Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/94

92 customs. There is no reference to the city itself as a great mart, or to either its shipping or its port. Even in the general charter granted by Henry I., on his accession, there is not a word in relation to commerce or merchants. It is stated, however, by William of Poictiers, that the Conqueror invited foreign merchants to the country by assurances of his protection.

The numerous ships in which the Conqueror brought over his troops—amounting, it is said, in all, to about 700 vessels of considerable size, besides more than three times that number of inferior dimensions—must have formed, for some time, a respectable royal navy. William of Poictiers informs us that the first care of the duke, after disembarking his men, was to erect defences for the protection of his ships; and most of them w'ere, doubtless, preserved, and afterwards employed in war or commerce. It is the opinion of a late writer, that the numerous fleet thus brought over by the Conqueror, "when not engaged in ferrying himself and his armies to and from the continent, was probably employed in trading between his old and new territories and the adjacent coasts of France and Flanders, which were all now connected with the new masters of England." We find a naval force occasionally employed in the wars even of the first English kings after the Conquest. The Saxon Chronicle states that, when the Conqueror made his expedition against Scotland in 1072, he sent a fleet to attack that country by sea, at the same time that he invaded it in person at the head of his army. Good service was done for Rufus against his brother Robert by the privateers which he permitted his English subjects to fit out in the beginning of his reign. A fleet was also equipped by Henry I., to oppose the threatened invasion of Robert, on his accession, the greater part of which, however, deserted to the enemy. Provision, indeed, was made by the Conqueror for the defence of the kingdom, whenever it should become necessary, by a naval force, by means of the regulations which he established in