A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



1331 seemed to settle the dispute in favour of Great Yarmouth, for it forbade any foreign ship to 

 discharge at Gorleston, the use of the port being confined to vessels belonging to the town. 1 

 However, so far from submitting to the decision we find from a writ of 1336 that 'large bodies of 

 armed men ' assembled at Gorleston and Little Yarmouth, and forced both English (other than those 

 owned in the town) and foreign ships to unlade there. 2 There must have been a large number of 

 Flemish fishing boats working in the Norfolk and Suffolk ports ; in 1316 the count of Holland 

 consented to a tax on each boat arriving until a claim of 1,300 against his subjects, for injuries 

 done to English merchants, was satisfied.* 



There was incessant strife between the men of Dunwich, Walberswick, and Southwold, con- 

 cerning the port and the receipt of dues, and Ipswich and Harwich had at this time a similar 

 quarrel on hand. Probably the Ipswich claim had been passively admitted until Harwich grew 

 prosperous, but in 1335 the Ipswich burgesses found it necessary to appeal to the king, saying that 

 ' the port of Orwell with the arm of the sea and the river leading from the mouth of the port 

 towards the sea as far as the town belongs to the king and his said town,' and again that the port of 

 Orwell ' has belonged in the past to their town.' 4 In 1340 a commission was inquiring into the 

 rights of the two towns, and the dispute as to jurisdiction lasted, it will be seen, well into the nine- 

 teenth century. Several documents of this period dealing with the controversy suggest that it was per- 

 haps the first time the pretension had been definitely put forward by Ipswich or refused by Harwich. 



As piracy closely follows trade it may be regarded as a sign of commercial importance that the 

 Suffolk ports were frequent offenders or victims. The promise of spoil brought over Flemish 

 pirates, so that in 1282 Yarmouth, Dunwich, and Ipswich were called upon to set out a local 

 squadron to patrol the coast. 5 The wrongs, however, were not all suffered by one side, for in 1291 

 a Flemish merchant had his ship plundered at Dunwich although not necessarily by Dunwich men. 6 

 In 1299 there was another commission to inquire into the seizure of a ship near Dunwich, the 

 pirates taking their capture to Gillingham and selling the cargo there ; in the same year the earl of 

 Gloucester complained that ships in which he was interested were plundered and destroyed at 

 Southwold and ' his merchants ' hindered in their accustomed use of the port. 7 At Orford, in 1309, a 

 vessel from Bruges was emptied and then sunk, while at Ipswich, in 1311, thirty-seven men, 

 including the parson of Flixton, were in gaol for piracy. 8 The next year a Goseford ship 

 boarded one belonging to Lynn, at anchor near Rochelle, and after ransacking her set her adrift so 

 that she went ashore and broke up. 9 In 1315 there were eleven commissions to inquire into 

 piracies committed between Lynn and Harwich ; there must have been many more in which the 

 losses were not large enough to tempt the sufferers to the tedious and expensive process of appeal to 

 the king. But the number is not surprising when we find, also in 1315, a Cinque Ports ship, 

 especially commissioned to cruise after pirates, despoiling two Flemish traders lying in the Orwell. 10 

 Matters had become so bad that the next year John de Botetourt was placed in charge of the coast 

 from the Thames to the Tweed to keep the king's peace, ' as well on land as on the sea near the 

 land,' with instructions to put aside all other business to attend to this particular need. 11 



If Botetourt was successful it was only temporarily. Bad cases occurred continually, such 

 as the attack on a Walberswick ship at Southwold by Dunwich men, and the murder of sixteen of 

 the crew ; 13 here the hatred born of the rivalry between Dunwich and Walberswick was no doubt a 

 contributing factor. Soon after, in 1335, four ships, manned by Englishmen, came into Orwell 

 Haven, and lay there for nearly three months, rifling and sinking all traders, holding the crews to 

 ransom, and detaining ten vessels prepared for the royal service, although these last they eventually 

 set free unharmed. 13 There seems to have been another peculiarly audacious act in 1344, when 129 

 men boarded ships belonging to Robert de Morley, admiral of the northern fleet, which were lying off 

 Lowestoft and plundered them of cargo to the value of 5,ooo. 14 As the men were led by four of the 

 bailiffs of Yarmouth it might be imagined, but for the value of the cargo, to have been merely one of 

 the innumerable fishery disputes between Lowestoft and Yarmouth. But occasionally cases called 

 piracy were hardly, if at all, outside the law. In 1340 a fleet of sixty-four ships belonging to 

 Yarmouth, Dunwich, and Bawdsey, attacked a Mediterranean ship bound to Flanders, and pillaged 

 her of goods to the amount of 20,000. Edward was compelled to compensate the owners at a 



' Ibid. 10 Edw. Ill, pt. 2, ra. 25 d. 



4 Ibid. 9 Edw. Ill, pt. 2, m. i8</. ; 12 Edw. Ill, pt. 2, m. 16. 



1 Pat. 5 Edw. Ill, pt. i, m. I. 



* Ibid. pt. I, m. 34. 



4 Ibid. 10 Edw. I, m. 12 d. 



6 Pat. 19 Edw. I, m. 23 d. In the opinion of the writer a very large number of the cases of piracy, so- 

 called, in mediaeval times would later have been simple privateering cases for the adjudication of the Admiralty- 

 Court. There was then no proper agency for the settlement of captures, and international law, even now 

 very cloudy, was only in the making. ' Pat. 27 Edw. I, m. 15 d. ; m. 6 d. 



' Ibid. 3 Edw. II, m. 34 d. ; 4 Edw. II, pt. 2, m. ifd. ' Ibid. 6 Edw. II, pt. I, m. 7 d. 



" Ibid. 8 Edw. II, pt. i, m. 21 d. " Ibid. 10 Edw. II, pt. I, m. 34. 



u Ibid. 5 Edw. Ill, pt. I, m. 22</. 27 d. u Ibid. 9 Edw. Ill, pt. 2, m. Q<t. 



14 Ibid. 1 8 Edw. Ill, pt. 2, m. 49</. 



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