CHARLES I. : THE NAVY 249 



to get an Order in Council to compel them. 1 Provision of 

 a guard for the east coast generally was attempted by levy- 

 ing a duty of two and five shillings a ton on all coal laden 

 at Newcastle or Sunderland for English and foreign ports 

 respectively. 2 



Equally impressive evidence of the lawlessness that then 

 reigned on the sea, and of the inability to deal with it effect- 

 ively, was furnished by the flagrant violation of English 

 ports and roadsteads, by the Dutch as well as the Dunkirkers, 

 who waged incessant war with one another. The herring- 

 busses and merchant vessels of the former were frequently 

 captured, rifled, and burned by the privateers, and when 

 the commander of a Dutch man-of-war had a chance of 

 destroying one of the pests, he was not always deterred 

 from vengeance by the Dunkirker taking refuge in English 

 waters; and in like manner the privateer did not scruple 

 to pursue his prey into English ports and anchorages. Some- 

 times, indeed, the warfare was continued on English soil 

 and the lives of the king's lieges endangered. In 1634, for 

 example, a Dunkirker chased a Hollander vessel into Yar- 

 mouth harbour and robbed her, and a lively fusilade went 

 on between the Dutchmen, who had taken refuge on the 

 pier, and the crew of the privateer, and one of the former 

 was killed. As the Dunkirkers refused to stop their " furious 

 assault," the bailiffs ordered two of the town's guns to be 

 fired at them, " which they only scoffed at " ; and when the 

 marshal called upon them in the king's name to desist and 

 begone, they only "answered with unseemly gestures and 

 scorn," and they did not make off until a company of mus- 

 keteers went down to them. But next day as the privateer 

 was hovering off the coast, two States' men - of - war bore 

 down upon her and she ran for shelter to the beach near 

 Lowestoft; but the Dutch followed, seized her, and carried 



1 State Papers, Dom., lix. 79; xci. 30, 45; xcii. 62; xciii. 82; xcv. 39; 

 clxiii. 65 ; clxxx. 94. In 1630 a Yarmouth fisherman, owner of one of the 

 Iceland smacks under convoy, petitioned the Council for relief from the pay- 

 ment of the twenty shillings, on the grounds that before the Order was made 

 he had paid 5 for the assurance of his boat during that season to the assur- 

 ance office in London, and that three boats belonging to him had been previously 

 taken by Dunkirkers. 



2 Oppenheim, op. cit., 276. 



