True, the Crown allowed privateering, though the commissions were limited only to the attacks on our acknowledged enemies, yet it was futile to expect that these rude Devonshire seamen would have any respect to legal _finesse_. To control these men adequately was too much to expect. French and Spanish and Flemish merchantmen, regardless of nationality, were alike liable to fall into the English pirates’ hands. Some of the backers were making quite a handsome income, and who shall say that some of those fine Elizabethan mansions in our country were not built out of such illegal proceeds? The Mayor of Dover, for instance, with some of the leading inhabitants of that port, had captured over 600 prizes from the French, to say nothing of the number of neutrals which he had pillaged. This was in the year 1563, and already he had plundered sixty-one Spanish ships. And there was the valuable trade passing to and from Antwerp and London, which was a steady source of revenue for the pirates of this time. You cannot be surprised, then, at that important incident in 1564, that did so much to enrage the English seamen and help matters forward to the climax in the form of the Spanish Armada; for what happened? Philip, seeing how little Elizabeth was doing to put down this series of attacks on his treasure ships, had, in the year mentioned, suddenly issued an order arresting every English ship and all the English crews that happened to be found within his own harbours. It was a drastic measure, but we can quite understand the impetuous and furious Spaniard acting on this wise. During Elizabeth’s reign there were of course some pirates who had the bad fortune to be arrested. One little batch suspected included a Captain Heidon, Richard Deigle and a man named Corbet. Included in the same gang were Robert Hitchins, Philip Readhead, Roger Shaster and others. The first three mentioned succeeded in fleeing away beyond capture, but the remainder admitted their guilt. Hitchins was a man about fifty years old and a native of Devonshire, but both he and his companions protested that they had been deceived by Heidon and Deigle; they had undertaken a voyage to Rochelle presumably in a merchant ship, whereas the trip turned out to be nothing else than a piratical expedition.