Catalogue description THOMAS WALKER'S PROJECT.

A PROJECT touching some abuses done by the Victuallers during the wars in Ireland.

First, I collect that in all sea journeys, a provision may be made for six months or eight months, without any waste, the means of stowage being nothing so convenient as it is for land services.

If so be that in sea journeys the victualling be so profitable, there is much greater reason that the victuallers for a land army should do the like, their contracts being but from 6 months to 6, many times 3 months and 3.

In like manner in these late Irish wars the victuallers had time enough to make choice of the best victuals most necessary for the service, and to pack it up in that substantial manner that little waste or none at all could be in transporting it, the passage from the west of England being no more than 2 or 3 days' sail at most; so upon their arrival it was always put into very convenient storehouses.

In all reason these passages could cause little waste to be required, yet notwithstanding these victuallers, upon their general accounts, were allowed not so little as 10,000l. for their waste ; but had they performed their services faithfully, and contented themselves with other large gains which they had, which was too much, neither respecting the misery of the poor soldier or their duties to the State, it might well have given them royal satisfaction without any demands for waste at all.

If the victualler made choice of victual which would not continue good during the time of the contract, or that the packing was the defect, must the King allow waste to the victualler in this case ? By your Honor's leave no, the fault is the victualler's.

It is not unknown to most Governors in Ireland, but that the greatest waste the victuallers could demand during those wars was for waste of victuals in the chief magissons (magazines), and not for victual which was wasted in remote garrisons by transportation. Then the stowage being convenient why should the victuallers lay any charge upon the King ?

It is true that by transporting victuals from the magazine into inland garrisons, the carriage being all on horses, much victual was spoiled, as with the rain, bread and cheese being transported in linen bags, taking wet, there was some waste, but that being monthly supplied the soldier was fain to eat it or starve.

The victuallers might well have borne with such a loss, if there had been any, for that their substitutes did curtail the poor soldier upon the delivery of their week's victuals by weight, to the clerks of every company; else how could a poor commissary of victuals, considering his beginning, prove worth 30,000l., in 12 year's space, of a noble a day's entertainment, and divers other inferior officers or substitutes, in 3 or 4 years, prove worth 3,000l. a man?

Then look what waste was demanded during the wars by the victuallers for six years' wars. I esteem not so little as 10,000l., but if the general accounts may be surveyed, your Honor shall find it much more.

It ought less to have been charged on the King, because the King's stock was ever employed in these services, to be stocked by the King, and to cozen him was not well. Therefore to call the victuallers to an account your Lordship may do very well.

Although the victuallers have found colour to demand these allowances for waste, yet in the passages of their contracts their gains was sufficient to countervail any extraordinary matters of charge, for they had so many natures of victuals to work upon that they would ever find me extraordinary cheap to pay for all on their sides.

Also this matter of waste was never demanded of the Lords upon their contracts, but a trick which they used to get a Governor's hand to allow it; so was this matter of waste always foisted in upon their accounts.

Your Honor's humble servant to the uttermost of my power.

Signed. THO. WALKER.

Copy.

Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth, ed. J. S. Brewer & W. Bullen (6 vols., 1867-73), vol. V, document 232.