Charles I's great warship the Sovereign of the Seas is famed for its design, decoration and importance as a tool that heightened the image of English naval supremacy.By exploring its career, size, name and decoration, this article highlights the Sovereign's significance as a national symbol of political and cultural power. It argues that Charles's leading warship was developed as a reaction to naval advances and current affairs in Europe.Through a diverse range of evidence including diplomatic correspondence, printed texts and artwork from both English and French institutions, as well as relating this to similar advances in the Netherlands and Sweden, the Sovereign's development is internationally contextualised. By comparing it with other contemporary warships, most importantly la Couronne of France, it is shown that Charles's flagship was a product of a growing international theatre of maritime activity that was inspired by cultural and political competition, as much as it was by military escalation.
In the autumn of 1555, after almost a decade of decay, the Marian regime decided to rebuild the English navy. With the encouragement of her Spanish husband, Queen Mary supported the new construction of three large carracks that would assist in the kingdom’s war against the substantial maritime forces of Henri II of France. Even with the potential insurance of Spanish military reinforcements from her husband, the French navy had expanded unprecedentedly under Henri II, forcing England’s maritime resources to their limits. This article will argue that it was these conflicts with France between 1557 and 1564 that forced the Marian and early Elizabethan institutions to endorse a policy of naval expansion.
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