Page:Royalnavyhistory01clow.djvu/257

 permitted some relaxation of a strain which must have been very severely felt, and allowed Edward to pay a visit to Philip V. of France. The king remained abroad only about a month, and disembarked at Dover on July 22nd.

At about this time Edward entrusted the custody of the Cinque Ports to the younger Hugh le Despencer, who seems to have abused his position by committing various piratical acts, among which may he included the capture, in 1322, of two dramons with cargo worth 40,000 marks. Accepting this as an unexaggerated estimate of the treasure, and making allowance for the then high purchasing power of money, the capture may be regarded as almost as rich a one as was made at sea by any English force, even in the days of the Spanish galleons.

A kind of private war, which had for some time existed between the mariners of England and those of Brittany, was provisionally ended in August by an agreement providing for a truce to last until November, 1322, and for the appointment, in the meantime, of two arbitrators on each side, with power to compel submission to their decision. The truce was subsequently prolonged for two years. This step towards the settlement of a dangerous series of disputes may have suggested to Edward the desirability of making an end to the long-standing dissensions between the barons of the Cinque Ports and the seamen of Poole, Weymouth, Lyme, and Southampton, which had led to many murders, robberies, and burnings of ships. The king ordered the issue of a proclamation forbidding, under heavy penalties, any man to injure the people of the said towns or their property; and directed the warden to send six of the barons to lodge the complaint of the Cinque Ports against the seamen before himself in council, and then to submit to such decision as might be given.

When the truce with Scotland expired in 1322, the Scots entered Northumberland in order to join the English rebels under Thomas, Earl of Lancaster; and after the Earl had been defeated at Boroughbridge, orders were issued to the Warden of the Cinque Ports that no one of whom he had not full knowledge should be permitted to quit the kingdom, and that any rebels venturing within his jurisdiction should be arrested. Not improbably the