Just about this time elaborate ornamentations of warships was the “vogue,” and it carried moral effect accordingly. What to the uninitiated landsmen merely spelt “waste of money on unnecessary display” spelt something else to those who went across the seas. Even in our own present utilitarian days a fresh coat of paint to a warship has been found to have a political value; and fireworks and illuminations (seemingly pure waste of money) have played their share in helping to preserve the peace. John Hampden, according to his lights, was a patriot, and according to the purely political questions with which he was concerned he may also have been; but on the naval issue of Ship Money he was little more or less than the First Little Englander, and hampered by just that same inability to see beyond his nose which characterised the modern Little Englander who protested against “bloated naval expenditure.” The intentions were excellent--the intelligence circumscribed. A contemporary account of the _Royal Sovereign_ is as follows:-- “Her length by the keele is 128 foote or thereabout, within some few inches; her mayne breadth or wideness from side to side, 48 foote; her utmost length from the fore-end to the stern, _a prova ad pupin_, 232 foote. Shee is in height, from the bottom of her keele to the top of her lanthorne, 76 foote; she beareth five lanthornes, the biggest of which will hold ten persons to stand upright, and without shouldering or pressing one on the other. “Shee hath three flush deckes and a forecastle, an halfe decke, a quarter-decke, and a round house. Her lower tyre hath thirty ports, which are to be furnished with demi-cannon and whole cannon, throughout being able to beare them; her middle tyre hath also thirty ports for demi-culverin and whole culverin; her third tyre hath twentie sixe ports for other ordnance; her forecastle hath twelve ports, and her halfe decke hath fourteen ports; she hath thirteene or fourteene ports more within board for murdering-pieces, besides a great many loope-holes out of the cabins for musket shot. Shee carrieth, moreover, ten pieces of chase ordnance in her right forward, and ten right off, according to lande service in the front and the reare. Shee carrieth eleven anchores, one of them weighing foure thousand foure hundred pounds; and according to these are her cables, mastes, sayles, cordage.” [Illustration: _Ex. Fincham._ THE _ROYAL SOVEREIGN_. The dotted lines represent a ship of the time of 1850.]