SHIPWRECK OF PRINCE HENRY. 137 that several planks were started, and she instantly began to fill. A boat was immediately lowered, and the prince was escaping in it,.. which he might easily have done, for the shore was at no great distance,.. when his sister, whom there had been no time to take off, or who in the horror of the moment had been forgotten, shrieked out to him to save her. It was better to die than turn a deaf ear to that call: he ordered the boat to put back and take her in; but such numbers leapt into it at the same time, that the boat was swamped, and all perished.* The ship also presently went down with all on board: only two persons, the one a young noble, son of Gilbert de Aquila, the other a butcher of Rouen, saved themselves: by climbing the mast, and clinging to the top, they kept their heads above water. Fitzstephens rose after the vessel had sunk, and might have taken the same chance of preservation; but calling to mind, after the first instinctive effort, that he had been the unhappy occasion of this great calamity, and dreading the reproaches, and perhaps the punishment that awaited him, he preferred present death as the least evil. The youth became exhausted during the night; and commending his poor companion to God's mercy with his last words, he lost his hold, and sunk. The butcher held on till morning, when he was seen from the shore and saved; and from him, being the only survivor, the circumstances of the tragedy were learnt. The tidings reached England in the course of that day; but no one would communicate it to the king; no one, not even those who had lost dear connections of their own by the same awful event, could bear to witness the first emotions of his grief. Three days they persisted in thus "Which sudden clap of God's judgment, coming in a calm of glory, when all these bustlings seemed past over, might make a conscience shrink with terror, to see oppression and supplantation repaid with the extinction of that for which so much had been wrought; and the line masculine of Normandy expired in the third inheritor, as if to begin the fate laid on all the future succession hitherunto, wherein the third heir in a right descent seldom or never enjoyed the crown of England; but that, either by usurp ation or extinction of the male blood, it received an alteration: which may teach princes to observe the ways of righteousness, and let men alone with their rights, and God with his providence."-Daniel, 65. concealing it, till the king's anxiety being at length well strong as he was in body and in mind, and in heart It had been the custom of England till this king's reign, that when a vessel was wrecked on the coast, both ship and cargo became the property of the lord of the manor, unless they who escaped from it appeared within a limited time. The usage was probably more barbarous than the law that licensed it; and it was mitigated by a decree of Henry's, that if one man escaped alive the lord should have no claim.t But even in far later and more civilised ages it has not been found easy to suppress the practice of wrecking ‡ among men who A.D. impiously persuade themselves that they exercise in it a 1174. natural right. During Stephen's turbulent usurpation the decree was disregarded, and the men who escaped from shipwreck found their fellow-creatures as merciless as the elements. Henry II. therefore revived his grandfather's law; and enacted also, that even if no person survived the wreck, but any live animal escaped from it, or was found alive on board, the ship and cargo should be kept for 1181. the owners, if they appeared within three months.§ A jealous regard for the maritime strength of the nation was manifested by the same king, in his injunction to the justices itinerant, that in every county they should William of Malmesbury, 518. Holinshed, ii. 70. Lyttelton, Henry II (8vo.) i. 198. Henry, iii. 48-50. Turner, i. 188-191. + Campbell, 1. 88. Henry, iii. 503. So late as the last years of George II.'s reign, lord Lyttelton says, "I am very sorry to observe, that notwithstanding this law, made so many ages ago, and other statutes enacted since, with a view to restrain this most inhuman barbarity, it still remains a foul reproach and disgrace to our nation." Methodism has since done much towards putting an end to it in that part of the country which was most infamous for this practice. But I am sorry to say, that in a most mournful instance, which is fresh in my own memory, boats hovered about a wreck to pick up the spoils, and left the sufferers to perish. Henry, iii, 504. GROWTH OF COMMERCE. 139 strictly prohibit any one, as he valued life and fortune, from buying or selling any ship to be carried out of England, or from sending or causing to be sent any mariner into a foreign service.* Piracy and commerce had grown up together in the northern seas, as among the Phoenicians and Greeks in ancient times. Or, perhaps, commerce may more properly be said to have originated from piracy, the civilising consequence of a barbarous cause. They flourished together; and, after piracy had been forbidden by the kings of the North (for this was one of the first beneficent effects of Christianity), the pagan and piratical state of Julin, or Jomsberg (the Algiers of the Baltic), which about this time was conquered by the Danish king Waldemar the Great, was one of the largest cities in Europe, and, Constantinople alone excepted, the most frequented port.