Chapter 32

413Acta Parl. Scot., iv. 369.Statutes of the Realm, 1 Jac. I., c. 2.Reg. Privy Counc. Scot., vi.Nat. MSS. of Scot., iii. No. 85.State Papers, Dom., 1604, x. No. 1. It is unfortunate that the reasonable delimitation of the territorial fishing waters proposed in the treaty was not carried out, for there can be little doubt that had it been it would have become recognised by other nations, and would have continued to the present day.414Acta Parl. Scot., v. 228, 230.The Earl of Stirling’s Register of Royal Letters, ii. 478.415The commissioners were the Earl of Morton (Lord High Treasurer), the Earl of Monteith (President of the Privy Council), the Marquis of Hamilton, the Earls of Roxburgh and Carrick, Sir William Alexander, Mr John Hay, and Mr George Fletcher.416Among other things, the commissioners were instructed to represent to the king the prejudice which Scotland sustained by the use of the name “Great Britain” in the royal patents, writs, and records relating to Scotland, for, they reminded him, “there was no union as yet with England”; and Charles was to be requested to renew his seals under the termsCarolus Dei gratia Scotiæ, Angliæ, Franciæ, et Hiberniæ Rex. It must be remembered that at this time the Scottish aristocracy were smarting under the defeat which the king had recently inflicted on them in connection with the Act of Revocation, by which most of the church, property in the hands of laymen was re-annexed to the crown.417Acta Parl. Scot., v. 232.418Rec. Conv. Roy. Burghs, iii. 325. The foreigners from Hamburg and Bremen were chiefly engaged in trade and barter.419Fœdera, xix. 211.State Papers, Dom., clxxxvii. 46. The commission was dated 8th December 1630, and the other commissioners were the Earls of Salisbury, Dorset, and Carlisle, Viscounts Wimbledon and Wentworth, Sir John Coke, Sir Francis Cottingham, and Sir William Alexander, who was Secretary for Scotland.420Acta Parl. Scot., v. 235.Rec. Conv. Roy. Burghs, iv. 526.State Papers, Dom., clxxxviii. 72. In the record of the burghs the distance from the shore on the east coast, at the Orkneys and Shetlands, and on the north coast, is given as forty miles; but as the original records of the Convention between 1631 and 1649 were lost, and that printed is from an abstract prepared in 1700, it appears that an error was made in the transcribing.421The Duke of Lennox had some time before this proposed the formation of a fishery society for the purpose.422Acta Parl. Scot., v. 236. The Act referred to was passed in 1607 by the Scottish Parliament, but it was to be inoperative until a corresponding Act was passed by the Parliament of England, which was not done.423State Papers, Dom., cxci. 7. Memorandum, dated 11th May 1631, by Secretary Coke, on “Matters in difference betwixt the English and Scottish Commissioners concerning the fishing.” From this paper it appears that the Scottish commissioners made the most of points relating to naturalisation; they objected to the natives being employed as fishermen by the association, and they would say nothing about the proportion of busses that might be set forth in Scotland.424Stirling Letters, ii. 538, 544.Acta Parl. Scot., v. 236. Charles, it will be observed, mentions 15 miles. The miles stated in the Scottish documents were Scots miles of 5929·5 imperial feet, 10 Scots miles being equal to nearly 11¼ imperial miles; the extent of the reserved waters was therefore very nearly 15¾ imperial miles (15·72).425Rec. Conv. Roy. Burghs, iv. 534.426Acta Parl. Scot., v. 238.427Rec. Conv. Roy. Burghs, iv. 534, 535.428“Whereat we ourselff for the most part were present,”—king to Council, 15th July 1632.Stirling Letters, ii. 604.429State Papers, Dom., ccvi. 46.430State Papers, Dom., ccvi. 50.431State Papers, Dom., cciii. 53, 54, 19th November 1631. The draft appears to have been prepared and altered entirely by the king himself.432State Papers, Dom., ccxxix. 78, 83, 87, 89.433The king to the Council, 15th July 1632.Stirling Letters, ii. 605, 606, 617.Acta Parl. Scot., v. 245.434The Act specified by the king was passed in 1491, but he seems rather to have been referring to the Act 6 James III., c. 48. “That Lordes, Barrones and Burrowes gar make Schippes, Busches, and greate Pinck-boates with Nettes,” which was passed in 1471, “for the common good of the realm and the great increase of riches,” to be brought from other countries in exchange for fish exported. The Act of James IV., “Anent the makeing of Schippes and Busches on the quhilk all Idle Men suld Laboure,” was an early attempt to carry out the policy advocated by English writers in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. It enacted that ships and busses, not under twenty tons burden, should be built in all the burghs and towns of Scotland, provided with mariners and nets: and power was given to compel “idle men” to man them.435State Papers, Dom., ccvi. 47. “What is required from the Lords and Gentry of Scotland towards the fishing.”436Acta Parl. Scot., v. 236.437State Papers, Dom., ccxxi. 1 ;Acta Parl. Scot., v. 239.438The councillors nominated by Charles were, for England and Ireland, Lord Weston, the High Treasurer (created Earl of Portland in February of the following year), the Earl of Arundel, the Earl of Pembroke, Viscount Savage, Lord Cottingham, and Secretary Coke; for Scotland, the Earl of Morton, the High Treasurer, the Earl of Stratherne and Monteith, President of the Privy Council, the Earl of Roxburgh, Viscount Stirling, Mr John Hay, and Mr George Fletcher.439Martin, who visited the Hebrides about the year 1695, saw the foundation of a house, which, the natives told him, had been built by the Society as a store for salt and casks, on Hermetra, a small island in the Sound of Harris; and he saw a similar relic on a small island called Vacksay, in Loch Maddy. He was informed by the natives that “in the memory of some yet alive,” as many as 400 sail had been loaded with herrings in Loch Maddy in one season: at the time of his visit the fishing had been abandoned, though herrings were plentiful.A Description of the Westerne Islands of Scotland, pp. 51, 54, 55.440Simon Smith, who was latterly Secretary to Pembroke’s association, afterwards stated that the Society had attained to the proper cure of herrings, and was likely to have been ultimately successful. This opinion was not shared by Dutch writers. The author ofThe True Interest and Political Maxims of the Republic of Holland, published under the name of