The problem of administrative areas Author:Harold Joseph Laski Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: In the Time of Sir John Eliot: Three Studies in English History of the Seventeenth Century SIR JOHN ELIOT AND JOHN NUTT, THE PIRATE In the year 16221... more » Sir John Eliot received his title of office as Vice Admiral of Devon under Buckingham as Lord High Admiral. The office had grown out of the two offices of "keeper of the coast" of Henry III's time and of the Lancastrian "conservator of truces"2. The holders of these earlier offices were merely shifting deputies of the Lord High Admiral with little individual responsibility. Henry VIII, however, among his other reforms of naval procedure, instituted for this place a permanent official of social rank and prestige, usually a county gentleman. His title was Vice Admiral and his business was to levy seamen, to inspect ships going to and coming from the harbors, to exact bonds and to look after prizes. The Vice Admiral got in return for this office a certain amount of wreck and salvage money, usually about one-tenth of each prize, part of which it was customary to tender to the Lord High Admiral. The Vice Admiral was rare, however, who, under stress of continual temptation, did not add to this acknowledged toll a fringe of less lawful receipts. The first record we have of Eliot tugging in the harness of office is a letter to the Privy Council in April, 1623,3 in which he complains of the scarcity of seamen for impressment, "many" he says "having gone to Newfoundland." Newfoundland or Avalon, was exciting popular interest just at this time. Discovered by Cabot in 1497, colonized by Whitbourne, Vaughan, Mason and most recently by Wynne, an agent of Sir GeorgeCalvert, it was an alluring bait to adventurers who were not yet aware of its bleakness but werp already getting profits from the fish in its waters.4 The impressment trou...« less