“Wherefor about the spring there arrived at the port of Joppa a fleet of ships from Genoa. In which fleet (when the Christian merchants had exchanged all their wares at the coast townes, and had likewise visited the holy places) wee all of us embarked, committing our selfes to the seas: and being tossed with many stormes and tempests, at length wee arrived at Brundusium: and so with a prosperous journey travelling thorow Apulia towards Rome, we there visited the habitations of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and did reverence unto divers monuments of holy martyrs in all places thorowout the citie. From thence the archbishops and other princes of the empire travelling towards the right hand for Alemain, and we declining towards the left hand for France, departed asunder, taking our leaves with unspeakable thankes and courtesies. And so at length, of thirty horsemen which went out of Normandie, fat, lustie, and frolique, we returned thither skarse twenty poore pilgrims of us, being all footmen, and consumed with leannesse to the bare bones.”
The story of the voyages of Englishmen in the twelfth-century Crusades, recorded in chronological order, opens with the chivalrous adventure of Edgar, grandson of Edmund, surnamed “Ironsides,” accompanied by “valiant Robert the son of Godwin,” in the year 1102, when, immediately upon their arrival out, signal aid was rendered by them to Baldwin, the second Latin king of Jerusalem, whom they found hard pressed by the Turks at Rama. The “valiant Robert” sprang to the forefront, and going before the king with his drawn sword, he cut a lane through the enemy’s camp, “slaying the Turks on his right hand and his left.” So Baldwin escaped. But the knight fared ill. “Upon this happy success, being more eager and fierce, as he went forward too hastily, his sword fell out of his hand. Which as he stooped to take up, being oppressed by the whole multitude, he was there taken and bound.” His fate was tragic. “From thence (as some say) being carried into Babylon, or Alcair, in Egypt, when he would not renounce Christ, he was tied unto a stake in the midst of the market-place, and being shot through with arrows, died a martyr.” Edgar having lost his beloved knight, retired from crusading, and returned to England honoured with “many rewards both by the Greekish and the German Emperor.”
Five years later, in 1107, a “very great warlike fleet of the Catholic nation of England to the number of about seven thousand,” together with “more men of war of the kingdom of Denmark, of Flanders, and of Antwerp,” set sail in ships then called “busses”—small vessels carrying two masts, and with two cabins, one at each end—for the Holy Land. This body of warring zealots reached Joppa after a prosperous voyage, and thence, under a strong guard provided them by King Baldwin, passed to Jerusalem safely from all assaults and ambushes of the Gentiles. When they had solemnly offered up their vows in the Temple of the Holy Sepulchre, they returned with great joy to Joppa, and were ready to fight for Baldwin in any venture he might propose against the enemy. Plans were formed to besiege a stronghold. But the move ended with an effective demonstration of the fleet in brave array, displaying “pendants and streams of purple and diverse other glorious colours, and flags of scarlet colour and silk.”
Near the end of this century, in 1190, came the “worthy voyage of Richard the first, king of England, into Asia for the recovery of Jerusalem out of the hands of the Saracens,” with which began the Third Crusade of the nine of history. This was that Richard, of restless zeal, surnamed “Ceur de Lion,” Henry the second’s son. After Henry’s death Richard, “remembering the rebellions that he had undutifully raised” against his father, “sought for absolution of his trespass.” And “in part of satisfaction for the same,” he agreed to make this crusade with Philip, the French king. Accordingly so soon as he was crowned he began his preparations. The first business was to raise a comfortable sum of money for the expedition. It was promptly accomplished by exacting “a tenth of the whole Realm, the Christians to make threescore and ten thousand pounds, and the Jews which then dwelt in the Realm threescore thousand.” At length his fleet was afloat, and he was off to join Philip of France. This Crusade occupied the first four years of Richard’s reign, and during it he made the conquest of Cyprus, won a great victory at Jaffa, marched on Jerusalem, concluded a truce with the sultan, Saladin, and slaughtered three thousand hostages when Saladin failed to come to time with an agreed-upon payment of two hundred thousand pieces of gold. The butchery of the hostages was performed on the summit of a hill that the tragedy might be in full view of Saladin’s camp. On his homeward journey he was shipwrecked, and he was long imprisoned in Germany. Hakluyt’s version of this Crusade is a detailed account “drawn out of the Book of Actes and Monuments of the Church of England written by M. John Foxe,” more popularly known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Richard’s code of laws and ordinances for the government of his crusading fleet, well illustrates at once the rigour of the discipline and the character of the British sailor of that day. It also discloses the antiquity of the method of punishment by tar-and-feathering:
"1. That who so killed any person on shipboord should be tied with him that was slaine and throwen into the sea.
"2. And if he killed him on the land, he should in like maner be tied with the partie slaine, and be buried with him in the earth.
"3. He that shalbe convicted by lawfull witnes to draw out his knife or weapon to the intent to strike any man, or that hath striken any to the drawing of blood shall loose his hand.
"4. Also he that striketh any person with his hand without effusion of blood, shall be plunged three times in the sea.
"5. Item, who so speaketh any opprobrious or contumelious wordes in reviling or cursing one another, for so oftentimes as he hath reviled shall pay so many ounces of silver.
“6. Item, a thiefe or felon that hath stollen being lawfully convicted, shal have his head shorne and boyling pitch powred upon his head, and feathers or downe strawed upon the same, whereby he may be knowen, and so at the first landing place they shall come to, there to be cast up.”