De Witt, says the herrings the Society sent to Dantzic in 1637 and 1638, though caught at the same time and place as the Hollanders’ herrings, were “esteemed naught to the very last barrel”; and a contemporary author, Meynert Semeyns, a skipper of Enkhuisen, in a work written in 1639 (Een corte beschryvinge over de Haring-visscherye in Hollandt), says the same thing. “The Dutch,” he boasted, “catch more herrings and prepare them better than any other nation ever will; and the Lord has, by means of the herring, made Holland an exchange and staple-market for the whole of Europe.” No other nation, he added, ever tried the industry but to their loss, and the example adduced was the Society’s herrings sent to Dantzic.441In August and September 1633, before the Council had met (busses having been purchased on the strength of subscriptions promised), two busses were taken by Dutch men-of-war and one by a Dunkirker. The former captures were doubtless made because the Dutch fishermen were acting contrary to the fishery laws of the United Provinces in taking service with aliens, and they were promptly disavowed by the States-General and the busses restored. The Dunkirkers made prize of some of the busses (there were ten or twelve of them) almost every year: one, theSalisbury, was taken twice, and in 1639 four were captured. Spain was then at war with the United Provinces, and the Dutch buss was a natural prey of the Dunkirk privateer.442P. 309.443State Papers, Dom., ccccxxix. 48. Order of the King in Council, 29th September 1639. “Taking into consideration of what great importance it is and may be to the good of this kingdom to plant, increase and cherish the fishery in the North seas, and understanding that the Dutch, who reap an annual great benefit thereby, have and do not only privately underhand, but too manifestly also oppose the endeavours of his Majesty’s good subjects, who have of late years employed their industry that way,” it was ordered that the Lord Treasurer, the Earl Marshal, the Lord Admiral, the Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of Dorset, and one of the Secretaries of State, calling to their aid Sir Henry Marten (Judge of the Court of Admiralty), should forthwith “consult and advise what fitting course may be taken to advance and settle the said fishery, and particularly to consider whether it may not be fit to debar the exportation of lampreys, without which the Dutch cannot well, as is informed, continue their fishing for cod and ling, until his Majesty’s subjects be quietly settled in the herring fishing.” The Dutch obtained their lampreys for bait almost exclusively from England, and chiefly from the Thames. The above account of the proceedings of the Fishery Society is summarised (for the most part) from numerous State Papers. It was stated by Simon Smith, who was latterly Secretary to Pembroke’s association, that £10,000 was lost through the Dunkirkers.444Oppenheim,A History of the Administration of the Royal Navy, i. 215, 217, 221.445Ibid.; Hannay,A Short History of the Royal Navy.446Oppenheim,op. cit., 265.447Oppenheim,op. cit., 275.448State Papers, Dom., lvi. 66; lxi. 81; lxx. 8, 9; liv. 56; xc. 70, 119; clxii. 82, 45.449State Papers, Dom., lix. 79; xci. 30, 45; xcii. 62; xciii. 82; xcv. 39; clxiii. 65; clxxx. 94. In 1630 a Yarmouth fisherman, owner of one of the Iceland smacks under convoy, petitioned the Council for relief from the payment of the twenty shillings, on the grounds that before the Order was made he had paid £5 for the assurance of his boat during that season to the assurance office in London, and that three boats belonging to him had been previously taken by Dunkirkers.450Oppenheim,op. cit., 276.451State Papers, Dom., cclxviii. 31, 88 ; cclxiv. fol. 20a; ccxciii. 107; ccxciv. 46.452State Papers, Dom., ccxciii. 107; ccxciv. 46; ccxcv. 31, 69, 71; cclxiv. fol. 164. Many of the crew of the man-of-war were English, Scottish, or Irish. It was probably owing in part to the considerable numbers of British subjects serving on the Dutch men-of-war that they were always favoured by the country people.453Ibid., ccxcvi. 5, 14, 30. Joachimi to States-General, (26 Aug.)/(4 Sept.),Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, O, fol. 380.454Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 30,221, fol. 43b.455Reglement for Preventing Abuses in and about the Narrow Seas and Ports, March 1633.State Papers, Dom., cclx. 127, 128; cclxxix. 18.Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 30,221, fol. 44 (Pepys’ collections). Copies exist inState Papers, Dom., vol. 515, Nos. 38, 39 (1647), extracted fromAdmiralty Book, Liber E, and inState Papers, Dom., Jas. I., vol. 11, No. 40 (1604), wrongly calendered (see p. 119).456Ibid., liv. 9, 33.457Oppenheim,op. cit.458State Papers, Dom., lxxxvi. 73, 75; ccxxix. 102.459Gardiner,Hist., vii. 349et seq.460Gardiner,op. cit., 368.461State Papers, Dom., cclxxxvii. 55; ccxci. 14.462Ibid., cclxxvi. 65.463Rushworth,Collections, ii. 257.State Papers, Dom., cclxxvi. 64. Compare the language of Edward III. in 1336, p. 36.464Rushworth, ii. 294, 353. Compare Windebank’s notes of the speech,State Papers, Dom., ccxc. 108: “The Judges at the Assizes to let the people know his Majesty’s care to preserve the ancient dominion (of the seas).”465Gardiner,op. cit.466State Papers, Dom., cclxix. 51.467Resol. States-General, 9/19 Nov. 1633; Muller,Mare Clausum: Bijdrage tot de Geschicdenis der Rivaliteit van Engeland en Nederland in de Zeventiende Eeuw, 229.468State Papers, Dom., ccxxxiv. 87; Nicholas’sLetter Book, Feb. 16, fol. 97. Muller thinks it was this revival of feeling about the dominion of the sea that caused the edition of Grotius’Mare Liberumto be published this year, with the Magnus Intercursus appended.469Coke to Boswell, 16/26 April 1635. Needham,Additional Evidences concerning the Right of Soveraigntie and Dominion of England in the Sea; Justice,A General Treatise of the Dominion and Laws of the Sea, 181; Entick,A New Naval History, xvii. If, as is probable, the mention of discourses concerningMare Clausumreferred to Selden’s work, it would show that the author was then known to be engaged in writing it.470“Dessein de Sa Matede la grande Bretagne p̄ sa flotte p̅r̅e̅nte,” 15/25 May 1635. Aitzema,Saken van Staet en Oorlogh, ii. 164; Muller,op. cit., 230. Boswell suppressed the reference to the Dutch fisheries and to the old troubles at Greenland and in the East Indies, and he toned down the part prohibiting the warships of other nations from keeping guard in the British seas.471State Papers, Dom., cclxxxvi. 