John Brown: An Address at the 14th

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 JOHN BROWN.
AN ADDRESS

BY

FREDERICK DOUGLASS,

AT THE

FOURTEENTH ANNIVERSARY

OF

STORER COLLEGE,

HARPER’S FERRY, WEST VIRGINIA, MAY 30, 1881.

DOVER, N. H.:

MORNING STAR JOB PRINTING HOUSE.

1881.

PRESENTED
BY THE AUTHOR TO STORER COLLEGE,
THE PROCEEDS TO GO TO THE ENDOWMENT OF A
JOHN BROWN PROFESSORSHIP.
 INTRODUCTION.
In substance, this address, now for the first time published,
was prepared several years ago, and has been delivered in
many parts of the North. Its publication now in pamphlet form
is due to its delivery at Harper’s Ferry, W. Va., on Decoration
day, 1881, and to the fact that the proceeds from the sale of it
are to be used toward the endowment of a John Brown
Professorship in Storer College, Harper’s Ferry—an institution
mainly devoted to the education of colored youth.
That such an address could be delivered at such a place, at
such a time, is strikingly significant, and illustrates the rapid,
vast and wonderful changes through which the American
people have been passing since 1859. Twenty years ago
Frederick Douglass and others were mobbed in the city of
Boston, and driven from Tremont Temple for uttering
sentiments concerning John Brown similar to those contained
in this address. Yet now he goes freely to the very spot where
John Brown committed the offense which caused all Virginia
to clamor for his life, and without reserve or qualification,
commends him as a hero and martyr in the cause of liberty.
This incident is rendered all the more significant by the fact
that Hon. Andrew Hunter, of Charlestown,—the District
Attorney who prosecuted John Brown and secured his
execution,—sat on the platform directly behind Mr. Douglass
during the delivery of the entire address and at the close of it
shook hands with him, and congratulated him, and invited him
to Charlestown (where John Brown was hanged), adding that
if Robert E. Lee were living, he would give him his hand also.

ADDRESS.
Not to fan the flame of sectional animosity now happily in the
process of rapid and I hope permanent extinction; not to revive
and keep alive a sense of shame and remorse for a great
national crime, which has brought its own punishment, in loss
of treasure, tears and blood; not to recount the long list of
wrongs, inflicted on my race during more than two hundred
years of merciless bondage; nor yet to draw, from the
labyrinths of far-off centuries, incidents and achievements
wherewith to rouse your passions, and enkindle your
enthusiasm, but to pay a just debt long due, to vindicate in
some degree a great historical character, of our own time and
country, one with whom I was myself well acquainted, and
whose friendship and confidence it was my good fortune to
share, and to give you such recollections, impressions and
facts, as I can, of a grand, brave and good old man, and
especially to promote a better understanding of the raid upon
Harper’s Ferry of which he was the chief, is the object of this
address.
In all the thirty years’ conflict with slavery, if we except the
late tremendous war, there is no subject which in its interest
and importance will be remembered longer, or will form a
more thrilling chapter in American history than this strange,
wild, bloody and mournful drama. The story of it is still fresh
in the minds of many who now hear me, but for the sake of
those who may have forgotten its details, and in order to have
our subject in its entire range more fully and clearly before us
at the outset, I will briefly state the facts in that extraordinary
transaction.
On the night of the 16th of October, 1859, there appeared near
the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, a party
of nineteen men—fourteen white and five colored. They were
not only armed themselves, but had brought with them a large
supply of arms for such persons as might join them. These
men invaded Harper’s Ferry, disarmed the watchman, took
possession of the arsenal, rifle-factory, armory and other
government property at that place, arrested and made prisoners
nearly all the prominent citizens of the neighborhood,
collected about fifty slaves, put bayonets into the hands of
such as were able and willing to fight for their liberty, killed
three men, proclaimed general emancipation, held the ground
more than thirty hours, were subsequently overpowered and
nearly all killed, wounded or captured, by a body of United
States troops, under command of Colonel Robert E. Lee, since
famous as the rebel Gen. Lee. Three out of the nineteen
invaders were captured whilst fighting, and one of these was
Captain John Brown, the man who originated, planned and
commanded the expedition. At the time of his capture Capt.
Brown was supposed to be mortally wounded, as he had
several ugly gashes and bayonet wounds on his head and
body; and apprehending that he might speedily die, or that he
might be rescued by his friends, and thus the opportunity of
making him a signal example of slave-holding vengeance
would be lost, his captors hurried him to Charlestown two
miles further within the border of Virginia, placed him in
prison strongly guarded by troops, and before his wounds were
healed he was brought into court, subjected to a nominal trial,
convicted of high treason and inciting slaves to insurrection,
and was executed. His corpse was given to his woe-stricken
widow, and she, assisted by Anti-slavery friends, caused it to
be borne to North Elba, Essex County, N. Y., and there his dust
now reposes, amid the silent, solemn and snowy grandeur of
the Adirondacks.
Such is the story; with no line softened or hardened to my
inclining. It certainly is not a story to please, but to pain. It is
not a story to increase our sense of social safety and security,
but to fill the imagination with wild and troubled fancies of
doubt and danger. It was a sudden and startling surprise to the
people of Harper’s Ferry, and it is not easy to conceive of a
situation more abundant in all the elements of horror and
consternation. They had retired as usual to rest, with no
suspicion that an enemy lurked in the surrounding darkness.
They had quietly and trustingly given themselves up to “tired
Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep,” and while thus all
unconscious of danger, they were roused from their peaceful
slumbers by the sharp crack of the invader’s rifle, and felt the
keen-edged sword of war at their throats, three of their number
being already slain.
Every feeling of the human heart was naturally outraged at this
occurrence, and hence at the moment the air was full of
denunciation and execration. So intense was this feeling, that
few ventured to whisper a word of apology. But happily reason
has her voice as well as feeling, and though slower in
deciding, her judgments are broader, deeper, clearer and more
enduring. It is not easy to reconcile human feeling to the
shedding of blood for any purpose, unless indeed in the
excitement which the shedding of blood itself occasions. The
knife is to feeling always an offence. Even when in the hands
of a skillful surgeon, it refuses consent to the operation long
after reason has demonstrated its necessity. It even pleads the
cause of the known murderer on the day of his execution, and
calls society half criminal when, in cold blood, it takes life as a
protection of itself from crime. Let no word be said against
this holy feeling; more than to law and government are we
indebted to this tender sentiment of regard for human life for
the safety with which we walk the streets by day and sleep
secure in our beds at night. It is nature’s grand police, vigilant
and faithful, sentineled in the soul, guarding against violence
to peace and life. But whilst so much is freely accorded to
feeling in the economy of human welfare, something more
than feeling is necessary to grapple with a fact so grim and
significant as was this raid. Viewed apart and alone, as a
transaction separate and distinct from its antecedents and
bearings, it takes rank with the most cold-blooded and
atrocious wrongs ever perpetrated; but just here is the trouble
—this raid on Harper’s Ferry, no more than Sherman’s march
to the sea can consent to be thus viewed alone.
There is, in the world’s government, a force which has in all
ages been recognized, sometimes as Nemesis, sometimes as
the judgment of God and sometimes as retributive justice; but
under whatever name, all history attests the wisdom and
beneficence of its chastisements, and men become reconciled
to the agents through whom it operates, and have extolled
them as heroes, benefactors and demigods.
To the broad vision of a true philosophy, nothing in this world
stands alone. Everything is a necessary part of everything else.
The margin of chance is narrowed by every extension of
reason and knowledge, and nothing comes unbidden to the
feast of human experience. The universe, of which we are a
part, is continually proving itself a stupendous whole, a system
of law and order, eternal and perfect: Every seed bears fruit
after its kind, and nothing is reaped which was not sowed. The
distance between seed time and harvest, in the moral world,
may not be quite so well defined or as clearly intelligible as in
the physical, but there is a seed time, and there is a harvest
time, and though ages may intervene, and neither he who
ploughed nor he who sowed may reap in person, yet the
harvest nevertheless will surely come; and as in the physical
world there are century plants, so it may be in the moral world,
and their fruitage is as certain in the one as in the other. The
bloody harvest of Harper’s Ferry was ripened by the heat and
moisture of merciless bondage of more than two hundred
years. That startling cry of alarm on the banks of the Potomac
was but the answering back of the avenging angel to the
midnight invasions of Christian slave-traders on the sleeping
hamlets of Africa. The history of the African slave-trade
furnishes many illustrations far more cruel and bloody.
