The growth of piracy in English waters certainly owed much to the Cinque Ports. In these havens dwelt a privileged class of seamen, who certainly for centuries were a very much favoured community. It was their privilege to do that which in the Mediterranean Cicero had regarded with so much disfavour. These men of the Cinque Ports, according to Matthew of Paris, were commissioned to plunder as they pleased all the merchant ships as they passed up and down the English Channel. This was to be without any regard to nationality, with the exception that English ships were not to be molested. But French, Genoese, Venetian, Spanish or any others could be attacked at the will of the Cinque Port seamen. Some persons might call this sort of thing by the title of privateering, yet it was really piracy and nothing else. You can readily imagine that with this impetus thus given to a class of men who were not particularly prone to lawfulness, the practice of piracy on the waters that wash Great Britain grew at a great rate. Thus in the thirteenth century the French, the Scotch, Irish and Welsh fitted out ships, hung about the narrow seas till they were able to capture a well-laden merchantman as their fat reward. So, before long, the English Channel was swarming with pirates, and during the reign of Henry III. their numbers grew to an alarming extent. The net result was that it was a grave risk for commodities to be brought across the Channel, and so, therefore, the price of these goods rose. The only means of remedy was to increase the English fleet, and this at length was done in order to cope with the evil. But matters were scarcely better in the North Sea, and English merchant ships sailed in perpetual fear of capture. During the Middle Ages pirates were always hovering about for any likely ship, and the wool trade especially was interfered with. Matters became somewhat complicated when, as happened in the reign of Edward II., peaceable English ships were arrested by Norway for having been suspected—erroneously—of slaughtering a Norwegian knight, whereas the latter had been actually put to death by pirates. “We marvell not a little,” wrote Edward II. in complaint to Haquinus, King of Norway, “and are much disquieted in our cogitations, considering the greevances and oppressions, which (as wee have beene informed by pitifull complaints) are at this present, more than in times past, without any reasonable cause inflicted upon our subjects, which doe usually resort unto your kingdome for traffiques sake.” For the fact was that one nation was as bad as the other, but that whenever the one had suffered then the other would lay violent hands on a ship that was merely suspected of having acted piratically. Angered at the loss to their own countrymen they were prompted by revenge on alien seamen found in their own waters and even lying quietly in their own havens with their cargoes of herrings.