a ship named the Santa Maria Desaie. This craft belonged to one Peter Alves, a Portingale, who hired a mariner, William Phelipp, to pilot his ship from Tenby to Bastabill Haven. But whilst off the Welsh coast a piratical bark named the Furtuskewys, containing thirty-five desperate corsairs, attacked the Santa Maria and completely over-*powered her. Alves they promptly got rid of by putting him ashore somewhere on the Welsh coast, and they then proceeded to sail the ship to Cork, where they sold her to the mayor and others, the value of the captured craft and goods being 1524 crowns. Alves did not take this assault with any resignation, but naturally used his best endeavours to have the matter set right. From the King's Council he obtained a command to the Mayor of Cork for restitution, but such was the lawlessness of the time that this was of no avail. The mayor, whose name was Richard Gowllys, protested that the pirates told him they had captured the ship from the Scots and not from the Portingale, and he added that he would spend £100 rather than make restitution.
But stricter vigilance caused the arrest of some of these pirates. Six of them were sentenced to death in the Admiralty Court at Boulogne, eleven others were condemned to death in the Guildhall, London: and in 1537 a ship was lying at Winchelsea "in gage to Bell the mayor" for £35 for the piracies committed in her, for she had been captured after having robbed a Gascon merchantman of a cargo of wines.
The finest of the French sailors for many a century until even the present day have ever been the Bretons. And just as in the eighteenth century the most expert sailormen on our coasts were the greatest smugglers, so in Tudor times the pick of all seamen were sea-rovers. About the time of Lent, 1537, a couple of Breton pirate ships caused a great deal of anxiety to our west-country men. One of the