100.472They were as follow:Merhonour, admiral, 44 guns;James, vice-admiral, 48 guns;Swiftsure, rear-admiral, 42 guns;St George, 42 guns;St Andrew, 42 guns;Henrietta Maria, 42 guns;Vanguard, 40 guns;Rainbow, 40 guns;Red Lion, 38 guns;Constant Reformation, 42 guns;Antelope, 34 guns;Leopard, 34 guns;Swallow, 34 guns;Mary Rose, 26 guns;Bonaventure, 34 guns; and the First, Third, Eighth, and TenthLion’s Whelps, of 14 guns each. The merchant ships were theSampson,Freeman,Royal Exchange,William Thomas, andPleiades.473The king to the Earl of Lindsey,State Papers, Dom., cclxxxviii. 84.474Instructions for our very good Lord, the Earle of Lindsey, Admirall of his Majesties’ fflete, in his Majesty’s shippe theMerhonour, prepared for this present Expedic̃on for Guard of the Narrow Seas. 2nd May 1635.State Papers, Dom., clvii. fol. 135b et seq.475Ibid., cxcii. 3, 21st May 1631; clvii. fol. 117b. It was found that the French had a fleet of thirty-nine men-of-war, and two additional ships were building.Ibid., cxcviii. 84.47620th May 1631.Ibid., cxci. 80.477State Papers, Dom., ccxxxvii. 1.478Ibid., clvii. fol. 132, 26th April 1634.479In the memorandum which Pennington submitted to the Admiralty, he said: “Sixtly, that if any stranger bee oprest by another stranger ytis stronger than hee, within the jurisdicion of ye Narrow Seas, and ythee flyes for succor or refuge to any of his Majesty’s shippes imployed for the guard of the sayd Seas, and come under his lee, and craves protection, whether his Majesty’s ffloatinge ffortes shall not have ye same privelege in succoringe and defendinge them as ffortes a Land hath.”Ibid., cclxv. 23.480Windebank and Cottington were two of the three in the confidence of the king as to the secret negotiations with Spain.State Papers, Dom., cclxv. 23, 25, 26, 41, 49, 78, 89; clvii. fol. 132.481An equally obscure answer of Coke’s is recorded in the collection of papers for the ambassadors to Cologne in 1673 (State Papers, Dom., Chas. II., vol. 339, p. 513). “1636. Ea Leicester (sic) Query—What answer shall I give if I be asked what I mean by the seas of ye King my master, or our seas? The Answer returned by Mr Secretary Coke in his own hand: By the King’s or our seas you are not to understand or condescend to any restrictive sense but to answer ye Brittish Seas: and that the 4 seas mentioned in our laws are thereby meant, which you must not otherwise circumscribe or limitt; besides they are the same which in all antiquity have been acknowledged to belong unto us, as is sufficiently proved by authentic records.”482State Papers, Dom., cclxxxviii. 84, 85.483State Papers, Dom., cclxxxviii. 4; cclxxxix. 75. He had “no more than two blue and two white flags with six pendants to each of them; there are wanting two red flags and six pendants, one blue flag and one white.” The office of Lord High Admiral was in commission from the death of the Duke of Buckingham in 1628 until the appointment of the Earl of Northumberland in 1638.484Gardiner,Hist., vii. 385.485The inhabitants of the coast were apprehensive of the French fleet, and the Admiral sent a message to the Mayor offering to show his orders from the King of France, which bound him to honour and respect everything that belonged to his Majesty of Great Britain.State Papers, Dom., ccxci. 23.486State Papers, Dom., ccxci. 58, 59.487Gardiner,op. cit., 385;State Papers, Dom., ccxcv. 61. The English agent in France reported in August that two squadrons under French admirals, and bearing the French flag, were to ply, one along the coast of France from Belle Isle to Bayonne, the other at the mouth of the Channel. The remainder of the fleet, half French and half Hollander (which guarded the coast up to Calais and to the north of it), bore the States’ colours, and were under the command of the Hollander Admiral,—“an expedient to avoid acknowledging his Majesty’s right in the Channel, in case this squadron should meet his Majesty’s fleet and be constrained to vail the bonnet.”488Gardiner,loc. cit.489It was from this Hollander, met off Beachy Head on 9th June, that Lindsey learned that the French fleet was at Portland.490State Papers, Dom., ccxci. 80, 27th June 1635.491Ibid., ccxcvi. 14.492State Papers, Dom., ccxciii. 12.493Gardiner,op. cit., 386.494Lindsey to the king, 2nd August; Coke to Lindsey, 4th August.State Papers, Dom., ccxcv. 9, 42. The rumour that two of the king’s ships were to go north to the busses reached the ears of the States’ ambassador.Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, O, fol. 376.495State Papers, Dom., ccxcvi. 5, 14, 16, 30.Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, O, fol. 380.Res. Holl., 7th September, Bosgoed,op. cit., p. 358. Twelve busses and three of the convoys took refuge at Newcastle; others in the Firth of Forth. The skipper of a coasting vessel from Scotland to Scarborough saw seven busses in flames; the sky was red from the conflagration. TheLeopard, one of Lindsey’s fleet, convoying merchantmen to Dunkirk, met eighteen of the privateers returning in triumph. The Dutch busses were the natural prey of the Dunkirkers, and the States were put to great expense and pains in guarding them. In 1625 a Spanish agent, Egidio Ouwers, submitted to Cardinal de Ceva, at Brussels, an elaborate plan for destroying the Dutch herring fishery, so as to “spoil their chiefest mine by which they maintained their wars.”State Papers, Dom., dxxi. 30.496State Papers, Dom., ccxcv. 44.497The facts as to the movements, &c., of the fleet are mostly taken from the Earl of Lindsey’s Journal, written for the king’s information, and preserved in the Record Office. “A Relation of the passages that daily happened in this late expedition under my conduct, being by Your Majesty’s gratious appointment Admiral and General of your Majesty’s ffleet sett forthe for guard of your Narrow Seas, from the time that the ships mett all together in the Downes, 28oMay, untill the 8oof October following, I making my first entrance aboard yorRoyall ship theMerhonor, 16oMay, in Tilbury Hope.”Ibid., ccxcix. 28.498Pennington to Nicholas, 3rd August 1635.State Papers, Dom., ccxcv. 