On Sunday, April 25, the attack was made, the large ships in the meantime continuing the blockade of Brest. Howard himself went in a rowbarge with Charran and eighty men. Other boats were commanded by Lord Ferrers, Sir John Wallop, Sir Henry Sherburne, Thomas Cheyne, and Sir William Sidney. At four o’clock in the afternoon they pulled in, Howard’s boat leading by a considerable distance. In spite of a storm of arrows and shot from the batteries he reached Prégent’s galley and climbed aboard. His men threw an anchor into the galley and so held on, but before more than sixteen persons had had time to follow the Admiral, the cable parted and the boat drifted away. Those who had boarded were killed or jumped overboard, and Howard was seen alone on the galley’s deck, waving his arm and crying: ‘Come aboard again! Come aboard again!’ Then seeing that there was no hope he took his whistle from about his neck and hurled it into the sea; and immediately afterwards the pikes thrust him against the rail and so overboard. The Spaniard Charran, his evil councillor, shared his fate. The men in the first boat, dismayed by what had occurred, made no further effort. The remaining boats arrived after Howard’s death, which, in the smoke and confusion, they had not perceived. They made a gallant though ill-combined attack, and lost many men. Sir Henry Sherburne and Sir William Sidney boarded Prégent’s galley, but were driven off. Then, seeing the Admiral’s boat retiring, and supposing him to have abandoned the attack, they drew off likewise, and only on reassembling outside did they discover their loss. Next day some of the captains went ashore with a flag of truce and parleyed with Prégent: what he told them destroyed the hope that the Admiral was taken prisoner, and rendered his death indisputable.[[361]]
The words of Sir Edward Echyngham, one of his officers, constitute his best epitaph: ‘Sir, when the whole army knew that my lord Admiral was slain, I trow there was never men more full of sorrow than all we were; for there was never noble man so ill lost as he was, that was of so great courage and had so many virtues, and that ruled so great an army so well as he did, and kept so good order and true justice.’
Lord Ferrers succeeded temporarily to the command, and led the fleet back to Plymouth before a week had passed. The retirement would have been inevitable even had Howard lived, for the shortage of provisions had now become unendurable, and sickness had also broken out. Discipline, never very strong in an irregular force, went utterly to pieces; for, after the Admiral, there was no other officer combining rank and character in a sufficient degree to exercise real command. The king was very angry at the failure, and wrote a severe letter to the captains. He appointed Lord Thomas Howard Admiral in succession to his brother, and ordered him to return at once to the Breton coast. Lord Thomas reported that his men were in great fear of the galleys and ‘had as lief go to Purgatory as to the Trade (Brest water)’. However, he promised to lead them there if victuals were forthcoming. After a month’s delay it was decided not to return to Brest, but to keep a select force in the Narrow Seas for the preservation of the communications of Henry’s army invading the north of France. In spite of their misfortunes, the English had demonstrated their superiority to the French at sea, and it would have been folly to have wasted more ships and men in continuing to blockade Brest without a chance of bringing the enemy to action. After the loss of the Cordelière the French sailing fleet never showed the least inclination to leave the shelter of its ports and contest the command of the Channel.
There was a promise of some revival of naval interest in the war in the latter half of 1513, when, after Henry had commenced his Continental campaign, James IV of Scotland declared war and allied himself with France. The small Scottish fleet was sent southwards and joined that of France, but their combined operations were ineffectual, and most of the Scottish ships returned to their own country after a few weeks had expired. The small naval force which England had kept afloat for the guarding of the Straits of Dover was deemed sufficient to deal with the allies; and the Lord Admiral did not think it necessary to go to sea, fighting instead on land at Flodden.
THE GRAND MISTRESS, Built 1545.
From Add. MS. 22047.
