departed home, by Bulgarialand and Dyrrachburg (Durazzo), and Poule (Apulia) and Rome, to Norway.[1] In the desperate fighting of this voyage we seem, as has been justly remarked, to have a foretaste of the exploits of Drake and Greville.
About this time, or a few years earlier, Adelard, or Acthelhard of Bath, travelled or voyaged round Spain, North Africa, Greece, and Asia Minor. Little or nothing is known about him or his adventures.[2] Now too we begin to find evidence of constant voyages and pilgrimages to the Holy Land, though few details are given, and we have little beyond the bare record. Thus in 1128, Hakluyt tells us that William, an Englishman, a canon regular of Jerusalem, was made Archbishop of Tyre.[3] About 1143, Robertus Ketenensis travelled to Dalmatia, Greece, and Asia. A little later the Crusades began to stimulate the development of English shipping, as the knights and their followers required generally to be conveyed by sea to the Holy Land. At the same time the Norman contempt for trade was dying out, and voyages were being made from Bristowe or Bristol, to Iceland and Norway.[4] From Grimsby chapmen sailed to the Orkneys,[5] Norway, Scotland, and the Südereyar (Hebrides). Berwick-on-Tweed has numerous ships, and one Canute of that town, on a ship of his being captured by the east of Orkney, hired fifteen vessels, gave chase, and recaptured her.[6] So, too, in Scotland statutes appear granting certain privileges to merchants who are trading abroad, and English fishermen begin to cross the Firth of Forth.[7] English traders are found resident at Montpelier,[8] and a treaty between Barbarossa and Henry II. concerning merchants and merchandise, testifies to the growing intercourse between England and Germany.[9] At the same time the defective geographical knowledge of Giraldus Cambrensis, who flourished towards the close of the twelfth century, proves that the writers and chroniclers were ignorant of the results of these voyages.
- ↑ Dasent, op. cit. 163. I have abbreviated the original, striving to retain the archaism of style.
- ↑ Dict. Nat. Biogr., 'Adelard of Bath.'
- ↑ Hakluyt, ii. 16.
- ↑ Will. Malmesbury, 'De Gest. Pont.,' 161.
- ↑ Orkneyingar Saga, 97, 98.
- ↑ Torfæus Arcades, i. 32.
- ↑ Macpherson, 'Annals of Commerce,' i. 324.
- ↑ Macpherson, 335, supposes that they did not come there by sea. I do not understand why not.
- ↑ Hakluyt i. 128, 129.
