4. =Ship-money. 1634-1637.=--More important was Charles's effort to provide himself with a fleet. As the Dutch navy was powerful, and the French navy was rapidly growing in strength, Charles, not unnaturally, thought that England ought to be able to meet their combined forces at sea. In =1634=, by the advice of Attorney-General Noy, he issued writs to the port towns, to furnish him with ships. He took care to ask for ships larger than any port--except London--had got, and then offered to supply ships of his own, on condition that the port towns should equip and man them. In =1635=--Noy having died in the meantime--Charles asked for ships not merely from the ports, but from the inland as well as from the maritime counties. Again London alone provided ships; in all the rest of England money had to be found to pay for the equipment and manning of ships belonging to the king. In this way Charles got a strong navy which he manned with sailors in the habit of managing ships of war, and entirely at his own orders. The experience of the Cadiz voyage had shown him that merchant-sailors, such as those who had done good service against the Armada, were not to be trusted to fight in enterprises in which they took no interest, and it is from the ship-money fleet that the separation of the naval and mercantile marine dates. Necessarily, however, Englishmen began to complain, not that they had a navy, but that the money needed for the navy was taken from them without a Parliamentary grant. Year after year ship-money was levied, and the murmurs against it increased. In February, =1637=, Charles consulted the judges, and ten out of the twelve judges declared that the king had a right to do what was necessary for the defence of the realm in time of danger, and that the king was the sole judge of the existence of danger.