314 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
the dreaded foe. There were rumours too of treachery. In 1597 
it was currently reported that Plymouth had been sold to the 
Spaniards for 50,000 crowns, and among the English prisoners of 
war who had entered the Spanish service was one Thomas Griffin 
of this town. There were other and more real dangers. We in 
these later days can hardly fancy that Turkish pirates ever infested 
these waters ; yet in 1617, when the inhabitants opposed the grant- 
ing of the monopoly of the Portugal trade to a body of merchants, 
they set forth, “the loss by pirates every day increaseth.” And 
there were other buccaneers at work. In 1629 seven sail of 
‘“¢ Dunkirkers” haunted the coast for a month, and took twenty 
vessels, of which four or five belonged to Plymouth. Most of 
their company were English or Scots. The French Protestants of 
Rochelle, who made Plymouth a rendezvous, were not much better; 
and it is very evident that there was a good deal in progress which 
was little removed from downright piracy between the Dutch, 
French, English, Dunkirkers, and Rochellers. 
Nor were the Plymouth folk themselves at all behind hand. 
They seem to have done in the reign of Charles I. very much the 
same that their successors did in the reign of George III., and to 
have abandoned the peaceful pursuits of commerce to go a priva- 
teering. This kind of enterprise was so much in fashion here in 
the opening part of this century that, when the great struggle with 
Napoleon came to an end, the legitimate commerce of the port had 
been practically annihilated. And so during the wars with France 
and Spain, between the years 1625 and 1629, letters of marque 
were granted to sixty-five Plymouth ships, varying from 330 tons 
to 21, owned, and in some instances commanded, by leading 
merchants of the town. Plympton also sent forth one; Oreston, 
four ; Saltash, five; and Millbrook, three. You cannot very well 
trade and privateer at the same time; and while Abraham Colmer, 
Nicholas Sherwill, Robert Trelawny, James Waddon, Abraham 
Jennings, Nicholas Opie, Bartholomew Nicholls, Francis Amadas, 
Henry Gayer, Roger Polkinhorne, and their followers—Puritans 
and Privateers—were despatching their letters of marque, they 
could have had little leisure to look after ordinary mercantile 
affairs. 
The royal expeditions fitted out here had a similar tendency, 
monopolizing for the time the whole resources of the port. ‘Thus 
in 1625 the mayor had to billet the 10,000 soldiers whom 
