truce was made between England and Scotland, in the terms of which it was stipulated that receivers and encouragers should be liable, as well as principals, to punishment, and to make compensation for acts of piracy; and that the aggressions of the subjects of either sovereign should not occasion a breach of the truce.

.451. In 1437 King Henry of England concluded a treaty with the Grand Master of Prussia, the cities of Lübeck and Hamburg, and the other Hanse towns, by which, among other provisions, the merchants of Prussia and the Hanse were to be exempt from the jurisdiction of the English Admiralty (so high an opinion of its character had been already formed), and to have their causes tried summarily by two judges, to be appointed by the King; and it was stipulated that the inhabitants of the port from which any ship sailed should make compensation for any piracies she might commit, and that security should be taken from every armed vessel before she was permitted to leave her port.

452. In 1440 some of the mercantile cities of Holland, with the consent of their Duke, entered upon a war of reprisals to the amount of 50,000 gold florins, against the Hanse cities of Lübeck, Hamburg, Wismar, Rostock, and those of the Sound, who were assisted by Prussians, Spaniards, and Venetians, and took twenty large hulks, three Prussian carracks, and a great Venetian carrack richly loaded, by way of compensation for the losses alleged to have been sustained.

453. In 1482 we have another instance of a treaty between a town and a foreign sovereign. The inhabitants of Guipuscoa, in Spain, with the consent of Ferdinand and Isabella, entered into a convention with the King of England for mutual freedom in trade, reciprocal security for the good conduct of their respective ships, and a stipulation that if letters of reprisal should be issued by the English or Spanish sovereigns, the English cruisers should spare the Guipuscoan vessels, and that the Guipuscoans should not permit Spanish letters of reprisal to be exercised againstthe English within their waters.

It may not be improper here to remark, that, as the kings had no navy by which they could secure redress for injuries offered by foreigners to their subjects, one only of two alternatives was open,-to allow the injured party to obtain satisfaction by his own prowess, or to summon all the private ships of the nation for a general war. The obligation to procure such letters was some restraint on the general license of the times. Indeed, the mariner injured, or who pretended to have been injured, most frequently endeavoured to do himself justice without requiring his sovereign's consent.

454. SHIPS AND FLEETS.-The strong and lofty ships of the Veneti, already described, were probably built from models introduced by mariners from Marseilles-for not such were the rest of the vessels which skimmed the waters of the Gael-nor such were the war-craft in which the Scandinavians encountered the sea.

455. The Veneti were destroyed by the Romans, and although Latian galleys afterwards guarded the Gallic and British coasts, the ships of commerce were few, and with the legions the maritime armament disappeared.

456. The Saxon invaders came in vessels of hides; they were superior to corracles (beyond which the naval architecture of the Britons does not seem to have advanced, for they were not a sea-loving race), but daring indeed were the mariners who ventured to embark in such contrivances on the stormy waters of the Northern Seas, although they may have had keels of wood and ribs a little larger than hoops.

457. The swarms which succeeded the Saxons,—the Seakings and the Jarls,-came in ships long, low, and narrow, but with lofty prow and towering stem, from which the missiles might be more effectively sent. The armed prows were adorned with quaint and gaudy figures; the breastworks were rows of shields; a single mast with a single sail occasionally aided the efforts of one long tier of oars.

The

arch-pirate and the chiefest of his captains occasionally erected two poles for masts, yet each in general bore only a single sail. The battle was the rushing of the vessels against each other, the shock of the pointed beaks, the flights of arrows, the hurling of stones and darts, the grappling together, and the boarding with the sword and the pike.

458. In after times, we hear of smaller vessels chained and bound in pairs, the better to sustain the violent impulse of the larger ships of the foe. Such was the unfortunate manœuvre of Svend, King of Denmark, in the battle in which he was (1064) terribly defeated by Harold Hardrada, the Norwegian king.

459. We are informed that Alfred constructed vessels much larger than those which infested the English seas; but the account of them is so vague as not to enable us to give any description of their magnitude or form.

460. The fame acquired by Athelstan (938), through his signal defeat of the combined forces of the Kings of Scotland, Northumberland, Cumberland, and the Norwegian kings of Ireland and the Isles, was recognized by presents from foreign princes, and among them of a magnificent ship from the King of Norway, with gilded beaks, a purple sail, and sides adorned with gilded shields.

