508 ENGLISH GALLEYS IN THE October Sir Edward Howard had dispatched a pressing demand for convicts to be employed in the fleet, ^ and, as we have seen above, Henry VIII was quite prepared to buy ten galleys from the emperor along with the slaves to work them. Henry actually acquired one set of slaves when the Galley Blancard was captured in 1546, and whether they were really freed soon after the restoration of the galley to France, or whether their freedom was merely nominal and they were retained to work the Galley Subtile, cannot with certainty be deter- mined, but they seem to have been well treated,^ and in August 1547 there is a warrant for £70 to be spent among the Forsados (i.e. formats) 'for theyr necessary furnitures',^ while, when the rowers were disbanded in 1551, they received £55 to be divided equally among them.^ On the other hand, they were apparently paid no wages, for though there are entries in the Pipe Office Declared Accounts for boarding, lodging, and victual- ling mariners, artificers, and forsathes, and for the wages of mariners and artificers, there seems to be no entry of wages for the forsathes.^ But it does not do to assume with Sir Julian Corbett and Mr. Oppenheim* that the term forsados always implied that the captured French galley-slaves are referred to, for there is considerable evidence that, during this period and under Elizabeth as well, the government had every intention of using the galleys as places of punishment for its prisoners of war and its criminals, and, moreover, we know that, in certain cases at any rate, this intention was actually carried out. As early as December 1542 Hertford writes to the privy council from Alnwick that Lisle had received the council's letters and certain proclamations for excluding Scots from the realm, and ordering a number of them to be sent up as slaves to row in galleys, but they had forborne to put these proclamations into execution until Hertford could declare the inconvenience that might arise thereby.' Two years later similar measures are threatened towards all non-denizen Frenchmen, that, if they do not depart from England within twenty days, they wiU be sent » Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy, i. 383. » Cf. Corresp. de Selve, p. 169, 22 July 1547 : ' Et me vient Ton de dire, Sire, qu'ilz ont secrettement faict attiltrer gentz en Escosse pour corrumpre et persuader les f orsaires des gallayres [French ones] de se faire prendre au combat, leur mectant devant la liberte et le bon traictement qu'ont icy ceulx du baron de Sainct-Blancquard qu'ilz trouvent moyen de leur faire tesmoigner soyt par lettres soyt de bouche par ceulx mesmes quy sont icy, ce que je trouve fort malayse de pouvoyr executer.'
- Acts of the Privy Council, ii. 112, 9 August 1647.
- Ibid. iii. 246, 30 March 1551.
- Pipe Office Declared Accounts 2194 (29 September 1548 to 24 October 1551).
- CJorbett, Drake and the Tvdor Navy, i. 383-5 ; Oppenheim, p. 78.
' Letters and Papers, xvii. 1157, 1 December 1542 : this may be taken to imply that the Galley Subtile had been launched in 1542.
