Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/87

1537.] to defend its own coasts and its own traders. Sufficient money was found for the immediate purpose, and a small but admirably equipped fleet was fitted out silently at Portsmouth. Sir Thomas Seymour, the Queen's brother, Sir George Carew, Sir John Dudley, and Christopher Coo, a rough English sailor, were appointed to the command; and, when the ships were ready, they swept out into the Channel. Secrecy had been observed as far as possible, in the hope of taking the offenders by surprise. The greater number of them had, unhappily, been warned, and had escaped to their own harbours; but Coo shortly brought two pirate prizes into Rye. The people of Penzance, one August afternoon, heard the thunder of distant cannon. Carew and Seymour, searching the western coast, had come on the traces of four French ships of war, which had been plundering. They came up with them in Mounts Bay, and, closing against heavy odds, they fought them there till night. At daybreak, one of the four lay on the water, a sinking wreck. The others had crawled away in the darkness, and came no more into English waters. Dudley had been even more fortunate. 'As he was lying between the Needles and the Cowe,' there came a letter to him from the Mayor of Rye, 'that the Flemings had boarded a merchant-ship belonging to that port, and had taken goods out of her valued at three hundred pounds.' 'That hearing,' he said, in his despatch to Henry, 'I, with another of your Grace's ships, made