Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham had gained a formidable reputation during his command of the Mediterranean Fleet between June 1939 and March 1942; he had become known as a ‘fighting sailor’ as a consequence of his fleet's triumphs at Taranto and Matapan and its courageous and grim fight against the Italian fleet and air force and the Luftwaffe and U-boats in the latter part of his command. As a result, Cunningham remarked early in 1942, ‘there is now no fleet to go to sea in’. The deeds of Cunningham and the Mediterranean Fleet during this stirring time are dealt with in volume I of these papers.

Following America's entry into the war, there was a necessity for the Royal Navy to strengthen co-operation with the United States Navy. To achieve this, the First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, turned to Cunningham, believing his great prestige and experience of combat conditions as a commander in a ferocious war zone would carry great weight with the Americans. Cunningham's brief term as head of the British Admiralty Delegation in Washington was to endear him to the Americans, so much so that they proposed him as Allied Naval Commander of the Expeditionary Force which was to invade North Africa in November 1942. The ‘Torch’ expedition was the start of almost two years of landings in the Mediterranean, embracing ‘Husky’ (the invasion of Sicily) in July 1943 and the ‘Baytown’ and ‘Avalanche’ landings in Italy in September 1943. His role as ANCXF was abruptly terminated in October 1943, when he was summoned to replace the dying Pound as First Sea Lord.

Cunningham was First Sea Lord from October 1943 to his retirement from active service in June 1946. In that time he presided over the invasion of Normandy (‘Neptune/Overlord’), operations in the Mediterranean, the sinking of the Scharnhorst and Tirpitz, the defeat of a late surge of U-boat activity, the British Pacific Fleet, and the problems of manpower, the futures of the Royal Marines and the Fleet Air Arm, and the conversion of the Royal Navy from its swollen wartime strength to a much-reduced peacetime cadre.

As with many other Elizabethan writers, we know little about Thomas Kyd's life. On 6 November 1558, the parish register of St Mary Woolnoth recorded the baptism of ‘Thomas, son of Francis Kidd, Citizen and Writer of the Courte Letter of London’. Kyd's father, Francis, rose to be Warden of the Company of Scriveners in 1580, the official body supervising ‘a profitable and ancient trade’. Scriveners, officially known as ‘Writers of the Court Letter’, enjoyed ‘a monopoly on engrossing charters, contracts, testaments, and official documents’, functioning ‘not only as notaries and copyists, but also as money lenders’. The need for verbal accuracy in their profession made them insist that a scrivener's apprentice acquire a perfect knowledge of Latin grammar and be ‘erudite in the books of genders, declensions, preterites and supines’. Francis Kyd had evidently had a grammar school education and ensured that his son had the same good start in life. Thomas must have received his first education at home, for when he entered the nearby Merchant Taylors’ School on 26 October 1565, just before his seventh birthday, he was expected ‘to know “the catechysm in English or Latyn” and be able to “read perfectly and write competently”’.

The curriculum of Merchant Taylors’ envisaged six to eight years’ intensive study of Latin grammar, as codified in the official ‘King's grammar’ of John Lily, reading a graded sequence of Latin authors (Cato, Terence, Virgil, Cicero's Letters, Sallust, Caesar, Horace's Epistles, Ovid's Metamorphoses and Fasti), and regularly composing Latin prose and verse, incorporating the figures of rhetoric. Although limited to Latin, the drilling in grammar, rhetoric, and classical prosody was so intense that it could hardly be matched in any modern university. Kyd published his Latin verse in his earliest work, Verses of Prayse and Joye (1586), celebrating Queen Elizabeth's escape from the Babington plot. The Spanish Tragedy includes several passages of Latin verse that Kyd wrote and also adapted to frame his quotations from classical Roman poets.

In addition to a thorough acquisition of Latin, Kyd may have owed to Merchant Taylors’ School his first exposure to drama. The headmaster Richard Mulcaster had been educated at Eton under Nicholas Udall, who had combined two Latin comedies (Plautus's Miles Gloriosus and Terence's Eunuchus) for his Ralph Roister Doister, the first English classical comedy (1567).

