Like its neighbour Dartmouth, Plymouth has been almost from time immemorial the home of daring adventure and warlike enterprises. And like the sister port it possesses a fine and commodious harbour (though one less easily defended), singularly well adapted as a base for expeditions of the kind which marked the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries more especially. But although many of the ships and fleets which sailed out of the Sound for the coasts of France, Spain, and the Americas in bygone times were unauthorized freebooters, early in the existence of Plymouth more truly national expeditions set sail from its quays. For example, towards the close of the thirteenth century a great fleet of upwards of 320 vessels assembled for an attack upon the French coasts; and in 1355--some sixty years later--Edward the Black Prince came here for a similar purpose. And during the wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster there was stir in the old streets by the waterside marking from time to time the arrival of some Royal fugitive or exile. Here, too, came unfortunate Margaret of Anjou, the dauntless, sleepless foe of Edward IV; and the not less unfortunate Duke of Clarence. In the first year of the sixteenth century there landed at Plymouth yet another ill-starred lady, the Princess Katherine of Aragon, on her way to marry Prince Arthur, and destined afterwards to become the wife of his brother Henry VIII. She was entertained right royally by the citizens of Plymouth, chiefly by one of the merchant princes of the port, named Paynter, who lived in a magnificent mansion not far from the waterside, which has, alas! in recent years shared the fate of most historical buildings that come in the way of modern and commercial progress. But although many books might be written concerning the sailing of the Plymouth corsairs against “the damnable pirates out of St-Malo, Morlaix, and Brest,” and other smaller ports of the Breton coast, and afterwards of the daring doings of ships which, leaving the port as honest traders to the Spanish Main, or West Coast of Africa, yet, when on the high seas, hoisted the black flag of piracy, we have no space to spare in which to describe them in detail. Nor, indeed, to deal with the “bloody adventures of bold seamen out of Plymouth, on the opposite coasts,” nor to recount the marvellous exploits of those who ranged the Spanish Main, and became passing rich by reason of the singeing of the Dons’ beards, and the booty which fell to daring enterprise and bold adventure, where no man valued either his own life or the lives of his foes. It is impossible, however, to pass without a somewhat detailed mention of the most eventful period of the town’s history when “by some concatenation of Fortune and circumstance so many brave and gallant men of skill and resource dwelt in or came to Plymouth, that they might in the hour of England’s need take upon themselves her strong defence.”