206 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



for wearing his flag in the narrow seas when he came to 

 marry Queen Mary. 1 



Sometimes, however, the zeal of the naval officers led them 

 too far in their resolution to compel the salute. Thus in 1613, 

 when the Count of Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, was re- 

 turning to England accompanied by two galleons, an English 

 man-of-war forced the Spanish ships to take in their flags off 

 Stokes Bay. The ambassador complained to the Lord Admiral 

 (the Earl of Nottingham), who decided that the captain had ex- 

 ceeded his authority, for the Spaniards were not bound to 

 strike their flag unless to the admiral of the narrow seas, 

 and the captain was neither admiral of the narrow seas nor 

 employed under his commission. The rules or etiquette re- 

 garding this ceremony were indeed somewhat complicated, 

 occasionally changed, and not always well understood, and as 

 a good deal will be heard of the striking of the flag in the 

 following chapters, it may be well to say something here 

 about the practice. It appears that it was customary from a 

 remote period for merchant vessels to lower their sails on meeting 

 a ship of war in seas under the dominion of the state to which 

 the latter belonged, 2 but the ceremony only attained to inter- 

 national notoriety in connection with the claims of England 

 to the sovereignty of the narrow seas. The practice varied 

 at different times. Generally speaking, by the custom of the 

 narrow seas as interpreted in this country, any foreign man-of- 

 war meeting with an English man-of-war in those seas had to 

 take in her flag and strike her top-sails as soon as she came 

 within sight or within range of the English guns, and she had 

 to keep in the flag until she had passed out of range. A 

 merchant vessel had to strike in the same way. Further, no 

 vessel in the narrow seas was to pass to windward of an 

 English ship of war, but must " come by the lee " ; the inferior 

 had to make way for the superior. 3 In an English port or 



1 Monson's Naval Tracts, ibid., 222. The Spaniards to whom Monson refers 

 were no doubt the troops which Don Louis Fajardo had attempted to carry to 

 Flanders when he was attacked by the Dutch and took refuge in Dover. Monson, 

 it may be said, was in receipt of a secret pension of 350 per annum from Spain. 

 Gardiner, Hist., i. 215. 



2 Loccenius, DC Jure Maritime ct Navctli, 48. . J 



3 Thus in the Earl of Warwick's voyage, in 1627, four vessels "stood with their 

 forefoot and very earnestly " tried to weather the king's ships off Falmouth, among. 



