. . .Havre-Southampton passage that among the suspicious circumstances alleged against a Genoese who landed in 1599, one was his choice of this way across.[24]

Going by the North Sea the usual havens were Gravesend, and Flushing or Brill, in spite of Brill's shallow harbour-bar, passed on one occasion with only two feet of water under the keel when "Mr. Thatcher, a merchant of London, who had goods therein, was so apprehensive that he changed colours and said he was undone, 'Oh Lord,' and such-like passionate expressions." Harwich was reputed so dangerous a harbour that when Charles I's mother-in-law came to visit her daughter in 1638 and put in there, she found no one to receive her; it not being thought [63]within possibility to expect her to land there. The fact that she did was probably due to her having been seven days at sea in a storm; not that the courtier-chronicler of her voyage allows she was any the worse for it, although he owns of her ladies that . . . Read More