Pepys’s house was a part of the Seething Lane front, and that occupied by Sir William Penn was on the north side of the garden, a house which was afterwards occupied by Lord Brouncker.[212] When the new Somerset House was finished, the Navy Office was removed there, and the old buildings in the city were sold and destroyed.
In course of time the work of the navy could not be properly carried out with the old machinery, and, at last, the Admiralty Office, which had largely grown in importance, swallowed up the Navy Office. By an Act of Parliament, 2 William IV., the principal officers and commissioners of the navy were abolished, as were also the commissioners for victualling the navy; and all power and authority was vested in the Admiralty.
I have attempted to give in a few pages as clear an account as possible of the kind of machinery by which the navy was governed, and I now propose to pass rapidly in review a few of the points raised by Pepys. To do more than glance at some of these would require a volume. The “Diary” is filled with information respecting the office and the petty squabbles of the officers, and we obtain from it a gloomy notion of the condition of the navy. In fact, it would be hardly possible to believe the wretched details if we had them from a less trustworthy authority. The whole system of money-getting was unsatisfactory in the extreme, and the officers of the navy were often expected to perform the task of making bricks without straw. The Treasurer, not being able to get money from the Treasury, floated bills, and these were often in very bad repute. We read in the “Diary,” that on August 31st, 1661, the bills were offered to be sold on the Exchange at 10 per cent. loss; and on April 14th, 1663, things were even worse, for it was reported that they were sold at a reduction of 15 per cent. In December of the latter year Pepys could hardly believe the evidence of his ears when he learned the “extraordinary good news,” that the credit of the office was “as good as any merchant’s upon Change;” but these bright days did not last long. Parliament being very dissatisfied with the way in which the money was spent by the officers of the navy, appointed, a few years afterwards, a commission to look into the accounts. This gave Pepys much trouble, which he did not relish, and we find him busy in making things as pleasant as possible during the latter part of 1666. He was in “mighty fear and trouble” when called before the committee, the members of which appeared to be “in a very ill humour.” Three years after this he drew up a letter to the Commissioners of Accounts on the state of the office, a transcript of which, addressed to “H. R. H. the Lord High Admiral,” and dated January 8th, 1669–70, is now in the library of the British Museum.[213]