against piracy, were contained in the treaty between England and the Earl of Flanders,-that all ships should have letters sealed with the common seals of the towns to which they belonged, testifying that they really belonged to those towns; and that the ships of Edward, whether of his English or French dominions, should carry his arms in their colours, and that the Flemish ships should carry the earl's.

434. About this time (1308-1309) private hostilities appear to have been carried on between the people of Bayonne and some of the towns of Castile, in which the sovereigns of the countries bore no part, except in endeavouring to obtain peace by mediation with their subjects, whom they appear to have been unable to command. In the course of these hostilities some English vessels were taken by Castilians under Portuguese colours.

435. About the same time the Easterlings, as they were called, the vessels from the Baltic, were accused of depredations on the Scotch coast. Complaints were made to the Earls of Namur and Flanders; complaints were also made of Norwegian ships; indeed, all the shipping appear to have been occupied in endeavours to capture each other. Treaties and conventions were made, but disregarded. Notwithstanding the closest amity which existed between England and France, in 1315 the ships of Calais attacked and carried into that port four English vessels sailing with wool to Antwerp, and with their boats attacked another English vessel so loaded, lying aground near Margate, and carried her also into Calais.

436. In 1333 the sovereigns of France and Aragon, appearing to have become conscious of the mischief of granting letters of marque, engaged with each other not to grant them unless justice should be denied by the sovereign of the aggressors; and made regulations for the amicable determination of claims in respect of improper captures. But about the same time the King of Aragon granted to one of his subjects a letter of marque for £2000, Barcelona money,

with 11,333 shillings for interest, and £100 for his expenses in journeys to England.

437. In 1325 we find the King of England entering into a treaty, not with the Earl of Flanders, but with the towns of Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres, for the continuance of a truce with them and the other towns of Flanders, and for various modifications of the previous conditions of their trade.

438. In 1353 we find the King of England entering into a treaty with the merchants, mariners, and communities of Lisbon and Oporto, irrespective of the King of Portugal, for an alliance for fifty years, during which neither was to assist the enemy of the other, but the ships of each were to have free admission to the ports of the other. Past injuries were to be forgotten, future were to be settled by arbitration, and the goods of the merchants of Lisbon or Oporto taken by the English were to be restored, unless the owners were assisting the enemy.

439. In 1378 we find two subjects, the one of Scotland, and the other of England, not only carrying on a petty warfare on their own account, but, without troubling their respective sovereigns, undertaking the belligerent business of their states. Mercer, a Scottish merchant, in his voyage from France, driven by stress of weather into Scarborough, was imprisoned in the castle till released by order of the King. His son, in revenge, collected a fleet of French, Scots, and Spaniards, and levied black-mail on the English seas; whereupon one Mr. Philpot, a London citizen, fitted out his fleet with a thousand men, and took Mercer with fifteen Spanish vessels richly loaded, together with the prizes they had made.

440. In the latter part of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth, the English appear to have peculiarly distinguished themselves by their achievements of appropriation on the sea, and to have captured with equal impartiality the well-laden vessels of all nations, French, Flemish, Spanish, and those belonging to the Hanseatic League.

In 1385, the governor of Calais and the seamen of the Cinque Ports took above 800 vessels of all classes from the French. In 1386, they fell in with some Genoese laden with wines, spices, stuffs of gold and silk, gold, silver, precious stones, etc., on their voyage to Flanders, and of course took them for condemnation into one of their ports (Sandwich). In this instance they were obliged, through communication with the King, to restore the prizes, with compensation for the damage they had sustained. In 1387, the Earl of Arundel fell upon and captured 126 of a vast fleet of Flemish, French, and Spanish vessels, laden chiefly with wine. Dartmouth had signalized itself by taking some rich vessels, including Clisson's sumptuous barge; as a reward perhaps for its intrepidity (in 1389) a general privateering commission was granted to the people of that town. Nor were its people slow in exercising the functions bestowed upon them. In the same year one of its merchants fitted out an expedition, with which he captured thirty-three vessels, loaded with about 1500 tons of Rochelle wine.