18. Pennington, it may be said, lost no chance of sneering privately at the Earl of Lindsey, especially in his correspondence with his friend, Nicholas, the Secretary to the Admiralty. When Lindsey finally reached the Downs in October, and Pennington was appointed to command the winter fleet, he told Nicholas that he had hoped that “they” who had had the “sweet of the summer should have had a little of the sour sauce of the winter”; he had spent “twice as much as he, and more every way for the king’s honour.” Nicholas shared the feeling. On hearing that Lindsey had appointed a French cook on board theHenrietta Mariahe refused to believe it, “as it was never since his time known that any Frenchman was admitted scarce to go aboard, much less to be an officer in any of the king’s ships”; and he foretold great evils from it.Ibid., ccxcix. 19; ccxci. 61.499Gardiner,op. cit.500Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, O, fol. 364.501State Papers, Dom., cclxxviii. 3. Roe’s reference was to the fishings at the Zowe or Sowe, where great numbers of gurnards were caught (see p. 65). The stipulation of Richelieu concerned the allied squadrons which were to blockade Dunkirk, as arranged by Article viii. of the treaty. Article xii., after providing for the size of the squadrons, continues, “Et au cas que lesdites esquadres viennent à s’assembler, comme il peut arriver qu’il sera necessaire pour le bien commun, l’Admiral desdits Seigneurs les Estats abaissera à l’abord son pavillon du grand mast, et le saluëra de son canon, et celui du Roi le resaluëre comme de coustume, et comme il en a esté use par le Roi de la Grande Bretagne.” Dumont,Corps Diplomatique, 83 (?).502State Papers, Dom., lxxix. 17. “Athwart ye opening of Falmouth four sailes stood with their forefoot,” and very earnestly tried to weather the English ships. Among them was a French man-of-war of Rochelle, but they shot four or five pieces of ordnance at him, and “soo brought him by ye lee.”See p. 207.503He reported, 16th September 1631, that two English merchantmen had met five French men-of-war, bearing the French king’s colours on the main-top, and the Malta colours on the poop, who saluted them with, “Amain, rogues, for the King of France”; but as the English ships refused to strike and prepared to fight, the French sheered off. He added that he had learned, through an interview between one of his lieutenants and one of the French commanders, that the latter had a commission to compel any English ships he could master to take in their flags and dowse their top-sails, and that three French admirals had been appointed for regaining the regality of the Narrow Seas, because, as the French officer said, the Pope had taken it from France and given it to England, but now that we had fallen from their religion it had been reassigned.State Papers, Dom., cxcix. 51.504Nicholas to Pennington, 29th September 1631.Ibid., cc. 45.505Pennington to Nicholas, 2nd October (ibid., cci. 7). Pennington, whose information about the French trying to make the English strike had given the Admiralty and the king “good content” (ibid., cc. 27), had been ordered westwards to retaliate, but “he hoped the Lords would not think that his two ships half-manned were able to encounter with twenty well manned”.Ibid., cci. 29.50614th October, 12th November 1631.State Papers, Dom., cci. 54; cciii. 32.507Ibid., cclxiii. 75.508Ibid., cccxvii. 102.509State Papers, Dom., cclxv. 23, 25, 41, 49.510Ibid., cccxvii. 102.511State Papers, Dom., cci. 59; ccii. 17; ccciii. 71, 79; ccx. 58; ccxxxiv. 37; ccxlviii. 81.512State Papers, Dom., ccxx. 25, 26.513Ibid., ccxxxiv. 5, 32. “The Ambassador and the other Lords being at dinner in the great cabin, the gunner sent word that a Hollander was passing with his top-sails a-trip, to whom he gave order to make a shot. The Lords and gentlemen left the table to see the event, but the Hollander, neither for that shot nor two or three others, would lower the same one foot; whereupon he gave order to shoot him through, which was done, with as much speed as they could bring ordnance to bear, so as before she passed she had twenty shot in and through her sides, which they heard to crash in the same. They could perceive but one piece she had forth; to that fire was given twice. The shot came not near, but they might well hear the same. After her came the Admiral with his flag on the main-top.” Ketelby cleared for action and was giving orders for a broadside; but the ambassador twice desired him to give over and stand for Dover, and he submitted. If it had not been for his passengers, Ketelby did not doubt he would have brought them in to answer the contempt.514State Papers, Dom., ccxcv. 13; ccxcvii. 28; ccxcviii. 16. It was the usual practice to make the offender pay for the shot.515State Papers, Dom., ccc. 43; ccci. 28; ccxcix. 21.516Ibid., cclxv. 49.517Ketelby and Viscount Conway explained that it was necessary to punish them in a public manner, since imprisonment in the bilboes and such corporal punishments were not effective. Conway recommended Scott’s fine to be remitted, owing to his worth and poverty, as well as from the fact that he had recently been taken captive by the “Turkish” pirates, and his ransom was not all paid. Bushell, as we learn from a petition “of divers poor men, women, and children, whose kindred are now in slavery at Argier and Sallee,” had redeemed and brought home thirty of the captives; and it is probable that neither of the fines was exacted. It is doubtful if Lindsey’s action was regular, for the vessels, according to his statement, had not come within gunshot. TheNeptunewas one of the three ships fitted out by London for Northumberland’s fleet.State Papers, Dom., ccxv. 28, 65, 67; cclxv. 50; cclxiii. 75; ccxcvi. 30, 34, 37; ccci. 31.518Molloy,De Jure Maritimo et Navalis, 149.519Regulations and Instructions relating to his Majesty’s Service at Sea, 1734, 1766, 1790, Art. xi.; 1808, Art. xxiv. A case of the kind occurred in 1829. Phillimore,Commentaries upon International Law, ii. 58.520Gardiner,op. cit., viii. 84.521State Papers, Dom., ccxcvi. 69; cci. 26, 97.522State Papers, Dom., ccciii. 74; cccv. 36, 38; cccxi. 1. The total number of men in the first fleet, which included five of the “Whelps” and two pinnaces then building, was to be 4580; in the second, in which were included two “Whelps,” it was to be 1890.523Hume (Hist. Engl., ch. lii. an. 1636), following earlier writers, places the number at sixty. Thus Frankland (Annals of King James and King Charles the First, 477 (1681)) speaks of “sixty gallant ships.” Baker (A Chronicle of the Kings of England, 455 (1679)) and others, including most of the naval historians of the eighteenth century, give the same number.

