Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/517

 1920 SIXTEENTH CENTURY 509 to the galleys,^ while in 1546 Hertford writes to Paget that, as Englishmen who have been taken prisoners by the French are straitly handled and employed in galleys, it would be well, if the king were setting forth any such vessels, to use in the same manner certain French prisoners taken at Boulogne."^ Whether this was done or not we cannot say. In 1545 the mayor and sheriffs of London were ordered to proclaim that notwithstanding wholesome laws to preserve people from idleness there remain, especially about London, a great number of ' ryffyns and vagabondes ' able to work but living by theft and falsehood in play whereby simple young men are polled and undone and by other detestable vices and fashions. The king intends to use all such persons to serve him in these wars in certain galleys to be armed forth before 1 June next.^ And, lastly, in 1549 comes that celebrated proclamation recorded by Strype that all such Sowers and Tellers abroad of vain and forged Tales and Lyes . . . [should] be committed into the Gallies, there to row in Chains, as a Slave or Forsary, during the King's Pleasure.* . These proclamations make still more inexplicable Somerset's twice-repeated statement to Selve that, as English prisoners were being sent to the French galleys, in reprisal tous les fran9oys et escossoys qu'il prendroyt en Escosse il les feroyt pendre, car il n'y avoyt poinct en Angleterre de gallayrcs pour les mectre, et que sy la guerre revenoyt avec vous qu'il en feroyt de mesnies de voz subjectz qu'il prendroyt.^ There cannot be the slightest doubt that England possessed one galley in 1547-8, the Galley Subtile, and, unless it is to be assumed that Somerset was saying what he knew to be untrue, and what, moreover, Selve would also know to be untrue — too naive a proceeding even for Somerset — his words cannot be under- stood in their literal sense. The most plausible interpretation is that Somerset merely wished to say that he had not enough galleys to accommodate all the prisoners that might be taken ; there was only one in the English fleet at this time, and that probably had her full complement already. It is significant of the disuse into which the galleys fell after ^ Letters and Papers, xxi. i. 594, 13 April 1546. 1548 he writes that ' sy Ton mectoyt lez prisonnyers angloys aulx gallaires il [Somerset] avoyt commande audict milord Grey de faire pendre et estranglcr tous ceulx qu'il prendroyt de quelque qualite qu'ilz feussent et de faire faire criee et deffence aulx angloys de n'en saulver ne donner la vie k paz ung et que pource qu'il n'y avoyt poinct de gallaires par de9a il n' avoyt poinct d'aultre moyen de rendrela pareille ' {Corresp. de Selve, p. 394).
 * R. Steele, Tudor and Stuart Proclamations, i. 26, no. 251, 10 May 1544.
 * Ihid. XX. i. 812, 26 May 1545 : the proclamation is calendared in Steele.
 * Strype, u. 149 (ed. 1721), 29 April 1549.
 * Selve to the French king, 21 August 1547 (Corresp. de Selve, p. 187). On 1 July