it prudent to give him the slip by a night march. In the winter the Duke of York sent him home for reinforcements. He came back an earl, having been created by letters patent, dated 20 May 1442, Earl of Salop (Rot. Parl. vi. 428); though the title was taken from the county, not the city, Talbot and his successors always called themselves earls of Shrewsbury. Now constable of France, he recovered Conches, and in November laid siege to Dieppe. But some months before its relief in August 1443, York sent him to England to protest against the division of the command in France. He returned to Normandy; but both sides were now weary of the war, and in 1444 a truce was concluded at Tours.
Next spring Shrewsbury and his wife took part in the home-bringing of Queen Margaret. Released from his foreign toils, he was for the third time sent (12 March 1445) to govern Ireland, and created (17 July 1446) Earl of Waterford, Lord of Dungarvan, and steward of Ireland. He rebuilt Castle Carberry to protect his lands in Meath, captured several chieftains, and enacted that those who would be taken for Englishmen should not use a beard upon the upper lip alone, and should shave it at least once a fortnight (Gilbert, p. 349). The Irish declared that ‘there came not from the time of Herod any one so wicked in evil deeds.’ At the end of 1447 Shrewsbury resigned the reins to his brother Richard, and in July 1448 was sent as lieutenant of Lower Normandy and captain of Falaise to assist Somerset in France. Exactly a year later he made an unsuccessful attempt to recover Verneuil. Rouen capitulating on 29 Oct. 1449, Shrewsbury was handed over as one of the hostages for the surrender of Honfleur and other towns to Charles VII. Honfleur standing out, he was sent to Dreux, and kept a prisoner for nine months. But on 10 July 1450 his release was made a condition of the surrender of Falaise, Charles stipulating only that he should visit Rome, where the jubilee was being celebrated, before returning to England (Stevenson, ii. [738]; cf. Will. Worc. ii. [767]).
In November 1451 Shrewsbury was made governor of Portsmouth, and two months later (7 Feb. 1452) constable of Porchester. The French threatening Calais, he was appointed (in March) captain of the fleet, and engaged (July) to serve at sea for three months with three thousand fighting men (Beaucourt, v. 54, 264). But the abandonment of the expedition against Calais, and the arrival (August) of envoys from Gascony to solicit intervention, decided the government of Henry VI to make a great effort to recover that province, and Shrewsbury was sent out as lieutenant of Aquitaine. His powers (dated 1 and 2 Sept.) were very wide, extending to the right of pardoning all offences and of coining money (Fœdera, xi. 313). Sailing with a considerable army, Shrewsbury landed about 17 Oct. in the Médoc near Soulac in a creek now silted up, but still called ‘l'anse à l'Anglot,’ and at once marched upon Bordeaux. Olivier de Coëtivy, the seneschal of Guienne, would have resisted, but the city rose, a gate was opened (20 Oct.), and he found himself a prisoner (Ramsay, ii. 153; cf. for the dates Ribadieu, p. 272, d'Escouchy, iii. 429). In a brief space the whole Bordelais, save Fronsac, Blaye, and Bourg, returned to its old allegiance. In the following March, 1453, Shrewsbury, reinforced by troops brought out by his son Viscount Lisle and Lords Camoys and Moleyns, opened the campaign by the capture of Fronsac. But his progress was arrested by the approach of three converging French armies; the Counts of Clermont and Foix, with two army corps, marched from the south into the Médoc, the king commanded a northern army on the Charente, while Marshals Jalognes and de Lohéac delivered a central attack down the Dordogne valley. Shrewsbury, according to one account, first marched out to Martignas with a view of giving battle to Clermont and Foix, but retired before their superior forces to Bordeaux (Beaucourt, v. 269). Meanwhile the army of the Dordogne, with artillery under the famous Jean Bureau, captured Chalais and Gensac; Gensac fell on 8 July, and five or six days later siege was laid to Castillon, some twelve miles further down the river on its right bank, and commanding the direct road to Bordeaux. Shrewsbury hurried to its assistance, leaving his foot and artillery to follow. Reaching Castillon in the early morning of 17 July 1453, he at once drove out the French archers from the abbey above the town; they retreated with some loss to the large entrenched camp, a mile and a quarter eastwards between the Dordogne and its little tributary the Lidoire, with its front covered by the latter, where their main body was stationed. After refreshing his men in the abbey, Shrewsbury, in a brigandine covered with red velvet and riding a little hackney, led them out against this position. Arrived there, he ordered them to dismount, but retained his own horse in consideration of his age. To attack without artillery a moated and palisaded camp defended (if we may credit Æneas Sylvius) by three hundred pieces of ordnance was foolhardy enough.