Viewed thus broadly our subject is worthy of thoughtful and
dispassionate consideration. It invites the study of the poet,
scholar, philosopher and statesman. What the masters in
natural science have done for man in the physical world, the
masters of social science may yet do for him in the moral
world. Science now tells us when storms are in the sky, and
when and where their violence will be most felt. Why may we
not yet know with equal certainty when storms are in the
moral sky, and how to avoid their desolating force? But I can
invite you to no such profound discussions. I am not the man,
nor is this the occasion for such philosophical enquiry. Mine is
the word of grateful memory to an old friend; to tell you what
I knew of him—what I knew of his inner life—of what he did
and what he attempted, and thus if possible to make the
mainspring of his actions manifest and thereby give you a
clearer view of his character and services.
It is said that next in value to the performance of great deeds
ourselves, is the capacity to appreciate such when performed
by others; to more than this I do not presume. Allow me one
other personal word before I proceed. In the minds of some of
the American people I was myself credited with an important
agency in the John Brown raid. Governor Henry A. Wise was
manifestly of that opinion. He was at the pains of having Mr.
Buchanan send his Marshals to Rochester to invite me to
accompany them to Virginia. Fortunately I left town several
hours previous to their arrival.
What ground there was for this distinguished consideration
shall duly appear in the natural course of this lecture. I wish
however to say just here that there was no foundation
whatever for the charge that I in any wise urged or instigated
John Brown to his dangerous work. I rejoice that it is my good
fortune to have seen, not only the end of slavery, but to see the
day when the whole truth can be told about this matter without
prejudice to either the living or the dead. I shall however allow
myself little prominence in these disclosures. Your interests,
like mine, are in the all-commanding figure of the story, and to
him I consecrate the hour. His zeal in the cause of my race was
far greater than mine—it was as the burning sun to my taper
light—mine was bounded by time, his stretched away to the
boundless shores of eternity. I could live for the slave, but he
could die for him. The crown of martyrdom is high, far beyond
the reach of ordinary mortals, and yet happily no special
greatness or superior moral excellence is necessary to discern
and in some measure appreciate a truly great soul. Cold,
calculating and unspiritual as most of us are, we are not
wholly insensible to real greatness; and when we are brought
in contact with a man of commanding mold, towering high and
alone above the millions, free from all conventional fetters,
true to his own moral convictions, a “law unto himself,” ready
to suffer misconstruction, ignoring torture and death for what
he believes to be right, we are compelled to do him homage.
In the stately shadow, in the sublime presence of such a soul I
find myself standing to-night; and how to do it reverence, how
to do it justice, how to honor the dead with due regard to the
living, has been a matter of most anxious solicitude.
Much has been said of John Brown, much that is wise and
beautiful, but in looking over what may be called the John
Brown literature, I have been little assisted with material, and
even less encouraged with any hope of success in treating the
subject. Scholarship, genius and devotion have hastened with
poetry and eloquence, story and song to this simple altar of
human virtue, and have retired dissatisfied and distressed with
the thinness and poverty of their offerings, as I shall with
mine.
The difficulty in doing justice to the life and character of such
a man is not altogether due to the quality of the zeal, or of the
ability brought to the work, nor yet to any imperfections in the
qualities of the man himself; the state of the moral atmosphere
about us has much to do with it. The fault is not in our eyes,
nor yet in the object, if under a murky sky we fail to discover
the object. Wonderfully tenacious is the taint of a great wrong.
The evil, as well as “the good that men do, lives after them.”
Slavery is indeed gone; but its long, black shadow yet falls
broad and large over the face of the whole country. It is the old
truth oft repeated, and never more fitly than now, “a prophet is
without honor in his own country and among his own people.”
Though more than twenty years have rolled between us and
the Harper’s Ferry raid, though since then the armies of the
nation have found it necessary to do on a large scale what John
Brown attempted to do on a small one, and the great captain
who fought his way through slavery has filled with honor the
Presidential chair, we yet stand too near the days of slavery,
and the life and times of John Brown, to see clearly the true
martyr and hero that he was and rightly to estimate the value
of the man and his works. Like the great and good of all ages
—the men born in advance of their times, the men whose
bleeding footprints attest the immense cost of reform, and
show us the long and dreary spaces, between the luminous
points in the progress of mankind,—this our noblest American
hero must wait the polishing wheels of after-coming centuries
to make his glory more manifest, and his worth more generally
acknowledged. Such instances are abundant and familiar. If we
go back four and twenty centuries, to the stately city of
Athens, and search among her architectural splendor and her
miracles of art for the Socrates of to-day, and as he stands in
history, we shall find ourselves perplexed and disappointed. In
Jerusalem Jesus himself was only the “carpenter’s son”—a
young man wonderfully destitute of worldly prudence—a
pestilent fellow, “inexcusably and perpetually interfering in
the world’s business,”—“upsetting the tables of the money-
changers”—preaching sedition, opposing the good old religion
—“making himself greater than Abraham,” and at the same
time “keeping company” with very low people; but behold the
change! He was a great miracle-worker, in his day, but time
has worked for him a greater miracle than all his miracles, for
now his name stands for all that is desirable in government,
noble in life, orderly and beautiful in society. That which time
has done for other great men of his class, that will time
certainly do for John Brown. The brightest gems shine at first
with subdued light, and the strongest characters are subject to
the same limitations. Under the influence of adverse education
and hereditary bias, few things are more difficult than to
render impartial justice. Men hold up their hands to Heaven,
and swear they will do justice, but what are oaths against
prejudice and against inclination! In the face of high-sounding
professions and affirmations we know well how hard it is for a
Turk to do justice to a Christian, or for a Christian to do justice
to a Jew. How hard for an Englishman to do justice to an
Irishman, for an Irishman to do justice to an Englishman,
harder still for an American tainted by slavery to do justice to
the Negro or the Negro’s friends. “John Brown,” said the late
Wm. H. Seward, “was justly hanged.” “John Brown,” said the
late John A. Andrew, “was right.” It is easy to perceive the
sources of these two opposite judgments: the one was the
verdict of slave-holding and panic-stricken Virginia, the other
was the verdict of the best heart and brain of free old
Massachusetts. One was the heated judgment of the passing
and passionate hour, and the other was the calm, clear,
unimpeachable judgment of the broad, illimitable future.
There is, however, one aspect of the present subject quite
worthy of notice, for it makes the hero of Harper’s Ferry in
some degree an exception to the general rules to which I have
just now adverted. Despite the hold which slavery had at that
time on the country, despite the popular prejudice against the
Negro, despite the shock which the first alarm occasioned,
almost from the first John Brown received a large measure of
sympathy and appreciation. New England recognized in him
the spirit which brought the pilgrims to Plymouth rock and
hailed him as a martyr and saint. True he had broken the law,
true he had struck for a despised people, true he had crept
upon his foe stealthily, like a wolf upon the fold, and had dealt
his blow in the dark whilst his enemy slept, but with all this
and more to disturb the moral sense, men discerned in him the
greatest and best qualities known to human nature, and
pronounced him “good.” Many consented to his death, and
then went home and taught their children to sing his praise as
one whose “soul is marching on” through the realms of
endless bliss. One element in explanation of this somewhat
anomalous circumstance will probably be found in the
troubled times which immediately succeeded, for “when
judgments are abroad in the world, men learn righteousness.”
The country had before this learned the value of Brown’s
heroic character. He had shown boundless courage and skill in
dealing with the enemies of liberty in Kansas. With men so
few, and means so small, and odds against him so great, no
captain ever surpassed him in achievements, some of which
seem almost beyond belief. With only eight men in that bitter
war, he met, fought and captured Henry Clay Pate, with
twenty-five well armed and mounted men. In this memorable
encounter, he selected his ground so wisely, handled his men
so skillfully, and attacked the enemy so vigorously, that they
could neither run nor fight, and were therefore compelled to
surrender to a force less than one-third their own. With just
thirty men on another important occasion during the same
border war, he met and vanquished four hundred Missourians
under the command of Gen. Read. These men had come into
the territory under an oath never to return to their homes till
they had stamped out the last vestige of free State spirit in
Kansas; but a brush with old Brown took this high conceit out
of them, and they were glad to get off upon any terms, without
stopping to stipulate. With less than one hundred men to
defend the town of Lawrence, he offered to lead them and give
battle to fourteen hundred men on the banks of the Waukerusia
river, and was much vexed when his offer was refused by Gen.
