Richborough; Dubræ, now Dover; Portus Lemanus, now the present site of Hythe; and Anderida, not far from modern Hastings; and out of the privileges enjoyed by these fortresses, it has been conjectured, arose the charter which Edward the Confessor is reported to have granted to five associated ports,-Romney, in lieu of Regulbium; Sandwich, for Rutupiæ; Dover; Hythe, for Portus Lemanus; and Hastings, for Anderida. This charter, however, if ever conferred, has been lost; and all we know is that William the Conqueror found arrangements existing for the naval service just referred to, and that soon after the Norman Conquest there was organized or reorganized an association of the five towns of Dover, Sandwich, Romney, Hythe, and Hastings, helping one another doubtless in commercial enterprises and in protecting the interests of commerce, and aiding the King with a small naval force, to be prepared and maintained entirely at their own expense, and used as he chose during fifteen days of each year, exclusive of the time required for equipment, for transmission to the place appointed, and for returning home after their discharge. For any longer period that was found necessary, the ships and their crews were to be at the King's bidding, but he was to maintain them at his own cost. In this way the State had at command a fleet of fifty-seven ships, with aggregate crews of eleven hundred and ninety-seven persons, a hundred and fourteen being officers paid at the rate of 6d. per day, and the rest being entitled to a daily pay of 3d. The entire annual cost to the Cinque Ports was estimated at

CHAP. 1.]

The Cinque Ports.

11

9837.58., which must be multiplied by nine or ten for the difference in value of currency between the twelfth and the nineteenth centuries. At a later date the number of ships was slightly augmented, and at a still later date, when much larger and costlier vessels began to be used, only two, three, or four were exacted; but the entire expense of the service in men and money was steadily kept on a par with that of the original institution. The Cinque Ports, however, in course of time, came to include a great many more than five separate towns. Partly because the original five were hardly able to bear the burthen put upon them, and partly because others were eager to share the privileges accorded for the service, several other towns were gradually incorporated with each of the principal ones. Winchelsea, Rye, Pevensey, and others, for instance, were added to Hastings; Folkestone, Faversham, and Margate to Dover; Reculver, Sarre, Storey, and Deal, to Sandwich.*

In this way the Plantagenet sovereigns were provided with a compact and well-manned fleet, strong enough by itself for their minor naval wars, and able at any time to be the nucleus of a larger gathering of fighting ships brought together, in time of need, by special imposts from all the leading ports and inland towns of England, when merchant ships were hastily adapted for warlike use. A few other vessels, known as the King's galleys, appear

*

JEAKE, Charters of the Cinque Ports and their Members; HOLLOWAY, History and Antiquities of the Ancient Town and Port of Rye, with Incidental Notices of the Cinque Ports (1847), pp. 66-68.

to have been maintained exclusively at the cost and for the service of the Crown; and they, of course, were constructed specially for fighting purposes. But there seems to have been no very great difference between ships of war and ships of trade. The stoutest of the King's galleys had but a single mast and a single sail, and the smallest of the merchantmen, generally employed in transporting troops and stores, were large enough to carry eight or ten horses amidships, and to hold eighty or more tuns of wine. Ships of all sorts, whether built for the sovereign or prepared for private use, were held to be, in theory and fact, the property of the Crown. The King could send any wherever he chose, and, in the most summary manner, could forbid their going to any objectionable place, or even going out of port at all. "Know for certain," we read in a mandate of King John's, addressed, in 1208, to the mariners of Wales, prohibiting their departure from their homes until they were otherwise instructed, "that if ye 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." Hundreds of similar orders were issued during the middle ages, the object being that the King's agents might choose for impressment, both the fittest vessels for transport or fighting purposes, and the ablest seamen to be employed in the royal galleys.

Thereby, of course, commerce suffered considerably; but it was chiefly by the pursuit of commerce that English shipping prospered under the Plantagenets. In each generation there was increase of the number of

CHAP. I.]

Plantagenet Ships and Sailors.

13

tough little vessels, constructed for trading round the coast or across the narrow seas, to Ireland on the one side and to France and Germany on the other; though able now and then, and under adventurous captains, to go as far northward as Denmark and even Iceland, or in a southern direction towards Spain and Italy. And if, in time of war, the merchants' ships were liable to seizure for public use, trade was helped in peaceful seasons by the employment of the King's galleys and the Cinque Ports' vessels either in actual transport of goods or in the protection of smaller craft from the native and foreign pirates who infested the seas. In peace time and in war time the English sailor of the middle ages had bold and hardy work to do, adding as much in those days as his successors have done in later times to the bold and hardy character of the whole nation of Englishmen. We may infer the rough way of life and sturdy bearing of the whole class from Chaucer's description of the typical seaman, who went on pilgrimage to Canterbury in company with priests, monks, friars, nuns, knights, yeomen, clerks, and merchants :

"A schipman was ther, wonyng fer by weste;
For ought I woot he was of Dertemouthe.

He rood upon a rouncy, as he couthe,
All in a goune of faldyng to the kne.
A dagger hangyng on a laas hadde he
Aboute his nekke under his arm adoun.

The hoote somer had maad his hew al broun,
And certeinly he was a good felawe.

Ful many a draught of wyn he hadde drawe
From Burdeux-ward, whil that the chapmen sleep.
Of nyce conscience took he no kcep.

If that he foughte, and hadde the heigher hand,
By water he sente hem hoom to every land.
But of his craft, to rikne wel the tydes,
His stremes and his dangers him bisides,
His herbergh and his mone, his lode-menage,
Ther was non such from Hulle to Cartage.
Hardy he was, and wys to undertake;

With many a tempest hadde his berd ben schake.
He knew wel alle the havenes, as thei were,
From Gotland to the Cape of Fynestere,
And every cryk in Bretagne and in Spayne;
His barge yclepud was the Magdelayne.”

England had thousands of such "good fellows" in the generations before and after the time of Chaucer, able and ready to do anything and go anywhere, working best and most to the prosperity of their country when following peaceful avocations, but adding most to its fame among the nations of Europe when summoned by their sovereigns to carry out their warlike projects.

Sailors had not much to do in the way of fighting, however, for more than a century after the Norman Conquest. Ships were used by the Anglo-Norman kings almost exclusively in transporting them and their retinues, large and small, to and from their continental possessions. Some vessels, called "piratæ," were chartered by William Rufus, in the early part of his reign, for opposing his elder brother, Duke Robert, and we are told that the English captured many of the Norman vessels, and slew most of their crews. In 1091 William also raised a fleet, with the intention of punishing Malcolm, King of Scotland, for his invasion of England; but the greater part of the ships were wrecked in passage, and the expedition was thus brought to an