In Chapter 2, I quoted the eulogy of Sir David Lyndsay, poet and herald at the court of James V, for William Dunbar, ‘quhilk language had at large’. Dunbar is one among twelve deceased vernacular poets named as paragons of their art in the prologue to Lyndsay's Testament and Complaynt of Our Soverane Lordis Papyngo (1530). First comes the English literary triumvirate, ‘Chawceir, Gower, and Lidgate laureate’ (line 12); next, a series of Scottish writers: Walter Kennedy, Dunbar, and seven further names all also mentioned either in Dunbar's Lament for the Makars or The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie. Lyndsay praises these poets in terms of their ‘rethorick’ (line 11) and ‘sweit sentence’ (line 14), claiming that ‘Thocht thay be ded, thar libels bene levand’ (line 20). But in the stanzas that follow, all are surpassed by the superlative skill and learning of ‘Albione’'s pre-eminent poet, Gavin Douglas:

Lyndsay's eulogy evidences Douglas's high literary reputation in Scotland and, though to a lesser degree, England throughout much of the sixteenth century. It also suggests some of the important differences between Douglas and the other English and Scottish poets examined in this book, not least, his particular agon with the concept of authorship. The most obvious difference is Douglas's noble status, both as a member of the powerful ‘Red’ Douglas family and, from 1516, bishop of Dunkeld. Douglas's material ‘prerogative’ would have greatly exceeded that of the court servitors and minor ecclesiastics Skelton, Dunbar, and Hawes.

Barking abbey calendar

London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho A V

[fol 2v, under 4 August] Simonis de Monte Forti

Barking abbey calendar

Oxford, University College, MS 169

[fol. 4v, under 4 August] Simonis de Monte Forti

Beaulieu abbey calendar?

London, British Library, Harley MS 2951

[fol. 129v, under 4 August] Anno Domini MCClxv occisus est Symon de Monteforti

Tavistock abbey calendar

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 210

[p. 30b] 1265. Sancti Simonis de Monte Forti die .4. augusti

Evesham abbey calendar

London, British Library, Lansdowne MS 427

[fol. 13r, under 4 August] Occisio Symonis Montis Fortis sociorumque eius

Evesham abbey calendar

London, British Library, Cotton MS Vespasian A VI

[fol. 183r] Anno Domini MoCCmolxovto <Occisio> Symonis Montis Fortis sociorumque eius pridie nonas augusti

Barking abbey calendar

London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho A V, fol. 2v

[4 August] Of Simon de Montfort

Barking abbey calendar

Oxford, University College, MS 169, fol. 4v

[4 August] Of Simon de Montfort

Beaulieu abbey calendar?

London, British Library, Harley MS 2951, fol. 129v

[4 August] In the year of our Lord 1265 was killed Simon de Montfort

Tavistock abbey calendar

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 210, p. 30b

1265. Of Saint Simon de Montfort on the 4th day of August

Evesham abbey calendar

London, British Library, Lansdowne MS 427, fol. 13r

[4 August] The killing of Simon de Montfort and his companions1

Evesham abbey calendar

London, British Library, Cotton MS Vespasian A VI, fol. 183r

In the year of our Lord 1265. The killing of Simon de Montfort and his companions on 4 August

The crisis in the supply of Naval ship timber in 1803–04 was the result of two related pressures. The first was the expansion of British Naval commitments after war with France was renewed in May 1803. The British fleet then comprised approximately 608 ships of all sizes, 81 of them being 74-gun ships, the backbone of the line of battle. By 1813 there were a total of 899 ships, 143 of them 74s. The victory at Trafalgar did not eliminate wearisome, wearing blockade of enemy ports and the very success of the Navy increased its tasks. Defeated at sea, French imperial power expanded dramatically on land. From 1806 the introduction of Napoleon's Continental System, his determination to outbuild Britain by sea and, after 1812, a war with the United States of America, imposed fresh duties calling for more ships. To meet these commitments and retain British Naval dominance, a regular, reliable and, if possible, reasonably priced supply of ship timber was essential and was becoming more difficult to acquire.

In 1801 the annual timber consumption in the royal dockyards was over 36,000 loads. After 1803 it rose to 53,000 loads, in 1812 it had reached 74,000 loads, and although this figure fell with peace, it fell only to the figure for about 1803. After 1815 Britain was concerned to maintain a navy of a two-power standard against France and Russia and old 74s were replaced by 80-gun ships, heavier, longer, more powerful and consuming more timber. Yet defence costs were being reduced in deference to peace and Naval estimates were fixed at approximately £6 million annually until 1830.