441. In 1393 we find another grant of letters of marque. One Collyng alleged that merchants of Plasencia, in the north of Spain, had plundered him to the amount of £3200; thereupon the King of England imprisoned all the Plasencians in England, and granted Collyng letters, authorizing him to make reprisal to that amount, by taking any vessels belonging to Plasencia.

442. In the same year, the King licensed three large warlike ships of Lynn, with their commanders and mariners, to enter into the service of Margaret, Queen of Norway; Sweden, and Denmark, against the Hanse Towns, by whose navy she was hard pressed.

443. In 1403 we find the Hanse towns of Bruges, Lübeck, and Hamburg complaining of the capture of their vessels by the mariners of England and Bayonne. The mayor of Bayonne had detained their prizes in defiance of the King's order to restore them. The pirates of Whitby had taken two

Danish vessels; and those of Cley had seized some Scotch vessels, and for awhile retained them, in defiance of the King's order for their restoration.

444. Indeed the maritime power of the Sovereign was so feeble, that those who chose to fit out armed vessels were under little if any restraint. Parliament committed the guard of the sea, from the 1st of May, 1406, to the 29th September, 1407, to the merchants, under the obligation of maintaining 2000 well-armed men and 1000 mariners; and appointed an admiral of the north, and another of the south, to be invested by the King with the usual power of admirals to take up vessels, press men, and appoint deputies; and assigned to them a portion of the revenues to maintain the undertaking. The funds however fell short, and the guard was ill-observed. 445. The Hanse Towns, or some of them, among which Bergen was particularly conspicuous, appear to have carried on a predatory warfare (1390–1415) against the English shipping in the north seas, even those trading with other Hanse towns,-apparently with the view of excluding their commerce from those regions.

446. In 1412, Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, and the free territory of Flanders, entered into a convention with Henry of England, to maintain the peace and commerce between them, notwithstanding hostilities between the King and the Duke of Burgundy, their Earl. In 1416, the Duke renewed a truce with Henry, which was to be observed, notwithstanding war should arise between Henry and the King of France, the sovereign of the Duke.

447. In the same year Henry renewed a commercial treaty with Prussia: certain sums were, on the one hand, to be paid to Prussia for outrages committed by seamen of Scarborough, Hull, Blackney, Cromer, Dartmouth, Plymouth, Calais, and Bayonne, and a vice-admiral of England; and, on the other hand, to England, for an outrage committed by a Dantziker; and it was agreed that for future injuries the sovereign of the aggressor should make satis

faction, or any of his subjects should be liable to arrest in the country of the injured mariner.

448. In 1412 letters of marque were granted to Waldern and others, merchants of London, to take all Genoese vessels for the reimbursement of £24,000, the alleged amount of their losses, and £10,000 for damages. The Genoese had deliberately captured and sold in Genoa the ships and cargoes of these merchants, who had ventured upon one of the first mercantile expeditions from England to the Mediterranean States.

449. In 1409 the King of England on the one hand, and the Grand Master of Prussia and the Hanse of the other, came to a general account and reckoning, in respect of the reclamations of their subjects for their misbehaviour on the sea. Merchants of Hull, York, London, Colchester, Yarmouth, Plymouth, Cley, Lynn, and other ports, all brought in their bills for ships or cargoes taken by merchants of Prussia or the Hanse; and on the other side, the merchants of the Hanse and of Prussia presented similar accounts. All had also reciprocal claims for violated privileges. The balances were struck, and King Henry gave his obligations to the Grand Master for upwards of 30,000 nobles, payable by instalments, and the Grand Master became bound in 766 nobles to the English merchants, whose claims had been preferred for twenty or thirty times that amount. The Hamburgers and those of other Hanse towns suffered also a vast reduction on their demands. In this account Wismar and Rostock seem to have been most distinguished for their plundering exploits.

450. In 1430 a truce for a year was concluded between England and Castile, one of the terms of which, to prevent piracies, was that no armed vessel should sail from the port of either country until sufficient security had been given to abstain from hostilities against the subjects of the other, and not to carry any prize into any port except that from which she was fitted out. And in the same year a