Читать книгу A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217 to 1688 - David Hannay - Страница 3

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Authorities.—Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas has made an exhaustive collection of all the evidence as to the history of the Royal Navy in the Middle Ages, in the only two volumes published of his History of the Royal Navy from the Earliest Times to the Wars of the French Revolution. It is the basis of this Introduction. Captain Burrows' Cinque Ports, in the Historical Towns Series, supplements Sir H. Nicolas.

A glance at a globe turned so as to bring the British Isles directly under the eye will at once reveal the most effective of all the material causes which have made them the seat of the great naval power among nations. It is the unrivalled advantage of their position. They lie between the Old World and the New, with free access to the great ocean, surrounded by seas, which, though stormy, are not unmanageable. Their coasts are never blocked by ice. No long intervals of calm varied by mere puffs of wind reduce sailing ships to immobility, and limit their size by imposing on them the necessity of relying on the oar. Steam has freed maritime war and commerce from dependence on the wind, but the naval power of England was created during the ages of the sailing ship. Steam, too, has only made the benefit of free access to the ocean if possible more valuable. It is commonly said that an island is peculiarly fitted to be the seat of a naval power, and no doubt freedom from the perpetual risk of invasion by land is a material advantage. Immunity from that danger has saved us from the necessity for expending our resources on armies, which crippled Holland, exhausted Spain, and has hampered France. But it must be remembered that the great maritime powers of antiquity and the Middle Ages were on the mainland round the Mediterranean, not on the islands. Again, it is clear that if, in the place of Ireland, there lay to the immediate west of us any great bulk of territory too strong to be conquered, too alien to be absorbed, our insular position would not have saved us from being much confined, if not wholly shut in. But to the west of us lies the Atlantic Ocean, the beginning of the road which leads to wealth and empire all over the world. No power can block our way thither while we exercise even equal strength on water.

Before full advantage could be taken of our position, three conditions had to be fulfilled. These islands had to become the seat of an organised State, and to cease from being merely the field in which hostile races were fighting for the mastery. The weapon of sea-power, which is the seaworthy and sea-keeping ship, had to be created. The New World had to be opened to the enterprise of the Old, and the globe to be explored. Ages passed before these conditions were fulfilled.

The maritime history of the country divides itself into three periods. First, there are the ages during which the people was being formed and the weapon forged. This may be said to extend from the first beginnings to the accession of the House of Tudor. At that date, when, be it noted, the Portuguese were exploring the sea route round Africa to the east, and Columbus was leading Spain to America, there was still much to be done in the work of consolidation within, and in the perfecting of the ship; but a vessel had been made which could sail the world round, and in the British Isles it had come to this, that England was predominant, and that for her fellow-islanders the choice was between conquest at her hands, or union on honourable terms. The second period stretches from the accession of the House of Tudor to the close of the seventeenth century, when superiority of power at sea had been fully won. The third, beginning with the Revolution, lasts until our own time. It includes the two hundred years or so during which England, having now united to herself, or conquered, all rivals within these islands, has exercised the power she had won.

A complete history of the maritime power of England would be a vast subject, for it must include the whole story of the growth of her commerce, and her commercial or fiscal legislation. The object of this book is more modest. It is merely to describe in the main lines, and without professing to enter into detail, the growth and action of the Royal Navy—the armed force by which England has protected her commerce, has made her strength felt in the strife of nations, and has first secured, and then defended, her dominions beyond the sea.

The first of the three periods just spoken of may be passed over rapidly. In the earlier ages there was neither the organised State which could wield a navy, nor the ships for it to use. From the days of Julius Cæsar to those of William of Normandy, no invader found effectual resistance for long on water when he was about invading this country. Our own Teutonic fathers, who were raiding on the coast long before they began their permanent settlements, the generals of the Roman emperors who had rebellions to suppress, the "hornets," as Simeon of Durham called them, who swarmed out of Scandinavia, and the Conqueror himself, landed as they pleased, with rare and doubtful exceptions. There was no State so rich and so fully organised as to be able to maintain a permanent navy. How fully this was the case was shown in the fateful year 1066. Harold was undisputed king in England. The House of Godwin was familiar with the use of ships, and possessed not a few. Yet within a few months England was twice invaded from over sea. Harold must have known that the most effectual of all ways of protecting his crown was by preventing the landing of an enemy. But he was compelled to disband his land and sea forces on the Nativity of St. Mary, for want of provisions. No organisation capable of meeting the cost of a permanent navy existed. The ships, too, were but large open boats, seaworthy enough, and even capable of making long voyages, but, when full of fighting men, they could not be stored with provisions, and they could not give cover to their crews. So there could be no blockade, no long months of watching spent at sea, without which a navy can never be used except as a mere means of transport. Hence for centuries it is always the same story. The invader runs into an estuary, or on to an open beach, and marches inland, seizing horses. A battle on land decides whether he is or is not to succeed in his purpose, whether of mere plunder or settlement. The Conqueror himself made so little use of his ships, except to cross the Channel, that he could not prevent the Danish king from hanging on the eastern coast for months.

With the beginning of the thirteenth century there came a great change. The conflict of races was over, State and people were formed in England. On the throne there was a man nearly as able as he was wicked, and he had every motive to make use of his ships to forestall invasions. With King John begins, strictly speaking, the naval history of this country. His predecessors since the Conqueror were masters of both sides of the Channel, and had no need of their fleets except for transport. They might take English ships and seamen with them on their expeditions as far as Syria. Under their powerful rule commerce had increased, and a seafaring class had been formed. But John is the first king of England who effectually used his navy to stop invasion. By 1213 his Continental dominions had been torn from him. Philip Augustus, King of the French, was preparing an invasion, and John well knew that an invader would find friends among his vassals. Being richer and better armed, if not wiser, than Harold, he struck first. A fleet of English ships, under the command of John's half-brother, William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, crossed to Damme, where the ships of the French king were collected, and burned them. The scheme of invasion broke down completely for that time. John's reign ended in anarchy. His rebellious barons brought in a son of the French king, and set him up as sovereign. But the death of the wicked king removed the one valid excuse for the rebellion. The country rallied round his infant son and against the invader. Within four years the ships of England were again used with decisive effect to crush an invasion.

