Although the new time had begun, the change from the Middle Ages was not yet very perceptible in so far as the general direction of a war was concerned. It was still a matter of raids and casual battles. The first naval action of Henry's reign was in pursuit of the old standing war against the pirates. A Scotchman named Andrew Barton had been robbed by the Portuguese, and had received letters of marque from his own sovereign, authorising him to indemnify himself for his loss out of any Portuguese property he could find upon the seas. In much later and more civilised times it was never difficult to turn a privateer into a pirate, and in the early sixteenth century the distinction between them was fine in the extreme. Barton betook himself to considering that everybody he came across on blue water was a Portuguese, or would serve the purpose very well. He plundered Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Flemings indiscriminately, and without the slightest regard to the embarrassments he cost his own sovereign. At last he became such a nuisance that ships had to be fitted out to pursue him. According to a story which is not very well founded, they were sent out at the expense of the Earl of Surrey, and were commanded by his sons, Sir Thomas and Sir Edward. The two vessels belonging to Barton, called the =Lion= and the =Jenny Perwin= or =Bark of Scotland=, were overtaken by Surrey's two cruisers, and captured after a fight of a most determined and picturesque character, for which, however, the chief authority is a spirited ballad of much later date. There is no doubt, however, as to the death of Barton, who was one of the numerous Scotch pirates of the time.