These then were their objects, and the means was the navy, whose first foundations, as we now know it, had already been laid in the reign of Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII. Up to that time, though the Government had possessed the right, in times of war, to employ merchant shipping, there had been no definite navy, permanently established, in the modern sense of the word. In return for certain privileges, merchant ship-owners--and especially, in earlier days, those of the Cinque Ports--were under contract, on demand of the king, to supply a specified number of vessels, manned and equipped for war. It was with fleets so assembled that, in 1212, the English had raided Fécamp and prevented a French invasion; that, two years later, in a similar action under William Longsword, they had again destroyed the French Fleet; and that, in 1334, one of the greatest British naval victories had been won at Sluys over vastly superior numbers. And, though the Cinque Ports had, by this time, already dwindled from their earlier importance, similar arrangements were in force, when Henry VIII came to the throne, with the merchant shippers of Bristol, Plymouth, Newcastle, and many other quickly growing ports. Under Henry VIII, however, we find coming into being the important Government dockyards of Portsmouth, Deptford, and Woolwich, and every provision made for the regular supply of the timber requisite {xxiv} for their needs. The same reign witnessed the establishment of the Navy Office, out of which our present Admiralty has grown, and the granting of a charter to Trinity House--that corporation of "godly disposed men who, for the actual suppression of evil disposed persons bringing ships to destruction by the shewing forth of false beacons, do bind themselves together in the love of our Lord Christ, in the name of the Master and Fellows of the Trinity Guild, to succour from the dangers of the sea all who are beset upon the coasts of England, to feed them when a-hungered, to bind up their wounds, and to build and light proper beacons for the guidance of mariners." And, although at the time of the Armada, as indeed ever since in moments of maritime urgency, a large bulk of the British Fleet consisted of transformed merchantmen belonging to private owners, the Elizabethan admirals found at their disposal the rudiments, at any rate, of a specialized navy.