In 1217 Prince Louis and his allies, the barons, had been defeated at the battle of Lincoln, and, being now hemmed in between their enemies and the sea, were in urgent need of reinforcements from abroad. Stores and men were collected for them in Normandy. Eighty ships, besides smaller vessels, are said to have been brought together at Calais, under the command of Eustace the Monk. This man was one of the many mercenary fighters of the time, and had once been in the employment of King John. With this force he put to sea, running before a southerly wind. His intention was to round the North Foreland, and carry his convoy up the Thames to London, which was still held for the barons. If he had succeeded, he might have greatly prolonged the Civil War, but, happily for England, neither the man nor the means to avert the disaster were wanting. Hubert de Burgh, the King's Justiciary and Governor of Dover Castle, was at his post. He appealed to the men of the Cinque Ports, not in vain. "If these people land," he said, "England is lost; let us therefore boldly meet them, for God is with us, and they are excommunicate." Hubert de Burgh saw that the one effectual way of preventing Eustace from doing harm on shore was to beat him at sea before he could land. The man who reasoned like this had grasped the true principle of the defence of England. Sixteen large ships and some smaller vessels were lying in Dover harbour. They were at once got out by the shipmen and fishermen of the town, worthy ancestors of the men who, centuries later, volunteered to fill up the crews of Blake, when he was threatened by Tromp in these very waters. The knights, squires, and men-at-arms of Hubert de Burgh's following made up the fighting crews. Training the yards of the one great square sail which the vessels of that time carried on their single mast, fore and aft, the English squadron kept its luff (the word is used by Matthew Paris), and, standing out to the east, placed itself on the track of the Monk, and between him and Calais.

As Eustace saw the Dover ships apparently standing over to Calais, he came to the not wholly unnatural conclusion that their plan was to plunder the town in his absence. He laughed, for he knew that he had left it well protected. But the intention of Hubert de Burgh was incomparably more courageous and more effective. He had begun, as every English admiral in after time was wont to begin, by manœuvring to secure the windward position, which with sailing ships gives him who holds it the option of attack. As soon as the French vessels had been brought well to leeward, the English turned together before the wind, and, forming what in after times would have been called the line abreast, stood at their utmost speed in pursuit of the enemy. The Monk was completely out-manœuvred. His heavily-laden vessels could not escape pursuit by flight, while they must infallibly be thrown into confusion by the act of turning to face the pursuers. It was no small advantage to the English that their arrows would fly with the wind. So soon as they were within shot, Hubert de Burgh's archers let fly, and the clothyard shafts, or the bolts from the crossbows, came whistling down on the crowded benches of the French ships. All battles then by land or sea were settled at close quarters with cold steel. The English pressed on to board. Where the enemy's ships were caught in the act of turning, they drove into them with the stem, ramming and sinking them. When this more expeditious method could not be practised, the English laid the enemy aboard, throwing quicklime, which the wind blew in the Frenchmen's faces, into the air in the moment of impact. The boarders followed close on the blinding cloud, and the axes of the Cinque Ports men fell briskly to work.

"Whenas he fights and has the upper hand

By sea he sends them home to every land,"

wrote Chaucer of the shipman. The Cinque Ports men, who had had a cruel experience of the tender mercies of John's foreign mercenaries, were certainly in no humour to give quarter to the adventurers who were on their way to England to renew the worst excesses of the wicked king's followers. There was a great massacre. Taken at a disadvantage, and scattered at the moment of attack, the Monk's ships were overpowered in detail. So great was the fury of the English crews that it overcame even the love of ransom which commonly introduced some measure of mercy into mediæval battles. Eustace himself, who, we are told, offered a great price for his life, was beheaded by one blow of the sword by Richard, King John's bastard son. The whole fleet on which Louis and the barons had relied to save them from destruction, was annihilated. The neck of the opposition to the young king's government was effectually broken. Before the end of the year Louis had returned to France, and the barons had made their submission.

The trial stroke of the English Navy was a master-stroke. No more admirably planned, no more timely, no more fruitful battle has been fought by Englishmen on water. It settled for ever the question how best this country is to be defended. In after times, during the Armada year and later, there have been found men to talk of trusting to land defences; but the sagacity of Englishmen has taught them to rely on the navy first, and that protection has never wholly failed us in six hundred and eighty years. The battle is curiously similar to the long list of conflicts with the French which were to follow it. The enemy is found carrying out a scheme of attack on our territory, and so intent on his ultimate object that he neglects to attack our ships first. Hubert de Burgh, acting exactly as Hawke, Rodney, Hood, or Nelson would have done, manœuvres for the "weather-gage," the position to windward, falls upon the Frenchman on his way, and wrecks his carefully laid scheme at a blow.

The navy was now established in all essentials as it was to remain till the accession of the Tudor dynasty, at the close of the fifteenth century. The ship was indeed in process of development throughout all these ages. The stages of this growth are obscure, and belong rather to the domain of the archæologist than to that of the historian. We still possess an example of the original type in the Viking ship which was dug up from the burial mound at Gókkstad in Norway. She is a vessel of some size, nearly a hundred feet long, sharp at both ends, high in the bow and stern. Her breadth is about a third of her length, and she is low in the waist. The bottom is flat, as was natural in a vessel designed to be hauled up on the beach, and to take the ground without damage on a receding tide. Her hull is clinker-built, that is to say, with the planks overlapping one another, and not put edge to edge, as in the carvel-built ships of later times. One mast, shipped exactly in the middle, and carrying one great square sail, constituted all her rigging. There was no deck, though there may have been small covered spaces at the bow and stern. She was steered by an oar fixed on the right or starboard (i.e. steering) side, a little before the sternpost. In battle the mast and sail were lowered, and the vessel propelled by oars, of which the Gokkstad ship rowed sixteen on each side. By the thirteenth century this type had been already developed. The maritime States of the Mediterranean and the Basque ports of Spain had begun to build more elaborately constructed galleys and much heavier vessels. But, to judge by the illuminations in the manuscript of Matthew Paris, the ships of Hubert de Burgh did not differ in any essential particular of construction from those of Saint Olaf or Canute. Indeed, as late as the reign of Edward III., and later, our ships were small in comparison with the Basque. Still there was a steady though slow advance in mechanical skill. Decks were introduced, and the vessels were built higher. Fore and after castles began to be erected. The rudder gradually displaced the steering oar. Two masts, and finally three, replaced the one of the early ships. The introduction of cannon, which dates from the fourteenth century, compelled changes in form. In order to support the weight of the guns, and the shock of firing them, it was necessary to build ships higher and stronger. The height could have been obtained by merely continuing the curve of the bottom farther; but if this had been done, the vessel would have been weak, and the leverage of the weight of the guns would have tended to tear her to pieces. To obviate this risk, the sides were curved in above the water-line in what was called "a tumble home." The guns were at first fired over the top of the bulwarks. A French builder, Descharges of Brest, has the credit of first constructing a ship with portholes through which the cannon could be pointed. In one respect the mediæval ship was curiously like the modern war vessel. She carried a crow's nest on her masts, a military top, in fact, from which archers and crossbowmen could fire, or stones be thrown, on to an enemy's deck. It must not be supposed that these improvements were all strictly successive. Old and new types would be found existing side by side. The rudder and the steering oar, for instance, are found in use together, but gradually the better drove the less good out of use. The long low galleys of the Mediterranean, or at least craft of that description, are heard of as employed in the Middle Ages, but our seas are not friendly to that class of vessel. It appears, from the account of the battle with Eustace the Monk, that the practice of lowering masts and sails on going into action had fallen into disuse by the thirteenth century. This implies at least a greater weight of spars and solidity of rigging than had obtained earlier. It will be easily understood that then, as at all times, there were wide differences in the sizes of ships. They ranged from mere row-boats to the vessel of 250 or 300 tons, known as "cog," or by other names of which we only dimly appreciate the significance.