Jim Lane and others to whom the defense of the town was
confided. Before leaving Kansas, he went into the border of
Missouri, and liberated a dozen slaves in a single night, and, in
spite of slave laws and marshals, he brought these people
through a half dozen States, and landed them safely in Canada.
With eighteen men this man shook the whole social fabric of
Virginia. With eighteen men he overpowered a town of nearly
three thousand souls. With these eighteen men he held that
large community firmly in his grasp for thirty long hours. With
these eighteen men he rallied in a single night fifty slaves to
his standard, and made prisoners of an equal number of the
slave-holding class. With these eighteen men he defied the
power and bravery of a dozen of the best militia companies
that Virginia could send against him. Now, when slavery
struck, as it certainly did strike, at the life of the country, it
was not the fault of John Brown that our rulers did not at first
know how to deal with it. He had already shown us the weak
side of the rebellion, had shown us where to strike and how. It
was not from lack of native courage that Virginia submitted for
thirty long hours and at last was relieved only by Federal
troops; but because the attack was made on the side of her
conscience and thus armed her against herself. She beheld at
her side the sullen brow of a black Ireland. When John Brown
proclaimed emancipation to the slaves of Maryland and
Virginia he added to his war power the force of a moral
earthquake. Virginia felt all her strong-ribbed mountains to
shake under the heavy tread of armed insurgents. Of his army
of nineteen her conscience made an army of nineteen hundred.
Another feature of the times, worthy of notice, was the effect
of this blow upon the country at large. At the first moment we
were stunned and bewildered. Slavery had so benumbed the
moral sense of the nation, that it never suspected the
possibility of an explosion like this, and it was difficult for
Captain Brown to get himself taken for what he really was.
Few could seem to comprehend that freedom to the slaves was
his only object. If you will go back with me to that time you
will find that the most curious and contradictory versions of
the affair were industriously circulated, and those which were
the least rational and true seemed to command the readiest
belief. In the view of some, it assumed tremendous
proportions. To such it was nothing less than a wide-sweeping
rebellion to overthrow the existing government, and construct
another upon its ruins, with Brown for its President and
Commander-in-Chief; the proof of this was found in the old
man’s carpet-bag in the shape of a constitution for a new
Republic, an instrument which in reality had been executed to
govern the conduct of his men in the mountains. Smaller and
meaner natures saw in it nothing higher than a purpose to
plunder. To them John Brown and his men were a gang of
desperate robbers, who had learned by some means that
government had sent a large sum of money to Harper’s Ferry
to pay off the workmen in its employ there, and they had gone
thence to fill their pockets from this money. The fact is, that
outside of a few friends, scattered in different parts of the
country, and the slave-holders of Virginia, few persons
understood the significance of the hour. That a man might do
something very audacious and desperate for money, power or
fame, was to the general apprehension quite possible; but, in
face of plainly-written law, in face of constitutional guarantees
protecting each State against domestic violence, in face of a
nation of forty million of people, that nineteen men could
invade a great State to liberate a despised and hated race, was
to the average intellect and conscience, too monstrous for
belief. In this respect the vision of Virginia was clearer than
that of the nation. Conscious of her guilt and therefore full of
suspicion, sleeping on pistols for pillows, startled at every
unusual sound, constantly fearing and expecting a repetition of
the Nat Turner insurrection, she at once understood the
meaning, if not the magnitude of the affair. It was this
understanding which caused her to raise the lusty and
imploring cry to the Federal government for help, and it was
not till he who struck the blow had fully explained his motives
and object, that the incredulous nation in any wise
comprehended the true spirit of the raid, or of its commander.
Fortunate for his memory, fortunate for the brave men
associated with him, fortunate for the truth of history, John
Brown survived the saber gashes, bayonet wounds and bullet
holes, and was able, though covered with blood, to tell his own
story and make his own defense. Had he with all his men, as
might have been the case, gone down in the shock of battle,
the world would have had no true basis for its judgment, and
one of the most heroic efforts ever witnessed in behalf of
liberty would have been confounded with base and selfish
purposes. When, like savages, the Wises, the Vallandinghams,
the Washingtons, the Stuarts and others stood around the fallen
and bleeding hero, and sought by torturing questions to wring
from his supposed dying lips some word by which to soil the
sublime undertaking, by implicating Gerrit Smith, Joshua R.
Giddings, Dr. S. G. Howe, G. L. Stearns, Edwin Morton,
Frank Sanborn, and other prominent Anti-slavery men, the
brave old man, not only avowed his object to be the
emancipation of the slaves, but serenely and proudly
announced himself as solely responsible for all that had
happened. Though some thought of his own life might at such
a moment have seemed natural and excusable, he showed
none, and scornfully rejected the idea that he acted as the
agent or instrument of any man or set of men. He admitted that
he had friends and sympathizers, but to his own head he
invited all the bolts of slave-holding wrath and fury, and
welcomed them to do their worst. His manly courage and self-
forgetful nobleness were not lost upon the crowd about him,
nor upon the country. They drew applause from his bitterest
enemies. Said Henry A. Wise, “He is the gamest man I ever
met.” “He was kind and humane to his prisoners,” said Col.
Lewis Washington.
To the outward eye of men, John Brown was a criminal, but to
their inward eye he was a just man and true. His deeds might
be disowned, but the spirit which made those deeds possible
was worthy highest honor. It has been often asked, why did not
Virginia spare the life of this man? why did she not avail
herself of this grand opportunity to add to her other glory that
of a lofty magnanimity? Had they spared the good old man’s
life—had they said to him, “You see we have you in our
power, and could easily take your life, but we have no desire
to hurt you in any way; you have committed a terrible crime
against society; you have invaded us at midnight and attacked
a sleeping community, but we recognize you as a fanatic, and
in some sense instigated by others; and on this ground and
others, we release you. Go about your business, and tell those
who sent you that we can afford to be magnanimous to our
enemies.” I say, had Virginia held some such language as this
to John Brown, she would have inflicted a heavy blow on the
whole Northern abolition movement, one which only the
omnipotence of truth and the force of truth could have
overcome. I have no doubt Gov. Wise would have done so
gladly, but, alas, he was the executive of a State which thought
she could not afford such magnanimity. She had that within
her bosom which could more safely tolerate the presence of a
criminal than a saint, a highway robber than a moral hero. All
her hills and valleys were studded with material for a
disastrous conflagration, and one spark of the dauntless spirit
of Brown might set the whole State in flames. A sense of this
appalling liability put an end to every noble consideration. His
death was a foregone conclusion, and his trial was simply one
of form.
Honor to the brave young Col. Hoyt who hastened from
Massachusetts to defend his friend’s life at the peril of his
own; but there would have been no hope of success had he
been allowed to plead the case. He might have surpassed
Choate or Webster in power—a thousand physicians might
have sworn that Capt. Brown was insane, it would have been
all to no purpose; neither eloquence nor testimony could have
prevailed. Slavery was the idol of Virginia, and pardon and life
to Brown meant condemnation and death to slavery. He had
practically illustrated a truth stranger than fiction,—a truth
higher than Virginia had ever known,—a truth more noble and
beautiful than Jefferson ever wrote. He had evinced a
conception of the sacredness and value of liberty which
transcended in sublimity that of her own Patrick Henry and
made even his fire-flashing sentiment of “Liberty or Death”
seem dark and tame and selfish. Henry loved liberty for
himself, but this man loved liberty for all men, and for those
most despised and scorned, as well as for those most esteemed
and honored. Just here was the true glory of John Brown’s
mission. It was not for his own freedom that he was thus ready
to lay down his life, for with Paul he could say, “I was born
free.” No chain had bound his ankle, no yoke had galled his
neck. History has no better illustration of pure, disinterested
benevolence. It was not Caucasian for Caucasian—white man
for white man; not rich man for rich man, but Caucasian for
Ethiopian—white man for black man—rich man for poor man
—the man admitted and respected, for the man despised and
rejected. “I want you to understand, gentlemen,” he said to his
persecutors, “that I respect the rights of the poorest and
weakest of the colored people, oppressed by the slave system,
as I do those of the most wealthy and powerful.” In this we
have the key to the whole life and career of the man. Than in
this sentiment humanity has nothing more touching, reason
nothing more noble, imagination nothing more sublime; and if
we could reduce all the religions of the world to one essence
we could find in it nothing more divine. It is much to be
regretted that some great artist, in sympathy with the spirit of
the occasion, had not been present when these and similar
words were spoken. The situation was thrilling. An old man in
the center of an excited and angry crowd, far away from home,
in an enemy’s country—with no friend near—overpowered,
defeated, wounded, bleeding—covered with reproaches—his
brave companions nearly all dead—his two faithful sons stark
and cold by his side—reading his death-warrant in his fast-
oozing blood and increasing weakness as in the faces of all
around him—yet calm, collected, brave, with a heart for any
fate—using his supposed dying moments to explain his course
and vindicate his cause: such a subject would have been at
once an inspiration and a power for one of the grandest
historical pictures ever painted….
