His successors followed up his ideas, and under Athelstane (901) the creation of an English merchant navy was also developed. Every inducement was offered to merchants who should engage in maritime ventures. Among other decrees then made was one that, "_if a merchant so thrives that he pass thrice over the wide seas in his own craft he was henceforth a Thane righte worthie_."[29] Thus honours were to be won as well as wealth, and in pursuit of both the merchants of England extended their energies to wider traffic on the seas. [29] "Canciam," IV. King Edgar (973-75), by virtue of his navy, won and assumed the title of "Supreme Lord and Governor of the Ocean lying around about Britain." Thus did the English flag, carried by its navies, sail the seas. But Harold, the last of the Saxon kings, instead of maintaining his ships in equipment and fitness to protect his shores, allowed them, for want of adequate provisions, to be dispersed from their station behind the Isle of Wight, and so, forgetting the teachings of Alfred, left his southern coasts unguarded and let the Norman invader have opportunity to land, an opportunity which was promptly seized. The Norman monarchs of England held in their turn to the supremacy which the early Saxon kings had claimed for her flag at sea. When the conquest of England, in 1066, had been completely effected by the Norman forces, the shores on each side of the "narrow seas" between England and Normandy were combined under the rule of William the Conqueror, communication by water increased between the two portions of his realm, and the maritime interests of the people were greatly extended and established. Richard I. showed England to the other nations, during the Crusades, as a strong maritime power. King John followed in his footsteps, and in 1200, the second year of his reign, issued his declaration directing that ships of all other nations must honour his Royal flag: "If any lieutenant of the King's fleet in any naval expedition, do meet with on the sea any ship or vessels, laden or unladen, that will not vail and lower their sails at the command of the Lieutenant of the King or the King's Admiral, but shall fight with them of the fleet, such, if taken, shall be reported as enemies, and the vessels and goods shall be seized and forfeited as the goods of enemies." The supremacy which King John thus claimed, his successors afterwards maintained and extended, so that under Edward I., Spain, Germany, Holland, Denmark, and Norway, being all the other nations, except France, which bordered on the adjacent seas, joined in according to England "possession of the sovereignty of the English seas and the Isles therein,"[30] together with admission of the right which the English had of maintaining sovereign guard over these seas, and over all the ships of other Dominions, as well as their own, which might be passing through them. [30] Southey: "British Admirals."