Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/626

612 rivalry of Henry was excited by the King of Scotland building a much larger ship than his Regent, which was said to carry 300 seamen, 120 gunners, and 1,000 soldiers. This ship, like Henry's Regent, was unfortunate, being lost at sea. By the end of Henry's reign, his fleet altogether amounted to 12,500 tons.

Besides building of ships, Henry seems to have planned all the necessary offices for a naval system. He established the Navy Office, with a sort of Board of Admiralty for its management, and he also founded, in the fourth year of his reign, the Corporation of the Trinity House, at Deptford, for managing everything relating to the education, selection, and appointment of pilots, the putting down of buoys, and erecting beacons and lighthouses. Similar establishments were by him created at Hull and Newcastle. He erected at great cost the first pier at Dover, and passed an Act of Parliament improving the harbours of Plymouth, Dartmouth, Tynemouth, Falmouth, and Fowey, which had been choked up by the refuse of certain tin-works, which he prohibited. But perhaps his greatest works of the kind were his establishment of the navy-yards and storehouses of Woolwich and Deptford. No monarch, in fact, had hitherto planned so efficiently and exerted himself so earnestly to found an English navy. Great merit is due to him for his advancement of the maritime interests of the nation.

The manner in which the different monarchs of the Tudor dynasty advanced or neglected the navy is well shown by the returns of the Navy Office to Parliament, in 1791. As we have stated, at the end of Henry's reign it amounted to 12,500 tons, at the end of that of Edward VI. to only 11,065 tons, and at the end of Mary's to merely 7,110 tons, but at the end of Elizabeth's to 17,110. At the time of the Armada, Elizabeth had at sea 150 sail, of which, however, only forty were the property of the Crown; the rest belonged to the merchants who were

A Gentleman of Fashion of the time of Henry VIII.

Lady and Country-woman of the days of Elizabeth.