the very means they had contrived for
their own safety to be the instrument of commercial disaster.

II.--THE FREEBOOTERS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

It was the French chronologist, Scaliger, who in the sixteenth century
asserted, "nulli melius piraticam exercent quam Angli"; and although he
had no need to cross the Channel to find men proficient in this
primitive calling, the remark applies to the England of his time with a
force which we to-day scarcely realise. Certainly the inveterate
hostility with which the Englishman learned to regard the Spaniard in
the latter half of the sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth
centuries found its most remarkable expression in the exploits of the
Elizabethan "sea-dogs" and of the buccaneers of a later period. The
religious differences and political jealousies which grew out of the
turmoil of the Reformation, and the moral anarchy incident to the
dissolution of ancient religious institutions, were the motive causes
for an outburst of piratical activity comparable only with the
professional piracy of the Barbary States.

Even as far back as the thirteenth century, indeed, lawless sea-rovers,
mostly Bretons and Flemings, had infested the English Channel and the
seas about Great Britain. In the sixteenth this mode of livelihood
became the refuge for numerous young Englishmen, Catholic and
Protestant, who, fleeing from the persecutions of Edward VI. and of
Mary, sought refuge in French ports or in the recesses of the Irish
coast, and became the leaders of wild roving bands living chiefly upon
plunder. Among them during these persecutions were found many men
belonging to the best families in England, and although with the
accession of Elizabeth most of the leaders returned to the service of
the State, the pirate crews remained at their old trade. The contagion
spread, especially in the western counties, and great numbers of
fishermen who found their old employment profitless were recruited into
this new calling.[37] At the beginning of Elizabeth's reign we find
these Anglo-Irish pirates venturing farther south, plundering treasure
galleons off the coast of Spain, and cutting vessels out of the very
ports of the Spanish king. Such outrages of course provoked reprisals,
and the pirates, if caught, were sent to the galleys, rotted in the
dungeons of the Inquisition, or, least of all, were burnt in the plaza
at Valladolid. These cruelties only added fuel to a deadly hatred which
was k