414Acta Parl. Scot., v. 228, 230.The Earl of Stirling’s Register of Royal Letters, ii. 478.

415The commissioners were the Earl of Morton (Lord High Treasurer), the Earl of Monteith (President of the Privy Council), the Marquis of Hamilton, the Earls of Roxburgh and Carrick, Sir William Alexander, Mr John Hay, and Mr George Fletcher.

416Among other things, the commissioners were instructed to represent to the king the prejudice which Scotland sustained by the use of the name “Great Britain” in the royal patents, writs, and records relating to Scotland, for, they reminded him, “there was no union as yet with England”; and Charles was to be requested to renew his seals under the termsCarolus Dei gratia Scotiæ, Angliæ, Franciæ, et Hiberniæ Rex. It must be remembered that at this time the Scottish aristocracy were smarting under the defeat which the king had recently inflicted on them in connection with the Act of Revocation, by which most of the church, property in the hands of laymen was re-annexed to the crown.

417Acta Parl. Scot., v. 232.

418Rec. Conv. Roy. Burghs, iii. 325. The foreigners from Hamburg and Bremen were chiefly engaged in trade and barter.

419Fœdera, xix. 211.State Papers, Dom., clxxxvii. 46. The commission was dated 8th December 1630, and the other commissioners were the Earls of Salisbury, Dorset, and Carlisle, Viscounts Wimbledon and Wentworth, Sir John Coke, Sir Francis Cottingham, and Sir William Alexander, who was Secretary for Scotland.

420Acta Parl. Scot., v. 235.Rec. Conv. Roy. Burghs, iv. 526.State Papers, Dom., clxxxviii. 72. In the record of the burghs the distance from the shore on the east coast, at the Orkneys and Shetlands, and on the north coast, is given as forty miles; but as the original records of the Convention between 1631 and 1649 were lost, and that printed is from an abstract prepared in 1700, it appears that an error was made in the transcribing.

421The Duke of Lennox had some time before this proposed the formation of a fishery society for the purpose.

422Acta Parl. Scot., v. 236. The Act referred to was passed in 1607 by the Scottish Parliament, but it was to be inoperative until a corresponding Act was passed by the Parliament of England, which was not done.

423State Papers, Dom., cxci. 7. Memorandum, dated 11th May 1631, by Secretary Coke, on “Matters in difference betwixt the English and Scottish Commissioners concerning the fishing.” From this paper it appears that the Scottish commissioners made the most of points relating to naturalisation; they objected to the natives being employed as fishermen by the association, and they would say nothing about the proportion of busses that might be set forth in Scotland.

424Stirling Letters, ii. 538, 544.Acta Parl. Scot., v. 236. Charles, it will be observed, mentions 15 miles. The miles stated in the Scottish documents were Scots miles of 5929·5 imperial feet, 10 Scots miles being equal to nearly 11¼ imperial miles; the extent of the reserved waters was therefore very nearly 15¾ imperial miles (15·72).

425Rec. Conv. Roy. Burghs, iv. 534.

426Acta Parl. Scot., v. 238.

427Rec. Conv. Roy. Burghs, iv. 534, 535.

428“Whereat we ourselff for the most part were present,”—king to Council, 15th July 1632.Stirling Letters, ii. 604.

429State Papers, Dom., ccvi. 46.

430State Papers, Dom., ccvi. 50.

431State Papers, Dom., cciii. 53, 54, 19th November 1631. The draft appears to have been prepared and altered entirely by the king himself.

432State Papers, Dom., ccxxix. 78, 83, 87, 89.

433The king to the Council, 15th July 1632.Stirling Letters, ii. 605, 606, 617.Acta Parl. Scot., v. 245.

434The Act specified by the king was passed in 1491, but he seems rather to have been referring to the Act 6 James III., c. 48. “That Lordes, Barrones and Burrowes gar make Schippes, Busches, and greate Pinck-boates with Nettes,” which was passed in 1471, “for the common good of the realm and the great increase of riches,” to be brought from other countries in exchange for fish exported. The Act of James IV., “Anent the makeing of Schippes and Busches on the quhilk all Idle Men suld Laboure,” was an early attempt to carry out the policy advocated by English writers in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. It enacted that ships and busses, not under twenty tons burden, should be built in all the burghs and towns of Scotland, provided with mariners and nets: and power was given to compel “idle men” to man them.

435State Papers, Dom., ccvi. 47. “What is required from the Lords and Gentry of Scotland towards the fishing.”

436Acta Parl. Scot., v. 236.

437State Papers, Dom., ccxxi. 1 ;Acta Parl. Scot., v. 239.

438The councillors nominated by Charles were, for England and Ireland, Lord Weston, the High Treasurer (created Earl of Portland in February of the following year), the Earl of Arundel, the Earl of Pembroke, Viscount Savage, Lord Cottingham, and Secretary Coke; for Scotland, the Earl of Morton, the High Treasurer, the Earl of Stratherne and Monteith, President of the Privy Council, the Earl of Roxburgh, Viscount Stirling, Mr John Hay, and Mr George Fletcher.

439Martin, who visited the Hebrides about the year 1695, saw the foundation of a house, which, the natives told him, had been built by the Society as a store for salt and casks, on Hermetra, a small island in the Sound of Harris; and he saw a similar relic on a small island called Vacksay, in Loch Maddy. He was informed by the natives that “in the memory of some yet alive,” as many as 400 sail had been loaded with herrings in Loch Maddy in one season: at the time of his visit the fishing had been abandoned, though herrings were plentiful.A Description of the Westerne Islands of Scotland, pp. 51, 54, 55.

440Simon Smith, who was latterly Secretary to Pembroke’s association, afterwards stated that the Society had attained to the proper cure of herrings, and was likely to have been ultimately successful. This opinion was not shared by Dutch writers. The author ofThe True Interest and Political Maxims of the Republic of Holland, published under the name of De Witt, says the herrings the Society sent to Dantzic in 1637 and 1638, though caught at the same time and place as the Hollanders’ herrings, were “esteemed naught to the very last barrel”; and a contemporary author, Meynert Semeyns, a skipper of Enkhuisen, in a work written in 1639 (Een corte beschryvinge over de Haring-visscherye in Hollandt), says the same thing. “The Dutch,” he boasted, “catch more herrings and prepare them better than any other nation ever will; and the Lord has, by means of the herring, made Holland an exchange and staple-market for the whole of Europe.” No other nation, he added, ever tried the industry but to their loss, and the example adduced was the Society’s herrings sent to Dantzic.

