MARITIME HISTORY 



a seaport, and, therefore, been able to supply naval necessaries, its position 

 might have caused Henry VIII to select it as a fleet-base under the altered 

 condition of naval operations against France in his reign. 



It will be noticed that there is no reference to Weymouth in the 

 foregoing petitions to king and Parliament. The town may have shared the 

 fate of Melcombe or it may have escaped as poorer and less tempting than 

 its neighbour ; in any case it was more difficult to attack and more easily 

 defended than Melcombe. 



The burgesses of Lyme petitioned in February, 1378, that the town 

 was being wasted by the sea and that the Cobb, large enough to shelter two 

 or three barges — from which we get an idea of its size — had been destroyed 

 in the gales of the previous November.^*' In this nothing was said of any 

 French descent, but in one of their numerous appeals for help — that of 1410 

 — they stated that the place had been burnt by the French in the reigns of 

 both Edward III and Richard II." It is probable, too, that Poole was 

 partly burnt in 1377.'^'^ The misfortunes of their neighbours may have 

 aroused the energy of the men of Bridport and tempted them to an effort 

 to take the lead of Lyme. In 1385 there was grant of a toll for three years 

 to John de Hudresfeld who had begun to make a harbour, there having been 

 none previously. The toll was continued for another year from 1388, and 

 again for three years from 1393, to enable the bailiffs of Bridport, who then 

 claimed to have begun the construction of the harbour, to finish it.*" The 

 fact, however, that the toll was on goods exported or imported by water 

 shows that there must have been some small shipping trade before the 

 improvement was effected. 



That the events of 1377 could have occurred proves that the English 

 fleet was practically non-existent ; in November of that year Parliament 

 decided that the country generally, including inland towns, should be 

 required to build ships by the following March, which is evidence of the 

 known exhaustion of the ports. No town in Dorset was called upon, and 

 that omission is almost conclusive that the county had suffered severely in 

 the summer. For years the coast was more or less in a state of blockade ; 

 alarms of invasion were frequent and the local levies were continually under 

 arms. The marine of Weymouth was not entirely destroyed, for we find 

 two ships, of which one was of 120 tons, taken up about 1383.^°^ When 

 John of Ghent sailed for Spain in 1386 to obtain the crown of Castile his 

 fleet of 57 ships included the James, 80 tons, of Poole. This ship was also 

 engaged in the passenger trade, now developing, in the carriage of pilgrims 

 direct from England to perform their devotions at the shrine of St. James of 

 Compostella."* Another such vessel was the Katherine, of Lyme, newly 

 built in 1395.*^^ 



Formal hostilities with France ceased in 1389, but although no declara- 

 tion of war came from either side during the remainder of Richard's reign 

 and that of Henry IV, the truce was only nominal. English and French 

 royal fleets did not meet as declared enemies after a ceremonial rupture, but 

 short of that the conditions differed nothing from open war. French and 



"■" Pat. I Ric. II, pt. iii, m. 3 d. " Rot. Pari, iii, 640. "•■ Froissart, Chron. cap. 378. 



'" Pat. 9 Ric. II, pt. i, m. 20 ; ibid. 12 Ric. II, pt. i, m. 3 ; ibid. 16 Ric. II, pt. ii, m. 10. 

 *" Exch. Accts. K.R. bdle. 42, No. 22. " P.it. 19 Ric. II, pt. i, m. 29. 



""'' Ibid. 18 Ric. II, pt. ii, m. 15. 



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