“I say, then, if a vanguard be ordained of those hoyes, who will easily recover the wind of any other sort of ships, with a battle of 400 other warlike ships, and a rear of thirty of His Majesty’s ships to sustain, relieve, and countenance the rest (if God beat them not) I know not what strength can be gathered in all Europe to beat them. And if it be objected that the States can furnish a far greater number, I answer that His Majesty’s forty ships, added to the 600 beforenamed, are of incomparable greater force than all that Holland and Zealand can furnish for the wars. As also, that a greater number would breed the same confusion that was found in Xerxes’ land army of 1,700,000 soldiers; _for there is a certain proportion, both by sea and land, beyond which the excess brings nothing but disorder and amazement_.” I have quoted from Raleigh at considerable length--a length which may seem to some out of all proportion to the general historical scheme of this work. But of the three possible “founders of the British Navy,” King Alfred by legend, King Henry VII by force of circumstances, and Sir Walter Raleigh, Knight, by his realisation of certain eternal verities of naval warfare, the palm goes best to Raleigh, to whose precepts it was mainly due that England did not succumb to Holland in the days of the Dutch wars. Compared to the struggle with the Dutch, neither the Spanish wars, which preceded them, nor the great French wars which followed, were of any like importance as regarded the relative risks and dangers. And the interest is the greater in that where the United Provinces were, about and just after Raleigh’s time, Germany stands towards the British Navy to-day. In 1618 the Duke of Buckingham was appointed Lord High Admiral and continued in that position after the accession of Charles I. Of the incapacity of the Duke much has been written, but whatever may be said in connection with various unsuccessful oversea enterprises, for which he was officially responsible, naval shipbuilding under his régime made very considerable progress. Things were quite otherwise, however, with the _personnel_. Abuses of every sort and kind crept in unchecked, and the men were the first to feel the pinch. The unscrupulous contractor appeared, and with him the era of offal foods and all kinds of similar abuses, of which many have lasted well into our own time, and some exist still. The money allotted for the men of the fleet became the prey of every human vulture, the officers, as a rule, being privy thereunto. Besides food, clothing also fell into the hands of contractors who supplied shoddy at ridiculously high prices, with the commission to officers stopped out of the men’s pay.