a treaty was concluded in 1320. The Flamands begged the king to cause justice to be done, and the king undertook to see it done. The Flamand prayer was, "that the king, of his lordship and royal power, would see law and punishment dealt out in connection with the said deed, forasmuch as he is lord of the sea, and the said robbery was committed on the sea, within his power,[1] as is set forth above." The treaty is in French. When, on December 13th, 1320, Sir Bartholomew de Badlesmere, Warden of the Cinque Ports, and others, were ordered to institute the inquiry which had been promised by the king, the statement of the circumstances included exactly the same expressions, but in Latin;[2] so that two independent records exist of the admission which, as it was entirely spontaneous, was the more significant.
"Craudon," off which the outrage which led to this admission is reported to have taken place, may probably he identified with Crodon or Crozon,[3] a little place on the Bay of Douarnenez, in the arrondissement of Châteaulin and the department of Finistère. It contains, to-day, between eight and nine thousand inhabitants, and has some considerable trade in sardines and salt. If, then, "la mere d'Engleterre" extended, as in the opinion of the Flamands it did, even farther south than Ushant, the English Dominion of the Sea in the fourteenth century may have been already as wide as it was formally conceded by the Dutch to be in the seventeenth.
The title of admiral has been once or twice ascribed in this history to the chief officer of an English fleet. In the latter part of the reign of Edward II., the rank was ordinarily given, by commission, to one holding that position, and therefore it may be pertinent to say something concerning its origin in this country. No English officer seems to have been formally and officially styled admiral until 1297. Previously, leaders of fleets had been called "justices," "leaders and governors," "leaders and constables," "keepers of the sea-coast," "captains of the king's sailors and mariners of the Cinque Ports," but on March 8th, 1297, in the convention made at Bruges between Guy, Count of Flanders,
- ↑ The French text runs: "... de siccome il est seigneur de la mer, et la dite roberie fut fait sur la mer dans son poer." The Latin text is: "... et quod ipse est dominus dicti maris, et depradatio prædicta facta fuit supra dictum mare infra potestatum suam."—Patent Rolls, 14 Edw. II; 'Mare Clausum,' ii. 29; and Rymer's 'Fœdera,' ii. 434.
- ↑ Patent Rolls, 14 Edw. II., pt. 2, m. 26.
- ↑ Spelt both ways in seventeenth and eighteenth-century maps and charts.
