MARITIME HISTORY 



them to use ' very bad language ' and to threaten revenge."^ The Council 

 called their language ' lewd and undutiful ' and ordered the principal mis- 

 demeanants to be sent up to London. 



The 1589 voyage to Portugal was a joint-stock affair under Norreys and 

 Drake who hired their ships. Although nearly 80 were taken up Dorset 

 does not appear to have supplied any. The ports were not again called upon 

 by the queen for ships until the Cadiz voyage of 1596 was under considera- 

 tion ; but in the interval those of Dorset were carrying on what must have 

 been a successful privateering war on their own account. Between 1587 

 and 1598 we find 23 ships of Weymouth, six of Lyme, and three of Poole 

 engaged in prize-hunting, and that the business was followed so long points 

 to good fortune.'^' One of these vessels, the Bark Bond (owners John Bond 

 and Wm. and Ric. Pitt) made an especial haul in 1592, when she met 

 the Grace of Dover which had on board the passengers and crew of the 

 great carrack, the Madre de Dios, just taken by an English squadron and 

 the richest capture of the reign. They were supposed to have been plundered 

 before being put on board the Grace, but Captain Aire of the Bark Bond 

 brought her to and managed to extract 50,000 ducats and many precious 

 stones from them. A warrant to arrest Captain Aire issued later.""" 



The failure of the 1589 expedition had made Elizabeth avoid enter- 

 prises on a large scale ; it was not, therefore, until the close of 1595 that an 

 undertaking, of which the destination was then uncertain, was decided upon 

 for the following year. On 2 i December a circular letter was addressed to 

 the ports, generally, requiring ships to be ready by the next spring, armed, 

 manned, and victualled at local charge for five months ; Dorset was 

 called upon for two.^"^ All the port ships were used as transports or for 

 other subsidiary purposes in the Cadiz voyage ; the Expedition and Catherine, 

 which carried soldiers, and both of Weymouth, were the Dorset ones, 

 and 130 seamen as well came from Weymouth and Melcombe.""^ The 

 attempts at evasion of payment were even more marked now than in 1588 ; 

 towns and individuals everywhere shirked their assessments. Weymouth and 

 Melcombe were charged with >C4°°» towards which the other Dorset 

 ports were required to contribute _;^ 160, but there was great difficulty in 

 obtaining it as well as the ratings in Weymouth itself. The only remedy 

 the Council could apply was to order that refractory individuals should be 

 sent to London to appear before them, a punishment which might obviously 

 be made a very heavy one in view of the direct and indirect expense involved. 

 By December, 1596, the mayor of Weymouth had written six times to the 

 Council complaining that the corporation could not obtain payment of the 

 jri6o ; in the following February it was still owing, and their lordships 

 wrote to the deputy-lieutenants of Dorset that 'a great contempt' was 

 being committed, and that if the money was not at once collected one of 

 them was to appear in London.^"'' This threat proved unsuccessful, so that 

 in May it was resolved that personal application should be made by a Council 



"* S.P. Dom. Eliz. ccxiiii, No. 43 ; ^cts ofP.C. 20 Oct. 1592. 



''' Harl. MSS. 598. The year gi\en in the text does not mean that the business ceased in 1598, but 

 only that there are no accounts for any later date. 



'°° Cecil MSS. (Hist. MSS. Com.), iv, 237 ; Lansd. MSS. 67, fol. 116. "" Acls of P.C. 21 Dec. 1595. 

 *" Moule, Charters of Weymouth, 134 ; Cecil MSS. (Hist. MSS. Com.), vi, 293. 

 Acts oj P.C. 7 Sept. 7 Dec. 1596, 27 Feb. 1597. 

 2 209 27 



203 



