While such insults were of too frequent occurrence on shore, the agressions of the privateers had rather increased than diminished in the Channel. Elizabeth felt that, for the safety of the kingdom against invasion, she must chiefly depend on the force which could be maintained in the immediate neighbourhood of her own shores, and that it was quite as safe, and much more economical, to encourage the voluntary action of her subjects than to rely entirely upon a royal standing navy. Throughout the whole of the English coast, and especially in the Channel ports, the sea-going population regarded Papists generally as their natural enemies and their legitimate prey. Between forty and fifty vessels, corsairs or privateers, for the difference was not easily discernible, held the coast from Dover to Penzance. The English, French, or Flemish seamen, of whom their crews were promiscuously composed, were united by a common creed and a common pursuit. At one time they sailed under a commission from the Prince of Orange; at another under one from the Queen of Navarre. In every English harbour they had abundant stores ready for their use. Prizes were brought in almost every day to Dover, Southampton, or Plymouth and other western ports, where the cargoes were openly sold and the vessels refitted and armed. At times their acts were of the most desperate character: thus, three ships with valuable cargoes from Flanders, bound to a port in Spain, were captured outside the Goodwins, and, because they had stoutly resisted these privateers or pirates, the crews were ruthlessly flung into the sea, and left to perish before the eyes of their murderers. [Sidenote: 1572.]