The King of England drew his fleets from three sources. To begin with, he had his own ships, which were his personal property, like his horses or the suits of armour he supplied to his own immediate following. These he used in war, or hired to the merchants in peace, according to circumstances. The purely administrative and financial management of these vessels was entrusted to some member of his household. In earlier ages it fell to one of the "king's clerks," the permanent civil servants of the time, who, when all learning was the province of the Church, were naturally ecclesiastics, and for whom the king provided by securing their nomination to benefices. William of Wrotham, Archdeacon of Taunton, was "keeper of the king's ships, galleys, and seaports" to King John. There is a mention, though not continuous record, of other "clerks" who had charge of the king's ships till the reign of Henry VIII. The number of these ships would vary according to the interest the king took in them, the need he had for them, and his merits as a husband of his money. In the troubled times of the Lancastrian line the king's ships were few, but it does not seem that at any period he was wholly without some of his own.

The second source from which the fleets were recruited was the trading craft of London and the outports. The kings of England claimed, and exercised from the beginning, the right of impressing all ships for the defence of the realm. Every port was assessed according to its supposed resources in so many vessels properly found. They were, however, maintained by the king on service. There was a certain difference in the method of manning these two classes. In the king's own ships all alike were his servants. When a merchant ship was impressed, her crew would, when possible, be taken with her. The king then put an officer of his own, with a body of soldiers, into her. In both there was a distinction between the military officer whose business it was to fight, and the shipman whose business it was to sail.

Thus arose that distinction between the captain and the master of an English man-of-war, which lasted far into this century. The practice was universal as late as the seventeenth century. Every Spanish ship had two captains—the "capitan de guerra" (of war) and the "capitan de mar" (sea captain). But whereas in the Spanish ships the two officers were co-ordinate, with us there was no question that the master was subordinate to the captain. The Kings of England, from the Conqueror downwards, have had no love for divided authority.

The third source from which the king drew his ships was the most picturesque of all. The towns, with their dependent townships, Hastings, Winchelsea, Rye, Romney, Hythe, Dover, and Sandwich, forming the ancient corporation of the Cinque Ports, were bound by the terms of their charters to supply the king in any one year with 57 ships, 1140 men, and 57 boys for fifteen days at their own charges, and after that for as long as he chose to retain them at his own expense. For this they were repaid by privileges and honours. Every ancient institution is respectable, and the Cinque Ports men won such immortal honour by the defeat of Eustace the Monk, that we are naturally tempted to treat them tenderly. Yet it may be doubted whether they have not enjoyed an historical reputation much in excess of their merits. It is the defect of every privileged body that it is apt to be jealous. The Cinque Ports men were no exception to the rule. Many instances might be quoted of their savage feuds with rival towns, notably with Yarmouth. Under so strong a king as Edward I. and in the midst of an expedition to Flanders they fell upon and destroyed a number of Yarmouth vessels. Under weak kings complaints of their piracies and excesses on the coast are incessant. Although they no doubt supplied some kings with stout shipmen and useful vessels, it may be doubted whether they did not on the whole do as much in the way of fighting and plundering their own countrymen as against the national enemy. In the later Middle Ages the ports had already begun to silt up. They sank into insignificance, and in their last stage were chiefly known as nests of smugglers and pirates.

The crews of war vessels were divided into mariners and soldiers in unequal proportions. There were always more of the second than of the first. Thirty seamen were considered the full complement even of a large vessel; and when it is remembered that two hundred or two hundred and fifty tons was the size of a "great ship," and that the rigging was simple, the number will appear amply sufficient. It must always, too, be kept in mind that, though the relative number of sailors and soldiers in ships has varied, this distinction between the two elements constituting the crews of fighting craft has prevailed to our own time. No man-of-war was ever manned entirely by seamen, nor was it necessary that she should be. The number of men required to fight or to do work only on the decks, or between the decks, was at all times much in excess of what was needed for the purpose of sailing the ship. The steersmen and mariners of the Middle Ages, and the prime seamen of the eighteenth century, were highly trained men, whom it would have been folly to employ on such work as could be sufficiently well done by less skilful hands. From the earliest time of which there is any record, the great and arbitrary power of impressment was used to find crews for the king's ships. In 1208 King John ordered the seamen of Wales to cease making trading voyages, and to repair to Ilfracombe for the purpose of transporting soldiers to Ireland. He bade them "know for certain that if you act contrary to this, we will cause you and the masters of your vessels to be hanged, and all your goods to be seized for our use." In later times this would have been called a "hot press." The forms used might vary, and the penalties grow more humane, but the king's ships continued to be supplied with crews, down to the end of the war with Napoleon, after exactly the fashion in which King John provided for the transport of his soldiers to Ireland in 1208.

