“Our enemies,” said Capgrave, “laugh at us. They say, ‘Take the ship off your gold noble and impress a sheep instead.’” The origin of England’s claim to the sovereignty of the sea, which was constantly advanced even in times of national degradation, was, I believe, a survival from the time when the Roman Fleet, which was maintained for the police of the narrow seas, made and sustained an Emperor, first Carausius, and then Allectus—this fleet had its headquarters sometimes at Southampton, sometimes at Dover, and sometimes at Boulogne, and was undoubtedly sovereign of the sea. The Fleet which King John—under whom the Channel was safe—placed upon the sea was the successor and the heir of the Fleet of Admiral Carausius. The first merchant ship whose name is preserved is the _Little Edward_. She was lying off Margate in the year 1315, when she was attacked and carried off by the French. Her owner and commander was one John Brand: she was bound for Antwerp: her cargo of wool belonged to three merchants of the Hanse. The ship—probably not a very large vessel—was valued at £40 and the cargo at £120. In the same year a great galley or dromond of Genoa, laden with corn and other provisions for London, was attacked and taken by French pirates. She was estimated to be worth—cargo and ship—£5716: 12s., or about £100,000 of our money. The incorporation of the Merchant Adventurer gave a stimulus to foreign trade in English vessels. London Merchants established themselves on the shores of the Baltic, in Sweden, in the Netherlands, and in the Levant. In the north they encountered the hostility of the Hansard: there was fighting continually: on one occasion all the English merchants at Bergen were massacred. In the Channel, during this century, piracy revived, and became again a great and pressing evil. But that the English ships were not deterred by the dangers innumerable which threatened them is proved by the fact that, in 1438, all the Genoese merchants in London were arrested in a body, put into prison and fined 6000 marks, because the ship belonging to one Sturmyer, a merchant of Bristol, had been seized in the Levant on an alleged charge of breaking the regulations of trade. If a Bristol merchant traded so far, the London merchants, one may be quite certain, penetrated to the same waters. There were also pilgrimages over the seas, and especially during the fifteenth century, to the shrine of St. Iago de Compostella, the tomb of the Apostle James himself. In the year 1434 two vessels sailed from London carrying eighty and sixty pilgrims respectively. And in the reign of Edward IV. no English merchants were allowed to ship goods in foreign ships unless there were no English ships ready for them. At the same time the tonnage of ships had so greatly increased that Canynges of Bristol owned a great ship of 900 tons.