Religion
THE NAVY WAS NOT IMMUNE from the religious controversies and conflicts that wracked seventeenth-century Britain, and religion certainly played a more central role in naval life than it would do in later years.
THE INTERREGNUM
Many of those who served in the navy between 1649 and 1660 were undoubtedly driven by a strong ‘Puritan’ zeal. The generals-at-sea, notably Blake, most of the other flag officers, and many of the leading administrators were ‘godly, if not out-and-out radicals, and they tended to favour their own kind in appointments to lesser com-missions.1 A significant number of leading officers were members of the Independent churches at Stepney or Great Yarmouth, which exerted a strong influence on naval appointments. Other ‘Puritan’ ministers also used their influence to secure the appointment of officers whose opinions they could vouch for.2 Prayers, fasting and a reliance on God’s providence played central parts in the fleet’s counsels during the 1650s, and it has been observed with some justification that ‘only in this period, perhaps, would a commander describe a storm at sea by telling the Admiralty that he had “experienced the words of the 26th and 27th verses of the 107th Psalm to the letter”’.3 Nevertheless, at least some of this apparent zeal was time-serving, as the careers of many officers after the Restoration proved, and the religious enthusiasts were never more than a minority in the officer corps.4
The same was even more true on the lower deck. Many commentators despaired for the soul of the average seaman, who was often characterised as drunken, ignorant and profane.5 But this was too simplistic. Many seamen had a simple religious faith, even if it found expression only when they faced or survived disaster, and under the Commonwealth at least some of the more capable chaplains and devout officers seem to have had a positive impact on their crews.6 A few became positive enthusiasts, and a smaller number still turned to what was in the 1650s the most radical belief of all, Quakerism. The best-known of these was Thomas Lurting, who went on to write his autobiography. Pressed at the age of fourteen in 1646, he was one of fourteen Quakers in his ship’s company in the 1650s, and used his cabin as a meeting place. Lurting found that most of his shipmates remained very kind to him, but eventually he refused even non-combatant roles, such as assisting the surgeon, and was turned ashore. Regardless of any nominal or real Christian faith, many seamen were deeply superstitious creatures who believed in evil spirits, witchcraft, omens and astrology.7 In 1656 an old crone of Pevensey was blamed for bewitching a warship in the bay, conjuring up the contrary winds that made it impossible for her to move.8 Porpoises were regarded as the harbingers of storms, while one crew became convinced that the only way to break a cable was to carry out a rite of exorcism on it.9
THE RESTORATION PURGES
The approach and immediate aftermath of the Restoration witnessed a searching enquiry into the affections of all those in the navy, both afloat and ashore, and an extensive purge of diehard republicans and nonconformists. Several radicals among the senior captains were laid aside in March 1660 and replaced by clients of the architects of the Restoration, George Monck and especially Edward Montagu.10 Radicals in the dockyards were similarly removed during the spring and early summer.11 Those who survived, or wished to survive, naturally buried their previous religious and political allegiances as deeply as they could and loudly proclaimed their loyalty and conformity to the new regimes in both church and state.12 All those who wished to retain, or enter into, naval offices, had to swear the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and about two dozen men lost dockyard positions at Chatham and Deptford when they refused to swear. Some officers and men were ejected from the fleet for the same reason, but overall they constituted less than one per cent of the total, suggesting that for most staying in office was more important than staying true to their religious convictions.13 By the end of 1660 another batch of ‘Anabaptists’ and other radicals had been ejected from the navy, and although some of the captains were recalled to service at the start of the second Anglo-Dutch war, many, including such distinguished flag officers as William Goodson and George Dakins, never served in the navy again.14 Their replacements were often Cavaliers from staunchly Royalist families, who conformed wholeheartedly to the Church of England.15
PRAYERS AND CHAPLAINS
The first article of war of 1652 specified that ‘Almighty God be solemnly and reverently served’ aboard ship, with strict observance of the Sabbath and an avoidance of‘profaneness and irreligiousness’. The Articles enacted in 1661 retained the stress on solemnity and reverence, but omitted mention of profaneness and irreligiousness, while specifying that worship should be conducted ‘according to the Liturgy of the Church of England, established by law’.16 During the Interregnum, daily services included prayers, a psalm and a reading, and there are suggestions that two sermons were delivered each week.17 The Restoration church abandoned such enthusiasm and the more dangerous extempore elements of‘Puritan’ worship: instead, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer laid down forms of prayer for the approach and aftermath of storms or battle, along with a specific daily prayer for the fleet:
