Then at last the island was for a time in the king’s hands. But in 1281 Richard the Second re-granted it to a descendant, and Mariscos ruled for a while, until Edward the Second granted it to the elder of his Despenser favourites. The force and vigour of the once-fierce Marisco family appear to have been lacking in Herbert, their last known representative, for he seems not to have opposed the grant with any determination, and died in 1327; the year after the king himself, fleeing from the plots of his wife and Mortimer, despairingly considered for a time the project of hiding in this then almost inaccessible retreat.
[Illustration: THE LANDING-PLACE, LUNDY.]
From that time onward, for a long period, whoever nominally possessed Lundy, foreign pirates actually occupied it, attracted by the prospect of rich plunder to be taken out of the ships sailing up or down Channel, to or from Bristol. On one occasion, in the time of Henry the Eighth, the men of Clovelly, greatly daring, fitted out an expedition and, attacking a company of French pirates on the isle, burnt their vessels, killed or made prisoners of them all, and thus freed the commerce of the Channel for a space.
Not for long, for in 1564 it was found necessary to direct Sir Peter Cary, “forasmuch as that cost of Devonshyre and Cornwall is by report mucch hanted with pyratts and Rovers,” to make ready one or two ships, for the purpose of suppressing them. The economical policy of the government, as shown in these instructions, was to secure that those thus charged with clearing out this nest of robbers should be provided with ships and food only, and should find pay for their labour in whatever plunder they could seize: “They must take ther benefitt of y^{ e} spoyle, and be provijded only by us of victell.” Furthermore, with an even greater refinement of economy, it was suggested that “ye sayd Rovers might be entyced, with hope of our mercy, to apprehend some of the rest of ther company, which practise we have knowen doone good long agoo in the lyke.”
These canny offers do not seem to have been eagerly responded to, for it became necessary, twenty-three years later, for the port of Barnstaple to fit out an expedition of its own. The town records show this to have been successful, for items appear respecting food and drink for prisoners taken, and for the pay of watchmen guarding them.