To charge Elizabeth with criminal parsimony because she insisted on every shot being ‘registered and accounted for’ will be received with ridicule by naval officers.  Of course every shot, and for the matter of that every other article expended, has to be accounted for.  One of the most important duties of the gunner of a man-of-war is to keep a strict account of the expenditure of all gunnery stores.  This was more exactly done under Queen Victoria than it was under Queen Elizabeth.  Naval officers are more hostile to ‘red tape’ than most men, and they may lament the vast amount of bookkeeping that modern auditors and committees of public accounts insist upon, but they are convinced that a reasonable check on expenditure of stores is indispensable to efficient organisation.  So far from blaming Elizabeth for demanding this, they believe that both she and Burleigh, her Lord Treasurer, were very much in advance of their age.

Another charge against her is that she defrauded her seamen of their wages.  The following is Froude’s statement:—­

’Want of the relief, which, if they had been paid their wages, they might have provided for themselves had aggravated the tendencies to disease, and a frightful mortality now set in through the entire fleet.’  The word ‘now’ is interesting, Froude having had before him Howard’s and Seymour’s letters, already quoted, showing that the appearance of the sickness was by no means recent.  Elizabeth’s illiberality towards her seamen may be judged from the fact that in her reign their pay was certainly increased once and perhaps twice.[78] In 1585 the sailor’s pay was raised from 6s. 8d. to 10s. a month.  A rise of pay of 50 per cent. all at once is, I venture to say, entirely without parallel in the navy since, and cannot well be called illiberal.  The Elizabethan 10s. would be equal to L3 in our present accounts; and, as the naval month at the earlier date was the lunar, a sailor’s yearly wages would be equal to L39 now.  The year’s pay of an A.B., ’non-continuous service,’ as Elizabeth’s sailors were, is at the present time L24 6s. 8d.  It is true that the sailor now can receive additional pay for good-conduct badges, gunnery-training, &c., and also can look forward to that immense boon—­a pension—­nearly, but thanks to Sir J. Hawkins and Drake’s establishment of the ’Chatham Chest,’ not quite unknown in the sixteenth century.  Compared with the rate of wages ruling on shore, Elizabeth’s seamen were paid highly.  Mr. Hubert Hall states that for labourers ’the usual rate was 2d. or 3d. a day.’  Ploughmen received a shilling a week.  In these cases ‘board’ was also given.  The sailor’s pay was 5s. a week with board.  Even compared with skilled labour on shore the sailor of the Armada epoch was well paid.  Thorold Rogers gives, for 1588, the wages, without board, of carpenters and masons at 10d. and 1s. a day.  A plumber’s wages varied from 10-1/2d. to 1s.; but there is one case of a plumber receiving as much as 1s. 4d., which was probably for a single day.