In the spring of 1514 Prégent de Bidoux raided the Sussex coast with his galleys. Landing by night he burnt Brighton, which the chronicler calls ‘a poor village’, but which a contemporary drawing[[362]] shows to have been something more. The drawing in question was thought by the editor of the Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII[[363]] to represent Prégent’s raid, although it is inscribed with the date 1545 in a sixteenth-century hand. It represents the town of Brighton in the form of a hollow square, with a green in the middle and houses on three sides of it, the shore forming the fourth. To the west is the village of Hove, separated by an intervening stream. The French galleys are thrust ashore on the open beach, where also the fishing-boats of the natives are seen in flames. Numerous French warships are cruising near the coast, doubtless to cover the landing of the galleys. The town is partly on fire, but reinforcements appear marching down a high road from the interior, summoned by the smoke of the beacon blazing in the ‘towne fyre cage’. The whole is beautifully drawn and coloured, and seems to be the work of a sailor. The details of the ships are minutely correct, and the artist does not commit the error, almost invariably made by the landsman-limner of the period, of making the wind blow two ways at once. Holinshed says that Prégent was finally driven off by a force of archers, losing one of his eyes as the result of an arrow wound. Although, apart from the above manuscript, there is no contemporary description of the burning of Brighton, it undoubtedly took place, since there is a reference to avenging it in a letter of June 5, 1514. The revenge consisted in a similar raid by Sir John Wallop on the coast of Normandy, in the course of which, with a force of only 800 men, he burnt twenty-one towns and villages and numerous ships.
This was the last act of the war, peace being signed shortly afterwards. On the whole the English had no reason to be ashamed of the deeds of their youthful navy. The right spirit was in the officers and men, although inexperience had betrayed them into many errors, and the business organization, in spite of Wolsey’s talent, had been lamentably weak. Prégent’s galleys had certainly borne off the palm for general efficiency and enterprise. The secret of their success was to be found, not in any advantages which might be possessed by the galley itself, but in the exceptional ability of their commander. On later occasions galleys failed to come up to the expectations which had been formed of them on the experience of this campaign. As to the behaviour of the French sailing-ships, it had been, with one or two brilliant exceptions, beneath contempt.
For the ensuing eight years, Wolsey’s policy was supreme in the State, and peace reigned between France and England. During this time the navy was strengthened by the completion of the Henry Grace à Dieu and other first-class vessels.[[364]] In 1522 Henry, in spite of his gorgeous conference with Francis II at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, entered into an alliance with the new Emperor Charles V. On May 29, while Charles was in England, war was again declared on France; and soon afterwards the Emperor, secure in the knowledge that the English fleet would ensure him a safe passage, set sail for Spain. Ford Thomas Howard, now Earl of Surrey, and later, by the death of his father, Duke of Norfolk, still filled the office of Admiral, although a great part of the operations of the fleet were conducted by the Vice-Admiral, Sir William FitzWilliam. The fact that Surrey was invested with the supreme command of the Imperial fleet as well as of that of England testifies to the prestige the navy had gained in the previous struggle with France.
The war of 1522–5 produced no such stirring incidents as had that of 1512–14. The English fleet, coupled with the marine forces of the empire, was so immeasurably superior to that of its enemies that the latter did all in their power to avoid an engagement. Large numbers of French and Scottish merchantmen were captured or burnt, and a very imperfect blockade of the northern ports of France was maintained. It was fortunate for the allies that the Government of Francis I had allowed the French navy to fall into decay, for on the English side, although the country had never before possessed so many powerful fighting ships, there was the utmost slackness and inefficiency in the civil administration of the fleet. Although the war had been reckoned as a certainty for quite a year before it actually broke out, the naval preparations were hopelessly inadequate. Not only was there a deficiency of accumulated provisions, but also of such essentials as casks and rigging, without which no fleet could remain at sea for more than a few days at a time.[[365]] All food, both solid and liquid, had to be carried in casks, of which an enormous number was required. Yet such was the confusion in the administration that some time after war had been declared Surrey was complaining that he could not move, as some of his ships had victuals for only eight days, and the majority for not more than a fortnight.