lish ports, the crews of which amounted to 14,151 persons. These merchantmen were divided into the south and the north fleet, according as they belonged to the ports south or north of the Thames. The places that supplied the greatest numbers of ships and men were the following:—London, 25 ships with 662 men; Margate, 15 with 160; Sandwich, 22 with 504; Dover, 16 with 336; Winchelsea, 21 with 596; Weymouth, 20 with 264; Newcastle, 17 with 414; Hull, 16 with 466; Grimsby, 11 with 171; Exmouth, 10 with 193; Dartmouth, 31 with 757 ; Plymouth, 26 with 603 ; Looe, 20 with 325; Fowey, 47 with 170; Bristol, 24 with 608; Shoreham, 20 with 329; Southampton, 21 with 572; Lynne, 16 with 482; Yarmouth, 43 with 1095; Gosport, 13 with 403; Harwich, 14 with 283; Ipswich, 12 with 239; and Boston, 17 with 361. These, therefore, it may he assumed, were at this time the principal trading towns in the kingdom.
It will be perceived that the vessels, if we may judge from the numbers of the men, were of very various sizes; and none of them could have been of any considerable magnitude. A ship, manned by thirty seamen, which the people of Yarmouth fitted out, in 1254, to carry over Prince Edward, afterwards Edward I., to the Continent, is spoken of with admiration by the writers of the time for its size as well as its beauty. Some foreign ships, however, were considerably larger than any of the English at this period. Thus, one of the vessels which were lent by the Republic of Venice to St. Louis, in 1270, when he set out on his second crusade, measured 125 feet in length, and carried 110 men; but this was reckoned a vessel of extraordinary size even in the Mediterranean. In 1360, Edward III., in an order for arresting all the vessels in the kingdom for an expedition against France, directed that the largest ships should carry 40 mariners, 40 armed men, and 60 archers. A ship which was taken from the French in 1385 is said to have been, a short time before, built for the Norman merchants in the East Country at a cost of 5000 francs (above 830l. sterling), and to have been sold by them to Clisson, the
