Even in the days of James I, when our fleet was in somewhat a poor way, its captains insisted as firmly as ever on the customary honour being paid to our flag. Captain Best of the _Guardland_ sends in a report about two Dutch men-of-war off Aberdeen, and says: "The Admiral of the Holland men-of-war hath his flag in her main-top, but giveth it out that he will not take it in for all the Commanders of His Majesty's ships. Forty years is within the compass of my knowledge, and I never knew but that all nations forbear to spread their flags in the presence of the King's ships. That custom shall not be lost by me. When I come into the road and anchor by him, if the Admiral will not take in his flag when I shall require it, I will shoot it down, though it grow into a quarrel." The last expression is delightful. There certainly would have been the makings of a "quarrel". This was in 1623. Captain Richard Plumleigh took an even wider view of the obligations of foreigners to pay honour to the English flag. His idea was that they had to do so even in foreign harbours. He writes to the Admiralty on 23rd September, 1631: "It was my fortune to speak with one of these two merchants from whom the French demanded their flag". That is to say that the French had what he regarded as the impertinence to expect that they should have "struck" their topsails to them. He goes on: "They shot at the English some dozen shots and received from the English the like entertainment, with the loss of one man, by which they sat down and gave over their pretences.... It hath always been my principal aim to preserve His Majesty's Naval honnour both in his own seas and abroad, and for my part I think that it were better that both I and the ship under my charge were at the bottom of the sea, than that I should live to see a Frenchman or any other nation wear a flag aloft in His Majesty's seas and suffer them to pass unfought withal.... I dare engage my head that with five of H.M. ships I will always clear the way to all French flagmasters, yea, and make them strike to him upon those which they call their own seas.... This summer I was at the Texel in Holland, where come in divers French, and though the Hollanders bade me domineer at home in England, yet I forebore not to fetch down their flag with my ordnance." Evidently the gallant captain had strong views on the subject, and did not hide them under a bushel. But he was not alone in his determination to uphold the "honnour of the flag" at all costs.