All the elements of the crews of later times are found in the ships of the Middle Ages. The mariners and "grometes" are the able seamen and ordinary seamen. There were boys then also. The archers were the predecessors of the marines, and of those drafts from the line regiments which were frequently used to make up the complement of men-of-war. The modern officers, too, have their representatives in the vessels of the Plantagenet kings. The Rector, afterwards called in official Latin Magister, is the master, the constable is the ancestor of the gunner, there was a carpenter, a "clerk," who was renamed the purser later on, and the boatswain. The nature of the work to be done would dictate the formation of these different offices. So soon as regular ships' companies began to be formed, it would be found indispensable to have someone to conduct the navigation—the master; someone to supervise the arms—the constable; someone to serve out the stores—the clerk. As ships' companies grew larger and ships more complicated, it would be necessary to increase the number of officers, and little by little the staff of a modern warship was formed. The title of captain appears at first to have been given to an officer who held what we should call flag rank. In the fifteenth century it began to be applied to the commander of a single ship. He was primarily a military officer, who might or might not be a seaman, but who in either case had a master under his command whose function it was to navigate the ship.

The growth of what came afterwards to be called flag rank may easily be traced. At first the king appointed some knight or noble to command his sea forces, and the soldiers in his ships, for some definite service. Then we hear of officers commanding in a given district for a specified time. These were first known as "captains and governors," justices or constables. In the early years of the fourteenth century the title of "Admiral" began to come into use. Captain and Admiral is the rank of the officer who commands the North and the Western Fleets. The first included the coast and sea from Dover to Berwick; the second, from Dover to the duchy of Cornwall inclusive. There was occasionally a third officer, who commanded in the Isle of Man and the Irish Sea. Of him we hear little. His chief duty was to assist in the work of subduing the Scots, and he was once at least chosen from among those chiefs of the Isles and the Western Highlands who were the worst enemies of the King of the Scots in the Lowlands. These captains and admirals were at first simple knights. Some of them were seamen of the Cinque Ports. The Alards, a family of Winchelsea, produced more than one holder of the post. The first admiral for all the seas was Sir John Beauchamp, K.G.; he was appointed by Edward III. in 1360, for a year. But it was not till later that it became the rule to have one admiral superior to all the others. In the fourteenth century a considerable change began to appear in the character, though not in formal rank or power, of these officers. In 1345 it was found necessary to appoint the Earl of Arundel to command the Western Fleet, "for no one can chastise or rule them unless he be a great man," to quote the candid confession of the King's Council. The royal authority, in fact, was growing weaker. It fell to its lowest depths in the later times of the Lancastrian line. The inevitable consequence was, that the barons seized upon the command of the ships, and used them for their own purposes. Warwick the king-maker, who among his many other offices held that of Captain of Calais and Admiral, was practically master of the whole naval forces of the country. The office of Lord High Admiral, which dates from the Lancastrian dynasty, was, in fact, a result of the aggression of the baronage. The king's authority being no longer sure of obedience, it was necessary to call in the power of the nobles, with the inevitable result. Those who knew that they were indispensable made their own terms. By the end of the Middle Ages the office of Lord High Admiral had become permanent. The old captains and admirals of the Northern and Western Fleets had disappeared, or were represented by subordinate officials, who received their commission from the Lord High Admiral. When the great Royalist reaction of the later fifteenth century had restored the authority of the Crown, the office survived. On the military side of his office the Lord High Admiral was the king's lieutenant for the fleet, exercising immense delegated powers in complete subjection to the Crown. But during the anarchy of the Wars of the Roses, such a man as Warwick, who garrisoned Calais with his own followers, and had the command of the ships, of which many were his own property, was practically master of the Channel, and rendered as much obedience to the king—or as little—as he pleased.

While the King of England possessed dominions on the Continent, he drew part of his naval forces from them. There is occasional mention of the king's ships and galleys of Aquitaine. The great reputation of the Italian seamen of the Middle Ages led to their employment now and then, and one, Nicholas Ususmaris of Genoa, was for a time in the service of Edward III., though only to command the ships belonging to Aquitaine. The Mediterranean seamen were employed very largely by the King of France, who was driven to use them by the want of skilful men among his own subjects. In the Middle Ages the English king appears only to have had recourse to them when he wished to make use of that typical Mediterranean craft, the galley. Under Henry VIII. Italians were brought in largely to serve both as seamen and shipbuilders, but by that time a larger class of vessel and a more extensive art of seamanship had begun to prevail. The galley, as has been already said, has never been found to answer in the Channel, and its brief appearances there have been of little note. For the classes of vessels he mainly used, that is, ships which might take to the oar as a subsidiary resource, but relied chiefly on the sail, the king could find men in abundance among his own subjects.

The most brief sketch of our navy in the Middle Ages would be incomplete without some mention of the famous claim to the sovereignty of the seas. That the King of England did make this haughty profession of superiority is within the knowledge of everybody, and it was advanced, in form at least, till late in the reign of George III. Attempts have been made to carry it back to the reign of King John, and have been supported by the inveterate mediæval practice of forging documents to bolster up supposed rights. But the so-called ordinance of King John, issued at Hastings in 1200, has been long given up. It was unquestionably a mere forgery, concocted at a later time to give the authority of antiquity to a more recent pretension. Yet about a hundred years later we find the sovereignty of Edward II. over the seas fully recognised by the Flemish towns. Edward III. asserted his right to be sovereign of the four seas of Britain without qualification. It must be remembered that this claim, which later times found intolerably arrogant, had in the Middle Ages the justification that it was supported by effective power. Not only was the King of England by far the most powerful sovereign on the seas in the west, but the possession of Calais gave him the command of the Straits of Dover on both sides. At a time when trade was conducted by coasting voyages, this enabled him to throttle the maritime commerce of the south with the north at will. The Venetian and Basque ships which came up to Antwerp in the early summer and went south again before autumn, were not only liable to attack by English vessels coming out of Dover or Calais, but they had constant need to use the roadsteads of these ports. It was consistent with all the ideas and practice of the Middle Ages that this power to injure should have been held to imply a right to assert superiority, and compel the recognition of it. Sir Harris Nicolas states that the first admission of this right on the part of foreigners is found in 1320, when certain Flemish envoys appealed to Edward II. to put a stop to piracies committed on their vessels by English evil-doers, praying him "of his lordship and royal power to cause right to be done, and punishment awarded, as he is Lord of the Sea, and the robbery was committed on the sea within his power, as is above said." It may be pointed out that the offences complained of were committed upon the English coast, and that an astute diplomatist of a later date might have argued that this admission did not amount to a recognition of English sovereignty over the whole North Sea. No serious resistance was, however, made to this claim till the reign of Louis XIV., which we may account for by the fact that nobody was strong enough to resist. The Venetian and Basque traders submitted to the claim much as an African caravan might recognise the right of a chief to extort backsheesh. The kings of France were too weak and too much occupied elsewhere to fight on this point of honour. The Flemings were generally our allies, and the northern powers were not concerned. Our pretension was the more easily borne because the King of England did not insist upon levying dues on all who passed through the four seas, but only on a salute as a formal recognition of superiority. This outward sign of deference, the lowering of sails, and in later times the firing of guns, was insisted upon punctiliously till far into the seventeenth century, and there are isolated cases in which it was extorted even in the eighteenth. The space of sea over which the sovereignty of England was held to extend was counted to stretch from Finisterre to the coast of Norway.

