[386] A Project for the Encouragement of Fishing by passing an Act of Parliament for Building fishing-vessels, to be protected by a Fleet Royall of 20 ships, the expense to be defrayed by a Tribute of every Tenth Fish. Ibid., clvii. 46.
[387] A Discourse of the Invention of Ships. Collected Works, viii. 326.
[388] Naval Tracts, in Churchill’s Collection of Voyages, iii. 220, 224.
[389] Cecil to Parry, 10th June 1603. Foreign Papers, France, vol. 129. It is endorsed “Souverainty of ye Seas, 1603. Monsr. de Vicque beares ye armes of france in Dover road.” See also Sully, Memoires des Sages et royales Oeconomics d’Estat, ii. 173, and Kermaingant, Le Droit des Gens Maritimes, 3.
[390] Monson’s Naval Tracts, ibid., 222. The Spaniards to whom Monson refers were no doubt the troops which Don Louis Fajardo had attempted to carry to Flanders when he was attacked by the Dutch and took refuge in Dover. Monson, it may be said, was in receipt of a secret pension of £350 per annum from Spain. Gardiner, Hist., i. 215.
[391] Loccenius, De Jure Maritimo et Navali, 48.
[392] Thus in the Earl of Warwick’s voyage, in 1627, four vessels “stood with their forefoot and very earnestly” tried to weather the king’s ships off Falmouth, among them being a French man-of-war. The English then shot at the latter, and “soo brought him by ye lee” (State Papers, Dom., lxxix. 17). In 1637 Captain Straddling explained how he compelled Dutch vessels to take in their flags, lower their top-sails, and “lie by the lee” (Ibid., ccclxi. 41). In the historic encounters with the Dutch in 1652 the same rule was shown. When Captain Young met the Dutchmen on 12th May ([see p. 402]), their admiral came under his lee and took down his flag, but their vice-admiral, “contrary to navigation with us in the narrow seas, came to the windward of us” (French Occurrences, Brit. Mus., E, 665, 6). So also when Blake met Tromp, he “fired two shots thwart Tromp’s forefoot for him to strike his flag and bear down to leeward, and he taking no notice of it, the general ordered the third shot at Tromp’s flag, which went through his main top-sails” (Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 11,684, fol. 5b).
[393] The Lords of the Admiralty to Plumleigh. State Papers, Dom., clvii. fol. 121.
[394] Meadows, Observations concerning the Dominion and Sovereignty of the Seas, 2.
[395] State Papers, Dom., Chas. I. ccxxix. 79.