a suspicion. These two French crafts, he sought to persuade, were genuine merchantmen who had discharged their cargo at "St. Wallerie's" (that is to say, St. Valery-sur-Somme), but had been driven to the Isle of Wight by bad weather, adding, doubtless as a subtle hint, that they had actually rescued an Englishman chased by a Spaniard. It is possible that the Frenchmen were telling the truth, though unless the wind had come southerly and so made it impossible for these bluff-bowed craft to beat into their port, it is difficult to believe that they could not have run into one of their own havens. At any rate, it was a yarn which Dudley's sailors found not easy to accept.
This was no isolated instance of the capture of Breton craft. In the year 1532 a Breton ship named the Mychell, whose owner was one Hayman Gillard, her master being Nicholas Barbe of St. Malo, was encountered by a crew of English seamen who entertained no doubts whatsoever as to her being anything else than a pirate. Their suspicions were made doubly sure when they found her company to consist of nine Bretons and five Scots. They arrested her at sea, and when examined she was found well laden with wool, cloth and salt hides. Some French pirate ships even went so far as to wear the English flag of St. George, with the red cross on a white ground. This not unnaturally infuriated English seamen, especially when it was discovered that the Bretons had also carried Englishmen as their pilots and chief mariners, and were training them to become experts in piracy.
But there were times when English seamen and merchants were able to "get their own back" with interest, as the following incident will show. At the beginning of June, in the year 1538, an English merchant, Henry Davy, freighted a London ship named the Clement, which was
