a project for the occupation of Canada. He was supplied with ships and stores, and had been allowed to empty the prisons to provide colonists for his intended settlement. When he found himself in command of a fleet manned by these promising crews, he hung about the English coasts, pillaging every vessel that came in his way.[1] Part of the gang haunted the Isle of Wight; others seized Lundy Island and waylaid the Bristol traders. The party at Lundy were accounted for by the Clovelly fishermen, who, after sufficient experience of the character of the party, went off in their boats, burnt a pirate ship, and made some end or other of the crew.[2] But this just and necessary exercise of justice was seized upon as a fresh pretext for dispute. It was represented to Francis that his innocent subjects had been causelessly attacked and destroyed by the English.[3] The
- ↑ Paget to Henry VIII.: State Papers, vol. viii. p. 676.
- ↑ The Privy Council to Paget: ibid. vol. ix. p. 172.
- ↑ The right had not been always on the English side. An exploring vessel equipped from London for discoveries in North America, was delayed in Newfoundland, and almost starved there. When at the extremity of famine, a French ship arrived 'well furnished with victual, and such,' says Hakluyt, 'was the policy of the English that they became masters of the same, and changing ships and victualling them, they set sail to come into England.' Hakluyt disguises behind an ambiguous phrase, an act of open piracy. In excuse it could only be urged that the English had been reduced to devour more than one of their own crew. They returned safely, and 'certain months after,' the story continues, 'those Frenchmen came into England and made complaint to King Henry. The King causing the matter to be examined, and finding the great distress of his subjects, and the causes of the dealing so with the French, was so moved with pity that he punished not his subjects, but of his own purse made full a royal recompense unto the French.'—Hakluyt, vol. iii. pp. 169, 170.
