EARLY HISTORY 29 



(A.D. 985), and North America (A.D. 861); and they founded 

 kingdoms or dynasties not only in England, but in France, 

 Sicily, Ireland, and Russia. 1 In the presence of such irre- 

 pressible energy in maritime and warlike enterprises the 

 English were not able to hold their own on the sea, far less 

 to acquire dominion over it. 



It is not until a considerable time after the Norman Con- 

 quest that valid evidence is to be found of the English claim to 

 the sovereignty of the sea. Although obscurity surrounds the 

 precise time and mode in which the pretension took its rise, 

 there is little doubt that it originated in the period follow- 

 ing the Conquest. The shores on both sides of the Channel 

 were then brought under the same dominion. In the reign of 

 Henry I. almost the whole of the Atlantic coast of France from 

 Flanders to the Pyrenees was in the possession of the English 

 crown, and for about four and a half centuries, until the loss of 

 Calais in 1558, England held more or less territory in France. 

 The Channel thus became in effect an English sea the narrow 

 sea intervening between the continental and insular territor- 

 ies of the king, and it acquired high importance as the passage 

 from one part of the realm to the other. It was in this connec- 

 tion and for the guarding of the coasts that the organisation of 

 the Cinque Ports was developed by the Norman and Angevin 

 kings. 2 Even after the loss of the French provinces, the contin- 

 ued possession of the Channel Islands and the usual possession 

 of Calais kept alive the English claim to the narrow sea. The 

 Conquest was, moreover, followed by a great increase in the 

 stream of traffic between the two countries, 3 while fishermen 

 from Normandy and Picardy, as well as from Flanders, came in 

 large and increasing numbers to take part in the great herring 

 fishery along the east coast of Scotland and England. 



During the frequent wars with France from the commence- 

 ment of the twelfth century onwards, the Channel acquired 

 special significance from a military point of view, and it was 



1 Worsaae, An Account of the Danes and Noriwgians in England, Scotland, and 

 Ireland ; Depping, Histoire des Expeditions maritimcs des Normands ; Beamish, 

 The Discovery of America. 



2 Burrows, Cinque Ports, 62, 81. 



3 Cunningham, The Growth of English Industry and Commerce during the Early 

 and Middle Ages, 173. 



