MARITIME HISTORY 



It is said that Rye and Winchelsea were again burnt by the French, but the date is given 

 vaguely as the twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh regnal year of Henry VI, 1 and there is no historical 

 evidence whatever that such an event occurred, while such collateral evidence as exists negatives it. 

 For example, a paper assigned by Mr. James Gairdner to 1450 2 is a detailed list of charges brought 

 by the duke of York against the duke of Somerset, governor of Normandy and practically regent in 

 France. If a French surprise of the two ports could have been ascribed to Somerset's treacherous 

 rupture of the truce, and included among the misfortunes which followed, it would assuredly have 

 been one of the accusations. It is assumed that a patent of I August, I449, 3 annexing Tenterden 

 to Rye to assist the latter because impoverished by the action of the sea and ' often burning by the 

 king's enemies,' is corrobation of the loss caused by the latest supposed French attack, but it is nearly 

 certain that any recent occurrence of the kind would have been specified. The chief cause of the 

 town's necessity was the mischief done by the sea, and the reference to the ' often burning ' is only 

 a general amplification in the usual form, certain to occur here where the memory of the troubles of 

 the reign of Richard II was still vivid. Exactly the same form occurs, in reference to Hastings, in 

 the patent of incorporation of Seaford in 1543, but a long period had then elapsed since Hastings 

 had been burnt. 



Sea-power played no great part in the Wars of the Roses, but the Cinque Ports were Yorkist 

 in sentiment. Discontent, due to their failing resources, would probably have made them ready to 

 welcome any change, but the presence of Warwick, as captain of Calais on the other side of the 

 Channel, and able to make things very disagreeable for his enemies, was doubtless an important 

 factor in shaping their political beliefs. In 1458 there were some 60 sail of French off the Sussex 

 coast, practically blockading it, but the experience cannot have been exceptional during those years. 4 

 Henry VII engaged in few maritime enterprises, but resuscitated the Royal Navy as a nucleus for 

 the armed merchantmen which were still the body of fighting fleets. The few vessels required 

 during his reign were hired from various ports, and one came from Winchelsea in 1487 ; the 

 'service' was required for transport purposes in 1491, during the troubles in Brittany. In 1495, 

 after the unsuccessful attempt to land at Deal, Perkin Warbeck appears to have put in to the 

 Camber of Rye, but probably did not attempt to set men ashore. 5 Sir Clements Markham has 

 suggested that one of the crew of Columbus's flagship in 1492, Tallarte de Lajes, was an Alard of 

 the Winchelsea family. 6 He is noted on the muster roll as an Englishman, and Tallarte might be 

 the Spanish form of Alard. Lajes is near Corufia. 



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

 said to have terminated. The coast towns were still sometimes to be called upon to provide ships, 

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

 which they belonged contributed, as a whole, to the cost. The non-corporate portion of maritime 

 Sussex naturally fell into line with the rest of England, and the Cinque Ports were, in time, 

 assimilated to the system. Improvements in building and armament had now differentiated the 

 man-of-war from the merchantman ; the latter was of little use in fleets except, as an Elizabethan 

 seaman said, ' to make a show,' and to have required the Ports to furnish real men-of-war would 

 have ruined them. If places like Southampton, Plymouth, Bristol, and Newcastle were unable now 

 to send true fighting ships to sea, it may be imagined that the antiquated ' service ' of the Cinque 

 Ports had become only an interesting survival. Three times during the reign of Henry they were 

 called upon for it, but only for purposes of transport ; on one occasion, in 1531, it was reduced to 

 ten vessels for horse and baggage transport, as men and ships were away at the herring fishery. In 

 1556 they nominally conveyed Philip from England, 7 and in 1562 they answered the old call for 

 the last time, again for transport and not for fighting, when Elizabeth was trying to hold Havre. 



It was one of the aims of Henry's statesmanship 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 subsequent ship- 

 money levies were based. The first war with France of 1512-14 was fought out chiefly by 

 men-of-war ; there were upwards of twenty hired ships in pay, but there was no Sussex ship among 

 them. Warfare by sea was mainly confined to the western Channel, but both in 1513 and 1514 

 Pregent de Bidoux, the commander of the French galleys, landed in Sussex in the first instance 

 burning a few cottages, and in the second plundering and destroying Brighton, then ' a poor 

 village.' 8 Some doubt has been thrown on the credibility of the chroniclers, but the fact that the 



1 Jeake, Charters, 1 08. ' Cott. MSS. Vesp. C. xiv, fol. 40. 



' Pat. 27 Hen. VI, pt. iii, m. 9. By an agreement of 1492 Tenderden bore one-fifth part of the 

 service and expenses of Rye. 



4 Paston Letters (ed. Gairdner), i, 425. b Ibid, iii, 388. * Markham, Life of Christopher Columbus, 69. 

 ' See/w/, p. 150. 8 Grafton, Chronicle (ed. 1809), ii, 252, 281 ; Holinshed, iii, 817, 831. 



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