With John Brown, as with every other man fit to die for a
cause, the hour of his physical weakness was the hour of his
moral strength—the hour of his defeat was the hour of his
triumph—the moment of his capture was the crowning victory
of his life. With the Alleghany mountains for his pulpit, the
country for his church and the whole civilized world for his
audience, he was a thousand times more effective as a
preacher than as a warrior, and the consciousness of this fact
was the secret of his amazing complacency. Mighty with the
sword of steel, he was mightier with the sword of the truth,
and with this sword he literally swept the horizon. He was
more than a match for all the Wises, Masons, Vallandinghams
and Washingtons, who could rise against him. They could kill
him, but they could not answer him.
In studying the character and works of a great man, it is
always desirable to learn in what he is distinguished from
others, and what have been the causes of this difference. Such
men as he whom we are now considering, come on to the
theater of life only at long intervals. It is not always easy to
explain the exact and logical causes that produce them, or the
subtle influences which sustain them, at the immense heights
where we sometimes find them; but we know that the hour and
the man are seldom far apart, and that here, as elsewhere, the
demand may in some mysterious way, regulate the supply. A
great iniquity, hoary with age, proud and defiant, tainting the
whole moral atmosphere of the country, subjecting both
church and state to its control, demanded the startling shock
which John Brown seemed especially inspired to give it.
Apart from this mission there was nothing very remarkable
about him. He was a wool-dealer, and a good judge of wool, as
a wool-dealer ought to be. In all visible respects he was a man
like unto other men. No outward sign of Kansas or Harper’s
Ferry was about him. As I knew him, he was an even-
tempered man, neither morose, malicious nor misanthropic,
but kind, amiable, courteous, and gentle in his intercourse with
men. His words were few, well chosen and forcible. He was a
good business man, and a good neighbor. A good friend, a
good citizen, a good husband and father: a man apparently in
every way calculated to make a smooth and pleasant path for
himself through the world. He loved society, he loved little
children, he liked music, and was fond of animals. To no one
was the world more beautiful or life more sweet. How then as
I have said shall we explain his apparent indifference to life? I
can find but one answer, and that is, his intense hatred to
oppression. I have talked with many men, but I remember
none, who seemed so deeply excited upon the subject of
slavery as he. He would walk the room in agitation at mention
of the word. He saw the evil through no mist or haze, but in a
light of infinite brightness, which left no line of its ten
thousand horrors out of sight. Law, religion, learning, were
interposed in its behalf in vain. His law in regard to it was that
which Lord Brougham described, as “the law above all the
enactments of human codes, the same in all time, the same
throughout the world—the law unchangeable and eternal—the
law written by the finger of God on the human heart—that law
by which property in man is, and ever must remain, a wild and
guilty phantasy.”
Against truth and right, legislative enactments were to his
mind mere cobwebs—the pompous emptiness of human pride
—the pitiful outbreathings of human nothingness. He used to
say “whenever there is a right thing to be done, there is a ‘thus
saith the Lord’ that it shall be done.”
It must be admitted that Brown assumed tremendous
responsibility in making war upon the peaceful people of
Harper’s Ferry, but it must be remembered also that in his eye
a slave-holding community could not be peaceable, but was, in
the nature of the case, in one incessant state of war. To him
such a community was not more sacred than a band of robbers:
it was the right of any one to assault it by day or night. He saw
no hope that slavery would ever be abolished by moral or
political means: “he knew,” he said, “the proud and hard hearts
of the slave-holders, and that they never would consent to give
up their slaves, till they felt a big stick about their heads.”
It was five years before this event at Harper’s Ferry, while the
conflict between freedom and slavery was waxing hotter and
hotter with every hour, that the blundering statesmanship of
the National Government repealed the Missouri compromise,
and thus launched the territory of Kansas as a prize to be
battled for between the North and the South. The remarkable
part taken in this contest by Brown has been already referred
to, and it doubtless helped to prepare him for the final tragedy,
and though it did not by any means originate the plan, it
confirmed him in it and hastened its execution.
During his four years’ service in Kansas it was my good
fortune to see him often. On his trips to and from the territory
he sometimes stopped several days at my house, and at one
time several weeks. It was on this last occasion that liberty had
been victorious in Kansas, and he felt that he must hereafter
devote himself to what he considered his larger work. It was
the theme of all his conversation, filling his nights with dreams
and his days with visions. An incident of his boyhood may
explain, in some measure, the intense abhorrence he felt to
slavery. He had for some reason been sent into the State of
Kentucky, where he made the acquaintance of a slave boy,
about his own age, of whom he became very fond. For some
petty offense this boy was one day subjected to a brutal
beating. The blows were dealt with an iron shovel and fell fast
and furiously upon his slender body. Born in a free State and
unaccustomed to such scenes of cruelty, young Brown’s pure
and sensitive soul revolted at the shocking spectacle and at
that early age he swore eternal hatred to slavery. After years
never obliterated the impression, and he found in this early
experience an argument against contempt for small things. It is
true that the boy is the father of the man. From the acorn
comes the oak. The impression of a horse’s foot in the sand
suggested the art of printing. The fall of an apple intimated the
law of gravitation. A word dropped in the woods of
Vincennes, by royal hunters, gave Europe and the world a
“William the Silent,” and a thirty years’ war. The beating of a
Hebrew bondsman, by an Egyptian, created a Moses, and the
infliction of a similar outrage on a helpless slave boy in our
own land may have caused, forty years afterwards, a John
Brown and a Harper’s Ferry Raid.
Most of us can remember some event or incident which has at
some time come to us, and made itself a permanent part of our
lives. Such an incident came to me in the year 1847. I had then
the honor of spending a day and a night under the roof of a
man, whose character and conversation made a very deep
impression on my mind and heart; and as the circumstance
does not lie entirely out of the range of our present
observations, you will pardon for a moment a seeming
digression. The name of the person alluded to had been several
times mentioned to me, in a tone that made me curious to see
him and to make his acquaintance. He was a merchant, and our
first meeting was at his store—a substantial brick building,
giving evidence of a flourishing business. After a few minutes’
detention here, long enough for me to observe the neatness and
order of the place, I was conducted by him to his residence
where I was kindly received by his family as an expected
guest. I was a little disappointed at the appearance of this
man’s house, for after seeing his fine store, I was prepared to
see a fine residence; but this logic was entirely contradicted by
the facts. The house was a small, wooden one, on a back street
in a neighborhood of laboring men and mechanics, respectable
enough, but not just the spot where one would expect to find
the home of a successful merchant. Plain as was the outside,
Another random document with
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 [762] Lansd. MSS. 70, ff. 55, 187.
[763] Harl. MSS., 306, f. 233, 3rd May 1594.
[764] 5 Eliz. c. 5.
[765] State Papers, Dom., cvii, 68.
[766] Ibid., cxlvii, 21, 22.
[767] Ibid., ccl, 33. This paper bears a note by Burghley, ‘Engl.
shippes allowed money for ther tonag sȳce 22 Eliz.’ It has been
shown that the custom, as a mark of royal approbation, was much
older than Elizabeth, but it may have been made a right from
about 1580.
[768] Ibid., cl, 96.
[769] State Papers, Dom., ccliv, 33.
[770] Ibid., cclxii, 126.
[771] The Admiralty Court.
[772] State Papers, Dom., cxxxvi, 35. When the Pelican, or as
she was afterwards called, the Golden Hind, returned from her
famous voyage round the world she was placed in a dock, filled in
with earth at Deptford, and remained there as one of the shows of
London for nearly a century. There is an estimate for works to the
amount of £370 for this purpose (Add. MSS. 9294, f. 68), but it
does not appear that this plan, which included a brick wall, roof,
etc., was ever fully carried out. In the Navy accounts only £67, 7s
10d for her repairs, £35, 8s 8d for a wall of earth round her, and
£14, 13s 4d for preparing the ship for the Queen’s visit are
entered.
