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This is the first general selection from the substantial body of surviving documents about Elizabeth's navy. It is a companion to The Navy of Edward VI and Mary I (Vol.157 in the NRS Series), where the apparatus serving both volumes was printed, and it complements the other NRS volumes that deal specifically with the Spanish Armada. This collection concentrates (though not exclusively so) on the early years of Elizabeth's reign when there was no formal war. From 1558-1585 the navy was involved in a number of small-scale campaigns, pursuit of pirates and occasional shows of force. The documents selected emphasize the financial and administrative processes that supported these operations, such as mustering, victualing, demobilisation, and ship maintenance and repair. The fleet varied in size from about 30 to 45 ships during the period and a vast amount of maintenance and repair was required. The main component of the volume is the massively detailed Navy Treasurer's account for 1562-3 which is followed by and collated with the corresponding Exchequer Account. The documents illustrate just how efficiently the dockyards functioned. They were one of the great early Elizabethan achievements.

John Hawkins was a central figure in the story of the Elizabethan Navy. It was his slaving and piratical expeditions in the 1560s which first engaged the Queen's support and complicity. He enjoyed high favour at court, and it was through him that Francis Drake (with whom he fell out in his later years) became 'the Queen's pirate'. This chapter presents few examples of Hawkins's surviving correspondence. Two letters are included chiefly because they represent a further line of archival descent from the Earl of Leicester's servant Sir Richard Browne via Evelyn to Pepys. One of the letters is written by John Hawkins to the Queen. The other letter is the proposal from Hawkins to Leicester. Gonson had served continuously since 1549, and must have been approaching seventy. In the autumn of 1577 he surrendered his letters patent, and received instead a new appointment jointly with Hawkins.

The first naval paper found in the Elizabethan State Papers is a ship list drawn up four months after the Queen's accession, and a month before the more substantial 'Book of Sea Causes'. Since the latter is printed in British Naval Documents, it is not repeated here. Both documents were part of the general stocktaking at the start of the new reign. It also includes incidental information, affirming that operational costs should not be charged against the ordinary, and listing the seven merchant ships at that time in royal service. From about a year later come the first ordinances for the Admiralty officers which are mainly a systematic record of the changes which had been introduced after the 1557 review. They are important because they mark a stage in the bureaucratisation of naval administration, and because they emphasise the interdependence of the marine officers, particularly the extent by which they were required to check up on each other.

This chapter gathers a few papers which supplement the formal accounts, and illustrates aspects of the financial administration from different angles. For this purpose the Navy Treasurer sent the Privy Council monthly estimates for sea wages, of which two examples from the time of the Le Havre campaign are here printed. These papers have been included because the copies in Pepys's collection enable part of the fire-damaged Cotton originals to be reconstructed. The wages for the officers of the Queen's ships at sea determined by the Officers of the Navy, which are not to be exceeded. This forms part of a quarto booklet in the State Papers which also contains calculations for victualling, tonnage, manning levels and cordage. The first part corresponds fairly closely with, but it then goes on to outline some of the abuses which have followed, and recommends a return to what might be called a 'flexible' ordinary.

James Humphrey of Ipswich was a junior clerk in the naval administration, and features most prominently here as a recruiting agent for mariners from East Anglia. Five items from the Humphrey's collection were printed, from the Rawlinson copies, in British Naval Documents. They present a coherent sequence of paperwork, though the examples are from different times and places. For completeness sake these appear again here, though from the earlier and more authoritative texts in the Pepys Library. Pepys's title to his extracts admirably summarises the whole, 'Memorandum that the original manuscript out of which the following collection is extracted seems to be designed for a book of rates, as containing not only divers historical informations but many forms of instructions, warrants, bills, tables of calculations. Humphrey's manuscript was written a decade into Elizabeth's reign and is principally a guide to practice then current, some of his examples are taken from the reigns of Edward VI and Mary.

