Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/495

 *bably contains the views of the most enlightened men in England on the impolicy of the course of continental conquest on which Henry had embarked. This curious production, which occupies twenty-one or twenty-two folios of closely printed black letter in Hakluyt, and has been frequently referred to and quoted by writers upon English shipping, is entitled—

"Here beginneth the Prologue of the Processe of the Libel of English policie, exhorting all England to keepe the sea, and namely the narrowe sea; and shewing what profite commeth thereof, and also what worship and saluation to England and to all Englishmen."

However much the people of England may at the time have been flattered by Henry's heroic deeds of arms, it is evident from this poem that a large class were thoroughly convinced of the impolicy of the aggressions of their monarch. But the all-important point the author has in view is the necessity of maintaining the command of the Channel as the only true safeguard of the shores of England; and almost every statesman since then has endeavoured to carry into effect what the author in his quaint old language so strongly recommends:

"The true Processe of English policie Of otterward to keepe this regne in Of our England, that no man may deny. Ner say of sooth but it is one of the best, Is this, that who seeth South, North, East and West, Cherish marchandise, keepe the admiraltie; That we bee Masters of the narrowe sea.

"For Sigismond the great Emperour Wich yet reigneth, when he was in this land