rt Princess Johanna, the
King's daughter, to Gascony, and escorts for various Princes had to be
provided on several occasions. The Black Prince was kept by contrary
winds in the port for forty days, when he was on his way to France to
fight the 'glorious battell at Poictiers.' In the early part of the
fifteenth century Plymouth suffered severely from the attacks of the
French and Bretons, and in 1403 the Bretons, under the Sieur du Chastel,
burned six hundred houses in the part since called Briton Side. The name
became gradually transformed into 'Burton,' but the memory of the raid
survived so far, Mr Worth tells us, as to enable the boys who lived in
the Old Town to taunt the 'Burton boys' during the wars with France, by
reminding them of the harm that the French had done to their quarter.

On Freedom Day, a 'local Saturnalia kept as such from the earliest
times,' one of the features was the fighting between the Old Town and
Burton boys for a barrel of beer, provided by the Mayor. Long after this
custom had been dropped, the recollection of it was revived by the sign
of a public-house, the Burton Boys, though eventually the owner changed
the sign to that of the Black Lion, as he 'wished for some more
peaceful name'!

Plymouth does not seem to have been much affected by the Wars of the
Roses, but Henry VII, as Earl of Richmond, 'while he houered upon the
coast,' came ashore at Cawsand, and here 'by stealth refreshed himselfe;
but being advertised of streight watch, kept for his surprising at
Plymouth, he richly rewarded his hoste, hyed speedily a ship boord, and
escaped happily to a better fortune.'

The fisheries of the port are old and important. The earliest grant now
to be traced, made by Reginald de Valletort to Plympton Priory, was that
of all his fishing rights in Tamar and Lynher--a privilege which Mr
Worth thinks was probably bestowed 'not long after the manor passed into
the hands of the Valletort family.' In 1384 Parliament decreed that all
fish caught in the waters of Sutton, Plymouth, and Tamar should be
displayed for sale in Plymouth and Aish [Saltash] only, which sounds as
if Plymouth were already jealous of other fish-markets, as was certainly
the case later on. During parts of the sixteenth century the industry
flagged, and in Henry VIII's reign a royal proclamation ordered
abstinence from flesh on Saturdays as well as Fridays, with the frank
explanation that this was 'not only for health and discipli