When the words "sovereignty of the sea" are used as meaning the king's effective superiority to any force which could be brought against him, there can be no question as to its reality. Throughout the Middle Ages, a king of England who was master of his own dominions was rarely hampered by the naval force of any enemy. When he marched to subdue his kingdom of Scotland, his fleets kept pace with his army as it advanced through the Lothians. On the rare occasions on which he visited his lordship of Ireland, there was nobody to say him nay. He passed and repassed at will to and from his kingdom of France. Pirates, Scotch, Flemish, and Scandinavian, might infest the coast. Now and then an expedition met with disaster. French and Spanish adventurers sometimes harried the coast, and burned small towns. But these failures of our power were comparatively rare. They occurred only when the king was weak, and the country exhausted or disturbed. The rule was, that when the monarchy exerted its strength it could sweep the seas. If the king was careless, Parliament was at hand to exhort him to action. Englishmen were keenly alive to the importance of "guarding the narrow seas round about." Nor were our ancestors ever in doubt as to how best to employ their navy. Even in the bad times of Edward II., when wisdom did not preside in the Council, a threat of invasion from France was met by the preparation of a fleet which was to attack, so that the enemy might first feel the evil. Centuries of experience have taught no better way of using the sea power.

A detailed account of the naval enterprises of the Middle Ages would go altogether beyond the scale of this work. Nor is the story one which can be told without monotony. In spite of the many improvements in the construction of ships and the advance of seamanship, the means of conducting a regular naval campaign were wanting. Vessels were still unable to keep the sea during long periods of cruising and blockade. They were not strong enough to stand the strain, nor could they carry the water and provisions required for the large fighting crews crowded into vessels ranging from fifty to three hundred tons. It followed from this double disability that warfare on sea was conducted by expeditions of brief duration. A fleet was collected, and sailed to attack the enemy's ships or harry his coast. When successful, it gathered all the plunder it could find, and returned home to be laid up for repair, while its crews were disbanded. Thus it not infrequently happened that, immediately after a striking victory, a raiding expedition of the enemy was able to pounce on some part of our coast, and retaliate by murder and ravage for what he had just suffered at home. We had a prevailing superiority, due to the greater number and efficiency of English seamen, and the greater average faculty of the English kings; but we must not look for examples of coherent, orderly war conducted through months, or even years, of effort by permanent forces.

A few examples must suffice to illustrate the general character of these centuries of conflict. No better instance of the nature of mediæval sea warfare can be found than the story of the desperate feud between the English and Norman fishermen, in the reign of Edward I. In 1293 a dispute arose in some port of Normandy or Gascony—for the authorities differ—between the French and English sailors. The point at issue, it is said, was which was entitled to drink first. It came rapidly from words to blows, and a man was killed. The authorities again differ as to whether he was French or English. All agree that the English sailors were chased back to their ships by a mob. Their ship put to sea, pursued by French vessels, and escaped. But the passions of the Norman seamen being now thoroughly aroused, they were minded to pursue the feud. Meeting six English merchant ships, they fell upon them and captured two. They hanged the crews at the yardarm, together with some dogs by way of greater insult. Then they paraded the Channel, plundering all they met, making "no distinction between an Englishman and a dog." In the meantime, the four ships which had escaped took refuge in the Cinque Ports. Here they promptly found allies, and a foray was rapidly arranged to revenge the outrage. A squadron of English ships, mainly drawn from the Cinque Ports, started in pursuit of the French. Finding that the enemy had returned to port, the English adventurers entered the Seine, captured six vessels after a sharp burst of fighting, and carried them off, having previously despatched their crews. Hereupon followed raid and counter raid, with their inevitable accompaniment of "great slaughter on both sides, shipwreck and rapine—both thirsting for blood." At last by common consent it was agreed to set a day and fight it out. The feud had apparently extended to all the seamen who used the Channel. Not only did other Frenchmen join the Normans, but Flemings and Genoese also. The Dutch and the Irish, the men, that is, of the partly English partly Norse towns of the coast, allied themselves with us. On the appointed day, the 14th April or May—for once more the authorities do not agree—the fleets met in mid-Channel, and after a savage battle the French and their allies were overcome with great carnage. At this point, but not till now, the Kings of England and of the French took up the quarrel of their subjects, and the feud between the fishermen and seamen grew into a national war. As, however, it possessed no naval features of interest, we need not pursue further the consequences of this explosion of the violence and pugnacity of the mediæval seamen.

It must always be remembered that the conditions which made this private war possible endured throughout the Middle Ages. In the absence of strong organised fleets to patrol the sea, and when no police had yet been formed in any State capable of depriving the sea robber of a safe market for his booty, every sailor not only had to fear the pirate, but he generally was prepared, upon a favourable opportunity presenting itself, to become one. The men of the Cinque Ports, of Yarmouth, or of Poole, to say nothing of the fact that they were prompt to pillage one another for want of better, were ever ready to applaud their townsman who brought in a French or Basque prize. The Norman or Basque, again, would have been surprised indeed if he had been asked to blame the fellow-countryman who came home with English booty. In fact, the sea everywhere was much in the condition of the Scotch Border. There might be truce between the kings, but the Borderers never ceased in their raids on one another, or on the rival clans of their own side. Hence it was that merchant ships sailed in large fleets for mutual protection, and that the complaints of rulers that their subjects had been pillaged by the sailors of another prince were incessant. Nor were the kings by any means backward in encouraging their vassals by their example. Of the two sea fights with which the chivalrous memory of Edward III. is associated, Sluys, and the battle off Winchelsea, known as "Les Espagnols sur Mer," the second was an incident in this piratical warfare. King Edward did not indeed make an unprovoked attack on the Spaniards for mere purposes of plunder, but he retaliated for one piece of piracy by another. His act was not one of especial violence for his time, yet it would not have been possible except in an age when the relations of seafaring nations were habitually lawless, and when an act of robbery by one was left unpunished, except when it provoked retaliation in kind by the other.

