Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/154

 146 SHORT NOTICES January promotion was rapid, and henceforth, as the editor remarks, the story of his life is entirely representative of the naval history of the earlier half of the seventeenth century, with the exception of the expeditions to Algiers in 1620 and to Cadiz in 1625. Since he combined great technical skill with sound seamanship his criticisms of the equipment of the navy are important. It seems clear that the constant failures of the navy were due, not so much to the incapacity of commanders, as to inefficient sailors and bad food. Even the ship-money fleets show little improvement in these respects. Thus in 1636 Mainwaring complains that one ship, in no way exceptional, had ' scarce a seafaring man except the officers ', while the food was mouldy and stinking. Most shameful of all was the treat- ment of the sick : ' I have seen some die upon the strand for lack of relief,' wrote Mainwaring. In addition to this valuable document, other very useful evidence is adduced about the ship-money fleets, and the lists of the ships sent to sea 1633-41 supply some biographical details not hitherto available about seamen who afterwards distinguished themselves during the puritan revolution. Other papers of interest include some letters on the blockade of the Forth in 1639 and a dispatch on Tromp's victory over Oquendo in the Downs. These documents have been noticed in the Calendar of State Papers Domestic, but the editor is to be con- gratulated on his zeal in always seeking for the manuscript originals instead of being content with printed summaries. On the other hand, there is a lack of proportion about this volume and the arrangement is defective. Mainwaring was not important enough to have a whole book devoted to his life, and many of the papers and lists given in the text might with advantage have been relegated to an appendix. Too much general history is included, and trivial incidents are treated at considerable length. The most striking instance of this tendency to irrelevancy and over-elaboration is in the chapter devoted to the royalists in Jersey in 1 646-7, which might have been cut down to a page or two by reason of the full account in Hoskins's Charles II in the Channel Islands. Yet, in spite of these errors of judgement, the volume makes an original and important contribution to naval history. G. D. The admirably edited second volume of The Assembly Books of Southampton, A. D. 1609-10 (Southampton Record Society, 1920), like its predecessor, published in 1917, 1 throws much light on the control exercised by the Southampton assembly over the life of the town. In the introduction Dr. J. W. Horrock draws attention to the relation between the assembly and the several local courts, the treatment of the poor and of new-comers, the regulation of trades and prices, and to maritime and commercial interests. The everyday details are relieved by several curious entries. Monopolies were so common in 1609 that a lacemaker ' humblye requested the howse that he onelye and non' other might be allowed to gather ould shooes in this Towne '. But the assembly judged the request ' verie unfit- tinge '. There is a remarkably enlightened stipulation in the case of a mercer who was to keep his apprentice in Spain for two out of his seven years ' to learn the language and make him free of the merchants '. In one 1 See ante, xxxv. 434-6.