[Footnote 79: London, 1894.]
A great deal has been made of the strict audit of the accounts
of Howard's fleet. The Queen, says Froude, 'would give no orders
for money till she had demanded the meaning of every penny that
she was charged.' Why she alone should be held up to obloquy
for this is not clear. Until a very recent period, well within
the last reign, no commanding officer, on a ship being paid off,
could receive the residue of his pay, or get any half-pay at
all, until his 'accounts had been passed.'[80] The same rule
applied to officers in charge of money or stores. It has been
made a further charge against Elizabeth that her officers had to
meet certain expenditure out of their own pockets. That certainly
is not a peculiarity of the sixteenth-century navy. Till less
than fifty years ago the captain of a British man-of-war had
to provide one of the three chronometers used in the navigation
of his ship. Even later than that the articles necessary for
cleaning the ship and everything required for decorating her
were paid for by the officers, almost invariably by the first
lieutenant, or second in command. There must be many officers
still serving who have spent sums, considerable in the aggregate,
of their own money on public objects. Though pressure in this
respect has been much relieved of late, there are doubtless many
who do so still. It is, in fact, a traditional practice in the
British Navy and is not in the least distinctly Elizabethan.
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