With regard to pirates, most of the ports were taxed in King James’s time, by way of contribution, to prevent them; and little more could be done until the navy was repaired and augmented. There are innumerable letters manifesting Buckingham’s extreme care to clear the Channel from pirates. The light erected on the Lizard Point, as Sir J. Killigrew, in a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton, then ambassador at the Hague, remarked, “might speak itself to most parts of Christendom.”[285] The forts and defences were inspected, and many oversights in Lord Zouch’s wardership remedied. Such were Buckingham’s exertions. His contemporaries were singularly ungrateful to him for the benefits which he laboured to procure them; but posterity experienced their effects. Thirty years after his time, Pepys thus comments upon the improvement in our naval force, as a popular theme of remark--"Sir William Compton I heard talk with great pleasure of the difference between the fleet now and in Queene Elizabeth’s days, when, in ’88, she had but thirty-six sail, great and small, in the world, and ten rounds of powder was their allowance against the Spaniard."[286] Footnote 285: Letter from Sir J. Killigrew to Sir D. Carleton, December 12th, 1619, and February, 1619-20. Inedited State Papers. By the same letter it appears that it cost ten shillings a night to supply the light. Footnote 286: Pepys’s Diary, 3rd edition, vol. ii., p. 31. Among the articles of Buckingham’s subsequent impeachment, in 1626, there was inserted the following statement: “The East India Company having, in 1624, loaded four ships and two pinnaces for India, the Lord High Admiral, knowing that they must lose their voyage unless they sailed on a certain day, extorted from them the sum of ten thousand pounds for liberty to sail for India.” Upon being charged with this act of tyranny, the Duke justified himself by the plea that the Company had captured several rich prizes from the Portuguese at Ormuz and elsewhere, and that a large portion of the plunder was due to the King, and also to himself as High Admiral; and he proved that the sum said to be extorted from the Company was given by way of compromise, instead of 15,000_l._, which was legally due; and he was able to show that the whole sum, except two hundred pounds, was appropriated by the King for the use of the navy.[287] Footnote 287: Macpherson’s History of Commerce, vol. iv., p. 317.