Their duties were by no means honorary in earlier times, although during the last fifty years of the Board's existence the chief work fell upon the permanent staff, and the visits of the Master-General were comparatively rare and ceremonious. If any one would learn what they had to do in the seventeenth century, let him go to the Tower, and examine the correspondence of Lord Dartmouth, the faithful friend and servant of Charles II., a professional Artilleryman and James II.'s skilled Master- General to the last. He created order out of chaos in the Department of the Ordnance, under Charles II., and so admirable were his arrangements, that on King William ascending the throne, he issued a warrant ratifying all previous orders, and leaving the details of the management of the Ordnance unaltered. In the autumn of 1688, Lord Dartmouth's office—never a sinecure—became laborious in the extreme. Daily and hourly requisitions reached him from the excited King and his Ministers, for the arming of the ships and the Regiments which were being raised in every direction. Authority was given to raise more gunners, as if experience could be created in a moment and the science of Artillery begotten in a man's mind, without previous study, for "twelve-pence by the day." To Chatham the Master-General hurries to superintend the fitting-out of the men-of-war, and next day, for the same purpose, to Sheerness, where he finds a despatch from the trembling Privy Council, ordering him to fill six merchant ships with fireworks to accompany the King's fleet, as fire-ships against the enemy. A terrible life did poor Lord Dartmouth lead at this time. Sometimes his letters are written from on board ship in the river, sometimes from his cabin in the 'Resolution,' at Portsmouth; very frequently from Windsor, where James anxiously kept him near his person, plying him now with questions and now with contradictory orders. Sometimes we find him writing at midnight, ordering his loving friends, the principal officers of the Ordnance, to meet him next day at the Cockpit, in Whitehall; at other times he swoops down unexpectedly on the bewildered officials in the Tower. In the old, quiet days, his correspondence was distinguished by an almost excessive courtesy; but now, in these days of fever and in the depth of his anxiety, it almost disappears; orders are issued like minute-guns; explanations of delay are fretfully demanded; and a bombardment is incessant of peremptory inquiries as to the state of His Majesty's ships and stores.