=Marlborough=, then lying crippled where she had pushed in among their own ships. Night and the confusion of both sides ended the battle, but the allies had suffered some rough handling, and were chiefly intent on retreat. Mathews might well have renewed the action when he was at last joined by Lestock. He came, however, to the strange conclusion that he could not follow the enemy, because it was his duty to protect the coast of our allies in Italy—though it would surely have taxed a less torpid intellect than his to say what that coast was to be protected against, unless it were the very fleet he was refusing to pursue. The enemy was actually allowed to recover the _Poder_, which he abandoned, and to retire unmolested to Carthagena. The _Poder_ was then burnt by us. Mathews returned to Mahon, where he solaced his feelings by putting Admiral Lestock under arrest. The failure off Toulon, coming as it did after a long succession of repulses in the West Indies, and futilities in Europe where nothing effectual had been done to intercept the Spanish fleets, stirred the country to deep anger. The news came slowly, and it was not until Lestock had returned under arrest, and Mathews had resigned and had come home, that their recriminations began to bring out the whole truth. Parliament took the matter up, and carried out a preliminary inquiry during April and March of 1745. Lestock and others were heard at the bar, and Mathews, who was a member, in his place. The debate left him, according to Horace Walpole, “in the light of a hot, brave, imperious, dull, confused fellow,” and it also left the House persuaded that a court martial must be held on the whole battle. On the 18th of April, the Commons with their Speaker waited on the king at St. James’s Palace with a petition that a “court martial may be held in the most speedy and solemn manner, to inquire into the conduct of Admiral Mathews, Vice-Admiral Lestock, Captains Burrish, Norris, Ambrose, Frogmore, and Dilk,” together with that of the lieutenants of the =Dorsetshire=, who were accused of misleading their captain, Burrish. The king granted the petition. The measure was somewhat irregular, and might be represented as trenching on the rights of the Admiralty,—it was so considered by Anson who was now on the Board,—but the case was exceptional, and it was by no means certain that the Admiralty would have acted if Parliament had not applied firm pressure. The action it took is one more reminder that, in the dullest times, the country has always been in earnest about its navy. It may, as Sir Charles Pasley has said, have played with the army, which it long regarded with jealous distrust and dislike, but where the navy was concerned it knew that its very existence was at stake. Therefore, though tolerant of much corruption in the naval, as in other branches of the administration, it was roused to wrath, and the resolve to have the whole truth out, by any failure on the sea.