Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/484

 Count of Holland, because that prince had not compelled two of them to pay some money due to Waghen; while orders were actually issued to detain all vessels and property in England, belonging to Holland and Zealand, till the Count should determine this affair "according to justice." The people of Dartmouth took the lead in these semi-piratical acts, as they held from the king a general privateering commission, whereby they brought away (1385) various rich vessels from the mouth of the Seine, one of which, according to the testimony of Walsingham, bore the name of "Clisson's Barge" (Clisson being at that time Constable of France), and "had not its equal in England or France;" while one of their merchants, with a fleet of his own, captured no less than thirty-three vessels, with fifteen hundred tuns of Rochelle wine.

There can be no doubt that, at the period of Richard's accession, the English navy was in a very neglected state, and wholly unfit to protect even the comparatively small number of English merchant vessels then engaged in foreign commerce. France, with fifty ships under the command of Admiral Sir John de Vienne, had made a descent on Rye, and, after plundering that town and neighbourhood, had levied a contribution of one thousand marks upon the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight; on the same