acquaintances and relations,"[1]—a system of piracy which other Channel ports were not slow in adopting. Indeed, between the privateer and the pirate there was then so little distinction that, when Henry attempted to suppress these lawless acts, he found it necessary to hang indiscriminately about thirty of the most guilty.
Increase of piracy.
Measures for its suppression.
But piracy, under the plea of retaliation, rapidly
spread among the ships of other nations. The
Normans, Scotch, Irish, and Welsh fitted out their
marauders, pillaging not merely every vessel they
could successfully cope with at sea, but also various
towns along the coast. The whole Channel swarmed
with pirates, and the spoils of rapine were too often
preferred to the slower acquisitions of honest industry
by those who thought themselves powerful enough to
be robbers; a state of things naturally much increased
during the long contest between Henry III. and his
nobles. During this period, indeed, foreign commerce
was almost annihilated. Wines, which used to
sell for forty shillings, realized ten marks; wax rose
from forty shillings to eight marks, and pepper from
six pennies to three shillings a pound; while the
scarcity of ordinary merchandise, especially of salt,
iron, steel, and cloth, together with the stagnation in
all exportable articles, owing to the interruption to
navigation, was so great, that the industrial classes
and many of the merchants were reduced to want
and beggary. Still more stringent measures were
therefore found necessary to sweep the seas of these
pirates; for the English nation had become seriously
alarmed. A great increase was consequently made
- ↑ M. Paris, p. 589.
