mustard, and vinegar, against which we may set the ‘purser’s necessaries’ of Elizabeth’s day.  In that day but little sugar was used, and tea and cocoa were unknown even in palaces.  It is just a question if seven gallons of beer did not make up for the weekly allowance of these and for the seven-eighths of a pint of spirits.  Tea was only allowed in 1850, and was not an additional article.  It replaced part of the spirits.  The biscuit allowance is now 8-3/4 lbs.  Weekly.

The Victorian dietary is more varied and wholesome than the Elizabethan; but, as we have seen, it is less abundant and can be obtained for much less money, even if we grant that the ’savings price’—­purposely kept low to avoid all suggestion that the men are being bribed into stinting themselves—­is less than the real cost.  The excess of this latter, however, is not likely to be more than 30 per cent., so that Elizabeth’s expenditure in this department was more liberal than the present.  Such defects as were to be found in the Elizabethan naval dietary were common to it with that of the English people generally.  If there was plenty, there was but little variety in the food of our ancestors of all ranks three centuries ago.  As far as was possible in the conditions of the time, Elizabeth’s Government did make provision for victualling the fleet on a sufficient and even liberal scale; and, notwithstanding slender pecuniary resources, repeatedly increased the money assigned to it, on cause being shown.  In his eagerness to make Queen Elizabeth a monster of treacherous rapacity, Froude has completely overreached himself, He says that ’she permitted some miserable scoundrel to lay a plan before her for saving expense, by cutting down the seamen’s diet.’  The ‘miserable scoundrel’ had submitted a proposal for diminishing the expenses which the administration was certainly ill able to bear, The candid reader will draw his own conclusions when he finds that the Queen did not approve the plan submitted; and yet that not one of her assailants has let this appear.[71]

[Footnote 71:  It may be stated here that the word ‘rations’ is unknown in the navy.  The official term is ‘victuals.’  The term in common use is ‘provisions.’]

It is, of course, possible to concede that adequate arrangements had been made for the general victualling of the fleet; and still to maintain that, after all, the sailors afloat actually did run short of food.  In his striking ’Introduction to the Armada Despatches’ published by the Navy Records Society, Professor Sir John Laughton declares that:  ’To anyone examining the evidence, there can be no question as to victualling being conducted on a fairly liberal scale, as far as the money was concerned.  It was in providing the victuals that the difficulty lay....  When a fleet of unprecedented magnitude was collected, when a sudden and unwonted demand was made on the victualling officers, it would have been strange indeed if things had gone quite smoothly.’