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
