MARITIME HISTORY 



also to be considered. Nothing, however, was done at Helford, and the additions at Pendennis 

 were confined to enlarging the existing castle by enclosing an enceinte with curtains, bastions, and 

 perhaps advanced entrenchments. 1 The sum of 1,000 was allowed for the works, and the queen 

 was very angry when more money was required, reprimanding Parker for taking in 50 acres of 

 ground more than was intended. 2 Nothing was said of St. Mawes, and it seems to have been 

 regarded as hardly capable of defence. 3 In 1599 there was another acute alarm of invasion, 

 although no Spanish fleet was ever nearer to England than Coruna, and on 27 July the authorities 

 in Cornwall were ordered to press all seamen between 16 and 60 years of age, and the mayor of 

 Penryn was asked to hire a pinnace to scout on the Spanish coast for some weeks. This, practically, 

 marks the end of the war, so far as any fears were felt in England or any further call made upon 

 the English counties. 



English seamen and shipowners had indulged for nearly half a century in a Saturnalia of 

 piracy and privateering for their own profit ; by the time the law had made itself felt and they 

 were becoming more orderly at sea they found that others had learned their game, and were playing 

 it at their expense, when they would fain have had peace. The Spanish government had always 

 hesitated about issuing letters of marque, and permission several times given to its subjects had 

 been in each case speedily withdrawn. The governors of the Low Countries showed no such 

 indecision, and as Dunkirk, Sluys, Nieuport, and Ostend fell into their hands they became privateer 

 bases that inflicted terrible injury upon English commerce. In 1601 the subject was sufficiently 

 important to be debated in Parliament, when it was said that Dunkirk alone, having begun with 

 two, had then twenty privateers at work. A year earlier Fowey and Looe were especially suffering 

 at their hands, 4 and one Dunkirker had taken four vessels off the Lizard in a single day, two of 

 which belonged to Looe and Fowey ; 5 a little later five of them were known to be cruising 

 regularly on the coast. The plague grew worse after the peace with Spain, when there was no 

 excuse for retaliation, and if it was ameliorated during the truce between the Dutch and the 

 Spaniards it recurred with tenfold fury when the Thirty Years' War broke out, to be followed by 

 our own wars with France and Spain between 162530. Moreover the distress was intensified by 

 the appearance in the western Channel of Algerine and Salee pirates, who had come there under 

 the guidance of Dutchmen and of English outlaws. In 1625 Penzance petitioned for a fort 

 because ' of late terribly terrified by the Turks,' and about the same time there were said to be 

 thirty Saleemen off Scilly. 6 On 12 August, 1625, the mayor of Plymouth wrote to the Council 

 that within ten days twenty-seven vessels and 200 men, of whom eighty belonged to Looe, had 

 been taken by them ; 7 and a few weeks before sixty men, women, and children had been taken out 

 of a church in Mount's Bay or Mevagissey Bay by a landing party. 8 In March, 1626, there were 

 six Dunkirkers off Pendennis, but there was not a gun mounted nor a pound of shot in the castle, 

 and the garrison had been unpaid for two years. 9 Not long after came the news that 

 Scilly had been taken by them, and that such a feat should have been thought possible 

 shows how thoroughly the Flemish privateers had obtained the upper hand. The country 

 people must have pursued their ancient industry with a yet keener enjoyment when a privateer 

 was driven ashore, and to one such they ' came thick with their axes and other tools.' In 

 1630 the Lord Treasurer was informed that 'Egypt was never more infested with caterpillars than 

 the Land's End with Biscayners,' but the Mohammedan pirates impressed the imagination more as 

 messengers of life-long slavery and torture. Occasionally a Saleeman caught a Tartar. A Looe 

 ship having been taken, the crew retook her, killing those on deck, shutting down thirty-two men 

 under hatches, and brought the vessel into St. Ives ; 10 but on the whole the effect was to blockade 

 the Cornish ports so that even fishermen dared not go out. 11 Neither time nor the personal 

 government of Charles brought a remedy ; in 1636 the Mediteanean pirates could be sighted 

 daily from the shore, and Looe was again an especial sufferer, fifteen fishing boats belonging to that 

 town and to Helford having been taken within a month. 12 Many other illustrations could be given 

 did space permit, and it may be said that the Saleemen were not swept out of the Channel, nor the 

 Dunkirkers suppressed, until the enormously increased and well-administered Commonwealth navy 

 enabled the government to police home waters systematically. 



S. P. Dom. Eliz. cclxv, 75. 



Acts of P. C. 20 Nov. 1597 ; 23 Jan. 30 April, 1598. * S. P. Dom. Eliz. cclxxii, 48. 



Ibid, cclxxv, 139. ' Hist. AfSS. Com. (Cecil MSS.) 12 April, 14 October, 1600. 



S. P. Dom. Chas. I, iii, 7 ; xiv, 5. 



Ibid, iv, 36. 8 Ibid, v, 8 1. ' A church at Minnigeesa in Mount's Bay.' 



9 Ibid, xxii, 97 ; xxv, 105. This last paper says that there had been no guns for nine years, and that 

 the garrison had lived on limpets and the charity of Sir John Killigrew. 



10 Ibid, xxvii, 54. The master was probably Wm. Harrys. 



11 Ibid. Killigrew to Nicholas, 8 July, 1626. 



u S. P. Dom. Chas. I, cccxxviii, 12, 62 ; Justices of Cornwall to the king. 



495 



