Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of maps
- Preface: Geography and the sea
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: Britain's island idea
- 1 Community of water
- 2 Queen of Sparta
- 3 The discipline of the sea
- 4 Ark of war
- 5 Blowing a dead coal
- 6 The British empire in Europe
- 7 The world in an island
- 8 Anti-continentalism
- 9 What continent?
- Conclusion: floating islands
- Appendix: Duck Language (1724)
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Ark of war
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of maps
- Preface: Geography and the sea
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: Britain's island idea
- 1 Community of water
- 2 Queen of Sparta
- 3 The discipline of the sea
- 4 Ark of war
- 5 Blowing a dead coal
- 6 The British empire in Europe
- 7 The world in an island
- 8 Anti-continentalism
- 9 What continent?
- Conclusion: floating islands
- Appendix: Duck Language (1724)
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Is this, saith one, the Nation that we read
Spent with both Wars, under a Captain dead?
Yet rig a Navy while we dress us late;
And ere we Dine, raise and rebuild their State.
What Oaken Forrests, and what golden Mines!
What Mints of Men, what Union of Designes!
Unless their Ships, do, as their Fowle proceed
Of shedding Leaves, that with their Ocean breed.
Theirs are not Ships, but rather Arks of War,
And beaked Promontories sail'd from far;
Of floting Islands a new Hatched Nest;
A Fleet of Worlds, of other Worlds in quest;
An hideous shole of wood-Leviathans,
Arm'd with three Tire of brazen Hurricans;
That through the Center shoot their thundering side
And sink the Earth that does at Anchor ride.
Andrew Marvell, The First Anniversary of the Government under O.C.The revolution of 1649 entailed much more than ‘the settling of the government … in way of a Republic, without King or House of Lords’. During the civil wars parliament had abolished parliamentary subsidies and replaced them by monthly assessment and excise. The former paid the army and the latter funded the fleet. In addition, parliament and then the republican government funded their military ventures by the proceeds of delinquency compositions and the sale of royal and episcopal lands. Between 1642 and 1660, it has been estimated, government income from these and other sources totalled ninety-five million pounds (‘what golden Mines!’), an annual income more than five times that available to Charles I in the heyday of Ship Money.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- When the Waves Ruled BritanniaGeography and Political Identities, 1500–1800, pp. 73 - 91Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011