This is the final or returned account for the period covered by the preceding Quarter Book, as presented by Gonson to the Exchequer, and is one in a regular series going back to 1548. 1 It is, however, an exceptional example because it covers the period of the Le Havre operation, and was subject to scrutiny by a commission appointed under the great seal on 5 August 1564 to examine all recent military spending. In addition to the Navy Treasurer's account, the commissioners were required to view those of the late Treasurer of the wars in Normandy, the Surveyor of victuals at Berwick, and the Lieutenant of the Ordnance. Gonson's account incorporates the full text of the commission, and is signed by Lord Treasurer Winchester, Secretary Cecil and the four other commissioners who attended to this part of the investigation. In other respects Gonson's account follows the established format. As is several times explicitly stated, it is based on the Quarter Book, but considerably compresses and often re-assembles its material. It will be seen that the auditors' markings to 4 are sometimes echoed here by the gathering of various items of expenditure under composite headings. The reorganisation can, however, most readily be demonstrated in the recepta. As more fully explained in the Introduction to Section II, the corresponding entries in the two accounts have been supplied with identifying symbols: #A and #B preface ordinary and extraordinary warrants for 1562; #X and #Y the like for 1563.

At the beginning of Elizabeth's reign this essential service was under the control of Edward Baeshe, who had been appointed General Surveyor of Victuals for the Seas. Then with the 1565 bargain printed here, victualling was placed on a contract basis, and the new procedures by which Baeshe alone was accountable to the Exchequer. A large amount of supporting material is to be found among the State Papers and elsewhere. Reconstructing Baeshe's operation ought therefore to be fairly straightforward, but there are inevitably some residual mysteries. For the most part Baeshe's papers give simply the dates and numbers of men for which ships were victualled; commodities, quantities and prices are not itemised, though cash totals are given at the foot of each original page, and at the end. Because of the increasing cost of Baeshe's supplies and other complicating factors the terms contracted soon became unrealistic, and in response to his repeated representations of the fact some allowances were made.

The Quarter Book has been used to correct some other slips in the Declared Account. The Quarter Books and Declared Accounts do not cover fees and allowances of the Lord Admiral and the senior officials who were paid directly from the Exchequer under the terms of their respective patents. Some fragmentary drafts and other papers used in the preparation of the Quarter Book also survive in the John Evelyn MSS now in the British Library. The annotations and supporting papers show that the expense of the Quarter Book itself cannot be taken as a sure record of payments discharged. Some bills ostensibly settled in 1563 were still being paid off by installments into the second half of 1565. The Quarter Book itself consists of 370 paper folios bound in parchment. The paper itself was supplied by the London stationer William Prestwoode.

Captain Edward Fenton is chiefly remembered as commander of a notoriously futile and ill-executed expedition to the South Atlantic in 1582-83. When Fenton's own journal of the voyage at last found an editor, it would be given a title which enduringly associates Fenton with troublesome. A more substantial collection of Fenton's papers was given by Evelyn to Pepys on 6 December 1681, by way of substitute for the Drake journal which Pepys actually wanted. These pieces further illustrate the long-term service which Hawkins performed as Treasurer, as he gathered together papers dating back eleven years. In addition to the 2,435 4s allowed for Hawkins's expedition, the warrant provided 3,033 10s for Sir Robert Constable, Lieutenant of the Ordnance, to furnish the new ships with brass ordnance, part of this was to be had from various coastal forts, and new iron ordnance was to be sent to the forts instead.

This is the first general selection from the substantial body of surviving documents about Elizabeth's navy. It is a companion to The Navy of Edward VI and Mary I (Vol.157 in the NRS Series), where the apparatus serving both volumes was printed, and it complements the other NRS volumes that deal specifically with the Spanish Armada. This collection concentrates (though not exclusively so) on the early years of Elizabeth's reign when there was no formal war. From 1558-1585 the navy was involved in a number of small-scale campaigns, pursuit of pirates and occasional shows of force. The documents selected emphasize the financial and administrative processes that supported these operations, such as mustering, victualing, demobilisation, and ship maintenance and repair. The fleet varied in size from about 30 to 45 ships during the period and a vast amount of maintenance and repair was required. The main component of the volume is the massively detailed Navy Treasurer's account for 1562-3 which is followed by and collated with the corresponding Exchequer Account. The documents illustrate just how efficiently the dockyards functioned. They were one of the great early Elizabethan achievements.