316.
{1636.} The effects of ship money began now to appear.

A formidable fleet of sixty sail, the greatest that England had ever known, was equipped under the earl of Northumberland, who had orders to attack the herring busses of the Dutch, which fished in what were called the British seas.

The Dutch were content to pay thirty thousand pounds for a license during this year.

They openly denied, however, the claim of dominion in the seas beyond the friths, bays, and shores; and it may be questioned whether the laws of nations warrant any further pretensions.
This year, the king sent a squadron against Sallee; and, with the assistance of the emperor of Morocco, destroyed that receptacle of pirates, by whom the English commerce, and even the English coasts, had long been infested.
{1637.} Burton, a divine, and Bastwick, a physician, were tried in the star chamber for seditious and schismatical libels, and were condemned to the same punishment that had been inflicted on Prynne.

Prynne himself was tried for a new offence; and, together with another fine of five thousand pounds, was condemned to lose what remained of his ears.
Besides that these writers had attacked with great severity, and even an intemperate zeal, the ceremonies, rites, and government of the church, the very answers which they gave in to the court were so full of contumacy and of invectives against the prelates, that no lawyer could be prevailed on to sign them.[*] The rigors, however, which they underwent, being so unworthy men of their profession, gave general offence; and the patience, or rather alacrity, with which they suffered, increased still further the indignation of the public.[**] * Rush.