Ordinary merchantmen, sailing with cargo, took advantage of any favourable chance without necessarily acting on a premeditated plan. One vessel, crossing the Channel, met three Bretons and it then occurred to the owner and master that they had lost £60 by Breton pirates and could obtain no redress. Not to lose the opportunity they captured one and sold the cargo at Penryn.[429] Piracy had not yet taken the savage character with which a few more years were to see it imbued; the theological bitterness was as yet wanting. Cases of bloodshed were very rare, and so far at any rate as Englishmen were concerned, the pirate was also sometimes a respectable tradesman on shore.[430] In 1543 the prisons were said to be full of pirates and the Council adopted the plan of requiring sureties before issuing letters of marque. The port towns flourished, at least some of them, then and long afterwards far more on the traffic with pirates, who visited them and sold the proceeds of robbery to the inhabitants, than by legitimate trade. Consequently no victim could rely on obtaining assistance even from the civic authorities. A French ship was ransacked in Plymouth Roads in August 1546—peace with France had been signed on 7th June—notwithstanding her captain’s appeal for help in the town, which seems to imply that the work was very leisurely and thoroughly done. The Council ordered that unless the goods were recovered and the pirates captured the inhabitants of Plymouth were to be made pecuniarily liable for the damage.[431] The wording of the Council order suggests that the Frenchman was boarded from the town, in which case the refusal of the mayor to interfere is still more significant.

Only one statute relating to piracy was passed by Henry. Before 1535 offenders frequently escaped because, if they did not confess, it was necessary to prove the crime by the evidence of disinterested witnesses and this was usually an impossibility. A fresh act therefore rendered them liable to be tried before a jury under the same conditions as ordinary criminals.[432]

Ordnance, Powder and Shot.

Soon after Henry’s accession he gave large orders for ordnance to foreign makers, chiefly at Mechlin, but the guns so obtained seem to have been for land service. There is only one paper which gives us the weight of the ship serpentine as used in 1513, and here it works out at 261¼ lbs. exclusive of the chamber or loading piece which weighed 41 lbs.;[433] the chamber contained the powder only, not the shot.[434] These were made by Cornelius Johnson ‘the king’s iron gunmaker,’ and who was one of the twelve gunners attached to the Tower with a fee of sixpence a day; as king’s gunmaker he also received eightpence a day. The sling, one of the heavier ship guns, weighed with its two chambers 8½ cwt. and 27 lbs., and there were also half and quarter slings; but there does not appear to have been any standard weight for these or other guns.[435] The serpentines bought in Flanders, for field use, weighed from 1060 lbs. to 1160 lbs. each. Guns were mounted on two or four-wheeled carriages, or, sometimes, on ‘scaffolds’ of timber; leaden shot and ‘dyse’ of iron were used with serpentines and iron shot with curtalls. In one instance 200 iron dice weighed 36 lbs., and they seem to have usually been one and a half inch square. The Artillery Garden at Houndsditch was granted for practice with ‘great and small ordinance,’ and persons with such English names as Herbert, Walker, and Tyler are noticed as gunfounders early in the reign, although, according to Stow, cast iron guns were not made in England till 1543. Some writers assert that they were used in Spain in the fourteenth century; if so it is probable that they were made here before the date given by Stow.

Serpentine powder cost from £4, 13s 4d to £6, 13s 4d and ‘bombdyne’ £5 a last; corn powder tenpence a pound.[436] Serpentine was a fine weak powder and probably midway in strength between bombdyne and corn. During 1512-13, 51 lasts, 12 barrels, 12 lbs. were used at sea, and 37 lasts during the succeeding year. For saltpetre we were dependent on importation, and between 1509-12 there are two contracts for quantities costing £3622, at sixpence a pound, with John Cavalcanti and other Italian merchants who were the usual purveyors, but gunpowder was made at home. Shot, whether of stone or iron, were called gunstones, round shot of iron costing £4, 10s to £5, 10s a ton, and of stone 13s 4d a hundred. Cross bar shot were in common use, e.g. ‘gun stones of iron with cross bars of iron in them.’[437] There are ‘ballez of wyldfyre with hoks of yron,’ and ‘bolts of wyldfyre’ both, like the arrows of wildfire, to set the enemy on fire. ‘Tampons’ were wads, sometimes of wood, and not the tompions now known: 16,000 were bought for the Henry Grace à Dieu at ten and twenty shillings the thousand.[438] From an entry ‘for two sheepskins to stop the mouths of the guns,’ we may infer that they were stuffed into the muzzles, or tied over them. Sheepskins were also used for gun sponges, and ‘cartouche’ or cartridge cases were made of canvas.[439]

In 1536 there were only 39 lasts, 11 barrels of powder in the Tower, 33,000 livery arrows,[440] ‘decayed,’ all the bows in the same condition, and the morrispikes wormeaten.[441] But the construction of the forts round the coastline in 1539-40, and the events that followed, gave an impetus to the demand for war material.

Stores.

In 1546 the Council querulously complained that ‘the general rule is whenever the King’s Maiestie shuld bye al is dere and skase, and whenever he shuld sel al is plentye and good chepe,’ an experience not confined to sovereigns. Stores such as timber, pitch, tar, oakum, ironwork, etc., necessary for building or repairs were mostly obtained from tradesmen at or near the dockyard towns. One reason for the adoption of Portsmouth is perhaps to be found in its nearness to Bere Forest and the New Forest, but nearly everything but timber, if not to be obtained at Southampton, had to be sent from London. Naval officials, like Gonson, sold necessaries to the crown, while acting as its representatives, and such transactions appear in the accounts as quite legitimate and customary. About 1522 oak timber from Bere was costing one shilling a ton rough and unhewed, one and eightpence seasoned, and three and fourpence ready squared. Ash was one shilling and beech sixpence.[442] Carriage cost twopence a ton per mile, and the work of felling and preparing the wood was performed by the king’s shipwrights who were sent into the forests for that purpose. Iron was £4 to £5, 10s a ton, the Spanish being of a better quality than the English and costing the higher price. Cables were used up to seventeen inches in circumference, ordinarily described as Dantzic, but sometimes from Lynn and Bridport, and bought of both English and foreign merchants. The price averaged about £12 a ton. The establishments did not, in 1515, possess any means of weighing cordage delivered, and there is a charge of 3s 4d for scales ‘hyrede of a belle ffundere dwellynge at Hondise Diche,’ and sent down to Deptford to weigh purchased cables. The following are the prices of miscellaneous requisites:—

Canvas{ Olron[443](1515),14s 4d and 15s a bolt[444]
{ do.(1518),10s a bolt
{ Vitery[445](1515),£4, 13s 4d the balet[446]
{ Poldavys[447](1515),18s a bolt
Hemp(1523),9s per cwt.
Lead(1513),6s per cwt.
Rosin(1523),10s per cwt.
Do.(1544),8s per cwt.
Raw Tallow(1523),6s per cwt.
Purified Tallow(1523),9s per cwt.
Tallow(1544),7s and 10s per cwt.
Flax(1513),8s per cwt.
Do.(1523),10s and 12s per cwt.
Oakum(1523),8s to 14s per cwt.
Pitch(1514),4s a barrel
Do.(1523),6s a barrel
Do.(1544),8s a barrel