not safe from their rapacious talons, and it is recorded that rich harvests were often reaped by the plunder of the small English vessels employed in the valuable trade between Antwerp and London. Indeed, the vessels of no nation were safe; even the fishermen on the coast became occasionally the objects of their prey, and were stripped not merely of their cargoes of herrings, but of their ropes and anchors, and left to perish of hunger.
Prompt retaliation of the king of Spain, 1564. Philip of Spain could now no longer endure the lawless outrages his people had suffered, so in January 1564 he issued a sudden order for the arrest of every English vessel in his harbours, with their crews and owners. Estimating that his people had suffered by them to the extent of one million and a half of ducats, he seized thirty of their vessels then in the ports of Spain, and imprisoned their crews as security for the repayment of this loss, at the same time excluding, by a general order, all English traders from the ports of the Low Countries.[1]
Reply of Elizabeth. With the French war still upon her hands Elizabeth was obliged to endure the affront, limiting her remonstrance to a request that the innocent might not be made to suffer for the guilty, and, while admitting that, in the confusion of the times and the imperfectly understood views of international maritime law, wrong might have been done to his subjects, she, as an earnest of her good intentions, proposed a joint commission to inquire into his claims. At the same time she prohibited Flemish vessels from entering her ports, and instructed her ambassador to say to Philip that whatever injury
- ↑ Flanders MSS., Rolls House.
