Although Henry doubtless achieved his object by restoring Normandy to the dominion of England, the success of his expedition, however barren in its ultimate results, was mainly due to his command of the Channel.
A document in metrical verse, illustrative of the war, and written about this period, gives so graphic an account of the then existing state of maritime commerce, and so well points out the wisdom of England in maintaining her supremacy at sea, that a few extracts from it cannot fail to be interesting and instructive to our readers. It probably contains the views of the most enlightened men in England on the impolicy of the course of continental conquest on which Henry had embarked. This curious production, which occupies twenty-one or twenty-two folios of closely printed black letter in Hakluyt, and has been frequently referred to and quoted by writers upon English shipping, is entitled—
Prologue of the “Dominion of the Sea.”
“Here beginneth the Prologue of the Processe of the Libel of English policie, exhorting all England to keepe the sea, and namely the narrowe sea; and shewing what profite commeth thereof, and also what worship and saluation to England and to all Englishmen.”
However much the people of England may at the time have been flattered by Henry’s heroic deeds of arms, it is evident from this poem that a large class were thoroughly convinced of the impolicy of the aggressions of their monarch. But the all-important point the author has in view is the necessity of maintaining the command of the Channel as the only true safeguard of the shores of England; and almost every statesman since then has endeavoured to carry into effect what the author in his quaint old language so strongly recommends:
“The true Processe of English policie
Of otterward to keepe this regne in
Of our England, that no man may deny.
Ner say of sooth but it is one of the best,
Is this, that who seeth South, North, East and West,