[12] The corresponding article in Gorges’s set (Stowe MSS. 426) is as follows:—­

’No man shall board any enemy’s ship but by order from a principal commander, as the admiral, vice-admiral or rear-admiral, for that by one ship’s boarding all the fleet may be engaged to their dishonour or loss.  But every ship that is under the lee of an enemy shall labour to recover the wind if the admiral endeavour it.  But if we find an enemy to leeward of us the whole fleet shall follow the admiral, vice-admiral or other leading ship within musket-shot of the enemy, giving so much liberty to the leading ship, as after her broadside is delivered she may stay and trim her sails.  Then is the second ship to give her side and the third, fourth, and rest, which done they shall all tack as the first ship and give the other side, keeping the enemy under a perpetual volley.  This you must do upon the windermost ship or ships of the enemy, which you shall either batter in pieces, or force him or them to bear up and so entangle them, and drive them foul one of another to their utter confusion.’  For the evidence that this may have been drawn up and used as early as 1578, and consequently in the Armada campaign, see Introductory Note, supra, pp. 34-5.

[13] ‘Sergeant-major’ at this time was the equivalent to our ’chief of the staff’ or ‘adjutant-general.’  In the fleet orders issued by the Earl of Essex for the Azores expedition in 1597 there was a similar article, which Ralegh was accused of violating by landing at Fayal without authority; it ran as follows:—­’No captain of any ship nor captain of any company if he be severed from the fleet shall land without direction from the general or some other principal commander upon pain of death,’ &c.  Ralegh met the charge by pleading he was himself a ’principal commander.’—­Purchas, iv. 1941.

[14] This expression has not been found elsewhere.  It may stand for ‘chap merchant,’ i.e. ‘barter-merchant.’

PART III

CAROLINGIAN

I. VISCOUNT WIMBLEDON, 1625

II.  THE EARL OF LINDSEY, 1635

THE ATTEMPT TO APPLY LAND FORMATIONS TO THE FLEET, 1625

INTRODUCTORY

From the point of view of command perhaps the most extraordinary naval expedition that ever left our shores was that of Sir Edward Cecil, Viscount Wimbledon, against Cadiz in 1625.  Every flag officer both of the fleet and of the squadrons was a soldier.  Cecil himself and the Earl of Essex, his vice-admiral, were Low Country colonels of no great experience in command even ashore, and Lord Denbigh, the rear-admiral, was a nobleman of next to none at all.  Even Cecil’s captain, who was in effect ‘captain of the fleet,’ was Sir Thomas Love, a sailor of whose service nothing is recorded, and the only seaman of tried capacity who held a staff appointment was Essex’s captain, Sir Samuel Argall.  It was probably due to this recrudescence of military influence in the navy that we owe the first attempt to establish a regular order of battle since the days of Henry VIII.