Amongst other articles of special interest, as showing how firmly the English naval tradition was already fixed, should be noticed the twenty-fifth, relating to seamen gunners, the twenty-sixth, forbidding action at more than point-blank range, and above all the fifth and sixth, aimed at obliterating all distinction between soldiers and sailors aboard ship, and at securing that unity of service between the land and sea forces which has been the peculiar distinction of the national instinct for war.

As to the tactical principle upon which the Elizabethan form of attack was based, it must be noted that was to demoralise the enemy—­to drive him into ‘utter confusion.’  The point is important, for this conception of tactics held its place till it was ultimately supplanted by the idea of concentrating on part of his fleet.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] Hakluyt printed several sets of instructions issued to armed fleets intended for discovery, viz.:  1.  Those drawn by Sebastian Cabota for Sir Hugh Willoughby’s voyage in 1553. 2.  Those for the first voyage of Anthony Jenkinson, 1557, which refers to other standing orders. 3.  Those issued by the lords of the Council for Edward Fenton in 1582, the 20th article of which directs him to draw up orders ’for their better government both at sea and land.’  But none of these contain any fighting instructions.

[2] Boteler’s MS. was not published till 1685, when the publisher dedicated it to Samuel Pepys.  The date at which it was written can only be inferred from internal evidence.  At p. 47 he refers to ’his Majesty’s late augmentation of seamen’s pay in general.’  Such an augmentation took place in 1625 and 1626.  He also refers to the ‘late king’ and to the colony of St. Christopher’s, which was settled in 1623, but not to that of New Providence, settled in 1629.  He served in the Cadiz Expedition of 1625, but does not mention it or any event of the rest of the war.  The battle order, however, which he recommends closely resembles that proposed by Sir E. Cecil (post, p. 65).  The probability is, then, that his work was begun at the end of James I’s reign, and was part of the large output of military literature to which the imminent prospect of war with Spain gave rise at that time.

[3] See Drake and the Tudor Navy, ii.  Appendix B.

[4] See Article 1 of the Instructions of 1816, post, p. 342.

[5] In all previous English instructions the prayer article had come towards the end.  In the Spanish service it came first, and it was thence probably that Ralegh got his idea.

[6] Laughton, Defeat of the Armada, i. 126; Account, &c. (Exchequer, Queen’s Remembrancer), lxiv. 9, April 9, 1588; Hawkins’s Observations (Hakl.  Soc), Sec. lxvi.

SIR WALTER RALEGH, 1617.[1]

[+State Papers Domestic xcii. f. 9+.]