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INTRODUCTION |
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sea, and namely the narrow sea; showing what profit cometh thereof, and also what worship and salvation to England, and to all English men.' {The Principal Navigations, etc., of the English Nation, vol. ii. p. 114, ed. 1903 ; the Libel is also reprinted in Thomas Wright's Political Poems and Songs relating to English History, 1861, ii. 157). It sets forth also the consequences of forgetting to guard the seas, and the damage which English commerce suffered from the pirates who were allowed to prey upon it unchecked. Of these the Bretons, especially the men of St. Malo, and the Flemings were the chief, and two particular pirates, Hankyn Lyons and Pety Pynson, are mentioned by name. Throughout the fifteenth century, and indeed until the close of the sixteenth, the Channel and the British seas in general were infested by pirates. There were Italian pirates as well as Bretons. In a ballad which gives a legendary history of the overthrow of Richard III., a messenger is sent by Lord Stanley to Henry Tudor with money for the intended expedition to England. The great danger the messenger fears is the galleys of the Italian pirates.
' They will me rob, they will me drown, They will take the gold from me.'
(The most pleasant Song of Lady Bessy, edited by J. O. Halliwell, Percy Society, 1847, pp. 27, 64). The popular ballad entitled John Dory, which first appeared in print in 1609, seems to embody some tradition of the fights with Italian pirates, or perhaps of some earlier battle with Italian sailors in French service such as that of 1416. The longer ballad, narrating Sir Edward Howard's battle with Sir Andrew Barton, printed on pages 6-15, describes an historical event which took place in |
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