Out of the 23 Yarmouth ships sent to catch cod in Iceland in 1644, 20 were sunk by the “pirates.” To protect their fishermen, Yarmouth, in 1645, obtained three men of war from the Parliament. These ships captured several of the pirate ships, among the crew of which they found several Lowestoft men. These captures brought a letter from Ostend signed by Captain Allen and 11 other Englishmen, including two or three more Lowestoft names, threatening Yarmouth with reprisals if these men were not liberated. The hostilities carried on by these “Ostend pirates” against the Yarmouth fishing boats could not have much advanced the cause of the King. We do not, however, hear of any lives being taken in the encounters, but the loss inflicted upon the Yarmouth and other fishermen must have been very severe, if the following statement in Captain Allen’s letter was anything more than bluster. “Have we given you thousands of prisoners which we might have indungeoned, nay hanged, but that rebellious ignorance impleaded their escape. Now we can if you compel us make a hundred suffer for one.” REMOVAL OF MEMORIAL BRASSES FROM THE CHURCH. In 1644 our church suffered some illusage from the Protestant fervour of the Parliament. The story, as told by the Vicar, Mr. Jacob Rouse, is as follows— “In the same year after, on the 22nd of June, there came one Jessope with a commission from the Earl of Manchester to take away from gravestones all inscriptions on which he found “orate pro anima;” A wretched commissioner not able to read or find out that which his commission informed him to remove, hee took up in our church so much brasses as he sould to Mr. Josiah Wild for five shillings, which was afterwards contrary to my knowledge, run into the litle bell that hangs in the town house. Thear wearr taken up in the middle ally, twelve peeces, belonging to the twelve severall generations of the Jettors; in the chancell, one belonging to Bishop Scroope; the words were “Richardus Scroope Episcopus Dromorocensis et hujus ecclesiæ vicarius, hic jacet, qui obiit 10 may anno 1364.” There was also by this Jessop taken up in the vicar’s chancell, one the north side of the church, a fair peece of brasse with this inscription “Hic jacet Johannes Goodknapp hujus ecclesiæ vicarius qui obiit 4 Decembris anno dni 1442.”