no avail, and at last, weary of the French king's covert enmity, he resolved upon open war. To this course many things combined to draw him. There was the old grudge between the English and French kings for several generations owing to their respective claims upon Normandy and Gascony. There were the persuasions of the French exiles at the English Court, especially Robert, Earl of Artois, THE ARTOIS SUCCESSION.

Philip's brother-in-law, who had done his best to get Philip chosen King of France, but had afterward been deprived of his inheritance and driven abroad by his kinsman. There was the danger of letting the French get hold of the great cities of the Low Countries, which were the chief markets for English wool and goods, and our traders were eager to help the men of Ghent, against their lord the Earl of Flanders, whose cause was upheld by Philip. Accordingly in 1337 Edward gave out that he was about to go to war with Philip to recover his lawful heritage the crown of France, in spite of the warning letters of Pope Benedict XII. (who was afraid of his joining the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria against himself), and he soon afterwards took the title and arms of King of France. The English nobles were not at all displeased to follow a brave young knight to a war in which they ran no danger of hardship or famine, but had good hope of rich plunder and heavy ransom from wealthy prisoners, even if they did not win broad lands and high titles. The English merchants who had suffered by the French and Scottish sea-rovers were glad to think that piracy would be stopped in the Channel, and that they would be able to pay back the Norman privateers for the damage they had done to the coast towns. The English churchmen did not care for the popes, now that they were living at Avignon, away from Rome their own city, and in the power of the French king, and they were glad that they would not be obliged to pay these "French popes" so much money or to see the

best preferments given to their foreign favourites. The Grey Friars and the Oxford Scholars had warmly taken the side of the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria in his struggle against John XXII. and Benedict XII. The English people, as far as they thought at all about it, were glad to help their young king to win a fresh kingdom, and liked the thought of having a blow at the French, their old foes. Edward did not go to war without allies. The Emperor Lewis, who saw a chance of using him as a cat's-paw against France, agreed to aid him; the Low Country lords, the Dukes of Brabant and Guelders, the Earl of Hainault, the Archbishop of Cologne and others, wellwishers or kinsfolk, also joined him; and he made friends with James of Artaveldt, the Master-Brewer of Gaunt, who was the leader of the great towns of Flanders and a sturdy hater of the French. Philip on his part found friends in the Kings of Navarre, Sicily, and Scotland, who sided with him out of kinship or need, and in John, King of Bohemia, who was the rival of Lewis and head of the imperial house of Luxemburg.

5. The first campaign of a struggle which was to occupy three generations of Englishmen and Frenchmen was not very glorious to either side. Edward landed in Flanders, went to Coblentz, when the Emperor sold him the Vicariate of the West of the Empire, and then with more than 30,000 men beset Cambray. But this city was too strong to be carried by storm; and when the English began to make raids into France the German nobles and knights refused to join them. The French king, who had 100,000 men in his host, would not fight a pitched battle, though the armies lay face to face for some days. By the end of 1339, Edward having spent all his money and exhausted his credit, was obliged to go home for more. His Parliament received him well, and granted him large supplies, while he agreed to several useful and notable statutes. The first orders the sheriffs to be yearly appointed in the Exchequer Court, and limits purveyance; the second completes the Confirmatio Cartarum by abolishing tallage of any kind, even on domain land, without consent of Parliament; the third declaring that the English crown shall never be under the French crown, though both be held by one man; the fourth frees the clergy from purveyance and other royal exactions. Meanwhile Philip had set a large army on the Flemish marches, and gathered a fleet of 500 ships at Sluys under Sir Hugh Kiriel the Breton, Sir Peter Bahucet a Norman, and Blackbeard the Genoese corsair, to stop the landing of the English and cripple their

