The above description, a very "potted" observational history of Portsmouth, made at the beginning of the 17th century, makes the town sound important, which it was, but also paints a misleading image of Portsmouth of that time.

Another account, more or less contemporary with the Brittania entry, describes Portsmouth as a "poor and beggarly town", which, given the amount of unemployment, following the opening of shipyards in the London area, is hardly surprising.

For more than a century, although the docks in Portsmouth continued to repair ships, no new vessels were built there and the number of jobs available to pay good money to skilled craftsmen was very low indeed.

And, as Charles I succeeded his father, James I in 1625, it didn't look as though things in poor old Portsmouth were likely to improve, for in that same year came another outbreak of plague and although actual figures are a little vague, it's fairly certain that another hundred or so people would have died.

However, after Charles I came to the throne in 1625. England began to more embroiled in the Thirty Years War, a conflict that was fought out mainly in Germany, but which spread sporadically to other regions of Europe and saw an escalation of naval warfare.

This did not initially lead to ships being built in Portsmouth again, but the towns position to the north of the English Channel made it ideal as a base for repairing the growing number of damaged ships and for re-arming and re-provisioning ships bound for conflict.

England and France were nominally on the same side early in the Thirty Years War, but there was always mistrust among the traditional enemies and Charles and his government were determined to build up the English navy as fast as possible, whatever the cost.

In France, Cardinal Richelieu had come to power in 1624 and the following year used English warships to defeat French Huguenots at the siege of Saint-Martin-de-Ré, which caused total outrage back in England.

Then, in 1627, Charles sent his favourite, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, with a force of 80 ships, to aid the Huguenots at the siege of La Rochelle; he landed a force of 6,000 on the nearby Isle de Ré, where he attempted to take the fortified city of Saint-Martin, but he eventually ran out of money and, with his army ravaged by sickness, was forced to return home.

Two more attempts were made to relieve La Rochelle, neither of which was any more successful, the second expedition once again organised by Buckingham, shortly before his assassination in 1628.

The fact that he was assassinated in the High Street of Old Portsmouth, by a dissident sailor, John Fenton, probably did little to help Portsmouth's reputation, but Fenton, who was quickly arrested, was tried and hanged for the crime and his body hung in chains on land to the east of the town, where it remained, until it decomposed, as a warning to others.

Even after Buckingham's death, Charles continued to pursue his aggressive foreign policy, declaring war upon Spain and eventually falling out with Parliament, over the costs of his overseas ventures - this would eventually lead to the English Civil War, but in the 1620s and 1630s, the people of Portsmouth were more interested in events on their own doorsteps.

And that meant more and more work on behalf of Charles's growing navy, which not only solved the town's unemployment problems at a stroke, but also meant that more artisans were attracted to Portsmouth on a permanent basis, so that slowly but surely, the population began to increase.

But, in 1642, the Civil War began and Portsmouth could not help but become involved in it; the town and harbour, regardless of its earlier "hard times" had never ceased to be of great strategic value and both sides wanted it for themselves.

Most of the population of the town, including the mayor, sided with Parliament, as did the navy, but Colonel George Goring, who commanded the army garrison in the town, was a Royalist.

Parliament sent a force to take Portsmouth in September 1642, and this first laid siege to Southsea Castle, which surprisingly was garrisoned by a mere dozen soldiers, under the command of a Captain Chaloner, who was apparently more interested in wining and dining than he was in fighting.

After a few harmless shots had been exchanged, the Parliamentarian commander despatched an officer, under a flag of truce, to demand the surrender of the castle and was asked if the surrender could be delayed until morning, because the commanding officer (Chaloner) was trying to get over a hangover!

The guns of Southsea Castle were now used to fire into the town and, on the other side of the harbour, where Gosport had also declared for Parliament, further batteries were established and they too opened up on Goring's force.

Besieged by land and blockaded by the navy, Goring realised the situation was hopeless, but he did have one trick left up his sleeve.

Setting himself up in the Square Tower, which was by then being used as a store for most of the gunpowder in the town, he threatened to detonate it, unless the Parliamentarians acceded to his surrender terms.

Not wanting to see such a vast hoard go up with a bang, nor wanting to see the devastation that such a huge explosion would have wreaked, the Parliamentary commander agreed and Goring was permitted to withdraw from the town with most of his force still intact.

He then went to the Netherlands, to recruit for the Royalist Army and continued to fight for Charles for a few more years, but few of his fellow officers trusted him and, after a disastrous defeat at the hands of Fairfax, in 1645, he withdrew to France on the grounds of ill health.

