ABSTRACT
When Elizabeth came to the throne, negotiations to end the war with France were already in hand. Both Philip and Henry II were bankrupt and in desperate need of peace, a fact which the new Queen of England tried to use to secure the recovery of Calais. She was unsuccessful because Philip, in spite of some twinges of conscience, could not go on fighting for the benefit of his ally, and because the French called her bluff.1 For several months before the peace treaty was eventually signed at Cateau Cambresis in March 1559, the fighting had become desultory, and English participation even more so. In anticipation of the end of the war, in February and March 1559, the officers of the Admiralty undertook a stocktaking of the navy, probably on the Queen's orders, and sketched out a policy for the years ahead. Before that, on 12 December 1558, an interim estimate had been made of the current charges, from 1 October to 31 December, which shows that at the moment of Mary's death there were six royal ships and seven hired merchantmen on patrol in the Narrow Seas, carrying 335 masters, mariners and gunners.2 If the latter figure is accurate, they must all have been very small ships. Together with the charges of shipkeeping at Portsmouth, Gillingham and in the Thames, these patrols were estimated to cost £3 167.4s.9d. over the three-month period. At the same time there were 184 shipwrights and other craftsmen building the Peter at Woolwich and a further 120 rebuilding the Jennet and the Hare at Portsmouth. This work was estimated to cost a further £2 123.14s. 1 Philip acknowledged that the loss of Calais resulted from u war undertaken on his behalf, hut was eventually reduced to suggesting that Elizabeth might wish to continue the war on her own. Loades, Reign of Mary, 338. } BL Add. MS 9294, f . l ; T. Glasgow, 'Maturing of naval administration'. 11.