P

The campaign

of 1339 and

1340. Cambray, Sluys,

trade. Among them were the galley-men who had sacked Southampton and taken the king's own ship the Christofer in 1338. On June 22nd Edward sailed with 300 ships against them in spite of his Council's advice, and on the 24th, "at the dawn when and Tournay. the sun was rising, he beheld his foes so strongly arrayed that they were very terrible to look at, for the ships of the French fleet were so strongly lashed together with great chains, and fitted with great castles, brettices, and barricades. Nevertheless Sir Edward our king spake to all those that were about him of the English fleet: 'Fair lords and brethren, be not dismayed for aught, but be all of good courage, for he that shall do battle for me to-day, and shall fight with a good brave heart, will have the blessing of God Almighty, and every man shall have whatever he can take.' Then our sailors hoisted their sails half-mast high, and hauled up their anchors as if they were about to fly; and when the French navy saw this they unlashed their great chains to follow us, and with that our ships sailed back upon them, and the battle began with the sound of trumpets, drums, viols, and tabors and other kinds of music."

"And the wavering wind that rose out of the west,
Blowing blithely and fair in the breadth of our sails,
Drove the big burly cogs [great ships] aboard of each other.
So strongly our stems struck the bows of their galleys
That the breastworks and bulwarks were bursten asunder.
Then we cast across grapplings from one craft to the other,
And hewed at the head-ropes that held up their masts.
At the strokes of the sword-blades the masts swayed and tottered
And fell down on the foredecks, destroying all beneath them.
From the boats that lay by the stones beat on the foe,
And our archers and arblastmen kept shooting eagerly,
As fast as when hail falls fiercest in winter,
And our engineers ever their bullets were uttering,
Till the French dared not front us nor lift up their faces.
Then boldly on board sprung the barons in mail,
And to hand-fight they fell, fencing cruelly with spears,
With the royal rank steel the war-harness rending,
Breaking through breastplates, burnished helms cleaving,
And shredding the shields with well-sharpened blades.
Thus they dealt all that day those bold doughty champions,
Till their foes were all felled or flung into the waters.'

"For the battle was so stiff and stern that the onset lasted from noon all day and all night and the morrow till the hour of prime, and when the battle was over there was no Frenchman left alive but Spaudfish, who fled with twenty-four ships and galleys." This victory delighted the English merchants,

and proved that the English archers, rightly used, were better than any foot-soldiers who could be brought against them. It also forced Philip to give up all plans for carrying the war into England. Edward then with his allies besieged Tournay, "assaulting it six times a day, with his springalds and mangonels [catapults and war-slings] casting huge stones, and with engines of powder and fire [cannons], so that these engines with their huge stones broke down the towers and the strong walls, churches, belfries, strong halls, fine buildings, and rich dwellings throughout the said city; and the people within the city were all but perished by reason of the great famine that was in the city, for they were so straitly held that the quarter of barley was worth £4 sterling [equal to £50], the quarter of oats 2 marks, an egg 6d., two onions for a penny." And they must have yielded up the town if Edward had not been willing, for lack of money to go on with the siege, to make a truce, September 25, at Esplocin, at the prayer of the Countess Dowager of Hainault, Edward's mother-in-law and Philip's sister. Not being able to get silver from England, the young king hurried home secretly, November 30, leaving his cousin and other nobles with the Flemings in pledge for his debts. Next day he turned out all the ministers, the chief-justices, and other of his servants from their offices, believing them to have misused their power and kept back his moneys. John of Stratford, Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the ministry, fled to sanctuary, and denying the charges brought against him by the king's libellus famosus [pamphlet of accusations], refused to make answer save before his peers in Parliament. But the king denied him the entry to the House till a committee of lords reported that peers, whether royal officers or not, cannot be put to judgment, nor lose goods or land, nor be arrested, outlawed, or judged, save in full Parliament before the Peers, when Edward gave way, and was reconciled with John. Before fresh supplies were granted the king was obliged first to promise (a) that all moneys received should be audited by a board chosen in Parliament, and (b) that he would not choose ministers without consent of his Council, and (c) that at each Parliament ministers were to resign and be compelled to answer all complaints before they could be reappointed. But when he had got his money, October 1, 1341, Edward recalled the statutes he had made, saying that " we should never have consented to the putting forth of the said statute save to avoid greater perils," wherefore" we dissembled as we were bound to do, and allowed it