Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/67

 FOWEY 61 chelsea, "would vaile no bonnet," by which we may suppose is intended the customary salutation made in courtesy to a fellow-port. Highly indignant, the men of Rye and Win- chelsea sallied forth to teach the Foyens better respect, our seamen in those days being as willing to quarrel among each other as they were with the men of Normandy or Brittany. In the quaint words of the Cornish Hals, this contempt shown by the Fowey men, " by the better enabled sea- farers reckoned intolerable, caused the Ripiers to make out with might and maine against them ; howbeit with a more hardy onset than happy issue ; for the Foy men gave them so rough entertainment as their welcome, that they were glad to depart without bidding farewell — the merit of which exploit afterwards entitled them Gallants of Fowey." Of course the Fowey men held their heads higher than ever after this, and even presumed to wear the arms of Rye and Winchelsea interwined with their own, in token of their supremacy. It was from such tough fibres that the British navy was built ; those strenuous days of constant conflict and privateering were a grand tutorage for seamen, though not unex- ceptionable from a moral standpoint. But a town that behaved as Fowey did naturally had to suffer reprisals. To quote again from Hals, we learn that certain Normans, with a commission from the King of France to " be revenged on the pirates of Fowey town, carried the design so secret that a small squadron of ships and many bands of marine soldiers was prepared and shipped without the Fowey men's knowledge. They put to sea out of the river Seine in July, 1457, and with a fair wind