[205]. B begins vilely, but does not go on so ill. The forty merchants coming ‘with fifty sail’ to King Henry on a mountain top, 31,2, requires to be taken indulgently.
[206]. .sp 1
“God’s curse on his hartt,’ saide William,
‘Thys day thy cote dyd on;
If it had ben no better then myne,
It had gone nere thy bone.’
(Vol. iii, 23, st. 27.)
[207]. An approach to sense may be had by reading ‘either in hach-bord or in hull,’ that is, by striking with his beam either the side or the body of the vessel; but I do not think so well of this change as to venture it.
[208]. The letters granted to the Bartons authorized them to seize all Portuguese ships till repaid 12,000 ducats of Portugal. Pinkerton, whose excellent account, everywhere justified by documents, I have been indebted to above, remarks: “The justice of letters of reprisal after an interval of thirty years may be much doubted. At any rate, one prize was sufficient for the injury, and the continuance of their captures, and the repeated demands of our kings, even so late as 1540, cannot be vindicated. Nay, these reprisals on Portugal were found so lucrative that, in 1543, Arran, the regent, gave similar letters to John Barton, grandson of the first John. In 1563 Mary formally revoked the letters of marque to the Bartons, because they had been abused into piracy.” Pinkerton’s History of Scotland, II, 60 f, 70.
[209]. Robert was skipper of the Great Michael, a ship two hundred and forty feet long, with sides ten feet thick, and said to be larger and stronger than any vessel in the navy of England or of France.