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HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

country, was conducted with similar success, under the influence of circum-stances parallel to the former. The pressure under which France unceasinglylaboured, not only during the whole remainder of Henry the Fifth’s reign, butfor a very considerable time after the accession of his unfortunate son, prevented,even the smallest convulsive struggle, or attempt towards creating any naval force.England, consequently, lay under no temptation of the same kind during the likeperiod. The civil feuds and dreadful contests which subsequently took place be-tween the Yorkists and Lancastrians, afterwards operated with greater force, ifpossible, in causing the same species of dereliction. The contest between thedesperate rivals, was carried on entirely by military operations, and the reasonof that procedure is almost too natural and obvious, to render any particularexplanation of it necessary. Although many circumstances tend to prove, thatsome semblance of a navy, specially attached to the service of the sovereign,and his government, had made its appearance on different occasions, yet thewarmest advocates for the antiquity of the establishment have never pretendedto deny, that it was extremely inconsiderable, and that the principal depend-ance the monarch had in the formation and collection of a fleet, was from theloyalty and enthusiasm, not of his nobles, but that of subjects who were fat-inferior in rank to the personages just mentioned, and comprised, as being prin-cipally the inhabitants of London, the Cinque Ports, and other sea port towns,what was considered as, the commercial interest of the country. The civilwar which raged for so many years, and might be said to have deluged Englandwith the blood of the noblest families she contained, was not the contest of onemoiety of the subjects, or inhabitants of the country, supporting a prince namedHenry, against the remaining moiety, who were no less strongly attached to apersonage named Edw’ard, but was maintained in all its furious and dreadfulhorrors by one body of nobles, whose power was very extensive, but whosenumbers were extremely contracted, against an opposing corps, precisely of thesame description. None but themselves, and their followers, took any materialactive part in the dispute, and that class of inhabitants, whose aid and exertionswould have been materially necessary to the maintenance of a naval war, wereperhaps as little interested in the event of the pending dispute, except when theflames of war unhappily approached them from the land side, as though theyhad been the subjects of a foreign potentate.