Death of Edward III., A.D. 1377. to fit out a fresh fleet of four hundred ships, of which he personally assumed the command, fortune and the winds proved adverse; and, after having been nine weeks at sea, he was unable to effect a landing on the French coast. Greater reverses followed, and the vast territories which the English possessed in France, and which they had maintained at so great a cost, soon sank into comparatively insignificant proportions. The death of the Black Prince, in 1376, preyed so heavily upon the king that he only survived him for twelve months; and in June, 1377, he died, after a reign of more than half a century, broken-*hearted at the loss of his brave and distinguished son.
State of the merchant navy during his reign. Although Edward, throughout the whole of his long reign, had encouraged a liberal commercial policy, and had devoted, in an especial manner, his attention to naval affairs, it was impossible for maritime commerce to flourish in the midst of turmoil and war. England, though she lost the greater portion of her unnatural territory in France, may have preserved, as against the fleets of that country, her superiority at sea, and her wars with France on the one hand, and with Scotland on the other, may have developed the natural bull-dog courage of her seamen; but war, while it lasted, transferred the bulk of her over-sea carrying trade to the ships of Spain, Flanders, Holland, and of the Mediterranean nations, the whole energy of her people, which might have been better employed in the development of her natural resources and manufactures, having been devoted to war and to the creation of its instruments of destruction. Commissioners were even summoned to London to hold a sort of naval parliament during