[773] State Papers, Dom., ccxxxviii, 142.
[774] State Papers, Dom., cxxxi, 61.
[775] Ibid., cxlix, 58.
[776] Ibid., ccxxxiii, 13, and ccxxxix, 44.
[777] State Papers, Dom., lxxxiii, 37.
[778] State Papers, Dom., cxx, 54.
[779] Lansd. MSS. 142, f. 182.
[780] State Papers, Dom., cli, 6 (1581).
[781] Ibid., ccxlviii, 80.
 [782] Malyne, Lex Mercatoria p. 200, (ed. 1622).
[783] State Papers, Dom., xi, 27.
[784] Ibid., viii, 36. Eventually £100 was remitted.
[785] Ibid., xxxviii, 8.
[786] Ibid., xxviii, 3.
[787] Harl. MSS., 168, f. 248.
[788] State Papers, Dom., Eliz. Add. xxii.
[789] State Papers, Dom., xcvi, p. 267. London is described as,
‘The river of Thames wherein is contained Maulden, Colchester,
Bricklingsey, Lee, Feversham, Rochester, and the creekes
belonging.’
[790] State Papers, Dom., cvii, 68.
[791] Ibid., clvi, 45.
[792] Harl. MSS. 4228, f., 45.
[793] Cott. MSS., Otho. E. IX, f., 162.
[794] State Papers, Dom., ccxxii, 57.
[795] Lansd. MSS. 81, f. 88.
[796] State Papers, Dom., cclxii, 21.
[797] Ibid., xi, 27. This is a return of ‘mariners and sailors’ only,
and does not include fishermen. London is omitted, and from the
numbers, e.g., Norfolk 178, Northumberland (with Newcastle) 37,
is probably only of men at that time ashore.
[798] Ibid., xxxviii, 8, 9, 14, 23, 28; xxxix, 17. This is also
incomplete but includes fishermen.
[799] Ibid., lxxi, 74 1; lxxiii, 15 1, 48.
[800] Ibid., clvi, 45. Includes seamen, fishermen, and masters
of ships.
[801] And 311 at sea.
[802] Including Liverpool.
[803] Including 957 watermen.
[804] State Papers, Dom., cclxxiv, Feb.
[805] State Papers, Foreign, 29th Dec. 1568, and Ibid. 1573-
1279.
 [806] ‘Releasing them for bribes and billes of dette.’
[807] Acts of the Privy Council, 29th April 1576.
[808] State Papers, Dom., cxxxv, p. 240.
[809] State Papers, Dom. Add., xxix, 126.
[810] Lansd. MSS., 148, f. 13.
[811] Add. MSS., 11405, ff. 91, 103.
[812] Lansd. MSS. 148, f. 1 and State Papers, Dom., cv, 18.
[813] State Papers, Dom., cxxxix, 54. In 1603 these owners
were still patiently petitioning James I.
[814] State Papers, Dom., cclxv, 13.
[815] Near Vigo.
[816] Ibid., cxci, 7.
[817] Lansd. MSS., 115, f. 196.
[818] Appendix D.
[819] State Papers, Dom., cxxxiii, 7.
[820] State Papers, Dom., cclxxxvi, 11.
[821] Harl. MSS., 253, f. 10.
[822] Ibid., 253, f. 18, and Exch. War. for Issues, 17th Dec.
1597.
[823] State Papers, Dom., ccxxviii, 1.
[824] Cott. MSS., Otho E., VIII, f. 169.
[825] Lansd. MSS., 61, f. 184.
[826] State Papers, Dom., ccxxvii, 1.
[827] Breton.
[828] The last was of 12 barrels of 31½ gallons (old measure).
[829] State Papers, Dom., ccxx. Stow says that Hawkyns
introduced nettings. They went out of use for a time.
[830] Harl. MSS. 306, f. 68.
[831] Pipe Office Accounts, 2210, 2212.
[832] Ibid., 2232.
[833] The Jesus of Lubeck and the Revenge.
 [834] Ralegh, Discourse of Ships; Monson, Naval Tracts; Duro,
Disq. Nauticas.
[835] Monson says that in 1599 a fleet was prepared for sea in
twelve days, and ‘the Queen was never more dreaded abroad for
anything she ever did.’
[836] Add. MSS. 5752, f. 136.
[837] Add. MSS. 19889; The Jewell of Artes, 1604, f. 135 et
seq.
[838] Harl. MSS. 309-51.
[839] Add. MSS. 9294, Nov. 1610.
[840] State Papers, Dom., Jas. I., cl, 83, 84.
[841] Whole or partial external double planking.
[842] Harl. MSS. 2301.
[843] Paul Hentzner.
[844] On 20th July 1613 a warrant was issued to pay wages
owing since 1608.
[845] Add. MSS. 9302, f. 9.
[846] State Papers, Dom., cl, 20.
[847] Ibid., xl, f. 70.
[848] A Dialogical Discourse of Marine Affairs, by Nath. Boteler,
Harl. MSS. 1341. Partly printed in 1685 but of this period.
[849] Ibid.
[850] State Papers, Dom., clxxxii, 29.
[851] Rot. Pat., 26th April.
[852] State Papers, Dom., xc, 98.
[853] Ibid., xxii, 15.
[854] Ibid., cxii, 101.
[855] Ibid.
[856] State Papers, Dom., cxvi, 86.
[857] Ibid., ciii, 104.
[858] Ibid., lxxxix, 33.
[859] State Papers, Dom., xli, f. 17.
 [860] Ibid., xl, 87.
[861] Cott. MSS., Julius F. III, f, 15.
[862] State Papers, Dom., xli, f. 25. See also Bishop
Goodman’s description of Mansell’s temper in Court of King
James I, I, 56.
[863] State Papers, Dom., cxii, 101.
[864] Coke MSS., Cal. Hist. MSS., Com. Report, xii, App., pt. i,
41.
[865] Cott. MSS., Julius F., III, ff. 98, 249, 250, 252.
[866] The report of the commissioners will be found in State
Papers, Dom. Jas. I, xli; the sworn depositions on which that
report was based are preserved in Cott. MSS., Julius F., III. The
evidence in question is of value for to-day, and may be
instructively compared with the reports of the committee of
investigation of 1803-5 on the again astonishing condition of
naval administration. It is to be hoped that the Navy Records
Society will print the Cottonian MS.
[867] Gardiner, History of England, II, 11.
[868] Gardiner, History of England, III, 200.
[869] State Papers, Dom., clxxxii, 28.
[870] Pipe Office Accounts, 2257, 2259, 2260.
[871] The Commissioners acted by Letters Patent of 12th
February 1619. They were Sir Lionel Cranfield, Sir Thos. Weston,
Sir John Wolstenholme, Sir Thos. Smith, Nicholas Fortescue,
John Osborne, Francis Goston, Richard Sutton, Wm. Pitt, Sir
John Coke, Thos. Norreys, and Wm. Burrell.
[872] State Papers, Dom., c and ci, 3.
[873] State Papers, Dom., cli, 35.
[874] Ibid., clx, 43.
[875] State Papers, Dom., clvi, 12.
[876] There are few separate dockyard amounts for these
years.
[877] Includes £4734 for a naval pageant on the Thames at the
marriage of the Princess Elizabeth.
[878] Exclusive of Algiers fleet £6446.
 [879] Exclusive of Algiers fleet £17,665.
[880] Inclusive of £9667 repairs to Algiers fleet.
[881] A fleet was sent to Spain for Charles, and £9100, owing
from 1615, paid.
[882] State Papers, Dom., clxxv, 85, 3000 hammocks were to
be supplied in this fleet.
[883] Cott. MSS., Otho E, VIII, f, 316.
[884] Ibid.
[885] State Papers, Dom., lxxxvi, 101.
[886] Ibid., xc, 24.
[887] R. Playfair, The Scourge of Christendom, p. 34.
[888] Monson, Naval Tracts.
[889] State Papers, Dom., cli, 21.
[890] State Papers, Colonial, March 1620.
[891] State Papers, Dom., civ, 65.
[892] England’s Way to Win Wealth, Lond. 1614, and The
Trade’s Increase, Lond. 1615.
[893] The Dutch Company is said to have distributed in twenty-
one years, ending with 1622, dividends of 30,000,000 florins on a
capital of some 6,000,000 florins, (Irving, Commerce of India).
[894] Egerton MSS., 2100.
[895] State Papers, Dom., xxii, 22.
