“And to this day the seas upon those coasts are called or known by the French fishermen coming there to fish, by the name of Kirkley seas. And long since, before Yarmouth was incorporated there was such trading and merchandizing of herrings at Lowestoft, and the same was by the Yarmouth men so much envied, that civil wars subsisted for a long time between them, with much bloodshed, until it pleased God to take the matter into his own hands, who ended the strife with such a great mortality of people, that there died of the plague in Yarmouth, 7000 persons, and then the war ceased.” The sand on which Yarmouth was founded, was dry in the year 495 when Cerdick the Saxon first landed there, and shortly after Yarmouth began to be erected by the Saxons. In process of time Yarmouth obtained a charter, and after a while the Yarmouthians attempted so to explain that charter, as to exclude the merchants of Lowestoft from purchasing herrings in the seas near their own town. A violent rupture between the two towns ensued, and so far did their resentments go, that they fitted out armed vessels, commenced hostilities on each other’s property, and even committed bloodshed. The case was in the end brought before the house of Lords and finally determined in favour of Lowestoft. {14} All history gives a higher antiquity to Lowestoft than to Yarmouth, and on this point the townsmen have been not a little jealous: the controversy with its junior neighbour, nevertheless, was not a controversy for pre-eminence, but for an independent existence; this it has secured, and now, though long repressed, Lowestoft seems girding itself anew to run the race of honorable competition with its more fortunate rival. LOWESTOFT AND THE CIVIL WARS. Probably the fact that, in these wars, Yarmouth was Parliamentarian, had no small influence in determining the men of Lowestoft to be so decidedly Royalist. We will not, however, deny them the praise, such as it is, of being devotedly attached to the cause of the mis-guided Charles. Lion-hearted, noble minded Oliver, whose character has been blackened by the accumulated injustice of two hundred years, here, in the early part of his career, performed essential service for the Parliament. Hearing that Sir John Pettus and others entertained a design of forming a counter-association, to oppose that into which the Eastern counties had entered on the part of the Parliament, he marched with the utmost expedition to Lowestoft, surprised them and frustrated their purpose.