Page:Royalnavyhistory01clow.djvu/411

 deliver it to him, and he would pay them for the freight of it. The Prussians refused an answer, and next day attacked the English who were still on board the hulks and killed many of them. Colville thereupon captured the hulks, and carried them into Southampton and Poole; and the merchants prayed that the prizes might not be restored until the case had been adjudicated upon by the Admiralty Court. An inquiry was ordered, but unhappily the result of it is not recorded. Under international law as now accepted, the Prussian ships would be forfeited in a like case in war time, for they violently repelled the searchers, who were acting under a duly commissioned authority; but nominally a truce prevailed with France, to which country the cargo was suspected to belong, so that it is doubly regrettable that the decision has not been preserved.

The truce was re-ratified in May, 1413; yet so perilous were the Channel and the Bay of Biscay, owing to the depredations of French and other corsairs, that in August it was ordered that no vessels should proceed for wine to Guienne, unless in numbers sufficient to defend themselves. By the terms of a new truce with Spain, it was stipulated that no armed ship of either nation should leave port without first giving security not to molest subjects and property of the other.

But Henry, to his honour, did much more than he could have effected by mere international agreement to put down piracy and the infraction of truces. It was enacted in 1414 that all such proceedings should be accounted high treason.

In July of the same year the king formally asserted his right to the crown of France, and, although hostilities did not at once follow, orders were issued in September to the king's master-gunner and engineer to impress workmen; and the export of gunpowder was prohibited. New ships, including the Holy Ghost, the Grace à Dieu, and perhaps the Trinity, were laid down, and the chancellor's speech at the opening of Parliament foreshadowed war. In the autumn, Patrick Coterell and James Cornewalshe were appointed Admirals of Ireland for life.