498 ENGLISH GALLEYS IN THE October the margin of difference between tons and men is usually large enough to allow for small variations. i The possibility of setting up such a criterion as this is not unimportant, because the names of ships are sometimes changed, especially after they have been refitted, and this renders identification increasingly difl&cult. The first galley of the strictly Mediterranean type that was built by Henry VIII was the Galley Subtile. Henry had appa- rently been considerably impressed by the value of this type of vessel, and, as Marillac reported to Francis I in November 1540, was intending to build six swift galleys before the following Easter ; ^ but by December the king had turned his attention to a large galleon, and in February 1541 Marillac thought that all talk of making these swift galleys had ceased.^ That this was not entirely true is shown by the letter from Chapuys to Charles V in July 1541, informing him that Henry VIII had sent to Italy for three shipwrights expert in making galleys,^ and by two payments noted in the same year, one of £100 by the treasurer of the augmentations 'towards the making of a galley subtell now new purposed ', and the other in November, of £308 15s. to William Gonson for the making of a ship called ' the Gallye Suttell '.^ When exactly this galley was completed the evidence does not tell us, but in July 1543 she is reported as ready to go forth against the French,^ and about the same time or possibly even somewhat earlier the Breton L'Artigue suggested using her in a raid on the west coast of Scotland.' In May 1544 she accompanied the expedition against Leith and apparently proved useful in harrying the villages of Fife.® So much impor- tance does Henry seem to have attached to the co-operation of galleys with the slower moving sailing ships of his fleet, that in December 1544 the privy council instructed Wotton to request the Emperor Charles V to lend or sell Henry ten galleys fully equipped and furnished with slaves and mariners ; this, however, Wotton reported, the emperor could not see his way to do, as he
- In Anthony Anthony's list of 1546 (printed in Derrick, Memoirs of the Rise
and Progress of the Royal Navy, pp. 303-7) and in the list of 1548 (referred to above), the Galley SvbtiU. is the only ship of over 50 tons that has more men than tons (200 tons, 250 men), with the exception of the Mary Willoughby, which in the later list is said to have 140 tons and 160 men ; this is, however, an error for 130 men (see Letters and Papers, Henry VIII, iii. 2014, which should be dated 22 January 1549, not 1522). The same standard is seen in the list of ships dated 20 February 1559 (State Papers, Dom., Eiiz., ii. 30), where no real ship has more men than tons, while the Black and Red Galleys are given 300 men apiece, a number certainly in excess of their tonnage. So also in the 1588 list (Derrick, p. 27) the galley Bonavolia has 250 tons and 250 men.
- Letters and Payers, xvi. 269, 16 November 1540.
» Ibid. xvi. 373, 534, 31 December 1540 and 12 February 1541. « Ibid. xvi. 1005, 16 July 1541. » Ibid. xvii. 258 (fo. 54) ; xvm. ii. 231, 28 November 1541.
- Lisle to Henry VIII, 11 July 1543 (ibid. xvm. i. 867). •
' Ibid. xvin. ii. 541. • Ibid. xix. i. 416, 472, 510.