The standard unit of measurement for ship timber was the load, of between 40 and 50 cubic feet. The average oak of ship timber size contained approximately one such load and provided, approximately, a ton of shipping. An average 74-gun ship, between 1,600 and 1,900 tons, required about 3,000 loads of timber, mainly oak but also elm, beech, ash and fir, and was built at an approximate total cost of £60,000, of which about £35,000 represented hull timber. The masts and yards cost an additional £3,000–4,000.

The royal forests could only supply a fraction of the Navy's needs, approximately 4,000 loads annually.

ONE of the defining features of the work of Roger Mason is a concern with the way in which political ideologies informed the political expectations and actions of the secular and ecclesiastical elites of late medieval and early modern Scotland. Mason's approach has never been an exercise in abstract intellectual history, but rather an attempt to understand how the views, arguments and writings of medieval thinkers, scholars and moralists might have shaped the way individuals and groups conceived of their role, duties, and obligations within the social and political structures of the realm. A persistent theme in Mason's work has been the relationship between kingship and royal government on the one hand, and the rights and beliefs of those subject to the authority of the crown on the other. The starting point for a series of thought-provoking and elegant ‘Masonic’ studies is the presumption that medieval kings and their administrators did indeed have ideas about the nature and reach of monarchical powers and rights and looked to find persuasive ways to articulate and promote these concepts in the public sphere to their own subjects. In this regard Mason has embraced ‘Renaissance Kingship’ as a useful umbrella term, denoting a royal lineage and establishment that consciously sought to enhance its status and the fullness of its authority through a variety of means. Renaissance monarchy was distinguished by a sustained emphasis on the supremacy of the king's legal authority within and throughout the realm. The (theoretically) unassailable nature of the monarch's power was promoted through the patronage of architectural, literary, and artistic works that stressed the elevated nature of royal ‘majesty’ and encouraged automatic deference to the king. The Renaissance court manipulated chivalric and religious sentiment and symbols to focus loyalty on the crown and used ceremony and ritual to stress formal hierarchy and the king's place as the font of social distinction and honour. Chronologically, the advent of Renaissance kingship in Scotland is usually placed, by Mason and others, in the reign of James III (1460–88). However, another reign that has been proposed as marking a significant change in the articulation and assertion of royal rights and ambition within Scotland is that of James I (1406–37).

ROGER Mason redefined how we think about the exercise of kingship amongst the monarchs of the Stewart dynasty, and led the way in re-interpreting and re-evaluating (and in several cases, evaluating for the first time) many of the major texts of the Renaissance and Reformation in Scotland, including the Latin histories of John Mair and Hector Boece, the Complaynt of Scotland, the Trew Lawe, and the Basilikon Doron. Mason also spent much of his earlier career evaluating the political theology of John Knox within a British and covenanted context, which resulted in his critical edition of a wide range of the reformer's letters and tracts ‘on rebellion’. However, perhaps his greatest gift to Scottish History is the critical edition of George Buchanan's De Iure Regni Apud Scotos Dialogus (‘A Dialogue on the Law of Kingship among the Scots’), edited with Martin Smith and first published in 2004, which gave scholars access for the first time to a clear and fully referenced translation of Buchanan's major ideological statement on the nature of kingship and how to deal with tyrants. Buchanan's ideas had a broad and long cultural afterlife, influencing the thought of leading reformed intellectuals including Andrew Melville, and serving as a source of justification for radicals ranging from republicans in the seventeenth century through to the soldiers of the American Revolution. Like Buchanan, Mason has had considerable intellectual influence on younger generations of scholars as a mentor, whether to the classes he taught for almost four decades at St Andrews, to the many colleagues he has offered a ‘killer question’ to in seminars and conferences or, above all, to his many PhD students. As one of those former students, it seems appropriate that this chapter focuses on Buchanan's relationship with his own supposed acolyte, Thomas Maitland. It is also appropriate, given Mason's interest in texts, that this relationship is revealed to us in a previously overlooked poem by Maitland, the ‘Jacobi VI, Scotorum Regis inauguratio’ (‘On the Consecration of James VI, King of Scots’). This poem, like all Maitland's extant poetry, exists solely in Latin in a single witness – the Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum, the anthology of Scottish neo-Latin poetry edited by Arthur Johnstone and Sir John Scot of Scotstarvit and published at Amsterdam in 1637.