Richard Gibson and the Royal Navy
Dr Matthew Neufeld, University of Saskatchewan, Canada
[Richard Gibson] Publick services in, or relating to the Royal Navy; wherein Mr. Richard Gibson, has been employed since the year of our Lord 1652, [London], c. 1700. Bowdler Tract Collection.
Of the three surviving copies of this tract, two are held by the Roderic Bowen Libary. The only other copy is at the British Library in London.
More significantly, the tract’s subject matter is unique for material printed in English prior to 1800. Brought together is a selection of documents concerned with the professional service of Richard Gibson, a seaman and naval administrator during the second half of the seventeenth century. Despite having begun his career in Cromwell’s navy, Gibson evidently acquitted himself well after the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution. The bulk of the tract is composed of letters of recommendation or commendation, dating from 1665 to 1700. They include a document putting Gibson forward as purser for the first-rate Royal Charles (p. 5), a letter from the Navy Board to King James II recommending Gibson for promotion (p. 8), and a short note from Edward Russell, earl of Orford, in April 1694 certifying Gibson’s suitability for service as a commissioner either for victualling or for sick and wounded sailors (p. 10).
The origin and purpose of the tract are not self-evident. Nonetheless, publication of the letters concerned with Gibson’s work to settle the accounts for sick and wounded, along with the tract’s publication sometime after the middle of 1700, suggest that it was printed as part of Gibson’s effort to be chosen Steward of Greenwich hospital. It is possible that the tract was intended for circulation among the Governors of the hospital. A similar collection of documents held at the British Library indicate that late in life Gibson tried at least twice to gain the position of Steward (Harleian MSS 11602, fos. 1-2). The tract probably came into the hands of Thomas Bowdler II, one of the collectors of the Bowdler Tract Collection, through his contacts in the Navy Office—possibly Samuel Pepys himself.
The tract sheds unique light on Gibson’s work on behalf of sick and injured sailors. In 1675 Charles II’s chief minister, Thomas Danby, put Gibson in charge of settling the Navy’s debts with the residents of coastal communities who had cared for sick sailors (pp. 6, 7). The only known evidence that this was accomplished, albeit in March 1689, is from a copy of a certificate submitted by representatives of port towns (p. 9). Furthermore, the tract testifies to continuing importance of personal reputation and credit networks for professional success in the Royal Navy during a period of enormous expansion and intense financial and political challenges.
Dr Matthew Neufeld
I am broadly interested in responses to and representations of brokenness in early modern Britain. I am currently working on two projects, one which examines the cultural memory of temporal and political brokenness--the English civil war, and another focussing on the state, local communities and sick and injured servicemen from 1650 to 1750. The former derives from my doctoral research, and will emerge as a monograph entitled, The Civil Wars after 1660. The latter project, ‘Pain for the State: the welfare of wounded veterans and perceptions of warfare in British culture, 1650-1750’, studies the treatment of and perceptions of the injuries and suffering endured by maimed soldiers during the rise of Britain’s fiscal-military state. It will place these practices and views within broader attitudes about the glories and horrors of waging civil and foreign warfare.
