JAMES I. I DISPUTES WITH THE DUTCH 207 



road no foreign ship or English merchant vessel could wear her 

 flag in the presence of a king's ship. This custom was also 

 sometimes enforced in foreign ports and roads, but usually only 

 when out of range of forts on shore. If a foreign vessel, 

 whether man-of-war or merchant ship, did not thus "do her 

 duty " or " perform the homage of the sea," the English ship 

 of war might hail her or send a boat to command her to 

 strike. Or they might at once, without any parley, fire a shot 

 across her bows, and after an interval another, also across her 

 bows or over her poop, and if this was ineffective, then a third 

 between her masts or at her flag. If the foreigner still refused 

 to strike, a broadside was usually poured in, and the vessel 

 might be carried into port and the offender punished. In the 

 reign of Charles II., Spaniards, Dunkirkers, Frenchmen, and 

 other foreigners, were not infrequently brought before the 

 courts and fined for refusing to strike. If a merchant vessel 

 refused to strike until she was shot at, she was compelled to 

 pay to the king's ship twice the value of the gunpowder and 

 shot expended. 



In England the custom, no doubt, originated in the Channel, 

 probably in the time of the early Angevin kings, when the 

 opposite coasts were under the same rule; and it is most 

 probable, as formerly said, that it arose in connection with the 

 exercise of jurisdiction over pirates and for securing peaceful 

 commerce. In early times the utmost lawlessness prevailed 

 on the sea : it would be a common duty of the king's ships to 

 satisfy themselves as to the character of the vessels they en- 

 countered, and the lowering of the sails and the coming under 

 the lee, for " visit and search," might well be a relic of a duty 

 enforced for that purpose. With regard to ships of war, the 



them being a French man-of-war. The English then shot at the latter, and "sou 

 brought him by ye lee " (State Papers, Dam. , Ixxix. 17). In 1637 Captain Straddling 

 explained how he compelled Dutch vessels to take in their flags, lower their top- 

 sails, and "lie by the lee" (Ibid., ccclxi. 41). In the historic encounters with 

 the Dutch in 1652 the same rule was shown. When Captain Young met the 

 Dutchmen on 12th May (see p. 402), their admiral came under his lee and took 

 down his flag, but their vice-admiral, "contrary to navigation with us in the 

 iiiin-ow sea*, came to the windward of us" (French Occurrences, Brit. Mus., E, 

 66f>, 6). So also when Blake met Tromp, he " fired two shots thwart Tromp's 

 forefoot for him to strike his flag and bear down to leeward, and he taking no 

 notice of it, the general ordered the third shot at Tromp's flag, which went through 

 his main top-sails" (Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 11,684, fol. 56). 



