an unusually lasting international friendship.[1] A notice of some of its provisions will he found in the preceding chapter. A curious episode belonging to the year 1354 was the issue to the Admiral of the Northern fleet of an order to provide three vessels to carry the Bishop of Durham to London, that he might attend to his parliamentary duties there.[2]
In 1355, Edward refused to agree to a renewal of the truce, and it was decided that the Prince of Vales should go to Gascony with a large army.[3] The usual directions were accordingly sent to the ports for the provision of the necessary shipping, and seamen were impressed.[4] So eager was the search for vessels that a Spanish craft was inadvertently seized, and the King in consequence wrote a letter of apology to his brother of Castille.[5] On September 8th, the Prince of Wales left Plymouth with three hundred troopers and transports, and after a quick passage he landed in the Gironde.[6]
The king himself had sailed earlier from Rotherhithe with forty large ships, carrying fifteen hundred dismounted men-at-arms and two thousand archers, and accompanied by his younger sons, Lionel of Antwerp and John of Gaunt; but, leaving Gravesend about July 22nd, had met with had weather in the neighbourhood of the Channel Islands, and had been driven into Sandwich and detained there until August 15th. Thence he proceeded with difficulty to Winchelsea and the Isle of Wight, but was again driven back.
While he was at Portsmouth during his ineffectual efforts to cross the Channel, news reached him that the King of Navarre, who had promised his alliance, and who was to have joined the English fleet off Jersey, had broken his engagement, and allied himself with the King of France before Calais.[7] The receipt of this intelligence led to the calling out of more ships and troops, which were assembled at Sandwich, and in October the king embarked there with his younger sons and a large retinue. He was joined at Calais by mercenaries from Flanders, Brabant, and Germany.[8] He at once marched against the French, who fled before him, and were energetically pursued. He then returned to England to meet Parliament on November 12th, but an invasion of the Scots, who had taken Berwick, called him immediately afterwards to the north,
