IV - Extracts from James Humphrey's Book of Forms, 1568

Summary

James Humphrey of Ipswich was a junior clerk in the naval administration, and features most prominently here as a recruiting agent for mariners from East Anglia [4, passim]. The first two letters below show him operating at Aldeburgh and at Holbrook on the Stour estuary. It is likely that he was the man of this name who was a freeman of Ipswich, though he may have come to rest, like many other naval officials, in Deptford church. He also had a private trade in naval supplies, and is sometimes described as a purveyor.

The volume from which the following extracts are taken is a miscellany of models, forms and calculations, composed in 1568, and which Humphrey doubtless used as a working manual. It passed to James, Duke of York and Lord High Admiral, who in February 1666 lent it to the Navy Board ‘to read and deliver to him back again’. In 1669 Pepys had some selections transcribed and bound. This copy survives as Rawlinson MS C. 846 in the Bodleian Library. At some later point he acquired Humphrey's original volume, which he incorporated into his library (now PL 1266), presumably at the same time relegating the 1669 copy to the secondary collection which passed in due course to the Bodleian. It is impossible to say whether Pepys ever had legitimate title to the original.

Five items from the Humphrey's collection were printed, from the Rawlinson copies, in British Naval Documents. For completeness sake these appear again here, (apart from the first, which dates from Edward VI's reign) though from the earlier and more authoritative texts in the Pepys Library. To these are added such other items from PL 1266 as are relevant to the theme of this volume. The documents are interesting mainly for the way in which they demonstrate different aspects of Admiralty practice.

Items 6–10 relate to the recruitment and discharge of mariners. They present a coherent sequence of paperwork, though the examples are from different times and places. When the fleet was to be manned, commissioners were appointed, usually to cover each of the shires to be mustered. One or more Admiralty officers and their servants would be named to each commission, and Humphrey writes the first letter not only as clerk but also as commissioner, instructing the local officers to muster all the seamen within their jurisdiction at a given day and time.