461. Olaf Trygvason, King of Norway, after his repulse before London (996), began to build war-ships far exceeding in dimensions any which had been commonly used in the North. Among them is mentioned the 'Dreki,' or Dragon. Her keel is said to have measured 74 elns, about 111 feet; she had 34 benches for rowers, and was as high as the loftiest commercial ships. Of course, her head and stern were richly decorated, carved, and gilt.

462. It is said that the fleet or assemblage of vessels collected by Harold to resist the invasion of William, exceeded 700, and that the Norman counted a larger force; but numbers were inconclusive evidence of maritime strength. Before this time (1066) and long afterwards, several of the English

ports were bound to furnish a certain number of ships, for a limited period, to their immediate lord. Dover and other Cinque Ports were each bound to supply twenty, with a crew of twenty-one men for each, when the king embarked in war. Indeed, to a much more recent period, the sovereign had no navy; he had scarcely a ship of his own; the men-of-war were improvised out of the merchant service, as their crews have been in modern times, and the natural instincts of the sailors of those days facilitated the equipment of an invasive fleet. The navy estimates were not so onerous as at present: they amounted in 1208 to the price of 1000 oars for the galleys; and in 1213 to £2. 68. 8d. for maintaining the royal fleet at Southampton, and 12s. for the support of "the other ship."

463. The Crusades led to the first naval expedition of England beyond the waters which wash her shores. Gathered from all quarters, and fantastically decorated for a fantastical occasion, was Richard's fleet-13 great busses or dromons, each carrying three masts, and on each mast a broad sail, 50 galleys and 100 transports, with 106 other ships, which were assembled at Lisbon to join him on the way. Their rostra were glittering in gilt and gaudy colours; the bulwarks were hung with shining shields, and standards, flags, and pennants were fluttering over their decks. They were impelled by sails and oars. This vast armament, by prodigious efforts, and under threat of crucifixion to the faltering crews, captured a solitary Saracen of alarming dimensions and carrying 800 men.

464. The first naval victory of England was won by the ill-famed John, and achieved after the fashion of Lysander's conquest of the Athenian fleet. The Pope had revoked his edict for the invasion of England, and Philip directed his interdicted arms against the Count of Flanders, the ally of John. That monarch sent 500 vessels to the aid of his ally (1213), and while the French were ravaging the land, seized 300, and burnt another 100 of their deserted ships.

465. This magniloquent sovereign, even before he won

this clandestine victory, had asserted dominion over the sea in a proclamation curious enough to be given somewhat at large. "If the governor or commander of the King's navy (so runs the writ of 1200) shall meet any ships whatsoever by sea, either laden or empty, that shall refuse to strike their sails on the command of the King's governor or admiral or his lieutenant, but make resistance against them which belong to his fleet, that then they are to be reputed enemies, if they may be taken; yea, and their ships and goods be confiscated as the goods of enemies. And that, though the masters or owners of the ships shall allege afterwards that the same ships and goods do belong to the friends and allies of our lord the King. But that the persons which shall be found in this kind of ships, are to be punished by imprisonment, at discretion, for their rebellion." It was accounted treason, says Selden, if any ship whatsoever had not acknow ledged the dominion of the King of England in his own sea, by striking sail; and they were not to be protected upon. the account of amity, who should in any wise presume to do the contrary. Penalties also were appointed by the King of England in the same manner as if mention were made concerning a crime committed in some territory of this kingdom (Selden, 401).

466. Selden assigned no mean limits to this pretended sovereignty. "Without question," he says, "it is true, according to the collective testimonies before alleged, that the very shores or ports of the neighbouring princes beyond sea are bounds of the sea-territory of the British Empire to the southward and eastward; but that in the open and vast ocean of the north and west, they are to be placed at the utmost extent of those most spacious seas, which are possessed by the English, Scots, and Irish" (Selden, 459).

467. He asserts the acknowledgment of this authority, and as independent of the English possessions on the coast of France, Normandy, and Aquitaine (p. 411) by the Genevese, Catalonians, Spaniards, Germans, Zelanders, Hol

I