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ready to join him on his arrival, when the English fleet of ships royal, and others meet for war, to the number of forty-two, besides ballengers, sailed in March from Portsmouth, under the lord admiral sir Edward Howard. He made straight for the coast of Bretagne, came into Bertram Bay, and there anchored in sight of the French fleet, which wisely kept itself close in Brest harbour. The English, with that confidence in their own courage which they had always possessed, and which the event has seldom failed to justify, determined to attack them there; and " so in good order of battle they sailed forward." But in this instance they ventured rashly, not being acquainted as they ought to have been with the navigation; and at the first entry one of the ships, whereof Arthur Plantagenet was captain, struck on a hidden rock, and "burst in sunder." Upon this all the others stayed, to their own great displeasure, and "not to the little joy of the Frenchmen, who shot at them without doing any harm. So the English captains, perceiving that the haven was dangerous to enter without an expert pilot, returned to their harborough in Bertram Bay." The enemy, not doubting that it was the intention of the English to attack them, moored their ships as near to the castle as they could, and erected "bulwarks on the land, on every side, to shoot at" their assailants. There were lying in the harbour four and twenty great hulks, which had come thither to load with salt. These they "set in a row," meaning, when the attack should be made, to use them as fire-ships, and let them drive with the stream against the invading fleet. “The lord admiral,” says Hall, "perceiving the navy of France to be thus in fear, and not willing nor daring to come abroad, but to lie as prisoners in a dungeon, wrote to the king to come thither in person, and have the honour of so high an enterprise; which writing the king's council nothing allowed, for putting the king in jeopardy upon the chance of the sea: wherefore they wrote sharply to him, to accomplish that which appertained to his duty; and

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this caused him to take courage and put things in adventure."*

Sir Edward Howard needed no such excitement. The very fact of his inviting the king to take part in such an adventure is proof sufficient that his own courage amounted to rashness. Meantime Prior John, with his galleys from the Mediterranean, arrived on the coast; and having learnt that the English fleet were so stationed as to prevent his junction with the Brest fleet, he entered Conquet Bay, drew his galleys to the shore, and "set his basilisks and other ordnance at the mouth of the bay, which was so bulwarked on every side, that by water it was not possible to be won." From hence he sent out his small foists, upon every fair occasion, to annoy the English, in the hope of provoking them to some rash enterprise. These were generally chased back to the bay, which the English vessels were too large to enter. At length the lord admiral manned some of his boats, and they, with the most imminent hazard, took one of the best foists, "the galleys and bulwarks shooting upon them so freshly that it was a marvel how they escaped." Sir Edward Howard bears a high character in the history of his times, as an able statesman, a faithful counsellor, and a free speaker, as well as a brave soldier and skilful seaman: but it is said to have been his maxim, that no sailor could be good for any thing, unless he were resolute to a degree of madness. To that degree the king's letter had now excited him; and he is not the only man who has been driven to destruction by an undeserved or intemperate reproof. He held a council, in which it was concluded that lord Ferrers and sir Stephen Bull should land with an adequate force to attack the land-defences; while he entered the bay "with row-barges and little galleys "thus simultaneously to attack the enemy by sea and by land. But there was a Spanish knight on board, who persuaded him that there was less risk in entering the bay than had been supposed; and Howard, in whose heart. *Hall, 536. Holinshed, 574.

DEATH OF SIR EDWARD HOWARD.

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the king's words were rankling, caught eagerly at a proposal which assured him of an honourable death if he failed of eminently distinguishing himself. So he "called to him William Fitzwilliam, William Cooke, John Colley, and sir Wolstan Brown, as his chief and most trusty friends, and made them privy to his intent, which was to take on himself the whole enterprise, with their assistance. These, "like men of high courage,' gladly assented; and so, on St. Mark's day, "he put April himself in a small row-barge, appointing three other 25. small rowing-ships, and his own ship's boat, to attend him, and therewith rowed suddenly into the bay," where Prior John had moored his galleys fast to the shore. So hot a fire was opened upon him, both from the galleys and the bulwarks, that they who should have supported him were afraid: but he pushed forward, grappled the prior's galley, and boarded it, the Spaniard and seventeen Englishmen bravely following him. He is said to have driven the French out, and to have been in possession of that galley; but the enemy rallied, when they saw that he was unsupported. They reentered it. Whether they cut the cable, or the English sailors themselves let it slip, is uncertain; but his row-boat fell off when he would have stepped into it. Sixteen of the English and the Spaniard was slain; and Howard himself, when he saw that it was impossible to escape, took the whistle (the badge of his degree) from his neck, and threw it into the sea, before he himself was borne overboard by the enemies' pikes. *

*Hall, 536. Holinshed, 574. Campbell, i. 263. Collins's Peerage (sir Egerton Brydges's ed.) i. 83. "He was thus unhappily lost," says Anster, "before he could have notice that he had been elected into the society of the most noble order of the Garter. The king of Scots, in a letter to king Henry VIII., bemoans his death in these words: And surely, dearest brother, we think more loss is to you of the late admiral, who deceased to his great honour, than the advantage might have been of winning all the French galleys which valiant knight and others that perished had been better employed than on the enemies of Christian religion.""

