“To the north of Swold Haven (Southwold), three leagues are Kirkley and Layestof, decayed towns. They have 6 or 7 North Sea boats; but they of Layestof make benefit yearly of buying herrings of the Hollanders; for likewise these Hollanders are hosted with the Layestof men, as they are with the Yarmouthians.”
The government of Elizabeth had adopted various measures (with one of which you are already well acquainted) for encouraging the employment of English ships and sailors in the fishing trade, and the general commerce of the country. But the English could not successfully compete with the Dutch fishermen even off our own shores. Charles took stronger measures to get these fisheries into the hands of Englishmen. He determined to issue a prohibition against the subjects of foreign countries fishing in what he claimed to be British seas, without a license from the English government. In order to be able to enforce such an offensive measure he took steps for providing a more powerful navy than the country had ever before possessed. Unfortunately he had already quarreled with his Parliament, and he had to obtain the money required by demands authorised only by his Royal Prerogative. However popular the measure would have been, if it had been carried out by constitutional means, the imposition upon the whole country, without the consent of Parliament, of the tax called “ship money,” was the fatal proceeding which brought on the Civil War. He succeeded however at first, and at once issued his prohibition which the Dutch refused to submit to, and in 1536, Hume tells us—
“A formidable fleet of 60 sail, the greatest that England had ever known, was equipped under the Earl of Northumberland who had orders to attack the Herring busses of the Dutch which fished in what was called the British seas.”
The effect of this attack upon the Dutch and French fishing in what was called the British seas was felt by Yarmouth and Lowestoft immediately. No more could their merchants rely upon their foreign visitors for their supply of herrings. If they were to retain their trade in herrings they must now catch them themselves or have their supplies limited to the produce of the English fishermen from southern ports.
Lowestoft in The Civil War.
Both towns had submitted, with the other maritime towns of Norfolk and Suffolk to the demands for ship money with which this fleet had been provided, but when the demand for more ships and more money was made in the following years, the loyalty of both towns must have been sorely tried.
The events which followed upon the King’s renewal of his demand for ship-money throughout the kingdom, form the saddest chapters in the history of our country. We have only to notice those in which our two towns were concerned.
The Long Parliament met in 1640, and in 1642 Yarmouth declared herself for “the King and Parliament,” which meant that she was prepared to side with the Parliament against the King. Lowestoft took a different course. Although probably, like most other towns, and even families, at this terrible and critical period, our old townspeople were divided on the grave questions at issue, it appears that several of the leading persons in the town were so much inclined to the King’s side, that instead of at once joining the East Anglian Association with the rest of the towns and parishes, and most of the landed gentry in the county, they entered into communication with some of the Cavalier party and offered Lowestoft as a rendezvous for the King’s friends. Such a course was perhaps only a natural sequel to the steps taken a few years before in applying to the King to exempt the town from contributing to the expenses of the county members, on the ground of being Ancient Demesne of the Crown. In the return of Sir Nathaniel Barnardiston and Sir Philip Parker, the Roundhead members for Suffolk, in the Long Parliament, Lowestoft had no part.
We have unfortunately no local records of the measures taken by our old townspeople, or by their cavalier visitors for converting the little town into a royalist stronghold; but it appears that in the early part of the year 1643, while Cromwell was at Cambridge, busy in establishing there the Head quarters of the East Anglian Association, he received information of “a great confederacy among the malignants of a town called Lowestoft, being a place of great consequence.” It is said that the information was given him by a man who brought fish to Cambridge; doubtless a Yarmouth man. Cromwell, with his usual energy, started off at once to nip this “malignant” movement in the bud.
We have a full account of what took place from a letter written at the time by Mr. J. Cory, a Norwich man. Cromwell started with 5 troops of horse, which he increased at Norwich, with 80 volunteer dragoons, under Captain Fountain and Captain Rich, and arranged with the Yarmouth people to meet him at Lowestoft with an additional force of foot volunteers and 5 pieces of ordnance. With this formidable force he appeared at Lowestoft on the March. He found