H.M. ships Golden Lion and Bonaventure, and seven armed vessels, and with Sir William Monson and Sir Edward Yorke as his seconds. Monson records that his ship, the Lion, during this cruise, obliged twelve foreign "hulks" to strike to her, in spite of their refusal to do so until they were forced. The earl, on account of illness, had to return prematurely; but three of his smaller vessels went on to the West Indies, and there did a good deal of damage to the Spaniards.[1]
Even prior to the conclusion of the Treaty of Melun, friendship between England and France, to the prejudice of Spain, had become very close and cordial, and Elizabeth had sent Sir John Norreys with three thousand men to co-operate with Henry IV. against the League, and against the Spaniards who were actively supporting the League in the neighbourhood of Brest. Henry, fearing lest Spain might dispatch naval as well as military assistance to his domestic enemies, persuaded Elizabeth, in 1594, to send a fleet to blockade Brest by sea. The League had by that time collapsed, owing to Henry's abjuration of Protestantism in 1593, and Norreys, with his troops, had been withdrawn. But the Duc de Mercœur, who had pretensions to the independent sovereignty of Brittany, and whose only hope lay in Spanish help, was still hostile to Henry, and rather than submit, delivered to his Spanish friends Blavet, now Port Louis, in Morbihan, and winked at, if he did not actually facilitate, their seizure of the peninsula of Camaret, between the Bay of Douarnenez and the roadstead of Brest. The Spaniards began to strongly fortify themselves there; and as their position threatened Brest and Le Conquêt, and bade fair presently to enable them to obtain the mastery of the chief naval station on the Atlantic seaboard of France, Norreys was ordered back to assist Marshal d'Aumont on the land side, and Sir Martin Frobiser, with a squadron, was directed to co-operate from the sea for the expulsion of interlopers who, had they ever securely established themselves in Brest, must have become highly dangerous neighbours for England.
Frobiser's force, according to Monson, included only four of her majesty's ships,[2] but to these there seem to have been added six, or possibly more, armed merchantmen. The main Spanish work was