441In August and September 1633, before the Council had met (busses having been purchased on the strength of subscriptions promised), two busses were taken by Dutch men-of-war and one by a Dunkirker. The former captures were doubtless made because the Dutch fishermen were acting contrary to the fishery laws of the United Provinces in taking service with aliens, and they were promptly disavowed by the States-General and the busses restored. The Dunkirkers made prize of some of the busses (there were ten or twelve of them) almost every year: one, theSalisbury, was taken twice, and in 1639 four were captured. Spain was then at war with the United Provinces, and the Dutch buss was a natural prey of the Dunkirk privateer.

442P. 309.

443State Papers, Dom., ccccxxix. 48. Order of the King in Council, 29th September 1639. “Taking into consideration of what great importance it is and may be to the good of this kingdom to plant, increase and cherish the fishery in the North seas, and understanding that the Dutch, who reap an annual great benefit thereby, have and do not only privately underhand, but too manifestly also oppose the endeavours of his Majesty’s good subjects, who have of late years employed their industry that way,” it was ordered that the Lord Treasurer, the Earl Marshal, the Lord Admiral, the Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of Dorset, and one of the Secretaries of State, calling to their aid Sir Henry Marten (Judge of the Court of Admiralty), should forthwith “consult and advise what fitting course may be taken to advance and settle the said fishery, and particularly to consider whether it may not be fit to debar the exportation of lampreys, without which the Dutch cannot well, as is informed, continue their fishing for cod and ling, until his Majesty’s subjects be quietly settled in the herring fishing.” The Dutch obtained their lampreys for bait almost exclusively from England, and chiefly from the Thames. The above account of the proceedings of the Fishery Society is summarised (for the most part) from numerous State Papers. It was stated by Simon Smith, who was latterly Secretary to Pembroke’s association, that £10,000 was lost through the Dunkirkers.

444Oppenheim,A History of the Administration of the Royal Navy, i. 215, 217, 221.

445Ibid.; Hannay,A Short History of the Royal Navy.

446Oppenheim,op. cit., 265.

447Oppenheim,op. cit., 275.

448State Papers, Dom., lvi. 66; lxi. 81; lxx. 8, 9; liv. 56; xc. 70, 119; clxii. 82, 45.

449State Papers, Dom., lix. 79; xci. 30, 45; xcii. 62; xciii. 82; xcv. 39; clxiii. 65; clxxx. 94. In 1630 a Yarmouth fisherman, owner of one of the Iceland smacks under convoy, petitioned the Council for relief from the payment of the twenty shillings, on the grounds that before the Order was made he had paid £5 for the assurance of his boat during that season to the assurance office in London, and that three boats belonging to him had been previously taken by Dunkirkers.

450Oppenheim,op. cit., 276.

451State Papers, Dom., cclxviii. 31, 88 ; cclxiv. fol. 20a; ccxciii. 107; ccxciv. 46.

452State Papers, Dom., ccxciii. 107; ccxciv. 46; ccxcv. 31, 69, 71; cclxiv. fol. 164. Many of the crew of the man-of-war were English, Scottish, or Irish. It was probably owing in part to the considerable numbers of British subjects serving on the Dutch men-of-war that they were always favoured by the country people.

453Ibid., ccxcvi. 5, 14, 30. Joachimi to States-General, (26 Aug.)/(4 Sept.),Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, O, fol. 380.

454Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 30,221, fol. 43b.

455Reglement for Preventing Abuses in and about the Narrow Seas and Ports, March 1633.State Papers, Dom., cclx. 127, 128; cclxxix. 18.Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 30,221, fol. 44 (Pepys’ collections). Copies exist inState Papers, Dom., vol. 515, Nos. 38, 39 (1647), extracted fromAdmiralty Book, Liber E, and inState Papers, Dom., Jas. I., vol. 11, No. 40 (1604), wrongly calendered (see p. 119).

456Ibid., liv. 9, 33.

457Oppenheim,op. cit.

458State Papers, Dom., lxxxvi. 73, 75; ccxxix. 102.

459Gardiner,Hist., vii. 349et seq.

460Gardiner,op. cit., 368.

461State Papers, Dom., cclxxxvii. 55; ccxci. 14.

462Ibid., cclxxvi. 65.

463Rushworth,Collections, ii. 257.State Papers, Dom., cclxxvi. 64. Compare the language of Edward III. in 1336, p. 36.

464Rushworth, ii. 294, 353. Compare Windebank’s notes of the speech,State Papers, Dom., ccxc. 108: “The Judges at the Assizes to let the people know his Majesty’s care to preserve the ancient dominion (of the seas).”

465Gardiner,op. cit.

466State Papers, Dom., cclxix. 51.

467Resol. States-General, 9/19 Nov. 1633; Muller,Mare Clausum: Bijdrage tot de Geschicdenis der Rivaliteit van Engeland en Nederland in de Zeventiende Eeuw, 229.

468State Papers, Dom., ccxxxiv. 87; Nicholas’sLetter Book, Feb. 16, fol. 97. Muller thinks it was this revival of feeling about the dominion of the sea that caused the edition of Grotius’Mare Liberumto be published this year, with the Magnus Intercursus appended.

469Coke to Boswell, 16/26 April 1635. Needham,Additional Evidences concerning the Right of Soveraigntie and Dominion of England in the Sea; Justice,A General Treatise of the Dominion and Laws of the Sea, 181; Entick,A New Naval History, xvii. If, as is probable, the mention of discourses concerningMare Clausumreferred to Selden’s work, it would show that the author was then known to be engaged in writing it.

470“Dessein de Sa Matede la grande Bretagne p̄ sa flotte p̅r̅e̅nte,” 15/25 May 1635. Aitzema,Saken van Staet en Oorlogh, ii. 164; Muller,op. cit., 230. Boswell suppressed the reference to the Dutch fisheries and to the old troubles at Greenland and in the East Indies, and he toned down the part prohibiting the warships of other nations from keeping guard in the British seas.

471State Papers, Dom., cclxxxvi. 100.

