The apparent gap in England's admiralty record

The formal office appears to vanish before de Leybourne's death and re-emerge decades later with Richard FitzAlan, fourth Earl of Arundel. FitzAlan nevertheless described himself as carrying on the work of predecessors and possessed an outline of the office's duties. That wording is suggestive rather than conclusive evidence that people continued to exercise the function under royal authority while surviving central records remained silent. The episode shows why institutional history must distinguish the absence of a document from the absence of an activity.