CHARLES I.'S GREAT SHIP. 29 



assisted the unfortunate monarch to his downfall, is too well known to need recapitulation 

 tere. Worthy Monsou, who, although bluff and hearty enough as a sailor, was something 

 of a courtier, defended the levy of the obnoxious tax. But then he believed that Charles 

 really wanted the money for the navy alone, and for retaliation upon the Dutch, while the nation 

 at large had not much faith in their king, or in the alleged purposes for which the tax was to 

 be levied. This is not the place for any defence, partial or otherwise, of Charles's policy. 

 He did, however, show a considerable amount of energy in his attempts to improve the navy, 

 and constructed one vessel, the Sovereign of the Seas, or Royal Sovereign, which was in 

 every respect an advance on anything built before it. One Thomas Hey wood wrote a very 

 learned and flowery tract concerning it. " There is one thing " says he, " above all things 

 for the world to take speciall notice of, that shee is beside tonnage so many tons in burden, 

 as their have beene yeares since our blessed Saviour's incarnation, namely, 1687, and not one 

 under or over ; a most happy omen, which, though it was not the first projected or intended, 

 is now by true computation found so to happen." A description of her ornamentation would 

 occupy several pages of this work ; gold and black were the colours alone employed. She 

 was 232 feet long, had three flush decks, besides quarter-deck and raised forecastle. " Her 

 lower tyre" had thirty ports; her middle tier the same; and the third, twenty-six ports 

 for guns. Her forecastle, half -deck, stern, and bows were all pierced for heavy guns that 

 is, heavy for those days. On the stern was painted a Latin inscription, thus " Englisht/" as 

 Heywood puts it : 



" He who seas, windes, and navies doth protect, 

 Great Charles, thy great ship in her course direct ! " 



She was built of the best oak, and no more seaworthy ship had ever been turned out from 

 Woolwich previously. The Royal Prince, built only nineteen years before, seems to have 

 been a mere holiday ship, and was at the above-mentioned date laid up ; the Royal Sovereign 

 was in active service for nearly sixty years, and would have been rebuilt but for an 

 untoward accident. The history and fate of this fine ship are thus briefly described by a 

 descendant of the architect, Phineas Pett, writing in January, 1C96: 



" The Royal Sovereign was the first great ship that was ever built in England ; she 

 was then designed only for splendour and magnificence, and was in some measure the 

 occasion of those loud complaints' against ship-money in the reign of Charles I. ; but being 

 taken down a deck lower, she became one of the best men-of-war in the world, and so 

 formidable to her enemies that none of the most daring among them would willingly lie 

 by her side. She had been in almost all the great engagements that had been fought 

 between France and Holland ; and in the last fight between the English and the French, 

 encountering the Wonder of the World, she so warmly plied the French Admiral, that she 

 forced him out of his three-decked wooden castle, and chasing the Royal Sun before her, 

 forced her to fly for shelter among the rocks, where she became a prey to lesser vessels, that 

 reduced her to ashes. At length, leaky and defective herself with age, she was laid up at 

 Chatham to be rebuilt; but being set on fire by negligence, she was, on the 27th of this 

 month, devoured by the element which so long and so often before she had imperiously 

 made use of as the instrument of destruction to others/'' 