472They were as follow:Merhonour, admiral, 44 guns;James, vice-admiral, 48 guns;Swiftsure, rear-admiral, 42 guns;St George, 42 guns;St Andrew, 42 guns;Henrietta Maria, 42 guns;Vanguard, 40 guns;Rainbow, 40 guns;Red Lion, 38 guns;Constant Reformation, 42 guns;Antelope, 34 guns;Leopard, 34 guns;Swallow, 34 guns;Mary Rose, 26 guns;Bonaventure, 34 guns; and the First, Third, Eighth, and TenthLion’s Whelps, of 14 guns each. The merchant ships were theSampson,Freeman,Royal Exchange,William Thomas, andPleiades.

473The king to the Earl of Lindsey,State Papers, Dom., cclxxxviii. 84.

474Instructions for our very good Lord, the Earle of Lindsey, Admirall of his Majesties’ fflete, in his Majesty’s shippe theMerhonour, prepared for this present Expedic̃on for Guard of the Narrow Seas. 2nd May 1635.State Papers, Dom., clvii. fol. 135b et seq.

475Ibid., cxcii. 3, 21st May 1631; clvii. fol. 117b. It was found that the French had a fleet of thirty-nine men-of-war, and two additional ships were building.Ibid., cxcviii. 84.

47620th May 1631.Ibid., cxci. 80.

477State Papers, Dom., ccxxxvii. 1.

478Ibid., clvii. fol. 132, 26th April 1634.

479In the memorandum which Pennington submitted to the Admiralty, he said: “Sixtly, that if any stranger bee oprest by another stranger ytis stronger than hee, within the jurisdicion of ye Narrow Seas, and ythee flyes for succor or refuge to any of his Majesty’s shippes imployed for the guard of the sayd Seas, and come under his lee, and craves protection, whether his Majesty’s ffloatinge ffortes shall not have ye same privelege in succoringe and defendinge them as ffortes a Land hath.”Ibid., cclxv. 23.

480Windebank and Cottington were two of the three in the confidence of the king as to the secret negotiations with Spain.State Papers, Dom., cclxv. 23, 25, 26, 41, 49, 78, 89; clvii. fol. 132.

481An equally obscure answer of Coke’s is recorded in the collection of papers for the ambassadors to Cologne in 1673 (State Papers, Dom., Chas. II., vol. 339, p. 513). “1636. Ea Leicester (sic) Query—What answer shall I give if I be asked what I mean by the seas of ye King my master, or our seas? The Answer returned by Mr Secretary Coke in his own hand: By the King’s or our seas you are not to understand or condescend to any restrictive sense but to answer ye Brittish Seas: and that the 4 seas mentioned in our laws are thereby meant, which you must not otherwise circumscribe or limitt; besides they are the same which in all antiquity have been acknowledged to belong unto us, as is sufficiently proved by authentic records.”

482State Papers, Dom., cclxxxviii. 84, 85.

483State Papers, Dom., cclxxxviii. 4; cclxxxix. 75. He had “no more than two blue and two white flags with six pendants to each of them; there are wanting two red flags and six pendants, one blue flag and one white.” The office of Lord High Admiral was in commission from the death of the Duke of Buckingham in 1628 until the appointment of the Earl of Northumberland in 1638.

484Gardiner,Hist., vii. 385.

485The inhabitants of the coast were apprehensive of the French fleet, and the Admiral sent a message to the Mayor offering to show his orders from the King of France, which bound him to honour and respect everything that belonged to his Majesty of Great Britain.State Papers, Dom., ccxci. 23.

486State Papers, Dom., ccxci. 58, 59.

487Gardiner,op. cit., 385;State Papers, Dom., ccxcv. 61. The English agent in France reported in August that two squadrons under French admirals, and bearing the French flag, were to ply, one along the coast of France from Belle Isle to Bayonne, the other at the mouth of the Channel. The remainder of the fleet, half French and half Hollander (which guarded the coast up to Calais and to the north of it), bore the States’ colours, and were under the command of the Hollander Admiral,—“an expedient to avoid acknowledging his Majesty’s right in the Channel, in case this squadron should meet his Majesty’s fleet and be constrained to vail the bonnet.”

488Gardiner,loc. cit.

489It was from this Hollander, met off Beachy Head on 9th June, that Lindsey learned that the French fleet was at Portland.

490State Papers, Dom., ccxci. 80, 27th June 1635.

491Ibid., ccxcvi. 14.

492State Papers, Dom., ccxciii. 12.

493Gardiner,op. cit., 386.

494Lindsey to the king, 2nd August; Coke to Lindsey, 4th August.State Papers, Dom., ccxcv. 9, 42. The rumour that two of the king’s ships were to go north to the busses reached the ears of the States’ ambassador.Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, O, fol. 376.

495State Papers, Dom., ccxcvi. 5, 14, 16, 30.Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, O, fol. 380.Res. Holl., 7th September, Bosgoed,op. cit., p. 358. Twelve busses and three of the convoys took refuge at Newcastle; others in the Firth of Forth. The skipper of a coasting vessel from Scotland to Scarborough saw seven busses in flames; the sky was red from the conflagration. TheLeopard, one of Lindsey’s fleet, convoying merchantmen to Dunkirk, met eighteen of the privateers returning in triumph. The Dutch busses were the natural prey of the Dunkirkers, and the States were put to great expense and pains in guarding them. In 1625 a Spanish agent, Egidio Ouwers, submitted to Cardinal de Ceva, at Brussels, an elaborate plan for destroying the Dutch herring fishery, so as to “spoil their chiefest mine by which they maintained their wars.”State Papers, Dom., dxxi. 30.

496State Papers, Dom., ccxcv. 44.

497The facts as to the movements, &c., of the fleet are mostly taken from the Earl of Lindsey’s Journal, written for the king’s information, and preserved in the Record Office. “A Relation of the passages that daily happened in this late expedition under my conduct, being by Your Majesty’s gratious appointment Admiral and General of your Majesty’s ffleet sett forthe for guard of your Narrow Seas, from the time that the ships mett all together in the Downes, 28oMay, untill the 8oof October following, I making my first entrance aboard yorRoyall ship theMerhonor, 16oMay, in Tilbury Hope.”Ibid., ccxcix. 28.