Campbell begins his series of the Lives of the Admirals, with sir Edward Howard. It seems as if Henry repented the harshness with which he had reprimanded him, and in honourable amends had given him the order of the Garter. The sharpness of that reprimand "caused him," says Holinshed, "to adventure things further than wisdom would he should, to his utter undoing and casting away; God having ordained the means by his

The lord Ferrers and other captains "much were dolent of this chance; but there were some who remarked that the admiral had acted without counsel, and so he had sped." The effect, however, upon the spirits A. D. of the sailors was such, that the officers, upon the plea 1514. that they had now no admiral in commission, determined to do nothing further till they knew the king's pleasure; and accordingly they sailed for England. Upon this the French came out of their harbour; and Prior John drew forth his galleys and foists, made for the coast of Sussex with all his company, landed there, and fired some cottages: the gentry raised the country, and drove him to his ships. Henry is said to have been "right sorry for the death of his admiral." He appointed the lord Thomas Howard to succeed him, telling him to revenge his brother's death. That lord immediately put to sea, and the enemy then thought it prudent to keep within their own ports.* Prior John was too skilful a commander, either to give his adversaries an opportunity, or to let one pass. Next year,

when the seas were unguarded, he again crossed the channel to the Sussex coast, and landing in the night, at the then "poor village called Brighthelmston, he took such poor goods as he found there," and set fire to the place. But when the beacons were fired, and the people, by the time it was day, began to collect, Prior John sounded his trumpet to call his men aboard. A handful of archers, who kept the watch, followed him to the sea, and beat the galley-men from the shore; and when

providence, which the Pagans implied (though wanting the light of grace)
in the name of destiny, by them counted inevitable. A destiny lamentable,
considering the quality of the person, with the manner of his dying;
wherein, although many vainly dispute that fortune led him to so miserable
an accident, yet if we will lift up our considerations to God, we shall find
that He hath reserved such a prerogative over all things which he hath
created, that to him only belongeth the authority to dispose all things by the
same power wherewith he hath created them of nothing. And yet the
foolish world (doting in blind ignorance, but pretending a singular insight
in matters of secrecy) blusheth not to talk of, or rather to assever, casualty,
chancemedley, misfortunes, and such like foolish imaginations; whereas,
indeed, the providence of God compasseth all things whatsoever, for no
thing can be privileged from the ampleness of the same."- p. 575.
* Hall, 537. Holinshed, 576.

PRIOR JOHN AT BRIGHTHELMSTON.

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the Prior waded to his foist, they followed him into the water, till they were driven back with pikes. He lost an eye in this affair. The wound was dangerous; and looking upon his recovery as miraculous, he had his image made in wax, with the English arrow in its face, and offered it as a memorial at the shrine of our Lady of Boulogne.* The lord admiral resented this expedition, by sending sir John Wallop with a squadron to infest the coast of Normandy; where landing frequently, though with not more than 800 men, he "burnt ships and boats in the harbours," and destroyed more than twenty villages and towns, "with great slaughter of the people." One nation could not in that age reproach the other for this barbarous system of warfare, which inflicted so much misery upon individuals, without contributing in the slightest degree to bring the contest to an issue.

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In the land war which meantime was carried on under the king in person, the English displayed their usual courage, and that want of wisdom which was too often felt in their councils. Terouanne was taken and burnt, and Tournay taken and retained,— a glorious but burdensome conquest, soon to be restored. Peace was made, and followed by a marriage, of which Henry's Low Country allies spake truly when they spake shamefully of it, the marriage of the princess Mary, his sister, then in her eighteenth year, to Louis XII., a feeble and diseased old man. While she waited at Dover till the weather should be favourable for her passage, one of the fleet, a ship royal of 900 tons, was driven ashore near Sandgate, and of 600 men scarcely the half escaped, and the most part of these "sore hurt with the wreck." And when, after Henry had "kissed her and commended her to God and the fortune of the sea, and the governance of the French king her husband," this fair lady had "taken her ship, with all her noble company, and sailed about a quarter of the way, the wind arose and scattered the squadron; some got * Hall, 569. Holinshed, 602.

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