, and then there was a fight between the two fleets. In this case, however, the end was disastrous to England. In spring Sir Edward Howard had his fleet collected at Plymouth. The total strength was of ships 24, of tons 8460, which gives an average of some 350 tons each. The statement as to the strength of the crews drawn up for Wolsey illustrates the superiority of the soldier to the sailor element in the fleets of the time. It is recorded that the captains were 26 in number, and the soldiers 4650, while of masters there were 24, and of mariners 2880. From this method of arranging the different elements of the crew, it is obvious that the captain and his soldiers were not looked upon as naval men in our sense of the word, but purely as fighting men, and were altogether considered as as much superior in dignity as they undoubtedly were in numbers to the sailors. It will be seen that these vessels must have been
