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HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

though principally of an unconsequential nature, presently succeeded on the partof England. As an exception, however, the town of Cherberg was plunderedand burnt, and a fleet, consisting of fifteen large merchant vessels, belonging toSpain, was captured on the coast of Flanders. But these successes were notobtained without some bloodshed. Philip is said to have effected a debarkationnear Dover, and, though driven off with some loss, to have done no small pre-vious injury to that town. A division belonging to the Yarmouth, or northernfleet, having too incautiously entered the harbour of Berwick, were attackedwith such fury by the Scottish vessels in that port, that four ships were totallydestroyed, and the remainder received so much damage, that it was not withoutthe utmost difficulty they were able to effect their retreat.

In 1296, however, the king, in spite of every opposition which he unre-mittingly experienced in pursuit of this object, collected a very formidable fleet,capable of transporting an army of sixty thousand men, with their necessaryequipage, and having proceeded to sea from the port of Winchelsea, in Sussex,towards the latter end of August, effected his landing in Flanders, without anysinister accident, on the twenty-seventh of the same month. Nevertheless, amost unlucky and unforeseen accident totally frustrated all those hopes of con-quest which the king, and his commanders had sanguinely formed. The mari-ners on board the squadron fitted out by the Cinque Ports , having had an affraywith those belonging to Yarmouth , it quickly rose to such an height, thatnotwithstanding every personal interposition the king himself could offer, sorelaxed was the state of discipline at that time, that ere the ferment could beallayed, not fewer than twenty vessels were burnt, others very materially da-maged, and three of the largest in the whole armament being driven to sea,were not preserved from foundering, but by the greatest exertions. To haveattempted any thing farther with people in that disorderly state, would havebeen an act of imprudence, if not madness. France, deriving spirit from thiscircumstance, made an attempt to set fire to the remainder of the fleet as it layat anchor, after its return in the harbour of Dover : the project, however,failed ; and under the pious mediation of pope Boniface the Eighth, peace wasconcluded in the ensuing year between the contending sovereigns.

Soon after the commencement of the fourteenth century, a most interestingoccurrence took place, than which, nothing can more strongly prove the unqua-lified acknowlegement of the right claimed by Edward, and many of his royal

predecessors,