Following the execution of Charles I, something approximating peace descended on England, but there were still rumblings across the rest of Europe and Cromwell and his Parliamentary government had to address that situation.

Not least among their problems was that fewer new ships had been launched during the Civil War and it's only possible to keep patching up wooden vessels for so long; as a result, the Dutch had superseded England as Europe's dominant naval power. It was therefore decided to increase the shipbuilding programme and, for the first time in more than a hundred years, Portsmouth Dockyard was commissioned to construct some of them.

Thus, in 1650, a new ship at last slid into the waters at Portsmouth again, a ship - a Phoenix Class frigate, aptly named HMS Portsmouth after the town in which she was built - eleven more ships followed in the next decade, which, together with the ongoing repair programme, meant that the town was very busy - it's estimated that the population had grown to around 3,000 by 1660.

There does not appear to be any painting or drawing of HMS Portsmouth, but we do know that she was 99 feet long and displaced 420 tonnes. Initially, she carried 38 guns, but this number was increased to 46, in or around 1677.

After Charles II was recalled from exile to reclaim the crown, the government started to look seriously at how the navy was run. In July of that year, 1660, a then unknown teller at the Exchequer, Samuel Pepys, was appointed Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board and the inheritance he bequeathed England stretched far beyond his famous diary.

In 1663 a new wharf was constructed at Portsmouth, this one for the exclusive use of the Dockyard and navy and, two years later, a mast pond was excavated. Mast ponds were an essential part of shipbuilding, as the freshly hewn masts were placed in them and left to soak, often for years, in order to season them properly.

Expansion of the dockyard continued in general; laying to the north of the town proper and still surrounded by fields, there was plenty of space available for this, but when war with the Dutch once again broke out in 1667, attention was diverted back to the question of the fortifications surrounding the town.

Despite all the money spent during Queen Elizabeth's reign, much of the perimeter was still protected by earthworks and palisades, and, over the next 22 years, these were slowly replaced by stone walls, with regular triangular bastions, affording defenders a field of fire along the walls themselves.

This latest update of the town's defences was designed by Sir Bernard de Gomme, a Dutch-born engineer, who had fought on the side of Charles I during the Civil War; he was knighted and promoted, when Charles II was restored to the throne. He made his first visit to survey Portsmouth in 1662.

(In the same year, the Infanta Caterina of Portugal - Catherine de Braganza) arrived at Portsmouth, having married Charles II by proxy, in Lisbon, on 23 April of that year. She was met by Charles and two wedding ceremonies were held, first a secret Catholic ceremony and then a very public Protestant one, in the Domus Dei church, part of which had served as the home for the town governor for several years.)

Apart from the bastions, which can be seen clearly in the contemporary plan shown to the right, de Gomme introduced a water-filled ditch and a secon wall, which meant that defenders would be able to fire down into any attacking force from a higher vantage point. Critics later claimed that the ditch was too shallow to be effective and a second moat was added, separated from the first ditch by a narrow strip of land.

However, de Gomme was much respected and he was the consultant engineer on many similar fortification projects, including the Medway and Harwich. He was also commissioned to build a citadel on the Hoe at Plymouth.

In Portsmouth, de Gomme also proposed considerable changes to Southsea Castle, including a covered way to protect the ditch and a thirty gun battery facing out to sea.

Records don't make it clear how much of his proposal was actually carried out, but it is known that a programme of maintenance was carried out and that the main gateway was rebuilt, incorporating the coat of arms of Charles II.

De Gomme's main gate into the town was situated at the end of the High Street, approximately where the roundabout is nowadays, at the end of Cambridge Road. A century later, as Portsmouth continued to grow in size and importance and the suburb of Portsea became larger than Old Portsmouth, the town walls were extended, it was decided that, for defensive purposes, it made more sense to have the main gate in a more central position and Landport Gate was built, half way between Guy's Bastion and the Town Mount Bastion.

The old de Gomme gate was demolished and there is no illustration of it available, as far as we have been able to determine.

Thus it was that, by the end of the seventeenth century, Portsmouth was recognised as being one of the most heavily fortified towns in Europe - a far cry from the days when those French raiders seemed to be able to sack the town at will! The mystery is, why it took the authorities so long to take precautions against them for so many years.

And now, as the seventeenth century gave way to the eighteenth century and England and Scotland were formally united, under the 1707 Acts of Union, to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the Navy Royal became the Royal Navy and, if Portsmouth's importance to the navy had been essential before, its role was set to grow even more ...