[486] State Papers, Dom., ccxci. 58, 59.
[487] Gardiner, op. cit., 385; State Papers, Dom., ccxcv. 61. The English agent in France reported in August that two squadrons under French admirals, and bearing the French flag, were to ply, one along the coast of France from Belle Isle to Bayonne, the other at the mouth of the Channel. The remainder of the fleet, half French and half Hollander (which guarded the coast up to Calais and to the north of it), bore the States’ colours, and were under the command of the Hollander Admiral,—“an expedient to avoid acknowledging his Majesty’s right in the Channel, in case this squadron should meet his Majesty’s fleet and be constrained to vail the bonnet.”
[488] Gardiner, loc. cit.
[489] It was from this Hollander, met off Beachy Head on 9th June, that Lindsey learned that the French fleet was at Portland.
[490] State Papers, Dom., ccxci. 80, 27th June 1635.
[491] Ibid., ccxcvi. 14.
[492] State Papers, Dom., ccxciii. 12.
[493] Gardiner, op. cit., 386.
[494] Lindsey to the king, 2nd August; Coke to Lindsey, 4th August. State Papers, Dom., ccxcv. 9, 42. The rumour that two of the king’s ships were to go north to the busses reached the ears of the States’ ambassador. Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, O, fol. 376.
[495] State Papers, Dom., ccxcvi. 5, 14, 16, 30. Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, O, fol. 380. Res. Holl., 7th September, Bosgoed, op. cit., p. 358. Twelve busses and three of the convoys took refuge at Newcastle; others in the Firth of Forth. The skipper of a coasting vessel from Scotland to Scarborough saw seven busses in flames; the sky was red from the conflagration. The Leopard, one of Lindsey’s fleet, convoying merchantmen to Dunkirk, met eighteen of the privateers returning in triumph. The Dutch busses were the natural prey of the Dunkirkers, and the States were put to great expense and pains in guarding them. In 1625 a Spanish agent, Egidio Ouwers, submitted to Cardinal de Ceva, at Brussels, an elaborate plan for destroying the Dutch herring fishery, so as to “spoil their chiefest mine by which they maintained their wars.” State Papers, Dom., dxxi. 30.