at La Rochelle on the 8th. Soon after his arrival, he ordered one thousand silver marks, and all the money (£2688 10s.), taken in a cog which ought to have gone to Nîmes, to be sent to Anjou for the payment of the knights and soldiers, and of fifty ships and galleys. The king reduced to obedience part of his former provinces, but unwisely interrupted the course of his successes by granting to Philip a truce for two years, and returned to Portsmouth on December 12th. Whether he distrusted Philip or feared the pirates of the Narrow Seas does not appear; but in July, 1207, when the Sheriff of Devon was ordered to find a good and safe ship, at as small a cost as possible, to convey the king's money to Poitou, he was also directed to see that no vessel sailed before the treasure-ship, lest perchance news might get abroad that the money was going over.[1]
John's next naval expedition was one to Ireland, in 1210. He embarked with his army at Pembroke about the middle of June, and landed, on the 19th or 20th, at Crook, near Waterford, where Henry II. had disembarked thirty-nine years earlier. The fleet employed on the occasion was a very large one, yet its only duties seem to have been those of transportation; and John, after a brief and successful campaign on shore, returned to England on August 24th following.[2] While he was in Ireland, six galleys, under Geoffrey de Lucy, were searching for pirates in the Narrow Seas.[3]
In the meantime the truce with France had lapsed; and in May, 1212, Geoffrey de Lucy, and others of the king's officers, knights and mariners, were ordered to detain all ships coming from Poitou, and to send them with their cargoes to England.[4] It would also seem, although the details, as given by the chronicler, are not in all respects borne out by the records, that in 1212 an English force captured many ships and burnt others at the mouth of the Seine, and, having seized some vessels at Fécamp, and attacked and burnt Dieppe, returning victorious to Winchelsea.[5] Nor did John confine his attention solely to his enemies in the south. The Welsh had been guilty of aggressions; and the king entered their country, ordering Geoffrey de Lucy, on August 17th, to send eighteen galleys
