The long peace which began with the accession of James I. had the effect of throwing back the development of the navy for some time. During the later years of Queen Elizabeth, a separate class of sea officers was beginning to be formed. Sir William Monson, for instance, was as much a naval officer as Lord Hawke. He went to sea young, he passed through all grades of the service, he was a trained seaman, and yet a gentleman who had received the education of his class. Constant war had begun to teach Englishmen that the business of commanding a fighting ship at sea required something more than a knowledge of military discipline and the habit of carrying arms. If King James had pursued the policy of constant hostility with Spain advocated by the small party whose best-known representative was Sir Walter Raleigh, it is probable that a corps of naval officers would soon have been formed by the mere necessities of the case. But when peace was signed with Spain, the necessity for maintaining a great naval force came to an end. The ships were laid up, the crews were disbanded, the officers either retired into private life, or were employed by the king in other ways. The seamen among them betook themselves to the service of the East India Company, to trade, or to colonising ventures in America. Thus, when the time came again to fit out great fleets, no progress had been made in the formation of a body of sea officers. In the reign of James I. and his son, it was not much less the rule than it had been with Henry VIII., that the captain of a king's ship was a gentleman with little or no knowledge of sea affairs, and that the seaman was confined to the inferior position of master. There were exceptions to this rule. Sir John Pennington, who was much employed by Charles as admiral in the Narrow Seas, was a seaman bred, but even he was commonly superseded by some noble whenever the king made a serious effort to fit out a great fleet.