the Cinque Ports, the men of which, according to Matthew Paris, slew and plundered like pirates, sparing neither friends nor neighbours, kith nor kin.
Convoy seems to have been practised. On August 27th, 1242. a reinforcement was sent to the king in twenty ships; and all persons having vessels in the Cinque Ports were requested to send them on the same occasion, if they wished them to go over for the vintage.[1] Privateers were also fitted out, for on February 13th, 1243, licences were granted to several persons to annoy the enemy by sea and land, provided that the king received one-half of their gains; and general orders were issued that the vessels of these persons should not he molested.[2]
Yet the affairs of England did not prosper. The Wardens of the Cinque Ports, applying for assistance to the Archbishop of Canterbury, as Custos of the Realm, represented that they had been thrice repulsed by the enemy, especially by the people of Calais, and that all the ships in England were incapable of resisting the fleet which the French had prepared. The country, they declared, was in danger. The Count of Brittany, with all the vessels of Brittany and Poitou, lay in wait to intercept communication between England and king. The Normans, and the seamen of Wissant and Calais, scarcely permitted the English fishermen to ply their calling in the Channel. And, since it was unsafe to send ships to the king, his majesty, at Bordeaux, was practically in prison.[3] These considerations seem to have determined the conclusion of the truce, which was made on April 7th.
When the war had just begun, Sir William de Marish, an outlawed knight, who had established himself in Lundy Island, at the mouth of the Bristol Channel, and had become a formidable pirate, was captured by stratagem; and being conveyed, with sixteen of his associates, in chains to London, was there executed.[4] In June, 1242, the Sheriff of Devon was directed to convey to Ilfracombe a galley, which De Marish had partially completed at Lundy, and to cause her to be there made ready for the king's service.[5]