[896] Ibid., cxix, 118, 1 and 121.
[897] State Papers, Dom. Jas. I cxxxiii, 70; Ibid., clviii, 54; Ibid.,
Chas. I xiii, 56. Pipe Office Accounts; Add. MSS., 9294 p. 505;
Ibid., 9295, Pett’s Autobiography; Ibid., 9297, p. 359. As usual all
these dimensions, especially tonnage, differ somewhat in the
various papers.
[898] The Nonpareil rebuilt and renamed.
[899] The Hope rebuilt and renamed. These ships were not
completed till 1605.
[900] The Swiftsure rebuilt and renamed.
[901] The Ark Royal rebuilt and renamed.
 [902] The Golden Lion rebuilt and renamed.
[903] For convenience the Merhonour, Dreadnought, and
Defiance are placed under one date, but they were in hand from
1611 till 1614.
[904] Or Convertive. This was the Destiny built for Sir Walter
Ralegh before his last voyage, and afterwards bought or
confiscated into the Navy.
[905] The Rainbow and Antelope were in dry dock some three
years (Pipe Office Accounts).
[906] State Papers, Dom., clxxiv, 56.
[907] Cott, MSS. Julius F. III, f. 293.
[908] Ibid., Otho E., VII, f. 155. Letter, Pett to Baker, 10th April
1603.
[909] Coke MSS., Cal. I, 114.
[910] In the literal but not later sense of ‘three decker.’ She had
two full batteries besides an upper deck armed. In 1634 the
authorities of the Trinity House, who, through a long series of
years appear to have always chosen the wrong view, wrote, ‘The
art or wit of man cannot build a ship fit for service, with three tier
of ordnance.’ Three years later the first ‘three-decker’ was afloat.
[911] Add MSS., 9294, Nov. 1610.
[912] Pipe Office Accounts, 2249.
[913] State Papers, Dom., ci, 4.
[914] Pipe Office Accounts, 2248.
[915] State Papers, Dom., xli, f. 39.
[916] Ibid., clxi, 68. The classification is that of the State Paper.
[917] State Papers, Dom., clviii, 56.
[918] Ibid., and cviii, 58.
[919] Harl. MSS., 2301. About 1625 or earlier, and by Sir Hen.
Manwayring. It was printed in 1644 under the title of The Sea-
man’s Dictionary. There is another MS. copy among the State
Papers (S. P. Dom., Chas. I, cxxvii), called A Brief Abstract ... of
all Parts and Things belonging to a Ship. The three versions differ
but little from each other.
[920] Add. MSS., 9299, f. 48.
 [921] Pipe Office Accounts, 2248.
[922] Ibid., 2252.
[923] Pipe Office Accounts, 2261.
[924] Ibid., 2256.
[925] Ibid., 2257, 2258.
[926] Ibid., 2260.
[927] Ibid., 2258.
[928] Ibid., 2261, 2262.
[929] Pipe Office Accounts, 2262.
[930] Add. MSS., 9297, f. 25.
[931] Cott. MSS., Otho E. VII, ff. 219, 220.
[932] State Papers, Dom., cxxxvi.
[933] State Papers, Dom., cix, 139, 1.
[934] Ibid., cxxxiii, 70.
[935] State Papers, Dom., Eliz. ccxxxvii, f. 119. Although
calendared under Elizabeth many of the papers in this volume are
copies of documents relating to the reigns of James I and Charles
I. See also M. A. Lower, Contributions to Literature, for an article
on the Kent and Sussex gun foundries.
[936] Cott. MSS., Otho E, VII, f. 78.
[937] State Papers, Dom., Jas. I, cxxviii, 94.
[938] Yonge’s Diary, Camd. Soc.
[939] State Papers, Dom., xvii, 103.
[940] Ibid., cix, 139, I.
[941] Add. MSS., 9302. f. 9.
[942] Coke MSS., Cal. I, 105.
[943] Cott. MSS., Otho E. VII, f. 263.
[944] Cott. MSS., Otho E. VII, f. 263.
[945] Mr Del Mar (Hist. of the Precious Metals, p. 209), quoting
Tooke and D’Avenant, estimates the stock of gold and silver coin
in England and Wales in 1560 at £1,100,000 and in 1600 at
£4,000,000.
 [946] Martin, Hist. de la France, X, 446.
[947] Kolb, Condition of Nations, p. 209.
[948] Gardiner, Hist. of England, X, 222.
[949] Parl. Debates, 31st Aug. 1660.
[950] A writer of the reign of James I estimated that there were
37,000 Dutch seamen engaged in the North Sea fisheries alone;
Ralegh put the number at 50,000 men.
[951] State Papers, Dom., Charles I, vi, 23. The original
purpose had been to take 2000 English veterans in the service of
the States-General, leaving the recruits in their place; but the men
were sent before any arrangement had been come to with the
Dutch, who finally refused to assent to it. The proceeding was
characteristic of Buckingham’s hopeful belief in the immediate
acceptance of his measures.
[952] ‘The number of lame, impotent, and unable men unfitt for
actual service is very great.’ (Ogle to Conway, 18th June 1625.)
[953] Ibid., ix, 15, Blundell to Buckingham.
[954] There were twelve king’s ships in the fleet (Pipe Office
Accounts, 2425).
[955] State Papers, Dom., ix, 39, Cecil to Conway.
[956] Ibid., xi, 49.
[957] Levet’s Relation of Cadiz Voyage, Coke MSS.
[958] State Papers, Dom., viii, 41, Coke to Buckingham.
[959] Voyage to Cadiz in 1625 (Camden Society).
[960] Sir Allen Apsley, also lieutenant of the Tower, remained
victualler with Sir Sampson Darrell till 1630.
[961] State Papers, Dom., xviii, 63, 1.
[962] Ibid., 75.
[963] Ibid., xii, 81.
[964] Ibid., xx, 25. February 1626.
[965] State Papers, Dom., xxii. 33, and Coke MSS., 4th March
1626.
[966] Coke MSS., 27th February 1626.
[967] State Papers, Dom., xiii, 67 and 73.
 [968] Ibid., xxiv, 9, and Coke MSS., 12th April 1626.
[969] State Papers, Dom., xxiv, 24.
[970] Ibid., xxv, 45.
[971] Ibid., xxiv, 33. Pennington to Buckingham.
[972] State Papers, Dom., xxiv, 65.
[973] Ibid., cxcvi, 32.
[974] Proc., April, 1626.
[975] State Papers, Dom., xxxv, 19, and Add. MSS., 9339, f. 24.
Six rates of vessels are classified. All carry trumpeters, and the
first four drummers and fifers. Both lieutenants and corporals
were employed in 1588, but afterwards discontinued; the Lion had
a lieutenant in 1587, and perhaps it was not uncommon for a
large ship on war service to carry an officer of that rank.
[976] According to rate of ship.
[977] Only to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd rates—‘a place not formerly
allowed.’
[978] ‘Not formerly allowed’; his duties were akin to those of a
musketry instructor of to-day.
[979] Egerton MSS., 2541, f. 13.
[980] State Papers, Dom., xxx, 48.
[981] Ibid., 75.
[982] Ibid., xxxiii, 27; July 1626.
[983] Ibid., xxxv, 44.
[984] State Papers, Dom., xxxv, 102 and 109, 1, Willoughby to
Nicholas.
[985] Ibid., xxxvi, 60.
[986] Ibid., xxxvii, 57.
[987] Ibid., xxxix, 78.
[988] Ibid., xli, 56, (1626).
[989] State Papers, Dom., 8 and 77, Philpott to Nichols.
[990] Ibid., xlii, 100.
[991] 12th Dec. 1626.
[992] State Papers, Dom., xlii, 137.
 [993] State Papers, Dom., xlix, 68; January 1627.
[994] Ibid., liii, 9 and 10; February 1627.
[995] Ibid., lxiv, 76, Mervyn to Buckingham.
[996] Ibid., lxxxviii, 62; 1627.
[997] State Papers, Dom., lxxxv, 61.
[998] Ibid., lxxxvi, 42.
[999] Ibid., lxxxvii, 37; December 1627.
[1000] Ibid., lxxx, 83 and 86.
[1001] Coke MSS., 17th September 1627.
[1002] State Papers, Dom., xc, 38.
[1003] Ibid., 75.
[1004] Ibid., xcii, 73; February 1628.
[1005] State Papers, Dom., xcviii, 26.
[1006] Ibid., 29, March 1628, Gorges to Buckingham.
