Gentlemen officers were restored, in the later account of Sir Henry Sheres, to ‘Counterballance’ the ‘Seamen … very much inclined to favour the party of [Edward Montagu] the Earle of Sandwich’. It was, that is to say, to leaven an opinionatedly republican navy sufficiently to make it an instrument of royal power. Gibson, after becoming clerk to Pepys, was told by him that ‘the King + Duke [of York] were for Gentle[me]n to comand in the Navy rather then Seamen’. Following the Glorious Revolution Gibson opined that ‘the designe of the Late King Charles ye 2 + James ye 2d [was] to bring Gentlemen into ye Navy to Introduce Arbitrary Govermt + Popery’. In the formulation of Charles II himself: ‘I am not for the imploying of men merely for quality, yet when men of quality are fitt for the trade they desire to enter into, I thinke it is reasonable they should be encouraged at least equally with others.’