Page:Daring deeds of famous pirates; true stories of the stirring adventures, bravery and resource of pirates, filibusters & buccaneers (1917).djvu/35

 Frenchmen pretending to be Scots, for which redress could not be obtained in France. In 1531 matters had become so bad, and piracy was so prevalent, that commissioners were appointed to make inquisitions concerning this illegal warfare round our coasts. Viscount Lisle, Vice-Admiral of England, and others were appointed to see to the problem. So cunning had these rovers become that it was no easy affair to capture them. But in this same year a notorious pirate named Kellwanton was taken in the Isle of Man; while another, De Melton by name, who was one of his accomplices, fled with the rest of the crew in the ship to Grimsby.

Sometimes the very ships which had been sent by the king against the pirates actually engaged in pillage themselves. There was at least one instance about this time of some royal ships being unable to resist the temptation to plunder the richly laden Flemish ships. But after complaint was made the royal reply came that the Flemings should be compensated and the plunderers punished. It was all very well to set a thief to catch a thief, but there were few English seamen of any experience who had not done some piracy at some time of their career, and when they at last formed the crews of preventive ships and got wearied of waiting for pirate craft to come along, it was too much to expect them to remain idle on the seas when a rich merchant-*man went sailing past.

Sometimes the pirates would waylay a whole merchant fleet, and if the latter were sailing light, would relieve the fleet of their victuals, their clothes, their anchors and cables and sails. But it was not merely to the North Sea nor to the English Channel that the English pirates confined themselves. In October 1533 they captured a Biscayan ship off the coast of Ireland. And during the reign of Henry there was an interesting incident connected with