This is part 2 of 3, looking at the very few documents I’ve photographed from the AGC series as the National Maritime Museum. This document is a letter from Samuel Pepys, pretty much after the Glorious Revolution.
For me, this second page is absolutely fascinating, detailing the number of warrants- and fees paid for those warrants- over nearly 6 years of Pepys’ career. This period covers the end of the 3rd Anglo-Dutch War (from the period when the Duke of York finally lost his position as Lord High Admiral and was replaced by a commission), to a period when Charles II was able to gain more support for building ships (after the start of the 1677 30 Ships program). This is a very interesting document, because we can use the ADM8 Database to see which ships were in service during this period (or brought into service), and then check those records against these. Some of these positions which are described in this document were kept employed even when ships were not actively in service- such as the boatswain and gunner. As such they were valuable positions, whose income exceeded the cost of the warrant fees.
