from entering Calais about the middle of April, and from getting out again unmolested. But from that time forward, matters were better managed.
The Earl of Warwick, with eighty ships, cruised in the Channel, and kept command of it;[1] in May, the Earl of Lancaster brought across a large and welcome reinforcement to the king; and soon afterwards Lord Stafford and Sir Walter Manny, at the head of a considerable force, met a French convoy bound for the beleaguered town, and captured twenty sail of it, besides galleys.[2] Again, on June 25th, the Earls of Northampton and Pembroke are said to have intercepted a French convoy of forty-four ships. Lords Morley, Talbot, Bradeston, and the two admirals were also concerned in the affair; from which fact it may, perhaps, be concluded that the chroniclers of the period were apt to jump to the conclusion that the personages of highest civil rank engaged in any action were the actual commanders on the occasion. The main credit for what happened should certainly be attributed to Montgomery and Howard.
A contemporary account is cited by Avesbury as having been written by one who was with the English army. The writer says that the English, while in search of the enemy, met him about the hour of vespers off Crotoy, at the mouth of the Somme; and that such of the French vessels as were in the rear threw their provisions into the sea, some making towards England, and others for Crotoy. Ten galleys, which had abandoned boats as well as cargo, headed out to sea; and one flute and twelve victuallers, which were in the van, were so closely chased that they ran under the land, and their people, jumping overboard, were all drowned. "But the night following, about daybreak, two boats came from the town (Calais), which, being soon perceived by a mariner called William Roke, with one Hikeman Stephen, one boat returned to the town with great difficulty, but the other was chased on shore, in the which boat was taken a great master, who was the patron of the Genoese galleys and of the Genoese who were in the town, and with him seventeen of those persons and full forty letters. But before the said patron was taken, he fastened an important letter to a hatchet and threw it into the sea; but this letter and hatchet were found when the water ebbed."[3] The letter in question was from the
