On the other points it is not quite clear what the final official answers were. Nicholas thought that when a superior fleet was encountered, the English Admiral ought not to engage rashly about the flag; but if he once commanded the foreigners to strike, then “the ships were better to be lost than his (the king’s) honour and sovereignty yielded.” The opinion he gave with regard to forcing foreign vessels to strike in foreign ports was in these words: “For ye French roades,” he said, “ye king of England’s ships should suffer none to wear ye flag but themselves: but in other roades after salutes both may weare ye flag without dishonour.” The exceptional treatment proposed for ships in French roads may have been in part owing to the political circumstances of the time, but probably chiefly had reference to ancient custom and the old claims of England to the soil of France. Charles still styled himself King of France; and later Selden argued that though English dominion had been lost in France itself, it nevertheless extended over the sea up to the very shores. It became the common practice to enforce the homage on the coast of the Continent, but not within harbours, ports, rivers, or within buoys, or at any place under the command of the guns of forts or castles.[509] The Earl of Northumberland, on repeating Pennington’s question in 1636 as to Calais, Dunkirk, and the Briel, was told that the homage was to be exacted “in the roads out of command of any forts.”[510] There was always some doubt as to the etiquette of the salutation between ships and forts or castles. Dutch vessels were fired on and detained at Portland Castle in 1633 for putting up their flags in the presence of the king’s colours, which were flying on the walls; and the act was justified to the States’ ambassador when he complained about it. In the year before, the commanders of the Castles at Deal and Walmer fired upon a French man-of-war that came in with his flag in the main-top, because after taking it down when requested, he hoisted it again on going away. “I gave him five shots,” said the Captain of Deal, “without hitting him,” and he added that the Council on a previous occasion approved of a like action against the Dutch, who had never since offended, but he had never heard of the French attempting it before. The Admiralty asked Pennington’s opinion as to the proper course, and he said he thought that all the ships of his Majesty’s subjects and of foreigners and strangers should strike their flags and top-sails as they passed by any of his Majesty’s castles; such, he said, was the custom in all parts of Christendom, “which, being done, they may ride under the castles with their colours flying abroad if there be none of the king’s own ships present.” The king’s castles had thus not so high a status as the king’s ship; but the military officers were not less zealous than those of the navy. Pennington himself had an amusing illustration of their zeal, for in 1631 Sir William