[6] The mention of the word galley in the records is, taken by itself, often misleading. Frequently it meant a small, but fully rigged, sailing vessel, supplied with sweeps for occasional use. Sometimes it appears to have been applied to a sailing ship of particular build, and on one occasion the Mary Rose, a ‘capital ship’ of Henry VIII, is called ‘the great galley,’ showing how loosely the word was used.
‘For foure things our Noble sheweth to me
King, Ship, and Swerd, and power of the See.’
Libel of English Policie, supposed to be by De Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, and written in 1436 or 1437.
[8] That his subjects at one time called him the ‘King of the Sea,’ shows how the fact of his having been the first English king to command a naval battle impressed popular imagination; towards the end of the reign the phrase must have sounded bitter in the ears of the inhabitants of the coast towns.
[9] King and sword were not new on coins, and the ship was usual enough on the seals of the port towns; in them, as doubtless in the noble, it referred to mercantile traffic.
[10] ‘The shifty, untrustworthy statecraft of an unprincipled, light-hearted king, living for his own ends, and recking not of what came after him.’ (Stubbs, Const. Hist. ii, 510).
[11] Rot. Parl. ii, 311, 319.
[12] The expression ‘ton-tight’ is somewhat obscure, but probably meant complete or measured tons. (Cf. Holloway, Dict. of Provincialisms, s.v. tight, and Halliwell’s Dictionary s.v. thite.) In Latin papers it is rendered by such a form as ships ‘ponderis 80 doliorum;’ in 1430 it is described as ‘le tonage autrement appelle tounetight,’ (Exchequer Warrants for Issues, 9 Feb). It was not necessarily restricted to ship measurement since, in 1496, stone and gravel for dock building were being purchased by the ton-tight. It is therefore possible that it referred to weight as distinguished from the cubic space occupied by a tun of wine, the original standard of tonnage capacity.