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HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

and ally, wished to promote the restoration of Edward, four large vessels were-equipped in the name of private merchants, and fourteen ships hired from theHanse Towns, which served to convey the royal emigrant, with his retinue,and two thousand men at arms, to the same port where Bolingbroke, grand-father to Henry the Sixth, had formerly landed, when meditating the deposi-tion of Richard the Second. He had scarcely seated himself, in opinion,securely on the throne, ere he resolved to renew the same species of attemptwhich had been made by his predecessors, towards the complete conquest ofthe kingdom of France. A fleet was accordingly collected sufficient for thetransport of thirty thousand men, at the head of which, he landed at Calais;but the mighty attempt ended in a treaty, which neither party took any painsto observe the articles of. The marine of England continued in the same statenot only during the remainder of his reign, but till after the defeat, and deathof Richard the Third at the battle of Bosworth.

It is not a little sjpgular, that so able a prince as Richard is universally admitted,even by his most virulent enemies, to have been, who was at the same time con-scious of the quarter from whence danger was to be apprehended, and was awareof his internal enemies, so that he must have been sensible that the security ofhis crown, in all probability, depended on his preventing the invasion of his realm,should have neglected the most obvious means of defence. Navy he had none,from which circumstance the earl of Richmond, his adversary, was encouragedto put to sea from St. Maloes with forty small unarmed vessels, having on boardabout three thousand men. Providence appeared in the first instance to havebefriended the cause of the usurper, and to have afforded him at least a chanceto amend his mistake, for Richmond’s fleet was materially damaged by a tempest,and compelled to put back. Still, however, as though the same Providence, seeingthe caution neglected, had determined his fall, no measures whatever were takento prevent a repetition, and the earl, having refitted his shattered flotilla, effectedhis landing at Milford, without opposition, at the head of two thousand men.The event is known to all, and appeared as an almost immediate prelude toa series of extraordinary events, which were on the eve of taking place in themaritime history of Europe.

Historians, and those who have peculiarly endeavoured to trace the progressof maritime pursuits, seem uniformly of opinion, that notwithstanding the navyof England, owing to those causes which have been already sufficiently explained,

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