At a meeting of the inhabitants in the year 1596, called to consider a proposal to take some of the rents of the Town Lands to defray the expense incurred in litigation with Yarmouth about the herring fishery, it was stated that out of 200 persons who reaped advantages from this fishery, many were unable to contribute towards the above expense, and that if the fishery was not supported, the town would inevitably be ruined. It appeared that before this meeting, the inhabitants (probably the merchants referred to above), had already subscribed £120. This statement is at once evidence of the importance of the herring trade to Lowestoft at this period, and at the same time limits the number of merchants, fishermen, and other persons employed in it, to 200. Assuming this number mainly represented heads of families, we should have some 900 persons or about half the population of the town dependent on the herring fishery. Some of these merchants doubtless owned ships, but it appears from other information that the number of fishing boats then belonging to Lowestoft must have been very few, probably 20 at the outside. We find it stated, some 100 years after, in a petition to Charles II., that the number of Lowestoft ships engaged in all the several voyages in the year was 25. Previous to Elizabeth’s reign, Lowestoft used to send several ships to Iceland in the spring to catch ling and codfish. You have already heard that as many as 14 ships were employed in the time of Henry VIII. in this fishery. The dissolution of monasteries and the neglect of the rules as to fasting, introduced by Protestantism, appears to have affected the trade in salted codfish very seriously, and we find it stated that in 1566 the number of Lowestoft Boats going to Iceland was reduced from 14 to 1. PIRACY AT LOWESTOFT.