attempts.' But this cannot be taken quite literally. So far at least
as they relate to discipline, some of Ralegh's articles may be traced
back in the _Black Book of the Admiralty_ to the fourteenth
century, while the illogical arrangement of the whole points, as in
the case of the Additional Fighting Instructions of the eighteenth
century, to a gradual growth from precedent to precedent by the
accretion of expeditional orders added from time to time by individual
admirals. The process of formation may be well studied in Lord
Wimbledon's first orders, where Ralegh's special expeditional
additions will be found absorbed and adapted to the conditions of a
larger fleet. Moreover, there is evidence that, with the exception of
those articles which were designed in view of the special destination
of Ralegh's voyage, the whole of them were based on an early
Elizabethan precedent. For the history of English tactics the point
is of considerable importance, especially in view of his twenty-ninth
article, which lays down the method of attack when the weather-gage
has been secured. This has hitherto been believed to be new and
presumably Ralegh's own, in spite of the difficulty of believing that
a man entirely without experience of fleet actions at sea could have
hit upon so original and effective a tactical design. The evidence,
however, that Ralegh borrowed it from an earlier set of orders is
fairly clear.

Amongst the _Stowe MSS._ in the British Museum there is a small
quarto treatise (No. 426) entitled 'Observations and overtures for a
sea fight upon our own coasts, and what kind of order and discipline
is fitted to be used in martialling and directing our navies against
the preparations of such Spanish Armadas or others as shall at any
time come to assail us.' From internal evidence and directly from
another copy of it in the _Lansdown MSS._ (No. 213), we know it
to be the work of 'William Gorges, gentleman.' He is to be identified
as a son of Sir William Gorges, for he tells us he was afloat with his
father in the Dreadnought as early as 1578, when Sir William was
admiral on the Irish station with a squadron ordered to intercept the
filibustering expedition which Sir Thomas Stucley was about to attempt
under the auspices of Pope Gregory XIII. Sir William was a cousin of
Ralegh's and brother to Sir Arthur Gorges, who was Ralegh's captain in
the Azores expedition of 1597, and who in Ralegh's interest wrote the
account of the