Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages / Third Edition

by Edward Lewes Cutts

Ship of Richard Earl of Warwick.

The next woodcut is taken from the interesting MS. in the British Museum (Add. 24,189, f. 3 v.), from which we have borrowed other illustrations, containing pictures of subjects from the travels of Sir John Mandeville. We have introduced it to illustrate two peculiarities: the first is the way of steering by a paddle passed through a gummet of rope, still, we see, in use in the latter part of the fourteenth century, long after the rudder had been introduced; and the use of lee-boards to obviate the lee-way of the ship, and make it hold its course nearer to the wind. The high, small, raised castle in the stern is here empty, and the forecastle is curiously defended by a palisade, instead of the ordinary bulwarks. Another representation of the use of lee-boards occurs at folio 5 of the same MS.

Sir J. Mandeville on his Voyage to Palestine.

But though the royal navy was small, as we have said, in case of need there was a further naval force available. The ancient ports of Kent and Sussex, called the Cinque Ports, with their members (twelve neighbouring ports incorporated with them), were bound by their tenure, upon forty days’ notice, to supply the king with fifty-seven ships, containing twenty-one men and a boy in each ship, for fifteen days, once in the year, at their own expense, if their service was required. Thus e.g. a mandate of the 18th Rich. II., addressed to John de Beauchamp, Constable of Dover Castle, and Warden of the Cinque Ports, after reciting this obligation, requires fifty-seven ships, each having a master and twenty men well armed and arrayed to meet him at Bristol; stating further, that at the expiration of the fifteen days the ships and men should be at the king’s own charges and pay, so long as he should have the use of them, viz., the master of each ship to have 6d., the constable 6d., and each of the other men 3d., per day.

In the year A.D. 1205 we have a list of royal galleys and vessels of war ready for service; and it is instructive to see where they were stationed: there were at London 5, Newhaven 2, Sandwich 3, Romney 4, Rye 2, Winchelsea 2, Shoreham 5, Southampton 2, Exeter 2, Bristol 3, Ipswich 2, Dunwich 5, Lyme 5, Yarmouth 3, in Ireland 5, at Gloucester 1—total 51; and the Cinque Ports furnished 52; so that there were ready for sea more than 100 galleys or “men-of-war.”

If the occasion required a greater force than that which the Cinque Ports were required to furnish, the king was at liberty to issue his royal mandate, and impress merchant ships. Thus, in May, 1206 A.D., the Barons of the Cinque Ports were commanded to be at Portsmouth by a certain date with all the service they owed; and writs were also issued to all such merchants, masters, and seamen, as might meet the king’s messengers on the sea, to repair to Portsmouth, and enter the king’s service; and the royal galleys were sent to cruise at sea to arrest ships and send them in. Again, in A.D. 1442, the Commons in Parliament stated the necessity of having an armed force upon the sea, and pointed out the number of ships and men that it would be proper to employ: viz., eight ships with fore-stages carrying 150 men each, and that there should be attendant upon each ship a barge carrying eighty men, and a balynfer carrying forty men; and that four spynes, or pinnaces, carrying twenty-five men each, would be necessary. The Commons also pointed out the individual ships which it recommended to be obtained to compose this force: viz., at Bristol the Nicholas of the Tower, and Katherine of Burtons; at Dartmouth the Spanish ship that was the Lord Poyntz’s, and Sir Philip Courtenay’s great ship. In the port of London two great ships, one called Trinity, and the other Thomas. At Hull a great ship called Taverner’s, the name Grace-dieu. At Newcastle a great ship called The George. They also state where the barges, balynfers, and pinnaces may be obtained. Some of these may have been royal ships, but not all of them. Of the Grace-dieu of Hull, we know from Rymer (xi., 258) that John Taverner of Hull, mariner, having made a ship as large as a great carrack, or larger, had granted to him that the said ship, by reason of her unusual magnitude, should be named the Grace-dieu carrack, and enjoy certain privileges in trade.

On a great emergency, a still more sweeping impressment of the mercantile fleet was made: e.g., Henry V., in his third year, directed Nicholas Manslyt, his sergeant-at-arms, to arrest all ships and vessels in every port in the kingdom, of the burden of twenty tons and upwards, for the king’s service; and Edward IV., in his fourteenth year, made a similar seizure of all ships of over sixteen tons burden. On the other hand, the king hired out his ships to merchants when they were not in use. Thus, in 1232 A.D., John Blancboilly had the custody of King Henry III.’s great ship called the Queen, for his life, to trade wherever he pleased, paying an annual rent of eighty marks; and all his lands in England were charged with the fulfilment of the contract. In 1242 directions were given to surrender the custody of the king’s galleys in Ireland to the sailors of Waterford, Drogheda, and Dungaroon, to trade with in what way they could, taking security for their rent and restoration.

The royal ships, however, maintained the police of the seas very inefficiently, and a petite guerre seems to have been carried on continually between the ships of different countries, and even between the ships of different seaports; while downright piracy was not at all uncommon. When these injuries were inflicted by the ships of another nation, the injured men often sought redress through their own government from the government of the people who had injured them, and the mediæval governments generally took up warmly any such complaints. But the merchants not unfrequently took the law into their own hands. In the twelfth century, e.g., it happened to a merchant of Berwick, Cnut by name, that one of his ships, having his wife on board, was seized by a piratical Earl of Orkney, and burnt. Cnut spent 100 marks in having fourteen stout vessels suitably equipped to go out and punish the offender. And so late as 1378 a sort of private naval war was carried on between John Mercer, a merchant of Perth, and John Philpott of London. Mercer’s father had for some time given assistance to the French by harassing the merchant ships of England; and in 1377, being driven by foul weather on the Yorkshire coast, he was caught, and imprisoned in Scarborough Castle. Thereupon the son carried on the strife. Collecting a little fleet of Scottish, French, and Spanish ships, he captured several English merchantmen off Scarborough, slaying their commanders, putting their crews in chains, and appropriating their cargoes. Philpott, the mayor of London, at his own cost, collected a number of vessels, put in them 1,000 armed men, and sailed for the north. Within a few weeks he had retaken the captured vessels, had effectually beaten their captors, and, in his turn, had seized fifteen Spanish ships laden with wine, which came in his way. On his return to London he was summoned before the council to answer for his conduct in taking an armed force to sea without the king’s leave. But he boldly told the council: “I did not expose myself, my money, and my men to the dangers of the sea that I might deprive you and your colleagues of your knightly fame, nor that I might win any for myself, but in pity for the misery of the people and the country, which from being a noble realm with dominion over other nations, has through your supineness become exposed to the ravages of the vilest race, and since you would not lift a hand in its defence, I exposed myself and my property for the safety and deliverance of our country.”