[1007] Ibid., cv, 80; 1628.
[1008] State Papers, Dom., cv, 85.
[1009] Ibid., cviii, 18.
[1010] Add. MSS., 9297, f. 118.
[1011] Coke MSS., 3rd June 1628.
[1012] State Papers, Dom., cxiv, 48.
[1013] State Papers, Dom., cxx, 27; November 1628.
[1014] Ibid., cxviii, 78.
[1015] Ibid., cxlix, 90; September.
[1016] Ibid., 92.
[1017] State Papers, Dom., clxxii, 42; August 1630.
[1018] Ibid., clxxv, 75.
[1019] Ibid., ccxviii, 52.
[1020] Ibid., ccxlvi, 85.
[1021] State Papers, Dom., cclxxii, 58; July 1634.
[1022] Ibid., cclxxix, 106, Advice of a Seaman, &c., by Nath.
Knott.
 [1023] State Papers, Dom., ccxcviii, 5; September 1635.
[1024] Add. MSS., 9301, f. 54.
[1025] State Papers, Dom., cccxxvi, 10.
[1026] Ibid., cccxxxvii, 15.
[1027] Ibid., cccxxxviii, 39.
[1028] Aud. Off. Dec. Accounts, s.v. ‘Navy.’
[1029] State Papers, Dom., cccliii, f. 95.
[1030] Ibid., ccclxv, 28.
[1031] The sale of gunpowder was at this time a crown
monopoly (Fœdera, xx, 107). Charles’s sad and picturesque
dignity of appearance did not imply such a delicate sense of
honour as to prevent him turning a penny by forcing contraband
of war through the fleet of a friendly power and supplying the
privateers who were the scourge of English commerce.
[1032] In the eighteenth century he would have had a hole-and-
corner trial, undefended and ignorant of the law, before the
associates, and perhaps friends, of the man whom he had
assaulted.
[1033] State Papers, Dom., lvi, 101, (1627), and ccccvii, 32,
(1638).
[1034] State Papers, Dom., ccccxxxi, 30.
[1035] With the exception of the Amboyna affair, a case once
more of the ‘prancing proconsul,’ the Dutch showed, throughout
this century, exemplary patience and moderation under a long
course of provocation, in affairs of salutes, right of search, and
seizures of ships, several instances of which there will be
occasion to mention. The rulers of the United Netherlands chose
to consider wider aims and more urgent needs than revenge for
insults to their flag, however flagrant, but when the Navigation Act
of 1651 brought matters to a crisis the Dutch must have felt that
they had a long score to settle.
[1036] State Papers, Dom., cccclxxxii, 13.
[1037] State Papers, Dom., ccccxciv, 2nd Jan. 1643.
[1038] Public Acts, 17th Charles I.
[1039] Preface to Calendar of State Papers, 1652-3, p. xii. In
other prefaces Mrs Green refers to the same point.
 [1040] The number eventually serving that year was nearer
20,000, but this included some thousands of soldiers.
[1041] Infra p. 244.
[1042] State Papers, Dom., cii, 72.
[1043] Ibid., cclxiv, f. 33.
[1044] Ibid., cccvi, 87; 1635. In another copy of this paper (Add.
MSS., 9301, f. 57), they suggest the sensible remedy of a register
at each custom house, in which agreements might be entered.
[1045] State Papers, Dom., cccxcviii, 23 and 40.
[1046] Fœdera, xx, 278; 25th November 1638.
[1047] State Papers, Dom., cclxxi, 12.
[1048] Digby’s Voyage (Camden Society), p. 9.
[1049] State Papers, Dom., clv, 31 and cclxxxii, 135.
 [1050] State Papers, Dom., xviii, 59.
[1051] But only applicable in port.
[1052] Add. MSS., 18772.
[1053] State Papers, Dom., ccclii, 78.
[1054] State Papers, Dom., cccxii, 90.
[1055] Ibid., ccclii, 78.
[1056] Ibid., 81.
[1057] Add. MSS., 9301, f. 156.
[1058] I am indebted to the courtesy of Admiral Sir R. Vesey
Hamilton, K.C.B., President of the Royal Naval College, for
permission to examine these books.
[1059] In receipt of yearly pensions.
[1060] For eight months ending 4th January 1644.
[1061] For three and a half months.
[1062] For a year.
[1063] State Papers, Dom., cclxxix, 106.
[1064] Reasons, &c., dated 17th June. The officers who sign
threaten, unless terms are made with the King, to blockade the
river.
[1065] Various authorities give 9, 10, and 11 ships; the
discrepancies may most probably be explained by supposing that
one or two of those which left the Downs turned back before
reaching Holland.
[1066] Clarendon, IV, 574, ed. 1888.
[1067] Warburton, Memoirs of Prince Rupert, III, 262.
[1068] Supra p. 207. The Speedwell was lost in November
1624, after this list was drawn up. There were also some worn out
Elizabethan ships remaining, the Crane, Answer, Moon, and
Merlin, which the compiler did not consider of sufficient
importance to include.
[1069] Pipe Office Accounts, 2425.
[1070] State Papers, Dom., lxvii, 47.
 [1071] Pipe Office Accounts, 2428.
[1072] E.g. the Sovereign of the Seas, which, until she was cut
down, was the largest most ornate, and most useless ship afloat.
[1073] State Papers, Dom., lxxi, 65. These remarks must be
read in conjunction with those relating to the lack of victuals and
stores, and want of competent and willing service on the part of
officers and men, made in Part I, and for which Buckingham’s
incapacity was principally responsible. But his incapacity was, in
this matter, not the only nor even the main factor, since, when in
1627 he applied to Gyffard, Sir Sackville Trevor, and Hervey for
suggestions as to freeing the narrow seas from pirates, they
agreed that the existing vessels were too slow to catch any but
others of their own type (State Papers, Dom., liv, 9, 11-13). In
October 1625, the Channel squadron consisted of ten English
men-of-war and merchantmen and four Dutch ships, a larger
force than had probably ever been employed before for merely
protective duties. The conditions were as bad or worse, after his
death.
[1074] State Papers, Dom., cclxxvii, 43.
[1075] Ibid., xi, 62, 63. Assuming in these instances the rake,
fore and aft, to have been about three-eighths of the keel length.
[1076] Ibid., lvi, 56.
[1077] Ibid., lvii, 42.
[1078] Ibid., cccxxxviii, 39.
[1079] Other prizes, which were nominally King’s ships, but
which only served during one of the big expeditions or for a few
weeks in the Channel, were the Mary Roan, St George, St Peter,
Pelican, Mackerel, Nightingale, St James, Little Seahorse, and
Hope. Where special references are not given, the general
authorities are State Papers, Dom., ccxv, 108; ccxxviii, f, 38;
ccxliv, 23; ccclxviii, 121; Add. MSS., 9294, f, 505; 9300, f, 54;
9336, ff, 63, 64; 18,037 and 18,772. As in previous instances the
measurements frequently differ in these lists, and can only be
taken as approximately correct.
[1080] From greatest breadth to upper edge of keel.
[1081] State Papers, Dom., x, 25.
[1082] Ibid., xxiv, 4. The St Mary was given to Sir John
Chudleigh in 1629.
 [1083] State Papers, Dom., xxiv, 62.
[1084] Ibid., xxi, 72, and Aud. Off. Dec. Accounts, 1699, 64.
[1085] Ibid., xxxvii, 95.
[1086] Called the 1st, 2nd-10th whelps. Two differed slightly in
size from the others.
[1087] Aud. Off. Dec. Accounts, 1699, 66.
[1088] A Dutch-built ship bought for Richelieu’s newly created
fleet, but taken in the Texel (State Papers, Dom., lxxxiii, 20 and
lxxxvi, 64).
[1089] Captured Dunkirkers. The measurements of the
Nicodemus, Nonsuch, Phœnix, and Elizabeth, are from a paper in
the Pepys MSS., quoted in Derrick’s Memoirs of the Royal Navy.
The Swan was lost off Guernsey in October 1638.
[1090] Bought in 1642 (Aud. Off. Dec. Accounts, 1706, 89).
[1091] Built in 1646 as a privateer, and employed as such by
Warwick (half share), Pett, Swanley, and others; bought by the
Parliament from 20th Jan. 1649, when she was appraised at
£2081 (State Papers, Dom., Interreg., xxiii, 119). The dimensions
are from Harl. MSS., 4161. She is popularly said to have been the
first frigate built in an English yard, but it will be seen from the
above list that four others, of a still more pronounced frigate type,
were launched in the same year.
