It is evident from a number of ballads, some belonging to the middle, others to the later part of this century, that there was considerable discontent in the navy. The feelings which found expression in _The Sea Martyrs_, in William III.’s time, were equally strong when George III. began to reign, and were to manifest themselves later in the mutinies of 1797. One perennial complaint was the badness of the provisions and the cheats of the purser. Musty meat, mouldy biscuit, hard, stinking Suffolk cheese, petty-warrant beer, burgoo ‘fit for nothing but to make a sailor spew,’ were what he provided, ‘though the nation allows men what’s fitting to eat.’ So says _The Saylor’s Complaint; or the true Character of the Purser of a Ship_ (p. 233), and every casual reference to a purser in any ballad is always abusive. A still greater grievance was the difficulty a man had in getting his pay: ‘My life I have ventured for gold My king and my country to serve, Now the wars are all over, Brave sailors may perish and starve,’ is the sum of a second _Sailor’s Complaint_ (p. 230). Often the sailor received a ticket for his pay, which he was obliged to sell to an usurer at a ruinous reduction--a practice which had existed since the time of Charles II., as Pepys witnesses, but which seems to have been checked towards the middle of the eighteenth century, according to _The Ticket-Buyer’s Lamentation_ (p. 231). A third grievance was the severity of the discipline. A pamphlet quoted by Entick (v. 59) explains why it is that neither by bounty nor compulsion men enough for the fleet can be found. ‘The reason is known to every common seaman, who, whilst Gazettes are filled with encomiums of their bravery and contempt of danger, and our senators are devising the wisest means for their provision and support, yet languish under the greatest hardships and the most abject slavery, puzzled and perplexed with unnecessary trifles, hard wrought, and ill-used by almost every petty officer of but a month’s standing, who, ignorant of duty, whether performed right or wrong, flourishes his rattan over the head of the ablest seaman, and acts the tyrant over them without control.’ Even ‘snotty boys of midshipmen,’ some hardly ten years old, declares one ballad, ‘strike many a brave fellow.’ In another a sailor declines to volunteer, and gives a captain his reason: Your damned rogues of officers use men so cruel, That a man of war is worse than hell and the devil. (pp. 235, 239).