† But as maritime commerce had been produced by piracy, so was it both directly and incidentally rendered honourable by the same cause; directly, when carried on by the proud sea-rovers themselves, who gloried in the display and disposal of their spoils; incidentally, because they who would otherwise have been peaceable traders, were compelled to sail in armed vessels for their own security; and thus they obtained, in public opinion, a degree of consideration which would not have been conceded in those days to mere wealth, nor to the humble pursuit of gain. The Anglo-Saxon laws conferred rank upon the merchants who thus traversed the seas in defiance of all enemies; but the Normans looked at them only in their mercantile capacity; and there is a curious passage in the history of the Conqueror, by his chaplain, William of Poictou ‡, which indicates both the extent of their dealings and the contempt with which not only the soldiers but the chaplain himself regarded them. "The English merchants," said he, "add to the opu*Henry, iii. 504. Turner, i. 37. Holberg, i. 236. The different nations who bordered upon the Baltic had their respective quarters in the town. lence of their country, rich in its own fertility, still greater riches and more valuable treasures by importation. These imported treasures, which were considerable both for their quantity and quality, were either to have been hoarded up for the gratification of their avarice, or to have been dissipated for the indulgence of their luxurious inclinations. But William seized them, and bestowed part on his victorious army, part on churches and monasteries, and to the pope and the church of Rome he sent an incredible mass of money in gold, silver, and many ornaments that would have been admired even at Constantinople." The ruin which was thus brought upon the great merchants afforded an opening to the Jews; and so many of that nation came from other countries to avail themselves of the inviting opportunity, that their settlement in England is commonly referred to the time of the Norman conquest, and the Conqueror is said to have introduced them*; but there is legal proof that Jews were settled in this island long before, and the strongest probability that they existed here in the time of the Romans. The great services which, in their pursuit of gain, this most unfortunate and persecuted people rendered to civilisation, to science, and to literature, has scarcely yet been acknowledged with sufficient gratitude. By their agency it was that the Sabæans imported into London the frankincense and the spices of Arabia; that palmoil was brought from what was then the rich country about Babylon; and silks, and gold, and precious stones from the East. The political connection between England and Normandy gave another impulse to maritime trade, by the necessity which it created for shipping, and the constant intercourse between the two countries. But nothing contributed so much to the growing strength and prosperity of the nation as the five-and-thirty years of tranquillity which it enjoyed under the vigilant and firm government of Henry I. Foreigners, who were * Anglia Judaica, ii. 4. + Henry, iii. 496. COMMERCIAL PROSPERITY. 141 driven from their own countries by the deadly feuds and barbarous warfare which every where else afflicted society, came to England as the only haven of security.* Merchants of all nations frequented London; the greater number seem to have been from Germany; and when our own harvests failed, the rest of the kingdom is said to have been supplied with corn from the metropolis. + At other times corn was exported from thence by licences, for which a fine was paid to the king. Bristol carried on a flourishing trade with Ireland, whither it carried slaves, bred or bought for the market; with Norway and the Baltic, from whence it brought furs, then an article of clothing for all who could afford to purchase them; and with other countries. English and French merchants had settled in some of the Irish ports, and were introducing, among a most barbarous people, such civilisation as is promoted by trade. They had cause to complain of their treatment by king Murcard O'Brien; but that cause was presently removed §, upon Henry's threatening to prohibit all commerce with that island. Ships from Ireland and from Germany sailed up the Ouse into the very heart of York city, where the Jews were then flourishing; they flourished also at 1121. Lincoln, then one of the most populous cities in the kingdom, and a mart for all goods coming by land and water; and it was probably through their representations that Henry I. connected the Witham and the Trent by a navigable canal, now called the Foss Dyke, whereby Lincoln was enabled to carry on a foreign trade. T "O England!" exclaims Matthew of Westminster, referring to this age, "thou wert lately equal to the ancient Chaldeans in power, prosperity, and glory. The ships of Tharshish could not be com * William of Malmesbury, 505. 582. Henry, iii. 494. + Campbell, i. 92. "For of what value," says Malmesbury, "could Ireland be, if deprived of the merchandise of England. From poverty, or rather from the ignorance of the cultivators, the soil, unproductive of every good, engenders without the cities a rustic filthy swarm of natives; but the English and French inhabit the cities in a greater degree of civilisation, through their mercantile traffic," p. 504. A. D. |