[Illustration: Fig. 13.--_The “Sovereign of the Seas.”_ After Vandevelde.] The king’s dominion on the sea was rapidly waning. Fielding’s ignoble mission was the last attempt that fate permitted Charles to make in actively asserting it. The shadow of the coming revolution was already upon him. The trial of Hampden for refusing to pay the ship-money focussed the attention of England, and it was followed by complaints of other grievances arising from the personal government of the king. The popular tumult in Edinburgh in the summer about the new Liturgy had as a sequence the National Covenant and insurrection. Charles found another use for his fleet than the enforcement of his sovereignty of the sea in the expedition to Scotland to subdue his rebellious subjects; and the British seas, even the King’s Chambers, were soon again the scenes of flagrant acts in violation of his authority. By a strange irony it was at this time that the king’s “Great Ship,” the famous _Sovereign of the Seas_, whose praises were sung by Thomas Heywood, the dramatist, was launched at Woolwich. Its construction had been under consideration for several years; it was begun in January 1636 and launched early in October 1637. Charles took a keen personal interest in his great ship, and supervised its details. He selected a scutcheon and motto to be engraved on each of its 102 brass guns--the rose and crown, sceptre and trident, and anchor and cable, with the inscription, _Carolus Edgari sceptrum stabilivit aquarum_--Charles established the dominion of Edgar over the seas; and on the “beak-head” sat the effigy of King Edgar, trampling on seven kings.[586] As its name implied, it was meant to be a symbol as well as an instrument of the king’s sovereignty of the seas; and it was symbolical of it in a sense undreamt of by Charles. It was costly, highly decorated and begilt, but useless until it was cut down and made serviceable under the Commonwealth. He inserted it in the list of ships to serve in the fleet that assembled in the Downs in 1638, but it was not ready to join. This fleet consisted of twenty-four king’s ships and seven merchant vessels, and, owing to the illness of the Earl of Northumberland, it was placed under the command of Sir John Pennington.[587] It did still less than the fleet of the previous year. Two ships were sent to the westwards on an alarm that “Turkish” pirates were in the Channel; it convoyed two vessels laden with gunpowder into Dunkirk, notwithstanding the blockade by the Dutch, and returned to the Downs; and two ships were despatched to the north to intercept supplies of arms and munitions of war from Rotterdam and Bremen to the Scots. There was not even the “one turn in an honourable procession” to the westwards as in the previous year, and the fleet rode idly at its anchorage.