Although Parliament was continually complaining of foreign piracy there can be no doubt that English seamen had nothing to learn, in that occupation, from their rivals. ‘Your shipping you employ to make war upon the poor merchants and to plunder and rob them of their merchandise, and you make yourselves plunderers and pirates,’ said a contemporary writer.[37] By a statute[38] of Henry V, the breaking of truce and safe conduct was made high treason, and a conservator of safe conducts, who was to be a person of position enjoying not less than £40 in land by the year, was to be appointed in every port. Under Henry VI, safe conducts were freely granted to neutrals to load goods in enemies’ ships, and protests were made by the Commons about their number and that they were not enrolled of record in the court of chancery and so led to loss and litigation.
Henry VI:—Merchant Shipping.
Notwithstanding the normal drawbacks of piracy and warfare, the over-sea trade of the kingdom seems to have been steadily expanding. A branch of traffic which employed many vessels, and must have been a valuable school of preparation for the longer voyages of the next generation, was what may be called, the pilgrim transport trade. The shrine of St James of Compostella was then the favourite objective of English external pilgrimage and there are innumerable licenses to shipowners to carry passengers out and home. In 1427-8 twenty-two licenses were granted, and in 1433-4 the number reached 65;[39] in 1445, 2100 persons were carried there and back.[40] Some of the licenses were granted to Soper, who was engaged in the business as well as in ordinary trade to Spain, and it is to be remarked that they were sometimes issued during the winter months—January, February, March,—showing that English seamanship was outgrowing the tradition of summer voyages. In 1449 we have the first sign of the bounty system on merchant ships of large size which, in the next century, systematised into five shillings a ton for those of 100 tons and upwards. John Taverner of Hull, had built the Grace Dieu, and in that year, was allowed certain privileges in connexion with lading the vessel in reward for his enterprise.[41] The document seems to imply that she was a new ship, but in 1444-5, she was exempted from the harbour dues at Calais because drawing too much water to enter the harbour,[42] and is probably referred to in 1442.[43]
There are two most valuable papers still existing which enable us to form some idea of the number and size of the merchantmen available for the service of the crown. The first of June 1439[44] is a list of payments for ships taken up for the transport of troops to Aquitaine, and is unfortunately mutilated in some places. Its contents may be thus classified:—
| Tons 100 | Tons 120 | Tons 140 | Tons 160 | Tons 200 | Tons 240 | Tons 260 | Tons 300 | Tons 360 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| London | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Hull | 2 | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Saltash | 1 | ||||||||
| Plymouth | 1 | ||||||||
| Exeter | 1 | ||||||||
| Fowey | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Bideford | 1 | ||||||||
| Bristol | 2 | ||||||||
| Penzance | 1 | ||||||||
| Barnstaple | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| Southampton | 1 | ||||||||
| Winchelsea | 1 | ||||||||
| Ipswich | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| Ash | 2 | ||||||||
| Lynn | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| Boston | 1 | ||||||||
| Teignmouth[45] | 1 | ||||||||
| Unknown[46] | 1 | 2 | 2 |
Twenty-two other vessels are of eighty tons, twenty of sixty, and six are under forty tons; in two cases the tonnage is not given, nine more are foreign including two from Bayonne, then an English possession, and ten entries are nearly altogether destroyed.
The next list, of 1451,[47] is also one of vessels impressed for an expedition to Aquitaine:—
| Tons 100 | Tons 120 | Tons 140 | Tons 160 | Tons 180 | Tons 200 | Tons 220 | Tons 260 | Tons 300 | Tons 350 | Tons 400 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| London | 1 | 3 | 1 | ||||||||
| Bristol | 1 | ||||||||||
| Southampton | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| Dartmouth[48] | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Plymouth | 2 | 2 | 1 | ||||||||
| Lynn | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Fowey | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Looe | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Weymouth | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Penzance | 1 | ||||||||||
| Falmouth | 1 | ||||||||||
| Portsmouth | 1 | ||||||||||
| Winchelsea | 1 | ||||||||||
| Ash | 1 | ||||||||||
| Hoke | 1 | ||||||||||
| Calais | 1 | 2 |
One vessel of one hundred and forty, one of two hundred, and one of two hundred and twenty tons belong to places unnamed, and there are twenty-three ships of from fifty to ninety tons.