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1205.]
THE KEEPER OF THE SHIPS.
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Palmer, with our three chargers and his horse, in the first ship sailing for England, and it shall be computed to you at the Exchequer";[1] or
"To the Bailiff of Shoreham. Find a good and secure ship, without regard to price, for William de Aune, our knight, and twenty bowmen, to carry them over in our service, and compute thereof at our Exchequer."[2]
The management of John's navy was largely in the hands of priests, and of these William de Wrotham, Archdeacon of Taunton, and Keeper of the King's Ships,[3] seems to have been the chief. No commission is known to have been issued to him, so that his functions cannot be exactly defined; but they appear to have been
- ↑ Norman Rolls, i. 24.
- ↑ Rotuli de Liberate, etc., 82 (ed. 1844).
- ↑ Mr. M. Oppenheim says: "This office, possibly in its original form of very much earlier date, and only constituted or enlarged in function by John, and now represented in descent by the Secretaryship of the Admiralty, is the oldest administrative employment in connection with the Navy. At first called 'Keeper and Governor' of the King's Ships, later 'Clerk of the King's Ships,' this official held, sometimes really and sometimes nominally, the control of naval organisation until the formation of the Navy Board in 1546. His duties included all those now performed by a multitude of highly placed Admiralty officials. If a man of energy, experience, and capacity, his name stands foremost in the maintenance of the royal fleets during peace and their preparation for war; if as frequently happened, a merchant or subordinate official with no especial knowledge, he might become a mere messenger riding from port to port, seeking runaway sailors, or bargaining for small parcels of naval stores. Occasionally, under such circumstances, his authority was further lessened by the appointment of other persons, usually such as held minor personal offices near the king, as keepers of particular ships. This was a method of giving a small pecuniary reward to such a one, together with the perquisites he might be able to procure from the supply of stores and provisions necessary for the vessel and her crew. In the course of centuries the title changed its form. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the officer is called 'Clerk of Marine Causes,' and 'Clerk of the Navy,' in the seventeenth century, 'Clerk of the Acts.' Pepys was not the last Clerk of the Acts, the functions associated with the office, which were the remains of the larger powers once belonging to the Keeper and Governor, were carried up by him to the higher post of Secretary of the Admiralty." 'History of the Administration of the Royal Navy,' I., 3, 4. The names of William de Wrotham's immediate successors do not appear; but from the beginning of the fifteenth century until the reorganisation in 1546, the following held the office:—William Catton; William Soper (from 1420); Richard Clyvedon (from 1442); and, after an interval, Piers Bowman; Thomas Rogers (appointed 1480, died 1488); William Comersall; Robert Brygandine (from 1495 to 1523); Thomas Jermyn (?); William Gonson (from 1524); Leonard Thoreton (?); Sir Thomas Spert (?); Edmund Water and John Wynter (?). Those officers whose names are queried, either were not appointed in the usual way under letters patent, or may, perhaps, have been only local keepers. The names of the officers appointed to the Navy Board in 1546 will be found in Chapter XIII.
