There was nothing accidental in the decision of the Duke of York. We know again from Pepys, that in the early days of the duke's administration there was much talk of breeding men to the sea, and making the sea service as honourable as the land. The appointment of Darcy was undoubtedly decided on with this very intention, and the subsequent history of the Royal Navy may be held to show that the duke builded better than he knew. It was long before his work was complete. Half-pay, that is, payment when not on active service, was first given in 1668 to a limited number of flag-officers. Other ranks only got it by degrees. But the principle was established. When once a king's officer was in the king's service for life, it followed that he had a claim to support when not employed. Before the reign of Charles II. no such right had been recognised, therefore there was then no regular service.
Another change, which had become a sheer matter of necessity, was the establishment of a permanent code of discipline. Hitherto each admiral, on being appointed to his office, had issued his own set of regulations. By use and wont there had arisen what was called "the Custom of the Sea." What remained to be done was to give expression to this custom, with the needful improvements and developments, in a statute, if that name can be applied to a set of orders promulgated by an administrative and not a legislative authority. Mention has been already made of "The Laws of War and Ordinances of the Sea, Ordered and Established by the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England" in 1652. This may, in a way, be said to be the first rough draft of the Queen's Regulations and Admiralty's Instructions. Oddly enough, the code is in thirty-nine Articles, a number which one would think a Puritan Parliament would be likely to avoid. A great part of it deals less with discipline and the duties of officers and men than with exhortations to fight well and prohibitions against holding relations with the enemy, or with "malignants." It is, however, explicit on two points: first, on the course to be taken with prizes, and then on the duties of captains engaged in convoying merchant ships. The prizes are not to be pillaged, and the captains engaged on convoy duty are ordered to protect the merchant ships, and to abstain from making profits for themselves. Valour against the enemy and obedience to command are enforced in repeated clauses, and the majority of them end with this formula, or some variation of it: "upon pain of death or such other punishment as the offence may deserve."