ABSTRACT
In December 1480 Edward IV appointed Thomas Rogers, an experienced seaman previously in the service of the Earl of Warwick, to be Clerk, or Keeper, of his ships.1 The office was an ancient one, which had originated in the thirteenth century, but it had been in abeyance for almost thirty years. Richard Cliveden, the previous Clerk, had presented his last account in 1452, showing a profit of £56.19s.6!/2d. on the sale of such stores and equipment as then remained in a rented warehouse at Southampton.2 During the intervening years the king had owned ships, which had been operated on his behalf, but there had been no office with responsibility for their management, and consequently no naval administration. The reasons for that unusual situation lay partly in the disturbed domestic politics of the period - the so-called Wars of the Roses - and partly in the nature of the medieval navy itself. It could be said that the navy of the thirteenth or fourteenth century was like the parliament - less an institution than an event. The word itself was used, not to describe the royal fleet but the entire maritime resources of the realm. When a 'navy royal' was assembled, it was for some specific military purpose (usually an invasion of France) and consisted to only a very small extent of the king's own ships. In 1347, for example, Edward III had assembled a massive flotilla of over 700 vessels, of which 50 were fully equipped fighting ships, but his own
contribution was less than 30 - of all sizes.1 Such a fleet was put together partly by 'ship service', and partly by commissions of impressment, similar to the commissions of array which were used to assemble an army. Ship service was a quasi-feudal arrangement whereby a port, or a group of ports, enjoyed specified jurisdictional and commercial privileges in return for providing a given number of ships, fully manned and equipped, when called upon for the king's service. The best example of this arrangement was the Cinq Ports, whose position had evolved from an early date, and who, by the thirteenth century were bound by charter to provide 57 ships for 14 days at their own expense,2 and for as much longer as they might be required at the king's expense. Ships 'taken up' by impressment were hired at a fixed rate, known as 'tonnage' from the moment of their requisitioning, and the crews were paid direct by the treasurer of the war. During the reign of Edward III, according to a subsequent parliamentary petition, the standard rate was 3s.4d. per ton for three months; at which time a seaman was paid 3d. a day, plus his victuals, and a master 6d.3 According to the same petition, this arrangement could provide the king with up to 150 fighting ships, in addition to the necessary victuallers and transports.