The battle of Sluys was a great regular engagement fought in pursuit of a national war. Edward III. had openly assumed the title of King of France in January 1340, and was preparing to assert his right by conquest. Philippe de Valois made ready to defend his throne, and took the measure dictated by sound sense. He collected a great fleet, composed in part of ships belonging to his subjects, in part of vessels hired from the Genoese. But the wisdom of the King of the French stopped at this preliminary stage. Although it appears that his fleet was collected as early as March, when King Edward had only forty ships in the Orwell, the great French armament lay idle in the little Flemish river Eede, at the anchorage of Sluys. The calculation perhaps was that its mere presence would suffice to delay the English king from attempting to cross. King Edward was not to be frightened. In spite of the opposition of his Chancellor and the backwardness of some of his captains, he decided to attack. Vigorous use was made of the time allowed him by the sloth of the enemy. Ships were called in from the north, and about the middle of June the king stood over to Blankenberg on the coast of Flanders. His fleet was somewhat stronger than the French. He puts the force opposed to him at a hundred and ninety vessels, while his own, including small craft, was over two hundred. But the French acted as if it had been their intention to deprive themselves of the advantage of their numbers. They remained in the river, with their ships lashed side by side to one another in three divisions. At a time when all battles were finally decided by hand-to-hand fighting, this was a not uncommon device with fleets which decided, or were compelled, to accept the attack. Nor was it altogether unreasonable, for it seemed to possess this advantage, that it forced the assailant to come on bow to bow, where his beaks would act with least effect, and where his men must board along a narrow passage; while the defender had the advantage of being able to make a barrier across the fore part of his vessel with his yard and his oars. The fatal defect of the formation was that an enemy who could fall on one end of the line could roll it up. As the French were drawn up along the bank of an estuary, and the English fleet was coming in from the sea, there was nothing to force King Edward to make a front attack. This fatal weakness of the position is said to have been noted by Barbavera, the veteran admiral of the Genoese. He is credited with an effort to induce King Philip's officers, Kiriet and Bahuchet, to stand out to sea so soon as the English appeared on the coast, but they showed the timidity which has commonly been noted in the sea fighting of the French, and preferred to wait passively for the attack. As usual, the victory fell to the side which could and would fall on.

King Edward had landed knights, who, riding over the sandhills, had taken a leisurely view of the French fleet at anchor. The weakness of their position must have been patent even to a less skilful captain than the victor of Creçy, and he decided to attack without delay. The battle was fought on the 24th of June. In the early morning the tide was at ebb, and an advance up the river was impossible. The English ships stood out to sea on the starboard tack till they were well opposite the entrance to the river. Then, as the tide turned, they swept in with it, and fell on the nearest division of the French. The destruction which followed bears an interesting resemblance to the battle of the Nile. On that occasion an English fleet coming in from the sea attacked the French lying passively at anchor, and overwhelmed them in detail. The difference was, that the Nile was decided by broadsides, and the great fight at Sluys by sword-stroke and the edge of the axe. Ship after ship was carried by boarding and its crew slaughtered, for all sea fights were, as Froissart noted, "felon," merciless and without quarter. The French had put the Great Christopher, a ship of King Edward's own, of which they had formerly made prize, at the end of their line. She fell first, and her sister ships shared her fate. In the rear of the French, that is, at the end farthest from the sea, some ships did indeed escape. They were commanded by Barbavera. It is probable that the English had not reached them when the tide turned, and the expert Genoese mercenary took the opportunity to slip to sea, leaving the van and centre to be crushed. In this also there is a curious similarity to the battle of the Nile, when Villeneuve fled with the rear ships. Sluys was an incredibly murderous battle. Upwards of thirty thousand men are said to have perished in the French fleet. It entirely crushed the naval forces of the Valois king, and from that time forward for years Edward crossed the Channel with as little molestation from an enemy as he would have met on the Thames at Oxford. The English loss was comparatively slight, but it is said to have included four of the ladies whom the king was taking with him to join the queen at Ghent.

The sea fight which took place ten years later is mainly memorable as a picturesque example of the lawlessness of the times. Characteristically enough, we owe our best account of it to Froissart, and it was just such a battle as he loved—a fine example of high-born daring, love of adventure, and, it is to be added, of total absence of scruple. To understand this battle, it is necessary to remember that the sea-borne commerce between the North and South of Europe was conducted in fleets which came up in spring from the south, and, after unloading and reloading at the great marts of Flanders, returned towards the end of summer. For the reasons already stated, they were subject to plunder on the way, and they were apt to retaliate. The king had cause of complaint against the Spanish, that is to say, the Basque traders, who are known to have plundered ten English ships coming from France. So, without wasting time in diplomacy, which would indeed have brought him little save delays and counter claims, he resolved to do himself justice. A fleet was collected at Winchelsea, and there the king, accompanied by some of his most famous knights, and by his still youthful sons, the Black Prince and John of Gaunt, lay in wait for the traders who must pass on their way home. The Basques were warned of what was preparing for them, but, confident in the size of their ships and their own courage, they were resolved to force a passage. They hired at Antwerp one of those gangs of fighting men who were then to be found in every marketplace in Europe, ready to serve any master who would pay, and any cause which promised booty. Then they sailed, well provided with weapons, and ready for the fray.

King Edward had taken up his quarters in an abbey near Winchelsea, with his queen and the ladies of his household. By day he visited his ships. By night there was feasting and dancing. When he knew that the Spaniards must be at hand, he went on board his flagship to be ready for them. It appears that no cruisers were stationed on the offing, and that the English fleet lay at anchor in the expectation that the Spaniards would seek them. If the southern traders had not been so unduly confident in their own strength, they might have passed in safety by keeping well out at sea. But, relying on the size of their vessels, and on "all kinds of artillery wonderful to think of," with which they were provided, they sought for battle, and therefore steered well in with the coast.

On the afternoon of the day of the fight, the 28th August 1350, the king was sitting on the deck of his vessel, the cog Thomas, wearing a black velvet overcoat over his armour and a black felt hat "which became him well." To pass the time, Sir John Chandos was singing the German dances he had learned on a visit to that country, and the minstrels played. While the knights and squires were amusing themselves with the gaiety of men who lived mainly for battle, the look-out in the top hailed the deck with "I see one, two, three, four—I see so many, so help me God, I cannot count them." Then the king called for his helmet, and for wine. His knights drank to the king, and to one another, and went to their stations. The fleet stood to sea. Its movements must have been seen by Queen Philippa, who remained in the abbey to pray for her husband and her two sons. The young John of Gaunt, then Earl of Richmond, and afterwards Duke of Lancaster, refused to leave his brother, the Prince of Wales. He was a boy of only ten, but King Edward and the Black Prince were the last men in the world to balk his very proper desire to be in a battle.

