It is satisfactory to know that the spoil taken and the ransoms obtained for the French nobles who were captured were such as to “greatly enrich the seamen, so that for the rest of their days they could dwell in comfort.” A picturesque and impressive touch was lent to the homecoming of the victors, who were met by a great procession of bishops and clergy, who had anxiously watched the issue of the fight from the summit of Dover cliffs. Seldom we may readily believe was a victory more welcome, for with this crushing naval defeat and the destruction of his force for invasion Louis was compelled to relinquish all hope of ascending the throne of England. And to ensure his escape to France he made a treaty which finally disposed of any claim he thought he possessed. The Cinque Ports folk of that age learned in a rough school, and it is perhaps little to be wondered at that occasionally, when truces of a temporary character had been entered into between this country and France or Spain, they failed to observe them with any degree of promptness or completeness, but went on “plundering and harrying their natural enemies the French,” until the King had on several occasions to interfere, and call them to book. It is, doubtless, to these acts, and others brought about by general orders issued by different Sovereigns in succeeding reigns, that the charges of piracy which have been levelled in the past and by some present-day writers against the men of the Cinque Ports are traceable. Matthew Paris, amongst other historians, charges them distinctly not only with piracy on the French, but with robbing and murdering their own fellow countrymen. A careful examination of the circumstances and facts leading up to this charge leads one to think that they were possibly guilty. But it must be remembered in extenuation that the age in which Paris lived was a lawless and disturbed one. The orders received by the men of the Cinque Ports were frequently of a general character to carry fire and sword along the enemy’s coasts, and it is little to be wondered at if the hardy seamen who frequently fought at long odds were not the most scrupulous of victors, and sometimes failed to discriminate to a nicety between legal and illegal predatory warfare. The very freedom of the privileges they enjoyed as citizens of the Ports made them less accountable than they doubtless otherwise would have been to the King’s properly constituted authority. Certain it is that on several occasions in the Middle Ages the men of the Ports were not backward in entering into a little war of their own, to their immediate and great advantage. They were pirates in just the same way as were the men and adventurers of the Devon and Cornish ports, and the French hailing from Morlaix, St Malo, and other Norman and Breton ports in those times.