As appears from the minutes of the council of war, printed below, Love’s revolutionary orders met with strong opposition.  Still, so earnest was Cecil in pressing them, and so well conceived were many of the articles that they were not entirely rejected, but were recognised as a counsel of perfection, which, though not binding, was to be followed as near as might be.  Their effect upon the officers, or some of them, was that they understood the ‘order of fight’ to be as follows:—­’The several admirals to be in square bodies’ (that is, each flag officer would command a division or sub-squadron formed in three ranks of three files), ’and to give their broadsides by threes and so fall off.  The rear-admiral to stand for a general reserve, and not to engage himself without great cause.’[2] The confusion, however, must have been considerable and the difference of opinion great as to how far the new orders were binding; for the ‘Journal of the Vanguard’ merely notes that a council was called on the 11th ’wherein some things were debated touching the well ordering of the fleet,’ and with this somewhat contemptuous entry the subject is dismissed.

Still it must be said that on the whole these orders are a great advance over anything we know of in Elizabethan times, and particularly in the careful provisions for mutual support they point to a happy reversion to the ideas which De Chaves had formulated, and which the Elizabethans had too drastically abandoned.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] ‘Journal of the Vanguard’ (Essex’s flagship), and Cecil to Essex, S.P.  Dom.  Car.  I, xi.

[2] ‘Journal of the Expedition,’ S.  P. Dom.  Car., I, x. 67.

LORD WIMBLEDON, 1625, No. 1, Oct. 3.

[+State Papers Domestic, Car.  I, ix.+]

A copy of those instructions which were sent unto the Earl of Essex and given by Sir Edward Cecil, Knight, admiral of the fleet, lieutenant-general and marshal of his majesty’s land force now at sea, to be duly performed by all commanders, and their captains and masters, and other inferior officers, both by sea and land, for the better government of his majesty’s fleet.  Dated in the Sound of Plymouth, aboard his majesty’s good ship the Anne Royal, the third of October, 1625.

1.  First above all things you shall provide that God be duly served twice every day by all the land and sea companies in your ship, according to the usual prayers and liturgy of the Church of England, and shall set and discharge every watch with the singing of a psalm and prayer usual at sea.

2.  You shall keep the company from swearing, blaspheming, drunkenness, dicing, carding, cheating, picking and stealing, and the like disorders.