The Spaniards came sweeping along from east to west with a good breeze. They were fewer in number than the English, but heavier ships. "It was passing beautiful to see, or to think of," says Froissart, who loved the pomp and circumstance of war. Their tops were glittering with armed men, and "their streamers bearing their coats of arms, and marked with their bearings, danced and quivered and lept in the wind." Coming out from the anchorage of Winchelsea, King Edward's ships struck on the Spaniards, who were advancing in a line, at an angle. His own vessel was steered into one of the biggest of the enemy. The two met with such a crash that "it was as if a tempest had suddenly burst upon them." They recoiled from the shock, and then crashed together again. Their spars became entangled, and one of the Spaniard's tops was broken off. All in it were hurled into the water and drowned. If the king's ship had not been stout, she would have been broken to pieces against the bulk of her opponent. As it was, she had enough. Her seams gaped, and the water rushed in. The Spaniard, being the less injured of the two, gathered way and stood on. King Edward ordered his men to lay her aboard again, but was answered, "No, sir, you cannot have this one, but you shall have another." It would, as his shipmen knew, but probably had not the time to explain, have been impossible to overtake the enemy with a vessel already in danger of sinking. The only chance was to run into one of those coming up behind and carry her by boarding. We may presume that the shipmen did their best to pick a smaller one. It was done, and only just in time, for the king's ship sank almost immediately after he and his crew had forced their way on to the Spaniard's deck.

King Edward's adventure was an example of what happened all along the line. The Prince of Wales was in great peril beside a tall Spaniard, for his ship too began to sink, and he could not scale the high sides of the enemy. From this pass he was rescued by his cousin Henry, Earl of Derby. The two got possession of the Spaniard. Then the prince's vessel sank, so that "he and his knights could more perfectly consider the danger in which they had just been." The most extreme danger was run by Robert of Namur, a Flemish noble, and a partisan of King Edward's, who in after times was the patron of Froissart, and probably his main authority for the battle. The king had given him the command of the Salle du Roi, the vessel which carried those members of his household who could not find quarters with himself. Robert of Namur was grappled by a big enemy, who began to drag him along. His crew shouted, "Rescue for the Salle du Roi!" but to no purpose, for it was now getting dark, "and they were not heard, and if they had been heard, they would not have been rescued." The Fleming was saved by the desperate valour of his squire, Hanekin, who forced his way into the Spaniard and cut her halyards. Then Robert of Namur boarded, and the Spaniards "were all slain and thrown into the sea."

It was a desperate battle, for the English fought most valiantly, and the Spaniards "gave them plenty to do." The English archers had a great share in the victory. The enemy's crossbowmen, and others who were appointed to hurl bars of metal or heavy stones over the bulwarks of the tops and sides, were compelled to expose themselves to take aim, and were shot through the head or neck by the clothyard shafts, while thus uncovered. Seventeen Spaniards were taken in all. Against this we had to set off the loss of several of our smaller vessels and of many men. The booty must have been considerable. There was no pursuit, partly because the victors were eager to rifle the prizes, but partly also, no doubt, because they had suffered much rough usage. The king returned to Winchelsea Abbey to celebrate his victory by festivities.

The battle with the Spaniards off Winchelsea marks the culmination of King Edward's naval power. In the gloomy closing years of his reign all these glories hastened to decay. His navy, drawn from so many different sources, and composed at all times largely of hired or impressed vessels, was peculiarly liable to suffer from the general disorganisation of his government when the long war with France had begun to exhaust his resources, and his faculties were failing. Twenty years after his brilliant sea fight, he had to listen to the bitter complaints of the Commons, who told him boldly, and with too much truth, that the coast was unprotected, and trade ruined. So far had the strength of the "Sovereign of the Seas" sunk, that there was actual fear of invasion from France, while raids carried out by French and Spanish adventurers on the ports of the Channel were numerous. Scotch "pirates," in alliance with Flemings, Frenchmen, and Basques, harried the north and east. The Parliament of 1371 insisted angrily on the abuses by which the naval strength of the country was being destroyed. There is much intrinsic probability in their complaints. When it is remembered that the fleets were mainly formed by impressing merchant ships, it is easy to understand how the misconduct or want of judgment of subordinate agents under a weak government might give ample justification for such complaints as these.

"First, that arrests of shipping were often made long before vessels were wanted, during which interval the owners were at the expense of keeping the ships and crews, without making any profit, by which many of them became so impoverished as to be obliged to quit their business, and their ships were ruined. Secondly, that the merchants who supported the navy had been so impeded in their voyages and affairs by divers ordinances, that they had no employment for ships; that great part of the mariners had consequently abandoned their profession, and gained their livelihood in some other way; and that their ships were hauled up on the shore to rot. Thirdly, that, as soon as the masters of the king's ships were ordered on any voyage, they impressed the masters and ablest part of the men of other ships, and those vessels being left without persons to manage them, many of them perished, and their owners were ruined."

Part of this petition against grievances is concerned with the general policy of the king in matters of trade, as expressed in his "divers ordinances." But the greater part of it is directed against abuses which were hardly to be escaped at a time when navies were formed by impressing merchant ships. Corrupt or even only insolent and overbearing officers would abuse the power of impressment. Where those evil motives were not at work, there was still an all but irresistible temptation to "arrest" ships long before they were needed, since, if they were allowed to go on trading voyages, they would not be forthcoming later on. The king's officers were to be excused if they preferred to err on the safe side; but to the trader it was a grievous oppression, for he was deprived of the means of earning profits, while remaining liable to be taxed in order to provide the king with a revenue for the support of the war. In later ages the impossibility of combining the qualities of money-earning merchant ships and of fighting ships, which should be always available for war, had much to do with the formation of regular military fleets. In the seventeenth century the State took, first, to hiring vessels for long periods, and manning them itself; then, as the need of a special class of vessel grew with the development of artillery, to building for itself. In the Middle Ages no State was yet rich enough to maintain for long together a great and costly naval force. Thus it was necessary to rely on impressed vessels, which could only temporarily be withdrawn from commerce. Fleets formed in such a way bore an inevitable resemblance to armies composed of farmers, townsmen, or mountain clans collected for a single foray or battle, and always liable to dissolution on the approach of harvest, or even under the influence of the occasional soldier's not unnatural desire to put his booty in a safe place. In the great Civil War of the seventeenth century, the Parliament discovered that the London trainbands, though capable of good marching and hard fighting, as they proved during the relief of Gloucester and at the battle of Newbury, soon grew eager to be back to their shops, and mutinous if they were kept out for what seemed to them an undue period. So it must always be with a citizen force. Since the mediæval navy was largely of that description, it suffered from recurrent lapses of strength, and was peculiarly liable to total collapse when the country was overwrought by the strain of long war.

