A HISTORY OF CORNWALL 



issued to the sheriff of Cornwall and others to arrest ' all masters, mariners, pirates, possessors, and 

 victuallers of any ships and vessels of the towns and ports of Fowey, Bodonnek, and Polruan, as 

 they have committed daily depredations . . . and do not heed the king's mandates, but daily do 

 worse.' l All the ships, goods, and gear found were to be placed in safe custody. No doubt this is 

 the basis of fact on which is reared the superstructure of popular belief that the ships and the chain 

 securing the port were handed over to the Dartmouth men, one or more of the burgesses executed, 

 and the maritime strength of Fowey destroyed. Whatever else happened, it is certain that its 

 maritime strength was not destroyed, nor was the piratical spirit broken. Between 1483 and 1485 

 there are commissions of inquiry into four cases of piracy, showing that Fowey ships were still at 

 sea in sufficient number to continue the local industry ; and in 1489 and 1490 the town sent the 

 Christopher (20o), 2 Gabriel (200), Antony (140), George (120), Anne (120), and Barbara (no tons) 

 to the Breton expeditions of Henry VII. 3 Except, perhaps, Plymouth, Dartmouth, or Southampton, 

 there was not at that time another town on the south coast that could have equipped so powerful a 

 squadron. The two towers which defended the entrance to the harbour before the construction of 

 St. Katherine's Castle are usually assigned to the reign of Edward IV, but in view of the relations 

 between the town and the king it seems unlikely that he would have regarded favourably the fortifi- 

 cation of the place or have made a grant in aid. Moreover, they are of the same type as the castles 

 at Dartmouth, and Dartmouth was fortified long before in consequence of the raid of 1377, so that 

 the towers at Fowey may be of the same period. 4 The fact that in 1457 the Bretons did not 

 attempt to enter the harbour, but landed to the westward of the town, seems to show that the 

 entrance was protected. 



If Cornwall had been Lancastrian earlier, it did not welcome Henry as duke of Richmond 

 when he appeared in Cawsand Bay in October, 1483, but was too cautious to land, and his 

 taxation as king overbalanced its not enthusiastic loyalty. In 1497 Perkin Warbeck, expelled from 

 Scotland, was advised to try his fortune in the county which had already sent a rebel force as far 

 as Blackheath. Warbeck, coming from Ireland, landed at Whitsand Bay (Land's End) on 

 7 September, 1497, and thenceforward nothing of maritime interest occurs for some years. 



With the reign of Henry VIII the era of general arrests and impressment of shipping may be 

 said to have terminated. The port towns were sometimes to be called upon to provide ships, but 

 such towns were usually associated in order to lessen the expense, and eventually the county 

 as a whole contributed to the cost. Improvements in building and armament had now differentiated 

 the man-of-war from the merchantman. The latter was of little use in fleets except ' to make a show,' 

 and to require the ports to furnish real men-of-war would have ruined them. It was one of the 

 purposes of Henry's life to create a national navy, and there was not a year of his reign that did 

 not witness some accretion to its strength. Such merchantmen as he required were hired without 

 the exercise of the prerogative. It is not until the reign of Elizabeth that we find in force the 

 further development of the right of impressment, the demand for fully-armed ships at the cost of 

 the ports and counties, the principle upon which the ship-money levies were based. The first war 

 with France, of 151213, was fought chiefly by men-of-war, although there were upwards of 

 twenty hired ships in pay. The Peter of Fowey and the George of Falmouth accompanied the 

 fleets, but only as victuallers and transports. It need hardly be said that although impressment of 

 ships had practically ceased, impressment of men continued, and Fowey and Penzance helped to 

 make up the crews in 1512.* Shipwrights and caulkers were pressed in Fowey, Saltash, Bodmin, 

 and St. Ives, to come to the new dockyard at Woolwich to build the Henry Grace de Dieu in 

 1 5 13. It is stated by some Cornish historians that in 1514 a French fleet of thirty ships descended 

 on Marazion and burnt the place, being met on their return by Sir Anthony Ughtred with another 

 thirty ships, and defeated. There is no trace of such an occurrence in the State Papers, but the 

 circumstance is noted on a nearly contemporary map. War with France and Scotland recommenced 

 in 1522, but it was fought out by men-of-war and troops. The state of war was, however, the 

 occasion of ships being stationed in the Channel as cruisers, and the George of Fowey was one of 

 the vessels posted between the Channel Islands and the ' Trade.' 7 



About 1539 Henry feared a Continental alliance against the kingdom. The new navy, 

 although more powerful than any England had yet possessed, more powerful than even its creator 

 dreamed it to be, was as yet an untried weapon. The preceding centuries were fraught with the 

 lesson that English battles were best fought on the English seas ; but there was a natural inclination, 

 especially in an age that was tending towards formalism in military science, to fall back on the 

 orthodox defences of castles, sconces, and bulwarks to prevent a landing or to support a defending 

 force. The union of Brittany which as an independent duchy had been sometimes inimical, but 



1 Pat. 14 Edw. IV, pt. ii, m. 15 d. ' Capt. John Treffry. 3 Tellers' Rolls, 62. 



* Yarmouth, Harwich, Rye, Sandwich, Winchelsea, Southampton, Chichester, Plymouth, and Dartmouth 

 were all fortified or re-fortified in the years following 1377. 



5 Chap. Ho. Bks. ii, ff. 7-10. Ibid. v. ' Passage de 1'Iroise, near Brest. 



484 