498Pennington to Nicholas, 3rd August 1635.State Papers, Dom., ccxcv. 18. Pennington, it may be said, lost no chance of sneering privately at the Earl of Lindsey, especially in his correspondence with his friend, Nicholas, the Secretary to the Admiralty. When Lindsey finally reached the Downs in October, and Pennington was appointed to command the winter fleet, he told Nicholas that he had hoped that “they” who had had the “sweet of the summer should have had a little of the sour sauce of the winter”; he had spent “twice as much as he, and more every way for the king’s honour.” Nicholas shared the feeling. On hearing that Lindsey had appointed a French cook on board theHenrietta Mariahe refused to believe it, “as it was never since his time known that any Frenchman was admitted scarce to go aboard, much less to be an officer in any of the king’s ships”; and he foretold great evils from it.Ibid., ccxcix. 19; ccxci. 61.

499Gardiner,op. cit.

500Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, O, fol. 364.

501State Papers, Dom., cclxxviii. 3. Roe’s reference was to the fishings at the Zowe or Sowe, where great numbers of gurnards were caught (see p. 65). The stipulation of Richelieu concerned the allied squadrons which were to blockade Dunkirk, as arranged by Article viii. of the treaty. Article xii., after providing for the size of the squadrons, continues, “Et au cas que lesdites esquadres viennent à s’assembler, comme il peut arriver qu’il sera necessaire pour le bien commun, l’Admiral desdits Seigneurs les Estats abaissera à l’abord son pavillon du grand mast, et le saluëra de son canon, et celui du Roi le resaluëre comme de coustume, et comme il en a esté use par le Roi de la Grande Bretagne.” Dumont,Corps Diplomatique, 83 (?).

502State Papers, Dom., lxxix. 17. “Athwart ye opening of Falmouth four sailes stood with their forefoot,” and very earnestly tried to weather the English ships. Among them was a French man-of-war of Rochelle, but they shot four or five pieces of ordnance at him, and “soo brought him by ye lee.”See p. 207.

503He reported, 16th September 1631, that two English merchantmen had met five French men-of-war, bearing the French king’s colours on the main-top, and the Malta colours on the poop, who saluted them with, “Amain, rogues, for the King of France”; but as the English ships refused to strike and prepared to fight, the French sheered off. He added that he had learned, through an interview between one of his lieutenants and one of the French commanders, that the latter had a commission to compel any English ships he could master to take in their flags and dowse their top-sails, and that three French admirals had been appointed for regaining the regality of the Narrow Seas, because, as the French officer said, the Pope had taken it from France and given it to England, but now that we had fallen from their religion it had been reassigned.State Papers, Dom., cxcix. 51.

504Nicholas to Pennington, 29th September 1631.Ibid., cc. 45.

505Pennington to Nicholas, 2nd October (ibid., cci. 7). Pennington, whose information about the French trying to make the English strike had given the Admiralty and the king “good content” (ibid., cc. 27), had been ordered westwards to retaliate, but “he hoped the Lords would not think that his two ships half-manned were able to encounter with twenty well manned”.Ibid., cci. 29.

50614th October, 12th November 1631.State Papers, Dom., cci. 54; cciii. 32.

507Ibid., cclxiii. 75.

508Ibid., cccxvii. 102.

509State Papers, Dom., cclxv. 23, 25, 41, 49.

510Ibid., cccxvii. 102.

511State Papers, Dom., cci. 59; ccii. 17; ccciii. 71, 79; ccx. 58; ccxxxiv. 37; ccxlviii. 81.

512State Papers, Dom., ccxx. 25, 26.

513Ibid., ccxxxiv. 5, 32. “The Ambassador and the other Lords being at dinner in the great cabin, the gunner sent word that a Hollander was passing with his top-sails a-trip, to whom he gave order to make a shot. The Lords and gentlemen left the table to see the event, but the Hollander, neither for that shot nor two or three others, would lower the same one foot; whereupon he gave order to shoot him through, which was done, with as much speed as they could bring ordnance to bear, so as before she passed she had twenty shot in and through her sides, which they heard to crash in the same. They could perceive but one piece she had forth; to that fire was given twice. The shot came not near, but they might well hear the same. After her came the Admiral with his flag on the main-top.” Ketelby cleared for action and was giving orders for a broadside; but the ambassador twice desired him to give over and stand for Dover, and he submitted. If it had not been for his passengers, Ketelby did not doubt he would have brought them in to answer the contempt.

514State Papers, Dom., ccxcv. 13; ccxcvii. 28; ccxcviii. 16. It was the usual practice to make the offender pay for the shot.

515State Papers, Dom., ccc. 43; ccci. 28; ccxcix. 21.

516Ibid., cclxv. 49.

517Ketelby and Viscount Conway explained that it was necessary to punish them in a public manner, since imprisonment in the bilboes and such corporal punishments were not effective. Conway recommended Scott’s fine to be remitted, owing to his worth and poverty, as well as from the fact that he had recently been taken captive by the “Turkish” pirates, and his ransom was not all paid. Bushell, as we learn from a petition “of divers poor men, women, and children, whose kindred are now in slavery at Argier and Sallee,” had redeemed and brought home thirty of the captives; and it is probable that neither of the fines was exacted. It is doubtful if Lindsey’s action was regular, for the vessels, according to his statement, had not come within gunshot. TheNeptunewas one of the three ships fitted out by London for Northumberland’s fleet.State Papers, Dom., ccxv. 28, 65, 67; cclxv. 50; cclxiii. 75; ccxcvi. 30, 34, 37; ccci. 31.

518Molloy,De Jure Maritimo et Navalis, 149.

519Regulations and Instructions relating to his Majesty’s Service at Sea, 1734, 1766, 1790, Art. xi.; 1808, Art. xxiv. A case of the kind occurred in 1829. Phillimore,Commentaries upon International Law, ii. 58.

520Gardiner,op. cit., viii. 84.

521State Papers, Dom., ccxcvi. 69; cci. 26, 97.

522State Papers, Dom., ccciii. 74; cccv. 36, 38; cccxi. 1. The total number of men in the first fleet, which included five of the “Whelps” and two pinnaces then building, was to be 4580; in the second, in which were included two “Whelps,” it was to be 1890.

523Hume (Hist. Engl., ch. lii. an. 1636), following earlier writers, places the number at sixty. Thus Frankland (Annals of King James and King Charles the First, 477 (1681)) speaks of “sixty gallant ships.” Baker (A Chronicle of the Kings of England, 455 (1679)) and others, including most of the naval historians of the eighteenth century, give the same number.

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