was fully grown, the old naval administration consisted of no less than fifteen departments. It was a further cause of confusion that they were not even all under one roof. The Navy Office was in Seething Lane, the Sick and Hurt, with the Victualling Board, had their office on Tower Hill. The Pay Office was in Broad Street. It was another proof of the final formation of the navy in this reign, that a special corps of soldiers was now first established for service in the fleet. This was the Admiral's, or, as it was called from the colour of its uniform, the Yellow Regiment. It was the first corps of marines proper of which we have any notice. Soldiers had been largely employed in the fleet before, but it does not appear that any attempt had been made to distinguish between the soldier who served in the king's ships and the soldier who was available for all military services. The Admiral's Regiment was specially devoted to the fleet. This corps was the predecessor, but not the ancestor, of the modern Marines. It was created partly, as it would seem, by drafts from one of the London trained bands in 1664, at the outbreak of the second Dutch war, and was disbanded at the Revolution. The old belief that the naval officer was rather a fighting man at sea than a seaman, was still so strong that the functions of officer in the Admiral's Regiment and naval officer were still considered interchangeable. The period during which the sea service was growing to its full stature was also one of strenuous and varied fighting. When King Charles II. was restored to his throne in what is officially counted as the twelfth year of his reign, the unstable adventurers who had temporarily held, or professed to hold, power in England had a considerable armament at sea. Richard Cromwell sent a force to the north, under the command of Edward Montagu. The object of this expedition was to intervene in the war between the Kings of Sweden and Denmark. A Commission, including Algernon Sidney, was sent to keep a watch on the admiral. But Montagu was too anxious as to his own fortunes in the prevailing confusion at home to have the heart to act so far away, and his subordinate officers were of the same way of thinking. They took a pretext to return home, leaving the Commissioners behind them. In England, where Richard Cromwell had been upset, there was no definite authority to call them to account. Montagu indeed retired from the command for a time, and was replaced by John Lawson. This seaman was an Anabaptist. From his own account he had begun life as skipper and part owner of a small trading vessel in the north of England. Clarendon called his trade by its name when he described Lawson as a collier. During the Civil War he had fought both on land and sea for the Parliament. It might be supposed that with this past, and with what was then called his fanatical principles, Lawson would have been an opponent of the Restoration of the king.