a seaport, and, therefore, been able to supply naval necessaries, its position might have caused Henry VIII to select it as a fleet-base under the altered condition of naval operations against France in his reign.

It will be noticed that there is no reference to Weymouth in the foregoing petitions to king and Parliament. The town may have shared the fate of Melcombe or it may have escaped as poorer and less tempting than its neighbour ; in any case it was more difficult to attack and more easily defended than Melcombe.

The burgesses of Lyme petitioned in February, 1378, that the town was being wasted by the sea and that the Cobb, large enough to shelter two or three barges - from which we get an idea of its size - had been destroyed in the gales of the previous November. ^78a In this nothing was said of any French descent, but in one of their numerous appeals for help - that of 1410 - they stated that the place had been burnt by the French in the reigns of both Edward III and Richard 11. ⁷⁹ It is probable, too, that Poole was partly burnt in 1377. ^79a The misfortunes of their neighbours may have aroused the energy of the men of Bridport and tempted them to an effort to take the lead of Lyme. In 1385 there was grant of a toll for three years to John de Hudresfeld who had begun to make a harbour, there having been none previously. The toll was continued for another year from 1388, and again for three years from 1393, to enable the bailiffs of Bridport, who then claimed to have begun the construction of the harbour, to finish it. ⁸⁰ The fact, however, that the toll was on goods exported or imported by water shows that there must have been some small shipping trade before the improvement was effected.

That the events of 1377 could have occurred proves that the English fleet was practically non-existent ; in November of that year Parliament decided that the country generally, including inland towns, should be required to build ships by the following March, which is evidence of the known exhaustion of the ports. No town in Dorset was called upon, and that omission is almost conclusive that the county had suffered severely in the summer. For years the coast was more or less in a state of blockade ; alarms of invasion were frequent and the local levies were continually under arms. The marine of Weymouth was not entirely destroyed, for we find two ships, of which one was of 120 tons, taken up about 1383. ^80a When John of Ghent sailed for Spain in 1386 to obtain the crown of Castile his fleet of 57 ships included the James, 80 tons, of Poole. This ship was also engaged in the passenger trade, now developing, in the carriage of pilgrims direct from England to perform their devotions at the shrine of St. James of Compostella. ⁸¹ Another such vessel was the Katherine, of Lyme, newly built in 1395. ^81a

Formal hostilities with France ceased in 1389, but although no declaration of war came from either side during the remainder of Richard's reign and that of Henry IV, the truce was only nominal. English and French royal fleets did not meet as declared enemies after a ceremonial rupture, but short of that the conditions differed nothing from open war. French and

78a  Pat. 1 Ric. II, pt. iii, m. 3 d.
⁷⁹  Rot. Parl. iii, 640.
^79a  Froissart, Chron. cap. 378.
⁸⁰  Pat. 9 Ric. II, pt. i, m. 20 ; ibid. 12 Ric. II, pt. i, m. 3 ; ibid. 16 Ric. II, pt. ii, m. 10.
^80a  Exch. Accts. K.R. bdle. 42, No. 22.
⁸¹  Pat. 19 Ric. II, pt. i, m. 29.
^81a  Ibid. 18 Ric. II, pt. ii, m. 15.

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