Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/506

 England the capacity of a ship is still better understood by the number of keels she can carry than by her registered tonnage.

It is not our province to notice the long and terrible wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster which followed the accession of the infant Henry VI. to the throne of England. War, in all cases, would seem to have encouraged hordes of marauders to fit out armed vessels, too frequently under the pretence of the national defence, but practically for their own gain and aggrandisement. But the war which now raged for supremacy between the rival claimants to the crown of England was, perhaps, the one of all others which offered the greatest encouragement to these disgraceful expeditions. Forms of licence were hardly necessary, as the flags of Lancaster or of York were sufficient covers to many crimes. Thus, under plea of aiding the cause of the House of York, the Earl of Warwick, "the king-maker," fitted out a fleet on his own account, with which he attacked, in the Straits of Dover, a fleet of Genoese merchantmen bound for Lubeck, with a cargo of Spanish merchandise, of which he captured six, rendered worthless twenty-six, slaughtered one thousand of their crews, and plundered merchandise to the value of 10,000l. sterling, with the loss, it is said, of only fifty of his own men. In the face of such an act as this, perpetrated by one of the most exalted of the English nobility, who filled the highly responsible office of