Page:VCH Cornwall 1.djvu/599

 MARITIME HISTORY also to be considered. Nothing, however, was done at Helford, and the additions at Pendennis were confined to enlarging the existing castle by enclosing an enceinte with curtains, bastions, and perhaps advanced entrenchments. 1 The sum of 1,000 was allowed for the works, and the queen was very angry when more money was required, reprimanding Parker for taking in 50 acres of ground more than was intended. 2 Nothing was said of St. Mawes, and it seems to have been regarded as hardly capable of defence. 3 In 1599 there was another acute alarm of invasion, although no Spanish fleet was ever nearer to England than Coruna, and on 27 July the authorities in Cornwall were ordered to press all seamen between 16 and 60 years of age, and the mayor of Penryn was asked to hire a pinnace to scout on the Spanish coast for some weeks. This, practically, marks the end of the war, so far as any fears were felt in England or any further call made upon the English counties. English seamen and shipowners had indulged for nearly half a century in a Saturnalia of piracy and privateering for their own profit ; by the time the law had made itself felt and they were becoming more orderly at sea they found that others had learned their game, and were playing it at their expense, when they would fain have had peace. The Spanish government had always hesitated about issuing letters of marque, and permission several times given to its subjects had been in each case speedily withdrawn. The governors of the Low Countries showed no such indecision, and as Dunkirk, Sluys, Nieuport, and Ostend fell into their hands they became privateer bases that inflicted terrible injury upon English commerce. In 1601 the subject was sufficiently important to be debated in Parliament, when it was said that Dunkirk alone, having begun with two, had then twenty privateers at work. A year earlier Fowey and Looe were especially suffering at their hands, 4 and one Dunkirker had taken four vessels off the Lizard in a single day, two of which belonged to Looe and Fowey ; 5 a little later five of them were known to be cruising regularly on the coast. The plague grew worse after the peace with Spain, when there was no excuse for retaliation, and if it was ameliorated during the truce between the Dutch and the Spaniards it recurred with tenfold fury when the Thirty Years' War broke out, to be followed by our own wars with France and Spain between 162530. Moreover the distress was intensified by the appearance in the western Channel of Algerine and Salee pirates, who had come there under the guidance of Dutchmen and of English outlaws. In 1625 Penzance petitioned for a fort because ' of late terribly terrified by the Turks,' and about the same time there were said to be thirty Saleemen off Scilly. 6 On 12 August, 1625, the mayor of Plymouth wrote to the Council that within ten days twenty-seven vessels and 200 men, of whom eighty belonged to Looe, had been taken by them ; 7 and a few weeks before sixty men, women, and children had been taken out of a church in Mount's Bay or Mevagissey Bay by a landing party. 8 In March, 1626, there were six Dunkirkers off Pendennis, but there was not a gun mounted nor a pound of shot in the castle, and the garrison had been unpaid for two years. 9 Not long after came the news that Scilly had been taken by them, and that such a feat should have been thought possible shows how thoroughly the Flemish privateers had obtained the upper hand. The country people must have pursued their ancient industry with a yet keener enjoyment when a privateer was driven ashore, and to one such they ' came thick with their axes and other tools.' In 1630 the Lord Treasurer was informed that 'Egypt was never more infested with caterpillars than the Land's End with Biscayners,' but the Mohammedan pirates impressed the imagination more as messengers of life-long slavery and torture. Occasionally a Saleeman caught a Tartar. A Looe ship having been taken, the crew retook her, killing those on deck, shutting down thirty-two men under hatches, and brought the vessel into St. Ives ; 10 but on the whole the effect was to blockade the Cornish ports so that even fishermen dared not go out. 11 Neither time nor the personal government of Charles brought a remedy ; in 1636 the Mediteanean pirates could be sighted daily from the shore, and Looe was again an especial sufferer, fifteen fishing boats belonging to that town and to Helford having been taken within a month. 12 Many other illustrations could be given did space permit, and it may be said that the Saleemen were not swept out of the Channel, nor the Dunkirkers suppressed, until the enormously increased and well-administered Commonwealth navy enabled the government to police home waters systematically. S. P. Dom. Eliz. cclxv, 75. Acts of P. C. 20 Nov. 1597 ; 23 Jan. 30 April, 1598. * S. P. Dom. Eliz. cclxxii, 48. Ibid, cclxxv, 139. ' Hist. AfSS. Com. (Cecil MSS.) 12 April, 14 October, 1600. S. P. Dom. Chas. I, iii, 7 ; xiv, 5. Ibid, iv, 36. 8 Ibid, v, 8 1. ' A church at Minnigeesa in Mount's Bay.' 9 Ibid, xxii, 97 ; xxv, 105. This last paper says that there had been no guns for nine years, and that the garrison had lived on limpets and the charity of Sir John Killigrew. 10 Ibid, xxvii, 54. The master was probably Wm. Harrys. 11 Ibid. Killigrew to Nicholas, 8 July, 1626. u S. P. Dom. Chas. I, cccxxviii, 12, 62 ; Justices of Cornwall to the king. 495