See the Domestic Papers for 1619-20, State Paper Office.
Not many months had elapsed, after his appointment to the office of Lord High Admiral, before Buckingham made use of his influence over James the First to induce him to augment his navy. Commissioners were chosen and selected to promote ship-building, and to regulate the expenses attendant thereon. James, attended by his Lord Admiral, visited Deptford in order to see two new ships, with which he was greatly delighted; and still more that from the yearly charge of sixty thousand pounds, in which his navy had stood him heretofore, it was reduced to thirty thousand pounds, for four years, during which time the Commissioners undertook to build two new ships every year, and to repair the old; and after that to discharge these claims for twenty thousand pounds a-year.[271]
Domestic State Papers, inedited. The agreement is dated July 17, 1624.
The King, adds the narrator of this incident, “congratulated with the Lord Admiral that he had appointed so good officers to assist him in his beginnings, so that he named the one ship ‘Buckingham’s Entrance,’ and the other, in the memory of the Commissioners’ good service, ‘Reformation.’”[272] This timely encouragement produced, of course, the most salutary effect.[273] We have seen that during the reign of James the First the number of ships of war was nearly doubled; and it is due to Buckingham to state that almost the whole of this increase was the result of his exertions.
Letter from Mr. Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton, dated London, Nov. 12, 1619.
A note of the charge of the fleet, among the undated papers in the State Paper Office, probably 1625, computes it at 65,656_l._ Our Navy Force had then been considerably augmented. Some of the items are as follow:--"For bringing of the King’s shippes into full equipage, for clothes for the men, for impress for surgeons."
The young Lord High Admiral had declared, at his outset, that his inexperience almost disqualified him for that important position to which the partiality of his Sovereign had promoted him; but it was soon perceived that his very wilfulness and impetuosity, and his liberal notions of expense, were almost virtues under certain circumstances. The Dutch were our great maritime rivals; for France had no naval armament; and although the contemptuous assertion of Voltaire, that Louis the Thirteenth had not, at his accession, one ship of war, is false, yet he might be said almost to be destitute of naval force, so poor and ill-provided were his vessels, and so incompetent and miserable his seamen. It became Buckingham’s pride to outvie all continental nations in naval power. The design might have been ascribed to his animosity in the event of the treaty with Spain, against that kingdom; but it is clear that he cherished it whilst the British nation was at peace with all the world, and that his schemes of improvement were formed before.