[1092] The first seven vessels were prizes captured during the
civil war and taken into the Navy, in which they remained long
enough to be included in the Commonwealth lists; the Globe, and
Hector were merchantmen bought into the service. For the names
of others see Aud. Off. Dec. Accounts, 1812, 443 A.
[1093] State Papers, Dom., xxi, 72.
[1094] Supra, p. 54. Mr R. C. Leslie (Old Sea Wings, Ways, and
Words, p. 49 et seq.) believes all the smaller craft of old, and
some large ones, to have been clinker-built.
[1095] State Papers, Dom., lviii, 25.
[1096] Ibid., cxxi, 41.
[1097] Ibid., ccclxv, 17; 1637.
[1098] State Papers, Dom., ccclxiii, 29. It is difficult even in
these days of mechanical appliances to keep the ports completely
water-tight in heavy weather. Ports were fastened by a bar of
wood passed through a ring on the inside; but this could not have
been very effectual, and it was usual to drive oakum into the
seams of the ports when bad weather was expected
(Nomenclator Navalis).
[1099] The Dutchman was probably Cornelius Drebbel, who
claimed to have solved the secret of perpetual motion, and to
have invented a submarine boat. His name occurs several times
in the State Papers as receiving rewards for various inventions
and appliances, and in 1628 he was employed in the preparation
of some especial fireships and ‘engines for fireworks.’
[1100] Aud. Off. Dec. Accounts, 1703, 73.
[1101] The original waistcloths of the Prince were of silk;
ordinary waistcloths, the precursors of the later boarding nettings,
were still of red kersey listed with canvas.
[1102] State Papers, Dom., ccliv, 25.
[1103] Ibid., ccxliv, 77, 78.
[1104] State Papers, Dom., cclxvii, 55. Pennington said nothing
about the crew; he was used to such crews. But Sir Hen.
Manwayring remarked that he had never seen a ship so
wretchedly manned; that, except the officers, there was scarcely a
seaman on board, and that they were ‘men of poor and wretched
person, without clothes or ability of body, tradesmen, some that
never were at sea, a fletcher, glover, or the like,’ (Add. MSS.,
9294, f. 489).
[1105] Ibid., cclxviii, 47.
[1106] Ibid., cclxxiii, 49, 1 and 50.
[1107] State Papers, Dom., ccxli, 16; 1633.
[1108] Ibid., ccxxviii, f. 63a.
[1109] Ibid., cclxxviii, 41, I.
[1110] A True Description of His Majesty’s Most Royal and
Stately Ship, etc., 2nd edit., London, 1638.
[1111] State Papers, Dom., cclxxiii, 25.
[1112] Ibid., cclxiv, ff. 67 a and 87 a.
[1113] Storekeeper at Deptford; one would suppose a most
unlikely person to be consulted on such a point.
 [1114] State Papers, Dom., cclxxxvi, 44.
[1115] Ibid., cclxxxvii, 73.
[1116] Aud. Off. Dec. Accounts, 1703-77.
[1117] State Papers, Dom., ccxcviii, 20.
[1118] Ibid., ccclxi, 73.
[1119] In the Leopard and Swallow he had himself ordered that
the ports should be eight feet apart (State Papers, Dom., cclx,
86,) although Pennington and other practical seamen urged that
nine feet was the minimum space that should be allowed.
[1120] State Papers, Dom., ccclxxiv, 30, and ccclxxxvii, 87.
[1121] Drakes were fired with full, periers with low, charges of
powder.
[1122] State Papers, Dom., ccclxxxvii, 87.
[1123] Add. MSS., 9297, f. 345.
[1124] State Papers, Dom., cclxxix, 27.
[1125] State Papers, Dom., cccxix, 4, 15. When ships were in
commission captains were in the habit of cutting windows and
scuttles in a vessel’s side if it suited their convenience.
[1126] Ibid., cclxxxiii, 1.
[1127] Aud. Off. Dec. Accounts, 1703, 78.
[1128] State Papers, Dom., ccccxcviii, 48 and 51.
[1129] Ibid., xxxiii, 108; 1626.
[1130] Ibid., 78.
[1131] State Papers, Dom., Elizabeth, ccxxxvii, f. 60 (list of
French and Spanish ships before Rochelle). There were thirty-six
Spaniards, and eleven of them were of 1000 tons apiece, the
others being nearly as large.
[1132] State Papers, Dom., Charles I, clxiv; 9th April 1630.
[1133] Ibid., cxcviii, 84.
[1134] Barbou, Hist. de la Marine Française.
[1135] State Papers, Dom., lv, 39; 1627. By John Wells. I
cannot profess to explain how all the figures here given are
obtained.
 [1136] I.e., 63½ x 26 ⅙ x 11 ÷ 100 = 182 burden and 243 ton
and tonnage (Cf. supra, p. 30, note 2, and p. 132.)
[1137] The planks on the inside of a ship’s frame on the floor.
[1138] This method was adopted during the Commonwealth.
[1139] State Papers, Dom., xxvii, 67.
[1140] State Papers, Dom., xxix, 7.
[1141] Floor, the bottom of a vessel on each side of the
keelson.
[1142] State Papers, Dom., xxix, 10.
[1143] Other papers relating to this question will be found in
State Papers, Dom., xxxii, 119-121; xxxviii, 30, 1; lv, 36; lvii, 92;
and lix, 75.
[1144] State Papers, Dom., ccxxvi, 74. By the old rule the
Sovereign was of 1367 net and 1823 gross tonnage (ibid., ccclxi,
71).
[1145] From outside to outside.
[1146] ‘Withinside the plank.’
[1147] Leaving out the false post, i.e., a piece bolted to the after
edge of the main stern post.
[1148] State Papers, Dom., xvi, and xvii.
[1149] State Papers, Dom., xxxi, 56; xxxii, 29, 71, 72, 1; xxxiii,
3, 1, 70, 1, 120, 129; xxxiv, 31, 98-110; xxxix, 28, 50, 1. North
Wales has nothing larger than thirty tons, and ‘not six persons
who can take charge of a barque as far as Dublin or the Land’s
End.’
[1150] State Papers, Dom., xcii, 45.
[1151] The East India Company possessed this year a fleet of
twenty-seven ships, of 12,250 tons (ibid., cxviii, 76).
[1152] Ibid., cxxxvii, Feb. 1629.
[1153] Ibid., cxxxii, 19, 20; cxxxviii, 4; cclxxxii, 135, (1634).
[1154] State Papers, Dom., xlvii, 22.
[1155] State Papers, Dom., liii, 62.
[1156] Ibid., lxi, 79, 81.
[1157] Ibid., 85, 1.
 [1158] Ibid., lxxx, 77, 1.
[1159] Harl. MSS., 1721, f. 642, and 7018, f. 24.
[1160] State Papers, Dom., cclvii, 29.
[1161] Ibid., cccliii, f. 116.
[1162] Add. MSS., 9302, f. 24.
[1163] State Papers, Dom., xciv, 1.
[1164] Meaning an order on the Treasurer of the Navy.
[1165] State Papers, Dom., iv, July 21.
[1166] Ibid., xxx, 53.
[1167] Specifications relating to Marine Propulsion. London,
1858.
[1168] Ibid.
[1169] Fœdera, xix, 257.
[1170] State Papers, Dom., cclxxii, 72. Perhaps the inventor
was a Mr Philip White (S. P. D. Interreg. May 25, 1658), in which
case it was patented for fourteen years from the 10th of Charles I.
[1171] State Papers, Dom., v, 6, 24, 36. As is well known,
several Englishmen of good family joined the Algerines and other
states. It must have been solely their guidance that brought the
Mediterranean corsairs so far north.
[1172] Ibid., xxv, 71.
[1173] Ibid., xxx, 17, (1626).
[1174] Ibid., xliii, 46, (1626).
[1175] State Papers, Dom., xxxiv, 85, (1626); and lvi, 66,
(1627). We have no figures which enable us to even guess at the
financial loss caused by the Dunkirkers during the first half of the
seventeenth century, but M. Vanderest (Hist. de Jean Bart. 1844),
himself a native of the town and having access to its archives,
estimates the pecuniary injury they caused to England during
forty years of warfare, from 1656, at 350,000,000 livres. Nor does
this computation appear to take into account the higher value of
money during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
[1176] State Papers, Dom., lxx, 8 and 9.
[1177] Ibid., clxii, 41, 82.