Edward's reign closed in failure and defeat. The last blow was given to his power in the south of France, when a fleet sent to the relief of Rochelle, under the command of John Hastings, Earl of Pembroke, was crushed by a superior force of Spanish vessels under Ambrosio Bocanegra, the Admiral of Castile, in 1372. The troubled reign of Richard II. saw no improvement. At one period in his minority, a Scotch pirate named Mercer harried the north-west unchecked, till he was defeated by the enterprise of a citizen of London, John Philipot. It is typical of the time, that Philipot was rebuked by some of the lords of the Council, with foolish insolence, for taking on himself to fight without their consent. A wealthy and important citizen of London, of Philipot's spirit, was not a man to stand bullying tamely. He answered that he had fought only to make good their failure to do their duty, and to that they had very naturally "not a word to answer."

Even the astute and capable Henry IV. was for long unable to bring about visible improvement. Amid the embarrassments of the first years of his reign, he had recourse to a very curious experiment. In order to deal with what may be called the ordinary work of the navy, the pursuit of pirates, and the repulse of mere raids on the coast, he entered into a contract with the citizens of London. They were to provide a force of ships and men, to be commanded by their own admirals, and were to be paid certain dues, and keep all their prizes. They did not undertake to deal with a great hostile fleet, but only to discharge the police duties. After a good deal of negotiation, the experiment was actually tried from May 1406 to September 1407. The merchants appointed two admirals, Richard Clytherow for the south and west, and Nicholas Blackburn for the north, who were endowed with large powers of impressment. This curious attempt to discharge the duty of the State by contract was not satisfactory, and the arrangement was not renewed. It is chiefly worth mentioning as showing to what shifts the Crown was driven in its times of weakness.

In an introduction which aims only at giving an outline account of the mediæval navy, further details of warlike operations, which were always of the same general character, are unnecessary. There was a revival of efficiency with Henry V., not, however, marked by any single events of the brilliancy of the battle of Sluys, or "Les Espagnols sur Mer." Then came another period of collapse in the dreary reign of Henry VI. With the close of the fifteenth century the mediæval period in the history came to an end. The establishment of the Tudor dynasty has been described as marking the beginning of the new monarchy. This is perhaps a somewhat arbitrary description, but it is certainly the case that the anarchy of the Wars of the Roses had converted Englishmen, or had brought them back, to a high conception of the need of a strong royal authority as the one effectual security for the safety of the subject against disorder. The administration was centralised in the king's hand. Increase of wealth in the nation supplied him with a larger revenue, and the formation of a Royal Navy in the modern sense became at last possible.

Before leaving the mediæval navy, the picture may be completed by one example of that brutal violence which has been mentioned as a feature of the sea life of the time. I have spoken of the feuds between the different towns, and of complaints of excesses committed on the coast by armed forces appointed to protect them. One concrete example is better than any amount of general statement. Here is an instance of sheer devilry taken from the unhappy years of the minority of Richard II., when the State was weak, and Englishmen had been brutalised by the savage wars of France.

In 1379 Sir John Arundel was appointed to the command of a force of archers and men-at-arms, which was to go to the help of the Duke of Brittany. It was to sail from Southampton. As the weather was unfavourable, there was some delay in starting, and Arundel quartered his soldiers in a nunnery. The house, according to a common practice of the time, contained, in addition to the nuns, many married women whose husbands were absent, widows, and unmarried girls, who were sent there for safety and education. Arundel's soldiers violated these women, and pillaged the chapel. Disregarding all complaints, he not only went to sea without punishing the offenders, but allowed them to bring their booty and several of the women with them. There were also, it appears, prostitutes in the ships. The ecclesiastical authorities fell back on the only revenge then within their power. They formally cursed Arundel and his thieves with bell, book, and candle as the ships sailed away.

To men accustomed to the licence of the French wars, this doubtless appeared a very impotent form of retaliation. But they soon had occasion to change their minds. A violent storm burst upon them, apparently, since it swept them out of the Channel, from the east or north-east. To lighten the ships, these savages threw overboard all the women they had carried to sea. The danger might have been avoided if Arundel had listened to the advice of his sailing-master, John Rust, a sailor of the now very much decayed little town of Blakeney in Norfolk, who warned him that a gale was coming on. But Arundel, though a good soldier, as he showed when defending Southampton in 1377, was neither a seaman himself, nor sufficiently a man of sense to listen to those who were. Having first incurred disaster by his obstinacy, Arundel sealed his own fate by persisting in again overriding the opinion of Rust. He had been driven to within sight of the coast of Ireland, and, in his frantic desire to escape the misery of his position on shipboard, insisted that an attempt should be made to land. It was in vain that the sailors pointed out to him that it was far safer to keep at sea. In an explosion of sheer fury, largely excited, we may presume, by fear, Arundel killed some of them. Then Rust and the others made the hopeless attempt to land the madman whom they had the misfortune to be compelled to obey. Seeing a small island near the coast, the sailing-master attempted to get under its lee, but found the water too broken. Then, as a last resource, he tried to beach the ship, but she struck on the rocks, and went to pieces. Arundel, to whom every opportunity seems to have been given by fate to display his folly, was one of those who contrived to reach the shore. He might have escaped if he had not stood within reach of the waves, shaking the water out of his clothes. Rust, who had also come through alive, seeing his peril, ran forward to drag him back, and both were beaten down and dragged under by the next wave. An uncertain number of other vessels, with many knights and men-at-arms, perished in the same disaster. This may stand as sufficient example of what was possible when the brutality of the Middle Ages coincided with the licence of the sea. We may hope that the details of the story were heightened in the telling, but there is no reasonable ground to doubt its substantial truth, and the mere fact that such a tale could be told shows what was believed to be possible.