Be pleased to receive into thy Almighty and most gracious protection the persons of us thy servants, and the fleet in which we serve. Preserve us from the dangers of the sea, and from the violence of the enemy; that we may be a safeguard unto our most gracious sovereign lord, King Charles, and his dominions, and a security for such as pass on the seas upon their lawful occasions …18
Ideally, such devotions were to be led by qualified chaplains, but if none was present an officer (usually the captain) conducted proceedings instead. On the whole, prayers seem to have taken place twice a day, as laid down by the General Instructions to Captains of 1663, although the longer Sunday service was sometimes abandoned if the ship had more pressing commitments.19 No doubt many naval men extemporised their own prayers. James Couch, master of the Charles Fireship, wrote his own poetic prayer in his journal:
Lord let thy grace swell richly in my hand
And make my grateful in thy heavenly art
And let me understand and be so wise
To know upon what point my havenly country lies
And having set my course directly thither
Great God preserve me in the foulest weather.20
Religious festivals were marked in the grand manner. Teonge observed that aboard the Assistance, at sea in the Mediterranean, Christmas Day 1675 began at 4am with trumpeters playing at the captain’s cabin, then at all the other officers’ cabins and finally from the poop deck to greet the morning. Prayers and a sermon followed at ten, but the highlight of the day was dinner: ‘a rib of beef, plum-puddings, mince-pies etc, and plenty of good wines of several sorts’.21
The conditions of naval service were hardly conducive to attracting competent, well qualified chaplains. They were paid the same as ordinary seamen, 19s a month, along with a groat (4d) deducted from each crewman’s monthly wage. This produced a decent enough income for the short period of actual service; the chaplain of a First Rate in wartime could earn at least £160 a year, and his colleague aboard a Fourth Rate in peacetime could earn over £33 a year.22 But like the commissioned officers, chaplains had no continuity of employment, and thus no pay when they were not actually at sea. Consequently, most went to sea out of necessity, rather than choice.23 Naval chaplains were also subject to all the hardships and dangers of naval life, and often encountered apathy or abuse from the seamen and even the captains with whom they served (Arthur Herbert, admiral of the fleet in the Mediterranean in the 1680s, allegedly called his chaplain ‘Ballocks’ as a matter of course).24 During the Interregnum, chaplains were usually nominated by individual captains, so naturally both quality and ideology could vary significantly from ship to ship. Most were young men, fresh from the universities, displaced ‘Puritans’ who had fallen foul of one regime or another and lay preachers.25 There were some attempts to improve the quality of chaplains. The method of appointment was put on a more formal basis in 1654, with candidates being referred to the committee of‘Triers’, who also vetted all potential candidates for clerical appointments ashore. In 1655 a‘one-off’ incentive, namely a salary of £100 a year, was offered to chaplains who volunteered for the Blake and Montagu expedition to the Mediterranean, and, unsurprisingly, this did briefly attract a better class of men.
At the Restoration, many‘Puritan’ chaplains were ejected from the navy, causing a serious shortage of provision.26 The system of ad hoc appointments by individual captains continued until 1665, when the Archbishop of Canterbury was given notional responsibility for their selection. This system was not a success and was overhauled in 1677, when the Bishop of London took on the role.27 In practice, though, captains often succeeded in getting the men they wanted, and several chaplains from the Interregnum navy continued in office long after the Restoration. The nadir of the old system of appointment was probably reached in 1675, when Titus Oates became chaplain of the Adventure. Already known for coarseness, thieving, perjury and stupidity, Oates was soon dismissed for homosexuality and went on to greater things as the concocter of the ‘Popish Plot’, the alleged Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Charles II.28 When he proposed reforming the chaplaincy, Pepys observed ‘how few commanders take any, [and] the ill choice generally made of those that are entertained, both for ignorance and debauches’.29 But a more centralised system of appointment was still no guarantee of improved quality. George Bradford, who came highly recommended for the place of chaplain of the Sweepstakes, ‘went drinking ashore at every port: at Portsmouth he cheated the corporal of Marines at cards, at Dublin he danced naked around Trinity College, at Carrickfergus he and his wife pranced naked around the town “catterwoolding” at one in the morning’.30 Pepys despaired, writing just before he left office for the last time that most naval chaplains ‘do more harm than good by hardening a hundred in their vices, sooner than reforming one’.31
Titus Oates, undoubtedly the most controversial member of the naval chaplaincy during the second half of the seventeenth century.
(© TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM)
‘The Dangers of the Sea’ that inspired a rough and ready religiousity among officers and men. This superb painting by Van de Velde the Younger shows a two-decker, with her main topmast gone and her fore course almost lost, in imminent danger of being driven onto a lee shore. Her consort, in the right distance, has already been wrecked. Painted in 1672, shortly after Van de Velde and his father moved to England.
(NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, GREENWICH)
Nevertheless, the naval chaplaincy had some impressive members. Thomas Dockwray, who ‘prayed like a Christian and fought like a Turk’ during the St James’s Day fight of 1666, was rewarded with a doctorate of divinity and became superintending chaplain of the fleet in 1672.32 Thomas Frampton, a future Bishop of Gloucester, acted as de facto chaplain of the Adventure in 1665 while en route to take up the post of chaplain to the Levant Company at Aleppo.33 Benjamin Woodroffe, who eventually became principal of Gloucester Hall, Oxford, saw service at the battle of Solebay, while Thomas Ken, chaplain to the king and a future Bishop of Bath and Wells, went with Pepys and Lord Dartmouth to Tangier in 1683 as senior chaplain of the fleet.34 Not all naval chaplains passively toed the official line; in 1687 John Laton, the chaplain of Chatham dockyard, was one of the Anglican clergymen who refused to read King James’s declaration of indulgence from the pulpit.35
THE RELIGION OF RESTORATION OFFICERS AND SEAMEN
The best testimony to the penetration of‘Puritan’ or more radical beliefs into the navy under the Interregnum is the fact that after the Restoration, and despite the purges of 1660, nonconformity (then known as ‘dissent’) had a strong foothold in the service. The Thames-side communities where many seamen lived were strongholds of dissent, and several prominent officers were probably ‘occasional conformists’, paying lip service to the established church in order to continue in office.36 Sir John Lawson, who had been regarded as a fanatical Baptist in the late 1650s, became an enthusiastic Cavalier within a matter of months, a transition which might not have been unconnected to covert financial inducements from Royalist agents.37 Thereafter, candidates for even very minor naval offices dutifully produced certificates testifying to their conformity from local ministers and churchwardens. All officers had to subscribe to the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy from 1660, and to the terms of the Test Act from 1673.38 Nevertheless, although most dutifully complied with the legal requirements, and despite an influx of‘gentleman captains’ with unimpeachable Anglican credentials, there was widespread religious scepticism within the officer corps; Pepys was surprised to learn of the indifference of his patron, the Earl of Sandwich, to matters of faith.39 On the lower deck, scepticism gave way to indifference, although many men were committed dissenters and others protested their loyalty to the Anglican church (an essential prerequisite for obtaining promotion). The political crisis from 1678 onwards triggered three major enquiries into religion in the fleet, in 1678, 1681–2 and 1685. These turned up some evidence of laxness and ‘occasional conformity, especially in the dockyards, but nothing more sinister, and it seems that the administration was prepared to live and let live, knowing that a more rigorous enquiry, followed by a purge, would have cost the navy too many valuable skilled men.40
THE CATHOLIC QUESTION
The Stuart brothers, Charles and James, were known for their openness to Catholic influences, and James, the Lord High Admiral, became a Catholic convert in the late 1660s, a move that eventually cost him his office in 1673 and his throne in 1688. Two captains resigned their offices at the same time as James, and in 1678–9 an extensive enquiry into Catholicism in the officer corps (which focused inevitably on the significant number of Irish captains in the service) led to the dismissal only of one man, the gunner of a Sixth Rate.41 Many naval men were imbued with the conventional anti-Catholic attitudes of their times. In 1681 the Chatham shipwrights staged a spectacular‘pope-burning’ ceremony, using their skills to manufacture carved images of‘the Pope, Jesuits, etc, which they carried in solemn procession, through Chatham to Rochester’.42 However, seamen were exposed to rather more influences than the static shipwrights. They often visited Catholic countries in southern Europe, where they watched the rituals and found them fascinating, or else talked to modest and friendly monks and nuns, finding them very different from the hysterical stereotypes being disseminated at home.43 The case altered dramatically with the accession to the throne of the Catholic James, Duke of York, in 1685. Sir Roger Strickland, the former rear-admiral of the Mediterranean fleet, soon converted to the Catholic faith of his wider family, and several other captains followed the same route.44 By the summer of 1688 Catholics constituted 1012 per cent of the commissioned officer corps of the navy, almost exactly the same proportion as that found in the much larger officer corps of the army.45 Their presence (and seemingly preferential promotion) caused deep resentment among other officers and created some discontent on the lower deck. Such attitudes helped to shape the fleet’s passive response to William of Orange’s invasion in the autumn of 1688.*
* See Part Thirteen, Chapter 53, p270.